hi glo! I stumbled on this beeeautiful idol gojo art by @/izeichan on pinterest and figured I'd send it your way in case you hadn't seen it!
byeee👋
I spotted this while clearing my inbox just now? How did I miss this?!
Thank you for sharing the pretty idol Gojo with me, my beloved ✨ And guess what? This is a sign. I worked on chapter 16 today. We're so back. WE'RE SO BACK. I'm not making any promises on timelines because I'm actually going to Japan next month (and I'm fucking devastated because literally the only thing I wanted to see was the Tokyo Opera City concert hall where Satoru and Suguru recorded Blue in chapter 11. It's closed for construction. I genuinely cried 🥲) and if I can't finish it before I leave, it won't be until May at the earliest. Christ...
Anyway, before I doom spiral on that, this chapter has its own playlist, same as the last two in this special three chapter run. As a little treat, I'm going to share a song from it, and very fittingly, it's one that you personally made me aware of all the way back in May 2024. You've been here for over two years now (if we include your anonymous asks before that) and it means the world. Thanks for supporting me for all this time, @supportingwomenswrongs, and I'm sending you extra love and hugs through the internet today ♥
to my great shame, i am approaching a whole year during which i've only updated over the threshold once. granted, it was chapter 15 and it was a fucking work of art in its own right, but something that's constantly playing on my mind is the fact that i've left suguru looping an endless night from hell for almost a year in real world time...
fictional characters only exist within the bounds of the universe we create for them. when you shut the book, they are frozen wherever you left them, and this is even more true when you're the goddamn author! at present, this is my single biggest motivation for finishing over the threshold. my baby is stuck in an endless night of horror. no matter where he goes from here, i NEED to save him from this dream/nightmare.
anyway, i stumbled on a new song i wanted to share. devoted readers will know that keshi played a huge part in inspiring something blue, borrowed, which was last year's mini masterpiece. well, he's done it again. yesterday, shuffle delivered a gift straight to my doorstep.
Save me from the night, oh, give me the light
Save me (I can't), I'm closing my eyes
Save me (I won't), I won't be the same me
Somebody wake me, save me from the night
and from chapter 15:
‘But this is my dream.’
‘Maybe by the time you’re my age, you’ll feel differently,’ said Tsukumo in a voice that sounded strangely like his mother’s. ‘Maybe you’ll discover there are things that matter more to you. Isn’t this enough?’
Suguru wanted to wake up. He wanted to stop dreaming. He was ready to wake up.
and later:
This wasn’t his dream. It was a nightmare.
He’d had enough. He wanted to wake up. Suguru wanted to wake up or maybe he wanted to sleep forever instead.
and for bonus points? keshi is literally suguru. watch this and tell me you don't just see baby suguru from chapter 15. i'll never recover from this discovery, i swear to god.
thanks very much for your time. hope you'll look forward to the next episode of "what changed glo's brain chemistry today" ♥
Something has really shifted in the aftermath of chapter 16. For the first time, the end of the story feels like it's truly within my grasp and suddenly I don't want to say goodbye, despite how much I thought I was ready for it to be over.
Today, a song destroyed me. The Weeknd isn't to everyone's taste, but he's fed into my writing of Over the Threshold in really significant ways and I have to give him his flowers. If Shameless is the song that closes out chapter 16, then As You Are follows it when the credits roll.
It's just me and you
They couldn't see what I see in you, yeah
'Cause I believe in you
You're the only one I choose
Even though you break my heart, my heart
I know what we are, our love's too young
Even though you break my heart, my love
I'ma need you, I'ma need you, I'ma need you, yeah
Show me your broken heart and all your scars
Baby, I'll take, I'll take, I'll take, I'll take you as you are
Show me your broken parts to know your flaws
Baby, I'll take, I'll take, I'll take, I'll take you as you are
Chapter 8, "Counterpoint", March 2024.
Chapter 14, "Pure Tone", July 2025.
Chapter 16, "Overtone", May 2026.
Look at that. Three years of Over the Threshold, probably four by the time I finish it. These boys have been a constant companion through a whole chapter of my life, which has seen both extraordinary highs and extraordinary lows.
I'm so fucking proud of this story. I'm so proud of my perseverance, not only in the face of my own creative and personal struggles over the long three years I've been writing this story, but in the face of all the ways people in this fandom have tried to kill my passion. I've learned so much about myself, about my limits, about my own strength.
Even now, even this week, there are people trying to talk me down, but I'm up in the clouds. It just can't reach me when I feel like I'm flying. No one can burst this bubble, nothing can even come close to the love I feel for this story and for the community around it. I've poured too much of myself into this for anyone to take this from me.
In the words of Cardi B, I want to thank my haters. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for throwing those challenges my way over and over and over so I could show myself over and over and over that nothing matters more than me. People have told me they would have walked away in my shoes, because how can a fanfic be worth that?
For me, this is self-love. This is putting myself first.
I know it sounds crazy and maybe it is. Over the Threshold is easily the most draining project I've ever embarked upon and it genuinely makes me feel like I'm losing my grip on my sanity sometimes. In the weeks before it comes time to post an update, I feel like the stereotype of the tortured artist. I have truly suffered for my art, but I have never once regretted what I put myself through for this story.
(This miracle of a song story.)
More importantly, thank you to every single one of you who has made this such a special and rewarding experience from start to finish. My gratitude knows no limits.
This singlehandedly brought my war with Over the Threshold to an end today. Watch this right now and tell me that Charlie Puth and Utada Hikaru don't read my fucking fanfic. I swear to god I felt something slot back into place in my brain watching this.
Chapter 2: Exposition
Gojō was looking everywhere but at him, far more interested in studying Suguru’s home studio than formally introducing himself. Suguru tried not to feel self-conscious as those blue eyes roved across the room, lingering on the shelf of finished journals, the sumi-e depictions of wildflowers hanging above the piano, and the beaten up guitar that was mounted on the wall opposite, standing out like a sore thumb among its pristine companions.
Chapter 4: Consonance
‘Home sweet home,’ he said when they finally stepped into an open plan living space with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views over the Han river and the misty city beyond. The apartment was pristine to the point of impersonal in its design, with minimalist interiors in varying shades of neutral that were reminiscent of a show home. It was a sparsely furnished space that didn’t suit Gojō in the slightest. In fact, the glossy baby grand over by the windows was the only sign the place belonged to the singer at all.
‘But when I listened to your album for the first time, it made me feel homesick for a home I’ve never had.’
Chapter 8: Counterpoint
The savoury scent of dashi was steadily filling the kitchen, bringing with it memories of his childhood. To Suguru, it smelled like warm hugs, like gentle fingers running through his hair, like blankets tucked up to his chin.
To Satoru, it probably just smelled like dashi.
Chapter 12: Solo (Interlude)
If it was the choice between driving into Shibuya every morning or letting anyone but Satoru into his home studio, it wasn’t a choice at all. The studio felt like a sanctuary now. A shrine to beautiful beginnings, to sacred secrets. A shrine to Satoru, mostly.
Music was fucking boring without him though.
Chapter 13: Ostinato
Everything was right with the world again, simply because Satoru was home.
Suguru gave Satoru a home, but Satoru made Suguru's house a home in turn. And when home is far away, music is the thread that binds them.
I also really love that the song is half in English and half in Japanese. It speaks to the sort of cultural displacement that I think Satoru experiences in Over the Threshold. There's a reason Suguru's home deliberately draws on a lot of traditional elements: the sumi-e paintings, the courtyard with the momiji tree, the engawa. There's a reason Suguru cooks Japanese home comfort food for Satoru, who attended an international school. It's "home is wherever you are", but it's culture as home too.
‘While I’m sure you came under a lot of pressure to release an album in Japan, you had no obligation to do so. That’s why you haven’t done it yet.’ He took Gojō’s silence as the confirmation he needed to continue. ‘So, why now? What changed?’
Being a musical artist is deeply tied to identity. Satoru is a product and he's an "exotic" product in some ways. He's been uprooted from his culture in all sorts of ways, not just by performing primarily in a foreign country in a foreign language, but it also shows in the musical education that was likely chosen for him in his youth. The piano is a Western instrument and it was very late to arrive in Japan.
Anyway, look me in the eye and tell me they didn't do that for me. Even the aesthetic is the same. We're so back.
Hey, Blue, there is a song for you on your birthday
I've been feeling very Blue lately. I had all sorts of plans for February 3 this year, but none of them came to fruition.
The fact that Suguru's birthday canonically falls on Setsubun, the day before spring in the old Japanese calendar, is fitting on so many levels. However, as I was struggling to motivate myself to complete a story for him in the cold dark of January, I realised it's another way he's stuck in that endless corridor. It's the "marathon game" of winter, but he never quite makes it to the light at the end of the tunnel, even when it's within touching distance.
I've used Suguru's birthday as a device a few times in my writing, but none so meaningfully to me as in chapter 15 of Over the Threshold:
On the day Suguru was born, his mother said she could see camellias in full bloom from her hospital bed. Red flowers bursting through the snow outside the window, a sign of the spring to follow. Eighteen and alone, just like Suguru, the camellias were her only companion.
Suguru was my fresh start.
That was what she’d always said.
Suguru was born much further north, in a private hospital on the edge of a town he’d never visited. Up in Hokkaido, where the camellias bloomed later.
That was almost twenty years ago. The world was warmer now. And looking around the cemetery, finding red buds coming into blossom on the cusp of the New Year, Suguru thought spring had peaked too soon.
Blue has huge significance in Over the Threshold. Although this snippet appears red at first glance, it's actually an absence of Blue and everything it signifies in this story.
His mother’s cooking tasted like warm hugs, like gentle fingers running through his hair, like blankets tucked up to his chin. It tasted the same way it felt when she used to sing for him, back when he was small enough to sit on her lap at the little upright in the living room. The same way it felt when she let him lay his little hands atop hers to learn the feel of the sounds beneath his fingers so he might one day make them himself.
It was an A minor chord on a rainy afternoon. A chromatic flourish, tumbling over black and white at the top of the piano. A second suspended like magic in the air, waiting for resolution to the third.
It was all over the keyboard, evidenced by two sets of blue fingerprints in two different sizes. It was in the blue notes singing from the strings of Suguru’s guitar as he started to play then. It was what dreams were made of, hers before they were his.
It was what had brought him all the way here.
He wanted his ma. He wanted to go home. He wanted, most of all. It wasn’t the same thing, but maybe — just maybe, Suguru thought — it was close enough.
Sat in his childhood bedroom, Suguru stared out at the stretch of blue beyond the window. Left and right, up and down, as far as the eye could see. Suguru saw blue skies unfolding over rice paddies, vibrant blue-green reaching for the horizon.
Blue, blue, blue.
In the end, a love song fell from his fingers all by itself. A bittersweet melody, a nostalgic accompaniment, a wistful ode to youth.
Blue, too bright and too beautiful to be real, streaming through the window.
Suguru knew these lyrics as surely as his own name. He knew the words like they were woven into the fabric of his very being.
Blue, blue, blue.
The lovely loneliness that dreams were made of, swirling around the room on a loop. He was drowning in it, locked inside an endless cycle of smiling, hiding, pretending.
Perfect Blue, a blinding illusion.
Suguru would rather let his retinas burn than look away. He didn’t want to avert his eyes.
Blue, blue, blue.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting, dazzled by the shape burned onto the back of them, by the impression seared into his retinas. By the afterimage of a man he didn’t recognise.
‘Your Blue, then.’
Suguru’s thumb slipped, catching on the strings in a discordant tangle of notes. It reverberated through his skull, out of key, out of place, out of time. He could picture the waveform as it rang out, a single continuous curve travelling in both directions along the x-axis, never decaying, never falter—
Precious Person actually came after I wrote this chapter. Boys and their mothers seems to be the theme for SatoSugu's birthdays this time around. I don't know why that is. Anyway, in honour of Over the Threshold Suguru, here's a Blue for his birthday, courtesy of Joni.
Hey, Blue, there is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Thousands of people singing his lyrics back to him, thousands of people screaming his name. The entire world cast in psychedelic blue. He saw it spilling from their open mouths. He saw it shining in their wide eyes. He felt it thundering in his chest with the kick drum, humming through his veins with the bass.
Blue all over his lips and theirs. Blue all over the fretboard of his guitar. And later, after the show, blue all over his body. This miracle of a song inked into his skin, over his heart, tucked against his ribcage for safekeeping so he might remember the feeling forever.
This was it. This was Suguru’s dream.
Someone just left a comment on Over the Threshold to tell me how many times they've come back to read the love scene in chapter 10 specifically and maybe it's just because I'm going through a hard time, but I'm really moved, ahhhh.
This particular story is more meaningful to me than anything else I've written (and may ever write) for many different reasons, and it's been a journey. I'm blessed to have many wonderful readers, but I've also lost a lot of readers along the way, simply because I've been posting it for two years now. Life moves on and people move on, too.
I write Over the Threshold for myself first and foremost. It's my story and it's personal, so I'll see it through for my sake. Still, those comments that remind me there are people out there waiting to see how this story ends are incredibly encouraging. Five chapters from the end. I'm closer than I've ever been, so let's do this!
For now, please enjoy a song that a reader recommended in the comments when I originally posted this chapter in June 2024. It really feels like it was written for this scene, for this story, for Satoru and Suguru in counterpoint.
Having seen how the singer worked at the things he cherished most, it wasn’t surprising that Satoru handled Suguru’s body, heart, and soul with the same care and consideration that he handled a melody or a rhythm.
It felt like a symphony springing off the page for the very first time, a blend of timbres coming together to complete one another in a harmonious chord that resounded throughout Suguru’s mind — and only Suguru’s mind. Whatever magic he'd discovered in the unique instrument of Satoru's body sounding together with his, it belonged to him alone.
It was his secret chord. One that no one else got to hear.
Despite the fact that he’d promised to give Satoru his all, in that moment, Suguru took a selfish pleasure in the secrecy that weighed on him daily. If he was the only one who got to hear the vocalisations that Satoru made in the seclusion of the sheets — the unique song he performed only for Suguru — all the better.
When the orchestra died down, Satoru kissed him with sleepy eyes and a sated smile and Suguru decided there and then that he wanted to keep Satoru his own personal secret for the rest of his life.
His own private symphony. It didn't sound so bad.
The world could have Gojō Satoru — the idol, the superstar, the celebrity. They could have all the different iterations of the man, except for the one that existed here in Suguru’s arms.
They would never have him. They would never have Satoru.
Froot by MARINA: the ultimate song for Getō Suguru as written by AO3 user greaterglow 🍓
The video isn't relevant. I just think... Marina... And I thought you... Might also think...
After posting chapter 4 of Five Days of Summer this evening, I was rooting around for something to listen to for my next project and I stumbled across this song for the first time in years.
The timing immediately after this particular fic is purely coincidental (it doesn't work for my next project at all), but it's true that I love my seasonal imagery for SatoSugu. For a while, I worried I was getting too repetitive with it, but then I decided I don't care because when something works, why not continue to find new ways to juice the shit out of it like froo-oo-oo-oot 🎶
Anyway, perhaps I was in the summer Suguru mindset, because it was such an oh moment listening to these lyrics progress and realising how they relate to how I depict Suguru not only in canonverse, but in Over the Threshold, too — because to me, this song is explicitly about the music industry.
Yapping with Glo (and manga spoilers abound!) under the cut!
Firstly, this song is simply eccentric. That's the only word for its sound. I'm never comfortable identifying modes in pop songs with any real confidence, because they tend to flirt with them rather than commit to them, but this shifts between scales noticeably enough for me to say that it's definitely modal, at least in the verse.
Modes have traditionally been described by the "character" or "mood" they impart. Dorian mode (which is what the verse of Froot is written in, G specifically) can't quite be characterised as happy or sad. It's a minor mode, owing to its minor third, and this is a sound that a Western ear usually associates with melancholy.
However, the major sixth further up the scale lends it a brightness which counteracts that somewhat. Thus, Dorian mode is considered melancholy yet hopeful, a bittersweet scale suited for jazz and blues. Sound familiar, OTT readers?
‘Were you sad when you wrote Blue Spring, Suguru?’
‘Why? Does it feel sad to you?’
Satoru deliberated over it for a long while. ‘Not sad exactly,’ was the noncommittal answer he eventually gave. ‘Bittersweet, I suppose?’ He tucked Suguru’s palm against his cheek, eyes wandering across the room as he weighed his words. ‘Maybe nostalgic. Or wistful. A lot of words that aren't quite sad.’
Blue was a thousand different things to Suguru, including a lot of words that weren’t quite sad. Bittersweet, nostalgic, wistful.
A familiar tinkle of piano keys sounded through the bar, cycling through three chords coloured by added sevenths and suspended notes — a jazz progression with a melancholic feel that was quintessentially Japanese.
Over the Threshold agenda aside, this sums up the music I tend to associate with Suguru. It doesn't quite capture one mood.
In the case of Froot, the song is upbeat, there's this swelling energy to it, but also a thread of dread running through the song. There's joy but also sadness. There's something a little unnerving about it, but also a delicacy to it. It's both hopeful and hopeless.
There are very tangible human instruments among the arrangement (a gutter filthy bassline opens the song, even. Dolce, anyone?) but also a synthetic sparkle. The vocals are playful, they hop and skip between registers, between voices almost. They concern themselves more with personality and style than with technique. It's all giving Getō Suguru declaring war. Nonsense!
Now, what about the lyrics? What about the damn lyrics?!
I've seen seasons come and go
From winter sun to summer snow
The sun setting on December 24 as snow starts to fall on summer (夏), growing cold in an alleyway. Yeah, okay.
It's summer time and I hang on the vine
They're gonna make me into sweet red wine
Hanging around like a fruit on a tree
Waiting to be picked, come on, cut me free
This entire interlude has such sinister undertones to it. It speaks of consumption and exploitation and objectification, befitting of both Suguru in canon and in the music industry setting of Over the Threshold (which we're not done exploring yet... Shhh!).
Suguru was "picked" by Kenjaku, but ultimately, Yūta cut him free.
Living la dolce vita
Life couldn't get much sweeter
Don't you give me a reason
That it's not the right season
Babe, I love you a lot
I'll give you all I've got
Yeah, you know that it's true
I've been saving all my summers for you
I've been saving all my summers for you
Sweet Sugar in Over the Threshold, waiting and waiting and waiting, smiling, hiding, pretending all the while.
Also, 夏 meaning summer when Suguru was born on the day of a festival which typically marks the arrival of spring, yet actually falls on the last day of winter. For Suguru, it's never the right season.
Baby, I am plump and ripe
I'm pinker than shepherd's delight
Sweet like honeysuckle late at night
This verse (and the song in general) speaks of a woman at the prime of her life, at her ripest. Age has importance in the music industry, but almost exclusively for women. To me, this song speaks both of empowerment and fear of the fate that befalls a woman who spends too long on the vine, especially if she's an artist in the commercial music industry.
In canon, Suguru dies on the cusp of the summer of his life, marking him a member of the famous 27 Club, a group of (mostly) musicians who died at the age of 27, arguably before they had the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Cancel me if you like, but I do associate notions of femininity and fertility with Suguru and his technique in canon. I don't think it's a reach at all and I don't think it needs to come with any nefarious implications either. Get outta here with your gender essentialism! Therefore, this idea of Suguru being plucked from the vine both too early and at the exact right time for Kenjaku to exploit his body is delicious, especially in light of the next half of the verse:
Leave it too long, I'll go rot
Like an apple you forgot
Birds and worms will come for me
The cycle of life is complete
Because Suguru isn't allowed to rot, but his body is used to further the cycle of curses after death. He's frozen in time, held in stasis in the season of his life that he died in.
I'm your carnal flower, I'm your bloody rose
Pick my petals off and make my heart explode
I'm your deadly nightshade, I'm your cherry tree
You're my one true love, I'm your destiny
I don't need to say anything. Bleeding camellias, an application of Limitless technique to the heart, twin deaths on December 24. Suguru, who was Satoru's one and only complex, and his sweetest downfall. Also, Summer's Last Cherry.
Come on, fill your cup up
Looking for some good luck
Good luck to you
Autumn, I'll be gone
Birds will sing their mourning song
Kenjaku hit the jackpot with the fruit machine that was Getō Suguru, an inventory of curses, opportunities spilling out of him.
The pre-chorus also speaks of the experience of making it in the music industry. This is an industry where "right place, right time" takes precedence above everything else for musical artists trying their luck. The reason bad deals are rife in this industry is because artists snatch at any opportunity to get a foot in the door. The first bad deal they're offered is likely the only deal they'll ever be offered.
The lyrics frame the music industry as the one who will get lucky by juicing the singer, urging labels to pick her before it's too late. Like I said at the top of the post, there's a feeling of empowerment to it, but also a sick sort of self-sacrificial sentiment. A willingness to exploit oneself because it seems like the only route to success. Oh, the themes.
Oh, my body is ready
Yeah, it's ready
Oh, my branches are heavy
Yeah, they're heavy
Again, we can read this in two lights. There's a sexuality to the first reading, an invitation, a suggestion of fertility and ripeness. However, the second reading has a weariness to it, a feeling of being weighed down. "My body is ready", but for what?
While I'm not a member of the "Getō Suguru set out on a deliberate suicide mission on December 24" club, I certainly think he had lost his way. Though I believe he set out with the intention of succeeding, I certainly think he was ready to die if it came to it. And I certainly think he wasn't wholly convinced by his own principles anymore. Also:
Truly, Satoru was a star. [...] And he’d chosen Suguru. He kept choosing Suguru.
The gravity of it was startling. It weighed on him. It exhausted him. He thought he’d given up resisting the pull that the singer exerted on him. Thought he’d made a home in Satoru’s inescapable orbit. Thought he’d resigned himself to being swallowed up by his beautiful explosion, too.
Music was still his dream; it didn’t matter that Satoru was the one living it. Not when Suguru had already passed the event horizon. When he’d already given so much. When he was already half devoured. It was enough to help Satoru shine. It was enough to be a part of him. It was enough.
Suguru is a star and a sweet fruit. He's being swallowed. He's being devoured. Those themes of consumption are really hitting hard.
Anyway, AO3 user greaterglow and your love for Getō "Summer" Suguru, you will always be famous. For more of Glo's greatest hits featuring seasonal SatoSugu themes, see February, Race You to the Bottom, erase me, and literally anything else I've written probably.
For more musical themes, yeah, same thing. You're not a one trick pony if you know how to make it fresh and juicy every time. Here's to more tasty froo-oo-oo-oot from fushiglow 🎶
and thanks to my last reblog, i just remembered that super trouper exists. when you read it, i want you all to think of this song. deal?
i'm currently at 13k and, glod willing, i'll finish it before i fly to japan in exactly one week. i fucking hope so anyway because my ass has not booked anything for this trip except the flights. not one thing.
at the end of the day, my stupid fanfic is more important <3
