all of last night was really really bad and made me really really insane especially the isolation parts which were... a lot of it honestly. iirc there were at least 3 hours in the middle of the night with no phone/no one checking on me, stuck in bed with a painful gaping wound, no food since the prev day's morning, no pain meds, painfully overstimulating overhead lights, staring at the curtain covering my door, and listening to screaming and fighting from outside my room. I Don't think I'm a martyr really, but I'm sure as hell not feeling normal about it either. it was a LOT and I haven't processed it yet. felt like a dream

Brocedes time line for a very patient anon

Lewis quotes in orange, Nico quotes in pink, everyone else is blue.

okay first some background knowledge:

Nico is rich as fuck. only child, born in Germany, brought up in Monaco. son of world champion Keke Rosberg

Lewis was born on a council estate in Stevenage and his dad had to work multiple jobs for him to start karting

Honestly I think the difference in their backgrounds is one of the things that pushed them together, they were both isolated from the rest of the kids, but I’m keeping this purely facts rather than speculation.

2000

They’re both 15 years old and are karting teammates for MBB (Mercedes Benz McLaren) in Formula A

Robert Kubica: “there was always competition. But they didn’t fight. It was friendly competition. There was always laughing afterwards.” // “they would even have races to eat pizza”

They often shared hotel rooms at the races which was a “scene of many wrestling matches between them”

Dino Chiesa (their karting boss) – “many times I was called by reception about some problem in the room. It might be noise, or they might have broken something. They would never sleep so they were always tired the next morning”

“they both liked ice cream so much, particularly vanilla. During the night they wanted to eat ice cream always, so I had to go out everywhere to find some and keep them happy”

Lewis would often persuade Nico to buy him sweets

They would have competitions over LITERALLY EVERYTHING

Lewis: “we always had great competition whether on the racetrack or computer games or playing football”

“probably the first bit of competition we had was when Nico used to ride a unicycle everywhere so I thought, ‘I’ve got to learn how to ride this unicycle. Ive got to be better than him.’ I spent all my time outside the go-kart learning to ride this unicycle”

Apparently it only took Lewis 2 hours to teach himself how to do it

In maybe 2013 ish (when they were still friends) Lewis reflected with– “I have never laughed so much than when we were racing together. Nico was kicking everyone’s butt at that time. We had so great races together and built a great relationship”

“we were just arriving and enjoying go-karts and eating pizzas every weekend, fighting all the time and just having fun, whereas now it’s all business.”

many times they would talk about what they would do when they got to f1, made plans hoping to be teammates and become world champions together.

“Nico would say ‘when I’m in formula one’ and for me it was always ‘if I ever get to formula one’. Because obviously Nico’s dad was a formula 1 driver- he knew he was going to make it.”

F1

Nico joined f1 in 2006 with williams, Lewis 2007 with McLaren. And man I WISH I knew what went down with this two when Lewis nearly one his rookie season (missing out by one point to mr fernando alonso) and then WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP in his SECOND SEASON (again by one point thank you mr alonso)

2008 Australia

Nicos gets his first podium, and ofc Lewis is there (he won it) and they are jumping around in the cool down room. Just, two kids who are literally living the one thing they have spent their whole lives dreaming about together. Lewis won the championship that year and oh wow I can only imagine their celebrations together.

2013

They’re teammates in Mercedes!!!

Nico: “every other day there are moments or things that pop up and I can smirk and thing, ‘that’s exactly the same as it was 15 years ago’”

2013 Malaysian Grand Prix gets an honourable mention. This is the race with red bulls good old multi 21 but merc also had their own team orders, stopping nico from fighting for his first merc podium, but Lewis disagreed with it so it didn’t really spark that much tension between them- more the team.

2014

the start of the turbo-hybrid era so y’all know this was good in terms of performance.

2014 Bahrain Grand Prix

They were both fighting for the win and had a collision which prompted a “mock fight” in parc ferme after the race (which I really hope there’s a video of).

Turns out, Nico won because he had used engine modes banned by Mercedes to get a power advantage in the closing laps. which kinda pissed Lewis off

2014 Spanish Grand Prix

Lewis’ fourth win in a row and took lead in the championship. They were fighting till literally the last second and Lewis crossed the line 0.6 seconds ahead of Nico, who says he could have passed him with one more lap.

Lewis defended using the same banned engine modes that Nico had used in Bahrain. Yeah.

2014 Monaco Grand Prix

This is IT. This is peak petty bitch. This is the one people still cry about.

It’s the end of Q3, both of them are out on a lap, Nico ahead of lewis. Nico’s already on provisional pole but Lewis is pretty close.

And then,, Nico just,, parks his car?? He says he made a mistake but the guy doesn’t even crash he straight up just,, rolls to a stop into a slip road. So the yellow flags come out forcing Lewis to abort a lap that was in the makings of pole.

The stewards say it was a-okay but Lewis was convinced it was intentional (and let’s be honest, yeah it probably was) and he even claimed that merc’s data proved it. (low key surprised he didn’t just tweet out the telemetry but I guess he got a stern telling off from mclaren last time)

But *this* is when Lewis tells the world that they aren’t friends anymore. An iconic interview.

Nico then wins the race too, ending Lewis’s four win streak and putting Nico in the lead of the championship.

2014 Hungarian Grand Prix

Lewis has an engine failure in quali meaning he starts from the pit lane, but he does good to make his way up the pack but THEN there’s a safety car which puts him ahead of Nico but on a different strategy.

Nico asks if Lewis can let him past as he needs to pit again before the end of the race, which will give him the place back anyways. Lewis straight up refuses, he’s on a role here. He started from last, and Nico started from pole, why should he slow down to let his title rival through.

Mercedes strongly suggest that his blocking fucked up Nicos race but Niki Lauda is on Lewis’ side so he doesn’t get punished (We stan a supportive father figure) even though he did blatantly refuse to be a team player.

And guys, this is the last race before the summer break so you know Nico was left seething for four weeks.

2014 Belgian Grand Prix

Second lap, Nico attempts a clumsy move and there’s contact, giving Hamilton a puncture and knocking him out of the race.

There’s a lot of controversy but basically it turns out he crashed with him intentionally, not backing out of the corner to “prove a point”. Nico ended up finishing second but was punished by the team, forced to apologise, and even booed on the podium.

2014 Abu Dhabi

For some reason it ran for double points?? The first time in History??? But idk???

Lewis had a perfect start and went on to win it and take the title, Nico had a problem and was told to retire the car but he kept going anyway and finished 14th. Nico went into the cool down room to congratulate Lewis on the championship win, which. cute.

Lewis claimed his second championship. Which not only was huge because of the inter team rivalry, but also because of the large gap between his first win. This guy had lost out on winning the championship in his ROOKIE season by ONE POINT, and then WON it in his SECOND season, and then there was like a FIVE YEAR gap before he won it again.

2015

Damnnn this car was fiiiinneeeeeee.

They do more laps in testing than any other car AND do it on a single power unit. And then. Australia. They take a one-two THIRTY FOUR seconds ahead of the third place Ferrari.

2015 Chinese Grand Prix

Nico is second in a one-two but claims that Lewis kept backing him up into Seb, trying to compromise his race (and help out his boyfriend).

Lewis gave zero shits: "It's not my job to look after Nico's race, it's my job to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible. That's what I did."

2015 U.S. Grand Prix

If Lewis wins here he could also claim the title with three races to spare (you have to remember back then the title fight often went up to the last race so this was pretty cool)

Lewis very aggressively forced Rosberg wide at Turn 1 to claim the lead, and then there was some sexy fighting between the Mercs and Redbull all race. Nico led in the closing stages but made a mistake, running deep into a corner and letting Lewis past with only a handful of laps to go.

Nico finished P2 and had not only lost the race but the championship title. Nico was fuming, saying Lewis’ move at the start was “one step too far”.

This is the infamous cap throw in the cool down room. Lewis throws Nico his P2 hat, Nico straight up yeets it back at him. I tear up just thinking about it. They grow up so fast.

2016

Nico had came so close to winning and I guess this was just, the last straw. All or nothing. This year he literally gave it everything he had. Lewis and him stopped speaking, Nico gave up literally the rest of his life and even stopped sleeping in the same bed as his wife and taking care of his kids, instead spending every moment trying to get into Lewis’ head. Honestly, I think he might be the only one that could beat Lewis. Just because he knew him *so well*. He literally threw away like 16 years of friendship. But also it’s like, he had to be world champion. He *had to*. His dad was champion and his whole life he’s been preparing to win it too. Tough luck that he raced in the same era as Mr. Best Driver The Sport Has Ever Seen.

Nico won the last few races of 2015, and the first four races of 2016. Lewis had a couple car problems and Nico had a good lead on him in the championship.

2016 Spanish Grand Prix

Gentlemen. A short view back to the past. Nico had made a switch error on the formation lap causing the car to go into the wrong engine mode. So he was running a lot slower than Lewis, who was fighting to claim back the lead.

Nico closed the door to keep him back, and Lewis lost control on the grass, and spins into Nico and taking them both out of the race in the first lap. This is probably one of the most iconic crashes. I’m pretty sure there’s a clip of this somewhere in black and white with the titanic music over the top.

Niki Lauda blamed this one on Lewis (I guess even a supportive dad has to be critical sometimes) "Lewis is too aggressive. It is stupid, we could've won this race".

2016 Austrian Grand Prix

Nico had been struggling with a brake issue all race but was still on the way to win it. But in the last lap Lewis had caught him up and gone in for the overtake.

Typical Nico not taking any shit, refusing to be the guy that backs out and they collide. Lewis took the win and a damaged Nico dropped to fourth. From first. In the last lap.

Both of them blamed each other and tired dad team boss Toto Wolff threatened team orders in future races.

The stewards blamed Nico for the incident, issuing him two penalty points for failing to allow "racing room" and causing a collision.

2016 Abu Dhabi

In the final laps of the race, Lewis ignored team-orders from his race engineer and the technical director.

He deliberately slowed and backed Nico into the pack hoping they overtake him, and there would be enough of a points difference to win the title.

Nico finished second and won the title by five points.

And then,,, Nico announced a surprise retirement during the FIA prize giving ceremony.

Lewis’ response:

"This is the first time he's won in 18 years, hence why it was not a surprise that he decided to stop.” (We stan a petty king)

“But he's also got a family to focus on and probably wants to have more children. Formula One takes up so much of your time."

“In terms of missing the rivalry, of course because we started karting when we were 13 and we would always talk about being champions. When I joined this team, Nico was there, which was something we spoke about when we were kids. So it's going to be very, very strange, and, for sure, it will be sad to not have him in the team next year."

And now they are kind of on speaking terms but not really, they are both pretty private but I think they are at the ‘awkward small talk when we run into each other at the supermarket’ stage of the break up.

got my full fanganronpa designed with names and backstories and personalities and everything... character info is under the cut! all the bios took about a week to put together so i hope you give them a look <3

basic premise: 16 fresh-out-of-highschool prodigies are invited to star in well-respected and widely-watched reality tv show, which takes place on a cruise ship. what they weren't expecting was for the show's 25th season to be a killing game! the students: TOMOKO KAITA: a peppy and outgoing astrology guru who can read your deepest flaws and strengths with just your date and time of birth. known worldwide for her extremely accurate personal horoscopes. despite this, she strongly believes in the ability of an individual to defy their fate through hard work and self improvement. she dislikes giving negative horoscopes, and does her best to focus on the positives that the stars hold in store. her smile brightens the whole room! she is intensly loyal to her friends, to the point of self-sacficing emotional labor. KENJI MINAMOTO: a formal and eccentric olympic fencer whose strange insistance on not wearing protective gear during practice (he believes it makes him better by giving him a stronger motivation to not get hit) has earned him many a scar over the years, and has left at least half of his joints in braces at any given time. he follows his own bushido-esque moral code, although he will not put himself above whapping the occasional really annoying person in the ankles. his épée is his best friend and he carries it most everywhere. most of the scars on his face and hands are actually from trying to put in his very sharp industrial piercings while drunk. despite his oddities, his lightfooted and elegant fencing has been compared by many to a graceful dance. HAZUKO KAGENO: a secretly sweet and polite orphan who took up puppetry as a child in an orphanage to amuse the younger kids. years of retreating into her puppets' personas has left her unable to communicate normally, and she prefers to talk through her puppets, her favourite being lady ravensdale, a proper lady in victorian fashion. she doesn't take very good care of her actual appearance, with long, tangled, split-ended hair and rips in her clothes. the only exception is her hands, which she keeps meticulously maintained and manicured, since they're the only part of her body visible during shows. her creepy smile and wide, glazed-over eyes are offputting to most she meets, but she is a truly kind and passionate person whose animated and lively puppet shows can bring a smile to any childs face. EISUKE ITOU: eisuke grew up sewing clothes for his younger sisters barbie dolls, and he particularly loved dressmaking. he gained exposure in his first year of highschool by handmaking gorgeous outfits for his class's booth at the school festival, and, through application to various junior fashion competitions, he was eventually noticed by a big-name designer in paris. however, he found learning french next to impossible and has spent the year prior to the game in relative isolation, unable to have any real human conversation. his pyschological state was fairly severely impacted by his long hours spent sewing and designing on internship with no company to get him by, and he is now debilitatingly socially anxious and finds conversation difficult and awkward. SHIN TOKUGEN: a silver-tongued and charistmatic human interest and general news reporter who specializes in getting personal accounts from those affected by newsworthy events. growing up billingual in english and japanese due to his american mother, language comes as easy as breathing to him. in addition to his mother tongues, he fluently speaks chinese, korean, arabic, spanish, and russian. news outlets pay hefty prices for his emotionally provacative and insightful interview stories, which covers all his travel expenses. he has a unique talent for getting complete strangers to reveal to him things that they might not even tell close friends. actual casual conversation with can be a little offputting, since it always feels like an interview, even when he's trying his best to not. MARIKO MIKAMI: mariko was a sickly child, and spent a large part of her elementary school years in hospitals. around the age of seven, she began folding paper cranes as something to do, and wished to live normally after she folded her 1000th. she soon recovered, and feels that she owes her life to origami. she is precise and calculating in everything she does, which shines through in her art: every delicate, artful piece of origami that she makes is creased and folded perfectly. she also dabbles in wet-fold origami. she's most famous for her dry-fold though, and her pieces are well known for their complex, precise, mathematical beauty. she refuses to fold paper cranes anymore, feeling that they are too sacred for her to touch after they saved her life as a child. a calm, slightly disconcerting smile is always on her face, no matter the circumstance; her manner is consistantly cool and polite. YUU IROIKE: yuu iroike isn't even his real name, and it's a mystery as to how show staff even tracked down his mailing address to get him on the show. he's a well-known public figure for painting huge, sprawling, colorful murals in tokyo, yet who he really is remains unknown. he paints faster than his murals can be scrubbed away, and has somehow never been prosecuted for vandalism because his graffiti is generally considered an improvment. he's sly, mysterious, and teasing in person, and gets a bit of an itchy trigger finger when he hasn't painted in a while. His skill with spray paint is so great that it seems as if the paint bends to his very will. MARIYA HAN: born and raised in rio de janeiro, mariya moved to her father's home country of japan at the age of eleven. inspired by the more vibrant trends in brazil as opposed to japan, mariya broke out of her mold at the age of 13 by experimenting with dramatic makeup and dying her hair blonde. she has adopted a delinquent-ish persona over the years due to general disapproval from teachers because of the looks she presents. her impeccable sense of all-around style has made her one of the very few half-japanese models to appear on the covers of magazines like kera and zipper. she has an uncanny sense of color and structure and is able to create attractive and stylish looks for almost any face. HARUMI HAMANAKA: harumi is a sweet and bubbly girl, if almost cloyingly so. her good luck is a fairly stable force (nowhere near as chaotic as komaeda, for example), generally acting in the favor of wishes of people around her. her mother intensly wanted for her to be on the show because of the exposure it provides, and this is what harumi attributes to her being selected. despite the way her luck operates, shes no doormat and in fact has an overwhelming force of personality, and her sweet demeanor can become rather passive aggressive if challenged on pretty much anything. MOMOTAROU KOBARA: momotarou, born into a rich family that fufilled his near-every want, made a name for himself in the world of collecting at the age of just eleven by, through luck and love for the series, collecting every pokemon card. from then on he set onto collecting just about anything non-perishable: pins, collectors set bandaids, vinyls, etc. he has exceptional luck in finding deals on ebay and other sites. he cant really be called a hoarder, since he likes to have just one of everything; he resells, gifts, or uses any duplicates. his mood swings between a dreamy, chilled out, flirtatious persona and periods of numb depression when it hits him that his whole life revolves around material possesions and that he has no real human connections. CHOUMI YUKIYAMA: exceptional among even her fellow shsls, choumi made her historic mark on ballet by becoming the world's youngest ever prima ballerina at the age of 13 and japan's first ever prima ballerina assoluta at 18. fans flock to her ethereal, angelic grace on stage as well as to the percieved sense of otherworldlyness surrounding her albinism. on the darker side of her popularity, repeated sexual harassment from fans and male dance partners alike has hardened her world view to make her not quite cold, but definitely reserved in her emotions. she adapts fairly easy to stressful situations and pushes through pain with almost no visible outward struggle due to her all too common experience with dancing through foot and ankle injuries. because of this she usually ends up taking initiative in difficult scenarios if no one else steps forward. she is also a quite talented hobbyist figure skater and is fluent in both english and russian. REN KIKUHARA: a fairly odd florist in that instead of ordering flowers to arrange into bouquets, every flower he sells is grown himself. although this means that his selection is seasonally and fairly regionally limited, he has an incredible talent for working with plants and can even sometimes coax out-of-zone flowers to grow. he's fluent in hanakotoba and is surprisingly good at flirting through flowers without it seeming cheesy, although he doesn't do it very often. people often remark that his bouquets often seem to have more love and life in them than store-bought ones. ren is a calm and kind soul and prefers listening to talking, with what he does say always seeming to be just the right words for the situation. JUN TENSEI: born jun harada, many believe that his spiritual connection is the real deal, but a few critics hold that he is most likely just an incredibly talented bluffer. the real truth about him is unknown, but many say that his seances do accurately reflect the personalities of their deceased loved ones and help them feel at peace. he is deeply religious, but not to any one traditional faith (although he does use traditional christian symbols such as crucifixes and items such as holy water on occasion). he believes strongly in the power of the soul and its ability to exist beyond death. his voice is soft and low, and he has a penchent for gentle teasing and riddles. he comes off as pretty shady to most, but he's fairly harmless. SARA KUROKAWA: a talented young woman from a long line of popular backalley tattoo artists. she combines traditional symbolism and youthful influence in her designs to make something new and more appealing for the younger generation, and is a huge proponent for tattoos being shown off for fashion rather than hidden away in the traditional style. sara does have (illegal) tattoos done by her older siblings on her arms despite the minimum age being 20, although her being homeschooled, looking older than her actual age, and having a tendency to wear long sleeves year round has led her to encounter few problems. she and her family are among the many who simply choose to ignore the statute requiring a medical license to tattoo. sara is a fairly rude person in a backhanded way, acts stereotypically catty, and enjoys making herself the center of attention, whether through her appearance (dyed pink hair and white contacts) or the things she says. the only two things that can break her shell and make her excited and genuine are tattooing and piano, which she has played from a young age and loves. SHOU KATSUKI (PROTAG): pushed to succeed in the game from a very young age, shou is japan's reigning chess champion, a FIDE-certified grandmaster, and went to international competition the year before the killing game. he played through to the finals with influenza, which worsened through the matches due to lack of treatment and culminated in debilitating pneumonia that left him in the hospital and unable to play for first. because of this, he's cultivated a sort of inferiority complex that he tries to cover for with self-confidence, which actually comes off as condescending rudeness. he has a natural talent for cause and effect analyzation and is good at planning ahead. he gets flustered easily over trivial things and is a sore loser, but tends not to crack under actual pressure. shou doesn't like to be associated with his family due to the intense pressure they put him under only to steal his winnings the second he began to succeed and thus prefers to be referred to by his given name, even by near-strangers. he does genuinely love chess, but his favourite board game is actually risk. (no one ever wants to play with him, though.) MIKI SHIMAZAKI: a child prodigy from a family of cheerleaders, miki learned to love the sport over years of family pressure. famous for winning back to back nationals from age 13 to present, she's well aware of the image of unintelligence and sexualisation that comes along with being a young girl in cheerleading, and these two topics are sort of trigger points for her. after a while she grew tired of people telling her that they were suprised she was nice and were expecting her to be a bitch, so she adopted a fake-nice, popular girl type persona to basically give people what they were expecting. miki trusts very few people due to the many creeps shes encountered, but her few friends are the most important thing in her life and she would stop at nothing to protect them.

Mission on Mimban 9 of 12

Previous Installments

Introduction, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven,Eight,

What Happens in the Chapter

Chapter Nine opens with Luke and Leia's chat as they walk down the tunnel. Luke thinks of a new plan, but Leia dismisses Halla as a delusional old woman who wants the Kaiburr crystal to defeat Grammel. Luke brings up having to find it before Governor Essada and his people. Leia shudders, and Luke asks what could have happened on the Death Star to affect her so. Leia does not tell him. They find the linchen-fungi that glows in the dark, so they don't need to use their lumas. The underground is a wonderland of multicolored stalactites, an underground stream, a bottomless pond, a miniature forest of helicites, cantilevered mushrooms, and a tall stand of something resembling paralyzed bamboo encased in quartz that ring when struck.

Just when Leia's come around on her opinion of Mimban "If Mimban is ever settled formally, everyone should live underground," the ground shatters under her feet and Luke has to pull her out of the new pit. They pass on smooching, despite the obvious set-up for it. They continue on with the spelunking, testing the ground with the lightsaber and holding hands as they forge on. The path ends at the shore of a vast underground lake, so wide that they could not see the far shore.

We have a nice bit of problem solving as they figure out how to make a raft out of a leprous lily that grows where the underground steam meets this lake and paddles out of selenite crystals. With those preparations made, they make camp and both pass out from exhaustion.

They wake up after twelve hours of sleep and the concentrates for breakfast now taste good. They slide the pad-boat into the water and start paddling. They hug the wall on their left, where the path had vanished into the water. Eventually Luke's imagined terrors subside and he wonders about Leia if the experiences they'd gone through so far on Mimban had had a mellowing effect on her. Leia's common sense has not been affected as she shoots down Luke's offer to do all the paddling.

Several hours after lunch, Luke calls a halt to the paddling. He's nervous about a pop-plop sound, too erratic to be drip water from the ceiling. Everything goes quiet and they resume paddling. When Luke calls a second stop upon hearing the strange sound again, Leia sees and is rendered speechless by a trail of fat bubbles that was arrowing rapidly toward them.

Luke fights the lake monster with his lightsaber, and falls into the water. Leia gets into a tug-of-war with the lake monster with Luke as the rope. Finally the monster gets tired of lightsaber hits and leaves them alone. Leia has a nice screaming fit after Luke is safely onboard the pad-boat again.

After several more luckily uneventful hours paddling, the far shore finally comes into view.

An ancient dock protruded from the dry ground ahead. While no boats of any kind were in sight, the long finger of metal extending out into the water left no doubt as to its function, its alien design notwithstanding.

Luke had less luck identifying the purposes of the numerous structures clustered all along the shore. Many appeared raised from stone, others had metal walls, and some combinations of both materials. No matter what the compositions, every one displayed signs of considerable age.

The lake is not a new feature underground if the ancient and vanished Thrella built a dock. Leia refuses to get her feet wet when they reach waist-deep water, so Luke carries her the rest of the way. She apologizes for her behavior and reveals she can't swim. They hike through the abandoned city and Luke keeps having the something is watching me sensation. He turns around to follow movement he saw out of the corner of his eye and ends up cutting the Coway behind them in half. Five more block their path ahead. Leia arms herself with a broken stalactite and wields it like a dagger.

Despite the odds in numbers, this is such an uneven fight it's almost funny. Luke slices up two of their spears. Leia dodges the third spear, trips him with her legs, and then stabs him in the skull. One Coway switches to an axe and gets his legs cut off with the lightsaber. Another with a spear loses his spear hand at the wrist. The last one jabs at Luke with his spear so Luke cuts off the spear point. He throws the shaft at Luke and runs away. Leia's last opponent keeps her at bay with his spear and retreats when he sees Luke approaching. Luke takes him out by throwing his activated lightsaber in the Coway's back.

Meanwhile, the smartest of the Coway is running uphill and climbing over a huge pile of rubble from the ceiling. Leia upgrades her weapon choice to one of the axes of the dead Coway and flings it at the runner. She scores a hit on his right shoulder. He tumbles down the other side of the rocks and they climb after him, desperate to keep him from alerting others. The chapter ends with Luke and Leia staring down at what is on the other side.

What I Liked

The water [of the underground lake] was as black as the inside of the Emperor's mind. Yeah, a description that a) feels Star Wars and b) something that Luke would think of! And I do believe this is our first hint that the Emperor is the evil heart of the Empire. To double check my belief, I found the 1976 hardback of the first movie's novelization published by Del Rey Books in my library. I believe my father bought it and it found its way onto my shelves next to the paperback novelizations of the next two that I bought at used books stores. I replaced these copies with a 2015 Books-A-Million edition that put all three in one hardback, but I wondered if they had edited to reflect what we know from the prequels. Surprisingly, they did not change the Prologue between the two editions. Here's the passage that described the Emperor of the Galaxy:

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the Imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.

The Emperor we get in Empire Strike Back and Return of the Jedi is not this Palpatine described, and by the time we get to the prequels, the character is a Machiavellian devil. Don't get me wrong, I prefer my Palpatine as the Master of the Sith controlling the whole galaxy brought down low after twenty-ish years of complacency, miscalculating just how hard abused beings will fight back (including Anakin and the Rebellion in that), and failing to factor in the murderbears (Ewoks). I'm also tickled to find evidence of changes in motion, as it were.

No Virgin Alarms go off during this camping scene.

Crossing the lake has more of the in-character moments for me.

Out of excuses, he stared at the lake. "I hope this lake's not as wide as it looks. I don't like traveling on water."

"That's not surprising," soothed the Princess, knowing that on the desert world of Tatooine where Luke had been raised, an open body of water was as rare as an evergreen.

It took 194 pages in my paperback copy for Foster to finally remember Luke is from a damn desert! The resulting fears in Luke's mind are pretty good too, believable from someone who has never seen water like this before.

I like the lake monster encounter and its introduction.

It rose.

A pale amorphous form, shining with phosphorescence, in color it was not unlike the great wandrella. But compared to the lake-spirit the worm-thing was a familiar creature.

There was no face, nothing recognizable in that constantly altering form. It lifted short, thick pseudopods of a whitish substance clear of the surface. They gleamed brightly in the dim cavern light. Luke thought he could see partway through the creature, and strange shapes swirling about it internally.

I kind of hate that ILM didn't take a stab at this kind of monster. Nowadays it would be easiest to use CGI, so I'm curious as to what the old school approach for film would have tried instead.

What I Found Problematic

Given how Grammel treated you, Leia, I would think you'd be on board turning him into a frog. Sure, be skeptical that you can actually do that with the Force, but don't mock the old lady.

Luke asking about why Leia is freaking out over an Imperial interrogation and what happened to her on the Death Star doesn't bother me as much as his reaction. Leia charged out of her cell and took charge of her rescue and then he was thrown into the pilots' ready room. So it's perfectly reasonable that he missed her trauma until she fainted after Grammel told them about the Governor.

She turned memory-haunted eyes on him. "Maybe I'll tell you someday, Luke. Not now. I'm not... I haven't forgotten enough. If I told you I might remember too much."

"Don't you think I could take it," he asked tightly.

She hasten to correct him. "Oh not you, Luke, not you. It's me, my own reactions I'm worried about. Whenever I start trying to remember exactly what they did to me that time, I start to come apart."

And Luke immediately follows Leia's confession with a heartfelt apology for prying. No, that is not in the text at all. Leia changes the subject and they discover the lichen-fungi that glows underground. I'm torn about this characterization, because making the trauma survivor (typically a female) soothe who is prying into the trauma by making it all about themselves is such a common response. It's believable as written (shocker from Foster I know).

This dynamic needs to be drop-kicked into the sun.

So I want to rewrite this with an added apology from Luke. His empathy fueled by his Force Sensitivity should make it a lot easier for him to pick up on how badly Leia is still hurt by the Death Star events. He is in love with this woman, offer some damn comfort. But Leia won't be in my version.

This is the lamest just kiss I have ever seen written:

Rolling away from [the gaping blackness], the Princess caught him with a hand, her weight halting his slide. Now Luke rolled clear, came to a panting stop on her chest. For a long moment they lay like that, suspended in time. Then their eyes met with a gaze that could have penetrated light-years.

Err, is Luke on top or are they on their sides chest-to-chest? Not only am I having trouble visualizing them on the ground, this really needs Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher's expressive faces to make me feel it. Not that I really want to feel the twincest.

Wait a blooming second, where did all this equipment come from? After checking his timer he woke the Princess. You didn't have a time piece hiking to town. Luke checked his tracom. Okay, maybe you had that earlier when you were searching for the beacon, but why wasn't it named? Luke brought water from the stream in a collapsible cup. Why are we just now seeing this stuff when it should have been shown on the first hike in Chapter Two (Did they have incomplete survival packs because these things were not mentioned in the text there.) If they didn't have these things in Chapter Two, where is the text that says these items came from the swamp crawler? Who edited this work and never caught this inconsistency?

Why, Foster, why? I liked the battle with the lake monster, even if I think the lightsaber should have a bigger effect. But then you go and ruin it by making Leia scream after it's all over. Since when is Leia a screamer? Was it just a set up for this?

Her voice rose slightly. "I'm ready to get out."

"Believe me, Leia," he replied, taking her hand in his, "I'm in just as big a hurry as you."

This is Luke Skywalker, who hardly needs an excuse to give anyone comfort and would seize Leia's hand without her having hysterics. If anyone deserves to have hysterics it is HIM, our poor desert farmboy dragged underwater again by something trying to eat him. Hello PTSD flashback to the Death Star trash compactor.

Leia can't swim. This is information that should come up at the beginning of a journey over water not at the end. And even if she can't swim, stop being a wuss and get your feet wet. Because Leia is a lot of things but a wuss isn't one of them.

Interracial warfare, perhaps, or maybe sequential decadence ending in their being overwhelmed by aborigines like the greenies. I'm wondering about what happened to the ancient aliens of Mimban too, but damn the phrasing of this sentence just rubs me the wrong way.

That's not how lightsabers work! They have an automatic off switch. No throwing it at fleeing opponents and expecting it to remain on, unless you are using the Force to keep it on.

What Changes in My Fic

Showing better trauma victim support: Mara's trauma is so different from Leia and with the bond between her and Luke, I don't see this conversation even having the massive misstep of Luke making it all about him. What will they talk about during this hike?

Lumas will be changed to glow rods. And do a better job with explaining where the equipment comes from.

I want a line from Mara about how bad they are at keeping watch when they wake up.

The underground lake is a good opportunity to touch on what swimming lessons the Alliance has given Luke.

The lightsaber effects the lake monster. Unless it doesn't for the same reason lightsabers don't seem to boil water. Research this.

My revision of the after lake monster fight: Luke's clingy because oh-crap-I-could've-drowned! reaction has kicked in and Mara has pulled him back onboard. Mara discovers she's not opposed to clingy or more accurately hugging with Luke.

Plot events time. Helping Writers Become Authors further explains this breakdown. It probably hasn't escaped anyone's notice that the scenes in the past few chapters have not ended up on the outline. While thrilling obstacles to overcome, they have nothing to do with what I have identified as the plot: getting the Kaiburr crystal before Grammel does. When will we get back to that plot? I have no idea, but I decided to fill in these scenes under the Action section.

Hook 1% mark = Crashing onto Mimban

Set-up 1% - 12%

Inciting Event 12% mark = Finding the Imperial mining outpost

Build-up 12% - 25%

1st Plot Point 25% mark = Luke and Leia agree to find the Kaiburr crystal with Halla

Reaction to 1st Plot Point 25% - 37%

1st Pinch Point 37% mark = Meeting with Grammel

Realization 37% - 50%

Midpoint or 2nd Plot Point 50% mark = Prison break

Action 50% - 62% = Wandrella chase, Lake monster fight, Coway attack

2nd Pinch Point 62% mark

Renewed Push 62% - 75%

Goodbye 2017 - Hello 2018

[[EDIT: tumblr did mess it up. Urgh. So this is now two hours late... sorry guys -.-]]

If tumblr doesn’t mess things up (and it hasn’t during the advent calendar, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it won’t), then this post should hit the dash exactly when the clock strikes midnight over here in Switzerland, and the new year begins. And that means it’s the perfect time to say...

Happy 2018 guys!

I hope you all will have a wonderful new year, one that will make you forget all the bad things that happened in 2017, and leave you a happy and content little human by the time 2019 rolls around in 365 days.

May your year be full of moments that make you smile, moments of love and friendship, moments of success and accomplishment, and above all, full of health and happiness. I am very happy to have met all of you, and to have interacted with you, whether it be by playing, by talking, or even just by reading some of each other’s works. You lot have been a big part in what kept me going this year, and I want you to know I’m really thankful for that. I hope we can enjoy much of the next year together as well, and that no matter where the year will lead you, you will be happy. I love you all.

As a little extra, I’ll put a little review of my and Sceada’s year under the cut - at least I hope it will remain somewhat little. But you know me... Anyhow. I’m placing it under the cut so as not to spam you, and also because I will address some stuff regarding my health and Sceada’s sexuality as well, and I know not everyone is comfortable with that. I’ll mark them with a small header so you can skip them, but I just wanted to warn you beforehand~

With that out of the way, here we go! And for those who don’t wanna read it: Happy 2018!!

The Mun’s Year in Review

Well, you all know that this year hasn’t been an easy one, and I daresay it was a rough one for everyone. Still, I do feel like I should talk a little bit about the hardships I’ve had to face, and the struggles that’ll accompany me for much of the year to come, if not the entire one. So... here goes.

Health

As many of you know, I had a tumor in December 2016, namely an Ependymom that was lodged in my spinal marrow, at about the tenth to twelfth thoracic vertebrae. It had caused me stiffness and loss of sensitivity in my legs, and once we found it, there had been little choice but to remove it asap.

Ever since then, I’ve been needing a wheelchair. And I started 2017 at rehab in the Swiss Paraplegic Center in Nottwil. Mind you, it’s probably the best facility in the world for such a situation, and I learned a ton of stuff, including how to walk again with the help of crutches - still, spending half a year stuck at rehab ain’t exactly fun.

Especially when you also have to relearn stuff like bladder management, using the toilet and what not. Do you want to take a wild guess at how helpless you feel when you can’t even go to the toilet on your own, when you can’t help but soiling yourself because you have yet to regain control over your lower body functions? If you don’t know, you don’t ever want to find out. Gods was I relieved when it all turned out to be functioning properly after all...

And it’s not like it’s been the only health thing that affected me. I needed another eye surgery, for the Keratoconus developing in my right eye after we already had to do the left one last year, and I’ve been struggling to get used to it since then. First with my old glasses, now with the new ones I still cannot wear for more than like two hours at a time... - Oh, did I mention that insurance didn’t cover the 1700.- surgery by the way? Goodbye my savings I had been clinging onto...

And let us not forget that due to my immune system having gotten weaker, I also have this amazing pleasure of falling sick faster! Stomach flu? Come right in and stay three weeks! Dizziness? Hello darkness my old friend! Regular cold? Knock me out for four days, feel free to! Urgh -.-

Add to that a heap of spasms in my left leg that have been present all along, but got considerably worse now that winter rolled around. We know by not it’s not due to the tumor resurfacing (because it can do that, they couldn’t remove it entirely after all without cutting my nerves!) but can you imagine how nervous you get while waiting for the answer? And it’s not like the spasms are any help walking either, rendering me less mobile again after I had improved so much beforehand...

But enough of that. I could sadly go on and on here (I haven’t even brushed my mental stuff yet, oh boy...), but I’ll spare you that. It’s gotten long enough as it is anyhow... Let’s move on to other topics.

Work and Finances

Look, it’s not as though I had a job really when they found the tumor - or actually, yes it is. I may have been in an internship of sorts organized by disability services, but I had a job lined up where I could have started in January - Alas, it never happened. And seeing how I can no longer work my original job in retail (no electronics store will hire someone in a wheelchair. You can’t do the cleaning jobs, can’t fill the shelves and are slow to get around. Plus, how the fuck are you gonna fetch a 55′’ TV from the storage when a customer wants to buy it?), I am now actually trying to find a new purpose for myself. Gladly, disability services will help me with that... though it won’t be easy, and I dunno if I’ll be ready to start a new apprenticeship in summer like they hope. Cause it’s unlikely any spots will still be available...

Still, they are hopeful, and in order to get me back in the swing, they placed me in the same internship/training thing again, starting with just two hours daily. By now I’m in the office the entire morning on weekdays, and it’s going good so far. I’ll be there at least three more months.

And then, who knows? Maybe they’ll send me into finances and banking, or perhaps communal administration? We’ll see.

What is upsetting is the financial situation though. Due to being at rehab, I had to file for social aid - and the money they give me is very, very little for swiss measures. While I was at rehab, it was about 240, now it’s roughly 760 I get - even though I do actually get almost 3500 per month for the internship form disability services. But all that goes to social services to “pay off the debt”... Urgh >.>

For reference, an average 42 hours per week job in retail would pay between 3900 and 4200 per month. So yeah... Granted, they cover my health insurrance (which is 55o-ish per month, mind you!), but it’s still rough... The price levels here in Switzerland are just so damn high...

Social Life

Which leads me to this... I barely ever go out anymore these days. I can’t afford doing much, and what little I do afford is a pain to do due to the wheelchair. I can no longer just spontaneously go somewhere, or attend an event, I always need someone to drive me or even join me - and that inevitably leads to you not doing much anymore, you know?

I barely have any real contact with my rl friends anymore, I at most attend a MTG event every 3 months (PreReleases, nothing more sadly...), my DnD group also fell apart (though that was unrelated)... - Honestly, if it weren’t for you guys here online, especially those who talk to me on Discord and such, I’d be completely socially isolated, and that sucks. It sucks big time...

Gladly my girlfriend sticks with me, believes in me and loves me. Even if I can’t see her as much anymore, as we both can’t really afford the flights to visit each other, which is rather lonely too... We only managed to afford a few weeks in August together, when she visited me here with my room still unfinished. If the paraplegic foundation didn’t have the kindness to pay for her flights and hotel in March while I was still at rehab, that’d have been the only time I’d seen her this entire year....

So yeah. Things aren’t easy right now. Which is why I hope... next year will see improvements. It just has to...

Sceada’s Year in Review

When the last year ended, Sceada was a heartbroken virgin longing for affection and deeply missing the woman he loved, Leonora. He knew who he was though, a talented mage and a scholar of old languages who found work here and there, traveling wherever he pleased and slowly but surely building friendships with more and more people.

If you look at him now, he is instead riddled by insecurities, questions pretty much everything about himself to the point he is neglecting work at times in order to investigate his origins and maybe find his father. And the answers he longs for. Oh, he’s also entered a relationship with Maria and become - and here I quote Locke who was very, very pissed about this a few days ago - an accomplished lover.

But let’s look at things a bit more step by step, shall we?

A brief overview

Following Leonorâ’s prolonged absence, Sceada begins looking for other sources of affection, becoming rather flirty and sometimes even bold with Fran and Selphie, while deepening his friendship with Maria during their trip and afterwards

Sceada and Maria get rather close following him finding her having a nightmare, and staying with her to offer comfort

Leila captures the mage and, after tying him to her bed and appealing to his curiosity, takes his virginity. Later a second encounter occurs, where he they both are drunk at a Festival, before parting ways again.

Upon having spent Valentine’s Day with his friend Maria, Sceada discovers he has developed feelings for her. However, when voicing them, he finds them to be unrequited, and he tries to distance himself from her for a while.

Leonora finally returns, and during the initial happiness the two share a passionate night before the Sage encourages Sceada to follow his heart and pursue Maria, suggesting he could be or become polyamorous.

Sceada spends more time together with Maria, becoming closer again, but is content with just being friends. This changes when the pair are attacked by Coeurls, and Sceada nearly sacrifices himself to protect her, causing Maria to realize her feelings. When he recovers, the two become a pair, and slowly, over time, grow closer and closer.

Conflicted by his feelings for both Maria and Leonora (and to an extent, Leila as well...), Sceada seeks out a Goddess of Love, looking for advice. His silent hopes for reassurance in loving both women are however aptly crushed when the deity questions his motives for loving them, leading him to realize how much suppressed doubt and insecurity he has carried with himself.

Upon trying to tell Leonora more about Maria, Sceada’s motives are once again questioned, leading to an unfortunate argument that exposes a lack of trust on his end that Sceada had not been aware of. Unwilling to let herself be hurt by this any longer, Leonora suggests they part ways - they have not seen each other nor communicated in any way since then.

Sceada tries to forget about it all, hoping he could overcome it all with Maria’s love. However, when she wishes to take their relationship to the next step, he feels guilty over not having told her, and in the subsequent conversation many an uncomfortable truth and emotion are laid bare. Still, the pair reconcile, staying together and eventually consummate on their relationship.

Knowing that he will not be able to ignore the burning questions in his heart and mind any longer, Sceada begins to prepare to leave on a journey, just as the Goddess had suggested. He arranges for the eventuality that he might not return with his old rival Seshat Khnum, but before he can leave, Maria implores him to stay with her until the new year.

Making the most of this opportunity, Sceada holds his advent calendar again, and at the end of the year, attends the Garden Festival organized by Selphie.

Of course, there have been plenty of other plays as well, and I wouldn’t miss any of them. For example, Sceada finally opening up to Freya, or adventuring together with Jack in order to grab a certain book from the library of Burmecia, and all the shenanigans with little Stabby McStabstab Vani the Helfling Rogue - There was so much I adore, and not enough room here to mention them all. Just know that I loved all of our interactions!

A little note about the Smut

Yes, you read that right. I already mentioned stuff further up, but I still wanna note it here too, and add what’s missing up there.

We’ve already seen that he slept with Leila twice and Leonora once before he then got together with Maria, and well... let’s just say that those two may have taken a long time to get started, but haven’t been exactly innocent since - Sindays ahoy, is all I’ll say ;) But there have also been others, which I am not yet exactly certain whether to consider them canon to his main story, or separate cases - there’s merit in both, mind you, and I’ll probably ask the ladies involved eventually too. But who were they?

There is an as of yet unfinished thread with Fran, where the two engage in intimacies in a spring in the woods, after Sceada followed her and her enticing scent. One could argue that this is mainly heat relief, but it is not as though Sceada is exactly unwilling or that he is uninterested in the beautiful Viera...

The few encounters he’s had with Selphie were things got frisky somehow all share a similar pattern: Be it a playful argument, a bet they had or simply because sharing a bed leads to some “friction”, there is always something triggering the situation getting a bit more intimate and well... no one can deny that Selphie is a person you can have much fun with...

I also want to mention Aria, though the way our plays so far have played out, I kinda headcanon it as the two of them having been willing to get more physical three times so far, and Sceada stopping it each time because he noticed Aria wasn’t certain about it, and quite nervous, even afraid at times. And if there’s one thing he wants more than to avoid hurting her, it’s for her to enjoy this decision and not regret it... Perhaps the moment will still come, should we resume playing and point them in that direction.

There are two more ladies I played with, where things are rather kinky. One of them is on Discord and a fellow Black Mage, who’s been tons of tun to write with - the other a blog dedicated to sinful threads. I’ll refrain from naming either for now, as these two are likely to remain their own verses.

Final notes

Finally, I’d like to mention that there is also one more I play with on Discord after she left tumblr, and that her muse Anima is a pleasure to write with in all three verses we came up with. Also, I just wanna thank everyone who played with me this year, and I look forward to continue doing so - as well as meet new people!

Sceada will soon leave on his journey, and that means there is plenty of room for new friendships to be forged, and acquaintances to be made - or rivalries and enmities! I’m open for anything!

With that said, if you’re still reading this, I apologize for rambling for so long. I wish you a very, very good new year and thank you for putting up with me! Have fun tonight, have fun the entire next year, and I hope to interact with you again in 2018!!

Thanks for everything,

Patrick~

The Half of It (2020)

Okay so first of all….. this is the best movie ever in the whole world….

I mean it..!!!!!

I cried watching the trailer for it, because immediately it felt like exactly what I needed after Never Have I Ever (review <here> – unfortunately I will be referring a fair bit to the series in this review).

The Half of It (Half) felt something like an antithesis to NHIE, if you will. This is a teen love story that is pure in both meanings of the word: purity in its wholesome, innocent, raw, simplicity of emotion and feeling and love, and purity in terms of unadulterated content perfectly suitable for its context, everything so appropriate and coherent and in-place i.e. no dumb jokes where they are not needed (in fact no dumb jokes at all), no pandering to any audience, no desperation to appear logged-on by referencing any internet culture… Unlike NHIE which rams internet culture down our throats, Half is so much more relatable because of the lack of it. A timeless classic, some might even say.

Really… this was so so so … I want to think of another word for pure because that itself is such an internetty word lol. Hmm.. this was just so genuine I guess? It reminded me of what early 2000s indie teen romances were striving toward but could only ever grasp at in futility because they tripped over their untied laces in the process. The untied laces representing the pretensions the narratives often got caught up in, aiming for cool and subversive or off-beat but ultimately remaining unrelatable, unrealistic and lacking soul in all its quirkiness. Something that comes to mind for example is Submarine (2010) by Richard Ayoade? I dunno, I never watched it cos it was too annoyingly annoying for me so I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up at all lol, but I know that even as a teen I could tell that it’s self-awareness just translated as self-consciousness and what is intended as delicate and niche just ends up being too loud in its non-mainstreamness… do you know what I mean? That kind of movie where the indieness is too indie and its just fucking annoying? Again, I’ve never seen Submarine so I’m not quite sure I’m even hating on the right thing (in fact I just tried to watch the trailer for it and its so gross omg) but basically what I’m getting at is that The Half of It is absolutely not that kind of coming-of-age film. Because it rocks… af.

Right, so here are the synopses for this lovely film, directed by Alice Wu:

-        When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush.

-        A shy, introverted student helps the school jock woo a girl whom, secretly, they both want.

Gonna do some character introductions because I shall be referring to them specifically a little.  Actually, you know what, maybe just watch the trailer? Because it’s just… fucking good… but also because then my review will make more sense I hope!

Do you feel the overwhelming pureness, the simplicity? I dunno, I don’t have much to compare this to, but are all ‘good’ coming-of-age / teen romance films these days of this mood, are they this solemn (yet fun…), do they all do their characters this must justice by giving us wholes of their lives, their environments, their homes, their after-school selves? I doubt it…

(later on once I’ve established more that is great about this film, I’ll compare it to some other works that the tone of this one reminds me of)

OKAY SO

Ellie Chu, the Chinese-American protagonist, writes hundreds of essays for basically everyone in school, for a fee, to support her single father who’s the manager of the train station. Then Paul, the guy, enlists Ellie’s help in writing a love letter to the girl he’s in “love” with, Aster the great beauty (who’s also other things obviously). So Ellie, pretending to be Paul, writes letters to and converses via some secret messaging app with Aster, who Ellie herself also has deep feelings for, feelings which only grow with these interactions. Paul, not knowing about Ellie’s feelings, is caught unawares when he realizes Ellie’s truth. So these are the three main characters whose lives and thoughts we follow, and my first comment is that they are incredibly compelling characters! It’s really rare for me to like one character in a film to this extent, but here I found myself enjoying all three of their journeys, found myself relating to thoughts, wanting to be brought along with them all the way, individually and together.

So if one had to simplify the plot, it could perhaps be described as a love triangle. And about this triangle, what I like the most and what I found to move the story along so well was how clear everything was to us from the start. From the moment Aster’s name is uttered* to Ellie (when Paul asks Ellie for a letter to Aster), it is clear that Ellie is in love with her. There’s no sudden realization later on in the movie, there’s no unfurling of sexuality or conflicted thoughts – Ellie knows her feelings (or rather, has known), knows herself, and so do we. And it was... really refreshing and nice? To immediately be thrown into the triangle knowing all the stakes involved, all the feelings apparent. And I liked this too at first because I thought it would be you know, like those utopian-type film-world where sexuality isn’t an issue, where Ellie’s love for Aster would be a problem insomuch as she was in love with her friend’s love interest and not because she was in love with a girl. Because Ellie’s hush over her own her feelings, her furtive looks (like in the toilet scene -gif below- omg fucking epic scene I’m cryinggg) toward Aster, and other hidden manifestations of her love for Aster are all in line with her introverted personality, coherent with how she’s lived her whole live in privacy and isolation. So the hidden sexuality part wasn’t explicit, I mean, because it could have been read as her just being a shy girl – and this is nice, it’s interesting, because again it normalizes the same-sex attraction by not mentioning it at all as the issue.

(Edit*: upon rewatching, I realise I was mistaken and we see and vicariously experience Ellie’s feelings for Aster even before her name is uttered! And it’s a beautiful scene... LOVE THIS CORNYASS FILM!!)

But later on Paul says something that reveals this utopia isn’t the world the movie is set in. He jerks us back to reality like this, toward the end-ish of the film, i.e. when he and Ellie have already become besties:

Of course I may not have the greatest legitimacy to speak on it, having very fortunately never had to be on the receiving end of something like this, but I don’t think I would necessarily couch this as ‘homophobia’, even if that’s the overarching effect…? Do you know what I mean? There’s so much more here, more in Paul’s immediate response that is both hurt and hurtful, than just homophobia. It’s about the that that he has never been out of this tiny train-stop town, the fact that his over-crowded house is incomplete and utter chaos each time he steps back into it, how he doesn’t have a second to himself each day to think on his own or to simply be, where tradition is heeded because it is the only thing that ties one to heritage, to any memory/experience of anything meaningful beyond the daily, dull grind in an utterly dour town. Paul doesn’t have the luxury of expanding his mind beyond this world, doesn’t have romantic hours in the blue fog like Ellie where she reads non-stop in her tiny booth by the railway tracks waiting to ring the crossing bell twice a day, where her father holds a PhD (even if they aren’t close or don’t engage in mind-expanding conversations, I mean that this definitely adds to the culture she’s been brought up in, which must be so so unlike Paul’s).

I find there are two key scenes which help us to understand this ‘homophobia’ of his (again, this is not at all an accurate or meaningful way to view his instinctive rejection of Ellie’s sexuality and feelings for Aster, but I’m just using the term to contextualize it as just one symptom of his greater upbringing).

The first scene is where Paul, whose family has for generations run a meat business, discusses with Ellie his desire to branch out into new, non-traditional sausage recipes. It doesn’t hit as hard out of context, so plzzz watch the film to get the full effect and get ready to crey real tears but this is what Paul says in a beautiful scene, and you won’t get the No Exit (Sartre) mention unless you watch the whole film so just ignore that first and I think the rest of Paul’s touching monologue speaks well enough for itself:

The thing about No Exit is it's like how what I really want is to run my own shop, with new recipes. And-- And FYI, taco sausage is really effing good.

Okay, but I'm the fourth son and my family's been making the same sausage for 49 years and it doesn't matter if they're going broke, or out of style, they're Nana's recipes.

If Ma can't have Nana, at least she can make her sausages. If I break away, it'll break her heart. And it's either her heart or mine.

So I stay.

The other scene that helps ‘couch’ the homophobia and helps frame that painful scene is this one below, where Aster speaks to Paul. After she’s had a random day with Ellie, driving to her “favourite secret place”, floating together for hours in a hot spring while they 谈天说地 (casually talk about everything under the sky and everything on earth), during which it is clear that they have some kind of bond that neither has ever experience and a deep connection that they both need very much, she returns back home and meets Paul and they have this conversation (I got the dialogue straight from a PDF of the full screenplay):

- [Aster] Hey.

[indistinct sports radio chatter]

- [Paul] Hey. [soft chuckle]

- [Aster] Do you believe in God?

- [Paul] Uh... of course.

- [Aster] Yeah.

- [Aster] Yeah, no, of course.

So this scene takes place beside a trash bin late at night where Paul is emptying, erm, trash. Lol so when Paul answers yes of course, that’s his answer because… of course it is. How could it be anything else? And so his rejection of Ellie, his leaving her in the dark upon finding out her deepest secret (of her feelings for Aster) hurts but it’s not cruel. It doesn’t turn our hearts cold against him, because we feel sorry for him. We do because we have to. I’m not saying we should award all homophobes of the world this generosity, but it sure helps us empathize with a lot that is beyond us. Things to do with generational upbringing and religious traditions and smalltown cultures and whatever else that I can’t even pretend is remotely relevant to my own life. But I just thought that his reaction to Ellie, cutting as it was in the moment, was the logical expectation given what we knew about him. And basically what I mean is that this is the best film ever because everything is real, and everything makes sense, and Alice Wu is the best person on earth, I do believe.  

And I’m sorry to have to go back to NHIE lol (I mean I’m really sorry – so sorry that I’m even speaking of them in the same sentence when they are so different omg it’s insulting) but really, there’s no reason that Half had to be THIS much better than NHIE. They have almost identical central themes: teenage female protagonists with Asian-immigrant roots in an American town, both feeling the pangs of loss from having a deceased parent (Devi’s father from NHIE and Ellie’s mother from Half), both featuring many scene in a high school, both dealing with first crushes. And, okay, both have the exact same epically high Rotten Tomatoes scores (96%), but… that’s just an accurate representation of the goodness of one and a ridiculous lie for the other. Take my word for it :)

Okay I suppose this is a good time to mention the other films that Half recalled in my mind!

1)     There’s a scene, (screencap below) where Paul speaks to Ellie’s dad, only because the latter is not confident in English, he speaks Mandarin to Paul who stands and seemingly understands every word, because the message is clear as day. This is a lot like Lilting (2014), and not just because of the sexuality and Chinese-parent aspect where in Lilting, Ben Whishaw’s character speaks to his dead lover’s mother and they converse, her in Mandarin and him in English, exactly like the shared conversation here in Half.  But this scene also has, as in Lilting, the extremely painful longing for closeness of any, all kinds, the desire to be seen and understood and accepted, the desperation for a bridge between two who may be worlds apart. And Lilting is truly an incredible film, so my commenting on this resemblance is meant to be entirely complimentary!!

^ Half above, and Lilting below

2)     In general the erm pureness (yes I swear I’ll start reading again soon which shall hopefully re-expand my vocab so I don’t have to keep using this same lame word over and over) of the mood of the film also calls up I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone, or Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho. This was a huge Youtube short film from years and years ago (2010) that I remember watching about a hundred times over, it’s Brazillian and under 20 minutes but it was so successful and compelling that a full-length feature film was later made in 2014 based on the characters and simple story that the short was based on. I don’t know if Half will grow to be that iconic, to bestow the world with oceans of fanfic etc, because now that there is so much choice and variety of entertainment Half may just be one of the many, but it feels like it shall leave a similar legacy. There are similarities in theme and plot, where The Way He Looks has a male-female best friend duo where they find they both have feelings for the cute new boy in school, oh and also the male bestie is blind so I suppose there is some similar comment on marginalization there, like Ellie’s immigrant status for which she is taunted for and which holds her father back from jobs much more suited to his capabilities. Anywayyyy yea just thought that Half reminded me of the same innocence and same budding feelings and forays into the world of a friendship being complicated by issues like sexuality and I loved being reminded of it!

3)     Also, very unfortunately, I was reminded of this shitty crap I saw a short while ago on Netflix just to pass the time while exercising, All The Bright Places.  I thought there would be, at least, something sweet in its “sadness” (quotation marks cos the tragedy of the plot is handled so fuuuuuuckkkkking badly) and maybe something moving even in its predictable contrivance but bro it was literally the worst shit in the world and I stopped about halfway through the film, actually right in the middle of this scene that I’m about to bring up.  Fuck even just re-watching this clip has killed me. Fucking disgusting movie!!! Okay so I tried literally for an hour to upload videos (having taken vids of my laptop screen with my mobile, then combining clips into one mashup video because the app only allows for one video per text post, and then trying 5 times to post it without any success for some reason, and also being unable to attach it via the web version) but I have to resort instead to these screencaps, which, disgusting as they already are, still don’t do justice to the crappiness of the whole scene which literally went on for minutes. So anyway here’s the Bright scene that offends every bone in my body:

And here is the genuinely tender and sweet and moving and touching and appropriate and epic Half version, where the stripping takes up about 2 seconds of screentime, with no chest or shoulders or stomach on display because they, you know, actually get to the point of the scene, to the conversation and moments that actually move the plot forward and serve as more than just fodder for pedo men watching:

Could these two scenes be any more different, seriously? And why should they be this way? Oh, right, umm, maybe it’s because Half is written, directed, and produced by a woman (Alice Wu, who I shall write a little about later), and All the Bright Places is directed by a man? Sure, the author of the YA novel by the same name that the film adapts is one of the two female screenwriters who wrote this film but in a scene like this, direction clearly comes from the director right? Sorry if my fleeting brush with film studies years ago has proven to teach me nothing accurate but yea I do think, seeing a scene like this, that the screenplay (by the two women) may say, you know, Boy and Girl strip and jump into the water, but the scene above that we end up seeing is more the result of the director saying something like alright lads let’s really keep the camera on her for like a good minute, let’s just really take our time on this attractive young girl and lets make sure everyone sees how HOT she is but also how CUTE and SWEET ok? It’s just so so so sexualized like it is just me? Do you guys see it too? Seriously it’s so indulgent and exploitative and inappropriate and unnecessary and it SUCKS bleauughhh! Compare it to the exact same idea in Half. They’re both showing basically the exact same activity right, both where one teen brings another teen to their favourite spot and makes moves to jump in, while the other teen in both films is seemingly hesitant / shy at first about doing so before eventually joining in, except that for Half, we see about 5 milliseconds of the actual undressing. Because it should be obvious right? The focus of the scene is about the subsequent floating, about the intimacy of bringing someone new to some place special to you, about vulnerability and friendship and love and blah blah whatever and the stripping of clothes is but an obvious means to get into the water, so there’s no ambiguity even if the scene cuts from two fully-clothed characters on land to two half-clothed characters in the water I think fucking everyone would understand what had occurred right?! Meanwhile we are forced to fixate on Elle Fanning removing each and every single item of clothing from her waifish body, forced to examine the torso of this girl who is meant to be mid-teens?, forced to understand her as beautiful and desirable and demure and enticing because we see her through the eyes of the guy whose glances are as unsubtle as they come and IT’S FUCKING GROSS LA fuck. FYI like I said I never finished watching this dumb film cos I literally couldn’t finish this stupid swimming scene so idk maybe it gets better and it’s ending rocks af but yea probably not ..

4)     Of course, Notting Hill (1999)! In Notting Hill, the beautiful cute iconic scene where Julia Roberts asks Hugh Grant for .. well basically asks if he’d be willing to take a chance with her, to work together for a relationship and he says umm nah and she says: Don't forget -- I'm also just a girl. Standing in front of a boy. Asking him to love her.

Similarly, in Half, Paul goes on his second date with Aster (after being wingman-ed af by Ellie) and Paul and Aster’s conversation falters (not that there was much momentum to begin with) and Ellie (who is sitting in Paul’s truck watching them on their date through the diner’s window lol) texts Aster with her phone (pretending to be Paul), and says “I get nervous when you’re close” and after a bit of ‘banter’, Aster replies “I’m just a girl”

Loved Notting Hill and always loved that funny just a girl line for it’s strange, spontaneous, unsophisticated simplicity, so again, as with Lilting and I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone, I enjoyed this reference a lot! :-)

Okay one last main point before I end off this longass ramble with some general points and then I’m done for real

So in Half, Ellie’s character is “deep” and “philosophical” and “smart” while such traits especially in teens would usually annoy me because of how badly they’re written, Ellie never displays these sides of herself intending to exclude others, or alienate or humiliate anyone for not being like her. While it is clear that she is different in so many ways from 99% of her peers and from her entire town, it never results in any kind of chip on her shoulder, and she proves to always see herself very much as a part of her environment, and so despite being the biggest fish in a tiny bond, Ellie remains relatable, likeable throughout when it would have been so easy to make her you know, too big for her boots.

This characteristic of Ellie’s, her ‘deep’ talk and how in her writing and texts to Aster, in wanting perhaps to convey her uniqueness or her smartness, the conversations read a little not-normal, in the sense that most of us won’t be able to relate to having dialogues like that, not because of the content but just the style being a little too not naturalistic, so some may feel that takes away from being able to believe in the characters as real people, anyway sorry for this longass sentence BUT this much-elaborated-by-me characteristic of Ellie’s reminded me of a description of Hermione from the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)! In the film, Professor Trelawney says to an uncharacteristically recalcitrant Hermione:

You may be young in years but the heart that beats beneath your bosom is as shriveled as an old maid's, your soul as dry as the pages of the books to which you so desperately cleave.

And, again, I think Ellie’s ‘pretentious’ dialogue (quotation marks cos I personally found it very coherent to her context and personality and was not offended by those trying-to-appear-smart bits haha) is what it is simply because she hasn’t had much beyond books and words to keep her company all her life. Her father’s love language certainly doesn’t seem to be conversating, and she has probably never had a good friend (or a friend at all?), and so, yes, there have probably been hundreds of dry pages to which Ellie has desperately cleaved through her years in Squahamish. And I think the point of the events in this film was to show that without having met Paul, without having confronted her feelings for Aster and getting to know her personally, without playing her sweet guitar song for her whole school, she would, as Trelawney accuses Hermoine, have gone on to possess a heart as shriveled as an old maid’s. The incidents in the film steered her away from said shreivelness and dryness, and toward a fresh, authentic, golden self.

OKAY I want to limit myself here because without one (a limit), I would literally analyse every scene and dialogue ad nauseam and ya no one would care for that so I just want to mention finally that the reason why this film is the best ever, why it’s so tenderhearted and utterly transporting, why its characters are so likable, why it was able to strike a perfect balance between all things light and heavy, why you can’t help but want to hug everyone you see on screen is because I guess Alice Wu is just an iconic genius! She shows different kinds of love (familial, romantic, platonic etc) and all the types of closeness and longing and dreaming in the film and its heartening to know there is a voice like hers in this mainstream YA world because, especially with things like NHIE and All the Bright Places out there, Alice Wu is clearly much needed.

Here is a bit of her director’s note for the film – it can be viewed in full <<<here>>>. I’m copying these two sections because they frame the film nicely, and again, just as NHIE was a semi-autobiographical tale from Mindy Kaling, Half is the same for Alice Wu, just that Half you know, actually tells a story.

And I like how, like she says, the film ends with our 3 lovely characters beginning their lives.

 Okay so… bye! Hehe :)  

what I found was unbelievable but I believe it's true (it did all the things love does that's how I knew it was)

Director Sanvers

This was the result of me seeing this post, started as a combination of the prompts:

‘A sleepy good morning kiss that ends up with a palm in the face and a muttered, “brush your damn teeth first.” and A sleepy good morning kiss that ends up with a palm in the face and a muttered, “I will push you off the fucking bed if you don’t let me sleep.” but a few others snuck in too.

ft: trans!Maggie, nb!Alex, and genderfluid!Lucy

warning for brief mention of past transphobia. 

The last few years had been— Maggie didn’t want to say kind exactly— that seemed disingenuous to much of the struggle and the sacrifice they’d all been through.

It had taken nearly two years to get National City back into fully working order after the Daxamite invasion. And that was with Supergirl pulling double time on the recovery efforts after she found out how Maggie had been spending nearly all of her off duty hours, helping out the neighborhoods— read the poorer and predominantly non-white communities who were suffering without the immediate aid going to the more affluent areas.  

And it wasn’t like crime, alien or human just paused during that time leaving the NCPD and the DEO busy with the daily grind as well.

Add in a near apocalypse or two, a historic birth marking the first green and white Martian child, three more crashed pods, one of which was crashing for a second time to no one’s amusement and the drama that followed in its wake.

An almost wedding and an actual commitment ceremony, the ultimate fall of CADMUS that brought about the death of Alex’s father at the expense of rescuing Kara’s— in a surprise twist captured but not dead aunt, the second Danvers sister’s bi-panic, a narrowly avoided invasion from an alternate universe.

Alex and Lucy both coming to terms with their respective gender identities and the adjustments to their relationship it brought which tangentially led to Maggie becoming quite close with Vasquez’s wife Erin and being named guidemother to their first kid.

Breakups and promotions and retirements and surprising couplings and Life made it a hell of a four years that Maggie ultimately wouldn’t trade for anything.

At least the last pod brought the only pleasant surprise to emerge from one in the form of Krypto, who was pretty amazing in Maggie’s opinion.

Granted Maggie had such a soft spot for dogs that it wasn't saying much even with the superpowers. It did help that he and Gertrude became fast friends.

So, incredible maybe or awe-inspiring were apt descriptors for the time that had passed. 

Of course, Maggie would be the first to admit she was probably a bit biased. 

Still, there wasn’t anything she would change save for a few calls that came closer than Maggie cared to consider even now well after her spouses or her family were out of the woods.

Family.

Maggie honestly didn’t think she’d ever have one of those again. Not after being thrown out at fourteen or the abuse she suffered long before it came to that at the hands of people she was told were doing it because they loved ‘him’.

Not when she finally escaped her small town only to find just as many people, in a community who should understand, that would turn their backs on her as well.

After people who would sleep with her but wouldn’t claim her in the light of day, too many girls who wouldn’t go out with her at all.

Eventually, Maggie learned how to best avoid those types though it was far foolproof (if being a fool was expecting basic human decency no questions asked Maggie would lay claim to the title, she tried not to expect much of anything then) She started dating aliens too, most of them coming from societies not mired in Earth’s hang-ups with gender or sexuality.

The problem was human or alien, the fourth or so set of hastily canceled plans because of work typically spelled out the end of any fledgling relationship.

Maggie had all but given hope of finding some happily ever after ending.

She had work and she had volunteering at the LGBTQ youth center. She had Adrian who she loved like her own and his seemingly endless strays that she was always happy to help with whether they needed an ear or an example, a home cooked meal or her ties with the justice system.

And that was enough.

It had to be.

But now? Now Maggie had two amazing partners and the kind of unconditional love she craved her whole life.  

She remembers watching her grandparents as a child enamored with the way her vovó would look at her vovô like he had the secrets of the universe in his eyes.

And as she got older she saw not only that tangible love that hadn’t faded at all but also but how it never prevented her vovó from calling him on his shit.

She saw how their love never wavered and that communication only made their relationship stronger. Which led Maggie to wonder what the hell had happened to her own father.

The painful memories of that life had long ago scabbed over but she had finally begun to heal with the support from her newfound family.

Being loved by Alex and Lucy was everything she ever dreamed and more.

It also meant winding up with two sisters, two brothers, a few in- laws, a space dad, a mom, an aunt (though Alex would would always deny that particular moniker, Maggie and Lucy would only tease them sometimes considering the circumstances but were unable to fully resist knowing the grumbling was due to the crush Alex had on Astra when the general first showed up well before Alex recognized it for what it was) or two aunts-ish, it was beyond surreal to think of Cat Grant as aunt even after the media mogul shocked everyone by getting together with Astra.

Maggie did readily accept Carter as her nephew however, he and Adrian got on like a house on fire and Maggie who spent so many years in isolating loneliness could scarcely believe how full her life had become.

These thoughts buzzed pleasantly in her chest as Maggie stretched in the warm patch of sunlight that was angled so it just hit the middle of the bed where she had fallen asleep last night. She could feel Lucy snuggled up against her back and hear Alex’s heartbeat from where her head had gravitated to their chest.  

She nuzzled her head closer placing a lazy kiss above their heart. Slowly waking up as she trailed languid kisses up their neck. Alex stirred slightly, a smile stretching across their face as they leaned into the contact eyes still closed.

Their lips meet in a sweet sleepy kiss and Maggie marvels at how right it still feels every time.

She feels the nose scrunch before she feels Alex’s palm pushing at her face, a muttered, “Brush your damn teeth first,” follows and Maggie can't help the full blown chuckle that shakes her shoulders and dislodges Lucy who grumbles while rolling over but doesn't wake up.

Maggie moves with her, pausing only to stick her tongue out at Alex who simply rolls their eyes at the gesture which Maggie reads as ‘good, subject Lucy to your morning breath while I go brush my teeth then.’ 

She ends up in a mirrored position with her head now on Lucy's chest instead of Alex's.

As soon as the two of them settle, Alex shifts. Awake now, they drop a kiss on Maggie's head and then Lucy's as they rise from their side of the bed to pad towards the bathroom.

Maggie lays there listening to the sounds of Lucy's heartbeat and Alex puttering around the bathroom. It's rare all three of them have a day off together and Maggie is content to laze in bed for a while basking in the novel illusion of zero responsibility.

Eventually, Maggie props herself up on one on one arm reaching out to tuck some hair behind Lucy’s ear.

She places a kiss on Lucy's forehead, then her nose and cheek. She leans in breath just ghosting Lucy's lips and suddenly Maggie finds herself on the receiving end of reflexes honed over years of precision training, Lucy's hand locks securely around the back of Maggie's neck bringing her in for a bruising kiss.

Maggie shifts slightly her body moving to mold into Lucy's but before she can follow through on the action there's a palm pushing against her forehead and then she's suddenly flat on her back staring up at the ceiling while Lucy growls out, “I will push you off the fucking bed if you don’t let me sleep.”

Maggie weighs her options for all of half a second before darting back up with a grin to peck Lucy on the lips, laughing even as she crashes to the floor.

She's still chuckling as she picks herself up and makes her way to the kitchen. 

Maggie has a pot of coffee brewing and is in the process of chopping up vegetables for omelets when she hears the door open and other tell-tale signs that Alex is back from their run.

Sure enough seconds later a sweaty Alex wraps their arms around Maggie from behind.

“Get off me until you shower, Danvers.” Maggie all but whines. Pulling the dish towel off her shoulder and using it to swat at Alex as they steal vegetables from the cutting board, ignoring Alex’s pout.

“I thought you liked it when I got all sweaty.” Maggie makes a show of rolling her eyes even though she knows that Alex knows what that tone of voice does to her.

“No, I like watching you work out and I like making you sweat. You coming back from a run and sweating all over our breakfast I could do without.” Maggie punctuates her statement by pointing her knife in Alex’s general direction.

Alex puts their hands up in mock surrender, sighing dramatically, “Alright shower it is…...you could always join me…” Alex says and Maggie doesn’t know where she finds the resolve against that lit.

“Breakfast first, Romeo.” She manages without her own voice betraying her as she turns her focus back to the skillet.

This time Alex’s sigh is a real one and Maggie immediately turns back around to snag their hand. She pulls Alex into a kiss mindful of the hot metal behind her, “We can get you all sweaty again after we eat— real food.” She adds before Alex can make a smart ass comment.

Too much time around Lucy, Maggie would tell anyone who would listen as if all three of them hadn’t entered the relationship fully fluent in sarcasm.  

Alex concedes with one last lingering kiss that warms parts of Maggie that cannot be blamed on the heat from the stove.

Maggie has two omelets plated, a third in one pan and another frying pan slowly heating oil when Alex emerges from the bedroom in their binder and a half-buttoned flannel.

Just the flannel.

“Luce still isn’t up yet?” Alex asks.

“You were the one just in there,” Maggie responds without looking away from the oil that’s just started sizzling.

Alex lightly shoves her shoulder, “ I meant why isn’t Luce up yet?”

Maggie still doesn’t look up as she starts frying bacon, “It’s our day off babe, not all of us need to start it before the sun’s fully up with a run like you besides wait for it in three, two, one…”

“Bacon.” Maggie laughs as Lucy appears in the door frame squinting at the sun like it just called her lieutenant.

Maggie hands over a cup of coffee spinning Lucy around and into Alex’s arms before she can try and pluck a piece of half-cooked bacon directly out of the scalding hot oil.

Lucy grumbles incoherently into said coffee as Alex snorts, “All those years in the army shouldn’t you be a morning person?” Alex teases.

Lucy glares at Alex. “I had to be up at the crack ass of dawn every day, I didn’t have to enjoy it.”

“So I shouldn’t have paid Josie’s kid down the hall to start playing reveille in the mornings?” Maggie chimes in and Lucy switches her glare to the back of Maggie’s head.

As Alex notices the coffee start to kick in they ask, “Lucy today?”

The cup clinks onto the counter and Alex notices the pause and the slightly unfocused stare. It only lasts a second or two before Lucy mhmm’s in the affirmative.

So Alex smiles at their wife who doesn’t notice because Maggie has dropped some bacon on the plate in front of her.

Alex themself barely notices their own plate as Maggie turns off the flame to join them both with her own breakfast. Alex thinks not for the first time that the legal system can go screw itself because their wives are amazing.

Maggie looks up from her plate catching Alex’s lovesick grin, “Oh my god Danvers, food.”Maggie orders as if she hadn’t been half watching her partners in the reflection of the oven door the entire time she finished cooking.

Lucy mumbles something that sounds like, “ Seriously. quit looking at us like Bambi and eat your damn breakfast would you.” but it’s hard to tell around the mouthful of bacon.

Alex doesn’t stop grinning but they do finally pick up a fork. There isn’t much talking as everyone’s attention is finally turned to eating but when their plates are empty Maggie’s head tilts, attention grabbed by Alex’s shirt.

They puff out their chest a little about to make comment along the lines of ‘see something you like?’

 Maggie beats them to it.

Just not in the way Alex was angling for.

“Is that my flannel?” Maggie asks unable to tell with the cuffed up sleeves masking their actual length.

Alex huffs a little, “Does it even matter anymore?”

“Well, no.” Maggie responds confused by the slight edge in Alex’s voice.

They stand up and start collecting the dishes to bring to the sink while Maggie and Lucy look on.

“Alex?” Maggie would swear up and down her voice did not just crack.

“Yes?” Alex questions right back without bothering to turn around.

“You aren’t wearing pants.” Lucy says dryly even as her eyes give her desire away.

“Took you long enough to notice.”

Maggie and Lucy exchange a glance and stand at the same time moving seamlessly over to where Alex is standing by the sink. Maggie presses herself into Alex’s back as Lucy moves to take the dish Alex is washing out of their hands.

“It’s our day off, the dishes will still be there tomorrow.” Lucy tempts. Alex gets lost in green eyes as Maggie presses kisses up the back of their neck. She nips at Alex’s ear, “You know you worked out this morning but we haven’t.”

Alex swallows hard as Maggie and Lucy each take a hand, lacing their fingers together before tugging Alex towards the bedroom.

Vasquez makes them promise a weekend of babysitting for covering for them when they need the next day to recoup from their day off.

I realized I can’t think of Maggie having a found family without Adrian being a part of it, He’s the creation of @queercapwriting I just borrowed him for sec.

I might have failed in op's original intent with op's 'real domestic otp scenarios' but like I want this let me hold out hope mmm'kay

I wrote this while avoiding real life kicking my ass so I’m hoping it actually turned out all right...

“I’d compliment your beauty, but I can’t see it under there. You’ll have to accept my compliments to your mask instead, it’s quite lovely.”

🎭 Masquerade Ball Starters 🎭

Akio felt out of place when he received an invitation for a ‘Masquerade Ball’, he personally wasn’t a big fan of any formal event that involved him getting properly suited and dressed. But even so, his time in Ionia has giving him a more positive outlook in a lot of activities and events he didn’t enjoyed back in Bilgewater, maybe this was a chance for him to change his mind about formal parties.

After a few minutes, Akio managed to find his old blue-ish suit, a gold colored tie which was a joke gift from his father, and lastly...an old masquerade mask...Akio remembers having this mask, but not really how he got it in the first place. All he knows is that, when he puts on the mask the dark color of his eyes seemed to fade away, leaving only the bright gold colored irises. He looked more...human in a way, expect for the light blue hair and his pointy ears. But there was no time to stare at his odd reflection, he had a party to attend to.

~~An Hour After Arriving At The Party~~

“Hmm....maybe this kinds of parties arent so bad after all” Akio said to himself, he managed to find an isolated balcony and gave himself a break from the classical music and minor chatter that came from the party. Still a bit baffled at the fact that he looked more human than usual, even more so after making up the excuse that his ears were just a family condition which everyone believed thankfully. 

“I wonder if i should leave soon...” Once again murmuring to himself, not really paying attention to his surroundings as he stared far off into the almost ending dusk. That was until a rather...familiar voice caught his attention. 

Slowly turning around, Akio took a good look at this person...she looked familiar...very familiar. ’Huh...where have i seen her before...’ Akio thought during her talk before it was his turn to speak, “Thank you ma’am, this mask is quite special too” He spoke in a rather neutral tone, still trying to figure out who this girl was. 

Tho...a part of him was feeling...scared? As if he was about to get in trouble? He only had this feeling after meeting Em for the first time. So why would this girl give off the same feeling? Looks like his night, was just starting.

@nithhaiahh

[HORROR] The Day of the Dog

I’ve seen dogs my whole life.

Now, when I say “I’ve seen dogs my whole life”, you’re probably thinking that I just happen to run into dogs a lot. Not so. I mean I’ve seen them even when they aren’t actually there.

Alright, let me explain.

All of this, the unbearable horror that ended up entering my life, it all started when I was ten. I was sitting at my desk at school, writing one of my class journal entries. I’m scribbling down why George Washington was my favorite historical figure of all time, when I feel something watching me. You know that feeling you get, when you’re being watched? That. I looked over near the door, and sure enough, there were three dogs - a doberman, German shepherd, and a pitbull. Just sitting all bunched up together, their tongues hanging out of open mouths, which were open in that way that makes it look like a smile. They were panting, the way dogs do, and staring at me.

Just staring at me.

Getting excited, I laughed and pointed at them. Then I looked over at my teacher, Ms. Sangha, seated at her desk.

“You never said we’d get a dog visit!”

She looked up, looking surprised - and then, slightly confused - as she looked over to where I was pointing. She frowned, looking back at me. “Jeremy, I’m sorry?” she asked, confusion evident in her voice.

“The dogs! Right there!” I said, louder and more excitedly, the smile on my face growing even wider.

She glanced back at where I had been pointing, then looked back at me and just stared. After a moment she sighed.

“Jeremy, go to the principal’s office.”

I frowned. “Why?” I shot out, hurt in my voice. As we were talking, the rest of the class was all staring at me as if I was pulling some odd sort of prank that only I saw the humor in.

“Disrupting class like this is not funny, and I won’t tolerate it. Now get to the principal’s office. Do not make me have to ask you again.” This time there was hard steel in her voice.

Hurt, I got up and started to move toward the door, but what I saw - or rather, didn’t see - froze me in my tracks. The dogs were gone. They’d just been there a few seconds ago, out of the corner of my eye. I was standing by my desk, in shock, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Jeremy!” Ms. Sangha’s loud voice, almost at the level of a yell, jolted me out of my daze, and as I looked over at her, she was pointing toward the door with a very angry look on her face.

I ended up getting sent home from school after I refused to ‘admit’ to the principal that I’d made it all up for fun. My parents didn’t know what to make of it at first, and they especially didn’t know what to make of it when I started seeing dogs at home that weren’t actually there.

They took me to a number of medical professionals, and I got questioned a lot as to what I was seeing, as well as what I was feeling and the like. All the while - through the long car rides to the doctor, to the interviews themselves, to the long car rides home and the ordinary days and everything in between - I kept seeing dogs. All kinds. Poodles, Dobermans, Daschunds, German shepherds, and more. They’d just… be there, staring at me, constantly, with that dog-ish kind of grin on their faces. It was so odd to me, and I had no idea what was happening or going on. At the time, I just trusted that my parents and the doctors would ‘fix’; me eventually.

I got put on medication. Thing is, it didn’t work. Nothing changed. So my doctors decided to up my dosage. Still nothing. I still believed I’d turn out alright, that eventually - as long as I was honest with my parents and my doctors about what I was seeing - that I’d get set right, and that everything would be alright in the end.

Then something happened that changed how I approached this whole matter. I overheard my parents talking one night, when I had started to sneak downstairs for a glass of milk near midnight.

“What do you want from me?” my mother snapped at my father.

“Look, Shannon, you know as well as I do that something isn’t right with the boy.” My father sounded frustrated, as if he was at his wits end.

“Dammit Henry, don’t you think I know that?” Mom yelled. She sounded as if… as if she had hit a limit and couldn’t take any more.

For a few moments, except for the sound of my parents pacing around the kitchen, there was silence. Tears were threatening to break forth out of my eyes and roll down my chin, and for the first time since this had ever started happening, I was scared.

“Shannon,” Dad said softly, pleadingly, “I don’t want him to end up in some… some institution any more than you do. But if this keeps up, well…”

“I understand,” Mom said back quickly, quietly.

I didn’t need to hear any more. I silently crept up back to my room, crawled into bed, and started to sob. This was serious, way more serious than I’d imagined it, and my parents - the two people who kept me feeling like everything would be alright in the end - were at the end of their rope and didn’t know what to do. What hope was there for me then?

Then my mind shifted to how to live with what I had while not getting locked away. I very quickly decided that if the next round of meds worked, great! Amazing! If they didn’t, though… well, nobody needed to know in that case, did they?

The next round of meds came and went. No change. Though, my parents and doctors didn’t know that. From what I told them, everything miraculously changed. My parents were over the moon, and so was I, even though nothing had actually changed. I guess their joy rubbed off on me.

So it went in my life. I grew more and more, graduated from elementary school into junior high, and then into high school, then out of high school into university, and then out of university into a basic office job. All the while, though, the dogs never left me. More than that, more and more of them kept showing up over time. I’d be walking down the sidewalk and the street and lawns on either side of the sidewalk would be filled with dogs. All of them standing silently still, their mouths hanging open with them panting, all of them staring at me. Every single one of them.

There was something else, too. During the day, they wouldn’t make a sound. During the night, though? They would all bark their heads off. That part started in high school, and though I couldn’t sleep for the first couple nights, I got used to it and was soon able to sleep through it all.

Now, you have to understand, over the years I’d learned to live with it. Seeing all these dogs all the time? Didn’t bother me. It became just an ordinary part of life to me. The way I’d come to look at it, I was sick, and this would be with me for my entire life. While that did suck, at least I was able to live with it in a way that you just couldn’t with other mental illnesses.

But it did have an effect on my life and how I lived it. For one, I’d never had a girlfriend in my life. I couldn’t think of how to let them into my life and explain what I was going through, what all this was like. I didn’t really have any friends, either. When I wasn’t working, I’d pretty much be at home watching Netflix and playing PC games as the dogs in my place sat on the floor and collectively stared at me. It was lonely, and yeah, it hurt. There were times when I sobbed my eyes out in bed out of sheer frustration at the loneliness and isolation I suffered, and there were times when I - in a panic - wondered how I was even gonna make it to my senior years living like and with this. It was hard, but, you know, I dealt.

Then when I was about twenty three, doing data entry at an office job, everything changed. Everything.

I was walking to work one day, and of course there was the sea of dogs surrounding me, panting and staring, as they usually did. Something odd caught my eye, though. First I saw it out of the corner of my eye, then - it was literally this jarring - I stopped and turned to get a closer look. It was just off to the side, on the sidewalk opposite to me. It was a dog - looked kind of like a German shepherd - but with snow white fur, and very, very bright blue streaks crisscrossing all over its body fur. On its face, there was a black circle surrounding its right eye, and its eyes… well, how to describe this. They were very, very bright green. To the point where they stood out to me, even from across the street. It was almost as if they were two tiny, ball-shaped emeralds stuck in its eye sockets.

For a few moments, I just stared at it, furrowing my brow and wondering if this was my disease getting worse, or if I should just shrug this off. As I did so, I felt like… how do I put this… I felt like it was staring into me. Eventually, I guess it reached too deep into me, because I got very - very - unsettled, and quickly broke eye contact, moved my line of sight so the dog was no longer in it, and kept moving.

On the rest of the way to work, for some reason that strange dog just stayed with me, and more than that, started to kind of really creep me out. There was just something off about it, you know?

I made it into the office, and once settled into my cubicle, I went about catching up on my backlog from yesterday. I’d had a number of work projects that were starting to weigh me down, so as one does in that sort of situation, I’d been doing triage - focus on the most important stuff first. So, that’s where my mind and focus was as I got into the office - just focus entirely on this gigantic project that had a deadline three days from then, and then get the rest done in their order of how urgent they were. That’s why I was working my ass off for the next four hours, my eyes not leaving my screen and my hands not leaving my keyboard except to sip from my coffee mug. It’s why I didn’t notice that, gradually, bit by bit, all the dogs had left my cubicle. It’s why I didn’t notice that by hour four, for the past two hours there had only been one dog left, staring at my back as it panted from behind me. A dog with emerald green eyes and blue streaks all over its fur.

By the time I finished the major project, I realized - before realizing that I really needed to go to the bathroom - that I felt uneasy. Very uneasy. I turned around and, sure enough, there it was - the dog that had been stalking me on my way to work. Haunting me on my way to work. For a moment, I was unable to look away from it, as it stared into me - deep into me. What the hell was this? What kind of trick was my mind playing on me? I was confused, and but mainly bothered. Why the hell did my mental illness have to start messing with me like this? As I stared at the dog, I got more and more aggravated that I now had this curveball to deal with.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the start of the road to my whole “I’m mentally ill” idea and assumption getting blown to bits.

Staring at the dog curiously for a few moments, I finally turned around and got back to work. Stupid hallucination, I thought to myself, It’ll go away soon. But it didn’t.

For the next month, this dog kept stalking me. There was no real consistency in the kinds of dogs that would populate the dogs that stalked me in my day to day life - except for this one. When I went on vacation to Toronto to see family, it was there waiting for me as I got off the airplane. When I was eating dinner with my boss on a company trip to Tokyo, it was sitting next to me in the restaurant. When I was doing anything, this dog was there. Sitting still. Smiling at me. Panting the way dogs do. Never even blinking.

This started to have an effect on me. I didn’t know why at the time, but this dog, this dog in particular, there was something about it. Like, I knew - or at least I thought I knew - that it wasn’t real, along with the other dogs I saw. I really was convinced it wasn’t real, but it… it felt real. It felt as if all the other dogs may or may not be real, but this one, this one was different. That was why I felt more and more unsettled the more I saw it. It was why my heart would race more often, and I would feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I got to the point where I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore out of the panic and anxiety that would set in. It was all because no matter where I went, I was never out of this thing’s sight.

It all came to a head one night, a month after this dog first appeared. I was laying in bed at around midnight, trying to fall asleep as I was already quite groggy. Nothing out of the ordinary for me.

Then it spoke to me.

“Jeremy, do you want to see something?” The voice was slow - a bit too slow - and deep. It sounded kind of friendly, honestly - just this kind, inquisitive tone to it. Still, it shocked the hell out of me.

I shot up and looked over at it, my eyes wide open. Its impassive, emerald green eyes stared back at me. My heart was racing, and I did feel somewhat afraid. Like I said, this dog wasn’t like the other dogs, and at that moment I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of a hallucination, but as an actual real life entity. That line of thought wasn’t logical, but with my mental state deteriorating for the past month, it was what it was.

Not knowing how to respond or react, I stayed silent. I guess it took this as permission to continue speaking, so it did.

“It won’t be anything bad. I just need to show you something. It’ll be fun. You’ll like it.” It paused, then continued - and this was the real kicker for me. “If you let me show you it, I’ll go away once we’re done. Promise.”

I don’t know why I decided to trust it. Maybe it was me being groggy, maybe it was my mind and mental state having been worn down enough by that point. Maybe I just wanted to believe it, even if it didn’t make sense to. So, what can I say? I took it up on its offer. What happened afterward has haunted me ever since.

“Okay. Show me.”

Everything changed the moment those words left my mouth.

Immediately, I was racing through a vast expanse of a field, with bright red grass under a dark green sky, and I felt great. The air slicing past me, my heart pumping more rapidly than I’d ever experienced before, and my legs feeling like they could run forever, I’d never felt more alive. I felt more energy than I’d ever felt in my entire life. Though, apart from that, I didn’t really know anything at that point, just the fact that I was racing through the grass very, very fast while feeling like a million dollars. As I ran, I examined myself. Glancing down at myself, I saw… paws? Dog legs? Son of a bitch… I was a dog. Looking up again, I cast a glance to both my sides. There were other dogs - dogs I’d seen during my day to day life, for years - running alongside me, just as fast, just as furious. Looking up in the sky, I saw not just planets - a number of them, I counted at least five, looming close and huge in the sky - but odd structures. One looked something like a mishmash of medieval castles, though not an asteroid - jagged in shape and as big as a moon in size, floating high up in the sky, somewhere in sub-orbit, if I had to guess.

That wasn’t all, either. Looking ahead, I finally noticed odd, wavy, coloured lines, intersecting with each other in the air. Focusing in on them, I noticed them running into the earth and into the sky, and following them with my eyes I saw… man, how do I describe it? I saw them running and interconnecting through the earth and across the sky. I saw flashes of energy pulse through them, and then I saw that energy flow through the air and the ground, and I felt the power from those lines run through me and fill me. This was it, I realized. This had to be some… some kind of set of connections, of power and energy. Did it power life itself? I didn’t know, but I had a strong feeling, maybe even a direct understanding, that the life and being of where I was depended on these lines.

This was amazing. I felt the sheer power of where I was and what I was, and it was better than I could have ever imagined. As I ran, laughing out loud in loud, ragged barks, I felt the strange dog - the one that brought me here - run up beside me. Looking over at it with a gigantic smile on my face, it met my eyes and asked me, “Do you want to see more?”

I couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough.

God, why did I say yes?

It was so fast. One moment, I was feeling like a god, and the next… Cold. So, so cold. An empty expanse of darkness. It was like I was floating in space, except it couldn’t have been space because there were no stars. Hugging my - I now realized naked - body and shaking violently due to the cold, I tried to get some measure on where I was. No luck. After floating in the darkness for a long while, I started thinking, what was this? What was that dog getting at? Was it good, or evil, or something else? I started to get very anxious and worried, very fast, and my heart started throwing itself against my chest hard, over and over, as I tried to work out how to get out of this situation.

Then… then I felt something. This creepy, weird feeling as if something was examining me. As if I was being watched. Not just that, either. It felt like something out there was looking into me. Floating there in the darkness, feeling utterly naked and vulnerable, I started to feel real, actual, raw fear, as whatever it was that was out there peered inside of me, rooting through my innermost aspects. I felt that my thoughts were naked and exposed, even being combed through by what was out there, and so I felt very uncomfortable even thinking anything conscious or deliberate. Tears of shame and vulnerability started to well in my eyes as I felt that my innermost emotions, and fears, and desires, were deeply and utterly known. It’s hard to describe, but I felt like I was utterly and completely exposed.

Then, what was out there stepped forth.

Floating in the darkness, something started to fade into being. Then, after a few moments, I saw it fully. It was a beast. Tall, large, and twisted in form and shape. So many limbs and teeth. It was unlike any animal I’d ever seen in my life, or that had ever even existed on earth, I think. Its claws, jagged and sharp, shiningly wet and dripping with… god, was that blood? Its teeth… so, so sharp.

Horror and terror simultaneously rose within me as I gazed on this being as it approached me, staring at me with an icy coldness that stunned me to my core. I knew immediately that this was the being that looked inside of me. Then, I - by accident, mostly - gazed into its eyes.

That was what started everything else.

Its eyes locked with mine, and I really saw. I saw vicious hunger, wild ferocity, and horrible coldness. I saw, as it looked over me, something that didn’t regard me as a being of any worth — at best, I was something not worth its time, and at worst, something to be devoured. The way it was looking at me, though, I could tell immediately that it was the latter. Fear overtook me and I started shaking even more violently, tears running down my face as I desperately, madly wished I was anywhere else.

Something weird happened at that point. All this time, I was looking into its eyes. Then, it started to intensely gaze into mine. As it did, I saw so, so much more.

What I saw kept me up at night for months afterward. A wild montage of images and visions. It’s hard to describe. The blood. The flame. A woman, dressed in what appeared to be ceremonial garb, smiling serenely as she took an ornate-looking dagger and sliced her throat open, falling to the ground as a pack of dogs trotted over and started to lick at and drink the blood flowing from her neck. Beings like the beast I saw feasting… my god, the feasting… Hordes of dogs ripping apart and eating men, women and children, laughing in high-pitched barks at their victims’ screams. Not just those, either, but more, so much more.

The images and visions moved faster and faster, switching from one to the other. Near the end of it I was screaming at the top of my lungs for it to stop, but I knew that the only things that heard me scream were the ones causing it to happen. Then, as quickly as it moved, it stopped. I was back in the empty void, floating. The beast was no longer there. A dog was. An ordinary, simple looking dog. A German shepherd, it looked like. Our eyes matched. What I saw horrified me.

I saw what I saw in the eyes of the beast. It was the same.

Everything started to sink in. As it did, I started to scream uncontrollably as wild fear and panic overtook me.

As I was screaming, I noticed that I was back home, sitting up in my bed. Catching myself, I stopped, and noticed that my heart was beating wildly as tears ran down my face, vicious sobs overtaking me. Looking over to that strange dog, I noticed something. It was… laughing. Laughing, joyfully and gleefully. This little fucker had put me through hell and it was laughing.

“What the hell did you do to me!?” I yelled at it, rage boiling up inside of me.

It stopped laughing and gazed at me. “You saw.” It said it happily, as if it’d done something great.

I breathed heavily, not knowing what to say. It continued. “What existed before, long before this universe was born, will come again. After all, we’ve always been around, haven’t we?” I understood its meaning. The eyes of the beast. The eyes of the dog.

Immediately after it finished saying this, it turned around and trotted casually out of the room. I didn’t sleep that night.

After I headed outside the next morning, I noticed something immediately that jarred me. There were no dogs. I mean, outside I’d see actual dogs, that were real, but the ones that only I could see? None of them. They were gone, every single one of them.

So it turned out that I wasn’t mentally ill. I wasn’t sick. I never was. What the truth turned out to be, though, was far, far worse.

What I saw and experienced that night stayed with me. I couldn’t shake it. From that night on, for months afterward, there was this constant feeling of anxiety - this tightness in my chest and nervous fear, both of which never left. I started to see life as pointless, because in the end, it was. I knew what would happen, I knew what would come, so what was the point?

Then there were the dogs.

I’d see, every now and then, people walking their dogs, or stray dogs crossing my path. Every single time when I caught them looking at me, I saw that they were, in their own way, smiling at me. As if they were laughing. They were in on the game, and so was I.

It’s been a year since that night. I’m now in my garage, and the noose is tied and ready for me. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’m satisfied in the choice I’ve made. Life still does have beauty in it, but I’m not willing to stick around to see how it ends. I don’t want to be around on the day that those things show up.

I don’t want to be around for the day of the dog.