[I:Y]
ok. first of all, hi! I got an ask about my OC's lore. This is probably waaay more than anon asked for, but tbh, this is a perfect opportunity for me to yap about my passion project. I’ve been gatekeeping and neglecting those characters for so long and it feels awful. I want them to have a place to exist and be known that isn’t just my head, I want them to be SOMEWHERE. So lets use this post. I couldn't use proper formatting when answering from the inbox, so this has to be a seperate post. cw / tw for suicide, self-harm, blood, murder (story related)
I’ll talk about how everything came to be: my account, this little murder mystery project, my two toxic codependent freaks, even my artistic journey. If you’re interested, read on :]
___ It all started in 2019… It was a rough patch of time in my life. I probably don't need to tell you how it feels being a college student in this cold vast world lol. Anyway I needed an outlet, sooo… I started making games. I sank around 600 hours into RPG Maker MV, maybe even more. I didn’t get a single one done. I was learning the program and just making shit. There was a little project before working on the current one. Fantasy, time loop shenanigans, etc. etc. I still have the entire thing saved and playable in multiple ‘builds’/ versions! (picrelated=main characters. It looks how it looks, dont laugh too hard, ok??)
After a while I got kinda bored of it, though. And then… I listened to EVE. This is how project [I:Y] was born.
The fantasy setting wasn’t going to cut it for whatever story was already brewing, so I was off to create anime school boys. Yahoo.
The hell is [I:Y]? I really wanted that japanese high-school anime story. I REALLY wanted it.
The stars kind of aligned - me, a college student without a single clue on what to do in life, an EVE song, raison d’etre. The meaning of life. Most of all, [I:Y] was a thing to help me process the complex, sad questions of why and how.
These are the first ever versions of them; Hizashi (pink) and Kai. Hizashi is the shounen protag ever (look at his jaw, goddamn). Despite having many connections, being hardworking and literally nice, he still feels lonely and out of place. Kai is dead and exists as a ghost, scaring people in public (late night subways specifically), an urban legend. He ran away from home, got on a train to ‘get away’, woke up as a ghost… an allegory. Bonded by loneliness, Hizashi was supposed to help amnesiac Kai pass on. I spent hundreds of hours building their world and even started a promotional twt account for the game - the same one I'm using to this day. It eventually pivoted to just fanart though, haha.
This is the last time you’ll see ‘Hizashi’ smile in my artwork, because holy fuck it’s about to go down for this guy.
This is where I’d put “development” miscellany or whatever… …If I fucking had it !!!
Somewhere in 2022 I nuked everything and forgot to backup. The project files, the .exe, everything. I thought maybe steam somehow cloud-saved anything, but alas. The video below is the only footage of the [I:Y] “game” that exists, and it’s not even a playable location, I was just messing around with enviro creation to show to a friend. There's also a placeholder title screen. That’s literally it.
Needless to say, I was gutted. But as sad as it is, it was a good experience! I tried making a game and learned javascript for it, tried composing music even. For what it's worth, it was very fun.
No seriously, what’s an [I:Y]? I for ikigai and Y for yellow, because its my favorite color. But since I’ve moved on from the japanese setting, ‘ikigai’ as a term seems unfitting. Right now I read [I:Y] as “I (as in ‘me’) : you”. It emphasizes the toxic codependency lol. Speaking of moving on, yes, I personally thought the japanese setting was kind of ungenuine? I can’t write something about a culture and people that I’ve never met, about a country I've never been in. So I scrapped the whole thing, ‘moved’ them to a setting more familiar to me, changed their names… and started working on a web comic this time.
Meet the new shiny characters. This sheet was drawn in 2023. Hizashi became Aist (pronounced Ah-east).
Here’s a few covers I drew for it, and two pages of the comic itself (2022).
…guess what. It never really went anywhere, either. Just a few chapters. I mean, it could've, probably, if I tried hard enough. But I didn't. Its kind of a thing with me, I never finish anything and can't commit properly. So now we’re here lol. This is the part the anon wanted to hear I assume, the actual finalized lore. It shifted from a feel-good coming-of-age story to a horror murder mystery (?)
Aist is a honor student and part-time teacher whose entire world revolves around his only friend, Rita. His abandonment issues forced Aist to become a 'good boy', smart and polite and reliable; so someone would want him around. In truth, he harbors great resentment and jealousy towards people around him (especially Rita's other friends...). He 'doesn't deserve this'. Just a very bitter narcissist under a sugary facade. His only emotional outlet is playing FPS games... I even made Aist's room in Sims. It took a long time lol.
When the social butterfly Rita graduates and leaves for university, Aist spirals into extreme, obsessive dependency. Reduced to online chats and calls after years of in-person hangouts, he stalks her socials, begins self-harming, and hallucinates figures following him. There really is no living for him if Rita is gone. In short, he's losing his shit.
One detail about the matching ribbon - Aist's hoodie laces are tied in a ribbon. Rita did that for him when they were younger! Moving on... One of those creepy figures is Kai, a ghost with no memory of his past. I'd describe Kai as an intelligent hooligan (gopnik lol) - crude, loud, but very sharp, observant. His best and worst trait is brutal honesty... if Aist is all about emotion, Kai is the logical rationalist... at first. After months of wandering isolated and memory-less, meeting Aist is a godsent. Kai proposes a deal: he'll banish the hallucinations if Aist helps uncover his history. Aist agrees but selfishly fakes Kai out. He's is too mentally unstable, lost in his own misery and refuses to help. Kai wins the mental instability competition soon enough, though.
He tries playing good cop at first: offering friendship and support, but Aist only wants Rita. Frustrated and desperate, Kai switches to a bad cop, resorting to ruthless bullying and physical abuse to force Aist out of his misery. They form a toxic wasteland of a relationship.
This is to this day my favorite artwork of them. (2022) Their relationship is a mutual hostage situation...
Aist, compensating for losing Rita, weaponizes Kai's reliance on him. He suddenly goes from being left behind to holding absolute authority over someone else's existence; by deliberately withholding the help Kai, Aist traps him, and that thrill of absolute power calms his abandonment issues down.
Kai is tethered to his only physical lifeline and desperate for his memories. He initially tries to take the high road, playing the savior to fix Aist's wreckage so they can both move forward. But as that nice facade shatters against Aist's obsession, Kai realizes he is trapped by a selfish brat who has no intention of letting him go.
Aist starves Kai of answers to keep him trapped, and Kai, driven mad by this captivity, resorts to physical and psychological torment out of pure frustration; two halves of a miserable equation. Aist endures the abuse because the alternative = being alone, and Kai dishes out because he is entirely reliant on his captor. They hate what the other person is doing, but are entirely dependent on each other to fulfill their most desperate needs.
If this were a game, it would have a 1) sanity metric, 2) three endings:
Neutral: Kai gives up, resenting Aist so much he drives him to suicide, which Aist livestreams for Rita to see. I drew a small animation for that!
Bad Route: Aist completely loses his mind. When Rita returns home to check on him, a completely rotted Aist plots to kill her and himself so they can never be separated again. (Drew that too...)
True Route: Aist begins to heal and finally uncovers Kai's backstory. Realizing how their lives mirror each other, Aist learns to cope with abandonment and obsession. A bittersweet ending where Kai disappears for real and Aist, despite starting to heal, is left alone once again...
I'm not really sure if I should reveal what Kai's past actually is. Does it count as a spoiler? A spoiler for what...? For now I'll just say that Aist and Kai's lives directly parallel each other. If anything, Kai is someone Aist can become if he isn't helped in time. You also might be asking, how the hell is a ghost capable of physically harming a human being? There's this whole thing about Kai waking up as a ghost BECAUSE of Aist's spiraling... Kai is like his soulmate. A guardian angel? Like an actual human being that died, but also a product of Aist's descend into madness... his own imagination!??
...phew! There's way more material than this... I mean, I havent even showed you art I made for an AU where Kai is alive and is in the same class as Aist... but I think I've said enough. If you read this wall of text, thank you so much! Hope it was entertaining! Lastly, I want to apologize. Call me corny, but whatever... I really love these characters. Since 2019, they're on my mind all the time. I'm sorry Aist, Rita and Kai for neglecting you, abandoning your games and comics. I'm a deadbeat mom, haha. Maybe when I'm more motivated, happy and free, I'll start the comic again, or maybe a visual novel... Honestly, I'm not sure I'm good enough to create something like this on my own. Does this even sound coherent to the readers, who haven't been plaqued with this plot for years now? Drawing is all I'm good at, so I promise to draw you lot more. Once again, thanks for reading~
/j
