all about Iosif Kļaviņš 𖦹

Iosif Kļaviņš is one of the two main characters in Post Tenebras. He's Alastair's victim, prior to which he was studying anthropology with the plan to become a professor. Iosif is the penultimate of Alastair's many victims, and the last moment of his in the story is Alastair murdering him.

DISCLAIMER: I know this plot is cliche of cliches. I don't plan for any of this to be published, and these snippets were only born in the first place a few years back as a way for me to channel my thoughts into something healthier than ending up in psych. The focus now instead is just to write scenes in which I can evoke the strongest possible emotions in my mini fandom (shoutout to Ulisse and Slate), and toy with the dynamic between these two characters. It's just for funsies :) alright, back to business

Iosif is an averagely tall, slender young man, with light olive skin and short, curly, mousey-brown hair. He has a very soft resting expression. He usually wears comfortable clothes; soft cotton jumpers and wide trousers in warm colours. At the time of the story he's 21, and living in Nottingham, and dies shortly before he would have turned 22.

Iosif was born in '72 in Riga, Latvia. He grew up to a loving mother and father, Dzintra and Juris, but during the Barricades of '91 Juris died in the shootings. Iosif and his mother moved to Kuprava, for distance from Riga with affordable conditions, only to have to leave a year later when the factory granting most of the residents the possibility to live there shut down. Iosif and Dzintra briefly moved back to Riga to live with his grandparents while they figured themselves out, span of time in which Iosif got a scholarship in Nottingham approved, and his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Despite his reluctance to leave her while ill, they both knew it was an opportunity he couldn't reasonably turn down. About half a year into university, he received news of her death.

The factors at play weren't the most favourable; far from home, with a span of interests that made him seem "unmanly" and which he chose to hide, and with recent news of Dzintra's passing. Thankfully, the budding friendship with the rather varied duo of Anna, a sporty and confident Russian young lady, and Jean-Baptiste (Jeanie, for friends, "like Jean Genie, right? Bowie?" he'd say), a flashy and slightly spoiled but very kind-hearted French young man, helped pick him up a little.

Unfortunately, the event that snapped him back into valuing his life (element he'd lost significantly) was its endangerment; being drugged and kidnapped by Alastair, never again to see his friends. He never stopped wondering, in some corner of his mind, whether or not they'd tried to look for him. Alastair didn't let him watch television. Other than a brief and extraordinarily ill-fated attempt at escape, Iosif never again saw anything but the confines of his captor's house until his death at the man's hands, in March of 1994.

Iosif is a kind, soft-spoken person, quite easily trodden on (unless it comes to standing up for loved ones). In university he attempted to blend in, seem rougher and more open to nightlife and mess than he really is, but the friends he made were those with which he didn't feel the need to hide being "softer". He struggles a little to take care of himself, and often feels crushed by the guilt of having left his mother. His shame over lack of manliness comes from not having fought alongside his father during the Barricades, despite only having been 19 at the time. Perhaps he could've saved him. This guilt is one he doesn't even share with Anna or Jean-Baptiste.

While initially being horrified by Alastair's monstrous existence for obvious reasons and having trouble even reconciling him with the concept of a human, time is a tedious mistress: only seeing Alastair for months of end, and the small warmths of being fed and patched up (even though the cause of harm was Alastair himself) worked an ugly number on him. By the end, had he been given the option to leave, he most likely wouldn't have taken it.

hope I've stirred some curiosity, if I tweak things or I've forgotten to mention anything, I'll update :>