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The Guardian Angel of the Shibuya Route

From chapter 12 of Over the Threshold, drawn by @posletsvet and shared here with permission.

This piece is extremely important to me and to the story, so I'm going to speak at length about it under the cut, including some of Arina's own words about her beautiful, beautiful work. I really encourage you to take a look, especially if you're an Over the Threshold reader ♥

I'm beyond thrilled to share this piece with you on Arina's behalf. A couple of months back, she sent this to me as the most devastating birthday gift I can imagine and I have been hyperventilating over it in secret ever since. I really wanted people to see this because I think it deserves eyes on it. It's very obvious how much Arina has poured her heart and soul into this, so I'm over the moon to be able to share it on my blog with her express permission.

Back in April 2024, Arina posted this piece of Suguru and his blue billboard, which those of you who are up to date with the story might recognise. That piece doesn't depict a scene from the fic (or does it?) but it resonated with me so much that it crept into the narrative of its own accord. It's one of the many occasions where a reader's engagement with this story has elevated it to a place I couldn't have reached by myself, and I am incredibly blessed to have this experience so frequently with this specific fic.

When Arina first read chapter 12, she messaged me to tell me that she was working on a diptych-like counterpart to Suguru's blue billboard piece. Of course, that's what you're looking at here, and I need to tell you how not only this artwork, but also Arina's feelings about the chapter, completely changed my feelings about the chapter in turn. Arina is a beautiful writer herself, and receiving her commentary on my work is always the most rewarding thing, so I'm going to let her do the talking. Here are some of her thoughts on this piece in her own words:

I read chapter 12 back at the end of January, and I knew immediately that I wanted to commemorate the billboard somehow. The sequence of scenes dedicated to it knocked the air out of my lungs with its brilliance repeatedly. I feel like it showcases the fic's thematic contents so, so efficiently, and you created such a powerful impact through it without ever telling what it signifies plainly. Instead, you show it all via the billboard, and it too becomes a meaningful metaphor in my mind on a metatextual level: the billboard is a placeholder of such great symbolic value. I knew I wanted the onlooker's gaze to move from Suguru outward and beyond to Satoru's face on the billboard, and the attention had to be drawn to it as if it had a gravitational pool. I'm quite satisfied with how I managed to pull that effect off, in the end. We're looking out of Suguru's well of sadness and colourless longing, seeing Satoru, seeing blue. I knew I wanted to work in monochrome with a single blotch of colour — the same celestial blue which is the centre of attention of my previous piece, but more importantly all of the things that aren't quite sad. Bittersweet, nostalgic, wistful, merging into an infinity of feeling. When everything is dull and void of brightness, it is Suguru's love for Satoru which colours his vision, draping his sorrow in blue. I wanted to show that Satoru has become the centre of Suguru's universe, and his absence bleeds in violent vibrance. There's little to nothing left in the world for him outside of Satoru. The angle I landed at, though I didn't quite see it at the time, turned out perfect for other reasons, too. First, we cannot see Suguru's face, cannot quite read his expression, although the longing should be evident in how his gaze lingers. It is him concealing himself and his vulnerability from the world, turning away until barely anything is seen of him, instead projecting his feelings onto some objects, or ideas, and at this point he's starting to turn Satoru and his love for him into one. Secondly, this angle makes it clear that Suguru, while looking at the billboard, is not looking at the road ahead. It brings a tinge of something unhealthy, harmful into the picture — the way he hinges all of his attention on the desired image, turning a blind eye to the reality. I like how the intensity of Satoru's gaze, coupled with his signature hand sign, makes for an impression that Suguru is spellbound by him.

I really struggled with my feelings about chapter 12 for a long time. At the time of writing and publishing it, I was in a really tricky place in my relationship with this fandom. I've spoken about it on this blog before, but something shifted around chapter 12 as my work started gaining more visibility. At some point, I passed an invisible threshold (ba dum tsk) where people started treating me differently, and by the time I realised that I needed to put boundaries in place, many people were already too used to crossing them.

I've always thought myself very fortunate to be able to have a little taste of the Satoru experience through the process of writing this fic. It's made the work better, but it's still been a hellish ride at times. Chapter 12 was tarnished by all of those feelings for a really long time, to the point that I didn't even know if it was any good. It's quite experimental as a chapter in a longer story, and for a while, I wondered if the risk hadn't paid off.

I'm sure you can imagine how seeing Arina's artwork along with her incredible commentary on it entirely shifted my perspective. I don't think an artist can experience anything more rewarding than having their own work reflected back at them in this way. Actually, I always call Arina my "mirror", because in her comments and in our private discussions, she consistently presents my writing to me in a new light and makes me appreciate it in new ways. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I would continue writing Over the Threshold for Arina alone, because the dialogue I get to enjoy with her through this work is simply that rewarding all by itself.

It's a lot of pressure to put on a reader, and Arina knows (hopefully!) that there is no obligation to engage with my work like this every time. However, I'm always immensely grateful to every reader who's willing to meet me halfway and immerse themselves in the story at a deeper level. In this case, when I was struggling so hard with chapter 14, this piece was a real source of motivation. The way I put it to Arina was:

I often feel a sense of duty to Suguru, to finish his story, and recently when I’ve been thinking, “Oh god, do I still have it in me?”, looking at your beautiful Suguru gazing out of the window towards Satoru has been so heartening and motivating. It just sets me back on track when I see it and reminds me why I started this story. I just adore how this piece feels like a visual interpretation of Blue, the song. Violent vibrance is such a perfect and beautiful way to describe it, but also, it means so much to me that you pay such close attention to the words I use. That moment about “words that aren’t quite sad” has such weight in this story, and I’m really glad it stood out to you the way I intended. You brought that to life here so so beautifully, and you even used blue and love interchangeably the way I have always hoped people would read it. I’m always thinking about how it’s a Suguru POV fic, but he’s such an unreliable narrator. It’s bizarre that we’re 13 chapters in [at the time] and we still don’t really see him. “Projecting his feelings onto objects or ideas” is pure perfection, and I just love that you point out that he’s not looking at the road. I really wanted that sense of dread to pervade that chapter. Suguru is so tired and he mentions an accident up ahead and calls Satoru the guardian angel of the Shibuya Route. With every Thursday that passed, I really wanted the reader to feel more and more worried about that. Someone else mentioned that the billboard reminded them of the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby (which I actually haven’t read, shame on me!) and when I looked it up, I gasped at the idea of a judgemental eye always watching. Satoru is his guardian angel, his love, his joy, but he’s also something for Suguru to hold himself up against. That watchful gaze looking down on him here works so well for me!

After all of that heartfelt, meaningful discussion, I also just have to say that Satoru is fucking gorgeous. Like, holy hell. No wonder Suguru can't keep his eyes on the road. Arina mentioned that the piece was mostly inspired by this image of Mingi from Ateez in DAZED, with the setting taken from a poster for Jungkook's GOLDEN in — you guessed it — Shibuya.

I hadn’t seen the Mingi image before, but I love how meta it is since he's “cosplayed” Gojo a few times now! With the shift to the hand sign for his domain and all of that vibrant blue around him, it's perfection. I'm so in love with Satoru in this piece, quite honestly.

Arina has really brought my story to life in so many ways and it's such a gift. I'm so lucky. I'm so grateful. I'm so thankful to everyone who makes sharing this story such a wonderful experience. Thank you for this most special gift, Arina. I'm telling the truth when I say that this will stay with me for the rest of my life, as will all of the art created for Over the Threshold.

I'm so grateful that we stumbled across each other all that time ago in December 2023, Arina. I miss the peace and quiet of my earlier days in this fandom terribly sometimes, but I'm so thankful that you've been a constant during the majority of my time here. I love you to bits and pieces ♥

P.S. Arina is here on Tumblr as @posletsvet so please shower her work in love, she will see it!

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