2026 Round: Quotes

[hwarium]

Status: Prompting Closed This round is now closed to further prompts but remain open for fills and remixes (forever!). Seventeen Holidays 2026 Round: Quotes About "Enter any body of water and you give yourself up to be swallowed. Even the stones know that." "beauty is terror" "Would you fall in love with me again, if you knew all I've done? The things I can't undo. " Calling all lovers of poetry and prose, rhyme and reason, screen and stage. Welcome to the Quotes Round, where every prompt must cradle a quotation (or two, or three). Mix the media and let the synergy birth a new order, or keep it short and let the subtext speak its secrets to the right writer. 🛑 HOLD UP If this is your first time on 17hols please check out our About Page which has helpful information about dreamwidth and HTML. We are a prompting fest where all the action happens in the comment section. Rules Sign up is not required. Fills have a minimum of 400 words for prose, haiku-length for poetry (3 lines), and 400px by 400px for art (memes are also art). Other mediums are fine too! There is no maximum cap. Tag and provide content warnings at your discretion, but a good guide are the Ao3 four (Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage) and this list of common CWs (cr: SportsFest). NSFW/Explicit content should be tagged NSFW art should not be visible, please provide a link and a warning. You may crop the artwork and embed a SFW preview. How it works Prompting Click on [Post a New Comment] at the bottom of this post; Change the subject; Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment and edit the sections. Feel free to add as much detail as you want! Need ideas? Check out our 2021 and 2022 Quote rounds. <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Do Not Wants:</strong> None <strong>Prompt:</strong> <blockquote>[QUOTE GOES HERE] </blockquote> Filling Reply to the original prompt; You must change the subject to [FILL] - this is to help the mods track. Feel free to add a title Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment, edit the sections, and add your text. You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection. <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** Remixing Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above; Change the subject to [REMIX]. Art/media Upload your work to any platform (twitter, imgur, youtube, soundcloud, google maps, etc.) Using the same HTML code as above, copy the link into your fill or remix. That's it! Optionally, you can embed a picture into your comment. Please use the following code instead. (To explain, the HTML resizes your picture to 400x400px so that it fits on most screens. Users can view the full size if they click on it. You can also add a link to your work on twitter so that others can share it, or to any other website you want) <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** <img src="INSERT IMAGE URL" width="400px"> <a href="INSERT ANY URL YOU WANT">TEXT THAT DESCRIBES THE LINK</a> Note! On dreamwidth, you can't edit a comment once someone has replied to it. Navigation ABOUT FAQ TWITTER BAITS ✧ 2026 ROUND: QUOTES ✧ 2026 FILLS MASTERLIST NOTION DATABASE (ALL FILLS) ARCHIVE: 2021 ARCHIVE: 2022 ARCHIVE: 2023 ARCHIVE: 2024 ARCHIVE: 2025

Comments

that dreamers often lie

[icarusundone]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: optional: Dreamscapes? Inception AU?
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Sometimes, you just want
something so hard you have to lie about it,
so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute,
how real hunger has a real taste.
- Ada Limón, “Lies About Sea Creatures”

If everyone believes it, a lie becomes reality — easy, right? People believe what they want to anyway. Honestly, if the world turns into what everyone dreams of, is that really so bad?
- Cipher, Honkai: Star Rail

midas is king and he holds me so tight / and turns me to gold in the sunlight

[icarusundone]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I pray
whatever that shines inside us bleeds
gold through & through & through
- Natalie Wee, “Listen I Love You Joy Is Coming”

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
- Richard Siken, “Scheherazade”

ordinary people

[harbourdreams]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: non-famous au
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

We are the world’s left and right hand, the river and its bed. We are a word consisting of two letters. We are ordinary people, so no one knows the power of our love. Like every indescribable secret, no one knows of its existence, and no one will feel sorrow at its passing, no one but the two of us. How marvellous.

— from “Premonition” by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang

[FILL] the right hands of light

[klav]

Ship/Member: Soonyoung/Minghao
Major Tags: Please consider this a Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings fill
Additional Tags: Avatar: The Last Airbender AU, canon-typical depictions of colonialism and war, isolation, The Soonhao Head Shave ™
Permission to remix: Yes

***

Teeeechnically this is a non-famous AU! I hope it's okay that I turned it into fantasy setting as well. I've had this sort of plot in mind for months and when I saw the quote it's like everything was finally unlocked.

Posted to ao3 here!

who's afraid of little old me?

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: consider: queerness and performance; the idolsona vs the self; every crack in the glass when a fan asks about your "type"
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

In any institution built on hierarchy, performance, and control, there is an unspoken cost to visibility. You learn quickly that success isn’t only about talent. It’s about predictability. About not complicating the machine. Over time, that expectation becomes internalized, and self-regulation replaces self-expression.

You don’t disappear entirely.

You edit.

That kind of editing produces discipline. It also produces fragmentation.

- Colton Underwood, The Quiet Negotiations

Me, with two namеs
Live two lives
Which one do you lovе?
Despite the two of me
I have one heart
So to you, I am one

- S.Coups, 난

to whom i owe my youth

[firstresponders]

Ship/Member: Any, but consider jihan, jicheol, gyuboo
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: testing the platonic-romantic border
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

a vow would be redundant to all the years we've spent in sailing. for centuries the seas have etched its waves on us. they cannot read it if they were not a sailor. we flow through the gap between fingers and live through locked hands. in any other container, we'll perish. but this is something they cannot understand. when you are water, they want you in a bottle. this is something they cannot comprehend.

to conjure up a bit of sorrow to make new verse

[dearmonday77]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: major character death

Prompt:

Now I know only too well the taste of sorrow.
I begin to speak yet pause,
I begin to speak yet pause
And say instead, "My, what a cool and lovely autumn."

-Xin Qiji 辛棄疾

graduation vigil

[lachrymosy]

Ship/Member: Minghao, Jeonghan, ensemble
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: (US-based) grad school AU; a little sad because it is a grad school AU
Permission to remix: Yes

***

By evening Minghao has packed up his entire apartment. The sum total of the past five years whittled down to two large suitcases, a carry-on, and a backpack: exactly the amount specified on his ticket, down to the kilogram. Two boxes should already be en route to China and he imagines them, floating on a barge that has to slice through the floating island of plastic that Vernon says he read isn't actually an island at all. It's mostly microplastics, Vernon had claimed, with the vague expression that suggested he was remembering something verbatim. Vernon told him once that he remembered what he read exactly as the page he read it on, and when trying to recall something, he imagined himself scrolling through the PDF, looking for the right-shaped paragraph in a specific spot on the page. Well, Minghao has often wondered what that is like. Did it make grad school easier, or life harder? Vernon seems to live in his own head most of the time. Then again, Minghao can relate to that.

He never intended to still be standing here, in this apartment, in November, but his advisor hadn't let him defend until the fall. Junhui claimed it was because his advisor wanted to squeeze another semester of TA work out of him, but Junhui is always looking for flaws in a system inherently built to break them. Standing at the end of it, Minghao is just glad that he wasn't crushed, even if it means he's departing when his neighbors have started hanging Christmas lights.

"Look at my hands! Look at what you've done."

Minghao turns to find Jeonghan standing in his doorway, palms up, pitifully red. He's arranged his face into an artful pout, too, calculated to make Minghao laugh. And he does: because the situation is absurd or because he is too tired not to? Doesn't matter. Jeonghan grins wide like an angler fish, though if he's working an angle, Minghao has no idea what it is. He's planning to sleep on the couch, and take the bus to the airport at 4:45AM. Jeonghan doesn't have enough time to lure him into a scheme.

Jeonghan enters the room and turns in a small circle. The house, according to Jihoon, was built sometime around 1950. And, Minghao supposes, seldom updated since. The wood floors are scuffed by successive occupants; the walls, pockmarked with nail holes. The window unit seldom worked. Jeonghan often teased him are you not an engineering student? Can't you figure this out? But it's not like Jeonghan ever did, either.

Jeonghan started the program a year ahead of him but isn't slated to defend until the spring. He has dark circles under his eyes and the wan look of someone who hasn't slept much lately. When Minghao first moved in they'd stay up late at the kitchen table, socks catching on the peeling linoleum beneath their feet, to work on their coursework late into the night. Jeonghan could never stick with a task in a straightforward way. He always wanted to find a trick, an elegant cheat, preferably one no one had thought of yet. It was annoying but it was what made him a good engineer. Minghao preferred elegance without the cheats: clean solutions that worked efficiently and precisely. They more or less reached the same solutions, and by three in the morning, Jeonghan would be elated and a little delirious as the answers unfolded before them.

"It looks smaller than I thought it was," Jeonghan comments. He sighs. "No one ever decorated as much as you, you know. I wish you'd left up the paintings."

Last night Minghao burned those paintings in the backyard, over a bonfire he'd made Mingyu start for him. Mingyu had frowned while Minghao carefully fed each large piece of paper to the flames, but he hadn't stopped him. Maybe he understood. Minghao doesn't want to take any paper home except his diploma, but the school will mail that to China anyway.

"I'm not sure the next guy would like them so much," Minghao says.

Jeonghan makes a face. "How could we let someone else live in your room? That's so sad."

Minghao grins. "I could have found someone to sublease."

"I don't want someone weird coming in here for a semester. I already have to live with Mingyu, ugh."

Jeonghan often seems serious to the people who don't know him well. Minghao hadn't understood at first, either, confused and annoyed every time Jeonghan barged into his room and demanded he go grocery shopping or out to eat or to the library or whatever else with him. The one time Minghao had complained can't you just go with Seokmin instead? he'd gotten his first look at what Jeonghan really looked like when serious, his glib teasing exchanged for an icy neutrality. When Minghao apologized after they crossed paths on the (literally icy) sidewalk one morning, he saw Jeonghan look sheepish for the first and last time. They've never had a problem since.

"Mingyu's fine," Minghao says. "It's Seungcheol I won't miss. I won't miss his stuff everywhere."

"You won't miss walking into the living room and seeing all his damp laundry hanging everywhere?" Jeonghan says, sounding shocked.

Minghao rolls his eyes. Seungcheol refuses to use the dryer, claiming that it will shrink all his Supreme clothes, and in the winter, dries his clothes on two drying racks and the back of every single kitchen table chair. Jeonghan swears up and down that the dripping underwear is why Joshua broke his lease and moved out, but Minghao kind of thinks it was because he shared a wall with Wonwoo, who never sleeps. Anyway, Joshua only moved two blocks away, though to hear Jeonghan tell it, he moved all the way back to LA.

Next year, Seungcheol will have graduated. He and Jihoon have lived in this house the longest of any of them and soon it will be filled with strangers, like none of them were ever here.

Five years. Minghao was often too anxious to string an English sentence together when he started, couldn't have imagined presenting at a conference. Now he can't seem to remember who he was before. It scares him, knowing that in a day's time he'll be back at home, trying to fit himself into the spaces that he'd once flourished in.

"I'm really proud of you," Jeonghan says softly, not looking at him. "You know."

A strange feeling settles in Minghao's chest. When he first arrived he imagined himself staying in the US indefinitely, caught up in a version of his life he'd dreamed up by watching television and his friends' social media posts. The reality was more grueling, no matter how often he reminded himself that gratitude was a practice calibrated in his own mind. He'd wanted something more substantial, and instead he'd gotten years of uncertainty.

When he defended and his committee shook his hand, he'd always imagined he'd feel happy, or some sort of satisfaction. Instead, all he felt was relief.

"Thank you," he says honestly. Jeonghan looks away, a hint of a smile curling at his lips.

"Don't leave early," Jeonghan sighs. "Stay here until the rest of us are finished too. You can be our live-in cook. You could totally get OPT for that!"

Minghao rolls his eyes. "That sounds terrible."

Jeonghan surprisingly has no counter to that, probably because it does sound terrible. He shifts his balance, pursing his lips as he says, "It just seems sad that you're leaving now."

Minghao has been chasing graduation since the day he started. It's the carrot dangled to keep them all going, the fear of failure being the stick. Now he has the carrot and no fear of the stick, but he still feels oddly at a loss for what to do next.

"For so long I just wanted to be done," Minghao says. "Now that I am… I don't know. I feel like I'm going to miss it here."

When he first moved in, Soonyoung showed him around. It's like, cool if you want to do your own thing and all, but we like to chill down here so you should join! This is the fridge and there's one in the garage out back too. Oh, shit, sorry, that's Seungcheol-hyung's vodka so like, don't touch that. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm not but he'll share. He's cool. Everyone's cool! You might want to label your food though. That's about it! Minghao had then had to ask him where the laundry room was, and after another detour into the basement, he'd finally walked up to this room and stood right in the center, looking at the tree outside his window drooping in the August heat. In the backyard, Mingyu and Seungkwan were playing basketball. His room had been quiet.

He'd started the paintings around the time his first advisor started harrassing him, before he'd figured out what to do. Traditional landscape paintings, every scene a depiction of this house. He'd painted the house on a mountainside, by the sea, in the clouds. He'd painted himself alone, he'd painted everyone but him. He'd painted them all together, too, haunting the windows like little ghosts trapped behind glass.

The last one he'd painted, before he burned them all, was the most realistic. Just this house on a street of other old houses with overgrown lawns. Nothing more.

He blinks and looks at Jeonghan. "It's weird. This will all be gone soon."

Even if he comes back to this house someday, it won't matter. It won't be the place he lived. Even if he goes to visit his friends, or they come to visit him, it won't be the same either. Their lives will have moved forward, slipping through time the way one steps into a river and finds the current strong enough to pull you downstream, if you only let yourself float.

"That's true," Jeonghan muses, a glimmer in his eye as he cracks a smile. "But we'll remember too."

Memories fade. Paintings can be burned. Diplomas don't signify five difficult years.

Minghao looks at the tree outside his window, spindly and dry in the autumn cold. What will it remember, come winter? He doesn't yet know.

i wouldn’t be here without you.

[dearmonday77]

Ship/Member: Any, consider Scoups
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: MCD, sad ending

Prompt:

Some call you murder,
shame’s stepsister—
then dress you up
& declare you white
& healthy, but you always
come back, sauced, to me.
Adam himself gave up
a rib to see yours
piled pink beside him.
Your heaven is the only one
worth wanting—
you keep me all night
cursing your four—
letter name, the next
begging for you again.

-Kevin Young, "Ode to Pork"

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Last year's wishes are this year's apologies

— I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You) by Fall Out Boy

someone has to leave

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Hoshi/Any
Major Tags: angst, breakup(?)
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.

— The Worm King's Lullaby by Richard Siken

biting

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: DK/Any, Scoups/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I am not a violent dog, I don't know why I bite.

— Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson

superposition

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Superstition aims with imprecision
But when things can't be explained - superposition
In any universe you are my dark star

I want you to want me
Why don't we rely on chemistry?
Why don't we collide the spaces that divide us?

— Superposition by Young the Giant

[FILL] i'm here at the beginning of the end

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Seungcheol
Additional Tags: non-famous au; telepathy; fast forwarding to the love confession with schmoop, fluff, ew gross etc
Permission to remix: Yes

young the giant superposition is a Low Blow btw
***

“It isn't fair,” Jeonghan says, hands curled at the back of Seungcheol’s neck. His index finger traces a line up to the hairs at the nape. “You can hear all of my thoughts, but I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

Jeonghan does have a point; all of this emotion is swirling inside of him, twining close and tight with Seungcheol’s own. It’s mostly insecurity. The worry that the love is misplaced. There isn’t any such thing, but he understands.

“Fine,” Seungcheol agrees, pressing his lips to Jeonghan’s chin. He smells like sunscreen. “You can ask me.”

The fingers in his hair stab at his scalp. Seungcheol flinches and whines. “Jeonghan-ah…”

“I don’t know what to ask you,” Jeonghan says, raking his nails across Seungcheol’s scalp. “You're putting me on the spot, you ass.”

His fingers grip at a section at the crown of his head. It isn't actually painful. The thoughts in Jeonghan’s head continue to swirl until one thrumming thought becomes more and more visible.

“Say it,” Seungcheol urges gently. The image isn't in focus but Seungcheol can feel it burn behind his eyelids.

Jeonghan scowls. “What?”

“You know what.”

Jeonghan frowns. The valley between his brows deepen. “I mean—”

“I did,” Seungcheol interrupts. He cups Jeonghan’s face between his hands, holding him as gentle as glass. “I liked you so much.”

“How does it work?”

“It’s like overhearing a conversation. Most of the time, it’s static, but some people have an active internal dialogue. Your mind is pretty quiet, but when you looked at me...” Seungcheol trails off. He feels shy. When you looked at me, it was like seeing myself for the first time. Like someone worth loving.

“All I could see was myself, and this feeling in my chest that matched my own.”

Jeonghan softens. “You’re different than I thought you would be, you know?”

“How so?”

“You put up this front, where you act like the world has fallen on your shoulders and it’s up to you to hold everyone up.”

“I do not—”

“Let me finish,” Jeonghan interrupts. His hand is warm against Seungcheol’s face. “Or read my mind. Whatever. But you’re—” Jeonghan hesitates. “When we… I was scared. You read me so well that I didn't know if…”

“I used to have anxiety attacks a lot,” Seungcheol says, gently. “Hearing everyone’s thoughts only made my own negative ones worse. I had theirs and mine, all running together. When I started medication, it made it a little more bearable. It sounds insane to say it this way, but the voices quieted.

Everything shifted from thoughts to feeling. Like heightened empathy. And when I’m close to you, I can find where your feelings end and mine begin. I can feel your emotions. I could hear you trying to work out what to say to me, and how, and I didn’t want you to be alone in this.”

Jeonghan doesn’t reply immediately. He hums to himself, thumbing the apples of Seungcheol’s cheeks. There are no thoughts there, just the feeling of a weight off his chest. Like sun on his skin.

Finally, there’s a little water in Jeonghan’s voice when he replies, “I’ve never felt alone with you.”

“I would hope so,” Seungcheol says, pressing his forehead to his. “Because I don’t plan on leaving you.”

never to be rid

[kkulecru]

Ship/Member: Any (maybe a DK or Chan involved??)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: tfw you are haunted by your husbands ex
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:
Our honeymoon in Italy had meant nothing at all to him, nor our living here together. What I had thought was love for me, for myself as a person, was not love. It was just that he was a man, and I was his wife and was young, and he was lonely. He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. He still thought about Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still, as Mrs. Danvers had said; she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning room, in the gallery above the hall (...) Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs.

- Rebecca, Daphne de Maurier

[FILL] never to be rid

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Seungcheol; past/implied Seungcheol/Jeonghan
Additional Tags: handwavey sci-fi, tfw your crush is still hung up on your ex
Permission to remix: Yes

***


From what Wonwoo understands of the mirrorverse, it's that everything inside of it is the inverse of what they know and understand. The worlds, universes, even—though Seungcheol often calls them 'planes,' which doesn't feel as all-encompassing as what he gleans it to be—were theorized to be in moral opposition. There's science fiction that poses the hypothesis of the other version of yourself—the reflector, the one you see in the mirror—being 'evil' or having an exacerbation of all of your worst qualities. He shudders to think what reflector Wonwoo's life looks like, and what he carries that's exacerbated in this universe. Little versions of yourself segmenting off like broken glass. Each decision, another shatter. Propagations of a life that could've, would've, should've been lived.

The first time that Seungcheol transports through a mirror, all Wonwoo sees is light. Like forgetting your sunglasses at the office with the sun at your back while driving home, or the flash of a camera on yearbook picture day, half-blink, grimacing and powder-pale.

He doesn't explain what it is he's seen. Leaving it alone is easy enough, until Seungcheol ropes him into it. Isn't that just the way?

He's just always crashing into Wonwoo's bedroom at a godforsaken hour.

“Don't be mad,” Seungcheol pleads. "But I have to tell you something."

Light travels wherever Seungcheol goes. It’s just a fact. Even in this darkness, the little slits that leak through the windows refract off his skin as he shimmers back into view. Into this plane of existence.

Wonwoo squints in his direction. His form slowly molds into something humanoid, then solid next to his bed. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“Why would I be mad?”

“Wonwoo-yah,” Seungcheol moans. Hands rest on his shoulder and shake him side to side. He tries—and fails—to wrestle the curled in ends from his fingers. Instead of giving up, he forces himself onto the small ledge of space between Wonwoo and the lip of the mattress. Always the little spoon, no matter what.

“Just promise.”

That can't be good. The arm he loops around Seungcheol’s waist is book ended with a fist to the stomach. A retaliatory elbow hits Wonwoo in the ribs.

“Ow!”

“Move over.”

Reluctantly, Wonwoo moves, and takes in a deep breath of cologne that is definitely not Seungcheol’s own. It sticks to his skin, his hair, under a thin layer of sweat. Oh. Good.

“How long have you been in here?” Wonwoo asks, peeling open his eyes. May as well brace himself for this conversation. Forty-five minutes of sleep is plenty.

“Long enough.” Seungcheol twists around in his hold. “You know, your jerk-off technique could use a little—”

A pillow to the face doesn't silence him.

“Shut up,” Wonwoo groans, reaching around for his glasses.

Seungcheol’s laugh, a loud hak-hak-hak, fills the air. Small comfort, for now. Wonwoo blinks at him as he solidifies into an actual shape, face, person.

“You saw him again.” Seungcheol going quiet is answer enough. "Hyung."

Going through it once was more than enough, but Seungcheol has always been a masochist. The worst part is that Wonwoo can't find it in him to be angry.

"We talked about it," Seungcheol says, as if anything he says doesn't make him sound desperate and ridiculous.

"They're not the same person."

Wonwoo's said it a million times, and the way Seungcheol responds has been it for a million and one.

"It's closure."

"You've been going to see him every week for the last three months," Wonwoo points out, which draws Seungcheol's shoulders to his ears. He presses his face to Wonwoo's chest, breath warming through the cotton. His hands are resting limply at his sides, though Wonwoo can feel him fist the sheet under them.

"We're making progress."

Wonwoo bites his tongue on the knee-jerk response. Progress is when we kissed on New Year's, not whatever this is. Instead, he grabs Seungcheol's hand and holds it in front of their faces.

"The longer you're there, the more you start to fade away."

Seungcheol groans and pulls his hand back. "There's nothing to worry about."

"So Jeonghan on this plane knows exactly what you've been doing then, right?" Wonwoo says sharply.

Seungcheol buries his face in Wonwoo's chest and groans. "How is it that you sound the same both here and there?" he whines. "I know what I'm doing. It's fine."

Wonwoo is not moved. And it's not fine.

giant proclamations

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: consider soonwoo
Major Tags: love!!!!!!!!!
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

When I'm with you, I am calm
A pearl in your oyster
Head on my chest, a silent smile
A private kind of happiness
You see, giant proclamations
Are all very well
But our love is louder than words

— Sunday by Bloc Party

the art of safe-keeping

[kkulecru]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Maybe the only way to truly preserve art is to keep it locked up, in the dark, forever, where no one can ever see it.
— Ghost Cities, Siang Lu

But humans are incapable of letting beautiful things be. Enamored by his sweet morning songs and dazzled by his brilliant plumage, a hunter snatches the bird from his nest in the dead of night. Trapped in a golden cage, the bird can no longer spread his wings.
— The Last Dragon of the East, Katrina Kwan

solar bonds

[kkulecru]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: is it magic or just metaphor, take your pick, seems like a lot of pressure to be the key to fixing this though
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

In the middle of night there's a luminous sun
It's a little too bright for us to sleep and dream

It's a little too bright when the luminous sun in the middle of night is shining down

(Brave little Sally fall asleep power is a gift so don't be fearful)
— Sally's Song, Universal Hall Pass

No night just day, the sky scorched red
Like the world's in monochrome (Like it's become one tone)
— Hot, Seventeen

tyler durden, a mirror

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I've loved you
like a man loves an old wound
picked up in a razor fight
on a street nobody remembers.

Look at him:
even in the dark he touches it gently.

- Wound by Larry Levis

i know the denial: wake up the next morning & ask around. has anyone seen him? the pretty boy with the killer kiss? if i see him, ill kill him. ill kill him if i see him. i swear to god, ill pound him to a pulp. & something inside you is waiting for next friday.

- FIGHT CLUB AS AN ALLEGORY FOR INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA by silas denver melvin

i know i'll never find your loving in anyone else

[dearmonday77]

Ship/Member: Mingyu, consider minwon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: hopeful (or happy!) ending
Do Not Wants: MCD

Prompt:

If someone were to come up to me
and say that they knew how
to love you better, I'd say, 'Buddy,
step into the ring you're going down.
I'd fight a guy for you. I'd fight a girl for you.
I'd fight myself, you know I would,
If I thought it'd do any good.

- Zanna, Don’t!, Do you Know What It’s Like?

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

-Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

heart so hollow

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any, but consider Vernon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: exes with benefits
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Your teeth gleam in thе dark
When I ask, "How's your heart?"
/
You probably got another lovеr
She's from anywhere but here
And it's probably almost over
And you'll come back to me by the end of the year
And I'm gonna sleep in your navy bedsheets
Your roommate's gonna hear me leave
In the morning when the novelty has worn off from having me
/
Take my lace and my leather off
And the novelty is gone

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: post-disbandment
Do Not Wants: rekindled romance

Prompt:

And I'm not mad anymore
In fact now I'm doing fine
I've gotten wiser with age
Will you let me back into your life?
I know it wasn't your fault
And though it might have been mine
We were just doing our best

- Reunite by Allie X

[dearmonday77]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: immortality maybe
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Life is so long and I’m too lonely.

- RM on weverse

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant
time was endless.

-Louise Glück, from The Silver Lily

when the party’s over

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: N/A

Prompt:

I had so much gratitude for having been loved by someone, regardless of how it ended. It's just not a given that anyone will spend any of their life loving you, and I wanted to look inward and say "I think I'm scared that I'm not easy to love and that scares me more than being alone" - so I centered the self and worked outward, with real grief but also real gratitude.

I think there has to be some other engine beyond heartbreak. Heartbreak is a primary color - I like staring at a cloudless sky for a little while, I'm impressed and even moved by it, but I think that is only because I'm aware of how clouds can complicate and interrupt it.

- Hanif Abdurraqib, on creating “divorce art”

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

NUMERO: On the flip side, is there anything you've learned to let go of over these 10 years?
S.COUPS: The desire to be loved. I realized that constantly seeking love isn't a good thing. If I want to be loved, I need to prioritize loving others. That's something I came to understand at some point.

i mutate myself, hoop-jumping to some semblance of normalcy by journaling and eating right and "trying harder". try as i might: i know the form i began with, and that always feels more permanent. i was born as an anvil. i could never be the weightless sword.

- tumblr user inkskinned

Psychology of a Monster

[abaegel]

Ship/Member: maybe Jeonghan but any is fine
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: You can take it the serial killer route or metaphorical, go crazy!
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

"When I used my knife, it brought psychological relief. I know I have to be destroyed. I was a mistake of nature."

- Andrei Chikatilo, The Red Ripper.

room 93

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

[…] i know the ghosts that haunt us aren’t tethered to buildings. They live in parts of us that are harder to reach and they go wherever we do.

- tiredandlonelymuse on tumblr

i was humilated. which is why we kissed.

[hyojungss]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: enemies to friends to lovers, plausible deniability
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

SERENA
So you guys have been lying to me and sneaking around for months so you could hang out as friends?

BLAIR
Exactly. Friends.

DAN
Yeah, I swear. Just friends.

Gossip Girl 4x19