Bonus Round 3: FSTs

[referees]

Bonus Round 3: FSTs

This round is CLOSED. Late fills can be posted, but they won't receive points.


We're halfway through all the bonus rounds now. If you're like us, every love song on the radio seems to apply to your OTP. In this round we'd like you to serenade us with some of your top picks!

This round ends at 7PM on July 11 EDT. Countdown Timer.

RULES

• Submit prompts in the form of a short playlist (3-6 songs) and a ship from any of our nominated fandoms. Submit only the track listing and a link to where they can be listened to; the idea is for others to interpret what you present. You may also link to lyrics if you would like.
• Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. (This is not the sports anime gen olympics.) Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Riko & Momoi & Alex). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Riko/Momoi/Alex). Please don't say "Any pairing," either.
• Create content based on the playlists of others! Fill prompts by leaving a responding comment to the prompt with your newly-created work.
• Fills may be in any form you choose (except for another FST of course) as long as they are inspired by/fit the mood of the soundtrack they are filling for.
• Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
• You cannot fill your teammates' prompts or your own prompts.

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)

There is no max work cap.

Format your comment in one of the following ways:

If PROMPTING:	If FILLING:	If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant:
PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP] Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to, including Grandstand or Sports Teams Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points Place the prompt's relationship in the first bolded line of the comment. Including the canon isn't required, but it's nice. Visual example	FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING] Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E) Place applicable major content tags and word count before your fill (when applicable) NSFW FILLS: Post written/text fills directly to the round with clear tags. Please link to art/visual fills. You can include a small safe-for-work preview if you'd like. To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" /> Visual example	FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING] Replace RATING with the rating of your fill, G - E, as explained in the rules Place applicable major content tags and word count before the fill, where applicable NSFW FILLS: Post written/text fills directly to the round with clear tags. Please link to art/visual fills. You can include a small safe-for-work preview if you'd like. To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" /> Visual example

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)

For fills:

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!

Comments

FILL: TEAM AOYAGI HAJIME/IZUMIDA TOUICHIROU, T

[elucidatedlucy]

Major tags: Suicide
Additional tags: Trans character, violence, amputation, minor gore, this fic might not make much sense. honestly im a little weird brains about it so i'll have to see later how confusing it is but hopefully its at least vaguely readable right now.
Word count: 2261

"Tonight on the news cast!"

Ducks bounced along the edge of the screen - if there were people in the crowds below, rather than shadows and himself, there'd be comments - new Sanrio mascots, maybe, but they weren't. They rolled into each other, batting at each other with their ineffectual wings, eventually having to plop down on top of the table, even with the cartoonish bandages that wrapped their wings.

"We've got talk," the blue one started, "Of new guests around!" the yellow one finished.

Teshima covered his ears - everything that box spouted off was another lie, another broken comment to make his head hurt, and he knew the source too well.

"Did you hear, did you hear? I wonder who let that girl rot away, so lonely?"

There was some world he'd stepped into, and he'd find the door yet - there was a place somewhere - that thing was sure to have hidden it.

"Did you hear, did you hear? I wonder who pushed that person so far away, who was it who couldn't win?"

Rain came down strangely, here, echoing around his feet in pixeled puddles. It was Tokyo - it wasn't Tokyo. It was some broken down mirror of it, and he was too curious for his own good. Mirrors always made him stop, grin, turn away embarrassed at his own vanity. He couldn't turn out of this one.

"Did you hear, did you hear? I wonder who let that man go forward sick, all on his lonesome?"

The sky didn't extend like it should have - none of the cars were really there. He'd stepped too close to them to check, been clipped and felt nothing but the coldest chill, making his blood pool in his feet. Buildings didn't stand straight either, but rather, curved and strange, hovering over him near mockingly.

"Did you hear, did you hear?" The news cast flickered like shards in his ears. "I wonder who would let themself die so easily?"

"Shut up!"

The screen broke - and a thousand faces looked straight at him, laced in broken glass bleeding technicolor hatred. "If all that hurts, you should stop caring so much."

That thing - they were around here somewhere, and there was a door, and he would beat it out of them if that was what it took. But this world was made of limitless windows with nothing but darkness on the other side, water that reflected nothing but eye-searing neon, doing nothing but to reflect along his shoes and skin until he felt like he was melting into the rest of the color and sound.

"As it so happens, I'm pretty fond of not being a zombie, Manami," he yelled, as best he could through grit teeth.

"Who, who?" one duck said - only for the other to bat at it with its wounded wing - "You're not an owl."

"Listen, I appreciate the show, but I've got somewhere to be! So if you'd maybe just..." Teshima paused and covered his face. Yelling at a screen - this was easily a dream, but his shame followed him even into his sleep. "You know what? Whatever. I've got it. I'm just fine alone. I don't need anything from you." Just as much as his own pride.

"I don't need anything from you." It should have been an echo. The voice was wrong. "I'm fine with staying here alone, if that's what I need to do."

"You shouldn't just stay here forever, what good does that do?" "It's a bit of a waste to keep going out into some world where you'll keep causing all that trouble." "And it does more good to just stay here acting like you can live with yourself?" "It's better than going out there again and having to remember that you can't."

Teshima wasn't really talking - they weren't really talking - something about birds, but the birds flickered away into feathers and bar lines and static - until the rain was snow that stuck to his skin like barbs.

There weren't reflections, but if he touched the walls - there were pictures of people, rippling into being and fading just as quickly - there was something wrong about seeing them if it wasn't really them - something wrong about looking at them through such a warped picture. It wasn't fair to them, but at the same time, it hurt to think that it wasn't actually them looking at him. It hurt to think that no one would look at him at all. It hurt to think that he couldn't be someone worth looking at.

"Why would you want to be seen at all," they muttered, curled up at the intersection of one mirror and another, as though the metal separator would hide them - because for some strange reason, all it returned to them was a clear picture of themself.

"Why wouldn't you?"

Manami leered up at him, as though they'd been here, electricity edging through where sun would normally reflect through their hair. "I don't really care about things like that."

"What do you care about then?" He kicked their leg. "Yourself?"

"Not really."

"Then why make a fucked up world like this?" It was a dream - but he liked to have someone to blame. He made a good scapegoat, but Manami - Manami was perfect for it, practically expected it, even in his dreams, hovering over him and leaving a mark that never quite stopped stinging.

When they rubbed their eyes, skin floated off their cheeks, light flickering and dripping down like paint, that they dragged up as they shoved their fingers through their hair, shook their head. "Sorry ... I don't really care."

"No!" He grabbed them, dragged them up, up, and they weren't there, and he was on another street, different lights, TVs flickering along the street lines, or not the street lines - in every building, where he was walking up the side, as though it was the ground now. Teshima grit his teeth and yelled anyway. "That's not a fucking answer!"

"That's your fault isn't it?" The birds on the show bounced into each other, knocked each other off their fake news stand. "Oh, yes, that's their fault, it is!" Confetti rained down, billowing out and knocking him off his feet, until he fell back to the streets, and through them like glass, down until there was nothing but ribbon and wire to support his weight, with a thousand lava-like waterfalls pouring out energy below.

"If it's such a problem, get out." And there they were, swinging upside down on a trapeze. "You're not going to find what you're looking for, anyway."

"And how," he struggled through ribbon, cutting into his skin, until it flickered away and back, "How the hell would you know what I'm looking for?" As though he knew what he was looking for either - just a way out, but how he was supposed to get out, "If you know, just tell me and I'll leave!"

Manami tilted a head. "Would you really?"

Not without pitching a fit at them, probably, no - not without dragging them through a mirror, a real one, not one of these fake mercury ones you drown in, one that slices through you properly - he tried to swallow but choked on how dry his mouth was. "Depends. Would you?"

They laughed - he really was a fool.

"I don't really care either way, Teshima-san." They pulled themself upright, on their feet, delicately balanced with dangerous swinging, on chains that looked near invisible. "But I won't let you through, you know."

The worst game of hide and seek - looking for something he didn't know, hidden by someone who would never tell him, and he hated them more than anyone else in the world, probably -

"Even yourself?" One bird, and a second, "Oh yes, what about that one?"

"Yeah." He grabbed the ribbon hard enough to slice through his fingers - it didn't matter anyway. "Even more than myself."

"Hm?"

They smiled too pleasantly.

"What do you think of me, Manami?"

They smiled so thinly.

"I don't really care at all."

They didn't care about anything - "You're just empty then, right?" He stood up on the wires, almost pitching himself forward and off, until they swung forward just to kick him in the chest - kick him back against the mess - he thought about how lucky it would have been to catch them and drag both of them into everything below. "Nothing to find in there, right?"

Manami sighed and looked up. "You sound like those birds, now."

"You would know, wouldn't you? You made those birds!"

They winced - subtle, but he wouldn't miss it, not for the world.

"Wait, don't tell me. Did you just trip into this massive mess all on your lonesome?" He tried to laugh, "Just like a chain wrapping around your neck, huh?!"

"Everything exists because it needs to, Teshima-san. No more, no less." They jumped forward, off their balancing act, and everything shifted, both of them stuck back on ground and gray. Sighing, they gestured, "See? It's really boring."

"So the shit-talking TVs exist ... because the universe here feels some absolute need to kick me while I'm down?"

"If you wanted to view it that way, you're welcome to."

"Or what ... does this whole world revolve around you?"

They shrugged and knocked a hand against a building - not a thing about it changed. "It just depends on how you see it." When Manami walked, the street lines below them rose off the ground and carried them up, as though on tight rope, and he couldn't keep up. "After all, you think those birds are talking about you. Are they? Do they apply to you, too?"

"Well, yeah," he yelled back. "Who else would they be talking about?!"

"Who knows!"

Non-answers were the closest thing he ever got to making sense out of them.

For all of how much he was running away from help - for all of how much he turned away from the safe reflections of people he knew, logically, loved him, for all that he didn't believe - he was still chasing after this, when he was supposed to figure it out on his own.

"It's both of us." A little infuriating to think that they would dare tread on his own ground of complexes - considering Manami was talent and ability and everything he couldn't be - but that was it. It was simple.

"I wouldn't know! I don't really care!"

"Yes, you do!" He slammed down a foot hard enough to make every wire above come crashing to the ground, to make them slide down with nary an emotion upon their face past frustration and sickness, until he could grab their wrist and stop them from floating away. "You hate me, don't you?"

"It doesn't matter very much."

A strained smile was the most beautiful gift they could give him - outside of that bitter suspicious look, if he could beat them, make them realize, be a fool that they couldn't forgive for noticing they were real.

"You hate me as much as you hate yourself, right?" He grinned, ear to ear. "After all, you wouldn't be here if you had an ounce of care about yourself."

They tore their arm away - literally, sparks flying from where it used to be attached, until it burned up in his hands and melted skin to bone.

"You can say that," they answered, glitching, panting, "But as long as I'm here, it doesn't matter." Through the paint under their peeling skin, there was the hint of a grin, through what they let remain here. "As long as I'm alone, none of that matters."

Teshima threw away what remained of their arm and slammed them into a skyscraper, yet another where they were the only clear reflection he could see, holding the melting mess of his hands to their neck as though he could just - let them die like that.

It was just a dream, after all.

"Unfortunately," he hissed, "You're not alone." As much as he wished it could be true solitude.

"You gave up on that so easily." Soft voiced, but they remembered the same things as he did, as much as they ignored him. "It's a little sad."

"Yeah, well, you know how it is. I can't just give up on a game. Even if it's something as worthless as trying to find some pinprick of hatred in this mess."

Their mouth twitched, into a crueler smile. "That's all you're looking for?"

"It kinda goes without saying! Considering that's what we are."

The mirror flickered - and it broke.

"Well ... that doesn't mean you've won."

"Sure it does."

With it broke apart that image in front of him - with it, broke down until his hands weren't broken and bleeding light - with it, broke down arms and sparks and pixels and birds - there was only one real thing in that world, after all.

Manami was as normal as they ever were - not at all - standing in the middle of Tokyo on a bridge as though it was the last day of their life.

"It's pretty obvious," Teshima said, making them almost jump out of their skin, almost trip over, until he dragged them back, until their arm was almost wrenched out of its socket, until they were on the sidewalk. "Considering all that hate."