Hi!!! I absolutely adore your work on loving decays, your characterizations for both Chao and Owen but especially MC are amazing, I reallg like how naturally Chao and MC's conversations flow because they're both such!!!! Interesting!!!! And equally strange!!!!! People!!!! Well maybe Chao is a little stranger but I digress; anyways, I asked this on twitter as well because I wasn't aware of your tumblr then but !! What was your inspiration for Loving Decay? Preservation as a symbol for love is quite fascinating and I'd argue that it's a really interesting and refreshing contrast from the cannibalism metaphor. Also, I wonder what drew Chao to botany specifically instead of say, preserving living creatures like insects or animals or even becoming a mortician himself? And tangentially I wonder what his stance on kids would be, like would he be interested in observing how his and mcs traits combine and manifest in a different human being altogether? I don't know much about plants but I was thinking in line of like, grafting plants or is horticulture(?) Not in his jurisdiction
Also I found it quite tragic how Jane acknowledged her guardian figure role in Chao's life (the mother's instinct dialogue) and yet Owen I presume knew nothing about him :( it feels like neither Owen nor Chao got to get a proper closure regarding Jane....
Sorry for such a long ask😔 I hope ur having a good break!!!!!
Thank you so much, you're too kind! 😭🩷
⚠️ spoiler warning for the end of this ask and my answer (after "----")
What was my inspiration for Loving Decays?
Concept: It was a mix of lots of things! I played around with many combinations of different but not-so-different professions. Life and death was also a concept I wanted to explore. From that, I chose the botanical curator x mortician pair.
Visuals: Pinterest, but especially the juxtaposition between a cold surgical aesthetic and a soft flowery one.
I also really like games with distinct visual feels, like Obscura, Reanimated Heart, Therapy with Dr. Albert Krueger, to name some.
Writing, Coding, Music: I wanted LD to have a consistent, hard-hitting feel where every scene and line matters, so movies/video media in general was an inspiration.
My writing style is also inspired by Disco Elysium, albeit less abstract. I like that balance between grounded and colorful.
Why botany specifically?
From my perspective as a developer, the visuals of plants inspired me the most, and I'm slightly more familiar with flora than fauna.
From Chao's perspective, it is simply what he likes. He enjoys the calm of plants, and the curiousness of studying something that can't tell you anything about itself.
What is his stance on his children?
Check out this and this! And yes, he'll be interested in observing how his and MC's traits would combine, if the child is biologically theirs.
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I would say that Jane was more of a complicated mentor figure than a guardian figure if we're talking about semantics here, but I agree that that line can be blurred in many situations!
All three of them are tragic in their own ways, and neither Chao nor Owen got proper closures in the traditional sense.
Thank you so much for your ask! Really enjoyed answering this <3