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
- 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 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.)
- 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)
Note!
On dreamwidth, you can't edit a comment once someone has replied to it.
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the soft animal of your body.
Major Tags: the parts of yourself you don’t want anyone to see
Additional Tags: none
Do Not Wants: none
Prompt:
Re: [FILL] you are what you cover up
Major Tags: Domestic Abuse, Alcoholism, just please be careful reading this, this speaks explicitly about abuse and scars and bruises being left on skin.
Additional Tags: backward narrative, first person pov, purposeful lowercase, self-repulsion
Permission to remix: Please ask
A/N: sigh this is so loosely based on the prompt im so sorry
majorly inspired by Patrick Roche's poem '21'. I borrowed its format of delivery. check out the poet and his works, he's incredible.
also please let me know if anything (tags, wording, etc) needs changing
***
21. they tell me my father is dead. they look at me as if i might cry, scream, throw up, faint. they look at me like they pity me and i wanna tell them i don’t want it. i don’t need it. don’t pity me. don’t make me another thing you can smother with faux-sympathetic words and barbed smiles. don’t let your eyes drift to my long sleeves in the dead of summer. don’t wonder what i’ve covered up. if i show you it’ll be the only thing that defines my being.
please. don’t look at me as if you already see the raised flesh, the ugly expanse of skin that molds over my flesh and bones.
don’t look at me like you find it repulsive.
i already do.
20. my father uses alcohol as an excuse. he uses drunkenness as a mask and a knife and guts himself, guts my mother, with it. when that’s not enough the belt kisses his hand and whips across skin and i pretend i don’t feel the second-hand sting on my back. he leaves my mother a shattered mess on the floor and expects me clean it, her, up like i do his vomit when he’s so drunk he can’t even make it to the toilet. in the morning he’ll stumble bleary-eyed into the kitchen to find breakfast blackened and burned on the stove, the fire alarm wailing alongside his screams, at me, at my mother. the police/firemen/saviors come and
19. ask if i’m okay. i nod and smile and pull down my sleeves to hide the purple and red and throw-up yellow. yes. i’m fine. please take my father to the hospital. i think he burned himself. no i don’t wanna come. i wanna stay here. watch over my mother. they nod. they smile. they leave. my father is gone. i’m so relieved i can cry.
i don’t. my mother does and i pet her hair, hug her close, ask
18. “eomma are you okay.” she answers with swallowed-down tears and a wobbly voice. i don’t believe her but i don’t tell her so, instead i nod and try to smile and reassure her emptily. “appa is gone” i say and immediately she sags. her hands are thin and dry as paper and ashes when she runs them over my face, asks if i’m okay. i nod. i smile. i lie. she tells me she’s so glad that i’m okay and i wanna ask what does that mean. what does o-k-a-y mean and how do i understand it if i’ve never understood it. my entire life i’ve always used it as placation. a deflect tool. look away. it’s fine here.
it’s always worked. it works on her too. i don’t know why that hurts.
17. i lose my best friend. he tells me he doesn’t understand me. he tells me he’s hurt i don’t trust him. how do i tell him trust isn’t something i dare own. how do i tell him my skin is a road map of scars and bruises and my mind is a decimated ruin of fear, hurt and trauma. how do i tell him i want to trust him, i want him to pry my rib cage open, lift my skin up at the seams, unravel my mind and kiss the tears away and still love me despite it all. how do i tell him i love him without telling him. how do i trust him. how do i love him.
how do i love. i’ve no frame of reference. my father delivers blows instead of kisses and calls it love. my father batters my skin and calls it care. my father
16. wasn’t always like this. my father used to laugh instead of shout and my mother used to smile instead of cry. i used to look between them and wish to be like them.
15. my father biked with me to high school and waved goodbye at the gate to the courtyard and told me he loved me. my father told me he’d be right there when the school bell rings.
he was.
i trusted that he would be.
14.
13.
12.
11. my father and mother walked me to middle school on my first day and proudly snapped pictures of me in my uniform. they held my hands and swung me between them and i was happy. it has become a blurry memory, happiness.
10.
9.
8. in grade three eomma sends me to summer camp. they ask about our favorite colors. everyone says purple or blue or red or black or pink. the counselor looks at me expectantly. i don’t tell her i think all those colors are disgusting. i don't ask her how those colors can be pretty still when they have been painted across your little chubby arms, stubby little legs and smooth back for as long as you can remember. green, green, green, i say. like my hoodie, plastered to my skin by sweat. green, green, green, i pluck at the sleeves.
“joshua, aren’t you hot?” yes, yes, yes.
“joshua, why don’t you take it off?” no no no i can’t i can’t eomma told me to cover up or i’ll scare the camp kids away. eomma told me they’ll see me as a monster if i show them.
“cover your bruises,” eomma whispers to me, “don’t let them define you.”
7.
6.
5. in kindergarten they ask us what we want to be when we grow up. i say, little hand in the air, “like appa! like dad!”
4.
3. i don’t remember but my mother has it on tape. my third birthday. little me, birthday hat skewed on my ruffled hair, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf at the candles. my mother, cooing at us. my father, smiling down at me like i was worth his entire world.
2.
1. my mother says they used to kiss, hug, hold hands. i don’t remember it at all.
0. my parents eloped. hid. crawled through shadows to get married and have a child. moved an entire continent, put their old lives an entire sea behind for each other. maybe when my mother was pregnant with me, she had a hope. she hoped that her son wouldn’t have to hide, run, crouch in darkness. she hoped that her son could live a life out in the open, with pain unknown to him. maybe she hoped i could be happy.
maybe she hoped my body wouldn’t be an animal i am repulsed by. maybe she hoped i wouldn’t know the patterns of scars, the criss-cross leaf veins. the sting of palms that leave imprints, the familiarity of blood.
maybe she hoped they could provide that future for me. a glimmering future. an unrealistic future. maybe that’s why she covers up her scars, hides her bruises, wears red-rimmed eyes like makeup.
maybe that’s why this family is like this.
we can only be what we cover up.