Apartments For Rent: TEN-YEAR RETROSPECTIVE
Ooooohhhh man, thisā¦ This is fucking me way up, big timeā¦ I donāt even know where to begin with thisā¦ I should definitely be using this free time I have today doing my homework, you know, the thing with a hard deadline? That was technically due yesterday?? Well, how about instead of that, I take a walk down memory laneā¦
Do you remember the 21st night of September?Ā
Picture this: Itās 2013. It is your sophomore year of high school. You have more friends than you ever have in your life and they are all so wonderful to you (this wouldnāt always be the case and they all wouldnāt stick around but you didn't know that yet). One of you proposes the question: If you were a monster, what would you be? A witch. A vampire. A werewolf. A mermaid. A ghost. A selkie. A dullahan. (You had to look those last two up.) You are so inspired by this that you want to make a story for these ideas to live in. You create a fantasy. Where all your best friends get to live together under one roof. A slice of a life you know youāll never have. Itās actually the 20th night of September that you created the tumblr blog where most of what comes out of this will live (your first post says āwhy do i do this to myselfā) but it is the 21st night that your creations get their names. Their genders donāt all stay the same but their cores havenāt really changed. āa very dramatic/theatrical witch who loves animals and sass master. a bubbly and happy mermaid who gets really scary when u cross her. a passive, nerdy vampire who isnt so out spoken. a moody selkie who loves to learn and lost her seal skin. a strong beautiful fairy girl who doesnt take shit from no one but is v nice to her friends. a ghost girl from the 1920s who is forgetful and not really confident but really likes her new friends.ā You put a disclaimer at the bottom of the post, clarifying that these descriptions shouldnāt be taken as a description of your friends but separate characters entirely. This is also the birth of Marvin, the human man created to navigate this world of chaos, not based on anyone you know in real life. The straight man in this goofball circus. Your Original Character. (Who, you now realize, was designed as the boring main male character in the harem anime.) This was the genesis. And you would never know peace in your life ever since.Ā
Bro, so much. A lot can happen in 10 years. You develop the characters further. You make a small town for them to live in (even though youāve never even been to a small town in your life). You make (bad) art. You make sims because you hate the way you draw but you need a physical version of them to exist outside your head, as you see them. You apparently make a rule where no one outside of your little group is supposed to know about these characters (because you āhad an experienceā and ādonāt wanna repeat itā). You make Alternate Universes for these Alternate Universe selves to populate, again and again. (As of right now, your āAU of an AUā list stands at 26 but there are probably more dumb ones not yet counted on the doc you made.) You try to make a one-shot comic collaboration with all your friends but no one seems to agree on how it should go so nothing but a script and panel formatting ends up getting made. (You know that your script was worse with many unnecessary details but you were bad at killing your darlings and stubborn about your ideas being the best. Youāll learn eventually.) You love and appreciate all the things your friends make for this story you start to feel full ownership of. (You havenāt noticed yet how much of a control freak you are.) Their writing and art give you life, especially considering they are doing The Most while you mostly just come up with ideas. The setting goes from apartment building to boarding house and back again before a year has passed. The first anniversary is a blast! You actually wrote something! And drew something you were proud of! Others wrote and drew and it was great. (How would you know it would never be like this again?)Ā
And the years go by and byā¦Ā
After the first year, you decided you wanted to make a dating sim with these silly characters because you just loved them so much. You shipped the characters (not realizing that your friends did it as a way to express they had crushes on each other, conveniently shipping your self-insert with the only man/only character not based on a friend.) There were still a lot of headcanons being made and posts being shared. But noticeably less and less. Then the second anniversary hit. Not much fanfare. After the second year, more characters started popping up based on more friends you make. Some of the friends that were there in the beginning werenāt anymore and you try not to think about it. After all, these characters arenāt your friends, they are separate and distinct from them. So itās still OK to play with them, right? (The answer must be yes; ten years later you still do.) Then the third anniversary happens, with 4 posts between them. It was understandable. That was your senior year of high school. Everyone was getting ready to go their separate ways. You were moving clear across the country. Your friend group was getting smaller still and this big shake-up would prove who would stick around to still be a part of this thing and who would remain a memory for you to look back on in ten years. 2017, though, was a big year for the blog. You were unemployed and not yet going to college so you had A LOT of free time on your hands. It was probably the most number of posts you made since the first year of the blog. It was magic. Then you got a job. There have been 16 posts in the last 6 years. 2019 had none. 2020 and 2021 had one each. They were all made by you. There has certainly been less activity on the blog but that doesnāt mean these kids have been lying dormant all this time. You havenāt stopped thinking about them since they first popped up into your head. In 2019, you rewrote the story you had written for one of those anniversaries; the first chronological beat. (You havenāt read it since then; You have no idea if itās good or not.)Ā In 2020, you attempted to write the actual story (like fr fr) for NaNoWriMo -- you didnāt get very far but itās the thought that counts? 2021 was a quiet year as far as actual writing goes - as was 2022 - but trust that your brain definitely didnāt forget about them.Ā
The Retro part of the SpectiveĀ
Alright, enough second-person POV.Ā
Talk about hard pills to swallow (thanks FOB).Ā
Iāve had this āstoryā, these characters, banging around in my head for ten years and what do I have to show for it? A couple thousand words and a blog full of half-thought ideas? Around this time last year, I was excited about this anniversary. I made a new Twitter for it (before that died) and was planning on actually publishing something to do this story justiceā¦ and I chickened out. I convinced myself, once again, that I wasnāt ready. That other things were more important, they took precedence. Do I have even that much to prove I was right? No, I donāt because I really havenāt changed all that much in ten years, if you can believe it. I know, a real shocker. (I still like all the same things I liked back in high school for crying out fucking loud!) I wanted to reach out to the people I used to do this with, to see if they still wanted to be part of it. (Iām sure that wouldnātve been at all hard, I wonder why I didnāt follow through?) I wanted to have something so I would be able to say, āI did it.ā So that maybe, I could finally move on. But thatās the thing, isnāt itā¦ I donāt want to move on. Iām stuck in this arrested development because I refuse to change, to give up any past part of myself. Because if I donāt have that, I donāt know who I am.Ā
So now what? Whatās all this for? One big, sad diary entry reflecting on the parts of myself that I already know very well?Ā
Honestly, I donāt know. I was hoping I could come to some sort of conclusion by writing this but as it turns out, it only made me want to cry.Ā
I wanted this to end on a good note.
I spent all day writing this, I canāt end it like this.
So letās instead talk about all the things that have changed about these goofballs over the years:
Mystic Cove is a city in a Northern California town. It started out in Florida, it almost ended up as a mountain town. I also briefly considered straight up placing it in San Diego because there are some nice, beautiful, old-ass buildings downtown that juxtapose the cold, sleek skyrises in such a way that I thought about writing something about being lonely in a city and finding your own family.Ā
Vast Acres has been an apartment building, a boarding house, Mediterranean Revival, Victorian, Queen Anne, even briefly considered a Bed and Breakfast. All I know is it has to be the place where this family gets together. At one point under the ownership and operation of Marvinās dad Alejandro, it is now bequeathed to Marvin by a mysterious, freshly dead uncle/great uncle.Ā
Marvin is a wholeass person to me, in that heās not completely knowable to even me anymore. Marvin is probably the person in Mystic Cove I know the BEST and that like doesnāt mean anything to me. Like yeah, Iāve written pages and pages and answered so many pointless questions about him butā¦ I donāt know how else to describe him other than, āHeās an enigma.ā The most significant thing about him thatās changed is Iām considering undeading his mom? Just because I feel like weāve had enough dead mom media and itās not something I can speak to truthfully. Briefly considered making her a runaway mom? But weāre still thinking about it. I think her name is Lily?Ā
Melās name went from Melinda to Melody because I decided Melinda was a weird name? And Mel likes music so I thought I would be clever. She went from āMarvās sisterā and side character to basically co-lead. Mel was even almost briefly considered as the real main character for a time when I thought to lean into its roots as a product of a high schoolerās imagination and go full YA coming-of-age adventure. It was actually the subject of my 2020 NaNo attempt. I decided against it because I loved Marv too much to push him to āsupporting characterā and if thereās something about me thatās developed, itās that I donāt much care for YA books anymore.Ā
Amber is unsurprisingly my favorite because Iām a Leo. I think I finally decided on a backstory for her that I like and sheās not white anymore? Like, not fully anyway lmao. Before she was like, from someplace in England with like Spanish parents so like tan? But now weāve decided that sheās from colonized Mexico and her father is a white devil. :) Iāll let you figure that one out. Over these ten years, Iāve grappled with the fact that an immortal is almost impossible to understand. Iāve gone back and forth on whether her immortality is on purpose or by accident or a curse or what. Honestly, Iām still thinking about it, I donāt know for sure what Iāll end up picking. Right now though, it is an involuntary immortality with her life being tied to her sisterās (yes, the cat). Details are fuzzy. Iād have to finish the main story first but if I were to make a spin-off, I would make a prequel story about Amberās life because it is QUITE eventful.Ā
Lucas is a man now lmao. And so is Will. And they r gay. For each other. But thatās been that way from the beginning lol. I think Lucās story had to do with self-worth and Willā¦ Will didnāt have much going on in my mind. My instinct was to make him a himbo but Will has always been very smart in my head so I donāt think that will work? Dudeās beefy asf and mad respectful so perfect man tbh? No notes.Ā
Jennyās been my way to try to break down the trope āBorn Sexy Yesterdayā because thatās just the kinda guy I am. No, but fr I think I was making a very infantilized version of Jenny initially and thatās why I shipped her with Mel in so many AUs?? Iām not against skewing Jenny younger to make that ship viable in canon but I donāt know if thatās the story I want to tell. I donāt think Jenny ever had a goal beyond āGet to the surfaceā which she gets when she makes her appearance in the story so?? Where do we go from here? Things to think aboutā¦
Rohen was fat (like a proper seal should be) before they lost their skin on the beach to some snot-nosed kid and became depressed. When they start healing on their depression journey, they start to gain weight again and it's a good thing. :)Ā
Everyone else I havenāt mentioned yet hasnāt changed much (ie. I havenāt thought about them much). Itās not that I have favorites (even though I just said that I did), itās just that I basically go down a list whenever I think about these guys, and, due to my short attention span, I never make it all the way down the list. AND honestly, itās probably for the best because looking backā¦ there were WAAAY too many characters to keep track of nglā¦ Like itās a slice-of-life thing, I know. Not every character has to be involved in every storyline but likeā¦ At some point, you have to draw a line at, āHow many named characters with their own plotlines can I insert into this story?ā YKWIM? Especially because at one point there was a whole roster of other people who lived in the apartment building when there were like 20 units. That was (rightly) reduced back down to just the core cast.Ā
You can pry Jonesy from my cold, dead hands, tho. Heās perfect. He can stay.
This post took me literally all day.Ā
I donāt really expect anyone to read all this but if you are not me and you made it to the bottom, congratulations! You now know me on a much deeper level! :) I hope I can convince myself to buckle down and write, straight up. Maybe NaNo this year? No promises. Iām trying to apply for university this year and living situation issues might take precedence but such is life, right?Ā
Even if you never intended to give it fully to me.
Itās mine now, bitches. >:)Ā
Hereās to 10 years! And many (but hopefully not too many) moreā¦
blakekathryn
amandla
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