Title: Crackerbox
Author: Alex Zachary Lai
Type: Novel
Genre: Teen Fiction / Romance
Date Started: April 1, 2022
Date Finished: December 30, 2022
Number of Chapters: 26
Word Count: 91, 175

Hi, hello, hey, bonjour, hola, hallo, 你好, selamat sejahtera, ciao, こんにちは, 안녕하세요, etc etc. Welcome to the end of the trainwreck that was Crackerbox, in which we once again question how I can manage to write nearly 100k words without knowing what the heck I'm doing at all.

*awkward silence*

*yeets self into room*

GOOD MORNING HORNY PPL I APOLOGISE FOR THE LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP MURDER YET AGAIN (why does this keep happening T_T)

anygays

me throughout the entire book be like:

So. We've reached the end of Crackerbox. Like. The end end. The end end end. The end of the end. The end of the end of the end. The---I'll shut up now. I actually finished it. Like, holy schist, I actually finished it.. I wanted to give up so many times BUT I ACTUALLY FINISHED IT.

Anygays, I would like to give a HUUUUGE THANK YOU to all the readers who have supported Crackerbox along the way. To the people spamming my comment section, thank you. (I love comment spam.) To the people who always give me feedback on how to improve and point out any errors, thank you. To the people who say hi every now and then, thank you. To the ones who blow up my notifs with votes, thank you. To the silent readers, thank you. To the people who clicked on this book, read a chapter, and then dropped out because "ew gay" even though it's very explicitly mentioned that this book is gay...thanks for the extra read, I guess???

Bottom line is, thank you so much for sticking with me through this entire trainwreck. I couldn't have done it without all of your love and support, and for that, I'm really grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you for going on this journey with me, even though it was unnecessarily long and unnecessarily dramatic. Thank you.

I'm going to miss my boys so much, and I'm going to miss the world of Crackerbox. But for now, I think it's time for me to close this chapter of my writing journey and move on to a new one (because I simply do not know when to stop). And I hope you guys will accompany me along the next journey I take.

Thank you for your time, your laughter, your tears, your very angry pitchfork-fuelled witch burning, and your love. Thank you for supporting and loving Jack and Lee, and thank you for supporting and loving me.

Please do let me know your final thoughts on this book, and I love you guys so much. 🥺💙💖

Thank you for reading Crackerbox.

Now, onto some trivia!

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TRIVIA

• Lee is not cisgender. He's somewhere on the genderfluid spectrum. I've confirmed this on my profile message board, but it's only mentioned in passing in the book itself. I personally feel Lee is the type of person who doesn't focus all that much on his own gender (save for desperately wanting tits) and therefore didn't make it like, really out there because I felt that wouldn't really suit his character.

He still uses he/him pronouns and mostly identifies as a gay male. However, as Alex Fierro (MCGA) would say, Lee has some very female days and does not consider himself cis. If you asked him to label his gender, he'd label himself as genderfluid.

This was a really hard aspect of Lee's character to write as I was afraid of getting flack for this since people might feel like I'm 'shoehorning' in representation, as Lee generally presents as male and uses he/him pronouns. He just so happens to be somewhere at the end of the genderfluid spectrum.

It was a tough decision to decide whether I wanted to keep this genderfluid aspect of Lee's character, as he's not an 'out' genderfluid character like Alex Fierro and could pass as cis. But in the end, Lee is not a cis person, as he is genderfluid, and I couldn't take that away from him, no matter how much backlash I was afraid of getting.

This also makes Lee my first main character ever to identify outside of the gender binary. I always write cis or trans main characters as I'm generally more comfortable with those (as I identify as fully male), but I knew I had to write Lee's story the moment he popped into my head. Maybe it's a cop-out, but this is him. And this is Lee.

(FYI: not tolerating any hate comments towards Lee. Hate on me all you want, but touch my baby and it's all over for you.)

• Lee's full name was not meant to be Leroy. It was supposed to be just Lee, but was changed because of his surname. Look, I'm Asian. Lee is a very common surname here. Lee Hiew is literally two Asian surnames strung together and that sounded way too freaking weird to my Asian brain. But I knew his name was Lee because that was the name he had even when I first conceptualised his character, and I desperately wanted to keep it. So I extended his first name and thus, Leroy was born. It looks better when I write his first name next to his surname AND I still get to keep the name Lee. (Leroy Hiew sounds less weird than Lee Hiew. At least it's not two surnames in a row.)

• Crackerbox's title is based off an Archie comic. Listen, I've never watched Riverdale in my life, and I don't want to. I'm perfectly happy reading my Archie comics and leaving it at that.

So anygays, there's this one strip where Veronica complains about her house being too big. The gist of the strip is that she starts off pitying her friends for living in their little 'crackerbox' houses as she walks through her giant mansion. She eventually realises how lonely she is and heads over to Betty's house to stay the night, where Veronica proclaims how lucky her friends are to be living in 'crackerboxes'.

Crackerbox's title was solely inspired by this strip, as well as the base plot. Rich, lonely kid finds comfort in poorer kid with a small house. In a way, it's both literal (Jack having a small house) and metaphorical (although Jack's not particularly small, he's just one person. and one person is small. so by Lee finding his 'home' in Jack, he's in a way finding his home in a 'crackerbox', drawing it full circle.)

• The Crackerbox playlist has 54 songs in it, making it the longest playlist for a book I've ever created. However, it was supposed to be even longer. I would write down songs that fit the book/certain scenarios in the book in a separate note for playlist planning as I wrote. Eventually, I ended up rejecting 104 songs. Some of the (more notable) rejected songs from the playlist include:
- Ive's Love Dive
- Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up
- Dua Lipa's Break My Heart
- Seventeen's Darl+ing
- Halsey's Colors
- IU's Ah Puh
- Troye Sivan's Angel Baby
- Børns' Electric Love
- Gfriend's Sunrise
- BTS' Boy With Luv
And way too many more, lol. (Full list of rejected songs is in the inline comment, if you wanna check it out!)

• In fact, the entirety of Crackerbox itself was inspired by Chrismas Tree by V of BTS. Ironic, because it didn't end up being the main theme, but it would have been if Hate Me, Hurt Me, Love Me didn't fit so well. I was actually selecting songs for an Insta story when I heard Christmas Tree (again, because I already heard it a few times before that, but it never really inspired me before) and suddenly, all the creative juices came flooding in and I was like:"wait. this would make the PERFECT book." and thus, Crackerbox was born. (or at least, the base concept of it.)

• Yumeko Mori's character design is based off Yumeko Jabami from Kakegurui. She has the same hime cut hairstyle, red nails and big eyes, although her body type is notably different. I took Jabami's first name too because I felt it really suited Yumeko Mori. However, her personality is loosely based off Mary Saotome, another character from Kakegurui.

(that is also the reason why y'alls will probably never get a drawing of Yumeko Mori, because i've drawn Yumeko Jabami once and it took me like. two hours. not even counting Mary, because i drew the Gambling Girlfriends in that picture.)

• Jack and Lee never actually refer to themselves as boyfriends. Even though it's established that yes, they are in a romantic relationship, they never explicitly say they are boyfriends, choosing to refer to things with substitute words such as 'yadda yadda' or 'something something'. This was an entirely intentional choice inspired by Seori's song Lovers In The Night.

In the post-chorus, Seori sings, "We don't need to put a label on it, do we now?" I wanted to take that lyric and use it to build up a non-toxic relationship where A) it's confirmed that they are romantically involved, B) they care about each other greatly, and C) they never choose to label their relationship, because they can be cute together and dating and whatever without openly stating that. I mean, we all know already, don't we? I felt Jack and Lee could love each other without having to explicitly label their relationship to the audience, since it's already confirmed they're together.

• Jack's sexuality is entirely based off my own. He has described his sexual orientation as not particularly caring about gender, so it can be assumed that he is bi, pan, or unlabelled.

This is similar to my own preferences. I wouldn't consider myself pan because I haven't met anyone who identified outside the gender binary in real life, and I'm only like, romantically interested in people I meet irl, so yeah. Having a label makes me feel more secure, so I would consider myself biromantic. (Although I suppose 'unlabelled' would probably be more accurate.) However, I guess I don't really care much about gender when it comes to who I like? Boy, girl, whatever. I'm more worried about things like age and personality rather than gender. I reflect that in Jack's sexuality.

• Lee's personality is based off my own, whereas Jack's personality is loosely based off Edward Midford from Black Butler (manga). Okay, so I'm a huge Edward Midford simp. Yes, he's a background character. Yes, he's boring as sh!t. Yes, he's my second-favourite (after Sebastian, because dear gosh, that man does THINGS to me). So sue me. I wanted to take the tsundere-type aspect of his personality, his bad temper, as well as his almost overpowering sense of moral justice, and use them as a base for an OC. Thus, Jack Sang was born.

• The reason both Lee and Yumeko are gay is because of some backlash I've had in the past about male-female friendships. I wrote a purely platonic male-female friendship in one of my books. My DMs got flooded with people being unhappy with the ending because they didn't get together. Personally, I don't believe it. (I mean, I'm BFFs with both guys and girls, so---) But I didn't want to sit through that again, so bam. They're both gay. Enjoy.

• I came up with 3 different side storylines involving Yumeko because I didn't know what to do with her when I was planning. Storyline 1: evil twin. It revolved heavily around school bullies and involved Yumeko having an evil twin, Arisu, who bullies people and impersonates Yumeko so she gets the blame. (Scrapped due to extreme clichéness and too many plot holes.) Storyline 2: Yumeko is part of the gang that bullies Jack. Seeing her as the weak link, Lee befriends her and tries to get her to turn against her gang. When she doesn't, he bribes the principal and gets the whole gang expelled, including Yumeko. Storyline 3: Lee's best friend.

I ended up going with Storyline 3 even though I originally planned to use Storyline 2 because a) the book was way too convoluted as it was, and b) I got attached. Admittedly, I got attached to Yumeko while writing her and therefore didn't want to villainise her, so I ended up choosing Option 3, where she is introduced as Lee's best friend and support system from the start.

• Crackerbox was originally supposed to be a dual-POV book, as most of my romance novels are. And I have the banners to prove it. (Which can be seen in my graphic shop samples.) Originally, Crackerbox was structured very similarly to TSP, with dual POVs and a full focus on romance and the Romance genre and everything. I had a whole plan. Except then I started actually writing, and I realised that this wasn't a love story. It was Lee's story.

Lee quickly became my favourite character, mainly because he was based off me. And the more I wrote, the more I realised that the real and only star of the show was this inappropriate, uncontrollable, daddy-issued kid. So I took out Jack's POV and changed the genre tag to Teen Fiction instead of Romance. While there's still a big romantic aspect, as there is in most of my books, the main focus of the plot is on Lee himself and his life (friends, family, thoughts) rather than just the relationship between him and Jack.

• Yumeko shares the same birthday as me. (Although she's a year older.) Her birthday is October 18th, and although she's currently seventeen in the book, she's already eighteen in real life. This also makes her the only Crackerbox character with a confirmed birthday so far. (All that is known about the rest right now is that Lee is older than Jack by nine months.)

• Jack and Lee are the first couple I've ever written who have any sort of pre-established relationship from the very start. I usually have my main couple meet each other near the start of the book, which means they start the book off as total strangers. (I'm a sucker for strangers to whatever whatever, so sue me.) However, Jack and Lee have already been good friends for nearly ten years, giving them a pre-established relationship of sorts (which I totally did not base off my classmate who's been my friend since we were 6 and so happens to be my current crush---)

• Honestly, Jack and Lee are a lot of firsts for me. They're the first couple I've ever written who go through the 'crush' stage. I'm gonna be honest here: I'm a HUGE sucker for love at first sight. Which is why most of my main couples have that. Either that, or they go from enemies to lovers. However, in Jack and Lee's case, Lee already has a longtime crush on Jack before he even starts falling for him, and Jack's been crushing on Lee since forever, which makes them my first couple to go through an explicitly described 'crushing' stage. They're also the first couple I've written who only gets together in the last chapter. And Crackerbox is my first original book to not have a large timeskip or an epilogue. (All my original books have an epilogue from several years or months or at least weeks later. Crackerbox doesn't and instead follows a consistent timeline separated by simply days.)

• The day after I wrote the shower scene, my crush accepted my promposal. I'm not even kidding. Maybe Jack and Lee getting down brought me good luck (though I can't really say I believe in luck.)

• The evening I finished writing the last (official) chapter, my crush asked me to the movies. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON ANYMORE BUT JACK AND LEE REALLY BE GIVING ME THAT GOOD DICK ENERGY HUH

• Chapter 24 (constellations of us) is the only chapter that has three words in the title. Its original title was 'to rest' but I'm gonna be honest, that chapter is very special to me, and I felt the title wasn't special enough. All the other chapters have two-word titles except for this one (and the bonus chapter, but the bonus chapter was intentionally meant to have a different number of words in the title to separate it from the rest of the book and make it clear that it's a bonus chapter).

However, since this chapter is so special to me, I wanted it to be 'special' in the sense that it stands out from all the other chapters without being too different from the rest of the book, so I changed the title.

• Jack's character design has remained the same from the start, while Lee's has changed significantly. This is more about the art than anything, and just kind of a fun fact! Jack's character design, despite going through at least 3 different art styles (because a hoe changes his art style like every week) has stayed more or less the same throughout all of them. His description in the book also stays the same the whole while.

Meanwhile, Lee's character design goes through a lot of changes. He loses a lot of weight throughout the book (as Jack comments on in Chapter 21) and his hair is much longer at the end of the book than it was at the start (mainly reflected in the art, as his hair in the cover is significantly shorter than his hair in the final strip). This is to reflect that as a person, Jack knows who he is, and therefore stays the same in terms of character design. Lee, as we all know, has general identity issues and doesn't really know who he is as a person. He also, as he mentions, tries to be more masculine so his dad doesn't see his mom in him, despite being generally more feminine. As the book progresses, he gradually evolves as a person and discovers more of his own identity, which I reflected in the evolution and constant changing of his character design. As he embraces his feminity and gender identity closer to the end, he grows his hair out to sort of reflect that.

• Crackerbox almost ended with Lee committing suicide. (Trigger warning: suicide) I considered three different endings: two happy, and one sad. Crackerbox's original ending was one of the happy ones. I wrote the ending about halfway through the book, and it would have been quite similar to the ending Crackerbox has now, except without the final rooftop scene.

However, the more the book progressed, the more I realised just how dark Lee's character was getting, especially with his suicidal ideation and inferiority complex. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure how I could give him a happy ending without dragging the book out too much, as more development would take at least an extra 5-10 chapters, but I just...didn't have the plot or energy for another 5-10 chapters. So I seriously considered having Lee succumb to his inner demons and killing himself in the second-last/last chapter, which would also act as a sort of character development from the first chapter (where he's all sunshine-y). Although it's negative character development, it would have acted as a) a subversion of expectations, and b) a truly dark ending that would fit the direction the plot was going. I wasn't happy about it, but it seemed like the only way for the plot to go.

The reason I ultimately had him take the road to recovery was solely because when I was revamping the ending and considering Lee ending himself, I'd already started on the 5-panel comic you see at the end of the last chapter. And because I'm a massive idiot who doesn't plan properly, the panel I'd started on was the one where Jack and Lee are lying in bed together. I was really proud of that panel and didn't want to scrap it entirely, which was what I would have had to do if Lee had killed himself. So in the end, I made the decision to add in an extra scene to the ending and change some parts of the previous chapters to show him fighting to keep living. All because I was lazy asf and didn't want to scrap my work.

• The original version of the last chapter had Lee talking to Jeong-Soon (from The Soulmate Paradox) at some point. Or rather, as we know him in Crackerbox, Mr Kang. In this scene, Mr Kang would approach Lee about his mental wellbeing. However, this scene was scrapped because: a) I felt it was unnecessary, b) I felt it painted Mr Kang in a negative light, although that wasn't the intention of the scene, c) It was honestly pretty unrealistic and tied things up a little TOO nicely (because real life just isn't that neat), d) I wrote this book with the intention of breaking out of the TSP mold, so having Jeong-Soon make an actual appearance felt like it would go against the purpose of me writing Crackerbox, and e) I felt it would be a better idea to have the identity of Mr Kang's fiancé remain unknown throughout the entire book. (Everyone's assuming it's Gregory. I never said it was Gregory :) so that'll remain a secret until the end of time ;P)

• Another deleted scene involved Lee seeing his new therapist, clinical psychologist Mr Gregory Gan. Gregory's future occupation was a question readers were asking since TSP, to which Gregory himself replies, "Serial killer." Well, ask no more, because here's the answer.

In a scene that I cut out for similar reasons to me cutting the Jeong-Soon scene (and also because the timelines didn't match up properly), Lee would talk to his new therapist about how his life's been going. Ultimately, although that was a good way to sort of 'fast-forward' the time and also give the readers a little look into how much Gregory has changed, I felt it wasn't relevant enough to the story (and again, timelines) and instead had Lee mention starting therapy in his conversation with Yumeko and the bonus chapter to show that he's seeking help.

• In fact, Crackerbox has probably the most deleted scenes out of all the stories I've written (unless you count me pretty much deleting two entire drafts of We Were Liars). A semi-complete list of deleted scenes (because even I can't remember all the scenes I deleted) can be found below:

- Lee talks with Mr Kang (scrapped for irrelevance)
- Lee talks with his new therapist (scrapped for irrelevance)
- Jack and Lee go on a date (scrapped for irrelevance and being too out of place)
- Scene referencing Call Me By Your Name (scrapped for irrelevance)
- Lee and Yumeko have an argument and stop being friends after he reports her to the principal (scrapped because of storyline change)
- Lee talks to his aunt (scrapped because the character of his aunt was changed and combined with the character of his cousin)
- In the second-last chapter, Lee tells his dad that they need to talk but his dad brushes him off again by telling him he's busy (ultimately changed because I would only have kept this scene in if I had gone the suicide route)
- Lee introduces Socks to Jack's family (changed because Jack's house is too small for pets)
- Scene referencing She by Dodie (scrapped because I changed the vibes and location of the first kiss scene)
- Scene where Yumeko and Sunny get together (scrapped because it's way too unrealistic)
- Actual sex scene (scrapped because I'm a pussy)

• I took inspiration from some other books, films, and mangas for certain scenes. For example, the scene where Lee stalks Yumeko on her 'date' and gets caught is inspired by the scene in Baka Ni Koi Toka Shoujiki Muri Ja Ne? (manga) where Kuraoka and Takahashi get caught stalking Nanase and Eno on their 'date'. There was also a deleted chunk of dialogue where after Lee tells Jack he'll call him anything he wants him to call him, Jack asks him to 'call him by his name' and Lee panics because he thinks that means they're going to break up. I ultimately deleted this scene because it was funny, but unnecessary.

• Jon was considered as a love interest for Lee at one point. Like, second male lead type of schist. Fortunately, I cut that out, because Jon and Cory are just too adorable together <3

• Cory was also originally supposed to be a villain. In my original plan, not only was Jon a second ML, but Cory would be his obsessive ex who would start off being friendly to Lee and then backstab him. I ended up setting him up as a friend for Lee the whole way because a) he and Jon are way too cute together, and b) I lowkey fell in love with his character (same as Yumeko) and couldn't stand villainising him.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

ADONIS
COMING 2023
(and so, here we go again)