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).
- 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 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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we all complete
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: dystopia or idolverse, or idolverse as dystopian/BBB-isms
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt:
[FILL] we all complete
Major Tags: idolverse, apocalypse
Additional Tags: strong hints of death, weird freeform musings on the end of the world! bad weird vibes!
Permission to remix: yes
***
There are bad times, near the end.
Which isn't to say there aren't good times - there have to be, that's the nature of things, but eventually the bad times have to win out; it's a numbers game.
It's a numbers game: blast ranges. Radiation levels. How many times Mingyu can say "We could have saved them" before Minghao takes this piece of rebar and sticks it through his throat.
There's very little information still publicly disseminated, either because nobody's around to disseminate it or they're the only people left listening. Most of it comes on the long-wave radio, signals from overseas. Neither of them can understand English well enough to know the words which are attached to the numbers, which seem to grow daily. Minghao doesn't know if that's good or bad, but optimism isn't a valued survival skill, so.
Hunting is valued. Sharp sticks are valued. Fire is valued, and Minghao so tends to it now, feeding the small blaze enough twigs and dried-out leaves to keep it happy. Mingyu was the one who taught him how to do it, he was on that survival show a few years back and still has a hazy understanding of what kind of organic fuel will make it so you don't choke to death on smoke. Minghao listens to him, because he doesn't know what else to do, and neither of them have asphyxiated to death yet so that's probably good.
Mingyu is stretched out on the other side, his back flat against the rock floor. They've been staying in this cave for two weeks. It has a high ceiling and a shallow pool of water near the back which Mingyu won't let them drink out of, and at night they watch the fires burn across the river, red and orange, almost like a sunset, except it isn't like a sunset at all. Mingyu is staring at the ceiling, not at the city. He could be looking at the stars but there's been too much smoke to see, these last few days. The river stops the smoke for now, except the fire is getting bigger, and the smoke is getting darker.
Minghao doesn't know the name of the city. Minghao doesn't know the name of the country; if it used to be a country, if things like countries exist anymore. Minghao wasn't supposed to be the one flying out to film with Mingyu in the first place - it was going to be Seungkwan, they had wanted Seungkwan, but he had that stomach virus, and Minghao was being bundled onto the plane before he could ask, and the cell network died before he could get a strong enough signal to pull up a map, and-
(And there had been a plane. Fueled, ready. Theirs, if they wanted.
- But it was small and rickety and the pilot's breath was sour, he couldn't point to Seoul on a map and he'd stared at Mingyu's expensive watch the whole time instead of listening to their words. Minghao's always trusted his gut. Mingyu has always trusted Minghao.
It was the right option. It was the option which saved their lives. Their lives, which matter just as much. Even Mingyu agreed.
But he wouldn't looked at Minghao when he'd did.)
Mingyu held Minghao's hands in his own the first time he showed him how to light this fire, their fire. His fingertips were rough even though neither of them have ever done manual labor in their lives. It was three days after, after Minghao lost cell service and Mingyu's phone cut out halfway through Jeonghan's "The air is getting wor-" It was getting darker, in the day along with the night, harder to see the sun for all the clouds brewing like they do right before a storm, except there haven't been storms for weeks.
And Minghao had considered turning his palm over so that it touched Mingyu's, curling his fingers so that they could touch in a real way, Minghao never liked skinship but this isn't skinship anymore, he doesn't think. But Mingyu pulled his hand away before Minghao could move, and now they don't touch each other.
Mingyu is saying something. His voice used to be so loud Minghao would joke he needed a muzzle but lately it's become high and strained and sad and broken, and full of smoke Minghao can't see but can taste in his own mouth, coating the inside ash. He doesn't ask Mingyu to speak louder, because even now Minghao could say Jump and Mingyu would reply Off what. Instead he just closes his eyes and remembers what Mingyu used to sound like, back before the air was hot, back when he would touch him.
"We could have saved them," he might have said, and Minghao would say, "We saved ourselves."
"You should have let me go back," he might have said, and Minghao would say, "You couldn't help them."
"It's your fault," Mingyu might have said, and Minghao would say nothing.
He takes a breath. (Can they still?) He scours his mind to find anything, anything worth the air. He opens his mouth.
But the silence has curdled and gone sour, and instead of waiting for a response, Mingyu turns his head away from the fire, and away from Minghao. His neck is long and stroked with ash. Minghao's fingertips itch. His throat itches. But even if Minghao wanted to say something the fire would be crackling too loud to hear. Both fires.
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[FILL] The price we pay
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Dystopian idolverse au, Vaguely based on Never Let Me Go, Discussions of pregnancy including implied miscarriage
Permission to remix: Yes
***
“Noona, stay healthy, okay? I'm really happy for you — I’m cheering you on!” Minghao smiles, cheeks rounding as he waves at the phone. The woman on screen grins back, leaning backwards so her hands are visible in the frame. She doesn't have to move too much — her belly is large, putting some distance between her and the phone propped up on her desk. In the blur of her waving arms Minghao sees a clunky, industrial-looking band strapped tight around her wrist, a bright red LED blinking at him stoically from its casing of metal and black plastic. He blinks back, momentarily stunned, and then the phone is passed down the line to Wonwoo and he's greeted by a new blank screen.
“Hyung, did you talk to that pregnant carat today?” Seungkwan asks when the fansign is over and they're waiting for the managers to bring the cars around. He's rubbing at his fingers, trying to get some of the ink marks off so he can take a selfie.
“Mhmm.” Minghao grunts in acknowledgement. “She’s seven months along.”
“Woah.” Seungkwan sneaks a glance. “Do you think…” He trails off. Tact is something Seungkwan has always prided himself on, though his curiosity is hardly one to go gently into that good night.
“Seungkwan-ah, it's bad luck to ask about a baby this close to the due date,” Jeonghan drawls from the right of Minghao. It doesn't sound true, but Minghao has no way of knowing for sure. He's never seen a woman this far along in a pregnancy through natural means. He doubts any of them have. A long time ago there had been a bump, he'd run his hands across it as his mother smiled down at him through tears, and then the flash of ambulance lights, and then his father, this time, crying, a pile of bills on the kitchen table, and Minghao had said, Ba, don't worry, and called the number of the entertainment company the next day and signed the contract and boarded the plane. Hope was a thing that money could buy, in this world, and even as a child Minghao had known that. What he hadn’t realized was that the damage had already been done, the price of two losses in a row much greater than even his eventual success could afford.
“And leave the marker stains. It's endearing.” Seungkwan gives Jeonghan a look, then brings his phone up to snap some finger heart selfies.
Later, Wonwoo finds Minghao in the kitchen eating a simple meal. It's dinnertime, but everyone else prefers to spend the short respite between schedules sleeping, or at least sprawled out on their beds staring at the ceiling, recovering whatever energy they can muster after three weeks of nonstop promotions. Wonwoo roots around in the fridge for a bit, then says, “my cousin got pregnant when I was young.”
“Oh.” Minghao puts his chopsticks down, not sure what to ask.
“No one thought she would make it. I mean, Changwon…” Wonwoo shakes his head. “The radiation and all. I was just a kid, so I didn't really understand why it was such a big deal. My parents helped, driving her to the tests, filling out paperwork. The government gave the whole family compensation.” He chuckles, a bit darkly. “I still remember all the good food we had that year.”
“What — what happened to her?”
Wonwoo takes a sip of his water. “She was determined to have the baby. It was hell on her body, but she wouldn't give up. She was really careful, did everything right, and in the end,” he tilts his head, “he came out perfectly healthy. No major complications or anything. What were the odds?” Wonwoo stretches his arms. “A natural-born baby is precious — they wouldn't use him for donations. The government paid them to move to Busan. We thought they were set for life. Just…”
He only hesitates for a moment, letting his arms fall to his sides. It's not like he's above being cruel, nor is any one of them too precious to hurt at this point, after all the years they've spent together. Besides, Wonwoo knows that sparing Minghao the truth for the sake of his feelings would be too obvious, with the way the other is watching him now; what's more, it would be taken as an even greater cruelty.
“Once they know you're capable of a natural pregnancy and birth — there are things they can get from your body that they can't from IVF, or from clones just yet. They monitor you closely, run tests, take blood, eggs, whatever. Maybe they make you try again, and again. You're basically a full-time lab subject.” Wonwoo puts the drink back in the fridge. “My cousin gave me some of the money she got for it all, so I could come to Seoul to be a trainee.”
Minghao nods. “She was fortunate, though, still. In a way. I mean, she had the child she always wanted.”
Down the hall, the members begin to stir, rubbing at their tired faces and swearing quietly when their palms come away smeared with carefully applied concealer and eyeshadow.
Wonwoo’s phone pings, a reminder for them to leave, and he dismisses the notification without looking. “Yeah. And she made it out.”
Re: [FILL] The price we pay
fics like this make me so happy 17hols exists because I've never read anything like it on ao3 or in longform. Using a fansign to peek into a world makes me think about how many people idols meet, that they really are getting a large cross-section of society. Or how even in dyspotia we need idols to represent something. Hope, happiness. There's a lot of food for thought in these words, thank you for writing <3
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