#Stars Commentary

[mykingdomforapen]

courage of stars | a writer's commentary

It's here! The end of the fic is finally here. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it. I'm so thankful to have gotten to write this fic and share it with you. Thank you for joining this journey with me, and for enjoying this story enough to want to read the behind the scenes. I'm really excited to shout obsessively about the thought process that went into this story, to the point where this commentary is +3k words rip.

Of course, major spoilers for the story ahead:

Original Inspiration

After finishing ‘spinning silk,’ I knew that I wanted to write a story about Cheng Xiaoshi and his mother. It took me some time to settle on how that story would play out, but the one thing I knew for sure I wanted, because this was the image that kickstarted my desire to write about them, was the idea of Cheng Xiaoshi diving into a photo and then stumbling into his mother, equally diving, who realises he is there and goes, “Little rabbit, is that you?” 

I also knew that whoever Cai Liangxing embodied would have a birthmark on their forehead, which I will get into later. 

Initially, I was going to make it a story that drew loose inspiration with the Magic Lotus Lantern story, which is about a demigod boy whose mother is stolen and trapped underneath the mountains by her godly brother, and he had to go on a quest to eventually be capable enough to break open the mountains and save her. In this story, his mother would have had some kind of photograph-related curse instead of abilities that fell upon her somehow, in which at random and uncontrolled moments, she would look upon a photograph and suddenly be sucked into it, and into the person within the photograph (not necessarily the photographer). She wouldn’t have control over it, which means it could happen at random, she can never go forward in time but backwards. Cheng Xiaoshi would have to keep diving into different photos further and further back in time to look for her, which would have led the narrative to explore different decades in Chinese history until he would find her. At one point, they would have agreed that whenever she was and whoever body’s she was in, she would bite her finger and place a small bloodied dot on her forehead so that Cheng Xiaoshi could find her. 

Slowly, though, I realised I didn’t want that to be how the story went. The dot on the forehead is in reference to a Chinese legend that I wanted to explore, and I realised that if I wanted to explore it to its full potential, the story had to go differently. So I scrapped the tumbling down into time idea and leaned more into this legend. This is how the legend goes: there was once a young prince who loved his partner, but something arose (intruders, I think) in which she was fatally wounded. As he held her in his arms and wept, she bit her finger until it bled and painted a small dot on his forehead and said, when I’m reborn, I will have this birthmark on my forehead. I will find you again. And then she dies. 

Many years passed, and the prince became the king. As king, he one day met a young man with a birthmark on his forehead and realised that this was his lover reincarnated. Of course, the young man did not retain any of those memories, but the king showed him great favor and took him in as his own, and eventually the young man grew to become the king’s trusted advisor. However, this young man slowly became corrupt, his allegiances were elsewhere, and it eventually became evident that he was a traitor to the kingdom and to the king. With a mournful heart, the king ultimately executed this young man. 

I wanted this idea of someone Cheng Xiaoshi loved being in the body of someone else, but who is losing themselves entirely until they are someone who causes Cheng Xiaoshi harm. I replaced reincarnation with the Cheng family’s photo hopping abilities, and eventually (and might I say, through tremendous and late-night efforts lol) developed SUn Yihan, the one who really had to carry the story’s stakes. I also knew that I still wanted this story to be deeply tied to Chinese modern history, and so Sun Yihan’s backstory was the way it was. 

There were three scenes I knew for sure I wanted to write, that really propelled the direction of the story: 

1) “Little rabbit, is that you?” 

2) Cai Liangxing, knowing of Lu Guang’s abilities, speaking to him through a photograph, and 

3) the scene in heaven of Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents, “Oh, Yinhe, he’s so beautiful.” 

I just knew I wanted to keep these concepts in and write them in whatever way possible. 

I also would be remiss if I didn't mention the song from which the title of the fic originated. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that its music video left an indelible mark on me, and is probably from where the imagery in the final chapter drew inspiration!

Epigraph

The epigraph for this story is one of the most famous poems from Li Bai, a Chinese Tang dynasty poet. It’s so famous, in fact, that I hesitated to use it because it’s famous to the point of cheesy. Elementary school children recite it, it’s one of the first poems you will learn in any Chinese language class. It’s very simple, and yet the themes just felt fitting. 

Here it is again in Chinese: 

床前明月光

疑是地上霜

举头望明月

低头思故乡

Here is its English translation: 

Before my bed lies a pool of moon bright I could imagine that it's frost on the ground I look up and see the bright shining moon Bowing my head I am thinking of home

The moon is such a crucial symbol in this story, and Chinese literature/art is FLUSH with moon imagery. This one I felt to be really fitting because I felt it reflected Cheng Xiaosh and Lu Guang all at once. Cheng Xiaoshi’s relationship with the poem a little more in its literal meaning, in that his mother had told him in the beginning of the story to look at the moon when she is gone because Mama Rabbit is always looking after him. And how, as Cheng Xiaoshi walked to the forest to his death, he looked at the moon and saw it for what it meant, rather than what it was, to draw courage from it. 

Lu Guang’s relationship to this poem is more tied to its context. Li Bai was writing this from a place of reflecting on filial piety. The inspiration from which he wrote it was imagining a Confucian scholar in the employment of the emperor who misses his hometown on Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s almost a little too on the nose for Lu Guang, isn’t it? Haha. 

Sun, Moon, and Stars

When I first wrote the opening of “courage of stars,” with Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents stargazing on their last night together, I honestly expected that to be the extent of celestial bodies’ presence in the story. All I had asked from it was for the stars, representative of his parents, to reflect that myth of stars being long dead but their light still reaches us. In this scant use of the motif of the heavens, light still represented love. 

In fact, the mention of Mid-Autumn Festival aligning with CXS’ death scene was just for my fun, since his death might coincide with Mid-Autumn on any given year (albeit not any year that the story could logically take place, but we’re assuming that they live in an alternate earth anyway hahaha). It felt like it would be fun to make the slowly filling moon reflect the passage of time that draws closer to CXS’ death day. In short, the sun and the moon were really meant to be somewhat melancholic motifs, and not much more.

Also, I liked to draw a through line between Cai Liangxing and Chang’E, the legend of the moon goddess. In order to protect her husband’s magic, Chang’E consumed a magical pill that a cruel man was trying to steal, which made her levitate all the way up to the moon. She kept the villain from taking the pills, but in turn she was trapped on that moon with no way to come down for the rest of eternity. Much like…

But the more that I wrote, the more that my appreciation for the moon and what it could symbolize really took root, particularly in the moment where CXS and LG reconcile after their painful conflict. Chapter 7 is really precious to me because I wanted to write a reconciliation between best friends that showed them in all their messiness and earnestness. I wanted these two best friends to be confronted with the shortcomings and pitfalls of each other and their own ability to love, and to still be able to comfort each other. I think for me, I err on the side of writing a friendship love in an idolizing way, putting it on a pedestal as the Ultimate Source of Love, when that isn’t really sustainable. CXS and LG aren’t going to be perfect friends to each other. They’re going to be messy and selfish and their love for each other will not be complete. But it is still precious. 

So when I wrote the last scene of them in LG’s bedroom, forgiving each other, the moon motif struck me. I thought about how the moon, in its pearly luminescence, is really reflecting the light of the sun. It glows, it is gorgeous, it is the stuff of poems and music, and it is in truth a reflection. My writing is really guided by my faith, and I often think of the line from the musical Les Miserables: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” My experience with love and with faith has often been best described as that we people are riverbeds, receiving and outpouring love to one another whose source is the Living Water. So when I wrote about the moon, it just…clicked. Ah, it’s a fountain. From the sun, to the moon, to the earth. Light as water as love. Cheng Xiaoshi shines with love to Lu Guang, but he doesn’t have to have the pressure or the burden of being Lu Guang’s only source of it. They are both joyful, earnest riverbeds, whose imperfections are not enough to stop the flow of love coming to one another.

After that, it really guided me in my writing, especially as we reached the climaxes, and Mid-Autumn approaching. The filling moon, and the holiday, still held this ominous tone to them because they do still indicate Cheng Xiaoshi’s coming death day. But, much like the memories of other motifs in this story, painful imagery also live alongside hopeful and encouraging ones. The full moon that terrified Lu Guang is also the moon that lit Cheng Xiaoshi’s way and followed him, symbolically, when he was afraid. We all go through journeys in life where none of our loved ones can follow us all the way, physically or emotionally, whether because they leave or because they simply cannot. Only we can feel the heartache in our own chest, even when someone is holding our hand. In that moment, as loved as Cheng Xiaoshi is by his friends, he must take this journey to his death alone. His own mother had literally forgotten him. But the moon, sunlight reflected, this story’s motif for love and courage and mercy, followed him every step of the way. 

Frogs/Corpse Pond

Frog Guang has become such an icon from this fic that I feel like I must make a little section for the frogs! 

When I was writing ‘spinning silk,’ there was a moment where Lu Guang is reliving his childhood and there’s a moment where he is with his grandfather, and he’s showing his grandfather a fat frog that he found. It was a throwaway line, and I do not intend for the universe of silk to be the same as stars (for the most part, I intend for each of my fics to all be of different universes, not even different timelines, but they simply cannot coexist), and there are differences in each Yeye’s backstories. But that throwaway line did plant that idea in my head that Lu Guang loved frogs, to carry over into ‘stars.’ 

I’m not a frog aficionado myself, although this headcanon has made me a lot fonder of them. I am ever thankful to Rulos who knows much more about frogs than me and told me frog facts and types to flesh out Lu Guang’s favor for them. But I do have an echo of frogs in my own family history. When my grandmother was pregnant with my father, this was during the famine years and she was like, 36kg/81lbs. There just wasn’t a lot of food! So she ate frogs that came from the pond in her neighborhood to supplement her nutrition. That was a story she told us and it stuck to me ever since, especially because said pond is one I am very fond of in my own life. For, of course, very different reasons than hers. Which leads me to my next subsection…

Hunger

The motif of hunger vs abundance came almost naturally, as a result of the frogs. One of my readers (I see you Juno) aptly noticed the juxtaposition between Lu Guang having a love for frogs that his grandparents ate out of desperation, and I was so excited that they saw that because that’s exactly what I was trying to capture. Hunger vs abundance. Starvation in Yeye’s anecdotes, and even Sun Yihan’s adulthood (for my parents’ generation, it was indeed so rare to eat chicken that it would only ever be eaten on New Year), compared to Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang basically having tons of snacks and meals in every chapter. And then, the way that hunger can really make people go impulsive and reckless and foolish. I know I make some dumb decisions when hungry just to fill my stomach. Anecdotes of people in horrible situations, be it in war or genocide or famine, hurting or killing others just to have a small bite to eat. Cheng Xiaoshi was so, so hungry for want of his mother that he betrayed Lu Guang. Sun Yihan/Ye Ci, starving for lack of a father figure and a sense of belonging in the world, betrayed his mother. Remember that you have been hungry, too. 

Names

I was very excited about the fact that I could make each chapter name of ‘stars’ correlate to a name, or to a meaning of a name/name-adjacent, because names really do play such a big role in this story. For one, plot-wise it is what put Cheng Xiaoshi in so much danger. Cai Liangxing and Cheng Yinhe’s names being oh so symbolic. Cheng Xiaoshi’s and Lu Guang’s childhood nicknames become almost motifs in and of themselves. And of course, Sun Yihan’s chosen name marking him as a punishment versus his secret, lost birth name of Ye Ci (which shares a character with the word ‘mercy.’) 

Also I want to emphasize that whenever he talked about him, Grandpa Lu always referred to Sun Yihan by the family name (Sun zai) because I didn’t want him to really interact or acknowledge his self-given name of Yihan. As he always said before, Grandpa Lu has no regrets meeting SYH, and he wishes SYH would not either. 

And I do love when a name is thematic. Cheng Xiaoshi naming Lu Guang’s new frog ‘Cassini’ is so important to me. 

Alternate Scenes/Ideas

Yeye was originally going to have abilities! His abilities would have something to do with being able to see a room in the past, so time traveling within a confined space of a room. He would have been able to use the traditional art of paper cutting that, if you pin it onto the wall, you would be able to see what had occurred in the room during the past (although, not necessarily able to interact with it). I did want to try to create a power for him where one could interact with the past, but then realised it would get messy and also would be very ironic of Lu Guang to be so adamant about his time scruple. The wall art magic would have been the original way that LG and CXS find out about CXS’ father’s death–witnessing it, not so much living through it. Sorry, CXS.

Lu Guang initially was supposed to be able to talk directly with Cai Liangxing while she was in the past. So LG was actually going to be the person to tell CLX that CXS has an unchangeable death node, and they would have come to some kind of agreement that they would do everything in their power to save him. Something about his abilities combining with Yeye’s would have made that possible, however I scrapped it because I couldn’t think of a way to do it elegantly, and that would stay true to the rules of the magic/universe. 

Qiao Ling at one point would have tried to use her abilities to look into a photo of Cai Liangxing, and would notice that when she peeked into Cai Liangxing’s mind, it would be exactly the same as when she would try to peek into Sun Yihan’s, thus emphasizing that the two have molded into one person. 

Sun Yihan was actually going to be something of a serial killer. He would have murdered young men with the surname Cheng in order to absorb Cheng Xiaoshi’s abilities, albeit he doesn’t know if he found the right Cheng Xiaoshi or not. Scrapped because I realised that would lean him towards villainy, which wasn’t what I ultimately wanted for his character, so…serial kidnapping. 

On that note, Cheng Xiaoshi would hae been recruited by Captain Xiao to dive into the photo of one of the victims to find out who the killer was. Upon discovering that it was SYH, LG would have panicked at him to get out and that would be how they realised SYH is hunting CXS down and for what reason he was killing all these young guys. I ultimately took all the tension I wanted from such a scene and put it into CXS diving into his father. 

CXS was initially going to get kidnapped by SYH (no Lu Guang as bait) and forced into experiments, which would lead him to dive into SYH’s mother at one point. He would inherit her emotions towards her son. I scrapped it when I reasoned that she probably would not have had any chance to take a photo between getting accused and getting killed. 

Fanart

I am so blessed to have artists share fanart of the fic with me. I wanted to put them all in one place, and will continue to add to this doc as I know one of my commissioned pieces from Sunny will be posted sometime later today. Thank you so much for everyone for sharing their imagination and vision of this little world with me. I'm so touched. Everyone please please please feast your eyes on these arts and show the artist love!!

PM_Paint

@sailboat-sparrow 1, 2

Blepps

@quarriart Quarri

@sgdlr-asdfghjkl Niebo

intothefrisson (sunny)

Thank you...

I just want to dedicate this space to say a HUGE thank you to my wonderful beta and dear friend, @fluffy-rulos. Rulos was cheering me on as I wrote this monster of a fic, tracked the mystery for me, gave me suggestions and feedback that helped me make the fic better, and of course, gave me all the frog facts for Frog Guang. I am so thankful for her and this story wouldn’t be the same without her. This story took about five months to write, writing for almost every single day of the week, and I don’t know how I would have made it this far without her encouragement and excitement. Thank you for joining me on this adventure my friend!! 

And thank you to everyone who stayed with the fic from beginning to end. I really hope you liked it and enjoyed reading the behind the scenes. I'll miss you all <3.

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

[lucabyte]

So does anybody else ever think about how Loop felt the need to demonstrate that the party's deaths wouldn't have any effect on the loops. I know I do but that's besides the point. Anyway I don't think Loop actually needs to bathe, they just like to feel included.

[expelliarmus]

[overseer-picard]

From the episode commentary of "The First Duty" with writers Ron D. Moore and Naren Shankar.

[victorian-nymph]

In honour of May 4th, I have a delivery of more questionable tweets

[lucabite]

loop you cant say that

+ bonus

[surreal-duck]

master artist and his number one fan

guy who is being so normal about the new additions to their profiles. i think abt midoris initial infatuation with his art slowly developing into appreciating yuzuru himself as a person and idol to the point he worries about how he sees him (ex: a bit of home party and in workplace survival rules) sometimes thats a lie i think about it a lot. and yuzuru learning to enjoy art just for the sake of drawing!! seeing the lets try diy story where he doesnt even refute drawing on midoris desk and was only worried that his doodles might cover up the mascot design compared to how discouraged he usually would be in earlier ! stories. everything to me i adore their dynamic if that wasnt obvious by *gestures to basically everything*

and happy pride month 🏳‍🌈

[askfordoodles]

I miss 'eeby deeby', I never see it anymore, even though it was released in the same tumblr language dlc as 'blorbo', scrunglo' and 'glup shitto'

what happened to my girl eeby deeby?

[disney-is-mylife]

I don’t understand why people hate Snow White’s husband so much?!?!? It’s not like he’s a creep or anything.

There are two main reasons: Number 1, compared to the other princes, he's the most boring. The film was made in 1937, it pioneered film animation, so it's bound to not exactly be chock full of Complicated Characters, that's just the way it is. He's a product of his time.

The other is because ....... *sigh* the annoying online spread of misinformation that he's supposedly 28 or 30 or some BS and she's only 14 🙄

(Note: ahead, I'll be ranting at the Haters, not at you @cleverqueencommander ^^")

Here's the CANONICAL truth, peeps: NO AGES ARE EVER MENTIONED IN THE MOVIE. EVER. NOT ONCE. If it's not in the text, it's not Canon. We can only assume based off of visual hints.

Now, that said, is Snow White probably one of the youngest princesses? I'd say so, but only because she has that "baby face" and chubbier cheeks. Let's say she's 15-16. Okay. Have you SEEN Princey Boy's face??

LOOK AT THIS DORK. That is NOT a 30 year old creep, that is a BABY! He cannot POSSIBLY be older than 19!! I'd say he's 17-18, max, but he's most likely ALSO 15-16 like Snow!

Snow White and her Prince embody YOUTH and YOUNG LOVE. The spell literally calls for "Love's FIRST Kiss" to awaken Snow White. Not "True Love's Kiss." FIRST KISS. That goes BOTH WAYS, it's THEIR FIRST KISS.

They are precious babies who are each other's first love and I refuse to hear any more slander claiming "isn't he supposed to be 28??" when that was pulled out of someone's ass to make Disney Look Bad >.<

[mykingdomforapen]

chapter 10 of "courage of stars" will be coming next week and guys, I'm so nervous. I am so excited and I'm so nervous. This chapter is many things. It's where I got to do some things I've been really wanting to do. It's where I cross a point of no return in the story. I got to try a different style. It's where the line blurs between fanfic and a genre that I respect and fear.

It's also a huge factor in why this fic is rated M. Hoo boy.

So! In lieu of updating today, so that you won't have to face a three week wait afterwards, here's a fun little drabble/filler episode:

-

When Lu Guang was four years old, he lovingly killed three tadpoles. He had scooped them from the pond in a plastic cup and brought them home happily, convinced he would raise them into froghood. By Thursday, all three of them floated lifelessly in the surface of the bright blue tub in which he housed them. His mother poked them curiously with a chopstick while he sobbed into his grandmother's lap.

"Don't be so sad, Guangguang," Maamaa crooned as she patted Lu Guang's head. "You tried very, very hard. We all know that you did your best." 

"I killed them!" Lu Guang wailed into her skirt. "I just want them to be frogs and now they died!"

"Oh, A Guang," his mother said as she furtively plucked the dead tadpoles into a bundled newspaper for a more discreet funeral. "This is a good learning experience, right? Now you know what not to do with a frog. See, it's good to learn with the wild tadpoles, before you spend money on a pet. You know better for next time not to use tap water."

Lu Guang sobbed louder ("I meant it to be comforting!") until Yeye came home. Maamaa intercepted Yeye before he walked through the door and sent him on a mission to bring home steamed bai tang gao as a consolation, and Yeye beelined to the nearest vendor to bring home a steaming, buoyant cake of tangy sweet rice. Lu Guang chewed on it sullenly on the living room sofa after bidding the dead tadpoles goodbye into the storm drain.

Yeye sighed as he sat next to Lu Guang, stroking his grandson's little head.

"You know," he said, "when I was little, my father raised bees."

Lu Guang blinked up at Yeye with teary eyes.

"Honeybees?" he asked.

Yeye nodded. "My father was a very adventurous man, you know. A scholar, but always enjoyed the outdoors. He got it in his head that he would like to try raising a colony of honeybees. I was so excited to help him. I thought we would have hives and hives of bees, but what do you know! Only a month or so of having the bees, one day they all flew away. The queen said, no more! I was so disappointed."

Lu Guang sniffled. Yeye scratched the back of Lu Guang's head.

"After that, we stuck with chickens," Yeye said lightly. "What do you think of chickens, A Guang?"

Lu Guang shook his head.

"I like frogs," he whispered.

"You want to try raising frogs again?"

Lu Guang nodded. Yeye smiled crookedly.

"Ah, well," he said. "Chickens are smelly, anyway."

-

For Lu Guang's seventh birthday, his parents took him to the pet store.

His mother had promised him a pet frog for when he turned seven, partly because she had assumed he would grow out of frogs in three years' time. She was a woman of her word, though, when she noticed him checking out library books about frog care and frog types when he hit age six. When asked if he wanted to invite friends over to play, he shook his head and asked to go to the pet shop.

So on Sunday when Ba and Ma were off work, they took Lu Guang to the best-rated pet shop in the city, four subway stops away from Peidi University. Lu Guang was shaking with anticipation as he counted down the stops, donning his frog bucket hat in celebration and looking away solemnly when teenage girls cooed at him. All he could think about was his dream coming true.

“Now, A Guang,” his mother said breezily as she took Lu Guang’s hand to wade through foot traffic. “When you pick a frog, you have to make sure it isn’t poisonous, okay? Mommy is afraid of poisonous animals.”

“I don’t want a poison dart frog,” said Lu Guang, albeit with reservation. “They won’t have them in a pet store.” 

He did not know what sort of frogs were available in the pet store that Ma and Ba were taking him. Ba, in all his practicality, had assumed that they would go to one of the street markets and pick up a frog that was meant for the dinnerplate. He expressed mild surprise when they turned left to the subway station, so Lu Guang knew Ba wasn’t going to be any help in asking for clues. 

“All right, Guangguang,” said Ma as she ushered Lu Guang into the pet store. It was a corner shop with clean glass windows, full of tanks and cages and colorful habitat accessories. Colorful parakeets squawked and glittering snakes coiled under sunlamps, and Lu Guang’s little heart began to race with anticipation. “Only one frog, do you understand?” 

Lu Guang nodded, his eyes as wide as coins as he stared up at the tall towers of tanks. There were saltwater coral fish dancing among anemones, drowsy tarantulas (Ma squeaked at the sight of them), sunbathing turtles, bearded lizards, and–

Lu Guang felt his jaw drop. 

An Amazon milk frog. 

It was just at eye level with Lu Guang, so that when he pressed his nose to the glass he was eye to eye with the docile pale blue frog. It perched on a rock under the sunlamp, milky blue and content to stare back at Lu Guang. It was perfectly patterned, gummy blue webbed feet, and a lipless mouth that promised simplicity. 

It was, in short, the most wonderful creature that Lu Guang had ever seen. 

He stood up on his tiptoes to get a closer look at the frog. Its tiny breaths puffed in its throat in a fascinating rhythm. It was like seeing a real-life Doraemon in Lu Guang’s eyes, or Sun Wukong–a fairy-tale celebrity come to life, except instead of comic books it was Lu Guang’s frog encyclopedia. Lu Guang knew its habitat, its life cycle, its favorite foods, and now he could behold one with his own eyes. 

Seven minutes passed, and his mother touched him on the head.

“A Guang, there are other frogs you should look at too,” she said.

Lu Guang shook his head. He pressed his hands against the glass. 

“Aiyah, A Guang, not too close.” 

Lu Guang moved his nose a millimeter away from the glass, leaving a smudge. His mother looked down at him with a crooked smile. 

“Is this the one you want, then?” she said. 

He looked up to his mother and nodded. Ma turned to Ba and tapped the price tag. Ba nodded solemnly and undertook the task of haggling (unsuccessfully) with the store owner. 

“Let’s pick out a tank for him,” said Ma. 

She took Lu Guang’s hand and tugged him towards the habitat shelves, but Lu Guang refused to budge. He glued himself to the spot, maintaining unbreakable eye contact with the milk frog. 

“A Guang, come on, now,” she said. “We have to give him a home, don’t we?” 

Lu Guang huddled closer to the tanks. He was convinced that if he were to let the frog out of his sight, some other seven-year-old boy would swoop down and claim the frog as his own. 

“Ba is buying the frog right now, see?” Ma said, pointing to Ba who was conceding to the original price of the pet store while he pulled out his wallet. “There. Let’s choose a tank.” 

After another minute of convincing, Lu Guang finally followed his mother to pick out a proper tank for his frog. He picked out the soil, cleaned rocks, plants, and water source that would all go into his terrarium, but it wasn’t until Ba handed to Lu Guang a plastic covered cup with his milk frog sitting politely inside did Lu Guang feel the surge of joie de vivre. He hugged the cup to his chest, whispered his thanks to his father, and then burst into tears, precisely in that order.

-

Thanks for indulging me with this little drabble, gang. Who knows, since I'm kind of keeping up this 2 week streak for the rest of the update schedule, you might see the return of Frog Guang's adventures again...after all, if you've been on my tumblr for some time, you may recall that I have a headcanon that Lu Guang has beef with one of his cousins.

Until next week!

[anakindoodles]

The Path to the Dark Side

Click for better quality!! and reblog to help artists <3

[guardian-angle22]

911 lone star fashion -> every carlos outfit

↳ 2.04

[lucabyte]

[ ] like a body my same size

+ textless alt

[bardicious]

Honestly tired of the criticism SNW gets from specifically Tumblr (cause when I check reddit, they love it lots). Like, there are some nitpicky ass people here.

Imo, the Gorn are awesome (you saw them once in TOS, get over it!), Spock/Chapel make sense and were always plausible (Also Spock had his fair share of female love interests in TOS that he knew less than Christine), regarding the silly episodes where Spock gets turned "human" or the new one where the crew turns "vulcan" (In quotes because a. I don't think the intention is for them to be accurate representation of either race b. we all just gonna ignore all the silly ass episodes in TOS like they're not part of the series' bread and butter), the musical episode was literally the best musical episode in the entirety of the genre of rando show doing a musical episode.

Spock this Spock that, there's so many complaints about Spock as if the Menagerie didn't have ooc Spock. The complaints about not having enough screen time for this character or that, like, again, let's be real, this show is for people who specifically loved TOS, of course you're going to have lots of Spock, Chapel, Uhura and yes, Jim also (because he's beyond crucial to Star Trek's legacy), and yes, maybe there should be more Ortega and idk whoever that other pilot is, but you still have focus on Pike, Una, and La'an, which is pretty damn good for a show that only has 10 episodes a season.

Lovely to see that the show has a 98% from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 93% from Google Users, which imo, despite the wackos I've seen on this site, is what really matters and means the show is going to keep trucking along despite a minority of negativity.

My long winded way to say, I can't wait for season 3! ❤️

[codacheetah]