girlsfest | Round 1: Quotes

Entry tags:

2023,
quotes

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:

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:

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:

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...

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.

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[FILL] i wanna be me, me, me
Characters/Ship: LE SSERAFIM Chaewon/Yunjin
Tags: Idolverse, identity confusion, redebuting
Permission to Remix: Yes

AO3
-

The first time Chaewon looks into the mirror with a full face of makeup and short black hair, she almost doesn’t recognize herself. The cut is nothing new, of course, not even a career first. Nevertheless, it’s only the reflection of an unfamiliar makeup artist in the mirror behind her that stops her from reacting verbally, or reaching out and touching the mirror. If it was a year ago, maybe Chaewon wouldn’t have hesitated, comfortable enough with the staff to look foolish every now and then.

But then again, it isn’t a year ago. That’s the whole point, after all.

So Chaewon says nothing, does nothing, except smile gratefully at the stylist and tell her she’s done a great job.

***

It’s Yunjin who shows her the first news articles. Her first attempt falls flat when Chaewon drily passes the phone back and says “English lessons are tomorrow, Yunjin-ah.”

Yunjin takes her phone back sheepishly, then spends the next three minutes searching up articles on Naver while Chaewon muses on the parts she managed to pick up on a cursory read-through. Her own name, of course. Something about hair. And the words “new” and “shocking”. It’s not hard to put the pieces together. But it is a little…well. Chaewon isn’t new to this, not by a longshot. But every now and then she feels it, that mixture of confusion and flattery, that people care so much. That they notice.

Yunjin finally manages to find an article in Korean, and passes the phone back to Chaewon, her enthusiasm dimmed by the loss of spontaneity. Yunjin does this often, so often it’s become a bit of a running joke. Yunjin travels twice as far as the rest of us — but only because she realized she forgot her phone the first time.

Yunjin really did forget her phone once, on a night walk to get lyric inspiration. After the requisite lecture Chaewon felt bound to give, as a leader, she’d asked “Don’t you write your lyric ideas down in the notes app, though?” giggling to let Yunjin know it was a joke. Yunjin looked Chaewon dead in the eyes in response, saying only “Don’t you ever just need to get out?” before heading back to her room. If she’d stayed, Chaewon would have said yes, of course I do. Looking back, maybe that’s when it began.

There’s a brief moment where Yunjin’s fingers brush against Chaewon’s, in the latest hand-to-hand transfer of Yunjin’s phone. Chaewon holds herself extremely still. When Yunjin pulls away, she busies herself with reading what appears to be a commentary on her own career, as tracked through changes in her hair. She steps back unconsciously, certain despite herself that Yunjin must be able to hear the way Chaewon’s heart is pounding.

Chaewon is halfway through her extremely studious perusal of this article — now turned academic, the part of Chaewon’s brain that constantly tracks public opinion, that tries to modulate herself based on who they want her to be fully engaged — when she spots something that makes her pass the phone back to Yunjin. Carefully, so as not to let their fingers brush.

It’s a picture of Yunjin. Well, really it’s a picture of Chaewon with half of Yunjin’s face in the background, the other half taken up by a giant Produce 48 logo.

“Look, you’re here too.”

Yunjin huffs out a laugh, more an exhalation of air than an expression of amusement. “Half of me. Not even the good half!”

Chaewon bites the inside of her lip, ever so slightly, so she doesn’t say something stupid or worse, openly lovesick. Just for a moment, to quell the rising tide that seems to build more and more every day, no matter how much she tries to push it down, no matter how much she attempts to marshal the part of her brain that wants to return to reading the article.

In the end, it’s looking at the Produce 48 logo again that brings Chaewon back down to reality, or at least enough that she doesn’t feel like she’ll ruin everything by opening her mouth. She releases the pressure on her lower lip, poised to offer a compliment that’s just sweet enough to be supportive but not too effusive to be – well. What it actually is.

“It’s funny, don’t you think?” Yunjin says. Speaking first, while Chaewon scrambles for a way to push the spiky edges of her thoughts into something smooth and polished.

“What’s funny?”

“I was there too. I could have been – I mean, it didn’t work out that way, but –”

“But you’re still here now. We both are.”

Yunjin breaks into a smile at that, so radiant that Chaewon has to look away. None of Chaewon’s defenses, her very carefully crafted, logical reasons why this would be a Bad Idea, can survive the precision strike that is Yunjin’s unabashed joy. So instead, Chaewon busies herself with looking at the picture once more. This time, she focuses on her own face. Frowns, then zooms in, furrowing her brow with every swipe of her fingers.

Yunjin reaches over to poke at Chaewon’s forehead. “Come on, it’s not that bad. You looked so cute!”

“I just look so….different.”

“I mean, duh. That’s the whole point of the article.”

Yunjin doesn’t get it. Chaewon didn’t expect her to, but she feels a bit disappointed all the same. Yunjin looks different too, of course. But there isn’t a yawning gap between Huh Yunjin, Produce 48 hopeful, and Huh Yunjin, member of Le Sserafim. Judging by how Yunjin had to pace the dorm for a full hour after running into Kim Taehyung in the hallways of the Hybe building, there isn’t even that big of a gap between Jennifer Huh, American teenager, and Huh Yunjin, idol, in-training or no.

Chaewon touches her hair unconsciously. Yunjin follows the motion with her eyes, expression softening.

“I thought you were the coolest, even back then.”

“Wha–”

“Your vocals were great, obviously. But you…” Yunjin hums, then continues, “You had this determination. You worked hard, you knew what you wanted and how to get it. I thought it was cool. I still do.”

Chaewon can feel her cheeks heating up.

“Yunjin….”

“You worked hard then, and you work hard now. That’s all there is to it.”

When Yunjin puts it like that, it seems so simple. It always seems so simple, when Yunjin is around. That’s what’s so dangerous about her.

“When it’s all laid out like this…it just seems like a big shift, that’s all.”

“It looks like that, yeah. But I knew you then. I know you now. You just grew up.”

Chaewon scrolls to the bottom of the article in lieu of a response, to a picture from their debut stage, then back up to the Produce 48 picture. Trying to square it all in her head.

Yunjin grabs her wrist, stopping Chaewon’s scrolling so that the screen shows an embedded advertisement for Chilsung cider. Chaewon thinks she might have to relearn how to breathe.

“Think about it like this. That was one version of you, but now you get to be someone else, same but different. Someone who can sing, and work hard, and knows how to get what she wants. But maybe…maybe someone who’s….”

Chaewon swallows. She already regrets the words before they even leave her mouth, but she says, “Someone who’s brave enough to go for it, even when she’s scared.”

Voice impossibly soft, Yunjin says “Right. Brave, confident, cool. That’s our leader.” She doesn’t let go of Chaewon’s wrist.

She’s only Kim Chaewon for the moment, not Kim Chaewon of IZ*ONE or Kim Chaewon of LE SSERAFIM or Kim Chaewon, leader. And as Kim Chaewon, she tips her head onto Yunjin’s shoulder.

“I’m glad, Yunjin-ah. That we both ended up here.”

“I’m glad too.” Yunjin says, a moment later placing a hesitant hand in Chaewon’s hair.

They stay like that until Chaewon’s phone rings, a sign she has a meeting to attend that she’s nearly late to.

The whole time, Chaewon thinks about what Yunjin said. Brave, confident, cool.

***

Chaewon can barely keep her eyes open, so tired from the grueling end-of-year schedule. But when the stylist taps her shoulder and points at the mirror, silently asking what she thinks, Chaewon gives a thumbs up. She hears Yunjin and Eunchae, laughing raucously in the background, somehow energetic despite it all. Chaewon smiles, and turns away from her reflection. It’s only later, as they trundle into the back of a car, giddy with the high of a successful performance, that Chaewon realizes she didn’t double take at the sight of herself.

Edited 2023-04-09 19:10 (UTC)

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