Support Systems

[kasihya]

I don't want to present Kai as someone who is quiet and shy and flawless. I want someone who is clearly human. He doesn't like some people, simply because they are better than him. He's a good artist, but he's not that good of a student, much to the dismay of his academic parents. And it's not even that he doesn't apply himself, because there's that, too, but even if he did, he still wouldn't be a terrific student. He'd still struggle in math. In some ways, he is the sum of his characters: he's proud and opinionated like Romana, he aspires to be arrogant like Macchi-Macchi because he thinks that that is cool, and Pantalero is the part of him that he fears he looks like to other people, the well-meaning but dumb idiot that hurts more than helps.

Romana = who he would be if he wasn't shy

Macchi-Macchi = who he wants to be

Pantalero = who he's afraid he's actually turning into

(I'm a little disappointed that no one in my class picked up on Romana's name, but it was mostly by accident, so whatever.)