Maybe People Don’t See Me As Believable Playing A Person Of Today. I Guess I’m Just More Realistic

so while ellie is in college paul and ellie’s dad bond and begin to experiment on making recipes for paul’s family’s business. ideally they start a chinese-fusion american-style diner selling pork sausage tacos and paul learns mandarin so that when sleazy investors try to trick ellie’s dad into a bad deal, they can discuss it in mandarin and ellie’s dad makes sure they make all the right business decisions

aster gets accepted to art school. one night, as she finishes a painting, she sends a picture of it to ellie. “what do you think of the last five brush strokes?” she asks ellie, and ellie replies “not yet your best work” and from then on, they keep on talking. as ellie and aster this time. before long talking to each other over text becomes the norm, then it’s skype calls, sometimes kept on throughout the night, even as one of them falls asleep.

(ellie does her best at understanding emojis. aster teases her a lot about it)

ellie loves college. her teacher’s right, she finds more and more people who get her in college. queer friends who are out and proud, kisses a girl or two. she meets all kinds of girls, the one with flowers in her hair, the one with short hair and broad shoulders, the one who says things like ‘emily dickinson is a lesbian’ without ever reading about her beyond the wikipedia page, the one who makes her smile and laugh. 

(perhaps even the one who makes her fall in love. perhaps it’s also aster, because ellie keeps wanting to talk to her at the end of the day even after meeting all these people. it should mean something, but–they have a couple of years. they’ll figure it out)

either way, they all end up in the right place, happy and with all kinds of love surrounding them bcs they deserve it and i love them so much

In honour of Cody’s recent comment. U right Legend.

ONCE AGAIN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN KATIE MCGRATH IS THE TOP FEMALE TUMBLR CELEBRITY LETS HEAR IT FOR THE QUEEN

there are just so many clever little details that alice wu puts in this movie and it's all just made so much stronger by the filming of every. single. frame.

the little detail with the train lights and how ellie's dad didn't trust the train light to work— but because he loves his daughter so much, he realizes that he needs to let her go and so the camera briefly pans to the lights working again

paul continuing to listen and feeling sad for ellie's dad despite not understanding mandarin because he recognizes that sometimes we just want someone to listen to us

aster saying "deep down, i probably knew the truth... it's not like it's never crossed my mind" just brings so much more IMPACT to the hot springs scene. was it intentional? did aster bring ellie there to keep her all to herself, even if it was just for a few moments?

the way aster sinks into ellie as they kiss, and how her hand moves down to hold her arm like she's not ready to let go yet, but ellie cuts it off because well, she's a nervous disaster gay. the way aster smiles right afterwards and laughs. she hadn't felt that way after kissing ANYONE (at least in the movie) — we can presume that she's never really been interested in trip, and that her being with him was her trying to conform within the norms of the society she's been placed in; she'd never felt that ecstatic or excited. she had no reason to.

and then there was ellie. the girl that challenges her intellectually. and in that moment, despite feeling dazed and confused over these new feelings, aster was SURE of one thing: she FELT something in that kiss. unlike any other kisses shown in the movie, she FELT something.

and when paul was googling "how to know if you are gay"— a lot was left out in that scene. the viewer fills in the blanks after he says "there are SO many ways to love someone" which leaves us to imply he probably went on a deep dive and tried to educate himself on other types of sexualities because he truly cares about ellie. his friend.

"you could never be different," she says, mockingly. "what would God say?" oh the ISOLATION ellie feels in this small, predominantly white, conservative town where literally the only people of colour we see in the movie are her, her father, aster, and her family. aster and ellie's layers slowly being peeled off as the movie progresses and they bond through their shared differences.

this movie isn't a love story, as prefaced in the beginning. it's a coming of age movie that features young people slowly becoming more self-aware; it just happens to feature a lesbian protagonist. we need more stories like this, where being gay isn't the sole focal point of a plot.

god, i love this movie and all its nuances.

and i know alice wu wants the audience to fill-in-the-blanks, but i'd give ANYTHING to have a fun, stupid rom-com with these characters. a sequel set in the future where ellie and aster are confident in their identities.

if the straights can have their fun, stupid, mediocre rom-coms, the gays should too!!! i want fun, stupid, mediocre disaster gay rom-coms!!!

Fleabag (2016 - 2019) / beetlejuices / “friend of mine”, krishnokoli / honeybee, trista mateer / honeytuesday / motion sickness, phoebe bridgers / chungking express (1994) / hope ur ok, olivia rodrigo / Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous / by langston hughes

Hang this in the Louvre

they did it together. 🥹

this belongs to the Louvre, she was sculpted by gods

(tap for more quality)