Bonus Round 4: Quotes

[referees]

A shipping olympics favorite, this round uses quotes of all sorts to fuel your creative endeavors.


This round is CLOSED as of 7PM on July 21 EDT. Late fills may be posted, but they will not receive points.

RULES

• Submit prompts by commenting to this post with a quote attributed to a specific person or character, along with any ship/ot3/etc. from one of our nominated fandoms.
  • Example: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - M. Gandhi
  • The quote can come from anywhere. Famous people, poetry, songs, books, movies, your neighbor, etc.
  • 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., Makoto & Rin). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Makoto/Rin). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
• Fill prompts by replying to the prompt with your quote-inspired fanwork.
• 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)

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. Below that, place applicable major content tags (when applicable; otherwise write "no tags" or "none") 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: Please cross-link these fills and use clear tags in your comment. Written/text fills should be hosted at AO3 ONLY as a new, unchaptered work. Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere. You may include a small safe-for-work preview of the fill in your comment. To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" alt="DESCRIPTION OF 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: Please cross-link these fills and use clear tags in your comment. Written/text fills should be hosted at AO3 ONLY as a new, unchaptered work. Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere. You may include a small safe-for-work preview of your work in your comment. 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 Tennis no Ouji-sama, G

[karahashi]

no tags

okay but i also love this prompt and these ships thank you??? i hope this gets filled a thousand times with better formatting and everything

Line Count: 78
Word Count: 483


-



(i)
every so often, tetsuya looks down at his phone and sees

    [hi]

stamped out in a font that fails to capture the sky
behind a smile; the warmth
in shigehiro's eyes. his phone beeps again
and again (but never enough) --

[practice was fun today]
    a picture of a boy, sweating, spinning the ball
    on his fingertip like the world,
    like tetsuya's heart tilting
    over and around at the sight of it,
    held up by a couple of kilobytes speeding across the cables.

[dinner now]
    a close-up of a hand, shaking,
    a pair of chopsticks hovering near the camera lens,
    and a smile behind it,
    unforgettable,
    tetsuya thinks.
    he knows.

[how was your day?]

each word is a reminder of what he has missed
each text a reminder of what he is lucky enough
to still have.


(ii)
there are creases in shigehiro's palms --
deep cracks from the rough skin of the ball,
the skin flaking off dry as it leaves his hands.
and all too often he looks at the court
wondering where
are you now: playing basketball
              on a court somewhere else in Japan
              with the teammates you have chosen yourself
          and are you having fun?

games leave him shaky these days,
muscles burning from old injuries that never healed,
and every time his shoes thump against the ground
he wonders why
    am i here at all? does my presence make a difference
    here, now, and in the future
    how will i look back on this moment?

there are still times when he falls
looking at the scoreboard and seeing nothing
but an endless row of 111-11 emblazoned in his mind.
when he picks up his phone, he calls
kuroko
and he remembers what was missing that match,
when every eye was cold as ice and he was frozen
at the very last.

he would have stayed there forever,
a stiff statue on the verge of tipping over
about to break.
but he thinks: kuroko wasn't there
that day.

this makes the difference.


(iii)

mochida tells him
  your friend came to see you.
kuroko? asks shigehiro, though the question mark is
  superfluous. he doesn't need an answer
though he gets one anyway, in the rumours that spread over the networks
faster than a phone call. they say there's someone strange at seirin
and shigehiro knows --
seirin, and kuroko, and what this all means.
what they don't tell him is the black band still fastened
  to kuroko's wrist,
the scars it hides
in memory and in plain sight
(to shigehiro, at least).

he thinks, i hope it's kept you warm.
he thinks, i want to play again.


(iv)

so he does.

it hurts, and it never stops hurting
but it's the good kind of pain,
the sort that heals over after.
it makes him think:

i'm glad i did.