The story of “Infatuation” is a non-linear, biased tragic romance with thriller elements that takes place in an alternate version of our reality where at the dawn of Homo sapiens, two mutations occurred creating invisible, light-wielding, cannibalistic monsters (Lightstalkers) and strong, agile monster hunters who could see them (Hunters), resulting in an entire secret society made up of various hierarchies that have ensured that the regular humans have no idea that monsters exist at the expense of anyone possessing these mutations. In New England, there is the New England Hunters’ Council, which consists of 13 roles and a long-standing history of self-martyrdom and tragedy, and in 2003, a somewhat dejected yet ambitious treasurer— Dolores Zima— deals with the complications of falling in love with new Councilwoman Mariko Sasaki— whose own ambitions and goals to fix the mistakes of her ancestor result in sabotage and the unraveling of both of these women, especially as the Council fails to address any of the genuine issues at hand, in favor of maintaining their traditions that often harm young Hunters and kill Hybrids (part-Lightstalker part-human individuals). As a result, I wanted the lookbook to reflect both Dolores’ instability to highlight the themes of societal failure and lack of community resulting in the creation of conflict, but also the fantasy worldbuilding I’ve created. To achieve this, I decided to make the lookbook into a physical binder containing notes about this story, often with collage aspects to represent Dolores’ fragmented recollections of events.
The formatting of these notes will be to give each section as assigned by the rubric as a section of notes labelled like a heading page for a Hunters’ Council meeting with aesthetic pages of inspiration and conceptual framework as the “notes.” For example, “Music” will have pages dedicated to the character’s individual playlists I have curated and how that reflects their personality, vibes, etc, analysis formatted as notes under headings as follows:
Music:
-Mariko Sasaki
–>Mariko notably listens to Frank Sinatra often, known for jazz and swing music, which is seen as “classy” and is more often listened to by older generations. This reflects Mariko feeling out of place among her peers, especially in the non-Hunter world, but also how she had to grow up faster than many of her peers due to the loss of her mother at a young age, her father’s early on-set Alzheimer’s, and the fact that she is a Hunter to begin with, with Hunter society disregarding the youth of its members in favor of having higher numbers in their ranks to combat Lightstalkers.
–>One of the songs that stuck out to me the most while creating a playlist for Mariko is the song “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan. “Good Luck, Babe!” is a song that is fundamentally about a woman’s message to another woman she loved about the fact that no matter what, she is a lesbian, and she can’t force herself to conform to society’s expectation for her to love women. This message reflects the dynamic between Mariko and Dolores, as Mariko denies herself of her love for women due to personal traumas and reinforced thoughts of society on queer women, while Dolores is open about who she is and cannot understand why Mariko will not accept this part of herself. The song is also notably upbeat in tone, much like how Dolores is around Mariko, even during tragic lines such as “When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night/With your head in your hands,/you’re nothing more than his wife/And when you think about me, all of those years ago/You’re standing face to face with “I told you so”
[Art by @dharie00 on X (or Twitter, whatever you want to call it). Chosen due to the framing of Suguru within Satoru’s eye reflecting how he is his primary focus amongst his relationships and how much of his world revolves around him]
- The point of the broken narrative
- Dolores is an unreliable narrator, so it only makes sense for the narrative structure to match that as well
- In denial of her grief
- Struggles with and often unwilling to look from other perspectives
- Mariko doesn’t get to tell her own story
- Ties into the themes of societal isolation that are exemplified by her character
- Ties back into the fact that she didn’t live long enough to “finish her story”
- Ties back into the way that society views women and how Hunter society views the Sasaki family and plays into self-destructive tendencies due to unrealistic expectations
- Dolores is an unreliable narrator, so it only makes sense for the narrative structure to match that as well
- Why is Dolores the protagonist and not Mariko
- After toying with this universe of mine, I decided I wanted Mariko to sort of haunt the lives of other people rather than have her own story be told
- Mariko also has a complicated love life, so I thought what better way to demonstrate the themes of my screenplay and the concept of Mariko “haunting the narrative” than by having one of her lovers be the narrator
- Dolores is also the protagonist because I wanted to expand upon her after her initial creation, but she didn’t fit into the other stories I wanted to tell within this universe
- I recognized that Dolores, as I initially created her, was very interesting— an ousted Council member and a friend of Wynn’s— but I hadn’t given her any substance outside of her existence as a Hunter, which ironically ties into the way Hunter society views its individuals
