I'd say... we're almost there. Those of you who have been on this eight-year-journey with me or have read every single work of mine on Wattpad know exactly what Intentions mean and it has been, and will always be, the way I write. Without a doubt, the reason why my most dedicated readers have become attached to the characters and stories that I write has much to do with what I have intended them to represent, and how they reflect a part of ourselves as we read and imagine every scene, every paragraph, every word. Let us begin.
Leroy's hypogeusia
I daresay it has been one of the biggest risks I have taken in all of my writing career; primarily because... well, yes, people die, people become ill, people can be struck by tragedy, but when your entire story is based on cooking and you decide to steal your main character's sense of taste. Undoubtedly, when it first crossed my mind, I was in a dangerous, dangerous place of being swept away by the wind.
I have made controversial decisions in my writing; things like deciding upon Giselle's blindness and Xander's depression and everything in Flight School. And like every other decision I'd made, Leroy's hypogeusia had come upon me while I was, as usual, sitting in my chair, thinking, which I do a lot, just sitting in silence and staring into space is what I do, and then when it came—just like most controversial decisions I make—I could not stop it.
I often describe how I feel about my characters 'acting' on their own despite, quite literally, myself being their creator and I should, supposedly, know exactly who they are and where they are headed towards. There are times when these unpredictable ideas simply come and take me away and I can no longer look back from when before the idea surfaced.
Leroy gradually losing his ability to taste was tragic and would have made everything seem so much more nuanced, so much more complex since he had, for nearly his entire life since birth, been training to become the person he thought he was going to be; the person he would have liked to live up to not only because his mother was a chef but because perhaps his father would one day see past his 'talent' when he was good enough and that they could be more than just 'mentor and disciple' but 'father and son'; and most of all, that he'd, perhaps, one day, be able to cross paths with a certain little fawn. Again. And so he chose the route that would increase their chances of coming together again.
But knowing me, I was never going to settle for pure tragedy. I mean, if that is the case, I'd just be plucking out feathers one by one and maybe having one of my Flight School characters actually lose their wings or, hm, lose one wing (that... actually sounds like a fantastic idea) or, hm, lose their Avian or something but HEY hahahaha, if I were to simply dish out things like that without proper literary meaning and for the sake of a simple grieving emotion, then I am not Cuppie.
Leroy being unable to taste sweetness, (not bitter, not sour, not salty, just sweetness) was everything I could ever imagine the perfect amount of complexity to be.
It is also essential to note that Leroy was never a fan of sweet things or would never actively search for desserts other than vanilla ice cream that served the purpose of being the calm in his chaos every other week or so when Vanilla was absent from his daily life. It had to be ironic—that his psyche can be so full of someone that it is representative of the most basic taste (sweetness) that it has gradually replaced his ability to physically taste it.
While, admittedly, there hasn't been much research on one's psychological state heavily influencing their sense of taste, I'd taken a leaf out of depressive symptoms and relied on Leroy's state of mind during the eight to nine months he spent completely alone (his mother in a coma and Vanilla not yet entering high school and him having to do everything to keep himself afloat).
His reliance on the hope that he would once again cross paths with someone so important to him and heavily influenced his childhood would explain the gradual but somewhat drastic change in his psyche and hence played a part in his hypogeusia, apart from the fact that he might have some family genetics that played a small part in it.
Most importantly; it had to add complexity to the characters. While Leroy knows that Vanilla doesn't see him as a 'chef' and loves him as a person, he is afraid to confront the reality in which his inability to taste sweetness might (actually, will) affect the other four basic tastes and therefore result in a deterioration of his culinary skills and abilities he's been working so hard to attain. He's facing possible complete abandonment from his father and risks, he thinks, disappointment from Vanilla who might never be able to taste the same cooking again that they have such fond memories of.
It also had to be ironic. It's not that Vanilla and sweetness are mutually exclusive but I did hope for there to be some form of 'choice', like, if Vanilla hadn't come back into his life, Leroy would still have been able to taste sweetness but conversely, that meant that he would have to struggle alone and should I present such a choice to Leroy himself as a god, would he have been able to choose? After knowing what losing his taste might possible entail?
And so I got to work.
It's chapter fifty-four that we learn about what exactly is up with Leroy but at chapter twenty-seven (halfway through) that readers are given a momentary peer into this event, in which Leroy declares Chip's pumpkin pie 'a little bland' and of course, I'd made sure to make things ambiguous so that people would end up attributing this comment to his bad mood or the conflict that was going on and every time I signpost his gradual loss of taste, I do the same thing. Him eating the vanilla ice cream at the hospital before chapter twenty-seven, even, and noting how bland it was "might have been due to the ice cream being cheap", or, him tasting Chen's cookie and thinking it was bland might be the high standards he holds to the school's top baker, or, that him adding honey in the lobster ravioli was a stroke of genius to tweak the recipe, and him making the sweet soy chicken extra sweet had to be for the children's sake at the orphanage.
Things like that.
I think if you count how many times I signpost Leroy's gradual inability to taste sweet things it's about seven or eight.
Of course, some readers caught on really fast and when I mean fast, I mean the moment Leroy said something about Chip's pumpkin pie people were P A N I C K I N G and I was like, hm, am I starting to become too predictable??? Um. But yes. Those who caught on, you were right :') it was deliberate.
To a certain extent, the only constant in Leroy's recent life (age 14-16?) would have been the vanilla ice cream he made at the parlour because that is the only sweet dessert that has a fixed recipe he can rely on to be a 'control' or, again, a 'constant'. And the reason why he hadn't actually realized he was losing his sense of sweetness is because the vanilla ice cream has been replaced by, well, a certain special someone, and he doesn't need the ice cream to soothe him, to be the calm in the chaos that he faces but ironically, this made him unable to realize that he was gradually losing his very ability to taste it.
Till Sunday, dear Beans 😊
-Cuppie