Vide NaNo Prep 2021

Setting

This will take place in Midwestern America, predominantly. This will be at least partially alternate universe, as it will be a non-existant town in Kentucky. There will also be portions taking place in France and other locations in America as needed by the plot. The time period will span from mid-80s to around 2070. Mostly, it will focus on the changes in the landscape of the rust belt moving from relative economic boom to isolated irrelevance. The main character's hometown will be a local community that changes vastly over the decades, including local businesses falling into disrepair as the spot is too far from the main roads to attract business.

Joseph will have a family farm house, which begins as a bustling hive for foot traffic of family members and neighbors. There is a fair amount of sprawling space separating neighbors, and they live a great distance from the nearest city. Still, people always make the trip, and there are often meals had together and food shared in transit. There are farmers markets nearby that the family does business at, beyond many of the family having jobs unrelated to farm work.

There will also be a fair amount of time spent at a university, which will be an old establishment with sparce newly renovated buildings. It will be a spot relatively close to home (still Midwest) that will allow Joseph to specialize in Astronomy and Physics (has a doctorate program for one or both). Most of the buildings will be pallid gray, linoleum and outdated. Much of the furniture will be mismatched and replaced as needed. The libraries are filled with antequated technology that has not yet been removed despite being dwarfed by the progress of technology at the time of his tenue. Think microfische machines, fax machine, and sound systems that take up entire rooms.

There, the department he works in will be mainly cubicles and small rooms in buildings filled with offices for graduate students. Joseph's office, once he gets one, will be neat and clean, yet always filled with dustmotes. He will attempt to have plants, and shelves that are off the ground, yet it will always feel cramped. He will not have many personal items, as the space will never feel lived in no matter how long he remains.

Part of the story will take part in France at an American military base. This will be Joseph's assignment for the entirety of his time in the military, as he will see no combat. There, he will explore the French countryside. This may also be an imagined situation, the base and location will be a fabrication and not reflective of real locations. It will have a healthy economy due to the closeness to a harbor and border of Germany, and there will be infrastructure that allows easy transport by foot or bike. There will be a predominant water's edge that can be seen from the town, and the base will not be far from the town.

Eventually, there will be another home that Joseph lives in, though he will never move very far away from what he knows. He will start out earning a modest wage and have a small apartment in the city nearest his university, in a desire to individualize himself from his family and grow apart from them. From there, he will land incrementally better jobs that allow him to have bigger houses, though the fact that he is not partnered makes affording home challenging.

After his college years, the family farmhouse will start to deteriorate as more of the family moves around the country and no longer have time to gather and share their wealth. Joseph will visit for major holidays, but it will be a hollow shell of what it used to be. Decorations and presents will be vastly diminished, children of family members will be unrecognizable and uninterested in socializing. Family will drop by only shortly before needing to move on with their busy lives. Joseph's parents will struggle to keep the farm together and organized as they age, leading to rooms filled with family history piled to the ceiling with nowhere to go, closets with objects that have been bought and forgotten. A cellar that is filled with expired canned food and general abandoned decay.

The town surrounding them, if it can still be called a town, will be rusted and abandoned as well, half-broken shacks and caved-in barns are overgrown and empty. An empty plot of land where a schoolhouse used to be. Forests and a single road that passes through and signs that display the name of long gone business fronts. Houses that have peeled paints and decrepit fences, the only buildings that are still prisitne are churches.

Further on, Joseph will have a large home that displays a life of expected success for a graduate. It will be large, modern, and clean, yet lack any real identity. It will be furnished with items that show a lack of taste, or at the very least interest. There is a flourish of color and spirit that can be clearely seen as Brandon's influence, with a focus on comfort.

Brandon's additions to the household will only be present towards the end of his life, and absent in all other locations. It will stand out from the rest of the setting, which are stagnant and gray.

The other versions of Joseph will live in different locations, but not far from where the original Joseph is. His taste will not be different, he is one for efficiency of space and utilitarian design. He is far more concerned with function than comfort, and most of the spaces he is in do not look personalized or lived in. He may become a squatter at certain points, in which case he will have everything he needs in a bag. He does not post photographs or hold on to sentimental items.

Brandon's apartment before he moves in with Joseph will be the opposite, filled with reminders of the past and enthusiasm for the future. There will be superfluous decoration and hoarded knick knacks of any miniscule significance.

wc. 1020

Main Character

Joseph Fischel is a man born in the 1980s in Kentucky. He has spent his life growing up in a large family on a farm house with industrious blue collar workers. They were loving and kind, part of a larger farming community in the area with a focus on hard work and Christian values. Most of the family have jobs they commute to, but would often spend time in the large farm house together.

He was the second born of five children in all, though he would not continue to keep contact with most of them. These lost connections are less due to any major animosity between the siblings, and more from natural disinterest and drifting. Joseph would never 'fit in' with the rest of the family, even though he would be included and praised for his accomplishments. His older brother would do well in his field and be more social, but also disappear from family events as he started his own modest family. The younger siblings would join the military, move across the country, and go to college for a decent career.

Aunts, uncles, and cousins would be famiiar faces at the start, but eventually involve themselves in petty controversy such as infidelity and crime.