#brinhoweek

[newtedison]

what would you trade the pain for?

brinho week 2023 day 7: free day

[brinhoweek]

THE PROMPTS ARE HERE!

Hopefully these will inspire you all to create some lovely Brinho content! However, if you still need some help, try this writing prompt generator or this masterpost from a blog that’s filled with one-sentence prompts. 

The prompts aren’t too strict: Sci-Fi could mean anything from magical realism to an alien invasion, Celebrities could be about athletes or musicians, and so on. Use them as a launching point! 

The quote prompts are a bonus meant to be written with the other prompt in mind. However, if for example “Don’t tempt me.” is written into a fic that doesn’t involve Rivals, then it will reblogged on the Free Day rather than Day 6. 

Please see the Rules and FAQ page for additional information and feel free to send a message if you have any questions or concerns.

Happy creating! It’ll be great to see what everyone makes!

[astralpenguin]

brinho week day 6 (or 5): celebrities

“You don’t want to go that way.”

The only person around was a man sat outside the café she’d been walking past, a disposable coffee cup beside him.

Brenda was used to people stopping her in the street, but this approach was new. She couldn’t even tell if he’d recognised her.

“Why not?”

“It’s super crowded round that corner,” he said, pointing. “You’ll be taking selfies for hours.”

He had recognised her, then.

And he’d helped her when he didn’t have to.

She glanced at his cup.

“Thanks, Minho,” she said, and smiled at his stunned expression. “I appreciate it.”

x

[itsthemxze]

Brinho week day 4: horror/mystery and “did I scare you?”

Minho isn’t a fan of horror. Brenda adores it. When she gets a job as a scare actor in a haunted house, Minho goes to be a supportive boyfriend, while Brenda and friends enjoy his fright ❤️

Alternate universe, modern setting, established relationship, fluff and humour

1758 words

[its-tea-time-darling]

periodic boosting of 2023 tmr events

updated schedule with @themazewomen , happening in june and july! <3

May

Mazevision @mazerunner-goes-eurovision

Thominho Week @thominho-week-2023

June

The Maze Women @themazewomen

July

Brinho Week @brinhoweek

September - January

The Maze Runner Secret Santa @mazerunnersecretsanta

start date (or existence) not yet set (or wasn't when i made that list) (which was a while ago):

newtmas fest @newtmas-fest

minewt week @minewtweek

tmr halloween event @bloody-inspired-halloween

lmk if i forgot anything!

Past:

February

The Glader Cup tumblr submissions here

Fandom Trumps Hate @fandomtrumpshate

March

Thomally Week @thomallyweek

April

Thomesa Week @thomesa-week

[newtedison]

Brinho Week 2023, Day 4: Mystery/Horror

film noir au: minho as the detective and brenda as the femme fatale

[newtedison]

brinho week 2023, day 1: sci-fi/fantasy

How Brenda Spied-Her Man Minho is Spiderman. Brenda is a girl with a knack for setting off his spider-sense. (or, five times Minho thought Brenda needed saving, and one time Minho needed saving, actually.) read now on ao3 [x]

[newtedison]

brinho week 2023 day 6: rival spies

[brinhoweek]

It is officially after midnight in Eastern Standard Time which means Brinho Week is over! Wow!

Thanks again to everyone who participated in my little event. This was a fun exercise and creative excuse for me (and hopefully you all) to create some needed Brinho content. We are a small but mighty ship. All hail.

That being said, it is quite unlikely that this event will run again so it is even more so appreciated to everyone who made content. And if anyone ends up posting something that was initially inspired by one of the prompts, I’ll share it here.

If you’re looking for other Maze Runner events, check out @tmr-cultures, a year-long event celebrating native cultures and languages, and @themazewomen, running until July 31st with a bingo board for WLW creations. Later in the year will likely be @bloody-inspired-halloween, and @mazerunnersecretsanta is certainly going to run as well.

Congrats to the Maze Runner fandom for keeping itself alive. And I hope everyone had a fun Brinho week!

[newtedison]

brinho week, day 3: college/univeristy | "you're on."

love's not a competition (but i'm winning)

Brenda is dragged to her college's Nerf Club by her friend Sonya, where she meets the club president, and certified annoying show-off, Minho. After a night of constantly one-upping each other, they agree to a bet for whoever can win the campus-wide game of Assassins. Espionage, betrayal, and ruthless attacks ensue, all with foam darts.

(T, ~12k)

read on ao3 here

bonus edit:

[newtedison]

brinho week 2023, day 2: safe haven | “we’re safe, aren’t we?”

here’s a short little scene for y’all. this technically takes place after the events of my safe haven brinho fic, but i wrote it so it can be read as a standalone. 

(~1.2k, SFW, hurt/comfort)

Jorge and Aris decide to break the news over dinner.

They stand in front of the rock memorial, hitting two pieces of wood together and calling for attention. Brenda picks her head up from where it had been resting on Minho’s shoulder to listen.

“Hey, everyone,” Jorge greets once the group has quieted down. “Aris has something he wants to tell you.” He claps Aris enthusiastically on the back, the strength of it almost causing Aris to stumble over. 

Aris clears his throat awkwardly. “Uh, hi guys. Some of you might know that me and Jorge have been working on a WCKD tablet we managed to smuggle out of Denver. Well, this morning, we were able to unlock it.”

A sporadic mix of “wow,” “oh?” and “huh” litter the crowd. Brenda and Minho look at each other, eyebrows raised.

“It’s solar powered, so it’s self-sustaining. Hopefully we can use it to repair the other WCKD gear we salvaged. We could keep digital logs and reduce the wood we use to make paper.”

Brenda nods, the idea sounding nice enough.

“What was on it?” Minho suddenly asks. “I mean, we’re still safe, aren’t we?” 

Brenda turns to him in worry at his rapid change of demeanor. Aris stares at him too, also caught off-guard.

“We’re fine, hermano,” Jorge chimes in. “It’s mostly records, like of their medical research. Not all of it, but enough to be helpful. We’ll be able to improve our medicine.”

“There’s also messages between them and some other countries,” Aris says. “We’re not the only survivors.”

To Brenda, this is good news. The weight of potentially being one of the last human beings on Earth was one that had laid heavy on her mind. Knowing there are other people out there, it takes away some of that guilt and responsibility.

But she can feel the way Minho tenses next to her, the energy of it almost radiating outward. She squeezes his hand in concern.

“Hey, what’s up?” she whispers. 

Minho looks at her for a moment, conflicted. Eventually, he stands up and runs toward the woods, Aris briefly pausing whatever he had been saying before continuing. Brenda doesn’t hesitate before following, knowing Jorge will brief her on whatever she missed later.

She doesn’t try and call out to him, knowing that he knows that she’s coming after him. It’s probably what he expected, as well.

He only stops once they make it to the hidden area of the beach where they first met. He stares out at the ocean, the sunset almost finished. 

Brenda silently takes her place next to him, wrapping an arm around his side. She watches the tide with him and waits. It takes him a few minutes to speak.

“They should never have taken that tablet,” he mumbles. Brenda looks up at him; his eyes are a little vacant, like his mind is seeing something else. “It can only make things worse.”

“How?” Brenda asks softly. “What do you know about it?” 

Minho swallows. “They had them everywhere at WCKD. They used them for everything. Opening doors, giving medicine, writing logs.” He looks down at the sand. “Shocking you. Increasing your heart rate. Making you see things.”

Brenda’s heart shudders, much like it does every time Minho mentions his torture at the hands of WCKD. He doesn’t much, which she understands. 

“They’re not here anymore,” Brenda assures. She turns Minho so he’s facing her, but his eyes have trouble focusing. “WCKD is gone. We watched it burn. The whole thing collapsed, no one survived. It’s done. It’s dead.”

“‘We’re not the only survivors,’” Minho repeats Aris’ words. Only this time, they’re filled with dread. “You heard that, right? WCKD was communicating with other people. Those other people can’t be good, and they’re still out there. They’re probably looking for a cure, too.”

“That’s not our problem.” Brenda squeezes Minho’s shoulders. “This island is our home. We’re not going anywhere.”

“But they might.” Minho’s gaze finally hones in on Brenda, wide-eyed and desperate. “What if…what if turning the tablet on sent out a signal of some kind? Maybe it sent our location to the other survivors. They’ll figure out we have Immunes here, they could send boats to try and capture…” 

“Hey, babe, look. Look at the water right now.” Minho turns. “No boats, right? No one’s attacking you right now. No one’s coming for us.”

Minho takes a few long, deep breaths. Brenda rubs a hand on his chest with each breath, right over the heart.

“Not right now,” Minho says through an exhale. “But they could.”

“They could,” Brenda nods. She cups Minho’s face and turns him back to her. “But we have weapons. We have guards watching the island. We’d see them coming from miles away.”

Minho frowns. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He grips Brenda’s side with a panicked tightness.

“I can’t go back,” he whispers. “I can’t let Aris and Sonya go back. It can’t happen to Thomas, to Gally.” His voice begins to rise in anger. “WCKD was willing to kill to get to me. What if the other survivors come, and you’re standing in their way?”

Brenda has a flashback to when WCKD took Minho. She and Jorge had originally left, but came back, and they took down as many WCKD guards as they could. It hadn’t been enough, and the way Thomas screamed out Minho’s name as they dragged his unconscious body into the plane is still so visceral in her mind. 

She’s learned by now not to blame herself for things like this, but when you love someone as much as Brenda loves Minho, it’s hard to push back the guilt. She didn’t know him then, but if she had, she would have done more than snipe the guards. She probably would have ran right into the line of fire if it meant getting him out.

“If I’m in their way,” Brenda says, her hand wrapped around the back of his neck, “then they don’t have a fucking chance.”

Minho looks at her, clearly still uneasy but starting to calm down, his hand fiddling with the fabric of her shirt. She loves how much they joke and banter in their relationship, but she also knows when to turn that off, and when Minho needs her. She’s still learning to be vulnerable, but she’ll do it for him.

“If I…” Minho starts. “If you…” He shakes his head, unable to say it. Brenda knows what he’s thinking. “I know my life has been mostly shit, but you’re still the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You know?”

Brenda gives a small smile. 

“That’s not changing.” She pauses, then decides to turn on some of the humor. “Unless the survivors come and they’re actually super chill, and you meet someone you decide is better than me.”

It manages to crack a smile from Minho, a tension in her chest releasing at the sight of it. She knows the things that haunt Minho will never really leave him, but if she can be there at his side to bring him back to earth, to keep him grounded, and to even get him to laugh, then she’ll be content. It’s the least she can do, really.

Minho pulls her in for a kiss. The sun finishes setting behind them, the darkness of the night draped over them like a blanket. 

“That’s never happening,” Minho assures. “I can promise that.”

[brinhoweek]

This time next week, the Brinho Week prompts will be revealed!!!

Reminder that Day 7 is a Free Day, so if you already have an idea you really like that doesn’t end up fitting the prompts, it can still be posted!

Hope y’all are excited!

[newtedison]

brinho week, day 5: celebrities

minho and brenda as independent wrestlers, rated T, 1.2k

People say that wrestling is fake. It’s sort of true.

Sure, it’s not a real competition. Like any TV show, the winners and losers are predetermined. There’s a storyline in place that the wrestlers have to follow, and certain moves that they have to hit. But other than that, everything that happens is made up in the moment.

Not only do the two wrestlers involved have to decide their moves and communicate this to each other secretly, but they have to pull off those moves in a way that reduces as much actual harm to the other person as possible. It takes an incredible level of cohesion.

Or sometimes you just really kick your opponent in the face, or really slam them from the top rope, or really put them through a table. There’s only so much that can be faked.

This delicate dance between performance and reality is where Brenda and Minho thrive. They delight in keeping everyone guessing. In the ring, they hold the audience in the palm of their hands. 

“Listen, as cute as you look in your gear and everything, let’s stop playing pretend,” Minho says with a shrug. He’s playing the heel, or the bad guy, in his match against Brenda. “When the bell rings, you’re gonna realize you’re playing with the big dogs now. And I’m not gonna hold back my bite just cause you’re a bitch.”

The crowd boos at this as Brenda shakes her head. To the audience, this conveys “Wow, how pathetic” but Minho knows she’s telling him “Hey, good line.”

“We’ll see who’s whimpering after the match,” Brenda responds, then chucks the mic out of the ring. Minho mirrors her.

Admittedly, their audience is smaller in scale than they would like. They’ve been working their way through the independent circuit for almost as long as they’ve been dating, years of hard work and gradually moving up through slightly bigger promotions. 

But there’s a sort of beauty to a smaller audience. You get more loyal and consistent fans, you can recognize faces in the crowd. The reactions are more raw, more passionate. Almost more intimate. 

The referee gets them each to a corner, then signals for the bell to be run. The two circle each other for a minute, pretending to size the other up, before locking their arms together in a traditional wrestling grapple. They “jockey for position” until Minho tucks his head in so his mouth is covered.

“Side toss,” he whispers to Brenda. “Put me in an early submission.”

Brenda subtly nods, then hooks Minho around the neck and tosses him over her hip before holding him down to the mat and pulling his arm back in a submission. It doesn’t really hurt the way she’s doing it, but Minho yells out in pain anyway, and the crowd cheers at Brenda taking the sexist guy down within the first minute.

The best part about smaller promotions is that they allow for intergender wrestling. It’s something that should really be commonplace by now -- it can easily be done quite safely, and crowds love it. But the bigger companies aren’t ready yet, are worried what the image of a man suplexing a woman will do for their sponsorship deals.

Here, Minho and Brenda can beat each other up as much as they want, and get paid for it, too.

Minho crawls over to the bottom rope and grabs it, forcing Brenda to break the submission. She stands up and poses for the crowd while Minho gets to his feet.

They grapple up again. Brenda wants to keep the momentum going.

“Corner,” she mumbles. Minho hears her, and pulls her by the arm so her momentum sends her crashing into the corner. Minho then comes running at her and delivers a clothesline, his arm going against her collarbone. He pulls the force back so most of the impact doesn’t hit, but Brenda plays it up by collapsing to the lower part of the corner. 

Minho then proceeds to kick her a few times before shoving her face into the corner turnbuckle. The crowd appropriately boos. 

The referee tells Minho to get out of the corner before he’s disqualified. He backs up, keeping his hands in the air. The crowd stomps to motivate Brenda to get up. She nods her head vigorously to the beat, using the energy to rush forward and fly past the referee, jumping into the air and landing a dropkick to Minho’s chest. She slaps her leg so it sounds harder than it is, and Minho drops himself to the mat.

All Brenda had said was “corner,” and they were able to complete that whole section of moves. It shows how often they’ve worked together in the ring that they were able to communicate so easily.

That skill also transferred to their relationship, which was an added bonus.

Brenda follows up her dropkick by kneeling down and elbowing Minho in the face, the two communicating each time she lowers her head.

“Middle,” Minho says.

“Backflip?”

“Go for it.”

Brenda finishes her barrage, then grabs Minho by one arm and leg and drags him until he’s in the center of the ring. She poses for the crowd, then makes a cross-chop to Minho on the ground before running to the ropes and springboarding off of them in a moonsault, landing on Minho’s stomach. He grunts a bit at the impact, but it’s nothing he hasn’t handled before.

The crowd cheers at the landing, then counts along with the referee as Brenda goes for her first pin attempt.

“One! Two!”

Minho lifts a shoulder to break the pin, too early to end the match here. They’re just getting started.

“We got ‘em now,” Minho whispers to Brenda. 

The rest of the match goes more or less the same, the two calling out moves and moments to each other to flip the momentum of the match back and forth, the crowd cheering when Brenda is winning and booing when Minho is. Minho makes a few more sexist comments to Brenda, as well, which garners more boos but also a laugh that Brenda barely manages to disguise as her face is shoved into the mat by Minho’s boot.

Now it’s time for the big finish. Minho has her in the corner again, berating her about how she’s an embarrassment to womanhood, and so on. He slaps her repeatedly, the referee pulling Minho back. The crowd is absolutely livid, chanting “Asshole!”

Brenda feels the adrenaline kicking in through her feet, a trembling that shoots up her legs and rattles her heart. She looks at Minho over the referee’s shoulder, and he gives her a look, one that no one else would ever be able to decipher but her. He’s telling her to end the match here, and how to do it.

Brenda bites back a smile. She always feels the most alive when she’s wrestling him.

When the referee finally moves to the side, Brenda rushes forward and offers a slap of her own, the sound of it echoing through the small arena. Minho puts a hand to his cheek in mock-shock, the hesitation enough for Brenda to lift Minho over her head, the crowd losing their minds over this feat of strength. Brenda smirks before dropping Minho and lifting one knee, Minho moving his head expertly to avoid actually being hit. But the crowd is none-the-wiser, responding with a unanimous “oof.”

Brenda gets to the ground and covers Minho’s shoulders for the pin. He talks to her as the crowd counts along.

“You crushed it. I love you.”

“ONE! TWO! THREE!”

[astralpenguin]

brinho week day 4: mystery/horror

Digging up a grave isn’t Brenda’s first choice for date night.

Needs must, however, and if the only way to make sure the ghost they spent all day banishing stays gone is to burn the bones then there’s no choice but to dig it up.

Desecration is a crime. It has to be done at night.

She’s glad to have Minho here with her. She doesn’t think she could’ve done this alone.

Finally, they reach the coffin. They jab their shovels through and prepare to pour lighter fluid on the bones.

But there aren’t any bones.

The coffin is empty.

x

[astralpenguin]

brinho week day 3: college/university

“To party or to study,” said Minho. “That is the question.”

“We’ve already unpacked everything,” said Brenda, gesturing at the notebooks, textbooks, and pens scattered around. “And you have a final tomorrow.”

“But look!” Minho pointed out the library windows. Countless people were streaming past, dressed up and heading towards various parties across campus.

“I have a final tomorrow,” said Brenda. “Do you want me to fail?”

A pause. “No,” he said, with effort and reluctance.

Brenda put her fingers to his chin and turned his head to face her. She kissed him. “Next week,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay.”

x

[astralpenguin]

brinho week day 5: rivals

Brenda’s never claimed to be a genius, but even she knows that crushing on your opposition is a bad idea.

Knowing it’s a bad idea doesn’t seem to be stopping her so far.

Luckily – or maybe not so luckily – Minho’s blatantly crushing on her right back.

There’s only so far distraction and sabotage can go to explain away his constant flirting.

It’s fun.

It also doesn’t matter.

She can date him after the competition is over.

She needs this prize money. If that means she has to destroy the guy she likes in every single challenge, then so be it.

x