FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2021!
HELLO FRIENDS????? Remember those fandoms we all used to be in? and producing things for? Well, baby, it's time for a nostalgia run, so buckle up your chocobos and get ready to roll. We haven't done a Kiss Battle in years and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina and I for one think it's TIME TO DO SO.
This event is open to everyone, even if we aren't DW circlefriends! (feel free to friend me too; i promise i'm not crazy that's a lie). If you aren't on DW, you can still play via anon or OpenID!
The Kiss Battle is simple. Players leave prompts in comments under each specific fandom, using generalized fandom nomenclature: a relationship of some sort, and a concept to inspire other players.
- For romantic relationship kisses, we use X / Y
- For platonic relationship kisses, we use X & Y
- Absolutely open to relationships with more than 2 people involved! X / Y / Z (/ A / B ...) welcome to this party!
- Prompts can be a word, a sentence, an image, a song lyric; it's a suggestion, rather than a request
- it's a kiss battle! there will be smooches!
Players then go looking for smoochin' prompts they'd like to fill. Fills can be fic, art, interpretive dance, whatever you're inspired to; they can be filled in a responding comment, or as a link (to AO3, tumblr, etc). FILLS GOTTA HAVE A KISS IN 'EM. IT'S A KISS BATTLE. What counts as a "kiss" is up to you, though -- you can be creative!
- Fills should use the comment header to let people know what the fill is; please use a format like "X / Y, (title), (rating), (any content warnings that might apply)"
- "Aerith/Tifa, memorial, G"
- "Cloud/Squall, just in time, R (blood)"
- Prompts can be filled multiple times! Don't worry if someone got there first; we love Two Cakes up in this event! The more kisses we get, the better!
- You can fill as anon if you want/need for any reason
- You can of course crosspost anywhere you'd like
It's a very simple game, and is meant to be played in good faith without anybody being a shitbag about pairings or characters. We're all too old for this.
FANDOM LINKS Fandoms with compilations and expansions should fall into their titled macrofandom. For example:
- FFXIII also includes FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns (FFXIII-3)
- FFX also includes X-2
- FFIV includes the After Years
If you need to specify a certain microfandom / singular canon, please do so in the prompt or in the comment header!
FINAL FANTASY I
FINAL FANTASY II
FINAL FANTASY III
FINAL FANTASY IV
FINAL FANTASY V
FINAL FANTASY VI
FINAL FANTASY VII
FINAL FANTASY VIII
FINAL FANTASY IX
FINAL FANTASY X
FINAL FANTASY XI
FINAL FANTASY XII
FINAL FANTASY XIII
FINAL FANTASY XIV
FINAL FANTASY XV
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS
FINAL FANTASY TYPE-0
FINAL FANTASY RECORD KEEPER
FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS
BRAVELY DEFAULT
FINAL FANTASY SPIRITS WITHIN
OTHER FINAL FANTASY CANONS
FF CROSSOVER PROMPTS
MAKE FRIENDS! If you're interested in meeting more FF fandom people, this comment thread can be used as a friending meme! Tell us a little about yourself, which FFs you've played, favorite characters/ships, and look around for new friends!
You can also join the Final Fantasy Old Folks Home Discord and come gripe about those kids on our lawn and the old days where you had to level grind by hand lmao. Open to all FF fans!
BLITZ KISSINS If you already know what smooches you want to write, you don't need to wait for a prompt -- just comment into the relevant fandom thread with your kiss!
REMEMBER It's only fun if everybody plays, so if you leave a prompt, try to fill someone else's!
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
They'll have to split up, Lightning announces, if they're going to scout Pulse properly. They'll form three teams of two people each, and they'll meet back here in the evening.
Sazh notices the way Hope stares at Lightning, while she splits them up into teams—and he notices the disappointed flicker on the kid's face, when she puts him on a different team than her. Sazh thinks suddenly, painfully, of Dajh. He hopes Lightning knows what she's doing.
Hope and Snow head north, and Fang and Vanielle go south, which leaves—
"You're with me," Lightning says, nodding at Sazh.
He follows her east without complaint. But as soon as the others are out of earshot, he whispers to her: "That kid looks up to you, you know. Hope."
Lightning frowns, like he's reminded her of something she was trying to forget. Sazh thinks she's about to deny it, or else she'll say that the kid needs to toughen up, get over it, something like that—
But instead she says: "I don't think anyone really stays a kid, after everything we've gone through."
"Is that so." Sazh hmms, skeptical.
There's a flash of annoyance on Lightning's face: "What?"
"I'm just saying—compared to me, all of you are basically kids."
Her face tells him that she doesn't agree, but that she also knows arguing would only prove his point. So she settles for a scowl, and walks faster.
It's funny. Sazh laughs. "It's nothing personal," he says, jogging to catch up, "it's just, I mean, c'mon, how old are you?"
"Twenty-one," she says, without turning her head.
Sazh nods. "See, when I was your age, I wasn't even due to meet my wife for another ten years. And I'm not sure how much anything before then counted."
That catches Lightning's attention—she tilts her head, though she still doesn't turn to face him. "Ten years? Really."
"Really. What? Is that so surprising?"
Lightning is counting something out on her fingers. Then: "You look pretty good, for how old you must be."
Oh. Ha. "I will choose to take that as a compliment," he says, with a mock-magnanimous bow.
They've reached a spot on the path where the only way forward is up, one long rocky scramble that's rather more vertical than Sazh cares for. East is where all those reddish cliffs loomed in the distance, wasn't it? He should've protested, earlier, and said, let's go scout some other direction—but it's too late for that, now.
Lightning bounds onto the next ledge, a full ten feet above them, in one graceful leap. Sazh's back is still sore from their crash-landing, the day before; he can't jump like that, l'Cie powers or no. He sighs and heaves himself a little ways up the craggiest section of the wall. At least Lightning's not ditching people, anymore—she's leaning over the ledge with an outstretched hand, waiting to pull him up. They make their way up together, just like that, an easy rhythm—Lightning leaping, then waiting, while Sazh clambers after.
Once they reach the top of the cliff, they pause to catch their breath—well, Sazh catches his breath, mostly, while Lightning watches. He wonders if her gaze has always looked so sharp, or if it's something they taught her in the Guardian Corps. So sharp, and yet her voice is almost soft when she asks him:
"So what were you doing, when you were my age? If you weren't meeting your wife."
"I sure wasn't a soldier or anything fancy like that," he says, slowly, not really wanting to get into specifics. "I was, well, hell. Kind of a drifter. Working this job and that, you know. I was probably was more of a kid than you. No reason to grow up if you haven't got any real responsibilities."
"So you were like Snow," Lightning says dryly.
Sazh laughs—he laughs so hard that he feels a little bad about it. Once he manages to catch his breath, he's still smiling, but he tells her, "You're kinda hard on him, don't you think?"
Lightning purses her lips thoughtfully. "I might be." Then she grins, like they're sharing some delightful secret: "But you still laughed."
He laughs again. "I said you were hard on him. I didn't say you were wrong."
Her smile fades, bit by bit, into something more pensive. "He just didn't have to grow up as fast as some people. Which is how it is, sometimes, I guess."
Something in her tone catches strangely, in a way that makes Sazh think, maybe Lightning isn't just jumped-up newly-minted-soldier I've-got-a-gun bluster. Maybe there's something more to her, underneath all that. Sazh is old enough to know that joining the Sanctum isn't the kind of thing that makes you responsible or grown-up, all on its own. But something else might be.
He wonders what that something was, for Lightning.
But instead of asking her, he takes a swig from the dinged-up water bottle they're sharing. Lightning watches him drink. He doesn't have to say when he's ready to go. She knows, from how closely she's watching him, and she simply stands up and starts walking again, right when he'd been about to say, Let's go.
They walk in silence for another hour before Lightning speaks again:
"So where is your wife now?" When Sazh blinks, confused, she adds, "The one you met when you thirty-one."
Right, right. He had mentioned that. "She passed away."
Lightning's face softens. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine. It's been a few years."
"Still."
Silence again. Silence for a long while, this time. They make their way through a narrow canyon pass, a pass so narrow that Sazh keeps almost tripping over Lightning's feet, from how the walls press them in together. (Lightning, of course, never falters in her step once. The more he watches her work, the more he wonders at her. How'd the Sanctum ever let someone this good this slip away?)
They'll have to turn back soon, Lightning says (whispering, because otherwise her words will echo in these walls). They need to make it back by nightfall. But she wants to get just a little bit farther, see just a little bit more—
They round a bend, and the path climbs rapidly. Moments later, they're standing atop a cliff, a cliff that seems to overlook the whole world, as far as Sazh can tell—red canyons stretch on beneath them, for miles, as far as the eye can see.
"Nice view," he says, with a low whistle. Even Lightning's got to hmm in agreement at that one.
They stand there for a long while, side-by-side, just staring. A wyvern circles lazily overhead, then drifts away on a breeze.
Then Lightning slips her hand slips into his—and it takes every ounce of composure that Sazh has ever built, over every year he's been a pilot, to not shout in surprise. Not that it's bad, or anything, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't intrigued, but—
She sidles closer. She angles her shoulders toward him. He feels her lean closer and—
"Ah, nah, no no," he says, backing up a step and wagging a finger, "none of that. Not until you tell me what we're doin', here."
She arches an eyebrow. "Sazh. We could all be turned into cie'th tomorrow. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that." She closes the distance between them with a single step.
Well. When she puts it like that. "Fair enough," he says, and he wraps his arms around her back to pull her close. She tips her chin up to kiss him, and the Pulse sun blazes bright on the red rock around them all the while.
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G