Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
About
"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."
"What is grief, if not love persevering?"
"You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath"
Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. Each prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, and more. Steal from a literary classic, or WeVerse drama. Have fun!
Examples
Minghao + Ocean Vuong
The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.
Ocean Vuong - night sky with exit wounds
Hoshi/Anyone; "Beauty is terror"
Thinking about these two quotes together and the idea of on/off-stage personas:
"Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful we tremble before it. And what could be more terrifying or beautiful, to the Greeks to to our own, than to lose control completely?" - Donna Tartt, the Secret Histories
"I am calm in everyday life but when I put on my in-ear device and step on stage, I can feel the tension and hear the cheers getting louder as the music gets louder. When the staff tells me it's time to step on stage, I feel something boil inside me. I feel it steaming inside and I think I have to give a burst of something, spill what is inside me." - Hoshi in Hit the Road Ep. 04
Any ship; "It's been so many years"
Hello, hello there, is this Martha?
This is old Tom Frost
And I am calling long distance
Don't worry 'bout the cost.
'Cause it's been forty years or more
Now Martha please recall
Meet me out for coffee
Where we'll talk about it all.
Tom Watts - Martha
Rules
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Prompting
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Filling
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You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection.
Remixing
- Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above;
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Art/media
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no subject
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: *cough* repression
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt:
[FILL] then fall
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: character study, ambiguous relationships
Permission to remix: Yes
I am unconsciously baited by soonwoo every year
***
Wonwoo is afraid of falling. He wakes up to it sometimes, blue sleep cartwheeling into cold sweat as the mattress crumbles underneath him — and he is awake, heart thumping up to his throat as he squints and realises he’s fallen asleep in the lounge room again, Seungcheol’s oversized cardigan on his knees.
He remembers the gym in elementary school. Laughter, squeaky shoes, loudspeaker crackle. His classmates are crowded around him. The teacher tells him to close his eyes, cross his arms over his chest, and lean back: don’t worry your friends will catch you.
Wonwoo crosses his arms, right over left, hands fisted so that he won’t be tempted to reach out behind him. Following instructions was a virtue, his mother says. Wonwoo closes his eyes and lets himself fall.
Gravity whooshes through him, his heart leaps like a rollercoaster and every hair on his body trembles but the moment suspends for a second too long and Wonwoo knows, as his eyes meet the ceiling, that he knew this was coming.
Wonwoo falls. His tailbone hits the ground first and his glasses bounce off his nose and scatter elsewhere. He squeezes his eyes shut as laughter pours over his head and red shame rises to his ears. No one had caught him. All of them stood by and watched him fall.
Wonwoo is afraid of falling.
“But hyung, what would you have answered?” Seokmin whines, “What is something you’re afraid of?” They are backstage in Chiba and the lady from MTV just left after asking them about Fear. Seokmin is being guided into a makeup chair for touch ups and Wonwoo on the hunt for a phone charger.
“Bugs was a perfect answer Seokmin. A lot of people are afraid of bugs. Especially bugs with a lot of legs.” Jeonghan replies, one hand already offering a placating pat, “Mingyu’s being weird again.”
“No. I also should have said something profound and deep. Now I seem like an idiot.” Seokmin slaps his own cheeks, “The transience of life. The inevitability of my own mortality. Being forgotten by my own mother.”
“Sincerity is always good,” Jeonghan says, already scrolling at his phone. His eyes shoot up to stare at Wonwoo squatting in the corner, on his third attempt at aligning a USB cord. Wonwoo senses radio signals. Silence hovers in the room. Jeonghan’s stare evolves into a glower.
“Pigeons.”
“What?” Seokmin looks up.
“I would say I’m afraid of pigeons,” Wonwoo repeats. He pushes his glasses up. Seokmin laughs lightly.
“See.” Jeonghan chimes, in a tone that also seems to say See, Wonwoo would also give a normal answer and he’s 10 times more profound than Mingyu ever will be. “Everyone is afraid of normal things.”
“Except Soonyoung,” Minghao says from the sofa. Seokmin squeaks and jumps in his seat, powder going onto his ears. To be fair, Wonwoo didn’t notice Minghao was here either. “Soonyoung is not afraid of anything.”
“Huh,” Jeonghan hums, “That’s true.”
Wonwoo’s first thought was no, that’s not right — the kickback instinct whenever asked to commit to an absolute truth. But then Wonwoo thinks about it, rewinds back 8 years of moments and memories. Walking in dark to the subway. The first showcase stage. The theme park in Dallas. He can’t recall ever seeing Soonyoung fearful. Perhaps once he would’ve assumed that Soonyoung was nervous or unhappy, but experience has taught him to read it as exhaustion, the low-burning oil of an introvert in recovery. His mind sped through hypotheticals. Haunted house, deep ocean, narrow caves. Each failed him. Wonwoo could imagine Soonyoung walking leisurely next to a ghost or bungee-jumping fashionably. In his mind, he skipped past the situational and tried to just imagine Soonyoung afraid, the look of it on him, but each expression slipped off his face like water, unable to stick.
Soonyoung was not afraid of anything.
In third grade, Wonwoo learnt that his jokes were never funny. So he stopped sharing them.
In high school, Wonwoo learnt most people weren’t listening when he rambled about grafting watermelon stems in dry weather or the unreliable narration in Final Fantasy 7. So he stopped talking.
In 2011, Jeon Wonwoo met Kwon Soonyoung, a boy from Namyangju that could not hold anything back. When he was happy, energy exploded out of him like an overflowing tap, as if his body could not contain his joy. When he was excited, his hands shook and his knee bounced. He physically vibrated. He could yell louder than Seokmin could sing. When he wanted to grab someone, not even Jihoon’s willpower could stop him.
Wonwoo was doing his homework in the horrible green room in the basement when the door slammed open, Soonyoung leaping inside with the winter wind.
“I confessed!” Soonyoung screamed. There were leaves in his hair and on the floor, trailing behind like a wedding train.
Wonwoo gave him a short nod and went back to his homework. The room thinned back into quietness for a moment and then Wonwoo jolted up. He was the only one in the room. Soonyoung was still standing there, frozen in time as if paralysed until a reaction was fed to him, like a coin in a vending machine.
“Hahaha,” Wonwoo forced out a laugh, “Congratulations.”
All at once, Soonyoung reanimated. His cheeks puffed up, his eyes crinkled, his bag thrown from his back into the wall.
“Can you believe I did it?”
Yes, Wonwoo thought, I can. Even at fifteen, Wonwoo had started to understand the parts of Soonyoung that made him so extraordinary. “How was it?”
Soonyoung blinks, as if processing, as if it had never occurred to him to reflect and value the events.
Wonwoo backtracked, “Well, what’s next?”
“What’s next?”
“What did she say? After you confessed?” Did she say yes? Are you dating now? What about training? How are you going to manage your time between practice and dates?” These were all things Wonwoo would have had answers to, if he wanted to confess.
Soonyoung shrugged. “Oh, I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
Soonyoung scratched at his grin, turning sheepish, “Well I didn’t wait to hear her reply.”
“So you just, said it and ran off?”
“I was going to miss my bus and be late.”
Wonwoo eyed the empty room in his peripheral vision. Well what was the point of confessing — he wanted to ask. He thought about asking, about what Soonyoung could say in response. If it would be rude to ask. If Wonwoo were to confess, it would be to hear a reply, to know for certain how someone else felt about him, to know his place in the world of another. But for that reason alone, Wonwoo would never confess unless he was certain that the feeling was reciprocated, that there was an answer that could be given. Otherwise there would be no point.
He could imagine it, Soonyoung running up the stairs to the school roof, confession bursting out like a ripe plum, before turning back and running back down, possibilities left behind him.
In the end, curiosity won out. “Why did you confess then?” Wonwoo asked. He closed his homework booklet and tucked away his pens.
“Just felt like I needed to,” Soonyoung said, kicking off his shoes, “and now I feel better.”
“Could you do it?” Seungkwan asks, “If that was your line.”
They are in the largest practice room preparing for the comeback performance of Fearless. Hyerim is explaining the choreography to Jeonghan — running up a set of stairs made from human bodies, spinning at the peak, looking for the camera, then dropping backwards into an ocean of hands. A trust fall.
There’s 6 of them in the back with the job of catching Jeonghan. Seungkwan just needs to stand pretty in the center but he’s migrated for a chat while the dancers are learning their places. Wonwoo likes to think Hyerim chose the 6 strongest but Minghao is there and Jihoon is, elsewhere.
“I could,” Joshua sniffs from Wonwoo’s left, “I’m just too heavy for it.”
“You could not,” Seungcheol snipes back, elbowing him in the ribs, “You’re scared of heights.”
Mingyu looks up, eyebrows drawn in worry, “Do you think Jeonghan’s scared?”
Of course Wonwoo thinks. Jeonghan’s also scared of heights, even if he never mentioned it when the idea was raised at the first planning meeting. Even now, Wonwoo can see the fear in his artificial focus, how his mouth is slightly open, how he sways on his feet. Wonwoo doesn’t say it out loud, the same way he does not say most thoughts out loud, because it was not what people wanted to hear.
I couldn’t do it. I’m afraid of falling. I’m afraid of not being caught.
Soonyoung is opposite him, contemplative. “I think it’ll be fun.” He shakes his shoulders, “Don’t you think it’ll look better if he posed first? Like this —”
Soonyoung stretches out his arms and leans back on his heels. For a second he is ethereal, a marble puppet crafted into art. Wonwoo watches him in slow motion, waiting for the moment Soonyoung moves his feet back to catch himself. But that never comes. Soonyoung snaps his arms across his chest, a different pose speaking to a different meaning. A millisecond passes and Wonwoo realises that Soonyoung is actually falling, falling.
He bolts forward, arms outstretched, hand grabbing the scruff of Soonyoung’s collar. Only his index finger makes it inside, he feels the tug of Soonyoung’s gravity, the grip of his sneakers as his balance wavers, then topples, crashing him past Minghao, into Soonyoung, into the ground.
Embarrassment tingles up Wonwoo’s neck. He pushes up his glasses to check if they’re still there. Soonyoung is laughing, hand curling into Wonwoo’s hair, halfway between a pat and a hug.
“What are you doing?” Wonwoo exclaims. They seem both unharmed, albeit uncoordinated and out of formation.
“Checking the pose,” Soonyoung chirps, he pulls his knees up.
“What if you fell?”
“I wanted to fall.”
“Didn’t you check if anyone would catch you?”
“Nope,” Soonyoung grins, getting up. He offers his hand to Wonwoo, still on the ground, “Isn’t it more interesting, to fall first, and see who would catch you?”
Wonwoo does not reply as he takes Soonyoung's hand and lets himself be pulled up. But he is thinking — perhaps.
Re: [FILL] then fall
- the REPRESSIONISMS of wonwoo..... oh dear. oh boy. someone should tell him it's all ok. and the contrast with soonyoung who just doesn't worry about all that!!! who confesses just to say it rather than to get a reply!! man. that's soonwoo alright
- as a 97z fan i am ALWAYS thinking about that interview, so the way you chose to write about that was just !!! to me. i loved it. i think it was so Them as well, like the way the room fell silent when jeonghan said it's good to be sincere was so fun, and then of course soonyoung who just isn't afraid!! perfect.
- and the FINAL BIT about soonyoung falling... the IMPLICATIONS of that. absolutely perfect. you've packed So much in here i really love it!!!
Re: [FILL] then fall
- YES REPRESSEIONISMS, when I saw this I was just like u___u sigh pb you're so obvious trying to bait wonwoo-ists surely this won't work -- and here we are haha
- that interview is iconic!! so much to think about, the contrast between the 97z, but also how it highlights Mingyu as a performer (haha)
<333
Re: [FILL] then fall
this was so wonderful and felt so carefully fleshed out in so little words!!!! ur prose n all the little canonical details <333 ugh so good
here are some tidbits i liked:
- “Bugs was a perfect answer Seokmin. A lot of people are afraid of bugs. Especially bugs with a lot of legs.” Jeonghan replies, one hand already offering a placating pat, “Mingyu’s being weird again.”
“No. I also should have said something profound and deep. Now I seem like an idiot.” Seokmin slaps his own cheeks, “The transience of life. The inevitability of my own mortality. Being forgotten by my own mother.” i chuckled… oh seokmin!!!!! you are valid!!!!!!! i love that interview so much sometimes svt are just some dudes - He could imagine it, Soonyoung running up the stairs to the school roof, confession bursting out like a ripe plum, before turning back and running back down, possibilities left behind him. this whole scene tbh!!!!! it was just so joyously soonyoung, how he puts his entire being into things & thinks later, while wonwoo is too heavily focused on cause/effects and stuck in his head to be doing anything (i particularly liked the line about how jww would only confess if he could be sure, so that he’d know his place in the world. it was a wonderful way to put it)
- just the image of soonyoung being ^^ and wonwoo being like, aren’t you scared & soonyoung (in return) not making fun of him for not being able to do it too, but kind of just carrying on his way, as if to say, you can do it too wonwoo… its a kindness and an act of love in itself i think T__T
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“Isn’t it more interesting, to fall first, and see who would catch you?” what a great line!!!!!!
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Also fyi, one of the scenes I considered was the interview they did for Abema about what they would do when they liked someone + Wonwoo said he'll take them out for a perfect picnic on the weekend (wtf hahaha). There was a wip about the honesty in their answers and how Wonwoo was answering to show off his jpn grammar/vocab... but the interview was in korean so I dropped it.
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"the low-burning oil of an introvert in recovery," "the fear in his artificial focus," "halfway between a pat and a hug" OHHH you do such a good job at conveying the little bits of human body language. i'm blown away
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