Preface
This work was started sometime in December last year and intended to be uploaded by Christmas, hence the name and setting, but I couldn't finish it in time so I settled for Valentine's Day. For the irony, of course. As a starter, I would like to credit the lovely fineinthemorning for the base premise I use here, which is derived from Phantasm. Secondly, the structuring of this work took influence from Beatingheartanthem's work December in Reverse. In a way, you can say that like one would make an art study of a more experienced artist's work, I did a study of December in Reverse. It is a shame ao3 didn't let me put more than one person in the 'inspired' section, but I highly recommend checking them out! Their work is amazing.
This style is largely experimental and helped me construct a better voice when I was stuck working on prophylaxis. Aside from Beatingheartanthem's style, I took influence from Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Nisio Isin's Monogatari Series. The Road has a heavy juxtaposition between narration and dialogue which gave an almost surreal quality to a gritty and despairing world, both of which are impressions that I wished to instill in the reader. The Monogatari Series on the other hand has always inspired me in how the narration tells rather than shows yet at the same time manages to tell nothing at all to the reader. Heavy on the dialogue and body language as well as making great use of unreliable narration, it was fitting for the end, where the conversations Akira has with both Goro and the woman matter much more than wherever they were in.
Themes and Symbols
Christmas: In Japan Christmas is less a holiday focused on the family, but on romantic relationships. Make of this what you will.
The Sea of Souls: Here I took my primary influence from Phantasm. The Sea of Souls is non-conforming, constantly shifting and changing. Akira and Goro are in a secluded area within it, spending a Christmas together. But the Sea is based on the id of humanity, so naturally those occupying any space of it, no matter how small, will experience the landscape changing in accordance to their unconscious desires and perspectives. This also influenced the setting to be related to bodies of water.
Flowers: I am a fan of flower symbolism. I don't quite expect anyone to actively search up the meanings behind them, so I will explain.
Velvet Flower (Love-Lies-Bleeding): hopelessness / hopeless love. There is also a correlation with martyrdom and the sacrifice of Jesus.
Primrose: (particularly in eastern flower language) young love, inability to live without someone
Cypress: mourning, death, and despair
The Woman: The woman started off similar to the woman in December in Reverse: an embodiment of the reader. She probes the story and brings attention to things that add to the story. She is, admittedly, also the part of me that questions why I'm even doing this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In the end, however, she's the 'punchline.' She brings the story to a close and highlights the point of the entire story. (I may have also taken a few lines from Attack on Titan, for the badassery and the applicability.) She's both me and you.
The Hallucinations: Hallucination is not wholly the right term, but in this context it fits well enough. Both Akira's death and the marionette are incidents that never happened, yet happened all the same. The Sea of Souls is messy like that. Taking inspiration from December in Reverse once more, they are representative of each other's greatest fears. To Goro, he fears having actually killed Akira in the interrogation room, and to Akira, he fears being Goro's sole reason for existence.
Use of Vocabulary
McCarthy utilized a variety of vocabulary to compliment the themes and symbols in The Road. The choice of word relied heavily on connotation. Here are some examples in which I tried my best to emulate that.
dichotomy: n. a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.
The story is centered around a division between two people, the difference in Goro's Christmas and Akira's Christmas, and the difference in perspectives across three people.
precipice: n. a very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one.
Despite the changes in points of views, they are all components in Akira's story. He starts out dangerously close to an edge of a cliff where what lies below may be despair, stagnancy, death, or all at once. At the end, Akira's position relative to this cliff is left ambiguous, but I'd like to believe that he's turning away from that deep fall.
Last Words
This is pretentious as hell but at this point, I kind of don't care that it is pretty pretentious anymore. I'm relatively proud of this. There are more things here that I haven't explained, but if I did, it'll ruin the fun, wouldn't it? This last bit feels very self-promoting and perhaps it is, but I originally wrote this to make myself actively consider about what I wrote as a whole (and maybe to compare myself to Beatingheartanthem's masterpiece of a fic). I hope this was a fun to read as it was fun for me to write!