BONUS ROUND 1 - FANMIXES

[a1c0bb]

BONUS ROUND 1: FANMIXES

For this round, instead of traditional prompts, we’ll be doing prompt playlists! (Don’t worry, if you prefer a non-playlist prompt experience there will be time for that in the other bonus rounds)To fill the prompt, respond to the playlist with a fill inspired by the songs in the prompt playlist.

To post a prompt, post a playlist of at least 3 songs (no more than 10 songs) in the comments to this post! Don’t give your playlist a specific title, the idea is to have people interpret your playlists. Your playlist can be about anything you want (does not need to be for any specific ship or character).

Please write out the song and artist (don’t post a link to a playlist on Spotify/YouTube/8tracks/etc).

for example, “Never Gonna Give You Up” - Rick Astley

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PLAYLIST: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:

PLAYLIST: VOTER

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:

FILL: VOTER

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS

For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 100 prompt points per team per round)

For fills:

• First 4 fills by any member of your team: 50 points each
• Fills 5-10: 25 points each
• Fills 11-20: 15 points each
  
• Fills 21-50: 10 points each
• Fills 51+: 5 point each

 

Comments

FILL: VOTER

[yrindor]

Fandom: Original Work
Rating: G
Wordcount: 733
Tags/Warnings: n/a

"Where did you say we were going again?" Katie asked. Her headlamp bobbed off of the tunnel walls as she followed Ima deeper underground. After the last turn, she could no longer see the light from the entrance, but the stone ahead had a faint bluish glow. She wasn't a biologist, but it was probably some sort of bioluminescence.

"I'm not exactly sure," Ima called back. She picked her way across the rocks with much more ease than Katie ever could; Katie supposed that was part of the training for field archeologists. "No one's ever found a real Altean site before, so we have no idea what they looked like." She paused to scramble over a boulder. "That's a little bit of exaggeration, but not much. Usually we look at other related cultures and try to draw inferences, but the few contemporary instances that mention Altea all treat it as a complete outlier, and then it disappears from the historical record entirely. If there weren't just enough independent teams who've found mentions of it, there'd be an even bigger portion of the field convinced it was all an elaborate hoax."

"Then why are we here again?" Katie asked. She wasn't built for clambering around in caves like this. She was much more at home in the library with her nose buried in dusty scrolls.

"Because I think you may have found it!"

"Me? And found what?"

"The Altean capital! And yes you. Remember the doorway inscription you were working on last week?"

Katie did remember. Linguistics was her specialty, and usually she was in her element with ambiguity and weird archaisms, but taken the usual web of possibilities to an entirely new level. "You mean the one that consumed my entire life for three days and left me with a raging migraine? I still don't have an interpretation I'm confident of; I swear it has at least five completely contradictory meanings depending on how you look at it, and that's before getting into regional variations and ritual shifts."

"Yep, that's the one! You had that whole thing about possible directional information encoded in the direction of the characters, and I just happened to be looking at some topographical maps of the last known reference to Altea at the time, and it got me thinking. Anyway, there's a tunnel here, and I don't think it's entirely natural, so I think we're on to something! Come on, hurry up, I think it's getting brighter!"

Katie sighed and risked a glance up from the treacherous rocks that kept threatening to shift and slide under her. If Ima wanted to make a habit of these, she was going to need a better pair of hiking shoes. Her sneakers were comfortable and all, but really not intended for this sort of terrain.

The blue glow definitely was growing brighter. In fact, is was so bright she could probably switch off her headlamp and still see just fine. Was bioluminescence supposed to be that bright? And where was it coming from anyway? She'd been seeing the light for ages, but it still seemed to be coming from just ahead.

"Maybe we should slow down a little?" she said. "We don't know exactly where this tunnel is leading after all. Also, I'm not in as good a shape as you." She pressed her palms to the wall to catch her breath and felt a steady vibration in her palms. "Shhh," she hissed, "do you hear that?" In the silence, a faint hum echoed through the tunnel walls.

"That doesn't sound like water," Ima said quietly. "Come on, let's keep going, but be careful." She moved more slowly now, testing each step first and never straying too far ahead of Katie.

The hum grew louder as they advanced, and the tension thickened too until Katie's heart was pounding in her ears and she swore her breathing was audible for a mile. She was just about to suggest they go back when they turned another corner.

A giant cavern opened up before them. Blue lights glowed from every wall, and in the center a giant chrome sphere set on a raised platform. Dozens of mechanical arms crawled along its surface, and every so often, a hatch appeared out of nowhere, then shut again just as quickly.

"This doesn't look like ancient ruins to me," Katie breathed.

"No, no it doesn't."