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girlsfest2023-04-03 05:55 pm
sleepyshamrocks) wrote in girlsfest2023-04-03 05:55 pm
Round 1: Quotes
Each prompt should be centered around words that have already been said.
Possibilities include a quote of any kind:
- Existing works (books, poetry, TV shows, movie scripts, video game scripts, song lyrics, articles)
- Speech (celebrity, netizen, anonymous)
- Anything else that fits!
Example:
Characters/Ship: ITZY Ryujin/Chaeryeong
Tags: alternate universe - fantasy, ryujin is marceline chaeryeong is pb!!
Prompt:
Tags: alternate universe - fantasy, ryujin is marceline chaeryeong is pb!!
Prompt:
Marceline: I dreamed about you while I was in my poison coma. I was all old and withered, and you were still nice and pink.
Princess Bubblegum: You think I'm nice?
-- Adventure Time 7x12, "Stakes Part 7: Checkmate"
Click here to view the fest rules.
RULES
- You are not required to have a Dreamwidth account to participate. There are no signups necessary. You may post anonymously if you want.
- There will be 4 rounds of this fest and 1 round will be opened each week of the fest. Rounds will be left open for fills and comments, so there is no deadline for participating.
- Prompts do not have to be claimed before you write them, and they can be filled by more than one person.
- There is no minimum or maximum word count for fills. In the spirit of the fest, we encourage you to write shorter works!
- Users are allowed to crosspost their fic on any other site, such as AO3. However, we ask that when possible, writers post the text of their fills as a reply to the prompt and include a link to an AO3 post if they choose to do so, instead of just linking to an AO3 post in their comment. This helps keep discussion in our community!
- Feel free to subscribe and join the comm to keep track of updates and view them on your reading page.
CONTENT
Prompts and fills have to center around K-pop girl group member(s). This includes:
- All active and former girl group members
- Female soloists
- Female members in co-ed groups
- Any female idol or trainee affiliated with K-pop (e.g. GP999 contestants, AKB48 members who featured in Produce48)
- Slash, gen, het, and trans works are all accepted as long as they involve at least one girl group member
PROMPTING
To prompt, reply to a round post and copy the following template in.
It will look like this when empty:
Characters/Ship:
Tags:
Prompt:
Tags:
Prompt:
Fill out the form with your prompt. You can also write in "Any" to give the writer freedom to choose their own. For example:
Characters/Ship: Any
Tags: canon compliant, no major character death
Prompt:
Tags: canon compliant, no major character death
Prompt:
Blow all my friendships
To sit in hell with you
But we're the greatest
They'll hang us in the Louvre
- Lorde, The Louvre
FILLING
To post a fill, post a comment reply to the prompt you wrote for and copy the following template in. Title your comment with [FILL] followed by the title of your ficlet.
It will look like this once filled out:
[FILL] still I fall
Characters/Ship: Aespa Winter/Karina
Tags: idolverse, predebut, shared trauma
Permission to Remix: Please ask
-
Content of fill here...
Characters/Ship: Aespa Winter/Karina
Tags: idolverse, predebut, shared trauma
Permission to Remix: Please ask
-
Content of fill here...
Please provide content warnings for Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, and Underage as well as NSFW/explicit content.
REMIXES
You are welcome to remix fics that the original author has approved for remixing. A remix is a work directly or indirectly inspired by another work.
To post a remix, post a comment reply to the comment you remixed and copy the following template in with your info. Title your comment with [REMIX] followed by the title of your remix.
no subject
Tags: not quite exes, sublimated desire
Prompt:
[fill] hang fire
Tags: Belated realizations of first loves
Permission to Remix: Ya
She says: "I took up singing lessons a few months ago." Chaeryeong is trying to listen, but it's like everything is coming through a film of water.
"Oh," Chaeryeong says, after a while. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth in a last act of betrayal. "You said you'd never touch a mic again."
A shrug. "I don't have to hold a mic. They just kind of let me... belt it in the studio. And they tell me when I'm bad, and tell me when I'm getting better. I don't know." Her brow ticks up in a downward slope. "You don't look happy about it," she's saying, and the film starts to lift just a little. An opening in the waterfall between them. Because this is familiar to Chaeryeong, the stubborn slant to her voice. The way her shoulders start to square up when she feels like she's under attack.
"I am," Chaeryeong offers. Her olive branch. "Happy about it, I mean."
"Say what you really mean. I don't want you to lie."
Chaeryeong finds that she can't help the laugh that bubbles out. Is it disbelief? Is it affection?
"Do I look like I'm lying?"
"You look like you're not being truthful." A breath. Chaeryeong holds her gaze. She's better at that now. And then, the telltale sign of surrender - the way she bites her lip at the very corner, worries the skin between her teeth. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm just - you -"
"Yeah," Chaeryeong offers. "I get it - I mean, I - I'm not that brave. As you are." She considers. "As you've always been. You know I envy you. That you're always trying again."
Ryujin's eyes soften, even if she doesn't know it. She's always worn a little too much of her heart on her sleeve. Chaeryeong turns the name around in her head. Shin Ryujin.
"What have you been up to, then?" Ryujin asks. She's slouching a little now, the tension leaving her body like a deflating balloon.
"Washing my dishes, cleaning my couch. Calling pest control," she lilts, watching the way Ryujin's lips curl up. Her Cheshire smile. Maybe that's why she hears herself say it, before she can stop. Press the eject button. Send herself through the roof and into space: "Missing you."
Ryujin's hand pauses on the stirring straw. Chaeryeong hadn't seen it, at first, while she was trying not to stare, but it's there now - the lines around her eyes. The tiredness in her shoulders. The blunt ends of her nails.
When they were younger, painfully so, they'd snuck up to the rooftop and Ryujin dared Chaeryeong to hang one leg off of it. You idiot, Chaeryeong had yelled, half afraid and half realising that she was in love, as Ryujin's arms curled around her like an anchor. She'd put the tip of her foot across the threshold and called it a day, and Ryujin had pulled her back in, and she'd laughed, and she'd kissed her on the cheek, sloppily and quick, and Ryujin had given her a look so violently tender that the laughter died in her throat.
Sometimes, Ryujin had said, quiet in the night, their shoulders pressed to each other's. I feel like you see me more clearly than anyone else.
Ryujin had been dating someone else at that time, and they both knew it. So Chaeryeong said nothing, and just stared up at the ceiling, listening to the puttering of the air purifier. Removed her sticky shoulder from where it had been resting.
It's cherry blossom season now, spring tumbling into summer. Chaeryeong's face smacks into one of the branches while they're walking, and Ryujin's fingers twitch, in the corner of her vision, before settling back onto the side of her pants. Chaeryeong hears her take in a huge breath-
"I don't think I knew what it was, back then," Ryujin says, raising her head to face her. And it's funny, the way Ryujin never looks away. Never even thinks to look away. She's always been braver, smarter, kinder. More ready to break Chaeryeong's heart. But you did, didn't you? Ryujin doesn't ask, for mercy's sake.
What are you talking about, Chaeryeong could ask. Buy herself time. Steel her heart.
"Do you know it now?" Chaeryeong asks, instead. They've never been fond of dancing around most things. Just one thing. Under her chest, she can feel it - her treasonous, rabbit heart is beating away, gnawing at her ribcage. Threatening to burst.
Ryujin stares at the back of her hand. "Do you remember when we went to Bali and I went a little crazy and fell off the banana boat, and everyone was searching for me underwater, thinking that I'd hit my head on a rock?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?"
"Do you always have to be so difficult?" Ryujin asks, matter of factly, like there must be an always even after she disappeared for a year.
"I just don't know what point you're trying to make," Chaeryeong says, but she does. She always does, when it comes to Ryujin. Even now.
"When you're pulled out of the water, there's like a whole gush just leaving your lungs. And you feel like you're not going to make it, but then the sunlight comes in, and the first breath is there." Ryujin is smiling that silly smile. Lost in a memory.
"You-"
"And - And I get it now," Ryujin cuts in. Her fingers are trembling. "I think I get it now, Chaeryeong-ie" Ryujin says, again. Chaeryeong looks down. Has her hand always been so small?
"I'm sorry that I took such a while," Ryujin tells her, takes her hand, quiet, tender, real, and Chaeryeong feels it slam into her lungs. Wide and wild. First breath.
Re: [fill] hang fire
[FILL] too much, not enough
Tags: not quite exes, mentioned fwb, second chances
Permission to Remix: Yes
-
ao3
It’s funny when you know someone for your whole life and then suddenly you don’t. It comes quickly, a lightning bolt of acknowledgement, as Yeoreum tries to send a message to Juyeon with only the curve of her lips and her gaze, but Juyeon only furrows her eyebrows. Understanding always ran deep between them; maybe because throwing sand into each other’s faces in kindergarten, then walking home from middle school in the early summer heat with melting popsicles making their hands sticky, later drinking together as Yeoreum finally joined Juyeon to their dream university — maybe Yeoreum thought they all left a mark on them.
Maybe Yeoreum thought that mark was forever. That it curved under their paper-like skin like the blue of the arteries, like it was in their blood flow. I know you, you know me — it was the deal. It sat silently between them. When Yeoreum reached her hand out and Juyeon intertwined their fingers. When Juyeon held back her own rambling to give way to Yeoreum, knowing Yeoreum is a coward and would swallow the bitter feeling clawing at her mind a thousand times before she shared them to anyone.
“What?” Juyeon asks, the crease between her brows deepening. “Your face is funny.”
Misfired communication, Yeoreum reasons. It’s okay, it's been a while.
“I think that girl is checking you out.”
Juyeon, lacking tact, immediately follows Yeoreum’s line of vision. The girl looking at Juyeon blushes and snaps her head back to continue her excited conversation with her friend. Juyeon turns back, frown even deeper.
“That’s the reason you look so constipated?”
Yeoreum scoffs. “It’s been a while, Juyeon. How was your exchange programme?”
New York City did Juyeon good. The calm confidence that lingers around her is something Yeoreum might’ve been familiar with but not the whole world. Now, in her baseball cap and long, inky hair, the Juyeon Yeoreum knows the most is shared with the whole world. In exchange, she’s the one being pushed to the precipice, holding onto a ghost she used to know.
“Yeoreum.” Some instincts die hard. The wild hammering of her heart against her ribcage at the way Juyeon says her name is one. “Why are you doing this?”
The coffee in her hand is bitter, but no amount of sugary syrup will change it either. So Yeoreum sips away, the biodegradable straw melting into a slush as she grinds on it with her teeth.
“What do you mean?”
The sigh leaving Juyeon’s lips is exhausted. Like they fought this fight one too many times.
“You— It’s already over between us. So why are you trying to dig up a corpse now?”
It’s also funny, when you break up with someone without ever realizing you are together. Because Juyeon offers love freely and it's easy to misunderstand. Maybe it was because Yeoreum was so used to seeing Juyeon kissing her friends, that the question hadn’t even been realized inside of Yeoreum before it was too late. Maybe because it was Yeoreum who fell first out of the easy rhythm of their communication, when the easiest explanation was right from the very first moment.
Maybe letting things escalate between them before clearing the situation was the real problem.
There’s a slice of cheesecake in front of her, stained purple by blueberries. Her stomach lurches at the sight, suddenly nauseous, but she cannot stop staring at it. Just in case the look she would find in Juyeon’s eyes were not kind to the tender ache of her soul.
“I missed you.”
Yeoreum, just as expected, had a Juyeon-shaped hole in herself, with torn and ragged edges, a forever pulsating hurt, after Juyeon left. It’s an odd thing; Yeoreum’s thumb hovering over the birthday text and never actually sending in, when only two years ago Juyeon wouldn’t go an hour without spamming her phone with every passing half-baked thought she had. Turning back to say something to Juyeon, only to realize she's not a lingering presence anymore. Making Juyeon’s usual coffee instead of her own on autopilot because of the mug she grabbed hastily.
(The oddly shaped mug Juyeon brought back from a ceramic class, too big and too unconventional, yet it found its way into Yeoreum’s kitchen shelf in no time. The tulips painted on the side are a nice touch, though.)
It's normal. Friendships fall apart, even when they seem unbreakable. Juyeon outgrown being part of Yeoreum, and the careful sheen in her eyes tell her that Juyeon will not even try to fit herself back next to Yeoreum. And it's fine.
She’s learnt to live with that.
Another sigh.
Juyeon is not built for long-lasting rage and her fury tempers out with time into a crash of forgiveness. Everything is written on her face, and Yeoreum just needs to take one step further to read the alien script to relearn understanding her. To her surprise, her resolution gives way with the meek plea Yeoreum has to offer after years spent apart.
“New York was fine. But I’m back now. I missed home.” Hastily, Juyeon pulls the plate in front of herself, stuffing her mouth full. Chewing on it and washing down with coffee, she looks at Yeoreum from under the rim of her cap. “I missed you too.”
Everything changed, yet nothing at all. They just became unfamiliar; a bicycle ride after years of not sitting on one. Juyeon does things now that are not how Yeoreum expects her to react and yet, they still ring true. The small nudge under the table, to push Yeoreum out of her wonderment with a touch of electricity. Two years — two years was enough for Juyeon to shed the role of being her best friend, but not enough to reinvent herself from scratch.
“I’m glad you accepted my invitation today,” Yeoreum treads into the topic slowly. “I was afraid you haven’t forgiven me yet.”
Juyeon takes off her baseball cap, running her fingers through her hair. The panes of her face, the soft curve of her nose, the brightness of her eyes — they are permanent images burnt into her mind. She notices new things: another ring piercing on the lobe of Juyeon’s ear, a peak of ink under the sleeve of her flannel shirt.
She shakes her head, almost chiding.
“There’s nothing to forgive. You were right that time,” Juyeon starts. “We were nothing back then. I had no right to claim you when I didn't have the courage to ask you out.”
But you did, Yeoreum wants to say, I just didn’t care to listen.
Because Juyeon wears her heart on her sleeve and Yeoreum is more than a good observer. If she wasn’t so adamant on jumping into conclusions on her own and acting from self-preservation, this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe it would’ve still.
“I had time to marinate with my hurt and I realized how unfair I was to you. But then I was already sitting on the plane and I didn’t know if you ever wanted me to contact you again,” Juyeon says, resting her chin on the back of her hand, closing her eyes like the conversation exhausts her. Eyes fluttering open, turning to crescents with a hidden smile, she asks, “You and Yeonjung— are you still together?”
Yeoreum fumbles a little bit.
“No, ah— we weren’t that serious.”
“Pity. I liked her.”
It’s an odd thing to say about a girl Yeoreum stopped their situationship for and consequently ended a decades long friendship by sheer misunderstanding.
“Yeoreum,” Juyeon calls her, her voice dipping deeper. “Be honest with me for a second. You called me here to make up, I guess. What do you want us to be exactly?”
To go back to a better time, is what comes to her mind instinctually. But then again, being twenty-one and stumbling into bed with your best friend, to get rid of the pent up stress from university is not a better time. And Yeoreum grew too. There are things she wants to tell Juyeon. She drinks coffee now, as her Master’s took a toll on her and she missed a part of herself, and the odd-shaped tulip mug kept refilling with steaming coffee. She works for the advertising company she interned for a summer ago and she likes her co-workers. She learnt she didn’t need to reshape herself to be accepted, and now she has more friends than ever before.
Love between them was a disruption, almost strangling what they built together brick by brick over the years. Yeoreum misses the simplicity that existed before it.
“I want to be friends with you again.”
Juyeon lets out a deep breath, the tense line of her shoulder dropping. The smile curving on her lips shocks Yeoreum for a moment, an artifice of the past.
“That I can do.”
Weird, how Juyeon crosses bridges Yeoreum wouldn’t even dream to attempt to try. How even though Yeoreum threw rocks in it and it rippled with crashing waves, the lake of their friendship seems to smooth out and Yeoreum can almost see their reflection in it.