Hey everyone!

Smoke here again. This week is a compilation of my thoughts on the origin of the story and the design of Masami and Xinyi (featuring the initial sprite sketches I made via Piccrew since I can't draw straight lines to save my life >.<). I'll be keeping this discussion as spoiler-free as I can, in case you are waiting until update to play, but a couple things might slip through. So proceed with caution!

Story

If you've read the story synopsis, or even just glanced at the tag line, you're probably thinking, "Why on earth would you want to make something so freaking depressing? Who wants to watch their protagonist mentally spiral like that? Why didn't you just write some fluffy romance story? Doesn't the world have enough sad stories like that already?" To which I say, good questions. I've asked them of myself, too. And the answer I've come up with is: I'm a masochist it's complicated.

Before the jam hit, I was coming off of the worst college semester I've ever had. The burnout of being in a major I didn't really enjoy (physics) caught up to me and the engineering research I'd been doing was making me question that career path, too. Being surrounded by a bunch of physics majors who, as much as they loved to complain about its difficulty, still loved the subject was very isolating. For the first time, I, the girl who always seemed to have it together, was floundering hard with what direction I'd want to take. 

Typical college kid struggles. Kind of ironic that my first semester back in-person (COVID threw us online for almost three whole semesters) would be the one to take me down, though.

Anyways, I finally got around to reconnecting with a couple of high school friends (or had wisely decided to leave it for something more creatively fulfilling) and we had a chat about our woes, as well as about how going to a competitive high school affected our current experience in college. On the one hand, we were used to "not being on top" because there were so many bright students in high school. On the other hand, the competitiveness bled into everything we did. We had to watch our steps, choose the secure route over the tenuous one if our abilities allowed for us to do so, regardless of personal enjoyment. Do all our assignments perfectly, always attend class. Always compared ourselves to the "average" to make sure that we were "ahead." Half the time it wasn't even parental pressure (which was quite a bit) - it was our peers (often just the mere existence of them as a stastical measure), which made it worse. 

It's a lot of toxicity that I'm still trying to unpack and unlearn. It's not easy, especially when self-comparison is built into many of us like it is.

In some ways, those of us who "broke" from the pressure during high school fared better than the ones who were losing it in college. I broke in college because I was a self-delusional masochist I was doing quite well during high school, my abilities aligned with a stable career path, and I thought I enjoyed what I was doing. But even then, what was going on with my peers still hit me.

There's one story in particular that I still think about. Like many of the others stories I'd eventually come to hear, it was one that many wouldn't catch wind of until after high school, though I was one of the few to know of it before. It was a simple incident on the surface level: a student climbs a light pole in a parking lot before hours, hangs a bright pink sign on it that says "Hi," then proceeds to get suspended for "trespassing." 

Sounds like some childish prank, right?

Except it wasn't. The student did it knowing they would get suspended. They knew what it would mean for their academic record too - they were doing quite well for themselves academically, poised in junior year to have a solid shot at top universities. They were testing themselves, and the system, on purpose.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Yes, I will admit that I did write this story to be a selfishly cathartic one through which I could scream at the system that wrecked so much havoc on me and my classmates. No, none of the characters or scenarios are a precise reflection of a reality I have seen through myself or others. But there are still pieces of these realities in each of the main cast.

Characters

Masami

Ah, yes. The protagonist who is the stand-in for me being an unhinged idiot on main. 

The smart kid, not genius-level per se, but doing just well enough so that they don't feel the weight of a competitive school bearing down on them. The kind of person who's always composed, always holding their grievances inside because they don't want to disrupt the peace for themselves or others...until they can't keep things back any more. Even then, they still feel guilty for letting loose, like they still have an obligation to preserve self-image. 

Some have criticized him for going on Joker-esque rants at times (especially at the beginning), to which I say, that's a valid criticism. Those sections could have undergone more polish to make them less preachy and cliche for sure. But they are thoughts similar ones I could have had myself and never dared to air (and if I did, I certainly wouldn't have done so very eloquently). And I can say from experience that when one doesn't curse much and suddenly gets pushed to the emotional brink, all the f-bombs WILL come out on full blast.

I also wanted for Masami's interactions with his family to reflect a lot of the expectations and silences that come with being a part of an immigrant household, especially since such things fueled the academic insecurities I've mentioned earlier. It kind of reflects my experience with my own family - neither of us had tiger parents who forced math competitions and college prep down our throats, but the weight of all the little comments and gestures just piled up over time. A lot of what Masami's mother says are things that I've heard myself. 

It's the sort of position that you don't feel justified enough to acknowledge your own personal pain for simply because "others have it worse."

Xinyi

I will admit that I don't know anyone personally during high school who felt the way she did to the point of incident, but I have seen the ripple effects of it during college. 

I think that might be because a lot of us in high school never stopped to allow ourselves to seriously consider even the inklings of dissatisfaction we've had to the point of having it overwhelm us. But it might also be because I was doing well enough to the point that I didn't notice a lot of the suffering my peers went through. We didn't talk about such things openly until the end of high school or when we were in college.

Xinyi is who I imagine I could have been if my neurodivergence had started working "against" me earlier - and if I didn't have a support network to reach out to. She's fiercely intelligent and creative, but also incredibly sensitive. She got the gifted kid diagnosis like her brother when she was younger, but her grades started "slipping" to "average"  in late elementary school. It was hard for her to watch her peers, and her brother, "achieve their potential" while she was struggling. As a result, "masking" (acting neurotypically) got more difficult and building support networks virtually impossible. 

Autism and ADHD doesn't always look like "robotic-walking-encyclopedia" kid and "distractible-as-a-squirrel-on-crack" kid y'all. And girls like Xinyi can and will hide their resulting issues to the point where no one knows they need help until it's too late.

Also, if you're looking at Masami and Xinyi's names and going, "wait, these aren't from the same culture" you would be correct! They are half Japanese from their dad's side, half Indo-Chinese from their mom's side. They grew up learning bits and pieces of both languages, but never fully understood either. As a result, they both felt a bit like they were on the fringe of things growing up, especially in the Indo-Chinese family friend circles they were sort of part of via their mother. On the bright side, they were spared some of the weight of the immigrant parent gossip network of child accomplishments...

Conclusion

And there you have it. Hopefully that was at least somewhat entertaining and insightful. Part II will be coming in next week with a look at Sabie, Rohan, and Tyree. If you've got any particular questions you'd like answered, feel free to leave those in the comments. Until then! :)