The seasons are the name of the story & the passing of the seasons reflects the progression of the story and relationships therein as well. Each of the 4 main players have one season most aesthetically attributed to them, and I can justify it thematically too...
Daichi: AUTUMN. this transitional season is a descending path from the warmth and life of summer into the cold hibernation of winter. Daichi grew up with hot blood and too many emotions, but for the sake of his family he took it upon himself to mute himself down and shed those feelings like autumn leaves. He's resigned himself to a cold life, forever just quietly shedding leaves until they're all gone. Suzu: WINTER. The cold air of winter drives people into corners seeking warmth & encourages interaction between people. Suzu's cold outside belies the warmth he has inside him, and the frostbite from the frigid weather of the persona he had developed to face his mother and peers with is ultimately what drives him to pursue the warm feelings he discovers he is capable of. Hotaru: SUMMER. this season is bursting with life almost to the breaking point. There's so much life it's almost stagnant. it's hot, sticky, uncomfortable, and leaves one restless. Hotaru's restlessness drives her out of her comfort zone, and while she rapidly matures over the course of the story, she wonders whether she wants to grow or not. The timeless feeling of summer, like life captured in a moment, a postcard, is relevant here. Su2u: SPRING. the opposite of autumn, this transitional season brings light and growth back after a dark winter. Su2u has a rocky path with many setbacks but she still finds a way to break through the frost and bloom. Her development is about coming out of her shell and finding a way to exist among other people. It's still cold, it still rains, but these things start to nourish her growth rather than stunt it. in Autumn&Winter the story is a little more evenly divided in that the first part focuses mostly on daichi and the second mostly on suzu. And the seasons of autumn and winter mostly apply chronologically to these first two parts as well. Daichi & suzu's story actually has 4 distinct parts, though. I try to keep their main goings on mostly confined to those two seasons.... again, for aesthetic and thematic reasons. As for Summer&Spring, I realize the order of those two seasons is backwards. The focus on forcing the story to take place during those two seasons isn't happening either, because it can't really. Taking turns focusing on hotaru and then su2u separately in parts like with daichi & suzu's story won't work as cleanly, so the POV is mixed between the two the whole way through. Here the seasons aren't AS prominent & important to the story as they are with daichi & suzu but I'm keeping the name & aesthetic just to tie everything in more.
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a while ago a friend introduced me to the concept of love languages, & I'm now finding it kind of neat to apply to OCs to clarify how they interact w/ people they care about. summary of the languages as I understand them:
[more under cut --------------------->] lmao don't mind that picture it's hard to find an imogen heap fan who can jsut post a dang video without some hippie renaissance faire decoration thing quick post since this song feels soooo Suzu right now, lyrics+explanation You know where to find me When you're on your way out All bustle and busy, Enough is enough Because life's sweet assemblages Are quick to driftwood away Be still with me You know where to find me For no particular reason To stop traffic behavior, Or to get something off your chest 'Cause we go a long way back Back to nothing at all mmm, be still with me Oh oh oh won't you be Be still with me You know where to find me If you think it's all over I can sense it a mile off, It's no friendly hello You could be screaming drunk Well I've got my bad days too I'm gonna be here for you Be still with me In a public place, private thoughts A reminder of a precious loss I can be a source of constant reassurance Let the breeze block sadness drop Oh oh oh won't you be Be still with me Woah woah woah Woah woah woah (Be still) Heart, lung, soul, Arteries and all A shoulder at the ready, vital organs on call (Be still) Heart, lung, soul, Arteries and all A shoulder at the ready Don't mistake my charity For what it is A deep need to be needed, Necessary Don't mistake my open arms For what they are They can turn on you So show me the money, Show me the money Blue and green, Fresh eyes on me I'm young again All things to mend with Bite-size life boats I'll fix your smashed up head Be still with me, If you want To be alone (Be still) If you'd rather die then tell You'll know where I'll be (Be still) Where to find me For hard talk To call it off or bring it on A proposal, If you're broken, I'll be here, I'll be here For secret... For a breather... If there's nothing you can do... it's about being there for someone, but I love how moodswingy it feels, that fits suzu. it begins with confidence and gentleness telling that he'll be there to support you, confident that he can help. but then we get to:
Heart, lung, soul Arteries and all A shoulder at the ready, vital organs on call it slowly becomes a little more desperate as he promises his whole self to the purpose of supporting you. and then the MOST suzu feeling part and what sold me on this song in the first place: Don't mistake my charity For what it is A deep need to be needed; Necessary Don't mistake my open arms For what they are They can turn on you So show me the money Show me the money the skin is peeled back to show this impure motive that sleeps beneath the rest of what he's done in the song so far. I love that the song addresses this part of Supportiveness: how it bounces back on the supporter, how supportiveness isn't a harmless one way street. Suzu is very self centered under it all, & if he can't actually help you it hurts him so much that he might even turn on you. however the song recovers from this dark swing and continues: Blue and green, Fresh eyes on me I'm young again All things to mend with Bite-size life boats I'll fix your smashed up head feeling better after that outbrst maybe? remembering why he wants to help you anyway? many people do have selfish intentions when they approach helping others. it's hard not to be self centered deep down, and it doesn't actually have to cheapen the value of your support. also because daichi=green I zero in on this verse as a glimpse of suzu reacting to daichi, and while the rest of the song feels like an internal dialogue of suzu's projected outward, this is a tiny peek of daichi's influence coming in & suzu reacting. possibly feeling calmed & reassured that his support is actually helping him. though suzu is the one purporting to be the sole support, daichi's mere presence is for the most part a stabilizing element in suzu's own life too. the rest of the song continues quietly & small, & fades out repeating much of the same sentiment as the beginning of the song. the tone of voice feels so small and worried and shy to me it reminds me how suzu eventually shrinks away from daichi out of his desire to help him becoming misguided. He promises to be there for him but increases distance, almost unconsciously, because he thinks THAT's what daichi needs as well. also the whole notion of "you know where to find me"; as if the help is not proactive, but passive, he waits for you to need him. And if you never come to him again, he'd decide to just keep waiting and be ready.... which is pretty much exactly what happens lol Suzu's character development is basically that of a totally self-centered person who finds someone they genuinely want to support & how he tries to be able to do that. which is this song, so it's perfect, and I get feels like back in the day listening to imogen heap in highschool thank you goodnight I always kinda avoided talking about the story in detail on the off chance that I ever get around to actually doing the story, but I'm gonna let that go now. If I make it anyway someday in the future then so be it if some people are spoiled already lol. I was really "YEAH!" about thsi story for years but for reasons previously touched upon I'm shakier on it now... I feel like it probably shows its age as a thing that I came up with in high school, but that's ok I'm gonna outline as best I can the story in its current form. any number or severity of changes forthcoming, or may not be, who knows. I def don't know. also apology in advance for this post being disorganized, rambly, wall-of-text-y. there's so much stuff that I feel like, thsi sounds totally stupid, when I write it out like this, but I'm somehow convinced I'd be able to work it if I actually made the thing itself. which is an unfounded conviction really, lol. but still. I'll do my best to explain. the story is roughly put into 4 parts (one for each season hah. Autumn, Winter, Summer, Spring in that order. it takes place over a number of years but each part occurs pretty much in that season i guess)
the characters:
the rest under the cut I'm going to a job interview tomorrow so I might as well make a related post, about jobs for my characters
For daichi it's important to the story that he have a job at certain parts, but it's been hard to decide on what he should do. when I first made him I tacked on the trait that he was good with computers & that technology was his main interest, but that ended up being merely a placeholder and didn't stick. it fits a lot more with his character now that his hobbies and interests aren't easily job-able. he likes being outside, cooking as a hobby, riding his bike, but none of those things would translate to a job for him, he's not particularly talented at cooking or biking he just finds them enjoyable pastimes (cooking to bond with his mom and because it's kind of meditative, biking bc it intersects with his interest in being outside and it helps him get away in a similarly meditative way) there are 3 parts to the story, and daichi needs a job in parts 2 & 3. his part 2 job is probably some throwaway like a basic entry level retail position (which he hates but can do) and doesn't need to be anywhere with anything related to him/his interests. a bookstore. idk is a bookstore a dated reference? hahah hah. in part 3 he's moved out to the city so I felt that harkening back to that shoehorned-in hobby of computers from the beginning was actually kind of appropriate, as he doesn't have access to the countryside like he used to so having a indoors-bound job isn't so weird, so I have been thinking computer lab tech at a school or library or something. something not actually very hard, and boring and uneventful. managing keeping the computers up to date, helping old people use the internet, organizing a zillion powerstrips. at the time of where ever I'd end the story (still not sure lol it's not a very well structured experience) he's the only one with a job. it takes suzu a long time to get a job. He went to school in business like his mother wanted, but after graduated decided to finally just not associate with her anymore, stop accepting money from her, and enters a rut. he would be very rusty at piano at this point having had to pretty much give it up to keep up with school. where daichi is ok with having a mind numbing job, suzu is totally not, so it's not until he REALLY NEEDS TO help daichi that he tries to get a job. he is more likely the one to end up in an idyllic, character-fitting job, like running a music store selling/renting instruments lol. the idyllic character-fitting jobs feel to me at the same time hokey and very satisfying lol. I can def see suzu frequenting some local store to use their piano, seeing as he doesn't own one of his own anymore, and making friends with the owners, eventually taking it over, etc. speaking of idyllic jobs, in post-story AU of nate&rhamiel (nathan & rémy) they totally end up working at a garden store or something like that. I'm jsut gonna go with it. plants are so much easier to draw than like 90% of all things on this planet, I'll make as many of my stories have to do with plants as I want. In the main story, nate works at a supermarket and it's plot-important. a conundrum is for sean & yui's story, wtf sean does to support himself after the story. it's like one of my most unrealistic (not a good word... idealized? not-bound-by-real-world-rules? ??ethereal??) stories. he basically acts as not a whole single person throughout the story so it feels weird making him get a job. I should point out this is mostly to talk to myself. I know I'm the only one reading with a baseline of context to understand the majority of what I'm saying here lol. I am writing this post bc I'm feeling weird and need calming down. I'm apprehensive about getting a job. my anxious side wants to sabotage myself and hopes I bomb the interview but my whatever-other-side knows that gamestop is probably the least awful place for me to work so I hope I get it. I need a job because the more years I go with nothing to put on a resume, the more and more bad it looks. My dad actually told me once that if an employer sees a large gap in time with nothing to say for on a resume they assume it's prison time or something like that. it's jsut up against this wall that I'm thinking "oh but all this stuff I wanted to do, how will I do them if I don't have time". Like if I weren't worried about having a job soon, I might have resubbed to ffxiv for a month, or worked on the next chapter of the [forgotten] pokemon comic I was so excited about last year (a ha ha ha) but in all likelihood I wouldn't have done those things even if I had all the time. I've got my own number by now on this stuff |
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April 2016
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