rain art blog

I wanted green to be the harmonizing color of his room, without making it the main color, like by making the walls green. So instead I scattered it around in furniture, accessories and most importantly plants! I strongly associate him (and his family) with plants :) I'm especially fond of the little cactuses next to the My Melody plushie.

I think he'd enjoy being around greenery, especially outdoors. So I don't imagine he spends most of his free time in his room, when he could instead go for a run, play soccer at the riverbank or go out on town. Despite that, I still wanted this space to reflect his character and feel lived-in.

And I think one of the things that helps achieve it, is the room's messiness. I think Kirino wants to be an organized person, and presents himself as such to others, but struggles with actually achieving that which causes him to feel quite frustrated with himself. He doesn't know he's neurodivergent yet (or perhaps, is too early in his acceptance and/or character journey to be kinder to himself), so at the moment whatever dissatisfaction he feels with his daily functioning is understood by him as a personal failure, instead of a result of being disabled. My personal headcanon is that he has ADHD; which is not the only type of neurodivergence I consider for him (I'm interested in exploring many different possibilities), but because we're talking about managing his space, this is the relevant headcanon to bring up.

His struggle is especially shown through his desk; I had a lot of fun piling up all that clutter on it. Because it doubles as his night stand, there's little separation of a space for relaxation and a workspace, further contributing to his trouble with focusing.

The desk has all different kinds of things on it, from soccer magazines, to textbooks, class notebooks, a personal journal, blank pieces of paper, a book he's currently reading... All objects that I hope convey his struggle with maintaing focus on a single task. I added in some crumpled balls of paper, which are imagine are rejected ideas, perhaps formations or strategies (that's what the clipboard is for!).

Sidenote (heh, note), I had so much fun placing the post-it notes in the desk area! I placed them where I felt they would be easy to see - on the lamp, the windowsill, the side of the shelf - and therefore not as easy to forget about (unless he gets so used to them they start blending in with the environment... that's probably what will happen to the ones on the side of the shelf).

And since I mentioned the shelf above his bed- I have an extremely vivid vision of Kirino hitting his head on it several times on separate occassions LOL. It's my favorite thing about its placement. Like, I imagine him reading in bed, straightening up too fast and bonking his head. See, this is what it means to design a room for your blorbo - think about all the various ways through which they can get annoyed at their living space.

Kirino hits his head on the shelf, has to repeatedly turn the desk lamp in a different direction depending on where he sits, he can't open the window unless he takes off all the junk on the windowsill first, he's frustrated by the mess he feels he can't control... All the fun stuff.

Some of these issues are more or less minor annoyances that either can't be fixed - like fitting in a nightstand, due to lack of space - or aren't troublesome enough to get something done about them, and some of them are things that impair his quality of life. That being said, there are still positive things about the room that somewhat outweigh the negatives: a desk by the window, making use of natural light, tatami mat flooring for sitting on the floor and a comfortable amount of space to do that, lots of storage and more. I actually built his room again in Paralives, within how I imagine the full apartment to look like, putting the room into some more context. I'll probably post it soon too :)

I included quite a bit of picture frames and photographs because Kirino loves his friends :] and considering how he reminisces on times when he felt closer with Shindou in Chrono Stone, I think the photos suit his sentimental nature. He is someone who's constantly looking out for others, more than himself.

There are lots of books because he enjoys reading, though on account of him being dyslexic he's not the fastest reader. Another thing about himself he perceives as a personal failure due to lack of awarness about neurodivergence and his deeply rooted insecurities.

Other things include sports equipment, some clothes strewn around, watercolor paints and a bracelet-making set. When I played the first GO game I noticed there were a lot of bracelet-type items you could equip on characters, and one of my favorites is the Friendship Bracelet:

Screenshot from a rip of assets uploaded to spriters-resource.com by ellunete <3

I put it on Kirino of course. It adds +22 points to the Luck stat and he definitely needs that lol. And then at some point my friend Rain drew Kirino and Shindou with matching friendship bracelets, and all that was said to explain why did I put the container full of beads on his shelf skhfjdfkhds. I think hobbies that demand precision and manual dexterity suit Kirino very well, which is also why I headcanon him to be into folding origami too. Which kinda sprung from that one official artwork of him doing ikebana.

And speaking of being precise, I also think Kirino has dyspraxia, considering how often he trips and falls <3 and also because I do too and every day is a motor skills-based trial <3 One of his in-game bios describe him as "graceful" and he is that for sure, but I think it exists as something that doesn't come easily to him - there's unseen effort, much greater than average, that goes into Kirino's daily performance. I think the idea that his surface-level self is at odds with him as a whole enhances the theme of self-acceptance that's visible particularly in his arc in Chrono Stone. For Kirino to grow he has to see himself as he is, the full picture, and choose to love himself enough to strive for what he wants.

The room as a whole is meant to be more rectangle-shaped but you can only choose pre-set room shapes in the game, and this square one was closer to the size I wanted the room to have. The closet is levitating on one side on purpose, to kind of imply the room continues in that direction. You'll see how it looks like once I post the Paralives apartment photoshoot :]