hs_olympics | BONUS ROUND 1

Bonus Round 1

Genre-Mixing

Hey, shippers! Welcome to your very first bonus round proper--we hope you have lots of fun with it! This time around we're going to be asking you to mix it up a little--each fanwork posted for this round will be a mish-mash of two different genres, blended together in a delightful incestuous slurry to create an UNSTOPPABLE CREATIVE CONCOCTION--er. Or. Something.

Yeah, we're genre-mixing. That's what we're doing this round.

Rules

Submit prompts! Prompts should consist of two different genres and one ship. This cannot be your team's ship! These are worth 5 points each, for a maximum of 100 points per team.

Look through the prompts and fill whichever you like!

You may not fill prompts for your ship, nor may you fill your own team's prompts.

Fills should be posted as replies to the prompts which they are for, following the format below. They may be any medium.

Title Format
If you are starting a new thread, please use this format in your title.

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team YOU belong to; please use the characters and quadrant, not whatever portmanteau or nickname you've come up with.
If your team name is not in this format and in the title we cannot guarantee that it will be counted.

If you are filling a prompt, use this format in your title.

Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team YOU belong to; please use the characters and quadrant, not whatever portmanteau or nickname you've come up with.
If your team name is not in this format and in the title we cannot guarantee that it will be counted.

Posts not using this format in the title will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, no matter what they contain. They, like all comments on the comm, are subject to the Wank Policy.

Scoring
For prompt posts: 5 points each (maximum of 100 per team)

For fills (as stated here):
First 5 entries in each post: 30 (per entry)
Entries 6-10 in each post: 20 (per entry)
Entries 11-15 in each post: 10 (per entry)
Entries 16+ in each post: 5 (per entry)

All scored content must be created/assembled new for this round.

If you have any questions, please ask them at the FAQ post here, or email them to us (homestuck.shipping at gmail). Otherwise, we cannot guarantee that we will see them in a timely fashion!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Only a few weeks after moving into their new home, John is announcing that the place is haunted and Jade is starting to believe him.

There's a night that John and Dave are engrossed in some new video game, laughing and shouting obscenities at each other, when Rose heads off to bed; soon Jade joins her in Rose's room, falling asleep cuddled up next to her before the hall lights go off.

They're woken up by a crash somewhere above them, like something heavy dropped onto the floor. Rose opens her eyes and whispers to Jade, "Did you hear that?"

There's another loud noise before Jade wakes up, untangling herself from Rose and looking at the ceiling. "Is it coming from the attic?"

For a minute it's quiet. Then the floor above them creaks slowly, to the pace of careful footsteps, and the hair on Jade's arm rises.

"What... is that?" Jade asks.

Rose hesitates. "...It's probably just an animal that got in somehow." But she looks doubtful as pulls Jade back down to the bed, and Jade is awake for quite a while thinking about how large an animal would have to be to put that much pressure on the floorboards.

She's almost forgotten the incident when, a few nights later, she sits up in her own bed at a steady thumping sound coming from somewhere else in the house.

"Dave, what's that noise?" she asks.

Next to her, Dave groans and shuts his eyes tighter. "I don't know."

The thumping stops, but before a minute passes something metallic is rattling above them.

"Are those... chains?" Jade whispers. "Why would there be chains here?"

"It's probably just John and Rose watching some dumb horror movie," Dave mutters. "Go back to sleep."

Jade says quietly, "I'm pretty sure John and Rose already went to bed..." but Dave doesn't respond. A few minutes later the noises stop and Jade lies back down.

When she brings it up the next morning, John and Rose look at each other and say they were asleep by then. But they both confess to have heard some strange things over the past few weeks, and John reports that more than once his glasses have disappeared from his nightstand while he slept. Even Dave, snorting at all mentions of "friendly poltergeists" John puts forward, can't deny that sometimes the wires of his music system are disconnected or switched around when he enters their downstairs studio, and the pieces Jade uses to build her gadgets tend to disappear from her basement workshop and show up in odd places around the house over the next few days.

But for all that Dave cries bullshit, John is absolutely convinced that the house is haunted. He stays awake late one night in Jade's room, refusing to sleep until he sees a ghost; she falls asleep next to him, and the next thing she knows he's shaking her awake and whispering something about voices.

John is still wearing his glasses as if he hasn't laid down at all and, sure enough, there's some sort of low, indiscernable murmuring coming from somewhere nearby. He looks fascinated, and Jade can't help but share his enthusiasm. If John is right and these are actual ghosts it could be a remarkable scientific discovery!

The noise stops and then another, slightly different "voice" sounds for a few seconds. John and Jade don't speak until it stops for good a few minutes later.

"Do you think it was actually ghosts?" Jade asks.

John grins, excited. "I'm sure of it," he says, and the next morning finally convinces everyone to accompany him on a ghost hunt to the attic.

By the time the sun sets Dave still thinks the idea is stupid, and he rolls his eyes at John in his Ghostbusters outfit talking animatedly to Jade about whether the ghosts will talk to them.

John leads the way to the attic with a flashlight in hand. The old floorboards creak, the air smells musty, and Jade nearly sneezes from the dust they stir up.

Once everyone is up the ladder-like stairs, they stop and John shines the light around the room slowly. "Hello?" he calls, but nothing answers. They're surrounded by old wooden chests and cardboard boxes with holes in them, and an old window near the rafters is so dirty Jade can't even see out of it.

"Maybe they're scared of us?" Jade asks.

"Maybe they think this is dumb," Dave says, and they can practically hear him rolling his eyes.

John turns around to face the others. "Well then you'd have something in common! You try talking to them, maybe they only talk to coolkids."

Dave just stares at him, but no one speaks, and eventually he sighs. "All right, 'ghosts,' I'm granting you an exclusive one-on-one interview with the Big Man himself. Here I am, taking time out of my outrageously busy schedule to come see you, so if you got something to say you better speak now or forever rest in peace."

Practically the moment he's done speaking, John's flashlight flickers and goes out, and a high-pitched creaking noise sounds from somewhere close to them. Despite her earlier assurance that tonight would be an exciting scientific venture and nothing to be afraid of, Jade reaches out for Dave's arm, which is a little too tense to be chill.

"Wait, hold on, I think I've got it," John says, fumbling with the flashlight, and Jade shuts her eyes in the ensuing light.

When she opens them, her brain takes a moment to recognize that, yes, that is a human-sized, pale white shape in front of her, and yes it is moving, and at once Dave and Jade jump backwards, clinging to each other and screaming.

But the shape doesn't move any further, just ripples slightly, and that laughing isn't spooky or eerie at all -- it's John and Rose, who, Jade can barely see by the quivering glow of the flashlight, are nearly doubled over in laughter.

John leans back against the wall and slides to the floor. "Oh my god Dave, you scream like a girl."

"You know what, fuck you. Fuck you both."

As Jade looks around now, she begins to see the signs -- the pulley system rigged up in the rafters that holds the fake ghost; the dust disrupted in places, clear indications that someone has been up here recently; a flashlight stowed away behind an old trunk.

Rose composes herself just enough to say, "The spirits of the house are angry with you for keeping them awake until three in the morning with your sick beats. They thought you should know."

"You know what I think you should know?" Dave says, then flips her off and leaves.

He admits to Jade later that night it actually was a pretty good prank, even if John and Rose are jackasses for pulling it and he's not going to spend the night with either of them for the next two weeks as "punishment."

Jade just snuggles closer to him. It may not be haunted, but at least life in this house will never be boring.

BONUS ROUND 1

Bonus Round 1

FILL: TEAM JOHN<3ROSE