#I don’t know why the app has been destroying the resolution of images lately

[keyyu]

I’m warm, I’m friendly, I think about Beetlejuice the musical only a normal amount

[peaceoutofthepieces]

Sink Or Swim

tag list: @cleocc @feeling-kinda-so-so @hopelessromanticvirgo @dreamy-slytherin @adora8 @lockerfivethreefive @painfully-oblivious @poeticinemaa @jjustonemorething @saraben00 @wedarkacademia @coolguyssyndrome @hischbabe @suckerforsobbe @tayspots @starmansander @theah0lt @zoenneforever @invisibleme @chibibanane

~^~

Sunday, 12:40

Song: Peter Manos - In My Head

Lucas is surprised his dad hasn’t come to tell him how pathetic he is yet. He supposes it isn’t necessary. Lucas is more than aware of it himself.

He’d dragged himself out to go to the bathroom and get breakfast and managed to avoid a run-in. Now he’s curled up in his bed with the covers pulled up to his neck, trying not to feel too sorry for himself.

It isn’t easy.

He’s tempted to call Kes, but he’d called him yesterday, and he doesn’t want to be so needy. He’s thought about messaging Isa, but he isn’t really sure what he would say. He’s sure they’re all busy anyway. Possibly even hanging out together. Without him. As is likely the new normal already.

Lucas had been so sure he’d found his new normal already, too, but nothing feels normal about his situation anymore. He feels more stupid than anything. He doesn’t know what he’s been thinking. He doesn’t know how he has managed to mess everything up so massively already.

Jens was offering him friendship, and of course Lucas went overboard with it. Of course he’s a fool.

He’s spent the weekend rewatching the vlogs. He’s already in that deep.

It goes against all his rules, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He can’t get any of it out of his head. He can’t stop feeling Jens’s hands on his hips, or his breath on his ear. He can’t stop remembering the pump of his heart when Jens has done nothing more than smile. He can’t stop imagining what Jens might have done, if Lucas hadn’t pulled away from their dance, if Lucas had made up for it when Jens pulled him down to sit in front of him by leaning right back against his chest. He can’t stop considering all the possibilities that have never been possible in the first place.

He can’t stop seeing Jens with her, looking entirely at home.

He’d avoided Instagram entirely yesterday, resisting the temptation to open Jens’s message or stalk his page or Jana’s for any possible torture. He hates how dramatic his heart is being. He knew not to expect anything, and he’d let himself get much too carried away anyway. Jens had just seemed so close and so possible. Now Lucas is realising the boy is probably even more like Kes than he thought.

Lucas is long over that, but there’s still a leftover sting regardless, even as he cringes at his own thoughts and thoughtless actions. It makes him feel worse, sometimes, now that the feelings have slipped away, to look back at it, but he can’t quite bring himself to regret it.

It’s given him plenty of time to come to terms with everything. With himself. He can’t exactly bring himself to regret something that taught him so much.

It just obviously hasn’t taught him enough.

It’s in moments like this where a little of that self-hate returns with full force, and he can’t help wishing that he was just normal. It wouldn’t feel like this, if he was just crushing on a girl who didn’t return his feelings.

He might have no proof to back this up, but he feels pretty sure of it all the same.

It would be fine, if he thought it wouldn’t mess anything up with Jens. He’s mostly angry with himself because of how much he’s already letting it affect him. He had run from the party without even saying goodbye, and he hasn’t responded to the message that Jens had so sweetly sent him afterwards. Or to the second message Jens had sent him yesterday, saying that he hoped Lucas got there safe and was having fun. He’d laughed at the irony of it. He doesn’t know how to explain to Jens that he’s completely miserable, and that he hadn’t gone anywhere in the first place.

He’s lying in his bed in Antwerp, and he’s giving in and clicking on Jens’s Instagram story.

It’s a video of him at the skatepark, flying up the ramp towards the camera, grinning as he jumps off his board and pushes the person away. The responding giggles sound like they come from Robbe. He looks as beautiful as ever, and Lucas wishes more than anything that he could join them. The pained twist of his heart isn’t entirely strong enough to make him want to stay away. It’s just an additional ache.

He escapes the app in a rush and opens Spotify, hoping to distract himself. His fingers twitch, tempted to draw, but there’s already a cramp in them. It was all he’d done yesterday. He’d needed to get his thoughts out, needed to put his emotions on paper, in something real, and endless sketches had poured out, inspired by the past few weeks. He’d sketched Sander first, stood in the art shop with his camera and his smirk. He’d sketched Luca, taking care with her curls and her glasses, one eye closed in a wink, adding extra details as he refused to pour out his mind’s main focus.

It still hadn’t stopped him from creating a dozen sketches of Jens, most only half-completed, the image lost midway as another one came to the forefront.

He needs a break from feeling like this, for a while. Before he remembers that he has to return to school tomorrow, where it will be unavoidable.

He doesn’t get very far, unable to make up his mind, before a notification pops up at the top of his screen and destroys any notion of forgetting his feelings.

Jens has messaged him again. Undeterred, it seems, by Lucas’s previous lack of response.

hey, you’re probably still busy but I was wondering what time you would be back? I’m at the skatepark with the boys, and we’ll probably be here until late, if you wanted to join for a while

Before Lucas can even take this in, another message appears.

you’re probably staying with your friends until the evening though, so don’t worry about it

Lucas blinks at the message with furrowed brows. At first his heart twists, thinking Jens has changed his mind and is politely telling him not to come after all. But the rushed manner in which it had been sent makes him doubt himself, and he rereads it again, searching for the purpose of it. The meaning behind it. Another thought comes to mind, but he can’t quite let himself entertain it. That can’t be right.

There’s no way that Jens is nervous.

It sounds an awful lot like he might be, though, the more Lucas reads it over. He begins to feel a little bad. He hadn’t thought too much on what his distance might feel like to Jens. He hadn’t considered the idea that he’s being unfair. It isn’t Jens’s fault, that Lucas feels hurt. He couldn’t possibly know. Lucas hopes that he doesn’t know. To Jens, it probably feels like Lucas is ignoring him now that he’s with his friends in Utrecht. That he simply takes a back seat. Lucas is the terrible person for knowingly hurting him this way.

He can’t help but smile slightly, and then his hands are moving on their own, opening the message and typing a reply.

I’m already home

It appears as ‘seen’ almost instantly, and it takes just as little time for the typing bubble to appear.

you left early? is everything okay?

I never went

He watches the texting bubble appear and disappear a few times before quickly typing out another message.

came home to my dad waiting for me. he found my (very small) stash. wasn’t pleased.

The typing bubble doesn’t appear for long now.

shit

grounded? I was wondering why you hadn’t replied

Lucas hadn’t even realised that he was creating the perfect out for himself. It’s that simple. It probably makes sense, that his grounding would include a lack of phone privileges. It isn’t too extreme, especially if it includes the idea that he’d already gotten it back. He could let Jens believe that his father had dished out that mini, extra punishment. He won’t even be lying. Not really. He just won’t be mending Jens’s incorrect assumption. Skipping over a tiny detail.

yep. I am to remain in this house indefinitely

fuck

he couldn’t be convinced to let you out for even an hour?

Lucas blinks.

Could his father be convinced?

Can Lucas?

He doesn’t have to think about it too long.

let’s check

He locks his phone and slips out of bed, suddenly eager. Determined. Still, he’s slow and quiet as he opens his door, and he winces at the faint creak of the hinges. He tiptoes up the hallway towards the kitchen, running through what he should say, giving himself a bit of extra time. He needs to go into this with patience. He needs to stay resolute. His father will shut him down the instant he blows up, so he simply needs to keep his cool. Throw in some persuasion. It’ll be difficult, probably, but not impossible. Hopefully.

Only his father isn’t in the kitchen, or the adjoining sitting room. Lucas furrows his brows in confusion and moves back down the hallway. The bathroom is unlocked and empty, and his father’s door lies open, proving without any doubt that the room is unoccupied. He’s completely alone in the flat.

His heart thrums and his mind races in time with the quickening beat. He’s not the most passive person in the world, and he wouldn’t let himself be walked over, and he’s not a model citizen. This isn’t too far past his realm of disobedience.

His father is already beyond pissed, and while Lucas initially cringes at the thought, he shrugs it off.

Might as well go the extra mile.

He heads back to his room and pulls a sweater on over his t-shirt, a light pastel green Isa had once bought him. He snatches his denim jacket from the hook by the front door and swipes up his keys as he shrugs it on. He hesitates for half a second before returning to collect his skateboard from his room, and then he’s off.

I’m on my way

Jens’s response is instant.

fucking nice :D

Lucas’s lips quirk, and he shakes his head slightly, and feels unbearably fond. Jens is so easy. Everything he does is so easy. He’s a steadily burning flame, bright and warm and sure, and Lucas is another brainless moth. Drawn in and set alight.

He doesn’t even know how he’s managed to develop such a ridiculous crush so quickly. He just hopes he can get rid of it in the same manner. Maybe he should be giving himself more time, especially now that he has a genuine excuse. He could have stepped neatly away from Jens for a while with the excuse of his imprisonment and Jens would understand. Lucas knows he would. He knows that would be the best thing to do. It’s unfair to Jens and himself to indulge these feelings, the excitement and the urgency and the pleasure at the mere idea of seeing him.

But Lucas has been miserable the past few days, and it’s starting to make his head whir in much more dangerous directions. He just needs to appease it for a moment. He just needs to see Jens once and let his heart quiet.

He’ll be pleased, at this stage, to see any of them. It makes sense for him to want to join as many of these outings as he can. He’s just beginning to fit into this friend-group.

The skatepark is relatively full, as to be expected for a Sunday afternoon, but it takes Lucas no time to find them. His eyes seek out Jens automatically and he finds him easily where he’s now sat at the top of the half pipe, laughing at someone Lucas doesn’t bother looking at and occasionally glancing at his phone. Lucas has to pause for a second and gather himself, squashing down the mixed emotions that bubble up and plastering on a smile.

It’s only when he’s halfway towards him that he does a double take, catching sight of white-blonde hair. His smile slips into something more real, and some of his familiar bounce returns to his step as he heads towards them.

“Yo, Lucas!” The cheer comes unexpectedly from Moyo, and Lucas twists around until he can see him, jogging in the same direction to meet him as he finally stops next to Jens, kicking up his skateboard and catching the tip in his hand.

Jens smiles up at him, left eye squinting more than the right against the sun. He’s still wearing just a shirt and a deep red hoodie, but he looks soft and warm and pleased as Lucas sits down next to him. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Lucas returns, feeling uncharacteristically shy, nerves twisting in his chest. The party and the hours before it skim through his mind, and then the hours after and all of yesterday when he’d attempted to purge himself of all unwanted feelings, pushing this boy away in the process. He doesn’t deserve the easy friendship Jens has handed him. He’s taken advantage of such an innocent thing, and Jens has absolutely no idea. He wouldn’t look so fond if he did.

“You got grounded?” Moyo questions him as he swings up next to them, dropping down on Jens’s other side with furrowed brows.

Lucas shrugs, twisting his hands together in his lap. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“What? Why?”

Lucas twists around to look at Robbe, who has finally detached himself from his boyfriend long enough to notice Lucas’s presence and migrate over. Lucas catches Sander’s gaze over his shoulder and Sander brightens, slipping around Robbe to greet him. Lucas allows him to clasp their hands together with a grin, but ducks away when he moves to ruffle his hair.

“My little protégé. I was starting to think these idiots were never going to let me see you again.”

Lucas huffs, shaking his head as Sander simply drops down to sit cross-legged behind him. Robbe looks at Lucas and rolls his eyes fondly, and Lucas watches with a twist in his stomach as he sits down behind Sander, wrapping his limbs around him and letting him settle back against his chest. “You say that like I listen to them.”

Sander raises his brows at this, nodding approvingly, and this is when Jens makes a small noise in the back of his throat, strangled with confusion.

Lucas looks at him to see him glancing between him and Sander in deep concentration. “Have you already met?”

“Yeah, on Thursday at the art shop,” Sander says easily. “We had a very educational chat.”

Lucas snorts, thinking of the mini lesson Sander had given him on all his favourite dead, supposedly-gay artists as he led him around the store and then to an ice cream stand down the street, instantly winning Lucas’s heart. It may not have been the most educational experience, but it had been enough for Lucas to learn that Sander is someone he could get along with.

Jens swivels to look at Robbe. “You knew about this?”

Robbe hums. “Yeah?”

“Since when?”

“That night?”

Sander takes in Jens’s expression of utter betrayal and snorts, and Lucas can’t help but raise his own brow in amusement as Jens turns his pout towards him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lucas tilts his head. “Why was I supposed to?”

Jens struggles to form a response to that, pout deepening, and Lucas really wishes he’d stop doing things like that. He wishes he would stop treating them as if they are so close, the way Robbe and Sander are close, sharing everything automatically and having a sunk-in understanding. He wishes Jens would make it easier for Lucas to let go of this idea of something more between them.

Sander knocks his leg against Lucas’s arm to get his attention, and his expression is dramatically serious. “Jens just gets a little jealous,” he mock-whispers, loud enough even for Moyo to hear him and let out a snort.

Jens’s pout shifts into a scowl and he rolls his eyes, and Sander knocks a leg against him instead in some semblance of apology. He raises his brows at Lucas, however, in a silent ‘told you’.

“What, you don’t seriously think Sander is going to steal me away or something, do you?” Lucas can’t help but tease, raising his brows in interest.

Moyo butts in with a laugh of his own, gesturing at Sander and hitting Jens’s arm. “Sander is basically a part of the group anyway, man. Where would he go?”

“That’s not the point,” Jens mumbles, mostly under his breath. Before anyone can question him on it, he’s turning back to Lucas and asking, “How’d you get your dad to let you out, anyway?”

Lucas shrugs, smiling sheepishly. “I didn’t. He wasn’t there, so I just left.”

“Ahh, a little rebel,” Sander teases.

Robbe huffs a laugh. “A match made in heaven.”

“Don’t encourage them,” Jens protests, leaving Sander sticking his tongue out at him. His gaze turns concerned as he looks at Lucas. “Won’t that make it worse for you when you get back?”

Lucas isn’t sure it can get much worse, but he can say with certainty that this is the happiest he’s been this weekend. It’s bad. This familiar warmth flooding through his chest under Jens’s gaze. It would probably be best for him, to be locked up at home.

But he can’t bring himself to regret this, either.

He gives another shrug, allows himself to smile, allows himself to enjoy how easily Jens returns it when he says, “It’ll be worth it.”

[gamesception]

You know, for all I love the kingdom hearts series, I never did get around to watching this, or even reading up on the lore from the phone game on wiki or whatever, so I know basically nothing about it.  I guess it’s about the olden days keyblade war?  I don’t know.  It’s probably terrible, but maybe in an enjoyable way.  Let’s give it a try.

Ok, so, fucking first of all, in like the very first seconds of this, I’m being assaulted with a boatload of exposition in awkward sentence fragments confusingly and distractingly arrayed over images from this phone game in like seconds at a time, and, like, am I expected to even be reading this?  Like, I can’t imagine I am, but whatever, lets pause every 30 seconds and write it out:

The world was pure darkness.  But I was born into a radiant world enveloped in a brilliant light.

Ok, yes.  This is that good kingdom hearts bullshit I was looking for.  Nice to see we’re off to a good start here.  But anyway...

From within that light, my master gazed upon me and smiled.  Before he disappeared, the one who made me bestowed names on his 6 apprentices, and passed down the Book of Prophecies to 5 who came to be known as the foretellers.  The 5 read the manuscript and were shocked by the final entry.  The fated land will be the battleground for a great war.  Light will see defeat and expire, while darkness prevails evermore.  They decided to draw on the powers of the book to prevent that from happening.  They harness unimaginable forces from the future to protect light and keep the world safe from darkness.  You should know that they share the same goal,but they don’t follow the same path.  Don’t lose sight of yours, okay?  The world was pure darkness.  But I was born into a radiant world enveloped in brilliant light.  From within that..

ok, now it’s just repeating itself?

While all that exposition is happening, there’s different clips playing from the phone game and... well, I’m glad I don’t have to play it.  It doesn’t really look super good.  The art style feels very off brand from Kingdom Hearts generally.  Has that sort of paper-doll sort of animation that one associates with cheap app store games.  I mean, clearly with more work/production value put into it than went into ‘Princess Frozen’s first Tracheotomy’ or whatever, but still.

And, I mean, I know what I’m getting into here.  I watched the ‘movie’ recaps of days and coded, even though I actually played both of those games on the DS.  So I know this is going to be a series of cut scenes sort of taped together with clumbsy exposition dumps rather than an actual cohesively presented narrative or whatever.  I just hope that the cut scenes involved aren’t in this same style, and that the narrative dumps aren’t all going to flicker past in this unreadable, random-font business.

the same text keeps flickering by over scenes from the Disney films and characters the series has already visited.  Is that the gimmick of the game?  The ‘book of prophecies’ or whatever lets the game rehash old narrative territory through precognition the way the way castle oblivion did in chain of memories by revisiting sora’s memories?  So the game actually takes place in the pre-fall world leading up to / during the original keyblade war, but the game contrives a way to spend all its time rehashing material covered in previous games instead?

That /would/ be a pretty KH move, if that’s what I’m in for.  Would also pretty much negate the point of liveblogging it.

Oh, fuck, I’ve been at this for like 10 minutes, and I’m only 30 seconds into this mess, lets get on with it...

The master sounds like a bit of a douchebag.  So I take it Luxu is the apprentice who /isn’t/ one of the 5 ‘foretellers’?  Also, I thought mysterious keyblade masters in this period wore animal masks, do distinguish them from the cloaks worn in the modern period which is, what, centuries later?  millenia?

So yeah, this takes place before all the worlds were split off into their own little planets.  And this is ‘daybreak town’, ans we’re basically being told the same stuff about the master who can see the future, wrote it down in a book, and gave it to 5 of his six apprentices.  I guess Luxu has a different job.

Not menacing at all.

Oh, and the cut scenes, at least in the back cover movie version, are not in the same art style as the game, thankfully enough.

Seriously, though, I would have expected this master of master’s (hft ‘mom’) guy to be more... dignified?  Wise?  It doesn’t come across in the still images, but he feels like a goofball jerk villain, like Xigbar or Axel.  Or Greed from FMA.

Mom: You read my cool ass prophecy book?  Fuckin sweet, right?”

Unicorn Fursona, distressed:  Yes, master, but... is the world really going to be destroyed?  Is there nothig we can do?

Mom: Oh, that?  It’s a Bummer, huh?  (like, no serioutly, a literal line from the fucking movie), nah, everything’s gonna disappear.  Also, I’d never up and leave you all, but if I totally do exactly that you’ll keep it real, right?  

So, if I’m gathering correctly:

kingdom hearts binds all the fairy tale worlds together into one world.

if kingdom hearts were lost they’ll split apart into different worlds, which we know from the other games in the series is exactly what happens.

Mom predicts the coming calamity, and is focused on what happens after.

Mom tells his apprentices about it, gives them keyblades, goads unicorn man into recruiting more keyblade wielders, with the apprentices’ efforts probably causing the war/calamity they’re trying to prevent, which Mom probably expects and is deliberately bringing about.

And he more or less says as much to Unicorn guy?  I mean, minus the ‘I am manipulating you into causing exactly this disaster’ part, so as per usual in this series we’re not exactly dealing with the brightest bulbs on team face.

As for the plan and master himself... it’s a very Xehanort plot, to the point that I’d say this just is Xehanort in some fashion, but his attitude and disposition aren’t norty at all.  Again, he reads much more like a Xigbar or Axel type.

Oooh, apprentice role call:

Unicorn guy is Ira, the designated leader of the group, chosen by Mom for his gullibility reliability.

Snake girl is Invi.  She’s super virtuous.  I guess that’s why her astral beast is a Snake.  Her job is to watch over the others.  Like a mediator for the group, I guess.

“fearless” Aced the Bear.  Not much of a distinct role, he just ‘supports Ira’.

“prudent” Ava, with a fox fursona.  Her job is to ‘prepare keyblade wielders for the world after’.

Gula the ‘cool headed’ the leapord, researches the book.

Luxu, the only apprentice who doesn’t have an animal mask, disappears, presumably sometime after the master.  Who is definitely not hiding in that box.  Luxu was ‘the first apprentice to be given his role’, but the narration doesn’t say what that role is.  Hopefully the movie eventually will, and this won’t be another Kingdom Hearts spinoff game that introduced another tangled mess of unresolved mysteries and plot threads to a series that has too many of those already, without actually resolving anything.

whoops, I guess Mom isn’t in the box, since Luxu left first.  Ok, whatever.

It’s getting late, so I’m going to take a break here, but so far?

The premise is interesting enough.  I feel like I see where the overall story is going, but I’m still pretty invested in the ‘who exactly is the master’ and ‘what’s Luxu doing’ questions.  Hopefully they actually get some resolution.

The designs at least for the main cast work well enough, though I wish mom and Luxu weren’t just dressed in exactly the same darkness robes from elsewhen in the series.  I honestly would have loved to play a kingdom hearts spinoff game where these apprentices were the main characters.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t what this game was.  I hope this movie recap of the game focuses more on these characters and not so much on the army of generic phone game mmo protagonists.