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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- 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).
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- 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 to something interesting;
- Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment and edit the sections. Feel free to add as much detail as you want!
Filling
- Reply to the original prompt;
- Change the subject to [FILL], you may add a title or stay chaotic;
- 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.
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.)
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no subject
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt:
[FILL] erasure
Major Tags: MCD (implied only!)
Additional Tags: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au, implied death, 95z try to take care of cheol, jeonghan is a liar but for a good reason
Permission to remix: Yes
i don't know how close this is to what you imagined with the quote but once i started i couldn't stop <3 sorry/thank you for the prompt!
crossposted to ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36220981
***
seungcheol wakes and the room around him is foreign. sterile. he panics for a moment and grips the icy steel handrails along the sides of his foamy mattress, his heart rate spiking far enough for the monitor next to his bed to begin beeping loudly. the door to his room is bashed open inwards and a pair of nurses sweep in, flitting around him like butterflies to check his vitals, the various tubes poked into him at painful angles, the monitors.
he sees two figures huddled together at the door, their gazes holding a myriad of feelings he cannot even begin to decipher. still, at least, he thinks he knows their names.
“shua? jeonghan?” his voice is scratchy from disuse and dehydration, and he coughs lightly in an attempt to clear his throat. “is that you?”
they move into the light, faces lighting up with smiles at the sound of their names.
“hey, how are you feeling?” joshua sits down first, perched on the edge of his bed like a little bird.
jeonghan rounds the corner, coming closer to press a cool hand against seungcheol’s clammy forehead, brows furrowed in concern. “at least he’s not feverish anymore.”
“i’m okay, i just… what happened?” seungcheol struggles for the memory: anesthesia does this, he knows, rips your brain into a little black hole. but surely it can’t be this bad?
joshua and jeonghan glance at each other, something passing wordlessly between them before he sees it. the little card, its edges clearly bent from being squeezed between joshua’s fingers, that joshua is now handing to him to read for himself.
lacuna tech. the name is emblazoned across the front of the cream colored card in a futuristic font, promising to restore peace in your life.
seungcheol turns the card over, his mind still far too fuzzy to understand from the name alone. on the back, in much smaller typeface, the card reads:
your friend, seungcheol choi, has opted to surgically remove a portion of his memories.
please do not bring up triggering past memories of _______, so as to aid his recovery and progress forward into a smooth and peaceful life.
the name has been blacked out with sharpie, methodical lines crosshatching the printed name until it is completely obscured from view.
“i… removed something. someone?” his voice wavers, uncertain.
“yes,” jeonghan pats his arm, the smile on his face made equal parts from kindness and sadness. “and it’s for the best. now, let’s get you home, okay?”
//
they lead seungcheol into an apartment that feels like a fever dream. parts of it are familiar, homey, things he can remember without effort. but he finds himself stubbing his toes on random corners, walking into walls and furniture that seem like they’ve just been moved ever so slightly.
“did i… who lives here?” seungcheol glances between the faces of both his friends, searching for truth. confirmation. stability.
“you did,” joshua begins. “with us.”
“we live together?” seungcheol brings one hand to rest on his temple as he processes, trying to summon that memory with an embarrassed laugh. “maybe they nicked more of my brain than they should’ve.”
they busy themselves over the stove cooking dinner, talking about the flavour of the soup and the weather and the music playing over the stereo. anything to remain rooted in the present, to not fall backwards into the webs of fragmented memories. and as they sit at the table together, sipping the seolleongtang that joshua had been simmering since the morning, seungcheol spots something.
“white chrysanthemums.” he notes, matter-of-factly. “did someone pass?”
joshua’s eyes flick to jeonghan’s, a note of frenzy that seungcheol, thankfully, does not see.
“yes, a distant relative of mine.” jeonghan covers smoothly, “while you were still recovering from your procedure.”
“oh, jeonghan, i’m sorry.” seungcheol reaches across the table, patting his friends hand softly. “i can’t imagine how you’re feeling. grief… grief can be so unbearable.”
//
that night, behind the closed door of the guest room they’ve been sharing, joshua and jeonghan argue in hushed tones, trying not to awaken seungcheol.
“you lied right to his face!” joshua throws his hands up in frustration, stalking across the room to glare pointedly out of the window.
“what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” jeonghan’s tone is measured, steady. as if he’s had this same conversation with himself. “what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, shua.”
“it’s a betrayal,” joshua turns back, sighing as he slumps onto the bed. “to him, to our friendship, and.. to jihoon’s memory.”
“yes, but… he chose to forget. he went out of his way to carve that knowledge out of him with some experimental medical procedure!” jeonghan’s voice has risen to a fever pitch, and he pauses here. forces himself to slow down, to breathe. “do you really want to be the one to plunge that knife back into his heart?”
“how long can we really keep it from him? he’s remembered before.”
“look, he’s been to lacuna twice now.” the way jeonghan’s voice twists on the company’s name betrays his feelings entirely. it is distasteful and discomforting, the bastardisation of science and memory and love. the loss of his friend in his true form. but it’s too late, they’re in too deep, they have to go with it or risk losing even more. “they say that if he remembers again they can’t promise a functional restoration… we need to keep him safe.”
//
seungcheol emerges for breakfast with a glass bottle in his hand.
“this cologne… is it one of yours?”
it’s a citrus scent he never would’ve purchased for himself, and yet the smell of it had immediately summoned a wave of emotion. it’s nostalgia, comfort, longing. seungcheol hesitates to name the last feeling, but there it is, bubbling up in his heart. love.
but it’s in his room and it’s not his, so the next logical possibility is that it belongs to one of his two best friends. his rocks, his anchors. his solid ground.
“they definitely made your brain into mashed potato,” joshua laughs, though the sound of it is cold and empty to jeonghan’s discerning ear. “i just ran out – did you buy it for me as a gift before you went to lacuna?”
the cover story is good. jeonghan nods, in agreement and in approval. maybe joshua understood what he’d been trying to say yesterday, after all. that these weren’t the battles they needed to fight over truth and lie and betrayal. that all they needed to do was keep seungcheol happy and safe until he could put his life back together again. that sometimes a lie was a kindness, a mercy.
seungcheol laughs, too, and withdraws the bottle back into his hands. the expression of his face melts from confusion into recognition, the conjured memory slotting easily into the void space held within his mind.
“okay, just pretend i didn’t say a thing! i’ll wrap it and surprise you again.”
as he turns to return the bottle in his room, joshua heaves a sigh of relief as jeonghan flashes him a quick thumbs up.
safe.
Re: [FILL] erasure
Such an interesting concept,
Rose x
Re: [FILL] erasure