#like the majority of media residing in the horror genre

[chirpsythismorning]

Antis: Stranger Things is a MONSTER show. There’s nothing deeper going on. That’s all there is to it.

The show: It’s forced conforming. Thats what’s killing the kids. That’s the real monster.

[vampyrluver]

About Me!

Hi! I am writing this to get rid of my carrd and have this replace it as a pinned post is much easier to update than a carrd site.

My name is Cal or Vampi <3

24 / any pronouns / Black / Aquarius sun, Libra moon, Gemini rising (I know...triple air sign...)

Resident Vampire lover, also aspiring academic. But im actually quite lazy and bad at reading. Currently Majoring in Anthropology with a Minor in Mythology and folklore, with my main focus being supernatural folklore and African folklore. I am in my last year of Undergrad and will probably be going to grad school for archiving, or museum studies or both.

Please talk to me about anthropology, folklore, mythology, vampires, supernatural beings, or anything related to humanities and social sciences. I love learning and most importantly i love yapping.

Outside of academics, heres a list of things i am insane about

Music:

Kpop (nct, onlyoneof, nmixx, le sserafim, gidle, seventeen, shinee etc), Goth music (with an emphasis on dark cabaret), hyperpop, cringe fansongs, alt rock, vkei, jrock in general, jpop, ethiopian rock music, ethiopian rap, alternative folk music, and metal.

Feel free to give music recs I am very open to just about any genre yes that includes country and rap! I love music so much <33333

Thangs:

vampires (duh), clowns, uncanny valley, dolls, lolita fashion, horror/thriller books/shows/movies (mostly thriller, am baby when it comes 2 horror), the splatoon franchise, dc comics, various video games, dating sims, gacha games, shigaraki tomura of my hero academia and probably more if you just scroll thru my blog!

Overall, i just like things that spark joy, I collect clowns, anime figures, kpop albums, vampire books/media, kpop photocards, CDs and i am starting a porcelain doll collection (i have 2 so far). Feel free to ask about any of my collections! My proudest collection is my vampire book collection, as i am nearing 100 books!! with a few VHS's and other various items scattered in the collection)

I also soon will amass a giant splatoon frye merch collection. I love my lil freak squid thing so much. Ill show that when it comes in!

I love collecting, I love learning and I love Yapping.

Hopefully this was through enough!

[saipng]

follow up poll to my horror tolerance level poll (you can put in the tags your tolerance level + how often you actually consume horror!)

*horror media refers to horror movies, shows, video games, tabletop games, books, comics, stories of any kind (think creepypasta, r/nosleep, scp foundation, etc.), analogue horror content, youtube videos, anime, manga, and anything else that can be viably constituted as horror-adjacent. it doesn’t include reading movie synapses on wikipedia, i’m afraid

**popular in this case refers to major releases or things that have entered popular culture - think movies like the conjuring or halloween or games like resident evil or five nights at freddy’s

***even if it’s genre dependent (i.e. ‘i can’t stand gore but i love psychological horror!’) then just vote for how much you consume of your favorite genre

[an-aussie-button-masher]

2023 Gaming Wrap-Up

   Welcome back to what is apparently a yearly tradition on this blog: the Gaming Wrap-Up! As we drag ourselves to the end of 2023, it’s always good to take a look back at the last 12 months and try to figure out just what was going on there. And well, this year…kinda sucked. It had a lot going on - it was stressful and exhausting at best for so many of us, but there’s always a bit of good within the bad (for example, on a more personal note, this was the year where I actually got a few of my articles purchased by publishers! Now I can, by definition, call myself a professional writer! Go me!), and video games are always an excellent escape from reality.   2023 had loads of great game releases, including some highly-anticipated sequels and remakes, while the business side of the gaming world had a fair few blunders and foot-shooting (Unity, anyone?). Before the end of the year, let’s all take a moment to remember all the highlights of the gaming world of 2023 - enjoy!

JANUARY-MARCH    Let’s get started with a bit of the old and a bit of the new - a pair of high-quality remakes of some classic survival horror games, Dead Space and Resident Evil 4, set a new bar for gaming remakes, with RE4 even being nominated for GOTY! Meanwhile, Pizza Tower took the indie genre by storm with its deranged animations and surprisingly catchy music, and Hi-Fi Rush ambushed us with a sneaky release and some toe-tapping rhythmic combat.   Fans of classic Nintendo games had a bit of a sad start to the year however, with the announcement that Nintendo would be completely shutting down all online services for the 3DS and Wii U, basically pulling the life support plug on the two platforms for good. Additionally, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) continues its streak of rough years; with X-Box, Sony and Nintendo all foregoing attendance, this years’ E3 was announced to be cancelled. With a rise in developers and publishers preferring digital and social media announcements over live shows thanks to the impact of COVID, could this be signalling the end of live gaming conventions like E3?

APRIL-JUNE    Moving on, 2023 also saw the release of some particularly exciting sequels - Dead Island 2 finally released after 9 years in development hell while The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom blew its GOTY-winning predecessor out of the water. Street Fighter 6 brought in Metro City veterans and newcomers alike, and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor continued the tale of Cal Kestis in his battle against the Empire in a galaxy far, far away.   From the small screen to the big screen, The Super Mario Bros. Movie joined the small-but-growing ranks of video game movie adaptations that are actually good, thanks to staying true to the games’ actual identity instead of trying to turn it into something else like so many other game-to-film adaptations. E3’s cancellation also wasn’t enough to stop the Summer Games Fest from being held, featuring a mix of live and digital shows and announcements. Also, this year was quite the mixed bag for game publishing companies - Embracer Group, a publisher for major development teams such as Gearbox Entertainment and Crystal Dynamics, went under some massive structural changes due to a major deal falling through, and was just one of many publishers that underwent huge changes in 2023.

JULY-SEPTEMBER    The latter half of the year didn’t see quite as many major game releases, but it was certainly a case of quality over quantity - Baldur’s Gate 3, an absolute narrative feat, practically overtook the entire second half of the year for both those familiar with the series or D&D and players entering the Forgotten Realms for the first time. Oh, and Starfield was released too.   Meanwhile, a cornerstone of video game voice acting, Charles Martinet, retired from voicing the Mario bros. Having provided the iconic voices of Mario, Luigi, Wario and Waluigi since 1994, Charles still works as a global ambassador for Nintendo in conventions across the world, while the superstar voice role would be taken over by Kevin Afghani later in the year.   Back in the business side of the gaming world, Unity - the group behind one of the most prominent game development engines in the industry - completely shot themselves in the foot this year as they announced an incredibly oppressive retroactive licensing fee to begin next year. This new fee would mean that every single developer that had ever used their engine would need to pay Unity for every copy of their game that has ever sold, even from before the fee took effect. Naturally, everyone disliked this, especially within the indie game community. The sheer amount of backlash caused Unity to rework the agreement to be “less aggressive”, but their reputation is beyond saving now.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER    2023 looks to be closing off with a bang - in yet another major simultaneous release, October 20th saw Spider-Man 2 expand the urban playground of everyone’s favourite web-slinging duo while Super Mario Bros. Wonder brought Nintendo’s flagship franchise in a fresh new direction. Meanwhile, another highly anticipated sequel, Alan Wake II, spun a terrifying new narrative just in time for Hallowe’en.   Of course, the biggest talking point for the end of the year was the Game Awards! Baldur’s Gate 3 beat out some incredibly tough competition for Game of the Year and swept the rest of the awards alongside Alan Wake II; a handful of exciting new games were announced, including a sequel to the classic World of Goo and a vampire-hunting action adventure starring Marvel’s Blade; and we learned that the Call of Duty developers can’t take a joke. However, the biggest announcement arrived just before the awards, bringing the entire gaming community together for one of the most anticipated sequels in video game history (besides Half-Life 3): Grand Theft Auto VI. Set for a 2025 release, 12 years after its predecessor, GTA6 returns to the sunburnt beaches of Vice City, introducing a modern Bonnie & Clyde as its’ pair of playable protagonists Lucia and Jason. 

LOOKING FORWARD    So, aside from the GTA fans that are probably cryogenically freezing themselves until 2025, what are your plans for next year now that 2023 is nearly over? There’s plenty of other games to look forward to - Star Wars and Marvel fans will be getting another exciting set of games with Star Wars Outlaws putting players in the shoes of the galaxy’s next big name in the galactic underworld, while Wolverine will be hacking and slashing his way through the neon-lit Madripoor. Taking our hands off the controller for a moment, a handful of other games will be taking their turn on the silver screen with a promising-looking Fallout streaming series and a somewhat more sketchy-looking Borderlands film. Can’t be any worse than the Halo series, right…right?

   I mentioned in last years’ wrap-up that 2023’s E3 is hopefully back on track, which has aged a bit poorly; well, there’s no need to worry about that this time as next year’s E3 has already been cancelled. At least that means saving on tickets, but is the age of big gaming conventions coming to a close? Time will tell, especially depending on if Summer Games Fest is still in the works. Maybe things are switching to a more digital-based platform for game announcements - as someone not fond of crowds, that suits me just fine.

   But, hey, that’s not until next year. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this look back at the gaming world of 2023, and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2024!   Happy holidays!

An Aussie Button-Masher

[omegathetaone]

Welcome to the Omega System ｡･:*˚:✧｡

Hey! We're the Omega System (also known as ΩΘ1/Omega or Theta in short), and we are a self diagnosed traumagenic system. The full DNI list will be written below, however note that we are expressly anti-endo/tulpa as they make us very uncomfortable! Below you will find our DNI list, frequent fronters, sign offs, and more! Please, please give it a read before interacting with us! Especially the DNI list, if nothing else!

This post is subject to updates at any time, so make sure to check here to keep yourself up to date! (Long Post under the cut <3)

The Basics & BYF

We use we/us and I/me interchangeably We are autistic, a minor, and bodily a trans man We are a self diagnosed osdd/did system but we can't tell which kind of system we are even after extensive research (we are leaning towards OSDD-1b)

We are a fictive heavy system We are a masc-identity heavy system The majority of our system is queer

We collectively go by Omega or Theta online. Outside of that we use the body's name (we will not be sharing it here) We collectively use He/It pronouns, so if you don't know who's fronting or are referring to us in general just use those pronouns

We block very liberally

We will delete posts as we so choose. One day you might see it, the next it could be gone. Sorry if this causes any confusion!

We struggle with self-acceptance at times to please be patient with us. We're doing our best to get out of that mindset but it's not an easy process

Don't be afraid to let us know if someone is problematic! If we reblog from someone unknowingly then letting us know would be greatly appreciated so we can block them and correct our mistake!

Boundaries

We prefer to interact with people who are at least 16, so if you are younger than that you will be on thin ice with us unless if we're mutuals.

General rule, please don't refer to us as "plural" or to our headmates as "parts". We don't feel comfortable with these terms.

We are open to most questions about being a system, how our system works, or anything else that might be on your mind! We love answering questions (though don't expect this from other systems online- they don't have to share anything if they don't want to).

Our DMs are open unless stated otherwise. If another system needs someone to talk to or is looking for a system friend, then you can come to us! Keep in mind though- we will stop communication and/or block you if we feel super uncomfortable!

We aren't a roleplay account. Please don't try to roleplay with us unless if it's a fandom thing we agreed to and not "oh you have a fictive of x character!", because it makes us uncomfortable.

Interests

Some Media/Shows/Movies that we really enjoy!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (+ TBB)

Heartstopper

Transformers

Demon Slayer, Naruto, + many more

Detroit: Become Human

Resident Evil (Video Games, not movies)

Subnautica

Destiny (Video Games, both 1 and 2)

Arcane (The Show)

Hades

Red Vs. Blue

Some more obscure ones are...

Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You

In Sound Mind (Video Game)

Firewatch

Some of my other interests include...

The Horror Genre

Cryptids, SCPs, Analogue Horror, and other things of that nature

Music + Composition

Sound Design

Art

Chemistry

History

Geography

Marine Biology

Marching Band (Marching music my beloved)

Learning new instruments (I'm up to 5 now I think)

Writing (I blame fandoms for this)

Of course some of these can vary depending on who's fronting but they are generally pretty consistent? For the most part anyway.

Favorite current songs...

Mayday mayday! by Biometrix

Downfall by NEONI

Outlaw by NEONI

Wonderland by NEONI

Big Guns by NEONI (can you tell we like Neoni?)

E.T. cover by Rain Paris

Beautiful is Boring by BONES UK

THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND by BAD OMENS

Underground by Unlike Pluto and 8 Graves

There's more, but the list would be going on forever lol

DNI

You are free to interact if you aren't anywhere on the list below (and if you don't break any boundaries of ours). That being said, DNI if you are...

endo/tulpa or a supporter

transphobe/homophobe/bigot

fakeclaimer

anti-mogai

anti-alterhuman

anti-neo/xenopronouns and genders

transid/transage/transrace

gendercritical

anti-informed self dx

zoophile/MAP/pedophile/proship etc.

anti-semetic

white supremasists/nazis

syscourse

racists of any kind

pro-life/anti-abortion

Anti-Paraphilia recovery

terf/swerf/radqueer/radfem, etc.

Other things to note here:

If you participate in cringe culture, or harass/call other people 'cringe' for doing what they like, I don't want to see you on my blog.

I will block blank blogs because of tumblr bots, so if you don't want that to be you then please make your blog look HUMAN and not a part of that mess.

I do not want to interact with HP fans/stans. Based on the rest of my DNI, the reason should be obvious. If not, just leave, y'all make me uncomfortable.

If you think that all systems have to sign off on every message and/or constantly let you know who's fronting, realize that just...isn't true. We like signing off a lot of posts because that's how we roll, but that doesn't mean other systems have to give you that window into themselves. Hell- we don't have to either if we aren't feeling it.

Once again, don't bring syscourse here. It makes us very, very uncomfortable.

Frequent Fronters

Max (He/It) - Host

Desmond (He/Him) - Co-host

Charlie (He/Him) - Sexual Protector (Kind of? He's our resident romance king)

The Omega System Member Sign-Off Legend

This isn't everyone, but it's the main ones who like speaking on tumblr and social media in general (for the most part)

✧ 🌌 - System tag

✧ 💤 - Max

✧ 💼 - Desmond

✧ 💌 - Charlie

✧ 💕 - Charlie (aka Char)

✧ 📜 - Alexandre (Aka Alex)

✧ 🩸 - Aurelius (aka AZ)

✧ 🎧 - Axel

✧ 🪀 - Chris

✧ 🔪 - Felix

✧ 🌗 - Domino

✧ 🐻 - Harley

✧ 🔥 - Kyo

✧ 🌠 - Sam

✧ 👑 - King

✧ 💣 - Fuse

✧ 🦋 - Kode (Pronounced Cody)

✧ 🐕 - Nick

✧ 🌹 - Nines

✧ 🐏 - Sebastian (aka Seb or Sebs)

✧ 🕷 - Weaver

✧ 🕸 - Xeno

✧ ✈ - Aileron

✧ 🖤 - Vox

✧ 🌧 - Apollo

✧ 💿 - Taz

✧ 🌙 - Soren

✧ 👻 - Talon

✧ 🧊 - Melvin (aka Mel)

✧ 🕊 - Marcel

✧ 🎵 - Liam

✧ 🎮 - Mustard

✧ 🌳 - Aspen

✧ 🌑 - Anakin

Userboxes

(from @/sysboxes)

(from @/sysboxes

(from @/sysboxes)

[skepticalkoi-catastrophe]

❝ ❤ 𝐿𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒦𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒶 🔪 ❞

Slasher oc x BlackFem!oc

⇸The following SMAU fanfic is inspired by the movie Scream, the 2015 MTV Scream TV series and fanficThe Final Girl by @ghoularaki . Comments, Reblogs, and Shares are heavily appreciated. Please enjoy ~ ♥︎

⇸ Paring - Slasher oc [@BUNII_ on Twitter] x Reader!oc

⇸ ⚠️ Warning/Genre ⚠️ Horror, slight comedy, interracial couple, slightly angst, fluff, social media au, senior high school/slasher au, character deaths ( major & minor), blood, detailed gore, eventual smut, explicit sexual themes, slow burn, strangers to friends au, friends to lovers au, childhood friends to lovers au.

⇸ Quick Sum up: ❝A rise in missing persons reports render a small town afraid and helpless. But when Ashe, the towns goody two shoes, gets thrown in the middle of copycat killing spree, an unknown contact comes to protect her from the shadows.❞

Next chapter  ➽ 

↳ Rose's Thorns ↲

Silverkeep Junior High are where his memories lay to waste. As a small fragile child from a broken home to which the warm-hearted granted amnesty, others enacted cruelties and prejudice. Despite that, she saw him as himself. With her hand outstretched she befriended him taking in all his good, his bad, and his ugly truths. His greatest light in his darkest of the dark.

Hardly a day goes by he doesn't revel in how she came to him. How she mended him, gave him a breath of life he felt he wasn't deserving of. Yet he'd done injustice to her by letting his fogged judgment aid his desperation for normalcy. His lackluster attempts at acceptance were his consequence, why he left without a goodbye. Why he watched from a distance as she crumbled to the ground of her front porch, his letter of apology, an engraved ring, and a stuffed teddy bear in her arms.

Her words rattled in his head like dice.

"You don't have to be scared anymore."

Stranger splashed water on his face, his dark uncombed hair held back with a hair tie. His rings resting on the porcelain sink while he rinses his bloody hands and prosthetic eye. Another consequence he suffered. Exiting the steamy bathroom, he sends a good morning text to Babydoll. Knowing her she's probably fast asleep.

His crime board is littered with haphazard notes and red strings crisscrossing over printed photos, articles, and newspaper clippings. Earl grey swirls in his mug as he turns on the news. Reports about forty previous kills were circulating warning residents in neighboring towns to be on watch as mandatory curfews are indefinite.

He swallowed his tea in frustration. In his mirror he stood shirtless, his black sweatpants hung at his hips and v-line. The band of his briefs read Calvin Klein. Damning as it may, his inner personal recollections forced out the beast he's become. Markings from the scolding water prove it without a doubt, Lord knows his mother would've been devastated to see him chart this path. God rest her soul.

Fossicking through his dresser he finds a shirt, a loud clink hits the floorboards below. It was a ring threatening to roll elsewhere. He quickly stomps it, kneeling to retrieve the stainless steel band. Her birth date along with the word forevermore engraved in Gothic Calligraphy.

His notification chimes as he sees Baby Doll's reply. Her choice of words earned him a placid smile slightly showing his teeth.

The stranger slips it on his right ring finger laying a kiss against it.

"In due time..."

Winding roads turned to dirt as Stranger curved beaten paths so as not to arouse suspicion from local law enforcement.

What he was doing was crazy. He knew it was a trap, he knew this was exactly what that psycho wanted but if it ment getting one step closer to saving Babydoll then he was willing to take that chance.

Stranger's jet-black Yamaha motorcycle screeches to a halt. He pops the kickstand, swinging his leg over while removing his helmet. Decrepit suburban homes hauntingly surround him, their once lively paint jobs now faded with time. The address sending chills down his spine as he stood on the brown patches of what was grass and fallen autumn leaves. 214 Hawthorne Boulevard.

He enters through the cobweb covered back window, the front door conveniently boarded up from inside. Peeling egg shell white paint resembled crepey skin of the elderly. Smashing it open with a backyard stone he vaults inside.

Stranger stalked around the hollowed interior of the first floor. To his left the living room stood motionless. Plastic covered furniture sank into the dusty floorboards. He swivels his head facing the bathroom.

Shining his light, mold sprouting on the tub walls and behind the toilet. 'up to your right' spell out on the mirror in grime.

Stranger's nerves rattled as he kept on. Towards the staircase each cautious step he took creaked underneath his weight. One step gave out, him seizing hold of the banister at that very moment.

Regaining balance he pulls his foot from the hole giving a look like thunder.

He swept the rooms, any and all lacking the life that once resided. That life an eerie ghost of who he once was.

His blood boiled getting closer until his combat boot made a small splash in a trail of crimson liquid.

It pooled, leading to a room off to the right.

Stranger's heart sank deeply, gripping the handle of his knife tightly when his posture stiffens. The door opens wide, his head stuttered like TV static. Inside there layed a dress familiar of 8th-grade prom dripping blood on the twin mattress. Candles lit aflame just at the moment he locked eyes with stuffed animals mutilated about alongside a cassette tape marked 'Track one'.

Blood-splattered white roses sat on a chair next to another note. He picked it up as his phone rang.

"I see you take a liking to my handy work. Who would've known kitten had such beautiful taste."

"You've got some nerve..." Stranger growled. "Whatever you're planning I won't stop till you're dead."

They smirks as they spoke. "I know. That's why I'm giving you clues on how to do that. And to save kitten of course."

Stranger picks up the bouquet and sees a note tucked away in the roses.

Perhaps another riddle.

"See that tape I left behind for you? It's your clue but I doubt you have a cassette player huh? I wonder who does."

"And the riddle? I didn't come all this way for nothing." Stranger jumps down their throat shoving the tape and note in his hoodie pocket. "Why lead me here then?"

They pause. "Look around. This was your childhood home wasn't it? Or it was hers at least. Have you forgotten?"

He froze, clasping his hand over his head. It goes without saying he knew. He knew he'd step into an empty shell of what once was his happy place. He'd stare at the glow in the dark spangled ceiling of her room, dance in the kitchen to her mother's old vinyls, even sitting on the porch with her during sunsets. Stranger huffed. What does it matter?

"I take it you haven't." Their tongue coated in mischief. "Use these clues to wash the blood off your hands, Cherry. Red isn't your color."

The call ends, Stranger dropping his hands to his sides. Taking the dress he flipped it over to see what's on the other side. A Printed flyer for a Halloween party.

'Babydoll's school' he thought to himself.

The flimsy paper was shoved in his pocket as he walked downstairs, avoiding the hole he left on the way up. Out the back door he walked to his motorcycle, frustration boiling with him.

A loud ping sounded from his phone. He sighs putting it in the phone mount swiping to answer.

"Babydoll this isn't a great time I-"

"Stranger please...come over. We need to talk." She stammered.

Revving the engine he pulls off. "I'm on my way."

Stranger cuts the headlights of his motorcycle parking it out of sight. Jogging towards Babydoll's house, the soles of his boots make brisk contact with the tree trunk pulling him upward.

Midnight on the dot he sat atop her roof tapping her skylight. Without street lamps, their little corner of Cali would be pitch black. The creaking of the glass catches his ear. Upon its opening Babydoll rubs her tired eyes, her lips in a cushioned pout. Her cheeks are glossy as she looks up.

"May I come in lovey?" Stranger's heart wretched, his hood obscuring his face waiting for her invitation.

Babydoll sniffles, bowing her head and stepping back clutching her midsection.

Her current state and his guilt squeezed his throat, choking him. He almost wanted to cry himself.

Swinging his legs over the windowsill drops in and removes his combat boots. Towering over her even still without the extra height Stranger placed his leather trench coat on the back of her desk chair tucking his hunter's knife away. LED lights line the ceiling on the lowest setting basking the room in muted blue. He drags along Babydoll's bedside trashcan as he sat upon her bed. More than enough snotty tissues crumpled inside it.

Her mattress dipped as Stranger handed her tissues from his back pocket. Babydoll lays down shifting so her head rests at the foot of the bed facing Stranger's lap. Feebly wiping her face her hair tucked away in a silken scarf and wearing an oversized hooded flannel.

Hesitant she whimpers. "I'm sorry you have to be here."

"I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner." Stranger bites his tongue. "Stop apologizing. You did nothing wrong."

Stranger's hands are folded in his lap, and leaning forward, his knee bounces a bit. This was the pain he hated seeing her in. The pain that kept him on guard, vigilant.

"If you're too afraid to sleep I'll stand guard. I know that's why you wanted me here."

"I'm fine Stranger you don't have to." Babydoll objects sitting up.

"Keep telling yourself that. You don't have to be strong for me or anyone. You're hurting...just let me do this. Just let me stay."

Babydoll rolls her eyes blinking away more tears. He was outright stubborn, and wouldn't budge much like a ghost she knew in passing. She nods pointing him to her mini-fridge.

"Could you get me a bottle of water?"

Tag list- @ebonyslasher @kuromi-kouhai-blog @peachjaem00 @nastyatticman @itzgabz22 @lxstfuleclipse @strxwberry-milku @iloveslasher @luna-ashe @house-of-elves

If you'd like to be added to the tag list, please comment below or dm me. I hope you enjoy ~

[elle-thinks]

Candyman Commentary - Fear of Black Poverty

I know I’m late to the game, but I recently finished watching Candyman. I viewed both the 1992 and the 2021 versions back-to-back. I want to share my thoughts on each film because they were extremely different.

1992

Take yourself back in time to the early nineties. People were wearing jorts with fanny packs… What a time to be alive. Anyways, amongst a slew of bad decisions, was Candyman, a movie that greatly exaggerated fears of low-income, Black communities. What most interesting about the film is that the directors and producers were trying to be progressive by having Black representation in the horror genre. This is evidenced in the film, as exposition on the projects, specifically Cabrini Green, is info-dumped to provide historical context and an oh-so-scary back story.

Yet, while attempting to solidify the Black presence in horror media, those who made the film purposely perpetuated stereotypes and false narratives to further the “fear” aspects. For example, a video/doc of the film’s production shows producers explicitly stating that Cabrini Green didn’t look destitute enough, so they brought in more trash to make the projects look slummy. If you think about it, how does seeing trash add scare factor? It does if what’s to fear is Black livelihood and Black environments. The film heavily relies on Cabrini Green as a character itself. In doing so, it draws on the fears of White, wealthier audiences caused by Black crime and other stereotypes of Black communities. This leaves POC viewers, like me, questioning what hyperreal world the plot of the movie is taking place in and why it was considered scary.

Additionally, Candyman himself had several socially charged aspects to him. For example, his slavery related origin story and the dynamic of a Black man chasing after a White woman prompted emotions and imagery during my viewer that brought me out of the film. In some ways the movie was very socially unacceptable, even for the early nineties. My mind called back to Emmet Till and similar themes in King Kong. I presume much of this was ignored though, seeing as how the strong, Black presence of actor Tony Todd was enough in terms of social achievement for some.

For these reasons, the movie did not scare me. It also made me question how the residents of Cabrini Green, which is a very real place, felt about such representations of their community. Additionally, Clive Barker’s original story for Candyman took place in the UK and had a major emphasis on class. It wasn’t until the film was conceptualized that race was inserted as a prominent plot device.

2021

I have less to say about this film because it was very straight forward. It was obvious that its purpose was to subvert practically all the defamatory and stereotypical misfires that its spiritual ancestor displayed. It directly supported Black creativity, empowerment, and history. Its reception may have been significantly different if it was released on it’s original timeline in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

This movie had a greater discussion about gentrification and continuous violence against Black people. It did a great job of showcasing Black family and wealth, despite most people not associating the two. It also sparked an interesting conversation around Black artistry and how it can go beyond focusing solely on Black trauma. Instead of having most of the scare factor lie in Black poverty, the film chose a more relatable, loss of self/identity. Psychological thrillers are scary for everyone, regardless of one’s background or biases.

Final Thoughts

I believe the newer film succeeded where the original did not. However, neither film did much for me. I think I’m just not a fan of the Candyman story in general. It’s much more of a revenge movie than a horror for me. I also don’t enjoy summoning rituals being such a key plot device of a horror film, rather than the typical one and done and the plot progresses. Guess I’m just not into Candyman but, I’m sure he’s living in the hearts-and mirrors-of his biggest fans.

[theanonymousb]

My 20 Best Korean Drama

1.    Hi Bye Mama

Genre: Fantasy, Drama

Plot:

Cha Yu-Ri (Kim Tae Hee) has been a ghost since she died 5 years ago. She left behind her husband Jo Kang-Hwa and their child. To become a human again, Cha Yu-Ri carries out a reincarnation project for 49 days.

Meanwhile, Jo Kang-Hwa (Lee Kyu-Hyung) works as a chest surgeon. He was loving, but, after his wife died, his personality changed. After 5 years, his wife Cha Yu-Ri reappears in front of him.

2.    It’s Okay to Not be Okay

Genre: Romance, Drama

Plot:

A story about a man employed in a psychiatric ward and a woman, with an antisocial personality disorder, who is a popular writer of children’s books.

Moon Kang-Tae (Kim Soo-Hyun) works in a psychiatric ward. His job is to write down the patients’ conditions and deal with unexpected situations, like if patients fight or they run away. He only earns about 1.8 million won ($1,600 USD) a month. The woman (Seo Yea-Ji) is a popular writer of children’s literature, but she is extremely selfish, arrogant and rude.

3.    Angel’s last Mission

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Plot:

Kim Dan (Kim Myung-Soo) is an angel. He is also a troublemaker and also optimist. Lee Yeon-Seo (Shin Hye-Sun) is a ballerina who does not believe in lve.

Dan then receives a mission. If he succeeds, he can return to Heaven. His mission is to find true love for Yeon-Seo, but soon falls in love with her.

4.    Prison Playbook

Genre: Black Comedy

Plot:

Je-Hyeok (Park Hae-Soo) is the best relief pitcher in Korea. He will to the U.S and sign a contract with a major league. One night, he hears his sister screaming and sees a man running out of her apartment. Je-hyeok and the man get into a physical struggle with Je-Hyeok striking the man with a rock. Later, Je-Hyeok receives a 1 year prison sentence for using excessive force. Devastated, Je-Hyeok must adapt to life in prison.

Meanwhile, Joon-Ho (Jung Kyoung-Ho) is a friend of Je-Hyeok and works in the prisonas an officer. He waits for Je-Hyeok’s arrival.

5.    Chicago Typewriter

Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Friendship

Plot:

This drama follows the lives of two men and a woman through two eras; one during the 1930s Japanese occupation of Korea and the other in the 21st century. Han Se-Joo (Yoo Ah-In) who was a writer in his past life and a bestselling author in the present. But Se-Joo is depressed with writer’s block so he can’t write his next book.

Yu Jin-Oh (Go Kyung-Pyo) owned a bar in his previous life. In 2017 he is a talented ghostwriter who can bail Se-Joo out of his predicament, but the mysterious man has a condition for his services. Se-Joo may not be able to meet it.

Jun Seol (Im Soo Jung) was a sniper. Now she has extremely variety expertise. She is a former Olympian hopeful, a veterinarian and a book lover who runs her own delivery service. She oscillates between extreme fandom and an anti-fan of Se Joo.

The intricately woven story of these three characters unfolds to reveal strange mirroring connections between the time periods as well as possibilities for past lives to be redeemed or improves in the modern world.

6.    Uncontrollably Fond

Genre: Romance, Melodrama

Plot:

Sin Joon-Young (Kim Woo-Bin) and No Eul (Bae Suzy) were in love in ther younger days. But uncontrollable circumstances separated them and they went their separate ways. Joon-Young is now a superstar actor and singer, while No Eul became a producer-director of documentaries. When their path cross again years later. Joon-Young discovers that No Eul is now very different person than he remembered – materialisticand willing to do anything to get ahead.

7.    Penthouse: War In Life

Genre: Suspense, Life, Drama, Family, Mature

Plot:

The residents of Hera Palace, a luxury penthouse apartment with 100 floors, have many secrets and hidden ambitions. Sim Su-Ryeon (Lee Ji-Ah), who was born into wealth, is the queen of the penthouse apartment. Cheon Seo-Jin (Kim So-Yeon), the prima donna of the residence, does all she can to give everything to her daughter. Oh Yoon-Hee (Eugene) comes from a poor family background, but she strives to enter high society by becoming the queen of the penthouse, the pinnacle success in her eyes. A battle for wealth, power, and prestige at Seoul’s most coveted penthouse begins.

8.    Crash Landing On You

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Military, Political

Plot:

Yoon Se-Ri (Son Ye-Ji) is an heiress to a conglomerate in South Korea. One day, while paragliding, an accident caused by strong winds leads Yoon Se-Ri to make an emergency landing in North Korea.  There, she meets Ri Jeong-Hyeok (Hyun-Bin), who is a North Korean army officer. He tries to protect her and hide her. Soon, Ri Jeong-Hyeok falls in love with Yoon Se-RI.

9.    Itaewon Class

Genre: Romance, Business, Friendship, Life

Plot:

On the first day of attending his new high school, Park Sae-Ro-Yi (Park Seo-Joon) punches his classmate Jang Geun-Won, who was bullying another classmate. The bully is the son of CEO Jang Dae-Hee (Yoo Jae-Myung). The bully's father runs restaurant business Jagga where Park Sae-Ro-Yi’s own father works. CEO Jang Dae-Hee demands to Park Sae-Ro-Yi that he apologizes to his son, but Park Sae-Ro-Yi refuses. Because of his refusal, Park Sae-Ro-Yi gets expelled from school and his father gets fired from his job. Soon, an accident takes place. Park Sae-Ro-Yi’s father dies in a motorcycle accident caused by his ex-classmate Jang Geun-Won. Burning with anger, Park Sae-Ro-Yi viciously beats Jang Geun-Won. He is soon arrested and receives prison time for the violent assault. Park Sae-Ro-Yi decides to destroy the Jagga company and take revenge upon CEO Jang Dae-Hee and his son Jang Geun-Won. Once Park Sae-Ro-Yi is released from prison, he opens a restaurant in Itaewon, Seoul. Jo Yi-Seo (Kim Da-Mi), who is popular on social media, joins Park Sae-Ro-Yi’s restaurant and works there as a manger. She has feelings for Park Sae-Ro-Yi.

10. Hotel De Luna

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Horror, Fantasy

Plot:

Jang Man-Wol (IU) is the CEO of Hotel del Luna. The hotel is situated in downtown in Seoul and has a very old appearance. She made a big error many years ago and, because of this, she has been stuck at Hotel del Luna. She is beautiful, but she is fickle, suspicious and greedy.

Koo Chan-Sung (Yeo Jin-Goo) worked as the youngest assistant manager ever at a multinational hotel corporation. He is a sincere perfectionist. He looks level-headed, but he actually has a soft disposition. Due to an unexpected case, he begins to work as a manager at Hotel del Luna. The hotel's clientele consists of ghosts.

11. Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol

Genre: Romance, Comedy

Plot:

Goo Ra-Ra (Go Ara) is a pianist. She has bright personality. Something happened that caused her to become bankrupt. She doesn't have anything now and she is frustrated with her situation.

Sunwoo Joon (Lee Jae-Wook) doesn't care what other people think about him, but he has a warm heart. He is free spirited and doesn't have a specific dream or goal for his life. He makes ends meet by working part-time jobs.

Goo Ra-Ra and Sunwoo Joon meet at the small private piano academy LaLa Land in a country village.

12. 18 Again

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Youth, Drama, Fantasy

Plot:

Tells the story of a husband named Hong Dae Young (Lee Do-Hyun) who is on the verge of divorce but finds himself back in his body when he was at the prime of his life 18 years ago. He ends up changing his name to Go Woo Young when he becomes 18- years-old again. Meanwhile, his wife Jung Da Jung(Kim Ha-Neul) joins the workforce as an anchorwoman later on in life after raising their 18-year-old twins.

13. Goblin: The Lonely and Great God

Genre: Comedy, Romance, Fantasy

Plot:

In ancient times, Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) is an unbeatable general in wars, but the young King (Kim Min-Jae) is jealous of Kim Shin and kills him. Kim Shin becomes Dokkaebi (Goblin), possessing an immortal life. At first he thinks that he is blessed, but he realizes that he is cursed.

Closer to the present day, Kim Shin has waited 900 years for a human bride to end his immortal life. One night, he saves a dying pregnant woman (Park Hee-Von) who is destined to die. Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper (Lee Dong-Wook) is unable to find the dead pregnant woman. The woman gives birth to a baby girl named Ji Eun-Tak (later played by Kim Go-Eun). 9 years later, Ji Eun-Tak lives with her mother and is able to see ghosts. One night, her mother suddenly dies. On that night, she meets the Grim Reaper.

In the present day, Ji Eun-Tak is a high school student. She still sees ghosts and hears their whisper of “Dokkaebi’s bride.” She now lives with her aunt’s family, but she is mistreated by them. On her birthday, Ji Eun-Tak sits by the sea with a lighted birthday cake. At that time, Kim Shin suddenly appears in front of her. Kim Shin does not know why, but he can hear her voice and appears in front of her against his will. Coincidentally, Kim Shin lives with the Grim Reaper at the same house.

Now, Kim Shin appears in front of her against his will, whenever she turns off the lights. One day, Ji Eun-Tak tells him that he is Dokkaebi and she is his bride.

14. It’s Okay That’s Love

Genre: Friendship, Psychological, Comedy, Romance, Drama

Plot:

Jang Jae-Yeol (Jo In-Sung) is a mystery writer and radio DJ. He suffers from a obsession. Ji Hae-Soo (Gong Hyo-Jin) is going through her first year fellowship in psychiatry at a University Hospital. She chose psychiatry because she doesn't want to perform surgeries. After she meets Jang Jae-Yeol, her life goes through big changes.

15. Let’s Fight Ghost

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Fantasy, Action, Horror

Plot:

Hyun-Ji (Kim So-Hyun) studied for most her life before she died at the age of 19. She is now a ghost and has wandered around the world for several years. Hyun-Ji then meets exorcist Park Bong-Pal (TaecYeon). Hyun-Ji and Bong-Pal listens to various stories from ghosts and sends them to the otherworld.

16. Hospital Playlist

Genre: Friendship, Comedy, Romance, Life, Medical

Plot:

A drama depicting the stories of people going through their days that are seemingly ordinary but actually special, at the hospital, a place known as the microcosm of life - where someone is being born and someone's life meets their ending. The five doctors are longtime friends of 20 years who started their undergrad in 1999 in the same medical school, and now they are colleagues in the same hospital. The drama will also deal with a story of a band formed by the group of doctors.

17. Fated to Loved You

Genre: Business, Comedy, Romance,

Plot:

This drama is the story of an ordinary girl, Mi Yeong, (Jang Na-Ra)who has neither outstanding looks, a prestigious college degree, nor any other charming qualities, facing her whole life abruptly changing when love comes knocking at her door. While on vacation, she accidentally happens to spend one night with Lee Gun (Jang Hyuk) and even gets pregnant from that night. Because of this incident, her life will never be the same, and this fateful encounter brings love that transforms this not-so-special girl to an attractive, charming lady.

18. Go Back Couple

Genre: Comedy, Romance, Life, Fantasy

Plot:

Choi Ban-Do (Son Ho-Jun) and Ma Jin-Joo (Jang Na-Ra) are both 38-years-old and a married couple. Choi Ban-Do has been burdened with being the breadwinner and Ma Jin-Joo is a housewife with low self-esteem. Even though they loved each other when they married, they now hate each other. They both regret marrying at such a young age. The couple travel through time and find themselves as 20-year-old university students, when they met for the first time.

19. To The Beautiful You

Genre: School, Teen, Romantic, Comedy, Sports

Plot:

Kang Tae-Joon (Minho) is a gold medalist in the high jump, but he has been mired in a slump due to an injury. In order to help her idol, a girl named Koo Jae-Hee (Sulli) disguises herself as a boy and enrolls at the same all male high school.When Tae-Joon (Minho) is competiting at the World Junior Competition, Jae-Hee (Sulli) watches him on TV in America and becomes very touched.

Despite her friends telling her otherwise, Jae-Hee cuts her long hair by herself. She then flies to South Korea, with a plan to stay with Tae-Joon who is now injured. Jae-Hee disguises herself as a boy and enrolls at the all boys Genie Physical Education High School. On her first day at school, Jae-Hee goes up the stairs with her suitcase, but her suitcase bursts open and all her clothes fall out. A boy comes by and helps her pick up her stuff. Jae-Hee realizes that the boy helping her is none other than her idol Tae-Joon. In her excitement, Jae-Hee sits on her suitcase, which proceeds to slide down the stairs.

20. When the Camellia Blooms

Genre: Triller, Comedy, Romance, Family

Plot:

Dong-Baek (Kong Hyo-Jin) is a single mother living in the small town of Ongsan. She runs the bar-restaurant Camellia, while also taking care of her son Pil-Gu (Kim Kang-Hoon). The people of Ongsan frequently gossip about Dong-Baek. She grew up as an orphan, is a single mother and runs a bar where many of the men in Ongsan frequent. Regardless of what the locals may whisper about Dong-Baek, local police officer Hwang Yong-Sik (Kang Ha-Neul) is deeply in love with her. Meanwhile, Dong-Baek's ex-boyfriend Kang Jong-Ryeol (Kim Ji-Suk) suddenly reappears in her life. He is a famous baseball player, that hid their relationship when they dated. While Dong-Baek tries to find happiness, something truly sinister lurks in the background. A serial killer roams Ongsan and Dong-Baek may be a target.

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Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x04 Phantom Traveler

In this week’s analysis, I’ll be discussing the unfortunate introduction of Abrahamic mythology, the lamentable gender politics of Dean in his nightwear, and magic languages.

Supernatural’s fourth offering, 1x04 Phantom Traveler, (not a misspelling, 'traveller' is spelt like that in America) is a solid episode. It’s not fantastic, and Supernatural certainly has better to offer, but it’s still an entertaining watch which introduces demons into the Supernatural universe and continues developing Dean and Sam’s characters, making them more distinct.

It is also the first episode Robert Singer directed for Supernatural. I didn’t see much to particularly comment on in the direction for this episode (my two years of Media Studies were not wasted on me at all), but one interesting choice, however, is the tracking shot of Dean’s sleeping form straight after the title card. EscapingPurgatory podcast had a shrewd postulation: the intended audience was heterosexual educated men between the ages of roughly 15 and 39, but a lot of them would be watching with their girlfriends and wives etc, and Dean is the brother who’s available at the moment.

Returning to the plot of the show, the script does itself a major disservice as early as the cold open. This episode was broadcast in America four years after 9/11 (almost four and a half in Britain) and was right in the middle of the decades-long and still ongoing war on drugs. The atmosphere surrounding airfare has changed fundamentally. The air hostess clearly saw the man’s black eyes and was affected by it, and should have alerted somebody on the plane to her worries, because she would have thought he was on drugs of some variety at the very least, and possibly smuggling drugs on the plane. However, for the purposes of the plot she does not act on her misgivings, but simply gasps and goes about her day.

This raises the question of why the demon revealed its presence like that. Demons are usually incredibly stupid on Supernatural, but this level of dumb is difficult for me to believe. The air hostess could have very easily had the man thrown off the aeroplane, and then its plan would be scuppered. The most likely reason was to show the audience that the man was possessed, but the audience was going to find that out in about a minute’s time anyway, so why reveal it there? It breaks the fourth wall in a bad way.

Whilst on the aeroplane and the demon’s plan, the episode never makes the demon’s motivations explicit. Sure, Sam claims that demons like death and destruction for their own sake, but this doesn’t fit well with how demons behave later in the show. They are, forsooth, as thick as poo, but they usually have higher ups telling them what to do. Was the demon’s repeated downing of aeroplanes part of a higher up’s plan?

Before I go on, it’s worthwhile mentioning that this episode is the first one to introduce the idea of an actual Abrahamic Hell in the Supernatural universe. It’s not the only genre show of its kind to have included something like this, with Charmed having the Underworld where the Source of All Evil resided, and Buffy having various Hell dimensions, but those two examples weren’t Hell as depicted in the Bible.

Joss Whedon specifically avoided the idea of a Hell and employed dimensions ruled by demons and demon gods rather than Archangel Lucifer. Charmed used the Underworld as an equivalent of Hell, but it was not a place of punishment for human souls. While Charmed is definitely my least favourite fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre show (Prue notwithstanding), I appreciated that it took a step away from Abrahamic mythology. Buffy/Angel were even better, having their own mythology that had precious little to do with Middle Eastern religions and more to do with Dunsany, Lovecraft or sometimes even Tolkien.

Kripke, however, took the lazy route with Abrahamic, specifically Christian, mythology, a choice which I believe was to the show’s detriment. It’s supposed to be a show about American folklore and urban legends, but that stuff eventually gets thrown under the bus. Forget Native Americans, screw the Americanised versions of Scandiwegian lore, screw the Old West and the Gold Rush and all the tales revolving around America’s history. And Canada? Pfft. What even is Canada? And don’t even think about Mexico. Let’s just have yet more desert myths from 2-3000 years ago.

My distaste aside, this universe has a Hell (and a Heaven), and demons are made by torturing humans until all humanity is gone from them, or by letting the humans off the torture rack if they agree to become the torturers.

Knowing this, two possibilities come to mind. One is that this demon is repeating its own human death for some reason, and another is that it kills people and drags their souls to Hell to make more demons.

Repeating its own death is entirely speculative, but this episode mixes up demons with traits later associated with ghosts and death echoes. Never again is an EMF reader used to detect demonic activity, and unless I’ve forgotten a certain example, demons aren’t shown to act as specifically as this again.

The second option, that of dragging souls to Hell, doesn’t seem likely as it’s made clear that demon deals or trades are required in order for Hell to get its claws on human souls, at least in usual circumstances. There’s nothing saying that demons can’t just decide to drag certain souls to Hell, and there is an implication at the end of this episode that this might actually be the case, but it’s a stretch. If this were the case, however, it would give the demon a real motive and make the episode less of a stand-alone bit of fun with overt X-Files vibes.

Sticking with Hell events on the aeroplane for now, let’s skip to the end and the exorcism. Whilst trying to exorcise the demon, it tells Sam that Jessica is burning in Hell. Dean tries to reassure Sam by saying that demons read minds and that it was trying to get to him, but demons can only know the minds of people they possess. This then leaves three options: the demon was lying and Jess is in Heaven, it was telling the truth and Jess is in Hell, or the demon was just trying to get to Sam, but unbeknownst to him Jess actually was in Hell.

Technically speaking, Jess shouldn’t be in Hell. She didn’t make a deal (that we know of) and it’s established later in the show that most people go to Heaven anyway. But Kevin didn’t, neither did Eileen or Bobby. Mary did, even though she made a deal with Azazel, and she died under the same circumstances as Jess. As Jess is never mentioned as being in Hell by another demon in the show, and as Dean, Sam and Cas eventually visit Hell and find nothing of her there, we can assume Jessica went to Heaven.

The exorcism in this episode is strange compared to exorcisms in the rest of the show. The Doyle (external to the text) explanation is clearly that the writers didn’t know exactly how they wanted things to work yet, but the Watson (within the text) explanation could be that they used a different exorcism ritual. Later in the show, there is no intermediate stage between being expelled from the host body and being banished to Hell: they just go directly down. This version, though, forces the demon to manifest and thereby makes it much stronger and more dangerous. I personally think the version in this episode makes the demons more of a threat because it’s harder to exorcise them, but I can see why it became streamlined later in the show.

The fact the demon possessed the aeroplane, however, raises the question of why it didn’t do so in the first place. Maybe it’s more fun to possess a human first.

Speaking of the ritual, Jared tells us on the commentary that he had to have a Latin teacher from a local university instruct him in Ecclesiastical Latin because he learnt Classical Latin at school. As a language person, I’m left wondering why. It’s the same language, just pronounced differently. Does the spell need to be pronounced in a certain way in order to work? If so, would the Ancient Romans have been completely incapable of expelling demons with their own language? Would they have had to rely on Greek, Etruscan, Gaulish or Sumerian for the rituals? It’s just completely unnecessary, especially as we later see Rowena casting spells in Scottish Gaelic, Irish witches casting spells in Irish, Celtic ‛demons’ performing rituals in Gaulish…

At least the university teacher got a little bit of extra money, I suppose.

Sticking with the aeroplane a little bit longer, Dean’s fear of flying is a welcome expansion to his character, though it was clearly included with the intent of making fun of him. It could easily have been played as such, but Jensen’s comments on the commentary indicate he saw it as an opportunity to provide more depth to Dean, as his connection with Lucas through their shared childhood trauma did in 1x03 Dead in the Water. In these two episodes, Jensen begins taking Dean away from the writers and making him his own: he was supposed to be the sidekick, but Jensen said nope.

In making Dean afraid of flying, but having him so insistent upon flying in spite of it, The Show perhaps did itself a bit of a disservice in its mission of making Sam The Hero and Dean The Sidekick. Dean was terrified, but flew anyway. That is bravery, and it’s what the audience wants to see in a hero.

Sam, however, does not miss an opportunity to make me dislike him (you knew this was coming at some point, don’t look surprised). Not only is he incredibly unappreciative and derisive of Dean’s talents, such as making his own EMF from an old Walkman, but he was also derisive of Dean’s fear of flying.

Sorry, let me reword that. Derisive of Dean for being scared of flying. It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of being in a giant metal bird suspended miles above the ground, but Dean agreed to it anyway in order to save people. And Sam treats him like a child because he’s scared of take-off and turbulence. Dean’s fear is a rational one, something that a person who hasn’t been sheltered from reality would have. Sam’s greatest fear, however, is…

Clowns.

I get it, they’re brothers, and siblings are supposed to rib on each other like this (the siblings I still talk to aren’t like this with me or each other, so I find it difficult to relate to Dean and Sam’s relationship) but it makes Sam come across as an utter cunny-hole. If somebody is clearly terrified of something and on the edge of a panic attack, you don’t sneer and mock, and then demand he calm down. Sure, Dean needed to calm down and Sam was the only one who could do it, but talking to him like a child just reveals how little Sam knows of taking care of other people. He’s the pampered younger brother, and it really shows.

He also shows a lack of judgement when roughly putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder while he was distracted. Dean’s essentially a war child (and suffers C-PTSD) and you just shouldn’t do things like this to somebody like that. That’s how you trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. Ask a veteran, I’m sure s/he’ll agree.

Aside from that, the middle-aged man on the aeroplane winked at Dean – winked – when Dean was walking down the aisle with his EMF reader. A man winking at a man has sexual overtones nowadays, and has done for a long time. How many men wink at a built guy standing over them like that unless they’re sure they won’t be punched in the face? Dean had his EMF reader out at that moment, but he was simultaneously on somebody else’s radar. Something about Dean set sexual bells ringing in cameo middle-aged man’s head. Regarding Sam, there’s two important moments for him in this episode (Jess aside): when he discovers John talked about and praised him in his absence, and when he exorcises the demon. It’s made clear in a few episodes’ time that Sam never felt like he fit in with his family, and that he believed John was disappointed in him. Exactly how he came to this conclusion is uncertain, since John doted on Sam and afforded him liberties he never would have allowed Dean, but it’s clear their relationship is difficult. Going away to university was Sam’s attempt to run away from the dysfunctional family he felt an outsider in and to escape John (and Dean): that he apparently didn’t speak to either John or Dean during his time there says a lot.

He finds out, however, that John praised him, undermining somewhat Sam’s belief that John regarded him as a disappointment. Episode 1x05 Bloody Mary provides another moment of character growth for Sam that subtly changes the way he perceives himself, but all in due course.

Praise from parents is important for children, and it really shouldn’t be hard for parents to tell their children they’re proud of them, even if they don’t say it in as many words. In spite of his difficult relationship with John, Sam gets that by proxy in this episode (whilst Dean’s happily checking out all the men in the hangar) and it changes the way he sees himself and John, even if only slightly.

The other moment – discussed above – is his exorcism of the demon. I don’t mince my words about disliking Sam, but even I can see he had potential. He’s the weird kid who wanted a normal life, but because of cursed blood had that hope denied him. Series 4 shows us the beginning of what Sam could have turned into when his blood magic arc truly kicks off, and it could have been a riveting plotline if written and handled well. Think for example of Willow in Buffy and the journey she went on with her magic powers: there was real darkness in there, and a gargantuan struggle to overcome it and become stronger.

This exorcism reminds me of Willow’s first steps at witchcraft in 2x22 when she casts the spell to restore a certain character’s soul and we see the potential for true strength as she performs the spell with ease. This exorcism of Sam’s should have been something similar, and his demonic powers should not have been completely removed and forgotten about in 8x23. He could have been Supernatural’s answer to Willow, and the Dark!Sam arc in series 3-7 could have been the first in his descent into darkness and his fight back out to take control of his own powers and become the opposite of what Azazel wanted him to be.

But – and not for the last time – three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

You might remember I mentioned the tracking shot of Dean (and neglected to mention the revealing shot of his thighs and underwear). Paula R. Stiles’ suggestion that the fact the writers and director for this episode were men doesn’t cheapen it is one I don’t understand. Jensen is in my 100% objective and unbiased opinion one of the finest men alive, but exploiting that in order to draw in an audience does cheapen the show.

To be fair, Supernatural is hardly high culture and commercial television is about revenue, but things like that break the illusion of artistic integrity, just like not making Dean explicitly bisexual does because that’d scare away too much of the audience. If having scantily-clad women in a show or film is there for the male gaze and drawing in money, then so too are Dean’s thighs and buttocks, similarly cheapening the show. If the male gaze objectifies women, stripping them of their power and subjecting them to male desires, then the female gaze objectifies and strips men of any power they might have and subjects them to female desires.

If it’s bad for the gander, it should also be bad for the goose.

Neither do I think it matters one bit that the writer and director are men, or am I supposed to believe a woman has never encouraged or coerced another woman to flash a bit of boob in order to get men to empty their pockets? Claiming that presenting a person as an object of possible sexual attraction turns him into an ‛object’ is strange, and that claim’s only ever made when women are being presented for men’s enjoyment.

But let’s stick to Supernatural because I have work in the morning. To be honest, I never notice if a woman on screen is being subjected to a ‛male’ gaze because I have no sexual or romantic interest in women whatsoever: if a woman is supposed to be portrayed as appealing to men’s eyes, it’ll usually go straight over my head because it just doesn’t register as having anything to do with sex. Interesting, however, is that this begins the trend of treating Dean in certain ways that women are usually treated, or associating him with ‛feminine’ traits.

Some people go overboard with for example Dean’s association with and likeness to Mary, his taking on the parental (maternal?) role in Sam’s upbringing, his knack with children etc, and use it as evidence to suggest that any traditionally masculine behaviour – or masculine behaviour at all – from Dean is a performance to keep up an act so that he can hide how feminine he really is.

My take on this is quite different than the condescending viewpoint that a man behaving like a man is performing and pretending. Dean’s ‛feminine’ traits are not his ‛true’ self in opposition to his feigned masculine behaviour. There is absolutely no contradiction between Dean exhibiting ‛feminine’ traits such as being good with children, cooking, or trying his hardest to fill the role Mary would have filled, and being a masculine man who identifies very strongly with being male.

I do think it’s fascinating, though, and the complexity and depth of Dean as a male character is one of the reasons he is one of my favourite characters. We rarely get to see men who are very manly and also incredibly loving, loyal and paternal and who exhibit a normal range of human behaviours and interests, including ‛masculine’ and ‛feminine’. That’s what normal men are like, something television and film seem to have forgotten.

Regarding Dean in bed, note that he is a stomach sleeper (sleeping on your stomach keeps your tummy safe), and this is consistent throughout all fifteen years of the show. However, this early in the show he takes his trousers, outer shirts and shoes off, in contrast to sleeping fully dressed as he begins doing sometime rather soon. He’s alert and cautious this early in the show, but not yet quite so worn down that he can’t be bothered to get ready for bed.

Note also that both brothers have sleeping problems here. Dean knew Sam was still up at 3am, meaning Dean likely slept for less than three hours, having been woken up by Sam at 5:45.

The end of the episode presents the brothers with something to be hopeful about. John has a new mobile phone number, the first evidence they’ve had so far that he is very probably still alive. It’s not much to go on, and John does not answer Dean and Sam’s call, but it’s something the boys can latch on to and keep them searching for John. Whether or not they should be searching for John is another question altogether, though, but at least it got the plot going in 1x01.,

Phantom Traveler is a strong but flawed episode which builds on last week’s expansion of Dean’s character and role, as well as introducing demons and Hell into the lore. The cut scene where Dean has to remove all his concealed weapons before going into the airport really should have been kept in because it says a lot about his character, as does his sleeping with a blade under his pillow, but other than that, I’m happy to leave this episode now on a positive note.

[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.

[lokiondisneyplus]

Over five popular seasons, the story lines of “Better Call Saul” have unfolded across nail salons, fried-chicken joints and other strip-mall staples of American life.

When new episodes begin premiering next year, though, the locations that give the “Breaking Bad” spinoff its texture could be reined in or done away with altogether. The culprit? The novel coronavirus, which is limiting where the New Mexico-set AMC show can film, potentially altering both its style and substance.

“Like a lot of other people, we’re going to have to be very creative in where and how we shoot,” said Mark Johnson, the veteran producer who oversees the Vince Gilligan hit, whose writers just began collaborating on the series’s sixth season. “A lot of places just won’t let you in.”

Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. In states with loosened restrictions, such as Georgia and New York, production is starting to crank up under tight controls that alter how sets operate. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods" that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go.

These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity.

Crowd scenes are a no-go. Real-world locations will be limited. On-screen romance will be less common, sometimes restricted to actors who have off-screen relationships. And independent films — that tantalizing side dish in the U.S. entertainment meal — could be heavily scaled back.

“A lot of people believe this is just about getting back to work,” said Mark Gill, a producer and former head of Warner Independent Pictures, the studio unit responsible for independent hits such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “They don’t realize the massive cultural impact we’re about to face.”

For most of its history, Hollywood created entertainment based on a simple premise: Shuttle in large numbers of people and move them around at will. That’s certainly true of crews. But it especially applies to extras, the low-paid day laborers who pack sets and off-camera holding areas in order to create dense crowd scenes — and, in turn, lend the work real-world atmosphere.

Such scenes have of course been part of some of the most memorable moments in Hollywood history. From “Ben-Hur” to “Braveheart,” on-screen entertainment has become indelible thanks to hundreds of people you’ve never heard of packing tiny spaces, then moving as one when the cameras roll.

Yet the virus has essentially made these hires impossible. Many don’t want to risk their health for a $100 paycheck and remote shot at background glory, and producers don’t want to take on the liability even if they did. “Braveheart" used about 1,600 extras, many from the Irish Army reserves. Experts say the movie couldn’t come close to being shot today.

“Those of us in the entertainment business are not used to being told ‘no’‚” said Lucas Foster, a longtime Hollywood producer who counts the 2005 romantic-action hit “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and last year’s Oscar-decorated blockbuster “Ford v Ferrari” among his credits. “And when it comes to things like crowds, there’s going to be a lot of no.”

Foster understands the challenges personally — he’s one of the first producers to have made a movie in the age of covid-19.

In March, the Los Angeles resident was in Australia, several weeks into preproduction on a new version of “Children of the Corn” when the pandemic began to spread. Millions of dollars had already been committed to the movie, adapted from the same Stephen King story that yielded the 1984 cult hit. So rather than shut down, he decided to proceed — cautiously. Foster created a production bubble, consulted doctors regularly, procured large amounts of tests, and engaged in elaborate workarounds in realms like crowd scenes.

He said it worked, but with major accommodations.

“I had to figure out how to do a crowd with no more than a few people at the same time. And with very specific camera angles. And by taking actors who would normally be close together and making them not close together,” Foster said. “In the end, I’d get the scene I needed but it looked different than it would have before the pandemic.” (Computer-generated crowds, he and other producers say, only work for more distant shots; anything requiring close-ups needs the real thing.)

It helped, he noted, that many of his actors were children, who are believed less susceptible to the effects of the virus, and that much of the movie was shot in cornfields and other vast outdoor spaces, a luxury not all films have.

Producers say the added cost required to implement all the safeguards could also result in a lower-end finished product. Films and TV shows achieve their level of shine through an endless period of refinement, with actors and directors often attempt 10 or more takes of a scene. With everything now going longer — and thus costing more — they may not have the luxury.

One producer of multiple studio hits said he expects the number of takes to drop significantly as the virus balloons budgets. He also expected a diminution in night scenes, which tend to be more involved and expensive than day scenes. He said some productions will be able to make the switch, but not all will be as lucky.

Also unlucky, say Hollywood veterans: movies where characters seek to get lucky. Many insiders say romantic scenes will be a major challenge in movies. Two agents separately reported they had high-profile clients who told them they wouldn’t shoot love scenes during the pandemic.

“I think every agency right now is looking down their client list to see which actors have spouses who are also actors, because then we could try to get them cast, too,” said one of the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their company to speak to the news media. “I’m joking. Sort of.”

The added wrinkle is even if the actors trust each other in real life, many of their characters would still have to take precautions on screen.

“How do you send two characters on a first dinner date when people aren’t really going on first dinner dates?” said a creator of romantic comedies who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing colleagues who are attempting new projects. “You can send them on a socially distant walk, I guess.”

Writers say that leads to a broader dilemma: how much to incorporate the pandemic into their stories. On one hand, they say they don’t want to pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But acknowledging it poses its own challenges.

“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?” said Mark Heyman, the co-writer of “Black Swan” and “The Skeleton Twins” and creator of the CBS All-Access historical drama “Strange Angel.” “Because a lot of those things won’t be very much fun to watch.”

Yet if creators aren’t willing to do that, he said, it could lead to those shows or movies getting shelved out of a fear that audiences will judge them inauthentic.

Heyman was working on a series set in a high school for Netflix when the lockdowns began. That project has now been put on pause. “It’s not easy to make a show about high school,” he said, “when there is no high school.”

To avoid reminding viewers of the pandemic, creators may take an approach that will lead to an unusual trend.

“I think over the next few years you’re going to see a lot more movies set in the past,” Foster said. “Even movies written for the present will be changed. They’ll make it the ’90s because then you don’t have to deal with these questions. And then you can just put in some cool ’90s music, so everybody wins.”

A few creators have gone the other way, leaning in to the pandemic.

Writers on Apple TV Plus’s “The Morning Show,” set at a news program, have torn up existing scripts to make the pandemic a part of the story line, according to a person familiar with the show who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. But with a lag time of months between shooting and airing, experts say that creators also risk looking out of date by the time episodes release to the public.

Sensing an opportunity, horror filmmakers have also tried to embrace current events.

“The horror genre is very suited to the pandemic and lockdowns — we’re always trying to create a feeling of being trapped anyway,” said the horror filmmaker Nathan Crooker.

When quarantines hit this spring, Crooker gathered nine noted horror filmmakers and had them shoot an anthology film — short fictional movies connected by the larger virus theme — and titled it “Isolation.” He required filmmakers to use only the materials and people they were in lockdown with, even prohibiting Zoom and other technologies.

“I think we’re going to get a very cool effect that mirrors what people are going through,” Crooker said of his work. “But I don’t know that every movie that gets made would want to look like that.”

One consequence of the virus could turn out to be the movies that don’t get made at all.

Some of the most beloved films of the past two decades, from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Fruitvale Station,” were independently financed. But before rolling cameras, independent productions require insurance policies to protect them from workplace lawsuits, along with completion bonds, in which a guarantor assures they will step in with funds to finish the movie if production is halted.

Experts say no company will cover covid-19 with either policy, effectively preventing production.

“Covid is an absolute disaster for the independent-film industry,” said Sky Moore, a partner in the corporate entertainment department of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker who has spent several decades putting together film financing deals. “The lifeblood of independent-film financing is loans, and loans need insurance. Now you have this massive hole in the middle of all of it.”

Moore believes the toll will be vast.

“I think 50 percent of the independent industry goes away,” he said.

(Movies financed by large studios do not buy these policies; Netflix or Disney would just absorb a shutdown or lawsuit as the cost of doing business.)

Even if they can work around the insurance issues, many independent films won’t get made because they simply won’t have the money. “It’s already hard to get funding for a lot of these movies,” said Shaun MacGillivray, a producer who makes large-scale independent documentaries. “And now you’re telling investors the budget is going to be 30 percent higher?”

The independent-film world is trying to push ahead, slowly. The Sundance Film Festival, the epicenter of the indie-film business, where companies like Hulu and Netflix sometimes pay more than $10 million for an independently financed movie, will hold a partially physical, partially virtual edition in January, albeit at just about half the length.

“We are reminded daily of the power of what is made newly visible to us, the importance of what we look at,” Tabitha Jackson, the director of the festival, said in a letter to staff this summer explaining why the festival needed to go on. “My hope for this edition of the Sundance Film Festival is that through a multiplicity of perspectives held by artists and audiences in their various communities we will also come to feel the power of where we look from.” Left unspoken: What happens in 2022, when the well runs dry because new movies can’t be insured and produced?

Whatever entertainment can get made, experts say, will have a more hermetic look. Even television shows, once shot heavily on sets, now often rely on the authenticity of locations; a police procedural feels like it does because detectives are popping into pizza places and apartment buildings.

“We don’t want everything to be a chamber piece,” said Johnson, the “Better Call Saul” executive producer. “But if many shows look different, I think that’s okay, because the world looks different.”

Then, considering the challenge further, he added, “And if that doesn’t work, then at least our show has a lot of deserts and open roads.”

[nikosokolov]

quick facts.

Name: Nikolai Sokolov. Age/DoB: 37 / March 9th. Occupation: Mechanic & Bartender. Sexuality: Heteromantic Heterosexual. Nationality: Russian-American. Languages Spoken: English. Hair Color: Dirty Blond (Garbage Blond). Eye Color: Light Blue. Height: 6′5″. Build: Athletic - lean muscle.

triggers for death, car accident, chronic injury / pain, terminal illness.

biography.

 Some people are made cruel by the machinations of their lives - instances that happen that turn a formally kind and compassionate individual into something hardened and thoroughly frigid. Niko Sokolov is not one of those people - he was just born an asshole.

Raised by a strict father (who some might allude to being overbearing, but Niko never quite saw it that way) and a loving mother, there were many pressures settled onto the shoulders of the only Sokolov child. Allusions to some great future in store for him where grades mattered and participation in extracurricular activities meant a padded resume for college applications in the future. He was always kept busy, always behaved when it mattered, but never with his peers. Perhaps it was genetic, or just a bad attitude in general that lead Niko down the road he walked, but his position in life was that of the antagonist, of devil’s advocate. Never a bully in the most dire of senses, Niko allowed sarcasm to drip from him even at an age where that sense of humor was advanced of him - maybe it was learned. Who knew. He was well-liked by his peers despite it (those he didn’t tease) and somehow managed to stay afloat even through the weight he faced at home.

When he was fourteen Niko was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of his father. It was the first real excuse he had to change, to become something bitter ---even through the consistent pain that would plague him for the rest of his life. After multiple back surgeries and months recovering in the hospital, Niko was discharged and schooled from home for the remained of his freshman year of high school, where physical therapy became the most important staple of his life. Grief stuck to his mother life an invisible parasite, but she managed to carry on for her son, though Nikolai understood that even his physical state added more onto her fragile mental state. He pushed through his recovery, speeding through the process, for her. When he came back in his sophomore year he was almost an entirely different boy: colder, reactive rather than aggressive with his harsh words, which somehow managed to be even more cruel than they ever had been before (where perhaps before he was just teasing in a mean fashion, now they seemed sincere in their desire to injure).

Nikolai withdrew, isolated himself, and soldiered through the rest of high school. He was accepted into his first-choice college and briefly moved away from San Amore when he was 18 to dorm, the dream and desire to become a surgeon the ultimate goal. However 2 years into his schooling his mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness and quickly lost her battle. With no family left and no desire to carry forth, Niko dropped out of college, moved back home, and took care of the estate.

He’s been in San Amore ever since, a staple figure of general malice to anyone who presses the wrong buttons. For the first year home he lived off of his inheritance (or rather, what remained of his parents - and to date he still lives in his family home on Riverside View) before he began working at Cupid’s Chokehold at 21, first as a busboy and later as a bartender. You can still find him there most nights, serving drinks and refusing to play that titular Gym Class Heroes song the bar shares a name with. At 25 he began trade school and became a mechanic, finding employment at a local autoshop once he completed the program.

And so it goes that Nikolai Sokolov, San Amore’s greatest underachiever, still exists within the town - almost haunting it with his sarcasm and dry humor (if you can guess whether or not he’s serious). Everyone knows that you can get a discounted drink on the right nights when he’s working, if the mood suits him, but you don’t ask for it. He’ll just give it, maybe, unless it’s cold and he’s bitter because of his old car accident injury flaring up once again. The life and death of the man with no dream.

tidbits.

---Has 3 cars at all times, though they rotate: an every-day car, a flashier car, and a tuning car.

---Still occasionally attends physical therapy when his injury flares up. He’s notably pissier when this happens, for any number of reasons.

---Major fan of horror flicks. Has a decent collection of everything in the genre, and regularly consumes horror media to scratch the itch.

---No pets, and never had a desire to have children. He’s a non-traditional kind of person: if he did get a pet, it’d likely be a snake or a lizard of some kind.

---Had one somewhat serious relationship in his life, which lasted a little over a year. Otherwise he’s been known to go on short dating spurts, or simply participate in one-night stands.

connections.

---( ARMIE HAMMER ) NIKOLAI SOKOLOV is searching for AN EX GIRLFRIEND (THIS IS NOT GOING TO END ROMANTICALLY) with the following suggestions of ANY FEMALE FC 30-35. You DO have to contact the player prior.

---( ARMIE HAMMER ) NIKOLAI SOKOLOV is searching for COWORKERS AT CUPID’S CHOKEHOLD with the following suggestions of ANY FC. You DO NOT have to contact the player prior. 

*I am always, 100% open to discussing more connections for Niko. He’s been a resident of San Amore for thirty five years, and I am sure we can otherwise work out any form of connection you might have in mind!

[aion-rsa]

Cyberpunk 2077: Lore and History of the Game’s Universe

https://ift.tt/31wmsZ3

Cyberpunk 2077 is far and away one of 2020’s most anticipated games. Not only is it the latest project from the studio behind the brilliant Witcher video game series, but it’s based on the incredibly popular Cyberpunk tabletop RPG franchise which many genre fans consider to be one of the medium’s finest in terms of world-building and storytelling.

Considering that the universe of Cyberpunk contains enough lore to fill several books, it’s understandable that you may feel a bit overwhelmed when you think about jumping into this world for the first time via Cyberpunk 2077. So far as that goes, an understanding of even the basics of the Cyberpunk’s lore may help you feel better prepared for the adventure developer CD Projekt Red has spent years crafting.

So while we could spend weeks completely breaking down the history of everything Cyberpunk, here is a brief primer on some of the most notable pieces of Cyberpunk 2077‘s lore and the greater history of the Cyberpunk universe.

The History of Cyberpunk 2077’s World

Up until a point, the history of Cyberpunk 2077’s world largely echoes that of our own (plus or minus some obvious deviations in terms of certain historical events and characters). However, that all changes by 1990.

It was around that time that the United States stepped up its war against drug cartels and corrupt governments in Central America. Their desire to win the war on drugs becomes so intense that they even resorted to forms of chemical combat. Such tactics not only cause former allies to denounce the U.S. but inspired the most powerful cartels to take the drug war battles to U.S. soil. In 1993, a cartel is even able to detonate a nuclear device in New York City.

In 1994, a global market collapse, and another nuclear incident in Pittsburgh, plunge the United States into further disarray. Corporations began taking over more aspects of Unites States life (including control over agriculture production) in an attempt to stabilize an increasingly uncertain world. Nevertheless, things somehow get worse in 1996 when the President and Vice President of the United States are assassinated.

As various gangs rise across the country in response to this incredible shift in the power structure, the NSA, CIA, FBI, and DEA form the “‘Gang of Four” and the Defense Secretary of the United States claims executive power in order to declare martial law. We hope this won’t come as too much of a surprise, but that move is not successful. More and more gangs appear across the United States as officials struggle to keep up with the madness. Around that same time, a variety of natural and unnatural disasters kill millions and inspire some states (including California) to secede.

It’s then that more and more corporations step up and use their resources (which now include private armies in most cases) to effectively secure control of what remains of the United States and many other parts of the world. Instead of bringing peace, though, these corporations soon launch new wars against each other for optimal business opportunities.

Somewhere along the way, advancements in technology afforded people the opportunity to enhance themselves with various cybernetic implants. While those implants are largely used by gangs, soldiers, and operatives, they’ve also worked their way into daily life. This discrepancy between available technology and the horrors of the world (as well as some drastic gaps in financial equality) is why you see some areas that look incredibly advanced and “futuristic” next to areas that appear to be dangerously underdeveloped.

That’s the rough state we find the world in at the start of Cyberpunk 2077.

What is Night City?

In 1992, a wealthy corporate executive named Richard Night began work on a massive urban development project he referred to as Coronado City. Night’s goal was to establish a city that would essentially be a corporate paradise and a testament to the philosophy of capitalism.

Night also believed that the city could one day be free of the crime and economic horrors that plagued the rest of the United States (as well as many of the laws which attempted to regulate corporations). Considering how many poor workers died building the city, though, that vision was certainly a matter of perspective.

In 1998, Night was murdered by organized crime elements who felt nobody left room for them in Night’s vision for Coronado City. That’s when Coronado City was renamed Night City in honor of its founder.

That’s also when various gangs started to clash with the corporate armies on the streets of the new city. That battle lasted until around 2005 when the corporations decided to pull out of Night City and leave the gangs to battle for control over what remained. At the peak of the Night City gang wars (around 2011), the Arasaka corporation intervened to take on the now weakened gangs in order to secure Night City for the corporations once more.

While the corporations did gain control of Night City for all intents and purposes, gangs and the corporate armies still clash with and amongst each other often by the time you enter Night City in Cyberpunk 2077.

What are the Badlands?

Night City seems to be located roughly near the geographic region of San Diego, but a series of devastating droughts and various unnatural disasters essentially dried out the area’s lush landscapes. This newly formed desert is regularly referred to as the Badlands.

Over the years, the people who either grew tired of Night City’s corporate power structure or simply had no other options began to form nomadic gangs that roamed the Badlands in search of what little food, water, and other vital resources remained. If you’re picturing the world of Mad Max, you’re not far off.

While some smaller gangs remain in the Badlands, the two largest “families” (the Aldecaldos and Wraiths) control most of the region. Those gangs will occasionally perform favors for the corporate rulers of Night City (as well as some of the city’s biggest criminal factions), but the largest corporations in Night City try to maintain border security and keep the Badlands gangs away.

Interestingly, a character creation option in Cyberpunk 2077 will allow you to start as a Badlands nomad who eventually works their way to Night City. This just confirms that it is possible for individuals to work their way into the urban area.

Read more

Games

Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077: Who is Johnny Silverhand?

By Rob Leane

Games

Cyberpunk 2077 Multiplayer Likely Delayed Until After 2021

By Matthew Byrd

What Are the Major Night City Corporations?

Various “megacorporations” have outposts in Night City where they battle for control amongst each other and with the organized (and less-than-organized) crime elements that roam the city streets. These megacorporations are comprised of various smaller corporations that share general interests and revenue streams. Here are some of the biggest megacorporations you’ll encounter in Night City:

ManuCorps

Arguably the biggest and most powerful megacorporation in Night City, ManuCorps focuses on the steady industry of manufacturing. Corporations under the ManuCorps banner include Araska, Militech, Mitsuzuki, and EBM.

AgriCorps

When various farms across the United States began to go under in the ‘90s, corporations stepped in to form AgriCorps: a megacorporation that controls much of the agriculture in the United States and nearby independent areas. Agricorps is largely comprised of Petrochem, SovOil, ConAg, and Akaromi BioCorp.

CyberCorps

Cybercorps is basically the Silicon Valley of Cyberpunk. This megacorporation handles most of the technological development in the world. CyberCorps corporations include Zetatech, Microtech, and Akari Heavy Industries.

BioCorps

BioCorps primarily handles the development and implementation of human augmentation technology, while some companies under this umbrella focus on genetically altered crops. BioCorps companies include Biotechnica, Cyphire Cyberware, and Bakumatsu Chipmasters.

ArmaCorps

The companies that form the ArmaCorps megacorporation focus on training and deploying security forces. They include some of the largest corporations in the Cyberpunk universe such as Arasaka, Militech, and Lazarus.

MediaCorps

MediaCorps is just a good old-fashioned media conglomerate. While much of the content that they produce is controlled by various influences, they have sources pretty much everywhere and attempt to know at all times what is really happening in this world. MediaCorps companies include Network News 54, Nippon Network, and World News Service.

Which Gangs Roam Night City?

Hundreds of gangs potentially roam the streets of Night City at any time, but these are some of the biggest/most notable groups that have been confirmed for Cyberpunk 2077:

Animals

Just as their name implies, the Animals are a particularly ruthless gang who prefer to use their own fists (sometimes amplified by chemical and technological enhancements) over more elaborate forms of weapons.

Scavengers

Another aptly named gang, the Scavengers make most of their money by harvesting other people’s technological enhancements. They’re not the biggest players in Night City, but they’re certainly among the most feared.

Voodoo Boys

Years ago, the Voodoo Boys were not only one of the biggest drug-dealing gangs in Night City but among the most violent. However, Cyberpunk 2077 portrays a different version of this gang which primarily exists to protect the residents of their community.

Maelstrom

The Maelstrom is an aggressive and large gang that relies heavily on high-tech gear. They used to control the docks, but it seems they’ve been pushed out of that area by the timeline of Cyberpunk 2077.

Tyger’s Claw

This gang used to be all about their pure martial arts abilities, but the version of them we see in Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have embraced modern technology and cybernetic ehancements. It’s believed that they’re funded by Arasaka.

Lizzies

One of the more “entertaining” gangs in Night City, the Lizzies are just really big fans of the singer Lizzy Wizzy. That said, they’re still quite dangerous and usually high.

6th Street

The 6th Street gang sees themselves as city protectors, but their views on what constitutes the idea of “protection” are, to say the least, loose. More often than not, they do more damage than the gangs they say they protect the city from.

Is Cyberpunk 2077 Canonical?

There seems to still be some debate on this subject, but the short answer is that Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the events of the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG and appears to be a continuation of the events in the Cyberpunk 2020 edition of that series. However, it seems that the game will ignore many of the details of the controversial third edition of Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk V3.0

At the moment, though, there is still some confusion regarding how the events of Cyberpunk may affect future editions of tabletop series and its related materials. It’s still entirely possible that Cyberpunk 2077 will take some creative liberties with the series which may not be reflected in subsequent Cyberpunk productions outside of the video game. It’s also possible that some of the events that take place between 2020 and 2077 may be altered in future editions of the tabletop game and related Cyberpunk stories.

Having said that, the basic lore that we’ve described above will still serve as the narrative foundation of Cyberpunk 2077.

What Role Do You Play in Cyberpunk 2077?

That will be entirely up to you.

While you will encounter notable characters from the Cyberpunk mythos during your time in Cyberpunk 2077 (such as Johnny Silverhand and Adam Smasher), you are not playing an established character in the Cyberpunk lore. You’ll create your own character, choose their backstory, and perform actions that will define who you are in this universe as well as the effect you have on the overall lore of this series.

How else Cyberpunk 2077 will honor, alter, and further the events of the Cyberpunk universe thus far remains to be seen.

The post Cyberpunk 2077: Lore and History of the Game’s Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2VzXhRF

[jmsebastian]

The Dismemberment of Horror in Dead Space

After playing Dead Space for the first time I became increasingly frustrated by its attempts to be a horror game despite firmly planting its flag in the action camp. Action-horror is a tightrope walk between genres that I think rarely pans out, but that combination is alluring enough that I can’t fault anyone for trying. To me, action and horror are almost antithetical. Good action games provide a vehicle for players to feel powerful once they understand the mechanics and master them. Good horror games never let the player feel at ease, using the player’s expectations against them to keep them constantly unsettled.

Dead Space betrays its horror elements almost immediately. In two very important ways. First, the game’s monsters, the necromorphs, are revealed in all their gross glory before you even get two rooms deep into the mining ship you’re investigating, the Ishimura. You get onboard after crash landing in the opening cutscene, you walk into a room that’s got blood all over the floor, and then the necromorphs try to murder the entire crew you came with while you look on behind the complete safety of glass.

Dead Space takes so much inspiration from the 1979 film Alien as if the necromorphs weren’t a huge giveaway. But Alien works as a horror film because it spends the majority of its time building tension, first through the interpersonal issues of the crew, and then by having characters picked off one at a time by a monster the audience doesn’t really get to see. During that first encounter with the necromorphs you get a very clear look at them. You get an even better look when you’re chased into an elevator by one whose predatory instincts are questionable, at best.

Once you’ve seen the necromorphs, you know what you’re up against. This leads to the second way in which the game betrays horror, it tells you exactly how to deal with the necromorphs, and it does so in the absolute clumsiest way possible. Necromorphs need to have their appendages cut off in order to get them to cease reanimating and you get four opportunities in a row to learn this, two of which are impossible to skip. First, you find a message written in blood next to a body that says “Cut off their limbs”. Pretty straightforward. Minutes later, you can find an audio log where a crewmember says the same thing. Technically, both the bloody message and audio log can be skipped over or missed, but their placement makes that unlikely, at least on a first playthrough. What’s not skippable is the captain chiming in over your communication device saying the same thing as the audio log, followed by instructions from your suit that appear on the screen.

That’s four instances of the player receiving the same information all within the span of a couple minutes. I understand that severing necromorph limbs is the crux of the game’s entire combat, but when you tell the player the solution to fighting every single enemy in a game that’s supposed to scare them, you are doing them a terrible disservice. What makes this especially painful is that the player is given a subtle hint about cutting limbs off with the first necromorph that the player sees. As Isaac stands in the elevator while he’s being attacked, the elevator doors close and chop off the necromorph’s arm and head.

I am empathetic to developers not wanting players to get thrown into combat situations and repeatedly die because they don’t know what they should be doing, but this a game whose combat is modeled almost entirely on Resident Evil 4. In Resident Evil 4 you can shoot zombies in the legs to slow them down, you can shoot off their heads for quick kills, and you can even shoot thrown projectiles out of the air. None of this is told to the player, but it doesn’t take much experimentation to start figuring it out, which is arguably the most enjoyable part of the game. Dead Space never lets the player work out strategies for themselves, which can reduce the enjoyment and prevent the sensation of panic that horror games can elicit so well.

For all the things that Dead Space did well with regard to immersion, a few choices really break the illusion for me. There are a lot of small, but obvious issues. Necromorphs drop ammo and health items despite being horrifically twisted re-animated flesh with no need for either of these things. The ship is littered with caches of those same items, either built into the Ishimura’s structure or littered about the floor. There are also shops that allow you to buy health and ammo, as well as upgrade your protective suit.

All of these little problems add up to one big problem. All of the tools you end up using in the game only work in the context of a shooter. Sure, they try to justify the various weapons you can carry by giving them a tenuous relationship to mining, but even that is shaky. You first pick up the plasma cutter, presumably the most advanced type of mining tool in existence. So what purpose, then, does a circular saw serve? The answer is that the various tools flesh out the combat mechanics because they’re weapons, and nothing more. It would have been nice if the various tools could have been used to solve environmental puzzles and really explore the idea that Isaac is an engineer and not a soldier. Sadly, there’s nothing that Isaac ever does over the course of the game that doesn’t seem like something any other character couldn’t have done. The very existence of the item shops and upgrade stations pretty much proves it.

That brings me to the characters. This is where Dead Space felt the weakest to me. Every single character is a very broadly drawn archetype. You have a no-nonsense soldier, a nagging second-guesser, a mad scientist, a religious fanatic (well, several of them, actually), and the secret agent. To top it all off, you have the silent protagonist. Non-speaking player characters make a lot of sense in a lot of games, but it just doesn’t work out as well in Dead Space because your character has a personal reason for being on this particular mission: your girlfriend is on the Ishimura.

The first thing you see in the game is a video clip of Isaac’s beloved, Nicole Brennan. Kendra asks him about it, and the motivation is set. Isaac’s goal is to save Nicole. During the course of the game you do eventually run into her, and yet despite the horror show that both she and Isaac have gone through, Isaac does absolutely nothing even remotely resembling how one would react upon reuniting with a loved one. At the end of the game, we are treated to yet another obvious trope: Nicole’s been dead the whole time. I’m not sure if this was intended to actually be a plot twist or not, because it’s heavily foreshadowed. The video clip at the beginning clearly cuts off before it’s finished, and Isaac is arbitrarily kept from being close to her due to door locks that couldn’t possibly be activated if it wasn’t all occurring in his mind. When you finally are in the same room with her, Isaac has no reaction whatsoever. He’s supposed to be in love, but there is nothing even close to resembling human emotion coming from him.

One interesting explanation could have been that the trauma of the events has left him emotionally comatose, but instead, it’s all hand-waved away by the Marker. The Marker is a weird space object that is responsible for the necromorphs and drives anyone who spends enough time around it insane. Isaac is supposed to be a victim of this, and Kendra straight up tells us this after she reveals herself to the double-crosser that she is. It’s here that we get to see the video of Nicole played back in its entirety, and watch as she takes her own life to spare herself the horror of the situation.

The root of every element of the game can be clearly seen. You get your doses of Resident Evil 4, Alien, System Shock, and Event Horizon. Obviously, there are few or no true new ideas when it comes to stories, but what you want is a game that works to defy expectations a bit, and that allows the interactive elements to tell the story in ways other media can't. Dead Space doesn’t do this, it simply adds everything it can into one pot and hopes for the best.

For all its lack of a true sense of horror, Dead Space is still an immensely enjoyable action game, which is, itself, a huge accomplishment. You can try it for the first time a decade after its release like I did, and it plays just as well now as I’m sure it did then.

[mint-yooxgi]

Munsta House - Yandere!Monster!EXO X Reader

Yandere!AU/Crack!Fic - Based off of the Yandere!EXO X Reader Series

Genre: Crack, Mature, Horror, Angst, Humour

Pairing: EXO OT12 X Reader

Words: 5,145

Warning: This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: This is basically a part two to You Can Call Me Munsta, so if you haven’t read that,I suggest doing so before you read this one! I have a few more planned in succession as well. I really hope you all enjoy this one, feedback is greatly appreciated!

A soft groan escapes your lips as you wake up with a splitting headache. Bringing your hand up, you rub at your temples, helping to relieve some of the ache you’re experiencing.

Sitting up in bed, you take in your surroundings, blinking a few times to clear your vision. At first, your eyes narrow at the somewhat unfamiliar room you find yourself in, until your eyes are widening in recognition and disbelief.

Flinging the covers off of your body, you race to the adjacent bathroom. Taking a quick look inside confirms it, and you watch your reflection in the mirror, face full of disbelief and slight anger. You’re back in the house you mysteriously woke up in a few weeks ago.

“What the actual fuck!” You exclaim, letting out a large puff of air as you walk back into the main area of the bedroom.

Not even ten seconds go by and the door is being flung open, Minseok rushing into the room followed by the pounding of feet from downstairs. Chanyeol appears in the room just as quickly as Minseok does.

“(Y/n)?” Chanyeol asks in surprise, not believing he’s seeing you with his own two eyes.

“Oh for fuck’s sakes, not again,” you sigh, just as the rest of the boys storm their way into the room.

“I thought you weren’t coming back?” Baekhyun comments, smug smirk residing on his face as he crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“Believe me, so did I,” you reply, mirroring his stance as your face remains impassive.

“Well, I for one, am glad to see you again,” Yixing smiles at you.

“I think we all all,” Kyungsoo says, receiving nods from the majority of them in the room.

You take this time to look over each one of them now, and notice how they seem calmer around each other. However, you can still sense tension between all of them, especially now that you’ve reappeared.

You think back to the last time you were in this mansion, and remember how it seemed to possess some sort of magical ability which gave you power over them. You wonder if that still holds true.

“Did I give any of you permission to be inside this room?” Your voice comes out stern, eyes narrowing as you look at them.

Immediately, Minseok is dragged out of the room by an imaginary force, and as he stands on the opposite side of the doorway, its as if an invisible barrier has formed which he cannot penetrate. At the same time, Chanyeol vanishes from your room, appearing a few seconds later beside Minseok in the hallway. Slowly, one by one, each boy is dragged out of the room by an invisible force, some willingly leaving before it can drag them out. Once they’re out, they cannot get back in.

“Looks like I still have some control in this house,” you smirk, moving to stand in front of the doorway where they’ve all been squished into the hall.

“How is this fair?” Jongdae pouts, pushing Baekhyun out of the way so he can stand in front of the doorway.

“You think what I had to go through with all of you was fair to me?” You counter. “News flash, nothing in life is fair.”

“(Y/n), please, we haven’t seen you in ages,” Junmyeon reasons. “Just let us spend time with you.”

“It’s been a few weeks, you’ll live,” you reply.

“Won’t you come out and talk with us?” Sehun asks, leaning up on his tiptoes to peer over a few heads to see you. He frowns at his current predicament.

“Why should I listen to any of you? You’re all fucking insane! Last time I was here, most of you were at each other’s throats, and now look at you. You’re probably getting along somewhat better now, who’s to say you won’t try and gang up on me. I know how you all think,” you spit.

“She does have a point,” Tao comments. “She’s good at figuring these things out.”

“She’ll have to come out of the room eventually,” Jongin smirks. “She still needs to eat, and last I checked, none of the rooms are stocked with food.”

As if to emphasize his point, your stomach growls, only causing his smirk to widen. You scowl in response. They wouldn’t really let you starve, would they?

“When she does, we’ll be waiting,” Rin nods.

“Well, good luck with that, because I don’t plan on ever leaving this room,” you say, walking over and slamming the door shut in their faces. 

You rest your head on the back of the door, letting out a sigh in frustration. You can faintly hear them talking behind the door and arranging a schedule for them to watch and wait just outside the door incase you decide to do anything, like try and leave again. Luhan has the first watch.

Great. Just great. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer.

You thought you had escaped them. You thought you could put all this behind you and live a normal life once more, but no. You just had to magically end up back in this hellhole.

Letting out a sigh, you move over to the bed and sit on the edge.

Feeling your right hand hit something cool, you look down to see your phone resting on the mattress beside you. A large smile breaks out onto your face as you can’t believe your stroke of luck. Immediately, you call the police.

Except, it doesn’t dial through.

That’s strange, considering you have full bars of service and nothing should be impeding the call. Unless it’s the house. Your mind flashes back to when Baekhyun had tried making a few calls the first time you were here.

Deciding to try some other contact, you attempt to call your family and some friends, but you seem to encounter the same problem. Texting doesn’t seem to work either, for all your messages concerning where you are and the situation you’re in seem to magically disappear or don’t send. You even go so far as to post on social media, but you encounter the same problems you did when you tried texting.

A deep frown resides on your face as you try everything you can think of to use your phone to help you. Nothing works.

You start to believe your phone doesn’t work at all anymore, despite what the service provider is telling you. To test your theory, you text your closest friend a quick hello.

Within a few minutes, you get a casual response back; them asking how you are.

Immediately, you jump into explaining your situation, thinking that whatever happened when you first tried surely won’t happen again. You’re wrong.

With a sigh, you reply vaguely, and the message seems to go through this time. It seems you can use your phone for basic things to keep in touch with people and stay updated on social media, but as soon as you attempt to reach out to someone and explain the situation you’re in, or to get help, it no longer works properly.

Great. Just great.

You do everything you can to keep yourself occupied in the room, doing your best to come up with ways to escape this crazy mansion again. You could probably tell them to freeze and walk right out like the last time, but you’re a little worried it might not work for a second time. Jumping out the second story window seems a little counter productive as you could do more harm than good, and then you’d really be stuck here.

You manage to keep yourself busy and distracted for about three hours, until your stomach twists in hunger. You did wake up in the morning, and after not eating a full meal last night before you went to bed, you’re starting to regret not eating more. Your stomach growls.

Searching the entire room for the next half an hour only confirms Jongin’s previous statement of there being absolutely no food in the room. All you have is water from the bathroom, and you know if you don’t eat something soon, you’ll start to develop tremors in your hands and become lightheaded. You might possibly even faint, and who knows what could happen to you if that happened.

Pacing back and forth at the bottom of the bed, your hand rests at the bottom of your chin. You think of a strategy to get food without getting caught, but your chances of everything going smoothly are quite slim, especially with Minseok’s supernatural hearing.

One thing you do know for sure, there is some sort of magic in this house, and you seem to be the only one who can control it. You just hope it continues to listen and obey you, especially now.

Taking a deep breath, you prepare yourself for what you’re about to do.

Opening the door slowly, you peer out into the hallway. Glancing to your right reveals Junmyeon sitting on a chair, leaning forward so that his arms are resting on his knees. His head is hung, but as soon as he hears the door creak, his head is flinging up to stare at you with wide eyes.

You mirror his surprised look for a second before bringing a finger to your lips to shush him. His mouth parts as he takes in your pleading expression, nodding slightly as his heart pangs in his chest seeing you like this.

You step out of your room, and immediately, he’s standing up from the chair. You look at him sharply, analyzing him to figure out his next move and make sure you can retreat into the safety of your room before he can do anything to you. To say what he does next surprises you, would be an understatement. Giving you a soft smile, he motions for you to follow him with his head.

He knows he should have alerted the others as soon as you opened your door, but seeing the look you gave him saddened him. The look of desperation filled with mild fear and surprise caused his heart to pang in his chest. He can’t let his best friend, the one he loves most, starve. Nor can he let the others take advantage of you. After all, he still wants to be the only one for you. Doing this might put him in good graces with you, too.

Since he’s been living in this house, Junmyeon has explored it top to bottom, finding all the secret nooks and crannies, as well as the best routes to take to get to wherever he wants to go. He leads you to the kitchen, checking to make sure the coast is clear before giving you the okay.

Letting out a small sigh, you walk into the kitchen.

“Well, that certainly didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Jongin comments, leaning against a separate entranceway to the kitchen with his arms crossed. “What happened to never leaving the room?”

Your expression hardens as you look at him, noticing how Minseok and Chanyeol both appear seemingly out of nowhere as the others slowly trail in afterwards.

Closing your eyes as you take another deep breath for the nth time that day, you allow your features to relax. Opening your eyes once again, you keep your expression neutral as you observe them while they observe you.

“Fine. You want to talk? Let’s talk,” you state, leaning against the counter you’re closest to. “First, I’m going to eat something so I don’t pass out. Then, we can talk all you want. You give me space and respect my boundaries, then I might consider staying after everything I’ve been through. You don’t? I’ll have you turning on each other before you can take a step in my direction. You all claim to love me in some sick, twisted way. Prove it.”

You can see they’re all thinking over your words carefully, a few with scowls on their faces. Luhan is the first to break the silence.

“As you wish, princess,” with a slight bow, he’s leaving the room, leaving you in a state of pleasant surprise.

“Okay, fine, but I’m not leaving the room,” Jongin says, moving to sit at the table.

“Whatever,” you roll your eyes, moving over to look in the fridge to see what you can make yourself to eat.

You hear the scraping of chairs against the floor, and when you turn back around, you see Baekhyun, Minseok, Kyungsoo, Jongdae, Sehun, and Rin all sitting at the table with Jongin. The others seem to have left the room, respecting you enough to give you space.

A few minutes pass by with none of you saying anything, them just staring intently at you as you prepare your food. You let out a sigh, wiping your hands on a towel.

“If all you’re going to do is stare at me like I’m some science experiment, please leave,” you narrow your eyes at them, leaning one hand on the counter.

“We’re just happy to see you again,” Sehun replies, the others nodding slightly in agreement.

You say nothing in response as you finish preparing you food. Grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, you being to exit the kitchen and make your way to the basement. Both Chanyeol and Luhan look up from their conversation on the couch as you pass by.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Minseok is in front of you in the next second, blocking your path and almost causing you to drop your food.

“Last time, if I remember correctly, there was a room in the basement that was fairly spacious with a bunch of chairs,” you remark, stepping around him. “If we’re going to talk, we’re talking there.”

“The door won’t open anymore, we’ve tried,” Jongdae tells you, only for you to shrug in response.

You continue to make your way downstairs, the others following close behind.  Reaching the door to the room, you turn the handle and open the door wide, the lights automatically flicking on. Turning around with a smug look, you smirk at Jongdae. They all look at you in disbelief.

“Maybe you’re just not me,” turning around, you walk into the room.

“You’re right, nobody else can compare to you,” Baekhyun sighs, being the first one to walk into the room after you. The others follow, either nodding their agreement or glaring at Baekhyun.

Ignoring his statement, you notice the simple wooden chairs that were previously in the room have been upgraded to one large comfy chair for you and couches for them.

“Oh sweet, upgrades,” you comment, settling into the chair with your legs crossed. “Well, are you all going to stand there all day, or are you going to come join me? You wanted to talk.”

This seems to snap them out of whatever kind of daze they’re in, and they all move over to sit on the couches facing you. They all stare at you expectantly as you take your first bite of food. You raise an eyebrow at them, waiting for one of them to make the first move.

“How did you get here?” Yixing is the first to break the silence.

“Believe me, if I knew, I wouldn’t be here right now,” you reply, letting out yet another sigh as you take a sip of water.

“Then why haven’t you tried to escape yet?” Rin raises an eyebrow.

You simply shrug in response, “if I do manage to get out, who’s to say I won’t just end up back in the house again? I’d rather not waste my energy.”

“Does this mean you’re going to stay?” Sehun asks, hopefully.

“For the time being,” you respond, and you see the fire light behind all of their eyes. “However, we need to lay out some ground rules.”

“Anything, if it means you staying,” Chanyeol says, and your lips twitch upwards at his sincerity.

“First, like I said upstairs, you give me space and respect my boundaries,” you begin, placing your now empty plate on the ground beside the chair you’re in.

They all begin to protest, not wanting to leave you alone for any period of time. After all, they can’t bear to not be in your presence since you’ve came back. It’s been torture giving you your space thus far.

“Oh boy,” you throw your head back as they continue to protest, growing louder each second. “At this rate I’m going to need protection. You hear that house? Whatever magic you have, send me a protector.”

A bang sounds from one of the closed doors off to your right. Immediately, they all become quiet, their heads turning to look at the door with smoke coming out of it as it gets flung open. Everyone’s eyes are wide, including yours.

“Wow, I never thought that would work,” you say more to yourself, but they still manage to hear you, causing them to frown.

Through the smoke pouring into the room, a tall silhouette becomes outlined in light as a figure steps through the frame. Revealed to them is an unfamiliar girl with long brown hair which fades to blonde at the ends. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie and black skinny jeans. She waves the smoke away with her hand, looking displeased with the whole ordeal.

“Why the fuck is there so much smoke?” She says, shoving her hands back into the pocket of her hoodie.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jongin questions, standing up from his spot on the couch.

Before he can do anything, both Minseok and Chanyeol have moved to either side of the mysterious girl. She looks unimpressed as they attempt to intimidate her.

“Someone called for a protector, so here I am,” she replies, flicking her eyebrows in amusement.

“Okay, but just who are you, and how did you get into this house?” Tao asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“I’m Jackie, and technically speaking, you’re in my house,” she quirks a brow, crossing her own arms now.

“Your house?” Your brow furrows. 

“Before you ask, no, I was not the one who brought you back,” she sighs. “That remains a mystery even to me.”

“Then why do you keep us here?” Baekhyun frowns.

“You twelve? Do you really need an answer for that?” She smirks.

“I think I can answer that one,” you stand up, walking hesitantly over to where she’s standing, still being stared down by Chanyeol and Minseok. “To keep you all away from me.”

“Bingo,” her smirk widens as she dips her head in agreement.

“But then the question gets raised of how does she know about us,” Kyungsoo says, looking her over.

“Now that, is a funny story,” suddenly, she becomes tense, letting out a nervous chuckle.

“Yeah, how do you know of our situations? Considering we’re all from different universes,” Luhan comments, the rest of them standing up now and making their way over to where she is standing.

“What are you, some kind of divine entity that can transcend space and time?” Jongdae scoffs in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she shrugs, “but I suppose here I could be. Let’s see, how should I put this…” she takes this time to rest her hands on her hips, leaning onto one foot, “how do you think your universes all came to be?”

“So you are an entity of some sort?” Yixing’s brow furrows in confusion.

“No, no,” she shakes her head. “I did create you, so to say, but not in the way you might think. You see, I know everything there is to know about all of you because I wrote your stories, and your personalities.”

“You did what?” Your voice is heard as they all let the information sink in.

In the next moment, Minseok lunges at Jackie, but she simply sidesteps him.

“Typical,” she sighs, shaking her head while closing her eyes.

In the next second, her hand whips out and catches Jongin’s midair as he goes to strike her. She uses the momentum combined with her strength to flip him onto his back, successfully knocking the wind out of him.

“Don’t even try it,” she turns to look at Jongdae who has opened his mouth to use his powers on her. “You’re all too predictable. I know what you’re going to do before you do it.”

“You wrote them like this?” Your voice is heard again, your eyes wide in disbelief. “Why?”

She shrugs, “entertainment purposes.”

“You bitch!” In the next moment, you lunge at her, successfully knocking her over, as well as all the air out of her lungs.

In your rage, you manage to straddle her waist and wrap your hands around her throat. She watches you with wide eyes, and tries to pry your hands off her throat.

“You made me suffer through all of their… whatever you want to call it, for entertainment?” You screech. “How fucking dare you!”

“You might want to let me go,” she manages to choke out. “Before something happens that you all won’t like.”

“Oh yeah? What could be worse than this hellhole?” You spit.

A deep scraping sound can be heard from the room in which Jackie entered from, causing all of their heads to look in the direction of the open door. 

“What the-“ Jongin’s voice is heard as something is seen moving out of the darkness.

You look back down at Jackie who is staring at you blankly, seemingly no longer affected by your hands around her throat.

“Just because I am a protector, doesn’t mean I don’t have ones of my own,” she says as a bang resounds from the doorway.

A gasp escapes your lips as you see none other than Pyramid Head from Silent Hill walk out of the door, dragging his large blade behind him.

Before he is able to take a swing at you, Junmyeon drags you off of Jackie’s body. In the next moment, Jackie snaps her finger and Pyramid Head disappears into thin air.

“How the fuck did you make a fictional character come to life?” Jongin stares in disbelief.

“Magic,” she says, standing up and brushing off her pants. “Now, I understand you being upset at me, but think about it,” she begins, watching as you remove yourself from Junmyeon’s hold, “there are plenty of ways I could have written the story, and you in particular. I wrote you with logic, not as some sissy who falls in love with the first man that gives you any kind of attention. Besides, who do you think gave you the magic to use in this house?”

“You mean you could have made her fall in love with us sooner?” Baekhyun scowls.

“Yep,” she confirms with a nod of her head. “Or made her fall for you at all for that matter. But hey, it could be worse, I could have added the ghost to this situation.”

“The ghost?” Tao echoes.

“Who- what’s that?” Sehun asks.

“Why don’t I let you all see for yourselves,” she snaps her fingers once more and another figure appears across the room.

“(Y/n)?” Jungkook’s voice is heard as he takes a step forwards in confusion, but he seems to run into an invisible wall. He begins to pound his fist on the wall, until he rests his palms against it, staring longingly at you from across the room.

“Yes, Jongin was the worst, but at least he didn’t go as far as actually killing you,” she comments.

“That bastard- that boy, did what?” Minseok’s anger spikes, eyes flashing red as a snarl rips out of his chest.

“Meet Jeon Jungkook, the ghost,” she gestures to him with her hand. “He invaded her dreams, one of which included a sex dream where he replaced himself with the man in the dream, and killed her in order to be with her.”

“I remember now,” your eyes widen, taking a step closer to where Jackie is standing.

“Hey, love,” Jackie calls to you, causing you to hum in response, and the boys to all scowl at the pet name, and how you responded to it. “You want to see something cool?”

You simply nod in response.

Jackie smirks, turning her harsh gaze towards Jungkook. Leading you in front of the twelve boys, she brings you face to face with Jungkook who is desperately trying to reach out to you.

“Tell me, how do you kill someone who’s already dead?” She asks rhetorically, smirk widening as Jungkook begins to clutch his head in pain.

“What the fuck!” Jongin exclaims, the others letting out gasps of their own as they witness the scene before them.

“Tell me, love, what would you have me do?” Jackie asks you, turning her gaze to look at your face.

“Make him feel what I felt,” you reply, emotionless.

Slinging an arm around your shoulder, Jackie turns her gaze back to the ghost who has fallen to his knees, “with pleasure.”

In the next moment, Jungkook clutches his chest, starting to hyperventilate. He lets out a pain filled cry as he feels his bones breaking and his heart stopping for the second time in his life. You watch this happen for another minute before Jackie snaps her fingers and Jungkook disappears into a cloud of smoke.

“What the fuck did you just do?” Baekhyun asks in fear as Jackie turns back around to face them with her arm still slung around your shoulders.

“How did you do that?” Kyungsoo looks at her with slight fear.

“I told you, you’re in my house now,” she grins maniacally. “Any one of you step out of line, or harm (Y/n), you’ll experience something just like that. That is, if you don’t tear each other apart first.”

“I don’t believe this,” Sehun huffs.

“Why don’t we just kill you and take (Y/n) for ourselves? You can’t hurt us if you’re dead,” Jongin moves into a fighting stance, some of the others mirroring his actions.

“Uh, yeah, did you not hear what I told you?” She rolls her eyes. “I created you, so if I die, you all die with me. Besides, you’re all too predictable. I know what you’re going to do before you do it.”

“That would have been nice to know beforehand,” you grumble. “Wish I knew that while I was going through what you put me through. Could have come in handy.”

“I get your slight resentment, but don’t worry, love, I’ll protect you now,” she squeezes your shoulders reassuringly.

“Stop calling her that,” Chanyeol growls.

“Get your filthy hands off of her,” Jongdae steps forward, face full of anger.

“I’m getting real tired of this shit,” Tao says, voice and expression dark.

“Ah, Z, so nice of you to join us,” she tilts her head back in slight mockery. “You’re not the only one I know with something else living inside him.”

“That’s it!” This time, Chanyeol is the first one to lunge at her.

All of them are getting sick and tired of seeing you being held in her arms, as well as her calling you ‘love’ all the time. They all want to dispose of her so they can have you all for themselves again.

Quickly dropping her arm from around your shoulder, Jackie pushes you behind her as she assumes a fighting stance. She manages to back you both up before Chanyeol can reach her, and right before Chanyeol can make contact with her, it’s as if the invisible wall which contained Jungkook has reappeared.

“What the-“ Chanyeol flinches back.

“Maybe I should get a sign,” Jackie chuckles. “Salt line, do not cross.”

Chanyeol scowls at your words.

“He may not be able to cross salt, but we can,” Jongdae says, stalking towards you, golden eyes on display. You can tell she’s really pissed him off.

“Oh no, I’ve pissed the fish off,” she fake gasps, causing you to stifle a giggle, which only adds to all their anger, especially Jongdae’s.

As soon as he crosses the threshold, Minseok takes this opportunity to strike while Jackie is distracted. Moving quickly, and using his speed, he goes to strike her side, but his arm is caught by someone, no, something black and slimy.

“Took you long enough,��� she comments as the black sludge continues to grow out of the ground to form a giant, humanoid figure with pearl white eyelike slits and rows of razor sharp fangs.

“What is that thing?” Luhan gasps from across the room.

Hearing the unfamiliar voice, the being turns its head to look at Luhan, grinning widely as half of it’s face pulls back to reveal a man beneath.

“We, are Venom,” that being said, he flings Minseok across the room, causing him to go crashing into the wall.

“Really, big guy, don’t destroy my place, please,” Jackie sighs.

“Sorry,” he replies.

“It’s good to see you again, V,” Jackie smiles.

“How in the world is Venom here?” You ask in disbelief.

“Magic,” Jackie turns her smile towards you. “Like I said, I have protectors, too.”

“This is just great,” Jongin scoffs. “We’re all still stuck here, and now we can’t even get (Y/n) back.”

“Yeah, and I just got tossed like a rag doll across the room,” Minseok scowls, brushing some drywall dust off his shirt as he rejoins the group of them.

“Oh, cry me a river,” you snark, crossing your arms in front of your chest.

“We like her,” Venom hums.

“Yeah, so does everyone else in this room,” Baekhyun comments.

Jackie rolls her eyes, “he’s not a psychopath about it, nor is he in love or obsessed with her.”

“He’s my favourite, at the moment,” you confirm, causing a few growls to be heard around the room, while the rest of them scowl. Yixing simply frowns, but it’s more of a pout than anything.

“Alright, I think they’re done trying to attack me for the time being,” Jackie observes as they all glare her down. “Okay big guy, can you let Eddie out now?”

No response is heard as Venom begins to shrink down and retreat to reveal Eddie in his place.

“That thing is inside you?” Tao gasps.

“Told you you weren’t the only one I knew like that,” Jackie smirks.

“How come he’s still here, anyways?” Rin quirks a brow at her.

“I like him, he’s funny,” Jackie says, slinging an arm around Eddie’s shoulder. “He’s good company to keep.”

“Aw, you’re going to make me cry from your sentiment,” Eddie teases, his own arm wrapping around her waist.

“So what’s going to happen now?” You ask, eyebrow raised.

“I have an idea,” Jackie grins maniacally. “Anyone want to watch a movie?”

[rpgmgames]

September’s Featured Game: Ghost Hospital

DEVELOPER(S): Lev, Kip, Rose, Tredlocity, C, Bittersweet ENGINE: RPGMaker MV GENRE: Adventure, RPG WARNINGS: Anxiety, Body horror, Implied child harm SUMMARY: Ghost Hospital is a game about anxiety, depression, despair, mental rock bottoms, and, of course, ghosts. You play as Robin, a twelve-year-old girl who has an anxiety disorder and is very much alive in this hospital meant for beings that are not alive. Frankly, her anxiety was already bad enough before she landed in a hospital full of dead people, the still-shambling shells of ancient ghosts who try to take her down for a sweet taste of life, and the hospital directors hellbent on keeping her contained, and more importantly, away from the reason she's REALLY there. Thankfully, you have your new friends Jay and Sarcastic Ghost- Jay is a ghost about your age, and still a very new arrival to the hospital, and Sarcastic Ghost…well, he's an amorphous blob of a ghost, who talks a lot despite not having a mouth.

Download the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Lev: Hey, my name is Lev! I'm an artist and storyteller, and though I've wanted to make games for a long time, this is my first serious attempt! Most of my work is about my experiences in mental illness. Kip: I'm a freelance artist being allowed to write cheap jokes in ghost form. Rose: I'm a freelance writer and editor for the game! I also work on dialogue and story drafting. Tredlocity: My name is Tredlocity! I do some character designs and writing in the game! C: c / ghoul is a character designer, comic artist and Halloween enthusiast. They're currently apart of several indie game teams and are writing the webcomic, This Dark Forest of Ours. Bittersweet: I'm Kendall (AKA Bittersweet), and I'm the resident music person (one of two, technically, but the other left the project unfortunately.) This is my first (and thus far only) major soundtrack composition project, but thus far, it's been a satisfying one!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Lev: Ghost Hospital is a game about anxiety, and the game was born out of an idea to put someone in the shoes of someone with clinical anxiety and depression without going for the prototypical 'horror game' or 'walking simulator', giving more game-friendly, practical narrative and gameplay examples of how it effects people.

How long have you been working on your project? *Lev: The game started development in late 2016 as a thesis project for college. At its inital completion, it was more of a beta or proof of concept than a demo- in its current state, it's far closer to what we have envisioned for the final project.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Lev: Absolutely! The biggest influences are OFF, Yume Nikki, and Sweet Home, and a lot of Gameboy Color graphics and aesthetics- namely, Pokemon GSC and the GBC Zelda Games.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Lev: RPG Maker is a versatile engine, but still fairly restrictive, so getting all the effects I wanted to work was challenging. Mental illness and real life have been taking a toll on development time, too. Getting things to work took teaching myself some javascript, and after being in serious development for this long, I've found ways to motivate myself to keep working. Having other people checking in on you helps, too.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Lev: In its very first inital pitch, it was much closer to Yume Nikki, being more atmospheric and serious. At some point in character and world development, though, I couldn't bear to make it a stoic adventure, and with most of the stuff I already take inspiration from, it's hard for me to not put jokes into the media I make, anyway.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Lev: At the beginning, it was just me working on everything. The first people I brought on board were my concept artist, Kip, my writer, Rose, and my musician, Bittersweet. I can't do music on my own, and I knew from word go that I wanted this to be the kind of game with a strong story and a lot of unique NPCs.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Lev: Call me biased, but the most fun part is making the art for it. It's hard for me to motivate myself to keep working if I'm just using default placeholder sprites, I have to make new NPCs to keep myself interested. It's not the most convenient, but it's fun to do, and it actually really does help with my workflow.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Lev: Oh, absolutely. RPG Maker games have a bad reputation for being very cut-and-paste, and there's a lot of those out there. But it just takes a bit of effort to make yourself and your game stand out, and it can be done absolutely beautifully! The latest one I've played was Hylics, completely surreal and wonderful.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Lev: Robin is a sort of proxy character for myself, so...I'm a bit biased on her. I love Jay a lot, too, he's kinda the friend I wish I had in elementary school when all this first showed up, haha. *Tredlocity: As someone who faces anxiety on a daily basis, I relate to Robin a lot. Though I would say my favorite character is Jay, since he can shoot plasma and has blue hair. *C: I'm partial to Coop [upcoming character], not just bc I designed them but bc I love big sister types. *Rose: I also relate to robin and jay! i try to control my anxiety while remaining positive and hopeful about situations. *Bittersweet: As an anxiety-riddled person, I relate immensely to Robin. However, my favorite character by far has to be Carna. (There's another character I'm particularly looking forward to when the full version of the game is released, though~)

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Lev: Honestly, there's a few things I wanted the game to be able to do at the start that I wasn't able to make happen. I spent a LOT of time trying to get it to work without having to go in and code it myself, and I wish I'd been able to take a step back, remind myself that this is my first serious project, and just stop worrying so much about what, in the end, would've been a minor detail, anyway.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Lev: Chances are I'm gonna leave it alone, but if I go back, I HAVE had a bit of a 'Ghost College' AU where they're exploring a haunted old library on their college campus instead of being trapped in a ghost hospital. It'd probably be cool as a point-and-click adventure, but it wouldn't exactly be a canon exploration of the postgame.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Lev: I'm actually working on a few other projects, so being able to work on those more freely would be great, especially considering I'm really bad at keeping my own limits in mind, haha.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Lev: Mostly, I'm afraid that making a game about a subject like this, as a minority and with other people in my team that would be considered minorities, that releasing this game to the mainstream public would get me a lot of negative attention from people who think that people like us don't belong in the gaming sphere. It's pretty nerve-wracking, but after the positive reception of games like Undertale and SLARPG, it's getting easier to convince myself that I should be more afraid of people just generally not liking the game, haha.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Lev: Have someone to work with! DEFINITELY have someone to work with. Even if it's just a friend to bounce ideas off of or someone to ask if you've been working on the game, having someone else involved helps a lot. And specifically for RPG Maker- if you can, replace your default font with a different one. It's a minor detail, but it goes a long way towards making your game feel more original. *C: Always have a backlog of different projects. I have about four or five ideas constantly on rotation so I don't burn myself out on just one. *Tredlocity: My advice for any creatives is to start small, and just get it out. Feedback is a great motivator, and the only way to get better at something is to keep doing it! *Rose: I think some good advice is to write a few drafts of whatever it is you're working on in order to see which version you'd like to continue! let your work have different scenarios and situations based on various elements you insert or take out of a story, game, or other piece. *Bittersweet: Don't pressure yourself to a dead-set deadline. I know, you want to get this project out eventually, and if you're on a roll with development then all the power to you, but if you're struggling, don't let it burn you out. That's just unhealthy.

Question from last month's featured dev @toxicshroomswamp: How do you feel about your main character(s)? What piece of life advice would you give them? *Lev: I love my main characters, I love them like my own children. I would probably tell Robin that she'll learn to handle everything, it won't be so scary forever. I'd tell Jay that stopping for a minute and thinking is way more important than it seems. I'd tell Sarcastic ghost to shut up.

We mods would like to thank Lev, Kip, Rose, Tredlocity, C, and Bittersweet for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Ghost Hospital if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum