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sportsanime2016-06-09 08:58 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2016-06-09 08:58 pm
Entry tags:
Bonus Round 2: Images
Please read the rules carefully before posting!
This round is CLOSED as of 7PM on June 23 EDT. Late fills may be posted, but they will not receive points.
RULES
- Submit prompts in the form of a canon screencap from one of our nominated fandoms along with a ship. Screencaps can be from the anime or manga, as well as any other kind of offshoot media, e.g. official art, drama CD covers, light novel illustrations, magazine covers, photos from stage plays, and/or caps from games.
- Doujinshi, fan-made games or any other fan-created work should not be prompted, even if you receive permission. Only prompt official, canon artwork.
- Keep your prompt concise. Don't prompt a whole manga chapter, for example.
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Abe & Tajima). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Abe/Tajima). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- Upload the cap somewhere (imgur works well) and post here with the images themselves or a link to them. Including a text-only summary of the image is encouraged.
- Fill prompts by leaving a responding comment to the prompt with your newly-created work inspired by the cap.
- Fills can be directly connected to the cap, e.g. panel redraws or writing fic that fleshes out the moment that was capped or that fleshes out what happened directly before/after, but fills can also be more indirectly linked. As long as the work is somehow inspired by the cap, it counts.
- Fills that are too long to fit in a single comment should have the rest of the fill placed as replies to the original fill comment. The subjects of these extra comments should be something like "part 2 of X" or "continued."
- Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
FORMAT
Bonus round shenanigans all happen in the comments below. Brand-new works only, please.Required Work Minimums:
- 400 words (prose)
- 400px by 400px (art)
- 14 lines (poetry)
Format your comment in one of the following ways:
| If PROMPTING: | If FILLING: | If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant: |
PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP]
| FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING]
| FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING]
|
Posts not using this format will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, regardless of what they contain. They, like all comments in this community, are subject to the code of conduct.
SCORING
These numbers apply to your team as a whole, not each individual teammate. Make as many prompts/fills as you want!For prompts: 5 points each (maximum of 50 prompt points per team per round)
First 3 fills by any member of your team: 20 points each
Fills 4-10: 10 points each
Fills 11-20: 5 points each
Fills 21+: 2 points each
All scored content must be created new for this round.
Etc.
If you're hunting through the prompts looking for what to fill, a good trick is to view top-level comments only.Have a question? Check The FAQ first. If you still need help, feel free to contact the mods. Happy fanworking!
PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND
tags: character death???
FILL: TEAM MIYUKI KAZUYA/MIYUKI KAZUYA, T
Word Count: 2,145
This got so... Out of hand... And veered way off track from what I originally intended. I was originally gonna kill Mei! That's not. Really what happened. I tried.
-
Narumiya Mei is invisible.
At least, he is most of the time. Other times, Harada will be talking to one of his coworkers, or waiting for the train at the start of his commute, or ringing up a few last-minute purchases at the conbini, only for the eyes of whoever is around him to slide just slightly to the right, fixing on something that shouldn't be there. It'll last only for a moment, a snatch of time just long enough to catch a glimpse of golden hair, a flash of eyes, the wink of teeth.
For that split second Mei will stare into them, the piercing blue of his gaze slicing through them, dissecting them.
Harada knows the look ordinary people get when they see Mei. It's a little bit stunned, a little bit disbelieving, a little bit confused. The human brain isn't built to handle the unexpected. It takes in data and rebuilds it, restructuring reality until it adheres to a construction the mind can take. Ordinary people don't see Mei because he doesn't conform to the safe, ordinary reality they prefer to live in. When they do, their minds quickly erase him.
Harada is relieved, every time he sees it happen — the awareness of Mei's presence vanishing, like a light snuffed out behind their eyes. Harada is relieved, because he doesn't want to have to erase that awareness for them.
-
"Masa," Mei says, that whine of his which always comes with a bit of an edge.
They're walking home, or at least Harada is. His neighborhood is a little run down, the streets lined with ragged storefronts and tired buildings, their bricks dingy, the windows dusty and cracked. There aren't many people moving around them on the sidewalk, and Harada walks with steady steps, at a pace just shy of hurrying. Mei floats along beside his right shoulder.
Usually, Harada pays no mind to Mei when they are in public, and Mei knows it. But there aren't many people around, and after the third, increasingly needy repetition of "Masa," Harada begrudgingly allows himself to reply.
"What is it, Mei?"
"Someone's staring at me."
"No they aren't," Harada says. "They can't. We both know this."
"Someone's staring at me," Mei says again, more insistently. "I can feel the eyes on me, looking into me. I don't like it. Make sure that they stop."
"How do you expect me to do that?" Harada asks, "when I don't have any idea who they are?"
"Isn't that your job?" Mei asks in return. "It's never been a problem in the past. Whenever someone looks a little too long, whenever they start to see what I am, you just—" He waves a hand, a vague, sweeping gesture with a flourish of fingers to indicate Harada's application of mental will. "—make them stop seeing."
"That's different," Harada says. "Whenever someone sees you too well, I can feel it."
"This time you can't?" Mei asks.
He sounds so sincerely dumbfounded that for a moment, Harada stops entirely in his tracks. This isn't a new game of Mei's, demanding that Harada do things for him by nudging at him and needling at him, pushing him to exert the influence he holds over certain undercurrents in reality's seeming so as to appease Mei's whims and Mei's whims alone. That isn't what Harada's abilities are for, and he has always in the past refused to be budged.
Harada only assumes that Mei is being needy and demanding, because that's what Mei is, a creature of certain wills incarnated into flesh, headstrong and indomitable. But when Mei's voice breaks with a surprise that can't be feigned, Harada is forced to consider whether there is someone else who can see Mei, someone Harada cannot see.
He resumes walking. He doesn't like the sound of that at all.
-
Mei is like a cat sometimes, pushing into Harada's space and shoving underneath his arm, interrupting whatever he's doing until he has no choice but to pay Mei the attention he desires. Mei has learned well that the tactic only works in Harada's apartment, and has resorted to making such demands as often as he can, when they're alone.
Harada is eating his dinner, seated on the threadbare old couch that sits across from the television and watching a recording of the baseball game he was too late to catch live. Mei is beside him, thrusting up underneath the arm not holding his chopsticks, pressing his face in close to peer down into Harada's bowl.
It's hardly worth it to force Mei back; long years have taught Harada that he wins more battles by knowing when to bend.
He settles his arm around Mei's shoulders, and Mei nudges in close against his side. He continues eating, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened at all. On the television, there's a crack as the batter slams the ball between center and left fields, managing to drive the hit between the fielders. He's running, and the crowd is cheering, and suddenly Harada is leaning forward in his seat.
"I can still feel that stare," Mei says, without any lead-in.
"You what?" Harada asks, aware of what Mei means, aware of how much he doesn't want to hear Mei's answer.
"I told you that someone was watching me," Mei explains. "Those eyes are still there. I still don't like it, Masa, you ought to make it stop. What's the point of having you around, if you can't make it stop? It makes my skin crawl."
It really does; Harada can feel the ripple down Mei's back, the way his flesh squirms beneath Harada's hand. It shivers and jerks, rolling like a bull that's attempting to buck its rider. For a moment, Harada is mesmerized, watching. He's a little unsettled. He doesn't know how to stop.
He wonders sometimes how much his brain is rewriting Mei, wonders how much of Mei's appearance is something that Mei has tailored himself, through some intuitive knowledge of what would best fit the eye of the person he's imprinted on. It's a shame Harada has always liked blondes, liked them since as young as when he was ten years old.
That was when he first began seeing things other people didn't, little ripples in reality he couldn't smooth out straight. That was when he was still playing baseball. He'd been good at it, too, as much as any elementary school kid could be good. He had a real knack for baseball, right up until he felt the world shift, until he placed his hand on a ball and felt the leather squirm beneath his palm, warm and crawling with a kind of life that choked Harada up, too persistent for him to stamp it out.
He doesn't think he ever really wanted to. But he also never touched a baseball again.
Mei feels much the same way as balls do, as some books do, as do the walls of certain places when Harada places his palm against their sides. He's alive beneath Harada's hands in a way that other people just aren't, more mutable, more dynamic, louder in his living than Harada himself knows how to be.
(Sometimes Mei places Harada's hands on him when they're alone at nights and Harada is trying to sleep, smiling out of the blackness and encouraging Harada along. Mei guides his hands, needy, sure, pressing into his palms and arching his back into the cleanest curve. Mei feels alive then too, violently so. He feels like a live wire, a cut cable sparking beneath Harada's hands. But still his hands are on Harada's hands, leading, guiding, and Mei did know just what form to take to ensure Harada would do just as he pleased.)
"I can't do anything about it unless I can find the source," Harada tells Mei.
He doesn't like it. The question in the past has always been should he make a change, should he twitch the fabric of reality just so, pulling it fractionally onto a different path. Now the question is can he, and the answer, to his dawning horror, is no.
-
"How long are you going to keep him as a pet?" a voice asks, speaking to Harada out of the featureless dark.
His first impulse is to look for Mei, constant companion of more than half his life, tethered to Harada so that he's never truly been alone. But Mei isn't there — it's just Harada, and the blackness, and the unfamiliar voice.
"I thought we could do without the company," the voice adds, as if it knows exactly what Harada was thinking. "That one would like it too much, being talked about right in front of his face as if he's the most important thing in the room."
Harada snorts, because whoever the voice is, it's absolutely right.
"I'm not keeping him anywhere," Harada says. "No one makes Mei do something he doesn't want to. I couldn't make him leave if I tried."
"But have you tried?"
Harada hasn't.
There comes a sound like a sigh, a much-beleaguered exhale of the universe which goes washing out of the void before the world washes back in. It blossoms around Harada like a sunrise, dropping him in the middle of a field touched with precisely that golden glow. There's a bench beside the field, and someone sitting on it. He gestures for Harada to take the seat beside him.
It isn't the first time Harada has gone out of step with reality. It comes with seeing the things he does, little kernels of existence more real than the physical world he lives in. He'll take one step to the side, move one foot wrong, and end up in a moment outside of time. He's stepped into quite a few bubbles of alternate realities preserving an idea of a particular space. This is simply the first time it's happened without Mei coming along.
Harada takes the seat on the other side of the bench.
"Send him back," the boy beside him says. "It's not right for him to be corporeal so long."
He looks human enough, smiling at Harada crookedly from behind his rectangular glasses frames. But when Harada leans toward him, just close enough to feel the heat radiating off of his body, he burns just as brightly as Mei and glows with that same sense of something too alive to have ever been one of the living.
"I don't know what that means," Harada says.
"Just—" the boy starts to say, making a quick twist of his wrist that's a bit too evocative of breaking some small creature's neck. "—do what you do, to ensure that people don't see him. I know you've been hiding him that way."
It never occurred to Harada that he shouldn't do that, shouldn't protect ordinary people from seeing Mei. It never occurred to Harada that he was hiding Mei.
"But do it to yourself," the boy adds, his eyes too sharp behind his lenses as he watches Harada.
"I don't know if I can do that," Harada says.
The boy stands up from the bench, pushing himself to his feet with a hand on Harada's shoulder. His palm lingers there, hot as a brand, burning itself into Harada's skin. "You'll manage. Some way or another."
-
Harada wakes up with sunlight streaming through his bedroom window, pouring across the pillows and lighting Mei's hair up with a gilding of gold. Asleep like that, curled in toward Harada's side, he could almost mistake Mei for an ordinary person. He could almost forget that Mei was never anything so common, anything so safe, so benign.
Harada smooths his hand across Mei's forehead, brushing his bangs back from his face with a gentle touch.
He's so used to seeing Mei every day. Mei's presence is a constant, always hovering just over Harada's right shoulder, always there on his periphery ready to cut in, to tease, to make his usual demands. He wonders whether, with Mei gone, he'll still see the world in the way he's grown accustomed to it being, with that extra layer of possibility overlaid above everything. He wonders whether it was never an ability he had, but something Mei was the one to bring out in him to begin with.
He doesn't have to do it, he reasons. There's nothing obligating him to cut Mei loose.
There's only the question lingering in the back of Harada's mind, wondering whether he has kept Mei on a leash far too short for what he is. Now that the thought has been placed in his head, he can't help but question whether he can make himself stop seeing, or whether Mei has already come in too close.
Harada smooths his thumb once more across Mei's forehead, breathes in deep, and lets the world shift.
Re: FILL: TEAM MIYUKI KAZUYA/MIYUKI KAZUYA, T
Also: comparing to him a cat.
Also: MIYUKI'S CAMEO, I'M SO FUCKIN--
/screeches at you forever