#Aircraft crashes: accidents or murder?

[winter-dayz]

For the Best

Pairing: Shin Ryujin x Reader Alien AU; Yandere Genre: Fluff; Horror Words: 2424 Warnings: dead dove: do not eat; implied kidnapping; insects; murder; strong language; violence

Masterlist | Fictober Masterpost

Taglist:  @soobin-chois

Ryujin,

'The first time I saw you, I was… well, for lack of a better word, amazed…'

You had been finishing a hike when you saw it.

A shooting star… well, a falling star really.

Falling rapidly, actually.

Fuck. It seemed like it was heading right for you, and you were just going to stand there making a wish like a fucking idiot?!

You were stuck.

You knew everyone died someday. You knew that you yourself would grow old and wither away as well. Or maybe die a bit prematurely from a cardiovascular disease or cancer—those are the leading causes of death globally after all. Hell, you wouldn’t even be surprised if you died in a car accident.

But a shooting star pummeling you into the ground? That hadn’t been on your ‘Ways I Might Die’ list.

“Fuck!” You screeched, dropping down to the ground as the object flew over you and crashed into the ground a few meters away.

You rolled over from your belly and flopped onto your back, breathing heavily to prevent the panic attack rising in your chest.

Smoke trailed where you had just been standing.

The—not really—shooting star would’ve for sure decapitated you.

You heard mechanics whirring and sat up, peering over to the cloud of dirt and smoke at the definitely not a shooting star.

It looked like a… car?

Like, kind of. But not really.

The metal hunk was car-sized and car-shaped but sleeker and with no tires. Where you would expect wheels was the glow that had given it the appearance of a star.

Or maybe a comet, if you thought hard enough about your science class days.

The glow was green and dying out as the whirring died down with it. The metal of the… UFO… creaked, and you heard the sound of pressurized air escaping. A door on the side swung upwards, very SLS AMG-style.

You stared, amazed, as a woman stepped out.

She was beautiful… otherworldly… terrifying.

“I apologize, human. I lost control of my aircraft.” She stated, very factually and less sympathetic than you would normally receive during an apology. “Have you been injured in any way?”

You couldn’t find words to answer her so you simply shook your head.

“Ah, good, you understand me. Do you also speak, human?”

Again, you just nodded. You were sure you looked like an idiot, with your eyes so wide you could feel them drying out and your mouth hanging open slightly. You definitely looked like the kind of stupid person who would die from a totally preventable accident.

Like a not-shooting-star crashing into you on an open hiking trail… at night… alone.

Or being murdered by a hot, albeit creepy, woman who came out of an alien spaceship on said hiking trail alone at night.

Her head tilted curiously as she observed you. You claimed to speak but continued to use no words. “Odd human.” She spoke. “Still, I require your assistance. My craft was hit by several asteroids in your planetary systems’ belt and thus fell into the gravitational pull of your homeworld. As such, it is your responsibility to host me until I can fix my vehicle.”

“Me?” You whispered.

She nodded, a smile upturning her purple lips ever so slightly. “Yes. You are the only one around, are you not?”

You shook your head rapidly, “Yes, but I mean… Shouldn’t you be asking me to take you to my leader or something?” “I have no use for your planet’s leader. I simply require shelter.” The smile dropped from her lips. You had to stop staring at her lips. Even if they were pretty and purple and kissable. “You will help me, human.”

Slowly, you nodded once more, the threat in her tone was subtle but clear. She moved closer, holding out a hand to help you stand.

“You may address me as Ryujin. How may I address you? Or is human sufficient?”

“Oh um… You can call me Y/N.”

🎃

'It wasn’t hard to get to know you. You seemed so up front about where you came from, your life and interests, and even your feelings for me…'

Ryujin was, surprisingly, easy to talk to… once you did some serious compartmentalizing and deluding about a spaceship nearly brutally beheading you and a beautiful alien somewhat forcing you to let her sleep on your sofa bed.

Either way, she looked human enough… if you ignored the permanently purple lips and faraway, yet calculative, gaze she constantly held.

She answered all of your questions and was actually rather excitable and cute when you would ask her about her home and interests. She loved telling you about her pets back home, Byul and Dal, in particular.

“You know…” Ryujin hummed, “I think I like you, Y/N.”

You choked on your food, and she sat back in her seat, observing you—as she often did—while you continued to cough and sputter. 

Ryujin had only lived with you for roughly two or three weeks at that point. The repairs on her aircraft had been slow, as she had casually explained that it was hard to get the right kind of materials for such advanced technology. You weren’t sure how her ship worked so you couldn’t exactly refute her claims.

She had also made the point that this wasn’t her planet and being so unfamiliar with the area made her vulnerable to go anywhere alone. Because of this, she insisted that you needed to go with her whenever she left your apartment. That also made progress slow since you had to work during the days and had even begun picking up a few more hours to help cover the cost of feeding an extra mouth. She didn’t love that you weren’t around for the majority of the weekdays, but she said she understood.

When you were free, you would spend the day showing Ryujin around the city. You explained about different types of businesses and shops, trying to help her in any way you could think to find somewhere that would have the parts she needed… or at least something that could substitute.

It was lucky for you that none of your friends had reached out the past few weeks either. It was odd… since you usually met up at least once a week for coffee or a meal or even drinks… but it was lucky. Really, how would you explain Ryujin’s sudden appearance in your life, and her confusion over particularly mundane things? No, it was definitely simpler that it was just the two of you trying to navigate this situation.

🎃

'You made it easy to fall for you. I don’t want to say no one had ever shown me interest before, but no one showed it quite like you did…'

“Tell me you feel the same.” Ryujin whispered. The back of her hand stroked your cheek, and your eyes fluttered closed.

A smile lifted the corners of your lips, “Yes, I’m falling for you too…”

Her lips broke into a smile, wide and striking white against purple. “I knew you would.”

Ryujin had confessed to you about three months into her stay on Earth, and though it was fast, you couldn’t help but feel the same.

Something about her was so captivating and magnetic.

She pulled you in, and you didn’t want to be let go. She was comforting and warm to you, even if she looked so coldly at others. She listened and let you lean on her. She was like a life raft when you felt like you were drowning in anxieties.

Ryujin just made life easier. She made it better…

When you came home from work one evening and sobbed because of how your boss had berated you and how you felt like he might be right, she was right there with a shoulder to cry on and a comforting hand rubbing your back. Her sweet words, whispered in your ear, were about all your positive qualities.

And if you didn’t notice how your boss flinched whenever you looked in his direction the next day, it was for the best.

When the two of you went out for lunch one weekend and a clumsy waiter accidently spilled the table over’s meal on your new white dress, she was quick to pass her blazer to you so that you could clean and cover up the transparent fabric.

And if you didn’t see how Ryujin dumped her own food onto the waiter when you rushed off to the restroom while he was attempting to clean the floor, it was for the best.

When you worked late one night and just as you reached your walk-up apartment door someone tried to rob you, she was there in the blink of an eye, knocking the absolute shit out of the guy and pouncing on him. She had straddled him, fists raining down on his face, and it took all your strength to pull her off of him, scolding her that assaulting someone is something you can’t just do on Earth and that it could’ve been greatly unsafe for her.

And if you didn’t see her bright smile when the robber’s nose cracked and he staggered to stand with blood being coughed up, it was for the best.

When your ex sent you a long text, begging for a second chance and explaining what had gone wrong before and how much he missed you, you ranted to Ryujin about how he was just a little too late. You expressed your confusion to her because you hadn’t really ended on bad terms, but you didn’t really feel that way for him anymore, even if you still had some of your favorite memories with him. She listened patiently, reassuring you that it was okay to move on and turn him down.

And if you didn’t think too hard about it how a few days later when you tried to call him back and received a message that the number was no longer in service, it was for the best.

Everything was just easier with Ryujin around. She made it… the best.

🎃

'But, unfortunately, I found that our… interests… didn’t always line up. Of course, couples can have their differences, but our differences are too much for me to handle…'

“I swear, they need to do something about the smell.” Your neighbor complained, while you two loitered near the mailboxes.

You hummed in agreement. Over the past couple weeks, the main floor had started to smell… Like really smell. You had to sympathize with your neighbor. Since she lived on the first floor, the smell would’ve been stronger for her. You considered yourself lucky that on the third floor the stench only reached you occasionally through the air ducts.

Your neighbor continued, “It has to be coming from the basement.” She shook her head and added conspiratorially, “Smells like something died. And I swear to you, I saw a maggot crawling out of my floor vents.”

You paused at her conviction that something sinister was hiding in the basement. Glancing in the direction of the downstairs door, you hesitated while your neighbor headed back into her own apartment.

What she said didn’t sit right. Something in your brain worried you. Could it just be your general anxiety? It wouldn’t hurt to check right?

You headed down the stairs.

Fuck. You shouldn’t have gone downstairs. You should’ve minded your business. Your neighbor should’ve kept her mouth shut.

There were bodies.

So. many. bodies.

The first one you noticed was your ex… His number had been disconnected. After you had talked to Ryujin. Fuck…

Then you saw that guy who tried to rob you, with a still broken nose and missing tooth, and… was that the waiter who spilled food on you? Fuck, fuck…

Your boss was there too. You thought he had been on a vacation that week… Fuck, fuck, FUCK.

There were others too. Just bodies. Corpses.

Some fresher than others. Maggots and swarms of flies and… bodies.

You almost vomited.

If you hadn’t felt paralyzed, you probably would’ve.

You couldn’t scream.

You needed to get out of there.

You needed to… get away.

🎃

'I’m sorry, Ryujin. I had fun with you. I liked you… I really did. But, I think it’s for the best if we end whatever it was that we had. You need to go back to your home anyway, right? We should leave things on a good note and go our separate ways now.'

-Y/N

She was dangerous.

Of course she was, she was a fucking alien.

She had literally crashed onto your planet and told you that you were going to shelter her, and you had deluded yourself that you would be safe because what… she was pretty?

You believed she was sweet and innocent because she talked about her family and friends and pets back home so lovingly.

But you didn’t really know anything.

She had been killing people.

And you couldn’t even be sure of why.

Was she fully carnivorous? Did she eat humans?

No… There was no obvious sign that she had been… consuming them? So what?

You thought hard.

So many of them were a part of your life somehow. Had she done that… for you?

You couldn’t do this. You couldn’t be around her.

You were afraid.

If you tried to just end things… Would she kill you too?

Write a letter.

Yeah, that felt safe, you’d write a letter and leave it for her when you went to work. You wouldn’t come back. You’d leave right after, head somewhere else. Somewhere safe.

You’d be okay…

Except you weren’t.

You’d left the letter; she’d been asleep on the sofa bed still.

She looked so peaceful. So innocent.

You’d left the letter on the side table; you’d taken a bag with you.

She found you as you left work.

You’d never told her where you worked. You’d never showed her the building or what floor your office was on.

She was standing in the door to the office.

Everyone else had left.

You were alone.

You were afraid.

“I apologize, Y/N. However, I cannot let you leave me.” A slow smile split Ryujin’s lips as she peered at you. Before, you had loved that smile; now, you were so, so afraid.

Your eyes trailed from her sadistic smile to the letter in her hands. Your letter.

Fuck.

You were supposed to be long gone.

“I just love you too much to ever let you go.”

[lucagray813]

Scars

Rating: Gen

Word Count: 1,002

Main Characters: Tang

Minor Characters: Pigsy, Sandy, Mei & MK

Relationships: Very subtle hints of Tang/Pigsy

Summary: Saving the world leaves its mark and it gives Tang plenty to reflect upon.

Additional Tags: No dialogue, Character Study

CW: None

Link to AO3 Version

----

Up until very recently, scars had never been a prominent feature on his body.

And the few he'd had were all from pretty minor incidents - falling off his bike as a kid, being bitten by his grandmother's cat, tripping over and hitting his head off the corner of a cabinet.

All very normal.

Most of his scars hadn't invoked any sort of feeling from him - at most he maybe felt a little embarrassed about how he'd gotten some of them but none of them were big or noticeable enough to make him feel self conscious.

When MK had first discovered the staff and had been working on controlling his new powers, it had resulted in a sharp increase in accidental injuries for Tang - a bump or bruise from a careless swing of a staff, a scratch or cut from being too close to a fight, or even a bite or peck from a panicked, transformed MK.

But most of these injuries healed with little issue, only every once in a while leaving a small, permanent mark. Honestly, he had been less concerned with the scars and more concerned with the fact that getting injured regularly was apparently just a part of his life now.

He'd amassed a couple more serious injuries and resulting scars from their time running from and then facing off against the Lady Bone Demon - aircraft crashes, fights with powerful demons and daring deeds tended to leave a mark.

These made him feel somewhat grateful his normal style of clothing only really left his face and hands uncovered as it was far too easy to get sucked into terrifying memories if he happened to look at a scar while he was in an odd mood.

Being able to summon a defensive bubble around him went a long way to reduce injuries and scars. It wasn't foolproof - he could still get caught off guard and admittedly his reflexes could do with some work - but he was still incredibly grateful to have it at his disposal.

In the aftermath of Azure's destruction and the discovery of MK's monkey form, Tang found himself tracing along a scar on his bicep - received courtesy of an impromptu crash into the ocean to escape Macaque - and thinking about how few scars his friends seemed to have.

And the glaring conclusion he'd drawn was that he was the only human amongst them.

Demons and dragons scarred but it took a hell of a lot more to injure them in the first place and then either wounds just healed better or scars stood out less.

He remembered Mei once squinting at Sandy before rudely pointing to his side and asking about the near invisible mark there and before he could answer she'd started to point out hundreds of other small marks that were so easy to miss if you weren't looking.

Pigsy had looked murderous at her behaviour but Sandy had just awkwardly explained they were scars but that even big injuries healed to nearly nothing for him.

He'd been patient in teaching them about how healing differed from demon to demon - so many factors could be involved in whether a scar was left and how it looked if it was. Obviously, the type of demon played a big part but interestingly, some demon's feelings about the wound could affect how it healed.

So a big wound that had perhaps been obtained in a fight to save the world could, theoretically, heal better than a small cut that you'd gotten through an accident depending on how traumatising or upsetting you personally found it to be.

He'd also explained that stress and overall physical, mental or magic health could influence healing as well but he'd argued that was the same for humans, albeit to a lesser extent.

Pigsy had looked uncomfortable through it all and it made Tang intensely curious what category of healing Pigsy fell into. He certainly had a large smattering of cooking related scars on his hands and arms but from what he knew of his life before Pigsy's Noodles, it wasn't unreasonable to think that stress and poor health had helped make those marks permanent.

Although despite the clear stress of his son being a hero, Pigsy seemed to have picked up very few scars from their most recent adventures and it definitely wasn't because he hadn't gotten injured - he'd been quick to put himself between Tang and any danger after all - so it was hard to say for certain if that was a factor for his scars.

Curiously, Mei herself didn't appear to have many visible scars but her dragon avatar did and he had no idea what that meant. He really hoped it wasn't some sort of manifestation of emotional or mental scars but Mei very rarely appeared affected by anything - the most she revealed was concern for MK or righteous fury.

Something perhaps he should find a way to subtly ask her parents about...

And then of course there was MK - who got injured on a daily basis and never had a scar to show for it. Even before the staff, he'd never had an issue with scars as far as he knew but given the mystery of what MK actually was that wasn't too surprising in hindsight.

All this to say, his own scars made him feel human and not in a good way.

His scars reminded him how close he had come to the end and it scared him into putting his all into mastering his new powers because dying was not on the agenda.

His mother had taken him to a fortune teller as a child who had predicted he would live to be ninety-two years old and he had taken that to heart - he was not letting some maniac hell bent on destroying the world cut his promised time short!

But still the scars on his skin reminded him that some things were out of his control.

--End--

LMK Fanfic Masterlist

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.27 (after 1970)

1974 – 109 people are killed in a plane crash near Pulkovo Airport. 1976 – Thirty-seven people are killed when American Airlines Flight 625 crashes at Cyril E. King Airport in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. 1978 – John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, is released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, Arizona, after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes. 1978 – The Saur Revolution begins in Afghanistan, ending the following morning with the murder of Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. 1978 – Willow Island disaster: In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia. 1986 – The city of Pripyat and surrounding areas are evacuated due to Chernobyl disaster. 1987 – The U.S. Department of Justice bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (and his wife, Elisabeth, who had also been a Nazi) from entering the US, charging that he had aided in the deportations and executions of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II. 1989 – The April 27 demonstrations, student-led protests responding to the April 26 Editorial, during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. 1992 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, is proclaimed. 1992 – Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history. 1992 – The Russian Federation and 12 other former Soviet republics become members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 1993 – Most of the Zambia national football team lose their lives in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Senegal. 1994 – South African general election: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote. The Interim Constitution comes into force. 2005 – Airbus A380 aircraft has its maiden test flight. 2006 – Construction begins on the Freedom Tower (later renamed One World Trade Center) in New York City. 2007 – Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia. 2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem. 2011 – The 2011 Super Outbreak devastates parts of the Southeastern United States, especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Two hundred five tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more. 2012 – At least four explosions hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk with at least 27 people injured. 2018 – The Panmunjom Declaration is signed between North and South Korea, officially declaring their intentions to end the Korean conflict.

[bucketsofgiggles]

Wait tell me something about commercial aviation safety that sounds cool.

okay so like, the engines being Important is an obvious statement right? because not only do they make the Plane Go but they're also the plane's electrical power plant. it's why you've got cabin lighting and A/C and flight attendants can make you food of various quality, and also, ya know, let the pilots have instrumentation. and modern aircraft can fly safely on only one engine! granted, your pilot will be landing that thing at the closest suitable airport ASAP, but it'll all in all be a fairly standard landing, probably just earlier and likely at a different place than you were planning.

but what if you lose both? like US Airways Flight 1549? i mean, beyond the fact you're now in a Giant Glider, the pilots are now flying said Giant Glider without all but the most basic, analogue instruments, right?

nope! (unless your pilots panic/are busy trying to keep the plane in control/incapacitated, to which then you have Bigger Problems, Sorry). there's the Ram Air Turbine, which will deploy automatically and use the air blowing past it to make electricity, though it'll be prioritized for cockpit instruments only. there's also the Auxiliary Power Unit or APU which has to be deployed by the pilots, but gives them even more power than the Ram Air Turbine because, if you've flown, i guarantee you've been on a plane that's used it, because that's the plane's power source on the ground when the engines are off, such as when at the gate.

if Flight 1549 sounds a bit familiar, that's because it's better known as the Miracle on the Hudson, AKA the A320 that landed on the Hudson River in NYC in 2009 after losing both engines to bird strikes at low altitude. and among the many brilliant things Captain Chelsea "Sully" Sullenberger did in that accident was almost immediately start the APU, which gave him and First Officer Jeff Skiles way more instrumentation a lot faster. in fact the emergency checklist made after Flight 1549 (because checklists for dual engine failure before it assumed you were at higher altitude, and thus assumed you had much more time to troubleshoot/try and re-start the engines) is pretty much just everything Sully and Skiles did based on pure instinct during that emergency, with starting the APU one of the first instructions. it's colloquially called the Sully Checklist for that reason.

anyway here are some more links to Wikipedia articles about really interesting air accidents (FYI none of these have fatalities so don't worry if you're sensitive to that sort of thing!):

TACA Flight 110: Proto-Flight 1549 effectively, a 737 loses both engines during final approach into New Orleans after hail ingestion into the engines. Captain Carlos Dardano (who is worth a look up on his own, this dude is a badass) safely brought the airliner to a stop on a levee.

British Airways Flight 5390: First Officer Alastair Atchison lands a BAC One-Eleven alone after Captain Tim Lancaster is partially ejected from the aircraft after the cockpit windscreen on his side is blown out due to improper maintenance. to an airport F/O Atchison is unfamiliar with. while also overflying London, some of the busiest airspace in the world.

Air Canada Flight 143 AKA The Gimli Glider: another loss of engine power, this time due to incorrect fuel loading due to Canada's then-recent switch from Imperial to Metric. pilots landed the plane safely at a closed down airfield that had been converted to a drag racing course. one of the most famous airplane crashes.

Federal Express Flight 705: (TW: attempted murder-suicide) okay this is technically a cargo flight, but it's one of the most badass displays of flying ever. a disgruntled Federal Express employee attempts to hijack the flight and crash it for life insurance payout and also revenge (he was targeting Federal Express' hub). despite inflicting all three pilots (this is old enough that this plane still had a flight engineer) with severe head wounds, they all fought off the attacker and landed safely, while also flying a fully-loaded DC-10 frighter like a fucking fighter jet to throw the attacker off-balance.

i also recommend the Mentour Pilot YouTube channel. it's run by an active 737 pilot who's also trains new pilots, so there's tons of good insider knowledge and he breaks down complicated aviation concepts into plain language very well. his videos are very well done and i always learn something new, even with accidents and incidents i've read extensively about.

[squadron-goals]

An unfortunate day for Berthold

22 May 1916

Since my engine had blown apart at one point during an air battle on 25 April, forcing me to make an emergency landing, I was to be given a 160-PS Pfalz. The aircraft, about whose type much was said, I was to try out thoroughly once. Unfortunately, the whole thing was just a deteriorated French knock-off. I take off, lift off from the ground and at the same moment the engine stops completely. I am at an altitude of about 100 metres. The bird sank down in a flash. I hear a splintering sound, feel a bump against my head, feel an insane pain and then nothing more ... The intense pain momentarily restores my senses: I unleash a fierce curse on those who, thinking I'm done for, not-so-gently yank me out of the mess. "He's ranting again, he's alive!", then a thunderous hurrah I hear, then it's night again. Once again I come to my senses and hear voices: "He might pull through, but he'll stay blind!" Then I scream, no, I roar with soulcrushing pain. I scream for the coup the grace ... Then night again!

25 May 1916

I wake up after long, long hours. I can see everything, even if not clearly. I'm lying in the hospital. A dull glow all around, everything so quiet. A woman with a glass of water in front of my bed. I only regained consciousness after 2 days. I can think clearly again and reflect on my situation: my crash was very serious. In 99 out of 100 cases, certain death! By throwing the little bird onto the left wing at the last moment, I at least mitigated the impact of the fall somewhat. The plane was completely destroyed. I suffered a complete fracture of my femur, upper jaw and nasal bone, as well as a fractured skull, a concussion and an injury to my optic nerves. The most terrible thing for me was the thought of having to lie here for weeks and months! In the next room lay the badly shot observer of the English plane that I had shot down a few weeks ago. He urgently asked to be allowed to see me, his conqueror. His request was fulfilled by opening the door to my hospital room when the Englishman came by outside... I'm struggling internally, especially since the start of the Somme offensive, where our airmen are missing. The nurse who looks after me, nurse Luise, tries to make everything easier for me and to help me get through difficult times. I will always remember her with gratitude. My dear comrades from the unit came as often as their duty allowed. With the Battle of the Somme, war as such ended. A miserable murder and slaughter begins. Hell begins! These incredible losses, these terrible injuries! The hospitals are all overcrowded. Doctors and nurses work day and night, their strength almost collapsing. Day and night they bring in the wounded, you hear the screams of the badly injured... I'm just now receiving the news that on April 29th my dear brother Wolfram, the theologian and Erlangen fraternity member, had a fatal accident near Lille during a gas combat exercise! I still can't believe it, it's a terrible blow to our family!

[nanzyn]

i talk about a plane crash so imma just put it under the cut. fair warning it’s one that disturbs even me, who reads about crashes all the time

The Price of an Hour: The crash of Alaska Airlines flight 261

that link goes to an article describing a deadly plane crash so only read it if you can handle that, and its a pretty sad one

but i can not stop thinking about it. the author puts it best:

An airliner cannot truly fly upside down — maintaining level flight in such a condition is essentially impossible, and the engines will quickly die — but if anyone ever came close, it was Captain Thompson and First Officer Tansky as they heroically tried to save their stricken aircraft, even after all hope was lost. 

for some reason, this paragraph always stuck with me. something about fighting to the very end, against impossible odds, to try and save the lives of the people whose safety you are in charge of, while knowing logically there’s nothing you can do at this point, is so... terrifying. and heartbreaking.

and then there’s the last paragraph of the article where they talk about how the airline essentially got away with the murder of 88 people

In some accidents, relatives of those who died can take some small comfort in the possibility that their loved ones never knew what hit them. This was not one of those cases. The last minutes of those on board the doomed MD-83 would have been sheer hell, as the plane went inverted, corkscrewed, pirouetted, and spun like a top during its final dive. For the relatives of the victims, this fact made it all the more important that Alaska Airlines pay for its negligence. But in the end, Alaska all but got away with it. And while the airline did eventually settle the suits, it did so only after dragging the families through what many described as a “legal hell” in which Alaska’s lawyers tried to downplay the monetary value of their deceased loved ones. It’s an outcome that has left many of them bitter to this day. As Fred Miller, father of crash victim Abby Miller-Busche, put it in a 2003 interview, “It seems like such an unholy type of loss. What a hard way to die: so an airline can make more money.” 

everything about flight 261 haunts me in a way no other crash i’ve read about has. i dont know. not even helios flight 522 hit me this hard (warning, also pretty disturbing, even for a plane crash). the author who writes these articles is very good at making these more than just a technical breakdown of what happened. I think that’s why theyre so addicting to me.

anyways, i just needed to talk about alaska airlines flight 261. i try not to talk about these kinds of crashes to my friends irl cause quite honestly its terrifying, even to me. and its a reminder that capitalism is not your friend and these companies have insurance policies that cover lawsuits from families of victims so when crashes do occur due to, say, negligence on their behalf, they don’t take a real hit.

something something the system is broken

[warningsine]

Exactly two months after his failed coup, Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is believed to have died on Wednesday after his private jet crashed in flames on an internal flight within Russia.

Speculation is rife that Russian President Vladimir Putin — who is notoriously unforgiving of traitors and accused Prigozhin of “treason” in June — ordered the downing of the aircraft. It comes only a day after Russian media announced the firing of Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, who has not been seen in public since the aborted Wagner coup.

A former loyalist who was dubbed “Putin’s chef” for his role as a catering executive supplying the Kremlin, Prigozhin became embittered toward the Russian government’s handling of the war. In late June, his uprising commanded 24-hour global coverage after he seized the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and ordered a column of troops toward Moscow.

Putin himself appeared cheery on Wednesday evening after Russian media suggested Prigozhin was dead, opening remarks at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk in World War II with a broad smile. “Devotion to the homeland and loyalty to the military oath is what unites all participants of the special military operation,” he said in his speech, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Since the coup, Putin and Prigozhin appeared to have reached an uneasy truce until the crash. On Wednesday, Russia’s investigative committee said it had opened a criminal probe into the loss of a business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg that crashed in the Tver region, with the loss of 10 people on board.

Russia’s aviation regulator, Rosaviatsii, also issued a statement confirming an investigation. “According to the list of passengers, the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin is among them,” the agency said.

Wagner Orchestra, a Telegram channel, posted a photo of what appeared to be the burning wreckage of a plane, saying the Embraer Legacy 600 had been shot down by Russian air defenses.

The well-connected Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU reported that Dmitry Utkin, a central Wagner figure and its alleged founder, was also among the plane’s passengers. “Wagner has been decapitated,” the channel commented.

Former tycoon turned political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote he had no sympathy for Prigozhin, but denounced what he described as “yet another extrajudicial killing.”

Hit job

Pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov tried to flip the blame onto Ukraine.

“Prigozhin is dead. No one believes that this is an accident,” he said on his Telegram channel. In a separate post, hinting at how Kremlin spin doctors might frame the plane crash in the hours and days to come, Markov said the “murder of Prigozhin and Utkin … is probably a terrorist attack by Ukraine ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day.” 

“All enemies of Russia are already rejoicing. The murder of Prigozhin is Ukraine’s main achievement this year,” Markov wrote. 

Journalist Christo Grozev from the online investigative project Bellingcat dismissed speculation Ukraine could be behind the crash. 

“If Ukraine had had the capacity to do something like this, it would have done it at a time when Prigozhin was one of its main enemies, when he stood at the head of one of the most efficient branches of Russia’s military,” Grozev told the Popular Politics YouTube channel run by allies of Alexei Navalny. 

Instead, he said, he thought it more likely Prigozhin might have staged his own death. 

“It fits his style,” Grozev said, pointing out Prigozhin had several doubles. 

But he added the most credible scenario is that it concerns a “hit job personally ordered by Putin for humiliating him.” 

Russia’s ‘open-windows’ policy

U.S. officials have been expecting Prigozhin’s demise given Putin’s history of dispensing with opponents. It has even been the source of some gallows humor. In July, at the Aspen Security Forum, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an open-door policy; Russia has an open-windows policy.”

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said: “We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”

Senate Intel Chair Mark Warner said: “No one should mourn Prigozhin’s death, but this report, if confirmed, is another reminder of the brutality of the Putin regime, and why we must continue our support for Ukraine in its fight for freedom.”

“If the news are confirmed, I would say it was always difficult to grasp Prigozhin could have believed he could survive after the June coup,” said a senior diplomat from Central Europe, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now, we do not know details, but this looks like most likely an obvious message from the regime, that anybody who challenges it, has to be eliminated.”

“What will be the consequences to the Wagner Group is to be seen, but most likely, under this brand or another, it will remain an instrument of the Kremlin.”

A second senior diplomat from Central Europe said: “I guess Prighozin was somewhat ‘in the air’ since the botched coup attempt, his chances for survival were minuscule. After the literal plane crash Putin is stronger in Moscow, Prighozin ‘deader’ north of Moscow.”

A diplomat from Western Europe, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “I guess most of us shared the view that up to this point he was a dead man walking. Unlikely we’ll get the true cause of this crash. But we may add this to the list of unexplained deaths among those who somehow undermine Putin’s authority.” 

Anniversary of uprising

The plane crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin, 62, launched his uprising. He led his mercenaries in an overnight raid, capturing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don before breakfast time without a shot being fired.

Another detachment of Wagner men rolled northwards, coming to within 200km of Moscow by late afternoon — before Prigozhin abruptly ordered his men back to base.

The rebel warlord invoked the wrath of Putin, who on the morning of the uprising took to the national airwaves to denounce it as a stab in the back. And, although a compromise deal was brokered by Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus to allow Prigozhin’s men to relocate to that country, the Wagner chief already appeared a marked man.

He disappeared for a time before appearing in a grainy night-time video addressing his men at a new base in Belarus, popped up on the sidelines of an Africa summit hosted by Putin in Saint Petersburg, and, only this week, appeared in a video apparently shot in Africa saying his mercenaries were enjoying the 50-degree heat.

Prigozhin started out as a small-time crook in Saint Petersburg where he spent several years in prison for robbery, theft and fraud. On emerging from jail, he opened a hot dog stand with his mother and, as he built up a restaurant business, fell in with Putin, who at the time was deputy mayor of Russia’s northern capital.

Prigozhin’s Concord catering business went on to win a string of government contracts — including to supply rations to the military. Gaining standing in Putin’s clannish network of influence and patronage, Prigozhin established the Wagner mercenary group at the time of Russia’s partial occupation of Ukraine in 2014. He only publicly admitted to leading Wagner last September, however, months after Putin’s full-scale invasion.

Soon after, he established himself as one of the most high-profile leaders of Russia’s war on Ukraine — touring prisons to recruit convicts and throwing his men into a successful but bloody attack on Bakhmut that delivered the only major battlefield victory of Russia’s winter offensive in Eastern Ukraine.

“A caterer should know that revenge is a dish best served cold,” said a U.S. official familiar with Russia policy.

Infuriated by a lack of logistical backup, Prigozhin soon fell out with Russia’s high command and defense ministry. He took to posting profanity-laden video rants on Telegram, the social media network widely followed in Russia. 

In one, he stood before rows of dead Wagner men at night time, yelling “where’s the fucking ammunition?” at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff. Prigozhin’s rants left him looking dangerously isolated, as Putin stuck with his loyal, if incompetent, military leadership.

[emiliblack41207]

This is so horrible and sad. I believe the Sky Guide technician Peter Nielsen did the best he could on his own with malfunctioning equipment. There was no intentional negligence and certainly no malice, it was just a dreadful accident. 71 people were killed. He never attempted to return to work as an ATC. The former air traffic controller was ultimately stabbed to death by a widowed husband and father who lost his wife and both of his children in the crash. The killer has been institutionalized while they evaluate him to determine if he’s fit to stand trial for the murder of Mr. Nielsen.

[dark-and-twisty-01]

Aircraft Crashes: accidents or murder?

The past nine decades, various fatal air crashes have spawned conspiracy theories that linger as haunting historical mysteries. Five cases produced official verdicts of criminal activity, but no suspects were ever indicted. The remainder are listed as accidents, but nagging doubts remain. These cases include:

July 4, 1923 Actor-pilot Beverly “B.H” DeLay and passenger R.I short (president of the Essandee Corporation) died while performing aerial acrobatics at Venice Beach, California. Time Magazine reported that half-inch bolts in the wings of DeLay’s aircraft had been switched with smaller bolts, causing the wings to collapse during flight. Gunshots of unknown origin had also been fired at DeLay days earlier, during a performance in Santa Monica. Journalists linked the crash to bitter litigation between DeLay and C.E Frey, a rival who claimed ownership of an airstrip purchased by DeLay in 1919. Several Frey employees were jailed for sabotaging that airfield, but no one was indicted for DeLay’s murder.

October 10, 1933 A United Airlines Boeing 247 aircraft travelling from Cleveland to Chicago crashed near Chesterton, Indiana, killing all seven persons aboard. Witnesses reported hearing a mid-air explosion at 9:15pm and watching the plane plummet into flames from 1,000 feet. Investigators from North-western University and Chicago FBI office concluded that a bomb had detonated in the plane’s baggage compartment, but no suspects were ever identified.

March 29, 1959 Barthelemy Boganda, first prime minister of the Central African Republic (C.A.R) and presumed to win election as president when France released control of his nation in 1960, died with all others aboard when his plane crashed 99 miles west of Bangui. No cause of the crash was officially determined, but suspicion of sabotage persists. On May 7, 1959, the Paris weekly L’Express reported discovery of explosive residue in the plane’s wreckage whereupon the French high commissioner banned sale of that issue in the C.A.R. In 1997 author Brian Titley suggested that Boganda’s wife, Michelle Jourdan, may have killed hi to avert divorce and collect a large insurance policy.

November 16, 1959 National Airlines Flight 967 vanished over the Gulf of Mexico with 42 persons aboard while en route from Tampa, Florida, to New Orleans. The final radar contact with Flight 967 was recorded at 12:46 am. Searchers found scattered wreckage with corpses near that point, but most of the aircraft was never recovered. Suspicion focused on passenger William Taylor, who boarded the plane with a ticket issued to ex-convict Robert Vernon Spears. Authorities surmised that Spears had tricked Taylor, a friend from prison, into boarding the plane with a bomb, thus permitting Spears to collect on a life insurance policy purchased in his name. Police later arrested Spears in Phoenix, driving a car registered to Taylor, but he subsequently vanished and was never charged with any crime pertaining to the crash.

September 18, 1961 Dag Hammarskjold, second secretary-general of the United Nations, died with 15 others when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), during a diplomatic tour of the strife-torn Congo. Security was tight during the tour, including use of a decoy aircraft, and Hammarskjold’s pilot filed no flight plans on the trip. Officially, the crash resulted from a pilot’s error in approaching Ndola’s airfield at the wrong altitude after nightfall. Many observers suspected a bomb or rocket attack. In August 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, announced that recently uncovered letters implicated South African intelligence officers, Britain’s MI5, and the American CIA in Hammarskjold’s death. One letter claimed that a bomb in the plane’s wheel bay was set to explode on landing. In July 2005, Norwegian major general Bjorn Egge told the newspaper Aftenposten that an apparent bullet hole in Hammarskjold’s forehead was air brushed out of photos later published showing his corpse.

October 16, 1972 House majority leader Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., was campaigning for Representative Nick Begich when their airplane vanished during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska. Also aboard were pilot Don Jonz and Begich aide Russell Brown. The plane was never found. Begich won November’s election with a 56-percent margin, but his presumed death left GOP rival Don Young running unopposed in a special election to fill Begich’s vacant seat in Congress. Some conspiracy theorists link the disappearance to Bogg’s outspoken criticism of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (who died in May 1972), but Begich’s children blamed President Richard Nixon, claiming that the crash was staged in a vain attempt to thwart congressional investigation of the unfolding Watergate scandal.

August 1, 1981 Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera, “Supreme Chief of Government” for Panama since 1968, died with several others when his plane exploded in mid air during a storm. Slipshod radio coverage delayed the report of his plane’s disappearance for nearly a day, and several more days elapsed before soldiers found the wreckage. Florencio Flores succeeded Torrijos as commander of Panama’s National Guard and de facto ruler of the country.

October 19, 1986 Samora Moises Machel, president of Mozambique and leading critic of South Africa’s racist apartheid system, died with all board when his plane crashed near Mbuzini, in South Africa’s Lebombo Mountains. At the time, Machel was returning home from an international conference in Zambia. The Margo Commission, an investigate panel including representatives from several nations, blamed the crash on pilot error, a verdict flatly rejected by the governments of Mozambique and the Soviet Union Russian members of the commission filed a minority report claiming that Machel’s plane was lured off-course by a decoy radio beacon, set up by South African intelligence officers. Machel’s widow, Graca, remains convinced that was murdered. In 1998 she married then-South African president Nelson Mandela.

 August 17, 1989 General Muhammad Ziaul-Haq, ruler of Pakistan since he overthrew predecessor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, died with several other generals and U.S. ambassador Arnold Raphel when their plane crashed shortly after take off from Bahawalpur, Pakistan. Witnesses reported a smooth lift off, followed by erratic flying and a steep nosedive. FBI agents called the crash accidental, but persistent conspiracy theories blame a wide range of suspects, including the CIA, Russia’s KGB, Israel’s Mossad, India’s RAW Intelligence agency, Afghan communists, ad Shi’ite Muslim separatists.

April 6, 1994 Unknown snipers shot down a government aircraft at Rwanda’s Kigali airport, killing Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, and all others aboard. The resultant political chaos led to full-scale genocide in Rwanda, where ruling Hutu tribesmen slaughtered rival Tutsis, and sparked civil war in Burundi.

July 19, 1994 Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 exploded while en route from Colon, Panama, to Panama City, killing all 21 persons aboard. Authorities found evidence of a bomb, blaming the crime on terrorists. Suspicion focused on Jamal Lya, the only passenger who corpse remained unclaimed after the bombing. Soon afterward, an unknown spokesperson for a group calling itself Ansar Allah (“Followers of God”) claimed credit for the attack, but investigators could find no other trace of the organization.

July 17, 1996 Trans World Airlines flight 800 left New York’s JFK Airport, bound for Paris, at 10:19pm Twelve minutes later it exploded in mid-air, killing all 230 persons aboard and littering the ocean with wreckage offshore from East Moriches, New York. Despite initial speculation of a terrorist attack, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a final report in August 2000, blaming the explosion on a presumed electrical short circuit that ignited fumes in the aircraft’s centre wing fuel tank. Meanwhile, multiple eyewitnesses on land reported seeing “a streak of light” rising from sea level toward the airliner before it exploded. Initial examination of the wreckage revealed apparent residue from three different explosive compounds, PETN, RDX, and nitro-glycerine but authorities claimed to find no evidence of impact from a rocket or missile. Some conspiracy theorists maintain that Flight 800 was shot down by terrorists, while others suggest a disastrous mistake during an offshore U.S. Navy training exercise involving surface-to-air missiles. The case is officially closed.

October 25, 2002 Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone died with seven others, including his wife and three children, when his aircraft crashed near Eveleth, Minnesota. Wellstone was near the end of his campaign for a third Senate term, his death coming 11 days before the scheduled balloting. Initial reports blamed icing of the aircraft's wing, but that suggestion was later rejected. Federal investigators finally named pilot error as the “likely” cause of the crash, claiming that deceased First Officer Michael Guess was “below average” in proficiency. In fact, Guess had been fired from two previous flying jobs for incompetence. Jim Fetzer, a philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, published a book in 2004, blaming Wellstone’s death on unnamed members of President George W. Bush’s administration.

 July 30, 2005 Dr. John Garang De Mabior, vice president of Sudan and former head of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, died when his helicopter crashed in southern Sudan. Circumstances of the crash remain unclear, and Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni blamed “external factors” for the incident. Foreign observers note that Garang’s death helped bring an end to Sudan’s long-running civil war.

[retrievablememories]

a strange love | yuta (m)

title: a strange love pairing: alien!yuta x black!reader genre: sci-fi/fantasy, fluff, angst, smut request: “I read a good chunk of your NCT work and really liked them. Would I be able to request a fic where a black female reader meets an alien (can be Yuta or Jungwoo) and they're both coming to terms that they're attracted to each other and have to come to terms with being attracted to someone of a different species? Can be smutty and don't be afraid to give the alien a less human biology if you don't mind.” word count: 13.1k warnings: alcohol use, cursing, near drowning experience, lots of mentions of water so this one might not mesh well with people w/ aquaphobia, non-human biology/body horror, extraterrestrial sex, lots of cum, oral sex (female receiving), tentacle dick, unprotected sex, creampie, please heed the warnings because this is an alien smutfic lmao a/n: giving the shape of water teas. i’ve actually never seen that movie 😕 but i will at some point. forgive me in advance for the nerdy references in here.

It’s funny how things happen when you least expect it. You never would’ve thought you’d be sound asleep when your entire world changed.

The night the UFO crashes in your city, you’re awoken by the tremors of its landing. The vibrations feel akin to an earthquake, and they make picture frames and other trinkets fall off your shelves and hit the floor in a clatter of noise. You jump up from your pillow at the racket, your heart pounding. You glance at the things lying on your floor and quickly register that the room—your entire home—is trembling.

There’s not much you can do at this point but ride it out, so you huddle down in your covers and hope the roof doesn’t cave in on your head. To your knowledge, your particular area isn’t known for earthquakes, which makes all of this even stranger. What could be causing one now? Is the world finally ending?

Eventually, the tremors stop. By now, your shelves have been emptied of nearly all their contents, but you’re still alive, which you’re grateful for. You wait a few more minutes to see if the shakes will begin again, but they don’t, so you climb out from the warmth of your covers to clean up your floor.

Police and ambulance sirens start blaring through the city not long after you get out of bed. That’s nothing unusual; there are usually injuries and casualties with natural disasters like these, and you expect many poor souls will be needing rescue tonight. You sigh and look at your closed blinds, watching them be sporadically illuminated by the lights of the emergency vehicles rushing past.

Once you’ve cleaned up your room and gotten back in bed, you think about checking social media for what people have been saying about the quake. There’s no doubt that the city’s residents have taken to Twitter and Instagram to document it. However, your eyelids are already starting to droop, and you’d probably fall asleep in the middle of scrolling, so you decide to tuck in and wait until morning.

Waking up the next day almost seems like a normal Sunday until you look at your blinds again and are suddenly reminded of last night’s flashing lights. Right. The earthquake. Throwing the covers back, you stumble out of bed to turn on your TV. You flip through the channels until you find a news station for your local area. You go to open the blinds, keeping your ears open for reports on the earthquake.

“Last night, we experienced unprecedented seismic activity throughout the majority of the city, caused by what appears to be an unidentified flying object, otherwise known as a UFO—”

Huh?

You turn to the TV, thinking this must be some kind of ridiculous hoax. You get ready to reach for the remote, thinking you must have turned it to one of those parody news channels by accident, but you freeze at what you see. Video footage of the city center—or what used to be the city center—plays on the screen. In place of the large historical monument that used to stand there, there’s a huge...silver and black spaceship. Or at least you think it’s a ship. It apparently sustained major damage in the landing, and now it looks more like a hunk of melted metal. The area around it has been blasted clear in every direction. Instead of green grass and pavement, there’s nothing but dirt.

The area is blocked off with yellow tape, though hundreds of people have gathered at the location to check out the object and take pictures and videos of it.

“What the fuck…” you whisper to yourself.

“We’re currently unsure where this UFO originated from, though we can confirm that it is not affiliated with any aircraft fleets owned by the U.S. military. Researchers and scientists from top universities across the country are being called in to assist in identifying this craft…”

“There’s no just way,” you mutter, grabbing your shower cap and pulling clothes out of your closet for your morning shower. “A UFO...guess that alien invasion is coming sooner than we thought.” You would like to believe it’s all just someone playing a terrible prank, but pulling off this level of theatrics is impossible.

After you get out of the shower and start making breakfast for yourself, you get a text from one of your coworkers, Alex.

10:30 A.M. Alex🍸 You seeing this shit on the news right now?

10:31 A.M. Obviously! It’s fucking wild. Do you really think it’s true? OR some elaborate government hoax? Anything’s possible. I’m betting “true,” but...

10:33 A.M. Alex🍸 I honestly don’t know. that’s why me and some of the others from work are about to head over there now. Wanna come?

10:34 A.M. The hell! I’ll pass. There could be all types of radiation n shit, I’m not tryna turn into the Green Lantern or the Hulk or somebody.

10:35 A.M. Alex🍸 lmFAO. Suit ypurself. If I gain superpowers don’t be surprised if I fly over to your house today.

10:35 A.M. You’re a mess. 💀

You spend breakfast watching more news reports and scrolling through Twitter feeds for firsthand information. People who visited the site, including your coworkers, have uploaded pictures of the UFO from various angles, inciting a frenzy of conspiracy theories and warnings that the world is about to end.

You don’t know what to make of the situation, but it stays on your mind throughout the day as you leave the house and go about completing your usual errands. The city center has been blocked off to all vehicles other than those belonging to people who’ve been called in to help, which means that traffic is sky-high everywhere else—even for a Sunday.

Sitting in a mishmash of cars, you roll down your window and sigh, looking out at the red traffic lights, and beyond that to the horizon. Things are about to get very weird for the next few weeks. Maybe months. You can only hope you’re prepared for it.

You don’t know why, but the air seems strange tonight.

It’s been 2 days since the UFO crashed. There haven’t been many more answers apart from what everyone already knows due to the ship’s destroyed state. The city has professionals out for that sort of thing, but they’re taking their sweet time analyzing the ship—though you can’t really blame them. Jumping straight into unknown alien tech seems like a death wish.

Your life has been pretty much the same as usual, though you know a few people at work who have been more directly affected by the events. One girl, Sooyoung, who lives in the neighborhood near the crash site claims the officials are thinking about having that entire area evacuate, though you don’t know why they’re beating around the bush about it if it’s true. Whatever radiation or chemicals they’re worried about has probably already leached into all the surrounding homes, and now you’re just waiting for someone to walk into your workplace with antlers or purple skin.

Admittedly, you’re morbidly curious about the case and what all of this could mean for Earth’s future, but you keep your fascination lowkey. You don’t need any of your coworkers thinking you’re the next alien-obsessed Mulder from X-Files. But then again, you’re not curious enough to visit the actual scene, so maybe you’re not the crazy one here.

You feel fine when you get home from work that day, but as you get washed up and settle into your usual evening routine, you can’t shake the eeriness gripping your subconscious. It’s not necessarily a bad feeling, either, just...foreign. Like an emotion you’ve never felt before, though you didn’t know there were even still new emotions to discover. Shaking your head, you figure maybe you should lay off the alien stuff for the rest of the week.

Before you head to bed that night, you go around the house making sure all the doors and windows are locked as you normally do. You pause at the backdoor for a reason you can’t explain, and the strange feeling grows stronger. At this point, you’re a bit frightened about what this is all about, but you can’t go to sleep without knowing. Curiosity takes over as you open the blinds and stare into the darkness of your backyard.

You don’t see anything right away. There are trees, bushes, your potted plants, and lawn chairs...everything looks normal. It’s only when you lean closer to the glass to squint that you see a figure lying in the grass. You jump once you catch sight of it, terrified that some monster or murderer has found their way onto your property. There was nothing there earlier when you closed the blinds, so whoever or whatever it is must’ve recently showed up.

You’re about ready to dial 911 when you realize the figure is curled in the fetal position and unmoving...almost like they’re unconscious. Or dead.

This is ridiculous. You feel like one of those people who always dies first in the horror movies because they went into the room the killer was obviously hiding in, but you’re overcome with the strong impulse to step outside. You grip the doorknob tightly, debating whether you should unlock it or not.

“...Fuck. Don’t let me regret this.”

You open the door with your phone in hand, the device serving as your flashlight. There’s still the screen door to get through, which you pause at for a moment. The figure remains unmoving even with the sound of the door opening.

“Hello?!” You call out to the individual, but there’s no response. Your phone’s light can’t reach them from there, which forces you to open the screen door and step out onto the porch. They’re still feet away, but from this closer distance, it seems like they’re wearing a sort of armor or full-body suit...maybe like a cosplay?

“Hope this isn’t some weirdo weeb passed out on my lawn…” you mutter, cautiously stepping onto the grass. As you approach, you can see now that the figure is likely male, though their back is to you so you can’t be totally sure. “Um, hello there? Can you hear me?” No response.

By now, you are only a few feet away from them. The person looks to be an Asian guy, with long blonde hair haloing his face. His features are angular and smooth, and he is indeed wearing some kind of body armor, its color unlike anything you’ve seen. Instead of being all one hue or even a few, it reflects the light from your phone and glows with a rainbow-like phosphorescence. The material itself looks translucent, but you can’t see through it; it creates a mind-bending optical illusion.

Your stomach suddenly drops to your feet. Is this who was in that UFO in the city center? It seems too out-there to be true, but your intuition is telling you otherwise. This can’t be fucking real.

You kneel on the wet grass next to the man and try to look for signs of life. You can hear his breathing, so he’s thankfully not dead. But he doesn’t look to be in good shape, either. He definitely won’t be able to get up on his own; he probably used the last of his energy to drag himself into your yard.

“Damn.” You turn the flashlight off and slip your phone into your sweatpants pocket. It seems like there’s no other options right now. You could call the police, but they’d probably accuse you of being in cahoots with this weird dude and drag you off to jail. Or they could cart him off for government experimentation, which sounds equally terrible. So with those things in mind, you gently maneuver his upper body until you’re able to hook your arms under his armpits and drag him towards your house.

You just really hope none of your nosy neighbors are seeing this right now.

He’s surprisingly light, and you get him inside the house fairly quickly. Once you’ve locked the door again, you pull him over to the living room so he’s propped against your couch. He still isn’t fully conscious, but his head and lips move as if he’s dreaming about something.

“What was that…?” You lean closer, trying to read his lips for some sort of clue. Surprisingly, you can make out the word water, which he mouths over and over again. “Water…” You run into the kitchen to pour a glass and bring it back to him, making sure not to spill any on the way over.

You press it to his lips, unsure if he’ll be able to drink, but to your amazement his muscles respond and he drinks quickly as you tip the glass. Soon, the water is all gone. You set the glass to the side with your palms sweating and watch as his face flutters even more. 

“Can you...hear me?”

His eyes open only slightly. This movement seems to cause him some pain, though you aren’t sure why. Maybe he has a headache since he was dehydrated? You scramble to turn the overhead light off, not wanting to make matters worse. He still doesn’t try to open his eyes any wider, though.

“Who are you? Were you...did you crash here?” You feel a little bad about asking so many questions, but you’re dying for answers as to what the hell is going on.

The man licks his lips, and his mouth parts like he’s going to answer. But his throat is still dry, and it hurts to talk.

“...Shit.” You get him another glass of water and let him drink until it’s gone again. He seems a little better after that.

“Th-this...” He clears his throat a couple times and tries again. “This is E-Earth, right?”

Now you’re the one lost for words. Although you already figured he couldn’t be from here, hearing it out loud makes your blood rush and your heart race. “Um, yes...this is Earth. Was...the UFO yours?”

He sighs, and his head falls back against the couch arm. “Yes.”

“It’s destroyed,” you say, and then feel silly about it. “But you already know that.” 

He doesn’t answer that. He just slowly glances around your living room instead, looking as if he’s never seen a stranger setup. The quietness is awkward, and you almost feel like he must be judging your taste for interior design. “Do you have a name?”

More silence. You decide he probably won’t answer until he finally says, “You can call me Yuta.”

“Yuta.” You tell him your name too, and he just nods, almost imperceptibly. He doesn’t say much without prompting, which makes it hard for you to know how to approach the situation. You don’t want to overwhelm him with questions, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to speak unless you do. “How did you end up here? I mean, in my—uh, my yard?”

Yuta shakes his head and then winces. “I crashed, and then...I just ran. The ship was melting. I just ran. I hid...I went from place to place, hiding. Don’t know how I got here.”

You wonder how he made it all the way from the city center to your home without being spotted, especially with that armor. You can only conclude that he must be stealth at hiding. Or maybe someone did spot him and the feds are about to bust down your door any minute. You take a shaky breath and try to push that anxious thought to the back of your mind.

Suddenly Yuta fixes you with a suspicious glare. “Will you reveal that I’m here?”

You try not to get offended, because you’d honestly be thinking the same if you were a newly-landed alien in a foreign land. “No. I don’t have any reason to do that. I just want to help. I’m not looking to be on anyone’s 6 o’clock news or cheap tabloid. You probably don’t believe me, but you can have my word for it...if that means anything to you.”

He’s quiet again, though you can tell he’s still skeptical.

“Um, do you need anything? More water?”

He sits up straighter at the mention of that. “Water.” You reach for the glass again, but he frowns. “Not that. I need…something more than that.” He looks around again, but when he doesn't see what he’s searching for, he attempts to stand only to slump down again.

“Slow down there, I don’t think you’re gonna make it like that. Can I help?”

You end up slinging his arm across your shoulder and letting him lean his body against you while you lead him to the bathroom. That’s the biggest source of water in the house, and you assume he must be wanting a bath or shower or something. Even aliens have their hygiene needs, you guess.

You turn the bathroom light on and have Yuta sit on the toilet lid as you turn the bathtub faucet. “Is...this what you meant?” He nods, and you put the plug in and let the tub fill up.

“Just water. Nothing else. I need to recharge,” he says, and before you can ask what he means by that, he starts undressing in front of you. 

At first, your reaction is delayed; you’re struck with surprise when you realize the armor isn’t actually a whole bodysuit, but more like...connected panels of material that can be taken off. You don’t understand the material at all, it doesn’t resemble anything on Earth you can think of—but of course, it’s alien tech. It conforms to his body as he’s wearing it but takes on a more rigid form once it’s peeled off, like actual armor.

Then, he gets ready to take the bottoms off and something finally clicks in your brain that oh my God he’s about to get naked in front of me.

“Whoa!” You spin around and cover your eyes for good measure, glad that your brown skin hides the way your face is burning right now. You step towards the open door. “Uh, I’ll just leave, sorry—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Um, what?”

“Doesn’t really matter to me,” Yuta says, pulling the last of his suit off. He steps into the tub and sits down in it, putting his hands underneath the stream of water rushing out of the faucet. The skin on his hands seems to ripple, like it’s readjusting itself, and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck at that. You forget to be embarrassed at his unclothed state as you watch it happen.

“What’s going on with that? And why did you need the water?”

Yuta splashes his face before answering, and he turns to look at you, the droplets of water sliding off the ends of his hair. “I’m part of a Water Race. Water is my home. Our bodies have adapted to be built for living in water, and it’s dangerous to be without it for too long.”

“Adaptation? But you look like a regular human.”

“It’s just a skin.”

“A skin?” You echo in horror, a sudden flashback to Silence of the Lambs popping into your mind. “Someone else’s skin?” 

Yuta gives you a look that seems to say he can’t believe you’re asking such a stupid question. “No, it’s my skin. It’s just not my natural form.” To prove his point, he holds his hand out, and right before your eyes his human skin pulls back and morphs into something much more scaly and green. His fingers are actually more like talons, with long black nails on the ends, and there’s translucent webbing between each one.

You gasp and step back, trying to catch your breath at the sight of something so very not human. The skin reforms around his hand—you assume he has to be willing it with his mind somehow, because he doesn’t even move—and his digits look just as human as ever.

“How the hell do you hide your nails under there? Isn’t it just like...wearing a bodysuit?”

Yuta shakes his head. “No. Once the skin is on, it becomes...part of me. My hand becomes a human hand. I’m not hiding anything, it just is. It’s hard to explain.”

“Have you been to Earth before? Is that why you have a human skin, because...adaptation or some shit? This is all so wild.”

“I can shift into different skins if I want, if I gather enough genetic information on certain species’ inhabitants...but there are limitations.” That doesn’t exactly answer your question, but you figure maybe it’s best if you didn’t know. You can at least assume he’s been in contact with humans before.

“I see…” You fidget for a few seconds before speaking what’s on your mind. “Okay, one last thing...you said there are limitations. Does that mean you can’t transform into, like...a dung beetle or something?”

Yuta gives you another are you serious look and you put your hands up. “Just wondering. It was worth a try.”

You feel awkward just standing there, and you feel like maybe you should give him some privacy even if he doesn’t care much, so you leave the bathroom to find something for him to wear.

You’re not sure if you’ll find anything that fits him, so you end up settling on a light pink bathrobe and decide he’ll have to work with that for now. You slip back into the bathroom to leave it on the sink, averting your eyes from his nude form in your bathtub. “Um, here’s something to wear...not sure if anything else will fit, this is all I have for now. Sorry.” You don’t wait for him to respond— he probably won’t anyway—before slipping back out.

It’s nearing 1 A.M. at this point, which is late considering you still have work tomorrow. You sigh and curl yourself up on the couch, hoping you won’t have to stay up for very much longer.

You’re not sure when you drifted off or how long you were out, but you wake up to the sound of footsteps and see Yuta coming out of the bathroom wearing the robe you’ve given him. You have to laugh a little at the sight of him in the light pink material, though you think it suits him in a way.

“Yeah, you’re gonna need some clothes.”

Yuta raises his eyebrow. “I still have my suit.”

“Yeah, but...don’t you want something else to wear? Your ship is pretty much gone, so you’ll probably be on Earth for a while...and if you don’t want anyone realizing you’re not from here, you’ll have to wear regular clothes.”

Yuta visibly upsets at the idea of his ship’s destroyed state, even though he knows there’s not much he can do about it. “I guess. I shared which planet I was heading to before I left, but...Earth is a very big place. And my trackers were destroyed with my ship, so…”

“I’m sorry,” you say, though you don’t know how much comfort that can be. “We can look for some clothes tomorrow. It’s probably better for you not to leave the house right now, but...that’s what online shopping is for.”

“Online shopping…?” Yuta seems puzzled by the concept, but he doesn’t ask any further. Then he looks around the room again. “Is there somewhere I can rest?”

“Oh, yeah, follow me.” You get up from the couch to head upstairs where the guest bedroom is. The house isn’t huge—it was your grandmother’s before she passed it on to you—but it’s more than enough for you alone, and it should fit one more just fine. You open the door and turn on the light, illuminating the small room. “It hasn’t been used in a while, so excuse any dust. I can fix that tomorrow, but it’s getting late...” you stifle a yawn, “...so we should probably go to sleep now.”

Yuta looks at you and nods. 

“Um, well...goodnight.” You wave at him from the doorway before closing it.

As you make your way down the stairs, a sudden weariness and apprehension comes over you. An alien in your home? Escaped from a recently crashed UFO? Wearing one of your bathrobes? You’re almost positive you haven’t thought this through deeply enough, but you’re in it now. Might as well see where the rabbit hole leads to.

The next morning, you prepare yourself to go to work like you usually do. For a while, the house is so quiet that you almost forget Yuta is there until you see him standing in the kitchen entryway, still wearing his pink robe, and you almost jump through the ceiling.

“Jesus, you came out of nowhere,” you gasp, holding your heart.

“Where are you going?” Yuta asks. He steps into the kitchen and tentatively sits down in one of the dining table chairs.

“To work,” you say, and then pause. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to leave a freshly-landed alien at home alone. “Will you be okay here by yourself? I could come over on my lunch break…”

“What am I supposed to do here the whole time?” Yuta asks, sounding displeased at the thought of being abandoned for hours.

“Well...you could watch TV? There’s the on-demand channel...the fridge is available for you too, just try not to clean out my—wait, do you even eat human food?”

Yuta shrugs, crossing his arms. “Not really. It’s not a big source of nutrients for us.” 

You nod awkwardly. “Huh. Well, that’s...interesting.” The stress of the situation is already making your head pound and you haven’t even left for work yet. “Uh, yeah—I think I’ll just come over later and check in...come on, I’ll at least show you how to work the remote before I leave.”

You bid Yuta goodbye once you’re about to go, though you feel more than a little hesitant about leaving him there. There isn’t much other choice, though; you can’t afford to take a day off on such short notice.

The extraterrestrial sighs, sprawling across the couch and looking at the ceiling. The TV is already playing the channel you left it on, and Yuta turns to the screen and watches as a group of humans make weird food dishes he’s never seen before.

“This is stupid.”

The rest of the week with Yuta manages to be an adventure even though he never steps foot outside the house. 

Yuta doesn’t take a liking to human food, which means he opts for spending most of his time in the guest bathtub instead, claiming that the water gives him more nourishment than meals can. You don’t know how true that is, but you’re not going to fight him on it. Less food you have to prepare, you reason...although you often end up making extra anyway and getting him to try a few bites. It feels odd to not see him eat.

Living with someone from outer space is not really as weird as you expected it might be, which surprises you. Yuta stays in his human skin whenever he’s around you, and you steer clear of the guest bathroom when it’s occupied lest you walk in on something crazy. 

You’ve taught Yuta about new concepts he didn’t know before or wasn’t overly familiar with. He’s particularly intrigued with online shopping, and you ended up buying him a bunch of outfits that you both thought he’d look nice in. He doesn’t seem to be big on technology, which surprises you considering how advanced his UFO looked even its ruined state, but maybe human tech is more primitive than what he’s used to. He’s quite fascinated with the microwave, though, and how it can heat anything up in minutes.

With you uncovering new bits of information each day, you continually wonder how different his homeworld must be from the Earth. You can’t pull much out of him about it, for whatever reasons he has for keeping the information close, but you try to let him talk about it at his pace without pressuring him.

You could probably get used to living like this. 

Maybe not your wallet, though. You’re definitely not loving how your water bill is going to look once it comes in the mail.

None of your coworkers or neighbors know—not that it’s any of their business anyway. You don’t know how long Yuta is going to stay, or what the hell you’re going to do when his people finally catch wind of his whereabouts and land a UFO in your backyard, but you figure you’ll get to that part when it comes.

On one Saturday morning, you wake up to the sound of tapping on your door. You try to ignore it, thinking it’s just some woodpecker setting up shop outside your window, but you’re proven wrong when the door swings open.

You pull the covers away from your face for a moment to see Yuta standing there looking at you. You stare at him for a few seconds before sighing.

“Why are you up so early? It’s the weekend,” you groan, pulling the covers back over your head. 

“Why do you sleep so late?” Yuta retorts, still standing in your doorway. You don’t know whether he expects you to get up and do a trick, but it’s not happening. You peel the blanket away so it’s just below your eyes and look at him.

“What?”

“It’s not fun being here alone all day, you know,” he says, crossing his arms.

“So...what? Do you want me to play with you or something?” You can’t stop your sudden laugh, but you feel bad about once it’s out. He has just lost his ride home and has no foreseeable way back until someone notices his absence. Plus, needing to stay hidden and cooped up like a criminal can’t be enjoyable.

Yuta rolls his eyes at your response and starts down the hallway again, but you jump out of the bed and follow him. “Wait, Yuta, I’m sorry. That was stupid. I know it can’t be easy living like this. I’m not sure if I can make it better, but I’m willing to try.”

Yuta pauses in the hall and turns back to look at you. “I’m tired of being in here all the time....no offense. But there’s only so much I can take. I know I’m supposed to be in hiding, but it’s not like anyone can tell the difference. Even you couldn’t. Can’t we go out for one day?”

You think about it for a moment and figure he’s right. You both were trying to be overly cautious at first, but there’s no real way anyone would notice anything unless he shifted. “I guess we could...as long as we don’t go anywhere with a lot of water.”

“I have more self-control than that,” Yuta scoffs, though his words trail off as he’s already heading back to his room to get dressed.

You and Yuta walk around downtown for a little while, although you can’t shake the lingering nervousness you feel. You both decided not to head back to the city center any time soon; there’s not much left of the broken ship anyway, with scientists carting off pieces of it for research. Just as you thought. It’s too big to transport all at once, but you’re sure the remaining parts will be gone within the next couple weeks.

Yuta is continually surprised by how many new and unfamiliar things he spots along the way—things he actually gets to see up close and in detail. Kinda hard to focus when you’re running and hiding for your life.

Eventually, Yuta slows down as you walk past a small and colorful restaurant. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing up at the sign. You stop to turn around and see what he’s gesturing to.

“That’s just a hamburger joint...you won’t wanna go in there,” you say, raising your eyebrows. Because you don’t eat food. Despite that, Yuta still seems curious about the restaurant and he hesitates to walk away. Realizing that you aren’t going to get anywhere, you go to stand next to him and peer inside. There are a few people already inside, sitting at scattered tables and eating their food. “Do you want to go in, or…? ‘Cause you have to eat something if we do. This is your idea.”

“I’ll eat, let’s just go,” Yuta says, grasping your hand and pulling you into the restaurant.

You wave at the person behind the counter who greets you as you walk in, while Yuta is busy scanning every inch of the place. You let him look over the menu for a little while, but with so many options available he isn’t sure what to get—especially when he’s not sure if he’ll like any of them—so you end up picking for the both of you.

When you finally get your food, you take it to one of the tables. You watch attentively as Yuta takes the first bite of his hamburger, and you try to stifle your giggles as you watch his face go from nonchalance to bewilderment to shock.

“This is actually...good.”

“Wait, this is really the first meal you’ve liked? Are you saying my cooking is bad? Damn.” You chuckle, shaking your head. 

“I’m not answering that.” Yuta laughs along with you, which is probably the first genuinely happy expression he’s shown since he’s been here.

Yuta has a very pretty smile, you realize. You’re a little taken aback by it. You haven’t seen much of it since you met him, but it’s here now and striking in its genuine quality. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside...which you mainly attribute to the satisfaction of doing something nice for someone else. Of course. Who wouldn’t enjoy a nice meal they didn’t have to pay for?

Things go smoothly for a while as you both eat and pretend to make boring small talk since you can’t talk about him being an alien in public. However, you feel sweat on the back of your neck when you see your coworker Alex walk through the door with his boyfriend. This city is too small for its own good sometimes. 

You try not to call attention to yourself and Yuta, keeping your gaze on your food, but he spots you anyway and waves enthusiastically. Alex gestures for his partner to go ahead and order while he comes over to your table.

“Hey, Y/N! It’s great to see you! Too bad we missed you at the UFO wreck today, though; we went out again one last time before they take the whole thing away,” he rushes out in one breath. Yuta’s eye twitches at the mention of his ship, and you’re suddenly on edge, hoping the situation doesn’t turn sour.

“Oh, uh, wow, that’s...cool!” you choke out, pinching your straw between your fingers. Before you can think of a way to divert the subject, Alex turns to Yuta.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Alex! Who’s this? Your boyfriend?” The last few words are directed at you. Alex gives you a playful grin, and you toss him an embarrassed smile back.

“Uh, no, he’s my friend! Yuta.”

“Nice to meet you,” Yuta says, though you can recognize his tone is a bit dry.

“Pleasure’s all mine!” Alex’s boyfriend calls him from the other side of the restaurant, and he turns to respond before taking his leave. “Ah well, looks like we’ll have to cut it short, but it was so great to see you guys. Enjoy your lunch!”

You let out the breath you were subconsciously holding once he leaves.

“Boyfriend…” Yuta murmurs.

“What?”

“That would be really weird. Wouldn’t it? We’re not even the same species,” he says, lowering his voice. It’s not like you don’t agree, but you admittedly don’t appreciate the way Yuta screws his face up at the thought. You prickle with embarrassment.

You scoff, taking a sip of your drink. “Well I’m not exactly eager to date an overgrown fish, so…” You almost expect Yuta to fall into another one of his moods at your words, but he actually chuckles a bit, which surprises you.

“Then it’s mutual!” Yuta sticks his tongue out and you roll your eyes.

The warm and fuzzy feeling, you soon find out, is not a one-time thing.

You don’t quite know what to make of that. You wouldn’t like for Yuta to go back to his initial broody state, of course, but you’re starting to believe this feeling can’t just be attributed to your charitable actions. You can’t stop thinking about the more playful side of Yuta you saw at the burger place that day, and the way he’s been gradually more open with you since then.

Yuta usually spends his nights splashing around in the guest bathtub, but one night he wanders into the living room and sees you putting your afro in plaits. He becomes weirdly fascinated with the process, watching you carefully and asking occasional questions. Amused by his interest, you answer all his questions and even offer to let him do one section. 

“It’s probably not the same, but I used to braid my friend’s hair often…” he says wistfully as he settles in behind you. “We did a lot of things together.”

Your ears perk up. “Oh? You sound like you were very close,” you say, resting your chin on your knees.

“Really close,” he affirms. His hands are gentle in your hair, as testament to his words. You close your eyes and relax into the sensation, and before you know it, that warmth is spreading through your chest again. You even allow yourself to wonder what it’d be like for him to do this all the time, tending to your hair and telling you about his homeworld, before you open your eyes again and quickly pull yourself out of that reverie. You probably shouldn’t get too used to this, you reason with yourself. “I think she’s what you’d call a mermaid...except the look is a bit...different.”

“Different?” you echo, wondering if you’ll get an explanation.

“They don’t have human arms or anything like that...it’s more like tentacles.”

“Ah,” you try to imagine that, though it’s hard. “That’s certainly unique.”

“Maybe you’d like it...my planet, I mean.”

“You think I would? Why?”

“I dunno, just a feeling…”

“If only I could breathe underwater,” you laugh. “You’d take me back, though? Hypothetically, of course. I’m not too human for you?”

“Will you ever let that one go? It’s probably the least I could do after setting up residence here. Maybe we’ll get you an alien costume, though, so you’ll fit in.”

“How nice of you to think of me in all my humanness. God, the universe is something else…”

You start when Yuta’s hands leave your hair. “I think I’m done?” he says, sitting back on his feet. You grab the mirror from the coffee table and look at the braid you let him do.

“Oh wow, it looks good.” You purse your lips to hide the grin about to break across your face. “Do you wanna do the rest?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“Go ahead then, my hands needed a break anyway.”

You sit back and let Yuta finish the rest of your hair, listening quietly as he tells you more about his friend from his homeworld. Her name is unpronounceable to you, but it sounds pretty all the same. They grew up together, he says, and have been on lots of adventures over the years, though he still keeps that same vagueness he always has when describing his life. He ends up getting you to tell him more about your life, which you do; you figure he probably doesn’t know a whole lot about you, either.

Yuta hands you the mirror when he’s done, and his head pops up next to yours in the reflection. “Good?”

“It’s great!” you say, and you really mean it.

You discover that, strangely enough, Yuta has an affinity for sci-fi movies. Go figure. He especially seems to like the campiness of alien films; then again, everything is campy to him because of how different it is from how extraterrestrials actually live.

You are in the middle of watching The Fly when it comes to one of sex scenes, and you try not to sweat. It’s always a little awkward to watch sex scenes with other people, but doing it with an alien gives the whole thing an extra layer of weirdness.

“Human sex is so funny,” Yuta says out of nowhere. You just barely avoid choking on your drink.

“Uh, o-okay. Do I want to know what that means?”

Yuta only shrugs and leans farther back onto the couch, looking completely unbothered about what he’s just said. “It just is.”

“...I’m sure your people must procreate some kinda way?”

“Yeah, but it’s not quite this. But when I’m in this form, I can do it as humans do.”

That makes you pause, and you’re not sure what to do with that information. Actually, your mind has already decided for itself and is trying to go to a place you don’t want it to, and you’re mildly horrified by that revelation. There’s no real reason why you should be curious about it. And yet...

“Hummm...have you done it before? In this form?” You keep your eyes glued to the screen, which is now showing a shirtless Jeff Goldblum doing acrobatics—but that’s still less awkward than looking over at Yuta right now.

“There was one time.”

There is a twinge of something in your chest. Fascination? Sure. Revulsion? Maybe not that. Dare you call it anything close to jealousy? You immediately throw that one out the door, sink further into your seat, and try not to think about what your life has come to.

“Okay, since you still won’t tell me directly if you’ve been here before, at least tell me this; did it happen here on Earth? With a human?”

Yuta shakes his head. “Some other aliens have weird fetishes. I only did it because she asked and was really adamant about it.”

“Ooookay, you know what…” You get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen, laughing awkwardly all the way. You don’t have any particular reason to go in there, but you have to do something with the nervous energy that’s about to make you jump out of your skin. You pretend to shuffle around in the fridge for a minute so you don’t look too silly getting up for no reason.

After taking a moment to calm down, you turn back to Yuta. “Okay. Hypothetically, if you wanted, could you actually…? With a human? In your natural form? Or would the parts be incompatible, or...”

“Maybe...I’m not sure. It’s not like I’ve ever tried. Why?” Yuta gives you a look that’s partway between curiosity and incredulity, and you wave your hand in dismissal.

“It’s just a question.”

Yuta leans forward on the couch, barely concealing his own amusement at whatever he’s cooking up in his mind. “Are you saying you want to try it with me?”

“You’re not funny,” you sigh, trying to ignore the way your skin is burning at that suggestion. “Remind me not to ask you anything like that again.”

When you get home from work one weeknight, you roll your eyes at the mass text sitting in your inbox, forwarded to you from Alex. Another after-work party, which means another event where someone will run through the sprinklers naked and everyone will pretend like they don’t remember it the next workday.

You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this one, especially with Yuta, who will likely want to go if he finds out, so you decide to just come out and say it and see what happens.

“Hey Yuta…” You slide up behind him where he’s sitting on the couch. “I just wanted to let you know I won’t be at home for a few hours on Saturday. I’m going to a party this weekend. It’s a friend’s party, someone from work.”

Yuta looks at you forlornly. “The same person we met at the restaurant?”

“No, but he’s gonna be there too. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I really don’t know if it’s safe for you to go…”

“That’s not fair, the last time at the restaurant went well,” Yuta argues.

“Yes, but this guy has a pool and he’s a dickhead who likes to push people in and what if you get caught off guard and change unexpectedly?”

Yuta’s response is as straightforward as you expected it to be. “Then I’ll punch him in the face.”

You laugh at that and shake your head, coming to sit beside him on the couch. “Ugh. As satisfying as that sounds, I don’t need the extra stress of dealing with the aftermath. I don’t know, Yuta...do you think you’ll be okay? God, I feel like an overprotective mom or some shit.”

“Y/N, it’ll be fine, stop worrying. I can take care of myself,” Yuta insists, putting his hand on your shoulder and looking into your eyes. He’s a little closer than you anticipated, which makes your heart rate increase a little. You chalk that reaction up to his invasion of your personal space and shift away, groaning.

“Fine, I’ll bring you. But if shit goes down, I can’t promise an easy way out. Let’s just keep things lowkey, alright?”

“Of course I can do that! I’ve been doing it so far haven’t I?” he says, but somehow you’re not entirely convinced.

The party is filled with people you know from work and a slew of unfamiliar faces, probably your coworkers’ friends. It’s mostly a backyard party, like you already knew, although there are some people mingling within the house.

There are already a few people lounging in the pool. In any other scenario, it might be inviting to you, but now you just look at all that water with a looming sense of anxiety. Yuta sticks close to your side, saying nothing but studying everyone around him.

“Y/N!” your coworker David shouts from the backdoor of his house. He holds up his beer in salutation and you wave back at him, mildly annoyed that he’s brought everyone’s attention to you both. He hustles over to you and claps you on the back strong enough to make your bones rattle, and you wince. “Hey dude!” He reaches across you to pull Yuta into a handshake, and Yuta also winces when he grips his hand a little too tight. “Make yourselves at home, I’ve got everything you could ever need—including the booze and babes!” You both nod awkwardly before David goes off to greet someone else who’s just pulled up. You roll your eyes once he’s gone.

Yuta’s eyebrows draw together. “That was…”

“Annoying,” you finish for him.

“You don’t seem to like him. Why did you decide to come?”

“Workplace politics, if you’re the only one who doesn’t come it’s awkward, ugh. It’s just bullshit. Let’s not get into it.” You walk towards the house and Yuta follows, and you nod at a few people you know along the way.

You find Alex in the kitchen, where he offers to make drinks for you and Yuta. You cast a glance at Yuta, wondering if he’ll take up the offer; you have no idea how he’ll react to alcohol, or if they drink any equivalent of it on his homeworld.

“Um, I think I’ll pass.”

“Oh okay, straight-edge guy! That’s cool too,” Alex grins, making just the one drink for you. As you and Alex talk, the girl from your department whose neighborhood was about to be evacuated sidles up to your little group.

“I’ve never seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Oh...it’s Yuta.”

“Yuta? How cool, I’m Sooyoung.”

Little did you know that that one introduction would expand into them having a half-hour long conversation right there in the kitchen. You really don’t know how Yuta is pulling this off without spilling the beans, but then again, you do; he’s good enough at manipulating the conversation to make it seem like he’s sharing personal info when he’s really not. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he throws in things you taught him every so often.

Alex notices your changing demeanor and follows you as you walk into the living room, finally exhausted with playing third wheel. “Hm, someone seems a little spicy.”

You cough. “I’m fine, it’s just cramped in there, David should really invest in a bigger house..this place could use a remodel.” You throw a glance around the living room, not wanting to see the mischievous look in Alex’s eyes.

“Well, remodel aside, it’s not really my business, but you certainly seem to have a little green monster brewing here.”

You give Alex a long look. “Don’t. He’s my friend. He’s not even—” You have to stop yourself before you expose anything, and you shift nervously on your feet.

“Not even what? Your type? I don’t know, he’s handsome enough to me. You can’t go wrong with a pretty boy. Don’t tell Xavier I said that, though.”

“Lord, let me get the hell out of here…” You leave Alex to cackle to himself while you go out into the backyard again, holding your drink and mulling around the edges of the activity. Too busy wrestling with your own emotions, you don’t realize how close you’ve drifted towards the pool.

“Hey, Y/N?” David says from behind you.

“Yeah?” You go to turn towards him, but before you can, you feel a huge shove from behind and the next thing you know your feet are off the ground and you’re in the pool. It all happens so fast that you can barely catch your bearings, and for a terrifying moment you’re convinced you’re about to drown.

The seconds feel like minutes, and you can’t even open your eyes to tell up from down. The next thing you register is an arm around your waist, and somehow you’re being pulled up even though you’re too panicked to even control your limbs. Your head pops above the water and you cough and sputter loudly, trying to take in air. You try to blink the water out of your eyes, though it drips off your hair and makes it even harder to see.

You’re still not sure what the hell is going on until you’re hauled out of the water and sitting on the ground. Someone hands you a towel, and you hear a female voice saying you’re such an asshole, David.

You wipe the water off of your face and then you’re finally able to see; Yuta is crouching in front of you, just as soaked as you are and staring at you with a worried expression. You look back at him, disoriented and a little dumbfounded at his still-human state.

“You didn’t…”

Even though you’re still trembling with the fear of almost drowning, you’re unable to look anywhere but at Yuta for that moment—at the pure concern on his face.

“Nice going, David,” someone else says sarcastically.

“It was just a bit of a prank! No hard feelings guys, come on. Y/N?” You realize David is standing on your left, and he tries to come closer, his hands open in an apologetic gesture. You jerk away from him, holding the towel to your shaking form.

“Get the fuck away from me. You’re a fucking idiot!” you shout. “All you do is ‘play pranks’ and then you wonder why no one likes you!” That draws a few barely concealed laughs out of the people standing nearby, though you don’t think any of it is funny. David steps back, unsure how to respond and looking truly embarrassed for once in his life.

Filled with anger, you try to get to your feet but you’re still unsteady. Yuta puts his arm around you again, lifting you up and encouraging you to lean your weight on him.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

You don’t have much to say on the way back home. You insist on leaving right away even though Yuta suggests you sit and wait until the tremors subside. He obviously can’t drive you back home, so it’s all he can offer, though it doesn’t make you feel much better.

The silence itself isn’t particularly awkward to Yuta, but he is uncomfortable anyway because he knows it stems from your own discomfort. At a red light, he turns to you.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

He’s quiet for a few moments, and then he speaks again. “I know you’re mad about the pool, but...it seems like there’s more than that. Did...you not like me spending so much time with Sooyoung?”

You scoff. “You can’t be serious. I don’t care what you and that girl do.”

“You’re not a very good liar.” You’re too worn out to argue, so you merely give him a sidelong glance. Yuta sits back in his seat and watches a few cars zip past, their tail lights looking like clashing stars against the night. He’s not used to so much...manmade stuff. There was his ship and his trackers, of course, but he still has a hard time adjusting to be surrounded by so much iron and steel. His own planet is ruled by nature, by the vast oceans in all their unpolluted original essence, but Earth—or at least this portion of it—is much, much different.

He means to glance back at you, but his eyes linger for a while longer than intended. He’s not sure why. Maybe it’s because your outfit is a pretty color, or because the coils of your hair look shiny reflecting the light. He’s never put much thought into human beings before, and his limited experiences with them were mostly better left unremembered. Taking a human form was no huge deal for him; just a move that was necessary at the time.

But now, he’s seeing humanity—and most specifically, you—in a different light, and he’s uncertain what to do with this realization. People have feelings, thoughts, and dreams, like his own species, or like any other. He’s beginning to care what you think of him, how you react to him, even though he doesn’t know why this matters.

“You look pretty,” Yuta says. The compliment is the last thing you expected from him. It seems especially random after what happened at the party; here you are, soaking wet and incredibly uncomfortable. You’re a little late to put your foot on the gas pedal once the light turns green, and someone behind you honks.

“Pretty? I thought humans were weird to you.” Your mind goes back to The Fly and the subsequent conversation you had, and your hands tighten minutely around the steering wheel.

“You are. That hasn’t changed.”

“Good to know.” You don’t want to laugh, but this does make you crack a smile. “But...thanks. And...thanks for that, at the pool, you know. I should...probably trust you more.”

The rest of the ride is a little more talkative after that, and Yuta is happy that he could lighten your mood if even a little bit. Although he wouldn’t tell you, he’s becoming accustomed to your smile, and he’s more displeased than he thought he could be when it’s absent.

The thunder booms so loudly that it makes your window frames shake. It almost reminds you of the day Yuta’s ship fell out of the sky. You pull the covers tighter around yourself as if they alone could protect you from the storm’s fierceness. Storm clouds have been brewing all day, but the skies didn’t open until you and Yuta went to bed. Now, the rain and lightning is in full force. The rain pounds against your window, sounding more like hail or even bullets.

You’re startled for a second time when there’s a knock on your bedroom door.

“Come in?”

The door opens slightly and Yuta appears in the small sliver of space. “Sorry, but...can I sleep here? The storm...” He gestures to the window, where a crack of lightning strikes right after. He’s wearing a sleep shirt and loose pants, and his blonde hair is disheveled. 

“Uh, sure.” You shuffle over to make room for him. “I guess this isn’t your type of water, is it?” He huddles underneath the covers with you, facing you with his arm tucked under the unoccupied pillow.

“Not when it’s so intense like this.”

You hum in acknowledgment. “It’s scary. Does rainy weather make you think of your homeworld often?”

“Often,” he repeats. “But...I think I’d be worse off if I weren’t here.”

“Here...on Earth?”

“I mean, here with you.”

“Oh,” is all you can think to say. It’s a surprisingly personal confession, though you are grateful you’ve become someone so important in his life already, even if it’s only because you’ve given him shelter. That familiar warmth spreads through you again. 

Warm and fuzzies = gratefulness to a friend, the feeling you get when you pet a cute puppy. Right. It’s not the sensation you get when you think you might have feelings for your extraterrestrial friend, you try to convince yourself. “I’m...glad you’re here. Maybe not under these circumstances, but still.”

Yuta nods without speaking, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from you. You think he must be waiting on you to say something else.

“What?” you ask quietly when he keeps staring at you. “Take a picture, it will last longer.” Your joke does little to clear the air, and the tension keeps rising. You should probably be the first one to look away, to end whatever weird game this is and go to sleep, but you can’t. It’s unexplainable.

Yuta props himself up on his elbow, and you’re about to ask him where he’s going when he slips his hand onto your bare shoulder. You’re already covered by the blankets, but you suddenly feel even hotter with his hand on you, sliding up from your shoulder to the side of your face. “Y-Yuta…?”

You don’t know what to say or do, but you don’t object when he leans closer. Your faces are only inches apart now, like he’s hesitating and wondering if he should cross the line. The thunderstorm is intense, but this moment feels much more suspenseful than that could ever be. And then, it’s suddenly satisfying when his lips are on yours.

The kiss starts gentle. He’s careful as if he’s afraid to hurt you or make you feel uncomfortable. It’s soft and sweet. Things get more heated when his tongue prods against your lower lip and enters your mouth. You don’t know when his hand made it from your face to your side, but he pulls you close with his fingers pressing into the flesh just below your breasts, and you tremble at the proximity.

When you pull away, both of you are breathing harder and unable to look each other in the eye.

“Should we be doing this?” you whisper.

Yuta shakes his head. “I don’t know. But it feels good.”

At those words, you pause for a moment before moving to kiss him again. His lips respond deftly to yours, his body crowding you in and making you feel hot and enraptured with desire from where you still lie under the covers.

His hair is very soft when you slide your hands through it, though you can’t push away the thought that suddenly manifests in the back of your mind. This isn’t really his hair, or his lips, is it? It’s all a mask to cover whatever is underneath, which is something you still don’t entirely know, yet are increasingly curious about.

Yuta’s hand drifts up just high enough to caress the underside of your breast—all still over the cover of your clothes. Abruptly, that thought forces its way to the front of your mind, making itself unavoidable, and you have no idea how to reconcile it. This is all so...very unfamiliar. And undeniably scary.

You pull away from him, your face creased with conflict, and his hand stills on your body. “S-sorry, I…um...this is...”

Subsequently, he pulls his hand away from you, though some part of you doesn’t really want that to happen. “I-it’s fine.”

You both settle back into the sheets, the tense aura from before replaced with one that’s thick with unease. The storm continues on outside, unknowing and uncaring of anything else but its own nature.

Though you would like to pretend it isn’t so, things become strained after the night of the storm.

You and Yuta don’t talk about the kiss. You expected him to say something about it that morning after, but he didn’t acknowledge it, and so you figured you just forget about it, too. What are you thinking, anyway? You’re literally from two different worlds. You don’t have the first clue about what a connection would look like between you, whether it be just sex or a relationship.

Why couldn’t you just fall for a coworker and have a bit of office drama like everyone else? Even that would be simpler.

Why did you have to let your thoughts get the best of you? You don’t have any answer for that, except for maybe your own need to come to terms with your attraction. People have never been very skilled at accepting others different from themselves, you know that much. But that usually counts for people of different ethnicities or cultural backgrounds, not two entirely different species.

You spend the whole week afterwards tearing your mind up with this monologue and trying to figure out what you should do next, because you’re quickly growing weary of coming home to a tense atmosphere. Alex can only give so much advice—not that you’d really tell him the entire situation—without knowing just how complicated everything is.

Where he used to hang out with you and help you with your hair, Yuta spends more time up in the guest bathroom again. You wonder if he thinks you’re disgusted by him. You’d probably think the same if he reacted the way you did.

Unbeknownst to you, Yuta is facing the situation with a similar amount of inner turmoil as you, wondering if he’s gone too far. He’s done many silly things in his life, but he doesn’t know how to undo this mistake. The mistake of kissing you? The mistake of seeing you as more than just another human? The mistake of knowingly flying in a faulty ship? Maybe all of it.

He feels guilty about freezing you out and pretending as if nothing happened, especially with all you’ve done to make him safe and comfortable in your home. But, at the same time, he is equally frightened to face you and discover the real reasoning for why you pulled away that night. Because you’ll never see him as someone you could like? Or maybe even love?

If that’s your truth, he’d rather leave it unsaid.

There aren’t many choices left but to face it. Whether this idea is smart or not is yet to be seen, but you suppose you don’t have many solutions left. And you are sick of being cooped up in the house.

“You sure this is safe?” Yuta asks as he stares at the scenery whizzing past. “You were all freaked out about me being near water before...now you want to go to a lake?”

You glance over at him. “Yes, it’s my parents’ lake property. It’s private, Yuta. No one will be there but us. I think we could both use a mini vacation this weekend, yeah?” 

“I guess, sure.” Yuta shrugs. His demeanor is more closed off than it was before that dreaded kiss, but you can still tell that he’s interested in the idea of getting access to a bigger body of water, even if he doesn’t outwardly express it.

The lake house is two hours out of your city. It hasn’t been used much in the past few years with both you and your parents being busy with work and life, but if there was ever a good time to use it, it’s probably now. You just hope there aren’t any squatters of the furry variety; the last thing you need is to be fighting raccoons or squirrels after stepping through the door.

Luckily, there’s really no one but you two once you reach your destination. The lake is big and pretty like you last remembered it, sparkling under the sun and throwing the rays back in your eyes. Yuta is automatically captivated by it.

“Here it is!” you say, walking along the sand and spreading your arms out towards the body of water. “It might not be much compared to your homeworld, but I hope it’s enough.” You carry your bag up the stairs to the house and turn back to Yuta, who’s still standing by the shore gazing across the water. “You can go in, you know? Get comfortable!”

That seems to snap him out of his trance, and he turns back to you, following you up the steps. “Not right now...I’ll go later.” You’re a little disappointed at that, but you simply nod and open the door to go in.

You spend the day getting increasingly more restless as you and Yuta hang out together. You go on the pier, walk around the entirety of the lake, and even take your dad’s boat out on the water, but he still doesn’t get in.

You eat dinner together later that night, although you’re the one doing most of the eating, and there isn’t much conversation to be had. You’ve both run out of things to say that don’t center around the kiss or why he refuses to get in the water.

Yuta spends a few more moments watching you push your food around your plate before leaning forward. “Why did you bring me here?” he asks.

You sigh heavily. “Do you not like it?”

“No, I do, but…” he hesitates. “Can you answer my question first?

You raise your eyebrows. “Okay, well. I brought you here because...I don’t know. I figure you deserve to have somewhere bigger to swim around in than my guest bathtub.” You laugh nervously.

He seems unconvinced. “Is that it?”

“I’d say so! Why won’t you even take one swim, is the better question? I want you to relax and be yourself.”

He furrows his eyebrows as if he doesn’t know how to reply. “You...aren’t you...repulsed by it? I just figured you wouldn’t want to see me in my natural form. Especially since…” He trails off at the end, and your palms sweat a little.

“No! I know I was weirded out at first, but...I-I guess that was the point of this whole trip, to show you that…” You grapple with your words for a moment, unsure if now is the time to fully confess what you’re feeling. “Look, I want to try, alright? I want to see it at least once. I want to accept you as a whole being, and that means, you know...all of you.”

Yuta smiles gradually at that, and you feel swept up with a sudden wave of affection you weren’t expecting. You are still a bit scared, but you don’t want to turn back now. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” you reply, clasping your shaking hands together.

Yuta nods and stands up from the dining table, gesturing for you to follow him. It’s late now, with the moon shining brightly and the last vestiges of dark blue sky giving way to black. The air outside is cool, but not uncomfortably so. You follow Yuta to the pier and watch timidly, your stomach flip-flopping, as he sheds his clothes, leaving them on the wooden deck. Then he slips into the water, disappearing underneath its still surface.

You crouch down, looking intently at the rippling water and anticipating whoever is going to resurface. The sounds of croaking frogs and crickets press in from every side, ringing in your ears so loudly that it’s hard to think straight.

You gasp when Yuta lifts from the water, his human skin gone and completely transformed into something that’s more...amphibian, if that’s any accurate way to describe his appearance. His skin is still scaly and green like you saw that first day, but in the moonlight it seems to glitter and reflect a spectrum of colors like his armor did. There are two fins on the either side of his face, translucent and shining a pale green. They slowly move back and forth as he treads on the water, as if they’re conveying an emotion to match whatever he’s thinking, and you watch them in fascination.

Yuta floats on his back in the water, the long gills on either of his sides catching the moonlight. You watch in fascination as they move with his breaths. Using the pier post to keep yourself stable, you reach out to touch them. They’re slick under your fingers, but not in a slimy or gross way. Your hand drifts to the rest of his skin, across his torso and along his sides, and every portion has a strikingly smooth texture. His alien eyes stare at you silently as you do, glittering big in the moonlight.

“What do you think?” his voice is quieter than you expected, as if he’s afraid of your reaction. He doesn’t break his gaze, though, studying your face carefully.

“You’re...amazing,” you say breathlessly. “Incredible.” 

His lips, which are green like the rest of him, form a small smile, and then he dives underneath the water. He does a few laps as if he means to impress you, his lithe marine form sparkling just below the surface of the water. You keep your hand suspended over the pier as you watch him, your fingers sliding against his body every time he passes by. You smile at his display, a laugh coming out of you at his impromptu performance.

When he’s finished, Yuta climbs up onto the pier with you and kneels in front of you, much like he did that day he saved you from David’s swimming pool. His feet are webbed like his hands. Droplets of water slide off of them onto the wooden boardwalk while others linger on the clear webbing like tiny jewels. Your hand is magnetized to his face, drawing across the scaly skin and tracing over his lips, which are just as smooth as the rest of him.

Before you can think twice about it, you lean forward and capture his lips with yours. Did you expect it to be fishy? Maybe. But it’s not that at all. He still manages to taste distinctly like Yuta, even though you’re not sure what that taste is. It’s a flavor that makes you feel...held. Yuta is surprised for a moment, but he responds to your kiss, one of his webbed hands inching close to your face. He doesn’t touch you at first, a little reluctant and yet wanting to let you lead the pace so he doesn’t scare you off.

You welcome his touch, carefully brushing your fingertips across his hand and bringing it to make contact with your skin. His own skin is still a bit cold from the water’s temperature, but it doesn’t bother you much.

The kiss soon grows more intense, and a mounting desire makes itself known in you. You won’t pretend like you’re 100% confident about all of this, but you don’t want to shun it anymore, either.

Yuta’s hand drifts to your neck, his long nails pressing into your skin ever so slightly. You dare to explore his body more, sliding your hands across his chest and over his side gills, feeling the way they contract under your hands, and farther down still. You haven’t looked down there yet, and you’re nervous over what you’ll find. But you keep going until your fingers meet something slick and hot and throbbing, seeming vaguely like a regular penis, though you quickly realize it’s more of a tentacle.

Yuta shudders and draws away from the kiss, and you feel alarmed, wondering if you’ve gone too far without thinking.

“If we’re going to do this, I should...probably shift back—”

“Don’t,” you blurt out. Yuta looks at you questioningly. “I...you should if it makes you comfortable. But...I don’t mind.” He’s quiet for a few seconds—seconds that feel much longer than they really are. You’re apprehensive of what he’ll say, but you keep your eyes on his face.

“Okay,” he agrees. “If you’ll accept me like this...okay.” 

Neither of you bother with moving to somewhere more comfortable like the lake house or even the sandy shore. Instead, Yuta peels your clothes away right there on the pier, covering every new bit of flesh with his strange and lovely mouth, his head fins ghosting across your collarbones and breasts like moths’ wings.

You tremble and grow wetter under his soft caresses, which are much gentler than you’d initially expect with his sharp black nails. His hands leave streaks of water across your body, which cools your burning hot skin.

Yuta carefully maneuvers your lower body at the same time as he bends his graceful head, bringing your sex close to his mouth and licking deeply into you. Your back presses hard against the pier, the wood scratching your skin as you cry out into the night air.

“Oh God, Yuta!” You soon realize that his tongue is much longer than any human one, and it reaches to a spot deep inside of you that makes you twist around in his grasp, your fingernails scrambling for purchase on the surface below you. He uses his tongue to pleasure that spot continuously, drawing moans and ever more wetness out of you as if he were controlling the waves in the ocean.

You find yourself coming apart on his extraordinarily long tongue, your legs shaking and then going limp with the pleasure flooding through your body. Your breaths come fast and hard. Yuta lifts his head from between your legs and pulls you carefully into his lap so his slick tentacle is pressing against you. It’s not hard like a dick would be, though it is clearly responsive to your body, and you momentarily wonder if it can even go inside you.

“Is this gonna work?” you ask, a tremor in your voice.

“It will work,” Yuta replies, and you’re not sure how, but you decide to trust him on it. 

It does, to your surprise. With your legs crossed tightly over his lower back, Yuta presses into you, wet and warm and very unexpectedly soft. It doesn’t feel like anything you’ve ever experienced before. It’s not a bad sensation, though—far from it. His tentacle is similar to his tongue in how it flexes and throbs inside you, pressing tight against that spot again and making you shiver in his arms.

You both quickly find a rhythm that works, your bodies moving together in an otherworldly combination of two beings, two species, two souls.

Yuta’s long nails scrape gently against your skin as he holds your back, guiding you on his sex and pushing his hips up into you. You sigh into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, feeling the cool scales underneath your lips. You seek a firm grip on his slick skin, bringing your body as close to his as possible.

“Yuta…” You moan his name. His hand slides to the back of your neck so he can bring your face to his again, kissing you deeply. There’s a wet squelching sound as your bodies connect, Yuta’s tentacle slipping in and out of you and pleasurably stroking your walls.

“Y/N…” Yuta whispers into your soft hair, pushing into your spot repeatedly, his thighs tensing under you as his pace increases. You grip his arms as you feel your orgasm swelling up in your abdomen. You tip your head back and Yuta’s mouth goes to your neck and farther down, his heavy breaths warming your skin and making you overheat from the inside out.

You tighten and cum around him, your voice stuttering out of you in broken gasps as he keeps thrusting into you, drawing your climax out. He pulses inside of you, which sends little shockwaves up your spine; you know he’s probably close, too.

When Yuta comes, there’s a lot more of it than you expected. His cum overflows and drips out of you with a consistency like syrup and a transparent color like precum. It makes the inside of your thighs sticky and shiny.

Yuta pulls out, and more of his cum spills out of you, leaking onto his lap and staining the pier underneath you.

“That’s not gonna get me pregnant, is it?” you say quietly, half-jokingly.

“Probably not,” Yuta chuckles.

“Probably!?”

Yuta carefully gathers you in his arms and stands to his feet, walking you off the pier and back towards the lake house. Your clothes are still on the pier, but you’re quickly getting sleepy and aren’t very worried about it; you’ll get them in the morning.

“What happens now?” Yuta murmurs as he walks up the front steps. You already know he’s referring not just to your relationship in this present moment, but to every event that will make up your future. Does he need to continue hiding, or is it really safe? How long will this last?

You close your eyes, resting your head against his chest. “We stay together.”

Yuta’s arms tighten around you as a silent affirmation of your words.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.10 (after 1930)

1941 – World War II: The Greek army captures Kleisoura. 1946 – The first General Assembly of the United Nations assembles in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. Fifty-one nations are represented. 1946 – The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the Moon and receiving the reflected signals. 1954 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1, explodes and falls into the Tyrrhenian Sea, killing 35 people. 1966 – Tashkent Declaration, a peace agreement between India and Pakistan signed that resolved the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. 1972 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to the newly independent Bangladesh as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan. 1980 – The New England Journal of Medicine publishes the letter Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics, which is later misused to downplay the general risk of addiction to opioids. 1981 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensive, gaining control of most of Morazán and Chalatenango departments 1984 – Holy See–United States relations: The United States and Holy See (Vatican City) re-establish full diplomatic relations after almost 117 years, overturning the United States Congress's 1867 ban on public funding for such a diplomatic envoy. 1985 – Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government. 1990 – Time Warner is formed by the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. 2000 – Crossair Flight 498, a Saab 340 aircraft, crashes in Niederhasli, Switzerland, after taking off from Zurich Airport, killing 13 people. 2007 – A general strike begins in Guinea in an attempt to get President Lansana Conté to resign. 2012 – A bombing at Jamrud in Pakistan, kills at least 30 people and injures 78 others. 2013 – More than 100 people are killed and 270 injured in several bomb blasts in the Quetta area of Pakistan. 2015 – A traffic accident between an oil tanker truck and passenger coach en route to Shikarpur from Karachi on the Pakistan National Highway Link Road near Gulshan-e-Hadeed, Karachi, killing at least 62 people. 2019 – A 13-year-old American girl, Jayme Closs, is found alive in Gordon, Wisconsin, having been kidnapped 88 days earlier from her parents' home whilst they were murdered.

[sciencespies]

Shakespearean Stabbings, How to Feed a Dictator and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/nature/shakespearean-stabbings-how-to-feed-a-dictator-and-other-new-books-to-read/

Shakespearean Stabbings, How to Feed a Dictator and Other New Books to Read

An estimated 74 heroes, villains and sidekicks featured in William Shakespeare’s writings meet unsavory onstage ends. Thirty of these men and women succumb to stabbing, according to a 2015 analysis by the Telegraph, while five die by beheading, four by poison, and three by both stabbing and poison. At the more unconventional end of the spectrum, causes of death range from grief to insomnia, indigestion, smothering, shame and being baked into a pie.

Kathryn Harkup’s Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts adopts a scientific approach to the Bard’s many methods of killing off characters. As the chemist-by-training writes in the book’s prologue, Shakespeare may not have understood the science behind the process of dying, but as a someone who lived at a time when death—in the form of public executions, pestilence, accidents and widespread violence—was an accepted aspect of everyday life, he certainly knew “what it looked, sounded and smelled like.”

The latest installment in our “Books of the Week” series, which launched in late March to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, details the science behind Shakespeare, the golden age of aviation, women doctors of World War I, the meals enjoyed by five modern dictators and the history of the controversial Shroud of Turin.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing-appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts by Kathryn Harkup

The author of A Is for Arsenic and Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein continues her macabre cultural musings with an immensely readable roundup of Shakespearean death. Looking beyond the literary implications of characters’ untimely passing, she explores the forces that shaped the Bard’s world and, subsequently, his writing.

Sixteenth-century London was a hotbed of disease, unsanitary living conditions, violence, political unrest and impoverishment. People of the period witnessed death firsthand, providing palliative care in sick friends’ and family members’ last moments, attending strangers’ public executions, or falling prey to misfortune themselves. Writes Harkup, “With limited effective medical treatments available, the grim reality of death, from even the most trivial of illnesses and infections, was well known, up close and in detail.” It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that all of Shakespeare’s plays reference disease in some capacity.

After establishing this sociopolitical context, Harkup delves into chapter-by-chapter analysis of specific characters’ causes of death, including infirmity, murder, war, plague, poison, emotion and bear attack. The author’s scholarly expertise (she completed two doctorate degrees in chemistry before shifting focus to science communication) is apparent in these chapters, which are peppered with rather clinical descriptions: In a section on King Lear, for instance, she mentions—and outlines in great detail—the “clear post-mortem differences between strangulation, suffocation and hanging.”

Death By Shakespeare is centrally concerned with how its eponymous subject’s environment influenced the fictional worlds he created. Combining historical events, scientific knowledge and theatrical carnage, the work is at its best when determining the accuracy of various killing methods: In other words, Harkup asks, how exactly did Juliet appear dead for 72 hours, and is death by snakebite as peaceful as Cleopatra claimed?

Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World by Alexander Rose

Today, most people’s knowledge of the zeppelin is limited to the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. But as historian Alexander Rose writes in Empires of the Sky, the German airship—invented by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin at the turn of the 20th century—was once the world’s premiere form of air travel, easily outpacing its contemporary, the airplane.

The airship and airplane’s fight for dominance peaked in the 1920s and ’30s, when Zeppelin’s handpicked successor, Hugo Eckener, faced off with both the Wright Brothers and Pan American Airlines executive Juan Trippe. Per the book’s description, “At a time when America’s airplanes—rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck—could barely make it from New York to Washington, Eckener’s airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury.”

Though the zeppelin held the advantage in terms of safety, passenger satisfaction and reliability over long distances, the airplane enjoyed the benefit of sheer quantity, with the United States producing 3,010 civilian aircraft in 1936 alone. The Hindenburg, a state-of-the-art vessel poised to shift the debate in airships’ favor, ironically proved to be its downfall.

Detailing the aftermath of an October 9, 1936, meeting between American and German aviation executives, Rose writes, “Trippe … suspects the deal is done: America will soon be in the airship business and Zeppelin will duel with Pan American for mastery of the coming air empire.” Eckener, meanwhile, flew home on the Hindenburg in triumph, never guessing that his airship had “exactly seven months left to live.”

No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain’s Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I by Wendy Moore

At the turn of the 20th century, the few female doctors active in Great Britain were largely limited to treating women and children. But when war broke out in 1914, surgeon Louisa Garrett Anderson and anesthesiologist Flora Murray flouted this convention, establishing a military hospital of their own in Paris and paving the way for other women doctors to similarly start treating male patients.

Housed in a repurposed hotel and funded by donations from friends, family and fellow suffragists, the pair’s hospital soon drew the attention of the British War Office, which asked Anderson and Murray to run a military hospital in London. As author Wendy Moore points out, this venue “was, and would remain, the only military hospital under the auspices of the British Army to be staffed solely by women doctors and run entirely by women.”

Tens of thousands of patients arrived at the hospital over the next four-and-a-half years, according to Kirkus’ review of No Man’s Land. Staff performed more than 7,000 surgeries, treating previously unseen ailments including the aftereffects of chlorine gas attacks and injuries inflicted by artillery and high-explosive shells. Though initially met with distaste by men who dismissed a hospital run by “mere women,” Anderson and Murray’s steadfast commitment to care managed to convince even their critics of women’s value as physicians.

In 1918, the flu pandemic arrived in London, overwhelming the pair’s Endell Street Military Hospital just as the war reached its final stages. Writes Moore, “Now that they found themselves fighting an invisible enemy, to no apparent purpose, they had reached the breaking point.”

The pandemic eventually passed, and as life returned to a semblance of normality, women doctors were once again relegated to the sidelines. Still, Sarah Lyall points out in the New York Times’ review of the book, the “tide had started to turn” in these medical professionals’ favor—in no small part due to the perseverance of Anderson and Murray.

How to Feed a Dictator: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks by Witold Szablowski

The favorite meals of five 20th-century dictators are more mundane than one might think. As Rose Prince writes in the Spectator’s review of Polish journalist Witold Szablowski’s How to Feed a Dictator, Saddam Hussein’s cuisine of choice was lentil soup and grilled fish. Idi Amin opted for steak-and-kidney pie complemented by a dessert of chocolate pudding, while Fidel Castro enjoyed “a simple dish of chicken and mango.” And though popular lore suggests Pol Pot dined on the hearts of cobras, the Cambodian dictator’s chef revealed that he actually preferred chicken and fish.

According to Szablowski, How to Feed a Dictator strives to present “a panorama of big social and political problems seen through the kitchen door.” But tracking down the personal chefs who kept these despots—Hussein, Amin, Castro, Pot and former Albanian prime minister Enver Hoxha—well-fed proved to be an understandably difficult task. Not only did Szablowski have to find men and women who didn’t particularly want to be found, but he also had to earn their trust and convince them to discuss traumatic chapters in their lives. Speaking with Publishers Weekly’s Louisa Ermelino, Szablowski notes that Amin’s, Hoxha’s and Hussein’s chefs were simply culinary professionals; Castro’s and Pot’s, on the other hand, started off as partisans.

Ultimately, the author tells NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “Sometimes they are very easy to like, but sometimes they are very easy to hate. Like, they are not easy characters, because it wasn’t an easy job.”

The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death by Gary Vikan

Gary Vikan has spent some 35 years tracking down evidence refuting the Shroud of Turin’s authenticity. In The Holy Shroud, Vikan—former director of Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum and a respected art historian—outlines his findings, arguing that the controversial burial cloth belonged not to Jesus, but to a medieval artist employed by French monarch John II at the height of the Black Death.

“I knew right away that the Holy Shroud was the fake, for the simple reason that it does not fit into the chronology of Christian relics or iconography, and because it appears for the first time in the historical record in 14th century France,” wrote Vikan in a blog post earlier this year. “ … [W]ith the help of a brilliant scientist, I am [now] able to answer the questions of when, why, by whom, and how the Shroud was made.”

Per the book’s description, John II gifted the “photograph-like body print” to his friend Geoffroi de Charny shortly before the latter’s death at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Originally meant as an “innocuous devotional image” for the knight’s newly-built church, the cloth was soon reinvented as one of Christianity’s most significant relics.

“Miracles were faked,” says Vikan, “and money was made.”

#Nature

[98percentinvisible-blog]

Type I/II Errors and Aeroplane Doors.

.This week I had to analyze mid-flight incidents concerning aeroplane doors.

The case material included the Germanwings flight and our task was to come up with recommendations on how to prevent similar future incidents.

To me this is a classic Type I/II error scenario. You don’t want to make a cockpit door too easy to open and provide an opportunity for someone to hijack the plane however making the door too secure could lead to an incident like Germanwings.

The most important recommendation for me at the time was to put pilots through psychological screening. Apparently the European Commission had no mandatory psychological assessment (Bryan, 2018) for pilots before the crash which seemed insane to me.

A question was raised of whether or not these screenings would be effective. Particularly whether or not a pilot would be honest about their mental state when being evaluated especially since there is seemingly no incentive to self report and it could mean they lose their job.  The argument my group and I made was that yes there might be some pilots who will lie their way through the assessment but at least that’s better than having nothing at all. Our point of view was to reduce the risk of an accident from happening rather than stopping any accident from ever happening again.

I think that other measures on top of our suggestion could be put in place so it’s not the end of a pilots career if they have a mental illness. An example being to provide pilots alternative jobs in aviation if they are unable to fly.

Another recommendation my class and I made was to have two people in the cockpit at all times with at least one pilot. Also to have a system in place that required two people inside the cockpit in order to lock the door which could potentially help enforce the two person at all times rule as well. The theory behind this was to prevent one pilot from intentionally locking the other out. A study on murder-suicide involving aircraft stated that ‘Five of six homicide-suicide events by pilots of commercial airliners occurred after they were left alone in the cockpit’ (Kenedi et al, 2016).

A recommendation the European Aviation Safety Agency made after GermanWings was to have random drug and alcohol testing. No one in the class thought of this ! I think it’s a good idea as you are not able to lie about how you’re feeling which is the case in a psychological assessment. The results of a drug test also has the potential to provide evidence on the mental wellness of a pilot. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that there is a ‘definite connection between mental illness and the use of addictive substances’(Dual Diagnosis, n.d).

Can you think of other suggestions or weakness to the recommendations that were discussed in this post ? Comment below !

References

Kenedi et al, 2016, ‘Suicide and Murder-Suicide Involving Aircraft’, Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 388-396

Dual Diagnosis, n.d, The Connection Between Mental Illness and Substance Abuse, viewed 23 June 2019, https://www.dualdiagnosis.org/mental-health-and-addiction/the-connection/

Bryan, 2018, ‘Europe adopts new pilot mental health rules after Germanwings crash’, Reuters, viewed 23 June 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-crash-germanwings-eu/europe-adopts-new-pilot-mental-health-rules-after-germanwings-crash-idUSKBN1KF1UA

[unitedfact]

Paul Wellstone Died 20 Years Ago in Minnesota

Paul Wellstone Died 20 Years Ago in Minnesota

On October 25, 2002, the Minnesota Democrat who was known for his large green bus, activism, and zeal for improving people’s lives was taken from this world when he was murdered in an aircraft crash. Today marks the anniversary of the horrific aircraft accident on the Iron Range in Minnesota that took the lives of seven people, including U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter, and five…

[blackpowerfrontsblog]

THE BLACK WORLD MUST NEVER FORGET SAMORA MOISES MACHEL, BY VELI MBELE, 8 DECEMBER, 2018

In her classic tune, 'Aluta Continua', the majestically graceful Warrior Queen, uMam’uZenzile Makeba sings:

My people, my people open your eyes

And answer the call of the drum

FRELIMO, FRELIMO,

Samora Machel, Samora Machel has come.

Maputo, Maputo home of the brave

Our nation will soon be as one.

FRELIMO, FRELIMO,

In South Africa a luta continua

Samora Machel, Samora Machel has won.

Mozambique a luta continua

A luta continua, continua, continua.

Through this tune, Mama Makeba poignantly captures the beauty, gallantry and heroism that is the great uBab'uSamora Moises Machel.Born on 29 September in 1933, in the village of Chilembene, Mozambique. Machel was raised by parents who were forced to grow cotton by the Portuguese invaders, after they had dispossessed his family of their farm land.

As a result, his relatives were forced to go and work in the mines in neighbouring South Africa, where his brother later died in what was reported as a ‘mining accident’. Machel went to a catholic school and later studied to become a nurse.

While a nursing student, he became attracted to the philosophy of Marxism. This inspired him to protest against the disparities in the wages of Black and white nurses and the general poor medical treatment that ordinary people were getting.

Expressing his disgust with these injustices, in an interview, he asserted that “…the rich man's dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man's wealth is built."

Unsurprisingly, he then went on to join the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique or FRELIMO, in 1962. By joining FRELIMO, Machel was not doing anything unusual. Before him, his grandparents and great-grandparents were involved in the resistance against Portuguese invasion of Mozambique.

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that resistance, rebellion and revolution ran through Machel’s veins.After receiving military training in several Afrikan countries, Machel led various guerrilla campaigns against Portuguese invasion of Mozambique.

His experience and prowess on the battle failed led to him becoming one of the most astute military strategists of his generation and eventually ascending to the position of commander and chief of the armed wing of FRELIMO.

It was under Machel’s leadership that the Portuguese invaders were forced to leave Mozambique in 1974 and victory was declared. A new Black revolutionary government was installed in June 1975, with Machel as its first president.

It is this victory over Portuguese invasion that inspired the Black Consciousness Movement ( SASO to be exact) in the white-criminal settler-colony referred to as South Africa, to organise what was called ‘VIVA FRELIMO Rallies’.

These rallies were essentially an act of rebellion against settler invasion in South Africa and other parts of Afrika, but they were also SASO’s way of reminding Black people in South Africa of the connectedness of their struggle to that of Black people in Afrika and other parts of the world.

For daring to openly celebrate the defeat of Portuguese invasion in Mozambique- the South African settler-colonial regime arrested Black Consciousness leaders such as Muntu Myeza, Zithulele Cindi, Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, Nchaupe Aubrey Mokoape, Saths Cooper, Nkwenkwe Nkomo, Kabarone ‘KK” Sedibe, Striny Moodley ( MHSRIP) and yes, believe it or not, Mosioua ‘Terror’ Lekota.

At the time of their arrest, many of them were in their twenties and were sentenced to long prison terms in the dungeon named Robben Island by the European invaders.

Upon taking power, Machel’s government instituted far-reaching social changes in the areas of economic ownership, health care and education. And because he was a pan afrikanist in word and in deed, Machel also used his government to provide military and other forms of support to the liberation armies of Black people in the neighbouring settler states of Rhodesia and South Africa.

In reaction to Machel’s support for revolutionary movements in these states, the racist-settler-minority regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa combined their resources to create and bolster a ruthless-deadly-anti-Black-counter-revolution force called RENAMO.

RENAMO went on a vicious campaign to undo all the social changes that had been introduced by the FRELIMO government. Part of REMANO’s campaign included bombing critical road infrastructure, hospitals, schools and even killing ordinary Black people in Mozambique.

This counter-revolutionary programme was carried out with the full knowledge and support of people like P.W Botha, Pik Botha, Magnus Malan, Constand Viljoen ( all of whom have never been held accountable for the atrocities they committed against thousands of Black in South Africa and other parts of Afrika).

Remember, with similar consequences for Black people in Angola, the same generals of the apartheid regime gave similar support to another anti-Black-counter-revolutionary project called UNITA ( under Jonas Savimbi).

At this stage, it became increasingly clear that, the very existence of the Black FRELIMO government, under Machel, posed a serious threat to the persistence and sustainability of the project of white-western imperialism in Afrika, and in particularly, in Southern Africa.

On October 19, 1986, on his way back from an international meeting in Zambia, Machel’s Russian-made Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft crashed in the Lebombo Mountains, near Mbuzini, Mpumalanga province. There were over 30 people on board and only 9 survived. Machel and 24 others died, this includes some of his ministers and civil servants.

There are many theories to his death. I align myself with the theory that says he was killed by a combination of agents of apartheid South Africa’s intelligence, working with some puppet Afrikan leaders and foreign intelligencies.

The growing stature and influence of Machel in the region and his close ties to communist Russia, Cuba and Warriors like Thomas Sankara, was a geo-political nightmare for the British and AmeriKKKan led project of western imperialism in Afrika- so the permanent elimination of Machel was of great benefit to western imperialism.

Besides they had already assassinated many Afrikan revolutionaries, who like him were not prepared to kneel at the feet of the white man. These are Afrikan revolutionaries like Patrice Lumumba, Amilca Cabral and his own FRELIMO comrade, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane.

It is also important to note that, 13 days before Machel’s assassination, soldiers of the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) were injured by land mines near the very spot where his plane later crushed. In reaction, the chief of SADF , general Magnus Malan issued a direct threat to Machel and indicated there will be consequences for this.

This year 19 October, marked the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of this great Warrior of our race. This interestingly coincides with the 41st anniversary of the banning of 17 Black Consciousness organisations in South Africa, by the illegitimate-white settler-colonial regime of BJ Vorster in October,1977 (a month after the same regime had brutally murdered the BCM's principal leader, uBab'uBantu Biko).

The decision to ban these BC organisations was carried out by the same apartheid minister of (in) justice, Jimmy Kruger who 3 years earlier, in 1974, administered the apartheid state's ban of the BCM’s VIVA FRELIMO rallies.This is how important and connected Samora Machel and the Black people of Mozambique are to the Black people of South Africa.

At a recent commemoration of Machel's assassination, a spokesperson of the government of Mozambique indicated that the investigation into Machel's murder is on-going. Whatever happens, the truth about who killed this great Warrior of our race, must be uncovered, no matter how long it takes.

It is a pity that la nja uPik Botha died before he and the other remaining generals of the bloodthirsty-anti-Black apartheid machinery could tell us who actually killed Machel.Samora Machel lived and died for all Black people, regardless of where they may be in the world.

For this reason, the Black world must ensure that his name is never forgotten. Where possible, we should name our children and grandchildren after him and others like him.

Most importantly, Machel’s life and example will assume even greater meaning if we internalise his immortal wisdom when he said “Your life continues in those who continue the revolution.” Samora Machel lives!

#BlackPowerOrDeath

#SamoraMachelLives

Camagu!

[thiscouldbetriggering]

Black Panther (2018 film, rated PG-13)

SOOOO I got to see this movie early because I work at a movie theater.  It was overall AMAZING and safe for most of the major triggers, but there are a few things worth a head’s up.

Note: To see the most recent version of this post, click here.  Vague Spoilers ahead.

Known Triggers*:

Death of a Parent: if you’re familiar with the MCU, you know the current Black Panther’s father was killed in a previous movie.  The relationship between him and his father and his grief at his father’s death is mentioned multiple times throughout the movie, but it’s relatively mild in nature.  

There is also another character who lost his father during childhood, and we see flashbacks of the event.  The character was clearly very traumatized by the incident.  

Finally, there’s a (perceived) death of an (adult) child, and the character’s family and friends being very upset about it before the reveal.

Racism: As you might expect, there is discussion of racial topics and the history of white supremacy and colonialism, although this upsetting issue is juxtaposed with incredible Black Power imagery and is ultimately extremely optimistic and uplifting.  (Warning, a white character also repeatedly refers to the black community by a racist term, ‘savages’).

Abandonment of a Child

Cultural Body Modification: A character has a very large body modification (a gage, I guess?) in his mouth, the visual of which could unintentionally bother people (despite not intending to be graphic in its cultural context).  He has fairly little screentime but I made sure to look away whenever he was in the shot. [ETA: an anon informed me this is actually called a ‘lip plate’.  Thanks anon!]

Self-Harm (Self-Mutilation) /Dermatosiophobia/Trypophobia/Scarification: A character has a ‘kill count’ etched into his skin, representing how many people he’s murdered.  We first see it on his arm, then (vague spoilers) we see that it actually extends more onto his chest.  The scars form this sort of roundish raised bumps that, while not gory, made me uncomfortable to look at.  Just something to be aware of.

Car Accidents: There are cars driving recklessly, and at least one explosion.  There are also plane ‘crashes’ (one crash with no injuries, and a few small aircraft are shot down).

Violence Against Women: There is a scene in which a male character briefly chokes a female character (thanks for reminding me of this @jiemba).  Domestic Violence isn’t a theme or anything, but the visual could be triggering nonetheless.

Got something to add?  Have a suggestion for future content? As always, stay safe! <3