girlsfest | Round 3: Free-for-all

Use this round for anything that doesn't match the other categories. Round 1 & 2 prompts can still contain these elements, but this is where you can request them without any other strings attached!

Alternate universes/tropes
First/last sentences
Intergroup/crossover pairings
Group lore

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 3 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.
Once a round is open, you can continue submitting prompts for it until the end of the fest moderation period. (Ex: On February 17 after Round 3 opens, you’re still allowed to submit prompts to Round 1 and 2.)
There is no minimum or maximum word count for fills. In the spirit of the fest, we encourage you to write shorter works, but any length is welcome and appreciated!
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: You’ve Got Mail (1998) AU; or alternatively, Twenty-Five Twenty-One (2022) AU

Prompt: A & B are rivals in their real life careers, but meet and fall in love anonymously online.

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] you’re sweet

Characters/Ship: STAYC Sieun/Sumin
Tags: rival bakery owners on the same street vs getting baking advice from each other on reddit LOL
Permission to Remix: Yes
-

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.

Fills with NSFW/explicit content should have (NSFW) at the end of the comment title.
Example: [FILL] love hangover (NSFW)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Characters/Ship: Im Dayoung/Lee Luda (WJSN)
Tags: Wayward Children series fusion
Content Warnings: Implied child abuse, some gore
Permission to Remix: Yes
-
By the time Luda staggers to her feet, Dayoung’s rushed to her side, steadying her with careful hands.

“Unnie, are you okay?” Dayoung’s voice sounds distant, muffled by the ringing of Luda’s ears from the energy blast. She should’ve been faster, should’ve dodge it, should…

Head spinning, she rests a heavy hand on Dayoung’s shoulder, fingers clenching around the ruffle of her sleeve. When she pulls away, it leaves a crimson smear behind.

“Dayoung-ah,” Luda gasps, like her breaths are slipping away from her. “Your… shoulder…” The world spins. It’s impossible to tell if it’s hers or Dayoung’s, but the red makes her head throb with the wrongness it screams among the pretty pastels she’s come to call home for the past few years. “Dayoung…”

Luda jolts awake, scrambling for her wand. Arms flailing until they hit something solid, soft, warm.

Dayoung reels back, expression a little concerned, mostly confused. “Don’t worry,” Dayoung says, cheerful even as her hand comes up to rub at her nose, “they’re gone now.”

Luda slumps back, recognising the plush surface she’s lying on to be her bed, and lets the world coalesce back into place.

“It must’ve been a pretty hard hit, huh,” Dayoung’s bright voice, something that Luda had once found disconcerting but has now come to associate with comfort, rambles on, “you passed out on me — but just for a bit.”

“Mm…” Luda lets her eyes trace the ceiling absently, mentally cataloging all the places where her body hurts. Her abdomen mostly, and a deep ache in her right arm like an old injury aggravated. She’d lived in pain for so long that it takes her a moment — or maybe her head’s still too scrambled — to realise that it shouldn’t be hurting this much.

She turns her head, wincing as the muscle on her neck strains, searching for Dayoung. Dayoung’s wearing normal clothes now — a flowy dress with thin straps that bare the bandage wrapped around her left shoulder.

“Dayoung.” Luda pulls herself up into a sitting position, squeezing her eyes shut as the world tilts on its axis. She’s reaching an arm out, ignoring the ache as she fumbles for Dayoung. “Your arm.”

“Hm?” Dayoung glances down to her shoulder, catching Luda’s hand in hers. “Oh, I got nicked too. I guess.” Her shoulder slips out of Luda’s grasp, and she keeps her arm tucked carefully by her side.

“But…” The words cling to Luda’s mouth, her tongue heavy like it doesn’t want to form any sound. “You shouldn’t be injured.”

She sounds stupidly juvenile, Luda thinks, but the injuries they acquire aren’t supposed to stick once they’ve vanquished the evil forces and become normal girls again. Magical girls don’t bleed, they don’t get hurt — that’s something that belongs only to the evil, as retribution for their sins.

The look on Dayoung’s face is oddly pitying. Luda squirms in place, realising that she doesn’t want to hear what Dayoung has to say next.

“I’ve always gotten injured,” Dayoung says, unwinding the bandage like Luda has to see what’s underneath to know it’s real. “If you’re born here — if you’re a kid, you don’t get hurt so much, because kids haven’t done anything yet. But, as you get older, one day your bruises will stick, or your arm will dislocate, or your ribs will break. That’s just how it works.”

Luda can’t tear her eyes away as the bandage falls off. She braces herself for the worst, a mangled mess of blood and flesh, something like what her own had looked like after a particularly bad meeting with a glass bottle as a kid. She didn’t know that type of pain could exist here.

“That’s why we need heroes like you.” Dayoung sounds apologetic, but it doesn’t stop her from saying we. “If you’re not born here, then the world protects you a while longer — until you’re an adult, you’re invincible. That’s what makes you a hero.”

Dayoung shrugs the bandage off. What lies underneath is a massive, discolored bruise, blanketing what looks like an old scar. “I still heal fast,” she says, rolling her shoulder experimentally. “But, unnie, your birthday must have passed. You need to be more careful now.”

Finally, Luda is able to look away, fixing her gaze on her hands which clench her blanket tightly in them. Time passes differently here, and she’d always felt a little older when she transformed, so she never tried to keep track. Had eight years passed so quickly?

“What happens,” Luda asks, wanting to reach for her wand, for the security it always gave her, yet too scared to do so, “if I…. am not careful? Do I go back?” There’s a whine on the tip of her tongue, unbefitting of someone who must be an adult by now. I don’t want to go back.

“Sometimes people go back,” Dayoung says carefully. “My unnie’s friend disappeared one day, so I guess she went back. But, if you stay, you’re one of us. The same rules apply to you.”

Luda keeps quiet, trying to wrap her mind around what Dayoung is saying.

When she was ten, she’d been swept into this strange world where everyone wore pretty dresses. They told her she could have magical powers too, if she transformed, and then she’d be strong enough to purge evil. It was a child’s dress-up dream come true. It wasn’t real.

“Sometimes when you fight in a war, people die.”

“Does it hurt?” The words escape Luda’s mouth before she can stop them, leaving her feeling small and stupid. She hadn’t thought of herself as a soldier.

“I thought you knew, I thought they told you. Before you became my friend.” Dayoung sounds like she’s trying to defend herself. “Did they not tell you?”

When Luda doesn’t say anything, Dayoung’s hand finds hers. “But, you want to stay, right?”

The next time Luda finds herself on the battlefield, mortality weighs heavily in her mind. She can’t make sense of it, not when she’d been so sure it didn’t exist for so long.

When a mass of shadows surges toward Dayoung, eager to leech her energy and taint her with darkness, too fast for Dayoung to effectively block and useless against Luda’s aggressive arsenal, she throws herself in front of the younger girl.

Someone like Dayoung, who’s been fighting this battle wholeheartedly since she was old enough to grip a wand without dropping it, who had the option Luda was never presented of being an ordinary citizen, does not deserve to die.

When Luda comes to, she’s sprawled out on the ground. The world spins. Settles.

A dingy alley, draped in the dreaded grey of evil, brackets her, something so wholly foreign that it sends a stab of panic through her. She pushes herself up, too dizzy to stand fully. Her clothes cling oddly to her skin, and it feels like her nose is dripping.

“Dayoung-ah,” she calls out of instinct, scrubbing her nose. Her hand comes away wet. When she rubs it clean on her leg, it leaves a red stain on the faded jeans she’s wearing.

“Teenagers these days,” she hears, as someone walks past the alley, clicking their tongue disapprovingly. “Getting shitfaced and sleeping outside. If I were her parents, I’d be so embarrassed I’d die.”

Round 3: Free-for-all

[FILL] when your wings break