SASO Referees (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sportsanime2015-07-12 12:47 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2015-07-12 12:47 pm
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Bonus Round 4: Official Art
Bonus Round 4: Official Art
This round is CLOSED. Late fills can be posted, but they won't receive points.
Memorable canon moments, bizarre omakes, tantalizing magazine spreads—this is the round to explore them all. Bring out your screencaps, promotional art, and manga pages, and let's talk about what really happened.
Please read the rules carefully before posting!
RULES
- Submit prompts in the form of a canon screencap from one of our nominated fandoms along with a ship. Screencaps can be from an anime or manga, as well as any other kind of offshoot media, e.g. official art, drama CD covers, light novel illustrations, magazine covers, 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 screencaps that are taken from a piece of canon media.
- Keep your prompt concise. Don't prompt a whole manga chapter, for example.
- Upload the cap somewhere (imgur works well) and post here with the images themselves or a link to them.
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Riko & Momoi). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Riko/Momoi). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- 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.
- 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)
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!
PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND
yellow text is speech, white text is thoughts! enjoy the pain.
FILL: TEAM ABE TAKAYA/MIHASHI REN, G
They part like that, sharing a few other words that don’t stick as heavily as the three that had fallen from Mihashi’s mouth.
I’m not lonely.
Kanou is left with a swelling feeling that he had hardly said what he wanted to say at all. Dissatisfaction folds over him as he turns on heel, far thicker than what was warranted by the loss Mihoshi just suffered. It hadn’t been an insignificant game, of course. It was important in the way that practice matches were important for testing out the team’s strengths and preparedness. After the good games and the let’s play agains there had hardly been anything else left for them to say anyway. Kanou and the others had already taken their precious time deciding whether or not to chase Nishiura down before the other team reached their bus and left the school grounds for good. The Nishiura players had already been dressed, walking toward the parking lot, and Kanou didn’t want to hold them back just to satisfy his want for closure, for something, for piece to salvage from the wreckage that Kanou had noticed much too late do anything about. Too late to sap the poison that had settled in Mihashi’s blood and much too late stop the barbs from flying from his teammates’ mouths in the first place. Nearly too late to do anything about it today too, he thinks, still caustic at how his own teammates dismissed Mihashi’s skill so readily like it was nothing, like he wasn’t good, like it was him or Mihashi, like Kanou needed to be protected and defended.
Kanou had bowed his head and apologized and asked Mihashi to come back, they all had, sincerely, even Hatake said it and he’d meant it and god – that still wasn’t enough, was it? Nothing could throw back time and reverse everything that had been done.
He should have known what was going on or at least noticed more, should have done something to be a better friend to Mihashi, but all Mihashi did was play and play like he never wanted to give up the mound and Kanou had the ignorance to mistake it all for ambition and admire him for it.
Even with his feet planted in the neighborhood he used to walk through everyday Mihashi had sounded like he’d already found a better home in the new teammates standing at his back.
Stupid, he thinks aimlessly and without much vehemence.
Kanou broods, but he doesn’t break.
A shadow falls over him. He glances to the side, then up. “You need to cool off,” Oda informs him as they spill back onto the outfield, sounding like the peace after a storm instead of the calm in the eye of it that’s still brewing somewhere in Kanou’s heart.
Kanou remembers saying things he hadn’t wanted to let spill out over the pitcher’s mound in the middle of an inning – or anywhere else really – and sighs, nodding.
Oda claps him on the back and moves on to post-practice practice.
Hatake gives him a look over a shoulder like he wants to say something too but changes his mind at the last second, offering instead, “We can handle the rest of the field maintenance.”
“No thanks,” Kanou replies. I thought you didn’t like favoritism. Unbidden, a sour note of vitriol wanting to rise up again… He bites the inside of his cheek and reminds himself that all of this wasn’t Hatake’s fault. The very idea of taking it easy, though. “Besides, practice isn’t over yet.”
So Kanou rakes up the infield with the rest of them and does cool down exercises, no pitching. It’s strange having his pitch count looked after closer than ever. High school sports club is exhausting, but he’ll push through it and eventually get used to the changes.
Mihashi pitched in longer and harder games all the time.
They end with plentiful laps around the perimeter that turns his legs into jelly but has his mind pleasantly floating with the most insignificant thoughts. By the time they finish the sun is bleeding itself into the horizon, turning the sky hot red and black around the edges.
“You think Coach was mad at us?” Miyakawa drily comments on the way back to the locker room, and Kanou snorts from behind the cap he’s fanning himself with.
**
Hatake stops him right after Kanou finishes straddling his bike by the school gates.
The catcher has one hand curled around his handlebar. Kanou doesn’t miss the way it tightens fractionally the moment Hatake opens his mouth to speak.
**
Fire and brimstone roils in the pit of his stomach the entire ride home, so thick he can nearly choke on the smoke billowing up from it and its whispering echo of Maybe I really should have broken your arms back then and It was just a threat, I really wasn’t going to do anythi--
Kanou stands up on his pedals and dances the rest of the way home, fingers hurting with how hard they’re gripping his bike handles.
**
There are only sparks and embers left as he passes through his front door, ashes and something loose and yawning fluttering beneath his sternum, threatening to fester if he lets it settle there for long enough.
Kanou’s too tired to do anything more than eat, wash up, collapse into bed and try not to think about how many homework assignments he’ll need to rush in the morning.
He turns onto his side and shuts his eyes, seeking sleep.
“Ren,” he says into the darkness, and he has to heave an inhale for the way his chest aches around the syllable. He breathes the feeling out but the air is muggy and it sticks in his throat instead, barely soothed by the blades of the fan churning slowly above his head.
“Renren,” he whispers instead but it tastes even worse on his palate, like he's taken something precious and dashed is upon the floor, or like a pill to be swallowed down before the bittersweet could burst all over his tongue. Not quickly enough. A vivid memory of him and Mihashi and Ruri playing catch ball together flashes on the black backdrop of his closed eyelids, burning red when Kanou tries to erase it with by digging the heels of his hands hard against them. The cloying smell of freshly mowed grass filling the back of his throat, the chirp of summer cicadas buzz in his ears, humming low beneath the crisp smack-pause-smack of the baseball flying from one glove to another--
The one time Mihashi left to fetch a wild ball that went soaring high into the trees, always the best at finding them, and Ruri had leaned over and shown him a picture of Mihashi’s new practice board split up so small and neat, three-by-three (a nine strike zone!), a skull and crossbones in the center, Mihashi’s arm a blur caught in the middle of a pitch, and all Kanou could think was I don’t know anyone else like him.
The memory’s there and gone in a second but it leaves him feeling scoured out.
You’re the one who’s lonely, not them.
He’s lost him. He’s lost Mihashi and he’s a little lost himself, but he won’t stay there forever.
Turning over, Kanou reaches beside his pillow for his phone.
[ From: Hatake
sorry, really ]
“I forgive you,” Kanou tries, but it doesn’t yet sound sincere so he exits and scrolls up without responding.
[ From: Oda
You never really explained that slow fastball to me, you know. ]
[ To: Oda
Like when I explained that it was a slow fastball? ]
He closes that too and stares at his home screen. There’s an old telephone number sitting low in his contact list.
Mihashi
Kanou’s thumb hovers over the keys. In his night shrouded bedroom the bright glow from the screen aches his eyes but he squints through it, drafts falling like sand through an hour glass.
[ What they did to you wasn’t fair. ] Message not sent.
[ I wasn’t very fair either, I think. ] Message not sent.
[ You’re good and I’m glad you didn’t really give it up, even if it's not here. ] Message not sent.
[ What's Nishiura like? ] Message not sent.
[ To: Mihashi
Let’s both win. ]
Re: FILL: TEAM ABE TAKAYA/MIHASHI REN, G
oh my god, you just. you !!! [clutches chest] this is beautiful. this hits all my buttons so hard, wow.
"You’re the one who’s lonely, not them." that's basically what was going through my mind during that scene, AND TO SEE IT IN WRITING, REALLY HURTS. i love the way you wrote in oda and hatake too. i love. EVERYTHING.
THANK YOU FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL FILL <3
i'm glad that when you saw the prompt, you knew it was meant to be :D
FILL: Team Tachibana Makoto/Yamazaki Sousuke, G
No major archive warnings.
A/N: Written in a "letter-like" format.
-
-
To: Mihashi Ren
You look different the last time we met. Did you grow taller? Did you cut your hair? Is it the new school uniform?
that no longer bears the same crest and colors as mine.I wondered what it was about seeing you again that brought joy to my person, but also made my chest constrict with something else.
We’ve always faced off against each other despite being on the same team before. There was one mound, and only one of us could be pitching there at a time. We both love the game and what we do; it was inevitable we’d become rivals.
But could we become friends too? Maybe even good friends?
You’ve always been alone out there on the mound. People might argue that isn’t true, you have your whole team our there too, but they were never behind you. Like a planet and its moons, we follow the same path, but are in entirely different orbitals.
That’s when I noticed it. What you lacked in Mihoshi, but found in Nishiura.
Friends.
Not the “fake” kind either, but true friends who support you and care about you. Not because you have the title of ace, that you earned by the way, but something more innate and intimate than that.
I finally understand why you answered the way you did. You’re not lonely anymore and I can see that now. Out on the field and after the match, I not only saw you, but your captain, your catcher, that wild card #5, and many more. That is what it’s like to be part of a team, Ren.
You’ve found something you were never given the chance at over here in Mihoshi. You deserved so much better from us, and from me.
I’m sorry, I should have done more, maybe reached out to you--.What’s done is done, I hope we can leave the past in the past and continue to look forward from now on. It wouldn’t do either of us any good to stay hung up about previous misgivings, regretting missed chances and opportunities. I’m pretty sure you don’t need reminding of what happened back then too.Looking at the “you” of old, the one alone on the mound, and then the “you” of now, who has a whole team behind him it’s clear what’s changed.
You’re different now, Ren.
The good kind of different, happiness is a good look on you.
- Kanou Shuugo
Re: FILL: Team Tachibana Makoto/Yamazaki Sousuke, G
i love that you did a letter format with this, it gave a different emotional feel that was also familiar (writing a hard to write letter/email/message is tough and so cathartic...) also love that kanou comes across as vulnerable, especially in the bits where he's more hesitant (the crossed out 'I should have done more, maybe reached out to you' IS JUST ;____;)
THANKS AGAIN <333