hey hey hey! my name is luna (she/her) - if you see alia call me smalluna, know that i am 6’1 at heart :) i am a ten-time swcer, gothic camper, host, and the inventor behind the 1k word introduction tradition. as a host, the area i’m specializing in this session is cabin wars - so if you have any questions regarding those, feel free to reach out!

starting with the basics - i’m fifteen and a half, bangladeshi american, a rising junior (grade 11 for nonamericans), neurodivergent (adhd), and an east coaster! my MBTI is intp, my enneagram is 4w5, and my zodiac sign is libra. i’m pretty sure my moon sign is sagittarius and my rising is gemini, but i don’t remember; the vibe feels right, though. i’m an immense spreadsheet nerd, and my irls perpetually make fun of me for it. i also strain my lemonade, which my irls also perpetually make fun of! the gist of my life story is that i am perpetually unable catch a break. and that i like the word perpetually.

as i said, i’m going into 11th grade - i go to an ib school, so this means i start the ib diploma program next year! i’m very terrified, but i think it’ll be alright - this swc, i’m hoping to get used to writing more essays on my own time because the ib program is heavily based on those. i’m taking math analysis, language & literature, biology, 20th century topics, spanish, and psychology at the IB SL (standard level) this year and next year, except next year i’ll be trading psychology for global politics and be studying lang/lit, history, and biology at the HL (higher level). i also have to take TOK (theory of knowledge) across both years, which is basically like a philosophy class. furthermore, i’ve had to start thinking about what i want to do with the rest of my life - i’m hoping to primarily study psychology or cognitive science! and then double major/dual degree/minor in some combination of public policy, design, international relations, communications, philosophy, or criminal justice. still figuring it out, but i know i want to be in the field of arts and humanities! and while i’m doing this and making a steady financial income, if i write a hit book and have the ability to become a full-time author, i would absolutely not be opposed.

enough about academics though - next up is music. while i have no intent on pursuing music as a career, it is something that has become an intrinsic part of my life. i’ve played piano since i was in 3rd grade and been self taught since i was in 5th; i usually teach myself covers of songs i like through youtube tutorials or creating my own arrangements! the only song i’ve learned all the way through is ‘achilles come down’ by gang of youths through my own piano trio arrangement - which i arranged and performed as a birthday gift for alia and for my ibmyp personal project in sophomore year. i am currently trying to find the time to learn lethargy by bastille, and i know parts of sweater weather by the neighborhood, lavender haze by taylor swift, work song by hozier, amongst other things. i’ve played the violin since 4th grade, making the upcoming year my eighth year of the instrument! i actually just got a new violin on saturday, and i’m having the time of my life breaking it in. i’m currently in my school’s top orchestra, and i sometimes like to arrange covers of songs for the violin too! my favorite thing i’ve ever played on the violin is mambo from west side story. except i rarely perform them because i hate the way the violin sounds on recording. however, i am trying to do hozier duets with robin and stingray - so who knows, maybe i’ll embrace violin cover sound quality soon xD

and when i’m not playing music, i’m almost always listening to it. take right now, i’m listening to sunlight by hozier. if it is not evident enough already, hozier is my favorite musical artist of all time - i saw him in new york as an early sweet-sixteen gift and it was hands down the greatest experience of my life! my favorite songs by him are from eden, first light, and be (acoustic), and my favorite album is probably his debut. aside from hozier, my main other two artists are taylor swift and bastille! my favorite taylor swift era is evermore, but my favorite songs are the lakes (original version) from folklore and new romantics from 1989. my favorite bastille album is without a doubt wild world - and as for favorite song, probably lethargy or power, which are both from that album.

i swear i listen to more than these people though - other artists i like are noah kahan, sleeping at last, conan gray, olivia rodrigo, sabrina carpenter, billie eilish, glass animals, gang of youths, arctic monkeys, lana del rey, twenty one pilots, air, imagine dragons, the oh hellos, maisie peters, boy genius, chappell roan, coldplay, guster, the neighborhood, ben platt, girl in red, queen, abba, bon over, joel sunny, gibran alcocer, neffex, and as of recently - gracie abrams and allison russell! i also love musicals, though it’s been awhile - my favorite of all time is hadestown, and i also listen to hamilton, six, dear evan hansen, epic, heathers, and others i’m forgetting off the top of my head. please reach out to talk to me about music, whether it’s playing or listening, at any time - it’s one of my favorite things ever to talk about!

okay, that was a lot on music. let’s switch tracks to literature - books are what fostered a lot of our loves for storytelling, after all <3 my childhood series is harry potter - love the series, hate the author - and i’ve devolved down the insane rabbit hole that is the marauders fandom in the past eight/nine months. i love to mainly read dystopian fiction, usually as a part of fantasy, magical realism or sci-fi - though i’ve enjoyed realistic fiction lately too! my favorite books of all time are i fell in love with hope by lancali and the song of achilles by madeline miller - the prose is breathtaking, healing and heartbreaking all at once. some books i’ve been wanting to read are babel, this is how you lose the time war, and blue lily/lily blue - the third installment of the raven cycle series! even though my list is way too long, i always love to garner more book recommendations, so i’d love a list if you have some <3

but of course, storytelling is more than just books - it’s movies, films, tv, too! some of my favorite tv series are arcane, the clone wars (which ironically came out the exact date and year i was born), rebels (same birthdate, different year) shadow & bone (i also adore the books), the owl house, how to get away with murder, ted lasso, jane the virgin (which i finished recently and it has left my head reeling). i’m currently binging young sheldon and watching ugly betty with my mom! fun fact: season 3 of heart stopper comes out on my 16th birthday…guess what i’ll be doing :>

i feel the necessity to make it seem like i have more interests than just music and media - so let’s see! i’m starting a psychology/neuroscience club at my school, i’m currently a student ambassador at my school’s equity program (i’m in the committee concentrated on mental health), i’m trying to do a research project on the connection between memory affected by alzheimers and music…oh wait that’s music again…i like programming spreadsheets to organize every aspect in my life, i run the lighting department at my school’s theatre (i love love love messing around with LEDs and the cyc), i like going on long walks around the lake, i perpetually style my curtain bangs to the point where it has to be considered an interest, i love graphic design…okay i think this is satisfactory!

my goals for this session are to 1) get better at writing essays - i made a list of interesting essay topics, and i’m going to try and write at least 10 this session. 2) be more engaged with my cabin & the overall swc community as a whole - i’d like to walk out of this session with some new friends! and increase my bonds with my current friends! and even reconnect with some old friends i haven’t talked to in forever! also, gothic is really freakin cool, and this is a cabin theme i don’t want to sleep on. 3) actually enter the writing comp - which means writing my collaborative fanfic with alia (from the vault) and figuring out a story of my own to tell and be proud of. which leads me to 4) - write things i’m proud of this session. also an honorary 5) - find a way to make a ton of people talk about epicanthic folds. trust, it’ll make sense soon!

lastly, we’re supposed to make a joke to go with introducing ourselves; i live in america, which is currently a joke. that counts, right!!

anyway, i already know it’s going to be a pleasure to meet you all as we conquer venture ikea - let’s have an epic session, gang <3

dear future luna,

you’d think writing letters would be a bit easier after writing seven goodbye letters for the seniors and the girl who moved away, but it really doesn’t. the prospect of writing something for someone to see, a month into the future, thirty years into the future, is so precarious — what do we predict? what do we jinx?

what happens that we never could have seen coming?

the world is in a complicated state, but the most important thing is that it is filled with so much promise. there is so much bad that could come, yet so, so much good. when i think about what will happen in the month to come, i can’t guess the trajectory — but i can hope.

the next two days are going to be painful, and i hope that we have the friends and support system to get through them. online classes are going to start feeling tiresome, but i hope we persevere. father is probably going to give us a new punch to the gut, but i hope we draw the line. there are a lot of opportunities for the future, and i hope we act and set the foundation for a really successful junior year. the final trip with the cellists and the final hangout with the violinists doesn’t seem like it’s on the horizon, but i hope it shows. every day is exhausting, but i hope we find comfort. all of the friendship tides are shifting, and i hope we heal. in essence, i truly hope we heal.

idealisms of an author is the most recent piece i’ve written that i feel truly proud of. i hope that by the time 29 more days have passed, i’ve written something else that will take that place. but honestly, no matter what happens, remember the wisdom you shared at the very end of that piece. even if it was intended for others, it applies to us too —

“i love you, and you should too.”

~ former luna

part one ⧖ three word stories
word count: 303

three word story prompt: i pray to the sky and the starless eyes

the decline of society was a smooth, straight-shot. zooming in microscopically, it was quite jittery, but when you look at it as a whole, it’s quite the simple glide. many things symbolized the gradual breaking apart of society: metaphorical lines drawn between red and blue societies, physical ravaging of homes and communities, a dull youth filled with apathy and a lack of willpower, adults who continued to inflict generational trauma rather than break the spiraling-downwards cycle. real lives were lost, yes. but not everyone could be bothered to care about those enough.

so the universe took it into its own hands - because nothing quite signifies the loss of livelihood like the loss of the universal light.

we lost the sunlight first when daytime and nighttime blurred into one, monotonous void. there was no way to mark time apart from the small ticking hands trapped in their glass cages, and the black circle we saw rise and fall across the mark of sunset and sunrise. moonlight died with the sun - it was nothing but an onyx sphere. lastly, stars flickered out one by one as our natural world gave up on us, the same way we already had in our minds.

as a member of youth myself, i don’t believe in the traditional thought that we have to devote our lives to a higher being and trust that we will all be saved. there’s too much cynicism for that to really be true. but still, i pray to the sky and the starless eyes - because i hope that humanity will come to its senses and find a way to create their own light, the same way we created machines and chemicals and monsters. are we deserving of another chance? probably not.

that’s the whole idea of humanity - we’re just selfish, aren’t we?


.⋆˖⊰ ☽ ♜ ☾ ⊱˖⋆.


part two ⧖ bestselling bookstore
word count: 344 (56 + 288)

personal blurb: cj, luna, and alia call themselves the bully trio. they bully each other, worship prem jyotish, be nerds over books, and argue over the validity of daisies. however, despite all of the bullying, they are truly best friends at heart. throughout all of their adventures and escapades, who knows what mayhem they will get into next?)

Isla is the third daughter of the Count of Thrala. Amir is the son of no one. Isla is neither the heir nor the spare, and to her family, she is simply a liability. Amir’s family died when he was boy, leaving him with nothing. Both have been left alone in this world. When a chance encounter at Amir’s flower shop blossoms into a new friendship, both can’t help but wonder if something new and beautiful could bloom. But in Thrala’s web of complex politics and shifting allegiances, peril lurks around every corner - peril harsh enough to threaten their very lives. Is it possible for Isla and Amir to preserve what they’ve grown, or in the end, will they simply become two more victims of Thrala’s unforgiving world?

(thanks smallias <3)

isla gently pushes open the glass door, the all-too familiar tune of the bells tinkling as she does. the florals overwhelm her senses in a way that brings serenity - coherent colors, cascading leaves of all shapes, serene scents. making her way through all the greenery and color, there’s nobody to be seen at the back counter.

“amir?” she calls out, but there’s no response in return.

isla continues to make her way behind the counter and exits through the back door. not many know about the back door - amir purposefully covered it with vines so that it was hidden in plain sight.

“the best things always are,” he’d say before he grabbed her hand and they’d vanish.

she ascends the spiraling stairs that she’s run up so many times before, through the funnel that has echoed so many laughs and snap-back jokes. finally, she throws the sky door open, climbing out into the open air -

and the world goes still.

the society keeps bustling, the rooftop is a vacuum as isla stares at the mangled frame before her. she’s only frozen for a beat before she runs towards amir as fast as she can, ignoring the way the knees of her dress tear as she hits the ground and the way her skin stings because her heart stings so, so much more.

amir is completely silent, an eternal statue in a heavenly garden. but none of that matters to isla - not here, not now - because nothing matters anymore when amir was proven right, that they had moved their hearts to the same plane, only to become another pair of victims in an unforgiving world, and now their souls are on separate planes, once more and forevermore.


.⋆˖⊰ ☽ ♜ ☾ ⊱˖⋆.


part three ⧖ take a break
word count: 150

it was only 49 minutes before
the worlds exploded
in preparation for the collision of a lifetime
wide smiles, cloud 9
incessant belief and invincibility accomplished

a stack of paperwork on digital, cast aside
because what was that worth next to friendship?
hours of on and off, clicking microphones,
a struggle to get things done (it ultimately failed)

a tea kettle screams, biscuits are warred
“i swear i’ll write the weekly,” they say
until the revelation finally hits

a story, they swore on, 2000 words,
they refused to give up, they had given up too much to give up on the story of their legacy
when they realized the answer before them the whole time was mere comedy
similar to that of illegal powders
smirks shared, cackling that fills the empty apartment
their savior comes cascading from the clouds the same way the brain cells drip out of their brains


.⋆˖⊰ ☽ ♜ ☾ ⊱˖⋆.


part four ⧖ google translate
word count: 414

CJ, Luna and Aaliyah are known as bad people. First, they threaten to serve nature, and we are not just talking about books and beads. They are friends despite their fears. (Who knows how much wind and rain we'll get along the way?)

cj waddled into the “bad people” hangout, which was called prem-world. prem-world was very silly, decorated like it was prom night but filled with sparkly bears and super nerdy books, such as song of achilles and the raven boys. “hey daisies!!” the fake daisy announced. “are we ready to devote our lives to astrology and numerology as prem has dictated?”

luna looked up from the crack fan fiction she was writing with aaliyah. “haven’t you heard, cj? we’re over astrology and numerology now. now, we only serve nature.”

cj gave an eyeconic (they were too good for stereotypical icons) eye roll. “okay, bet. let’s go serve up some nature.”

so cj, luna, and aaliyah transformed into their bear costumes (ice bear, brown bear, and panda bear respectively) and dallied on into the wild wild, western, but not texan, world of nature.

—

“guys, it’s a little dangerous out here, don’t you think?” aaliyah asked. “i feel like prem wouldn’t approve of this…he wants us to see sunny days and happier tomorrows.”

luna chucked the book she was holding at alia. “shush, aaliyah! we’re not prem worshippers anymore. now, we serve nature, and if we don’t, we threaten to destroy the world.”

“cheerful,” cj responded as they picked up the book luna had thrown. somewhere over the summer, they became a total nerd, and started reading physics books 24/7. luna hated physics, so she tried to get rid of the book whenever possible, but she wasn’t really that good at it because subtlety was not her forte.

—

they continued to waddle throughout the forest, and it only became more dangerous. the wind was howling like the swirling storm inside the heartbroken souls who finished reading song of achilles, and you definitely couldn’t keep the rain in if you tried. somewhere along the way, luna slipped on some randomly laid out beads on the ground.

“GOSH DIDDLY DARN IT!” luna exclaimed frustratedly.

“oh no, how will we move on now?” cj asked.

“yeehaw,” aaliyah said sagely. as she recited this all powerful incantation, she hauled luna to her feet in one swift motion, healing any injuries luna had.

“thank you so much, yeehawliyah,” luna thanked her, referring to her by her true name. “i don’t know what we would do without your cowboy magic.”

“we would probably become straight white boys,” cj mused.

“you already are one,” luna reminded him.

“wow, thanks luna.”

“just doing my job as the epitome of kindness and all truth!”

dear diary, today i finally figured it out.

this past week, i’ve been stumped by a mysterious shadow that was following me. at first i thought i had a stalker, but it wasn’t a human shape, so i thought it was just a tree or something. but then i noticed that it was rounder than a tree, more like an oval shape. this is why i thought i was being stalked by a person in a cardboard oreo costume, but i have an acute sense of smell and didn’t sense any cardboard or oreo in the distance. that’s when i finally used my eyes to realize…

i was being followed by a polar bear! i am pretty sure he’s a magical polar bear because it is currently 100 degrees and the world is dying of heat stroke, but somehow there’s a polar bear here.

another possibility is that i’m dying of heat stroke and

Idealisms of an Author

The world is a canvas, and prose is my paint. I’ve known for years that words are how I make my impact on the world, but I never felt that I ever properly mastered the stroke of the brush. There had never been a moment where I stepped back from a piece and thought: Yes, this is perfect. This is me.

I sought that mastery in the summer of sophomore year, two nights before the deadline of a writing competition. It was well past midnight when I approached my friend, knuckles pressed to my lips, buried in bedsheets and laptop radiation. She and I had both spent hours that week drafting our own pieces and revising each others’ intricate metaphors. Her company easily became the only part of entering the competition that didn’t consume me with dread.

At our check-in that night, I couldn't find it in myself to reciprocate the tranquility we’d been sharing to smooth over our anxieties.

“I really thought I was going to break the pattern this time,” I lamented. “There hasn’t been a single story of mine that I’ve been proud of in the past two years.”

She responded with the same question I’d been avoiding asking myself:

“Why not?”

What makes me a writer is that I need to love creating the story as much as I do the final result. All my projects through the years had quickly become orphaned because I’d had burning tears as I raced to finish it for a deadline, or I rewrote the same bits over and over again to the point where apathy conquered any passion for it. I couldn't effortlessly construct a bridge from my emotions to my imagination without ripping a part of myself in the process.

I set this story up to be my magnum opus, my only hope of solving my writer’s block. There was an unspoken truth behind the possibility of failure: if I couldn’t accomplish this on my terms, then it was time to come to terms with the fact that I’d deluded myself. I would have to accept that this form of creativity wasn’t written for me.

Saying no to everything I put down had driven me to desperation; so I took an opposite approach. I snatched all of my scrapped ideas off the shelf, rolled them into one big knot, and began to pick at their notches. I jumped between plot points, blurted out sentence fragments and typed gibberish in capital letters as placeholders. Minutes blurred into a smeared oil painting as I wrote sitting up, pacing, hanging off the edge of my comforter. I had no reverse pedal; I refused to rectify any mistakes until I had reached an end.

Letting mistakes happen made me feel boundless. Freeing myself from the shackles of perfectionism dissipated the stress that had been stopping me in my tracks. From the foundation of the first draft, I strung notes into melodies, staggered hints of symbolism that culminated into the grand finale—my story was born. Guilt was reincarnated as a pendulum clock that wouldn’t stop ringing. A grave for the past was plowed so that a future could be embraced.

It was in the middle of the second draft that I was blasted by the overwhelming sense of victory.

Yes.

The singular word was a mantra as I felt a long-lost puzzle piece realign itself inside me. I hadn’t reached the finish line, but I already won. Woven into my heart was a sense of deja vu; the same incandescent giddiness eleven-year-old Me felt when first coming to the conclusion she was a writer.

I ended up submitting my story with exactly a minute to spare. After the adrenaline had worn off, my friend and I read over our entries one last time before surrendering our fates to the judges.

“It's been quite the struggle, but in the end, I enjoyed writing and now reading my piece - something I can’t say about a lot of things I’ve written,” she mused. “And I think that is finally enough for me.”

I grinned behind my screen. “I couldn't agree more.”

In the Hope of Open Hands saved my writing dream. It wasn't the image of perfection I had constructed, and it surely won’t see the light of day till I've cut the number of run-on sentences at least in half. But it was me — I could see my anxiety, my journey of overcoming self-hatred, all packed into a thousand words.

I've continued to romanticize writing in disarray. Take this memoir - the first draft was typed on my phone in all lowercase and a childish font. I wrote buried in my blankets that comfort my doubts, wearing that same precious grin that comes to my face when I feel alive.

I am idealistic, I am imperfect. I am an artist who fell out of love and back again with her craft. I will fabricate a multiverse through my eyes.

Word Count: 826

A great many thanks to Recca and Alia for helping me revise my memoir, consistently reassure me about my memoir, and for bludgeoning it into my brain that I didn't need to rewrite my entire memoir. Love you girliepops <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dear Judges:

The best part of writing this fanfiction was, without a doubt, the amount of sheer laughter we got from it along the way. We wrote this for the vibes and the giggles, and we’re submitting this with no regrets. As long as we made you laugh a little, we’ve succeeded.

ANYWAY!

First, our HRI (not to be confused with Human Resources, Inc. or Horse Racing Ireland) because Luna was too proud of all the references she worked in!


Hozier Reference Index (In Chronological Order):

• “BEFORE THE FIRST LIGHT” - First Light (Unreal Unearth)
  
• “One bright morning” - First Light (Unreal Unearth)
  
• “…cherry wine” - Cherry Wine (Hozier)
  
• “…guitar thrumming” - the awesome rock vibes of the guitar in There’s No Plan (Wasteland, Baby!)
  
• “The first light erupts” - First Light (Unreal Unearth)
  
• “NOBODY” - Nobody (Wasteland, Baby!)
  
• “There’s No Plan for how this will…” - There’s No Plan, (Wasteland, Baby!)
  
• “…a nice tune of rhythm and blues” - Jackie and Wilson (Hozier)
  
• Adam sitting in the leather chair: reference to the album cover of Wasteland, Baby!
  
• “…or there will be darkness again” - There’s No Plan (Wasteland, Baby!)
  
• “It’s not the waking, it’s the rising” - Nina Cried Power (Wasteland, Baby!)
  
• “The art of scraping through” - Someone New (Hozier)
  
• “The color erupts” - First Light (Unreal Unearth)
  
• “LIKE I LIVED MY WHOLE LIFE” - First Light, Unreal Unearth
  

This whole thing started about a year ago, actually. Our friendship really started with book exchanges - each of us would recommend a book/series to the other, and we’d read each other’s recommendations. My first recommendation, to no one’s surprise, was the Song of Achilles. That was really where our friendship took off. Luna’s second recommendation was the entirety of the Marauders fandom (I recommended books. She recommended fandoms.) Our entire relationship was built on the precarious base of Angsty Gay Couples. Soon after, I recommended the Raven Cycle (finish reading the Raven Cycle. Rn.), and the holy trinity of Angsty Gays was completed.

We sent each other and other people essays about the parallels between the characters, discussed it briefly, but nothing much came of it. Then, one particularly chaotic night (another normal Tuesday for us, honestly), we began flinging around ideas for a crazy, epic crossover. Our fanfic went through many phases - the serious angsty dreamer stage, the game show phase, the murder mystery phase, the murder mystery game show phase, the stage where cut 75% of the characters (we went through most of these phases in 48 hours) - but in the end, we created this. In the end, we loved every moment of this - and I can’t think of anyone else I’d have rather written this with than Luna <33 I don’t think I stopped laughing once the entire time we were writing this - I’m not quite sure how you new exactly how to make me smile every time I desperately needed it. This fic has been the best part of my life the past couple of weeks, and you’ve been one of the best parts of my life since I got to know you. Here’s to many more chaotic escapades *raises chai* Ily bestie

Okay, now that Alia has waxed her 4AM poetic, MY TURN! It’s 5AM for me, so all sense of poetry is gone unless you count my beautiful Latin haiku:

Intertexti sunt
Supra, inter et infra
Amor triumphat

(I know it’s grammatically incorrect. Sue me, Lynch.)

Alia covered the makings of the fanfiction, but what she brushed over was the sheer chaos it took to get there. I’ve lived for every second of scheming, throwing logic to the wind, and hysterically coming to epiphanies, the all-nighters, and documenting the highlights of our insanity in an extensive 4k+ word document. Sorry for derailing us for at least 48 hours by throwing the murder mystery in the loop – but for all that it took us to get here, I am so glad that you pushed us to make it all the way to the end. I wouldn't have had this roller coaster any other way.

This is a fanfiction with nine different characters, but at the end of the line, it was always about me and Alia, and getting to amalgamate the foundations of our friendship into something iconic. Her company is something that I don’t know what I would do without, and I am so, so thankful every day that I know her and have the pleasure of her company. Thank you for always hearing me out, balancing me out, and for always knowing how to be exactly what I needed. Words can't express how much I love you - you make everything better <3 To all of our chaotic adventures - let's have the next ones end before sunrise for me, shall we?

Huge, huge thank you to @27coding_crazy for all her plot ideas, late-night support, and being our personal crack fairy <3 This would not exist as it does without you being our #1 enabler. Thanks to @Polarbear_17 for his 4AM speed critique as well. And, of course, thank you to @cb2jkl for being the smolest bully we know <33 We love you!!

(Also we wrote a deeply chaotic first draft at 1AM with Recca’s undying encouragement: behold)

If you’ve made it all the way down here, comment on Luna’s profile that she’s smol ;D
And if you’ve made it all the way down here, comment on Alia’s profile that she’s lyrical :>

Don’t forget to die-cry-bye on your way out!

With chai and love,
Alia and Luna