#also exploring how Jupe’s family was affected by both tragedies sounds interesting

[limeinaltime]

Some doodles for the hyopthetical Nope sequel/side story because I won't be talking about it a lot. I do not kill my cringe, I kill the part of me that cringes.

Kind of reworked Black Spade and renamed her Blackjack, because that's a more fitting name (and way more fun to say). She's the scariest thing in the skies of Southern Cali, but there is one singular person who has gone unscathed so far just because she knows how to not set Blackjack off, and everyone else who does kind of has it coming.

Media also seeks out the families of the victims or instigators of tragedies without any real sympathy or respect for what they're going through, and the Star Lasso Experience is one hell of a tragedy. Jupe definitely has family and is a pretty well-known child star thanks to the Gordy incident, so I'm sure he and the rest of the Park family have been harassed over the years for more about the story and their relationship with the child star himself.

Maya is Jupe's distant hypothetical cousin, a recluse who lives out in the country, running a small farm business and generally living a simple life compared to the attention and fame her cousin chased. She doesn't understand why Jupe suddenly starts contacting her about selling her horses (Maya also works with a few and learned to ride as a kid) until after the new of what went down in Agua Dulce reaches the mainstream news and the media starts asking her about her relationship with her cousin. Which is awkward, since the two were never close to begin with and Maya hasn't seen him ever since Jupe made it big as a kid. She only knows about him, and eventually his wife and kids, through the TV. While frustrated upon piecing together what Jupe was attempting to do, she is still upset, mostly at the fact that she'll never get to know her famous cousin for real and that she took any chance of doing that for granted. It's not a big void in her chest, but it still exists anyway.

Blackjack isn't a newcomer to the farmland; she's been there for a while and figured out that the presence of these humans brings more food so she leaves the farm itself alone. While Maya's parents got to ambitious with business and tried to make Blackjack into an attraction, Maya just does her job and doesn't look at the sky when there's a weird cloud hovering overhead, which is what's ultimately saving her from suffering the same fate as her parents. The two have a symbiotic relationship, in a way, and while Maya thinks about how cool it would be from time to time, she's always known that Blackjack can't be tamed or controlled. The news of the Star Lasso Experience only hammers that in further.

Being an older UAP, Blackjack's not as afraid of humans, especially Maya, so she'll sometimes lose her cloud disguise and come down to observe whatever's happening at the ranch or eat whatever network is stupid enough to ignore the warnings Maya's set up to keep Blackjack from eating people. Maya doesn't look at her, but has gotten used to having a giant black disk big enough to eat her house hovering over her from time to time. The isolation Maya lives in can get a bit lonely, so it's nice to have company every once in a while, even if that company could easily make her suffer the same fate as her cousin and parents.

There really isn't much to say about this AU. There could also be some commentary on how far media will go to get the story, on things like true crime podcasts being disrespectful towards families trying to move on from the tragedies... there's no real story, but I think it fits with the themes this movie's set up. I'm also going to slap in that Maya is the provider of the horse feed Haywood Ranch uses and no one ever finds out that she's related to Jupe until later just because I think it's funny.