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!
Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Red was curled up by the campfire—he'd been dozing, really, and Aerith's voice startled him awake. He'd caught the words, but not their meaning: "Pardon, miss?"
Aerith sat down on the log beside him, still smiling. "Back in the lab," she said. "You could have spoken up sooner in the lab. I thought I was talking to myself the whole time we were locked up together."
Ah, yes. Hojo's lab. When they had first met.
When they'd shoved a woman into the cell beside him, Red thought there must have been some mistake. Hojo only dealt with monsters—and things that looked like monsters, Red guessed, thinking of himself.
The woman was unphased, however, glancing around the room as though she were deciding on the proper furnishings for a cozy new apartment, and not at all like she was locked up behind three layers of guards somewhere in Shinra Tower.
Then, she had finally noticed him with an excited gasp, spotting him through the thin plexiglass wall that divided the two of them: "Oooh, kitty! You're so pretty."
Red had flinched, pulling his lips into an expression of bemusement that, to the untrained eye, probably looked more like a snarl.
"Mm, you're not a kitty at all," she said, her voice dropping a pitch, solemn. "Sorry, Mister..." She searched him for some sign of a name, and found it: "Mister Thirteen. I'm Aerith. Nice to meet you."
Red had almost spoken, then. Despite all the blood-draws and endless measurements the lab's technicians had taken, despite all the things he'd been injected with and monitors he'd been cuffed with and the cameras on every wall—despite all that, this was the first time someone had looked at Red, really looked at him, in weeks. And so, he almost spoke to her.
But then he didn't, and Aerith went on talking, addressing him as Mister Thirteen. She didn't speak like she was talking to a kitten, nor to lab-monster; she just spoke to him like any other person. She told him some stories about the children back in her Sector. She told him about a chatty customer who bought flowers from her. Little things.
Maybe, Red thought, all this chatter was a stratagem for holding her nerves steady. If so, she was doing a fine job. Her voice quavered only rarely, and only a little.
And maybe—maybe, Red realized just then, staring at the same woman now, weeks after their escape, sitting by this fire beneath a starlit sky—maybe she had spoken more than she would have, if she'd known he could understand. Maybe his reticence had led to something like deception. They had been in that lab together for several days, after all. After the first day, she had told him that she'd been here before, in this very lab. That this wasn't her first run-in with Hojo. Later, she talked a little about the church she tended, and a bit about her mother. Red had been able to hazard a guess at what she was, then—Bugenhagen had taught him the planet's history well—and still, he'd kept his silence—
"I apologize," Red said at last, with a little start. "I didn't intend to deceive you."
"It's not something to be sorry about," Aerith said, laughing. "It's just funny."
Red XIII quirked a lip, like it was funny. But then he flicked his tail, and batted one of his ears, because—maybe it wasn't anything to be sorry about, but it still felt unworthy of him, somehow, and it was simple enough to explain—
"I didn't like talking where Hojo might hear."
Aerith tilted her head. It reminded him of a gesture his mother would make sometimes. Interested, but not demanding.
Red smoothed down some fur he hadn't noticed he'd bristled in the first place, and looked back to the fire. "Before you arrived, I'd demanded an audience with Professor Hojo. I thought there had been a misunderstanding, and if he realized that I was no dumb beast, he would have to let me go." Red laughed, once. "If he'd spoken to me, and told me he didn't care, that would've been one thing. But he just said 'impressive' and 'interesting,' no matter what I was saying, as though all my words were just circus tricks. I don't know if he was ignoring me on purpose or if he really couldn't hear, somehow." Red flicked his tail behind him. "I tried appealing to the lab assistants after that. One of them just repeated back at me everything I said, and laughed about it. Like a parrot. Utterly juvenile." He shook his head. "So I stopped bothering."
Aerith nodded. She didn't say I'm sorry, which was good, because he didn't want that. What he wanted was this: the easy understanding they'd been building, those days in the lab, even if one of the hadn't realized it yet. He'd slept pressed against the plexiglass wall, in that lab, the closest thing to a source of warmth in that place—and now here they were, sitting side-by-side, with no wall between them at all.
She didn't say sorry, but she leaned down to kiss his forehead. He purred, and nuzzled his head into her lap, and she stroked her hand through his mane, slowly, steadily, until he at last drifted back asleep.
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Aerith casually poking fun at a miserable, shared experience and Red solemnly thinking about that time is such a good way to show their personalities. Red's demand for an audience with Hojo... ouch. And of course, the smooch at the end is perfect.
<3
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
Re: Red XIII & Aerith, shared history, PG
And it's indeed on AO3, you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29918478