Multifandom Poetry Fest 2024

[minutia_r]

Welcome to the eighth annual Multifandom Poetry Fest, a prompt fest for poetry for all fandoms! Have fun, and feel free to promote it on your journal/community/tumblr/discord server/whatever if you want. You can copy the code in this box wherever HTML applies:

<a href="https://minutia-r.dreamwidth.org/74159.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/luATN9w.jpeg" /></a>

Rules

1) Leave a prompt in the form of fandom, characters or relationships, prompt. If you don’t want to specify the fandom or characters, you can say "any." One prompt per comment. Leave as many prompts as you like.

2) Reply to other people’s prompts with poems. The poems can be any length or form, or no form. Quality isn’t important--the point is to have fun, not to produce deathless works of art. (Any deathless works of art produced are just a bonus.)

FAQ

Q: I want to write a sonnet/haiku/villanelle/limerick, but I’m not sure how it goes.

A: You can find a good list of poetic forms and their structures here.

Q: Can I write fills without leaving any prompts, or leave prompts without writing any fills?

A: Go ahead!

Q: I want to fill a prompt, but someone else has already filled it.

A: That’s okay, prompts can be filled multiple times.

Q: I want to write explicit erotica, or a poem with potentially disturbing themes, or a poem that spoils recent installments of canon (or make a prompt for the same). Is that okay, and what sort of content do I need to warn for?

A: Sure, that's fine. Warnings are considerate and appreciated, but they're also up to the discretion of the individual poster. Consider this a warnings-optional space and read at your own risk accordingly.

Q: Are the fills I write considered to be gifts to the prompter?

A: Only if you and the prompter want them to be! Otherwise feel free to treat the prompt simply as inspiration.

Q: Can I prompt/write original works?

A: Original works are a fandom! If you want, you can specify genre and character types while prompting, like so: original fantasy setting, female elf/female orc, next time I won't miss.

Q: I want to participate, but I don't have a dreamwidth account/I'm shy.

A: That's okay--anonymous posting is on.

Q: How long is the fest going to be running for?

A: Currently, I don't have any plans to close this post to comments--I figure we'll keep going until everyone gets bored and wanders off. I reserve the right to change my mind, though.

Q: Is there a collection on AO3 where I can post my poems?

A: Right here.

Q: I want to participate, but I suck at writing poetry.

A: Aww, you’re probably not as bad as you think. But even if you are, it really doesn’t matter--like I said, the main point is to have fun.

Comments

[minutia_r]

Dungeon Meshi, Chilchuck Tims, half-foot union songs

[minutia_r]

SVSS, Shen Qingqiu (either or both), phoenix

[ilthit]

Dry hot wind
picks up sparks, bright against the night
A warm trickle down a boy's wrist

(Low heat that pulses through the earth
In the crack between the worlds)

A cool dewy spring on the mountain
prickles the skin

(but that wrist still itches;
even willow can only bend so far)

Love is a thing of wet places
for one reformed of ashes

like mud on the shore of an icy river.

[minutia_r]

Area X, the biologist/her husband, that one urn by Clay Pigeon Pottery

[ilthit]

Community, Britta Perry, iambic pentameter but wrong

[ourswordsmeandeath]

Any, Any, Scars and their tales

The Untamed, Wen Qing (& Jiang Cheng & Wei Wuxian)

[minutia_r]

This is a love story.
Blood is my ink—
A scalpel my brush—
The rising, curved, and falling stroke,
The ebb and flow of qi—
Your flesh is the paper on which I write the tale.
In long years to come,
You'll trace your ridged scars:
A script you can't read.
You're not meant to know.
This is a story I'll take to my grave.

[ilthit]

Your pre-established original setting, any character, memories of water

[minutia_r]

I was born to drown
And everywhere I walk
Water fills my lungs
The depths fill my eyes.
You made me to be your death
And I will be.
Everything you have
Everything you are—
I will take it all.
And you will be lost beneath the waves,
Forgotten.

(companion piece to this)

[anneapocalypse]

FFXIV, Urianger, prophecy

[anneapocalypse]

Dragon Age, poetry from any non-human culture (Dalish, dwarven, Qunari, etc!)

[dariaw]

The Originals, Klaus/any unrelated male or Elijah/any unrelated male or Marcel/any unrelated male (TVD crossovers fine), the taste of your blood on my lips

[dariaw]

The Good Place, team, Jason writes poems of love or appreciation to all his friends

[dariaw]

Leverage, Eliot/Hardison or Eliot/Hardison/Parker, warrior poet

[kiragecko]

I don’t understand poetry
It isn’t safe like money
or vents
or the silly little people in the computer who shoot lightning
and cause him to shake the desk in victory
and grin from ear to ear

But you tell me how to make spanakopita
while you finish your tray
and carry it
to him while he argues about whether that was a cheap shot
and you cause him to sit still
and smile up at you so softly

And you tell me how to break someone’s wrist

And you tell me how to break the door
that is keeping him from me

And you tell me how to NOT break his heart

And you tell me
You tell me
It isn’t safe
But that I might want it anyway

-

I think you are poetry
I think you are safe like money
or vents

But even if you aren’t I want
to set crème brûlée on fire
with you
I want us to all be silly little people in the computer who shoot lightning
and make cheap shots
while we try not to grin

I want you to tell me how to make rope out of grass

I want you to tell me how to plate a meal
so I can do it for you

I want you to tell me how to NOT break your heart

I want to understand poetry

Will you tell me?

[dariaw]

Chicago PD, Jay/Dante, eyes

[dariaw]

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles or Almost Human or Futurama, poem written by a cyborg/robot/android

[sasheneskywalker]

DC comics, Jason Todd, pouring his feelings about his death, resurrection, and Bruce into a poem

[lumiosecity]

What does it mean, really?
To come back—
And to come back wrong, at that?

Is such a thing even possible?
You’re still you, in the end.

Changed, of course.
Grave dirt under your nails,
Ash lingering on your tongue.

The anger overtakes,
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.

But you’re still you.
All you’ve ever done is burn bright, after all.
You’re just as you were.
Just as you are.
Just as you always will be.

It’s the people around you that have changed.

You’re not a little bird anymore—
No hollow bones,
No sitting pretty in the nest,
No flight.
No magic.

You grow up.
You never got to grow up.
Both are true,
Neither are true,
And you are set ablaze.

You’re a memory, a shroud, an echo.
And memories don’t grow.
They don’t change.
They don’t taste blood and ash and earth.

But you have— even if you are still you.
A blurry photograph, a fractured glass case,
A pedestal, a shrine, a memorial.
Those aren’t you.

You’re still you.

But there’s no space for you in a memory, is there?
Unyielding, unchanging as they are.
If you don’t fit the image, then—

Then you came back wrong, didn’t you?
That’s what they say.

You’re not a songbird anymore.
You can’t sing—
You don’t have a voice.

But you can still make them listen.
You’ve always burned bright, after all.

You’re still you, in the end.

[lumiosecity]

Batman: The Animated Series, Bruce Wayne (optional: & Harley Quinn), "I had a bad day once."

[lumiosecity]

Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn, a madwoman's love song

[minutia_r]

Girl Genius, any, the madness place

[minutia_r]

Queen's Thief, any, legacy

[minutia_r]

Critical Role, Laudna & Delilah, love and loss

[(Anonymous)]

Any Disney princess fandom, any f/f, love poem

Disney Princesses, Tiana/Ariel

[minutia_r]

My baby's sweet as honey from the hive
Thick on my tongue like honey from the hive
Her loving makes me know that I'm alive

My baby's got that chili pepper heat
All night long, that chili pepper heat
From flaming hair down to her dancing feet

My baby's kisses sting like alcohol
On my lips, sweet burn of alcohol
Yeah, in her arms I feel no pain at all

My baby's tears are salty as the sea
When she cries, she's salty as the sea
That's when I'm scared she'll swim away from me

Baby, come on back, you taste so good
When you're gone, I don't want other food

(fun fact, the very first fic I posted to AO3, about 14 years ago now, was a Tiana/Ariel fic. Thank you for inspiring me to revisit this pairing!)

[(Anonymous)]

Any, Any, yearning

[(Anonymous)]

Any Ghibli film, any, "Ring the bells that still can ring. / Forget your perfect offering. / There is a crack, a crack in everything. / That's how the light gets in."

[(Anonymous)]

Any fandom (or original work) with a dog, any, poem written from a dog's perspective

"To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis, Cyril to Princess Arjumand, post-canon(ish)

[primeideal]

Thy namesake's death near-drowned her love in grief
So he enshrined her in a marble tomb
Whose florid towers beggar all belief,
Engravings intricate in every room.

But you, O nine-lived Princess, can't be quenched
By far-flung journeys, not through time nor space.
However chastised, scared, bedraggled, drenched
You land upon your paws, with haughty face.

What though your human takes another name,
Changes one continent for distant shores?
Your proud demeanor shall remain the same:
You'll pounce, and preen, and strut upon all fours.

Foes at first sight, we'll face whatever comes
In untold futures as the best of chums.

[primeideal]

Anathem, any, "I wondered what a poem would read like, written by one who saw the Precipice as I did now, knowing what I knew" [about the Three Inviolates].

[specialagentartemis]

The Murderbot Diaries, Any, Planet