EXEC_with.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~ #Mir with Lyuma extracting
Ending song
The above linked file is actually EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~; the lyrics are mostly identical, with one small change. Please open your heart, and use your imagination. :)
Thanks to aquagon for the original translation and the translation of my edited lyrics.
Chs hymma en famfa der ciel,
Like the birds that fly in the firmament
chs plina en grlanza art fhyu,
Like the plants that dance thanks to the wind
chs hasyu en zassyen der sielp,
Like the fish that swim in the rivers
chs bister en rana anw dor,
Like the animals that run on the land
was yea ra messe anw briyante.
I will be happy to convey to the world my voice of joy
Wassee anw fane lusye,
Let's praise love's shining light
wassee zess frawr bautifal en afezeria,
Let's praise this blessing, as beautiful as a blooming flower
wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation
Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel iem, wassee!
Now, I will be happy to turn my life into a world for the sake of love. Let's praise!
Wassee!
Let's praise!
Was yea ra wael yorr uteu enw fernia,
I'm happy to see you sleeping with a smile,
en sorr quen art ftt omnis crudea.
a smile that exists because suffering has vanished.
Was yea ra wael yorr yaserwe,
I'm happy to see that you are relaxing,
en melenas oure en yanwe oure sor.
and thinking "What do I love the most? What is most important to me?"
Was yea ra grandus ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to protect this world, because of love.
Was ki ra fogabe van anw na fogabe cupla.
I will concentrate in forgiving even the unrepentant
Wassee, fatele gyajlee haf alroetsue,
Let's praise, so that the sinners can find atonement
wassee forgandal dauane keenis na nozess,
Let's praise, because the radiance of the dawn will not disappear
wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation
Was ki ra yorra sarrifis anw omnis noes, wassee!
Now, everyone, offer yourselves to me. Let's praise!
Wassee!
Let's praise!
xN rre cia n.m.l. ut talam ag f.r.l. du tussu/.
The sky is being dyed with the color of the dawn, and I tremble with the presentiment of change
xN rre sarr m.n.g. du tyui lyuma/.
Let's try to catch that tiny star once more
xU rre urgn zz tUkd ut LYAglansee,
The laments no longer reach us,
targue rre qejyu zUzx
and even if the people are still despairing,
ag tUn za vUt dn balduo sefanl/.
they will stop living in the forest of darkness
Wee yea ra rre lyafre famfa en jass anw iasien;
I'm happy that the morning dew is claimed by the flying butterflies;
en tarfe tou yos maun.
they gently rest upon your closed eyelids
xU rre sefanl s.n.k.k. aje qraffa,
I'm sad that the trees have finished sprouting their new leaves
en h.k.t.t. nafan du ouwua kouf/.
and that they have wrapped us gently in their whispers
Was nyasri ga hieg yorra guaysu
I'm sad that you are depressed
art crudea en raklya art idesy memora.
because of the sufferings and cries that come from the memories of the past
Tasyue anw gyuss en yosyua yor,
I will offer my embrace to you and console you
tasyue anw ciel en dople anw omnis lamenza,
I will offer myself to this world, and I will remove the laments from it
tasyue en chs Sublimation.
I shall offer myself, and my Sublimation
Was yea ra sonwe sos yor en valwa anw ciel.
I will be happy to sing for your sake, and to purify the world
Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to turn my life into a world, for the sake of love
Was yea ra grandus ciel sos infel.
I will be happy to protect this world, because of love
Wassee anw fane lusye,
Let's praise love's shining light
wassee zess frawr bautifal en afezeria,
Let's praise this blessing, as beautiful as a blooming flower
wassee en chs Sublimation.
Let's praise our own Sublimation
Was yea ra omness chs ciel sos infel iem, wassee!
Now, I will be happy to turn my life into a world for the sake of love. Let's praise!
Was yea ra chs yuez en yanje yanje pitod yor.
I'm happy to be with you, and I want to be forever, forever with you
Was yea ra chs yuez en yanje yanje pitod yor.
I'm happy to be with you, and I want to be forever, forever with you
Was yea ra chs yuez....
I'm happy to be with you
The players
Mercís Enfandria (AR): 31 years old, long-time activist and independent Reyvateil, and owner of the blog "Falling Through the Generation Gap". After becoming interested in Reyvateil rights in her teenage years, she made a vow to herself, as many other Reyvateils have, to live independently of "the corps"-- the Church and Tenba, the two big organisations in Sol Ciel who provide free Diquility to Reyvateils in exchange for what she saw as emotionally demanding and coercive work. After working several regular if low-paying jobs, she fell upon dire circumstances and for several years worked as a prostitute, doing volunteer activist work by day, until a strange and random act of kindness turned her life around.
While she was a prostitute, she began to look to Mir as a symbol of hope in times of adversity, and, as revealed in the side-story The Flesh Fair, covertly wears a hand-crafted red-and-black pendant in dedication to her.
She shares the same last name as Leish Enfandria, one of my other OC Reyvateils, but they're not actually related (or at least, only very distantly, in the same way that two people with the last name Wood might share a common ancestry many generations back). She's extremely tight-lipped about her upbringing and family history; even those close to her know very little about it. Much like Luca Truelywaath, she has amber eyes.
Daire Nakayoji (dhezeall): 26 years old, long-time activist and independent Reyvateil. Known for her use of dry wit, dressing casually and androgynously, and flirting with anything with an install port; carried on a hush-hush relationship with Mayalan, a Church Reyvateil with a human partner and a friend of polyhymnia's, for a large portion of the plot, though only celeliss was in a position to know about it. Because of bullying inflicted on her as a teenager, her right ankle (where her install port is) is weak, and she typically walks with a cane.
Despite her sometimes sharp words towards people she considers ignorant, Daire is a caring, friendly and socially responsible person. She, like AR, has a history of being heavily involved with offline activism, though she joined the movement several years later. At various times, her floor and couch have been home to several Reyvateils in need of shelter, including celeliss.
Her father, who hated Reyvateils, forbade music from being played in the house when she was growing up. As a result, she can't stand silence, and plays music at a low volume constantly when she's home. She carries a portable music player for the commute to and from work; the ride isn't exactly silent, but she says being able to shut out the crying babies and bickering teenagers makes her journey bearable.
She's interested in the concept of non-binary gender identity as it applies to her, and considers her gender to be "Reyvateil in pants", a statement she made quasi-flippantly but with serious meaning behind it; she prefers female pronouns but considers her femaleness to be secondary to her Reyvateil nature in terms of what defines her. In 21st-century queer theory terms, "soft butch" fits her pretty well as a descriptor. Being only attracted to Reyvateils, rather than females as a whole, she rejects the definition "lesbian", arguing that there ought to be another word for Reyvateil-specific attraction.
Daire has never had a great deal of control over her magic; it tends to come to her suddenly and only when she's in dire need, and has no consistent theme. She manifested her first spell, a powerful blast of fire, as a teenager to escape her abusive home. Though she never mentions it to anyone, she also has shapeshifting magic, and has been known to occasionally look something like this, amongst other things. (Not my art.)
Alodia Hyafazerie (heartofharmony): 19 years old, Reyvateil employed with the Church of Elemia. A shy, introspective girl, raised by her father on dreams of an ideal life in the Church, she was subsequently partnered with a controlling and unpleasant man and forced to confront the stark reality that the Church guaranteed no happily ever afters. Realising that even those she believed in might not always be telling her the full truth, she began to wonder what else she'd not heard the truth about, and, driven by her increasing understanding that forced partnering was unfair, she found her way into activism.
On the outside, Alodia is exactly what many people expect a Reyvateil to be: feminine and graceful in her demeanour, with a fondness for pretty clothes and a seeming willingness to submit to authority. However, her brain is also very much alive and ticking, and while she's still sometimes brought up short by the things she was indoctrinated to believe, she values critical thinking and tries hard to implement it in her daily life. She's a voracious reader of all kinds of things, from novels to the political and scientific journals she finds in the library, and has never quite been able to shake her weakness for pulpy romantic fantasy, even if in reality she's grown wary of the romance game. Like many Reyvateils, while she's not entirely asexual, she leans more towards harmonic bonding with her own kind as her primary way of relating emotionally to others.
An extremely non-aggressive person, she'd like life to simply be peaceful and free of conflict. Eventually, she gets her wish, from the source that she least expects.
Lyuma Sechel (neonsunray): 18 years old, college student. Came to the blog after following a trackback link from a news article that featured her, written by an undercover journalist without her permission. One of the few Reyvateils in Sol Ciel ever to pursue a college education after being funded by her rich parents and encouraged to pose as human, she studied business, wanting to do something for her species by someday making it to the top of a big corporation and helping to change working conditions for the better; but deep down her heart always lay with the arts, specifically painting. She tells people that she began painting Mir because she wanted to explore the many controversial issues that surround her, but secretly Mir had always fascinated her for more reasons than that.
Lyuma is empathetic, even for a Reyvateil, and prone to dreaming big and believing wholeheartedly in those dreams, even when they make her seem disconnected from reality to others around her. The turning point in her life came when she decided to leave her prestigious college position to pursue Mir to Metafalss, where she ended up being shot in a riot and rebuilt with mechanical parts. During this time, Mir also upgraded her to be insanely powerful-- enough to be guaranteed to be able to handle an Extract Hymn, which put her at a level almost on par with a Beta Reyvateil-- and attached her to Infel Phira, so that she could sing the METHOD part of the Hymn Sublimation.
When she was injured, she lost her left arm, which meant she also lost the use of her install port (it was on her left wrist). Thankfully, she had enough Diquility within her to last her until the end of the world; it's unsure whether Mir could have found a way to manually give her Diquility if she'd needed it before then.
She formerly had long brown hair, but cut it when she went to college. The red-and-black dye job she frequently sports is a subtle, codified way of expressing her devotion to Mir.
The politics
Falling Through the Generation Gap was heavily inspired by real blogs in the field of activism, particularly race and gender equality activism. While my activities in the sphere of activism are, unfortunately, pretty much limited to reading said blogs and trying to reform my thinking based on what I've learnt from them, I do feel that my attempts to understand the uncomfortable social issues they raise, as commented on by those who have to live with the impact of them day in and day out, have helped me to develop my personal morality.
As a result of becoming increasingly aware of these kinds of social issues, when I played Ar Tonelico for the first time, I immediately started reflecting on the problems a disenfranchised "second-class species" like the Reyvateils would realistically face. Disappointed that the game hinted at these problems but didn't really develop them, and that other fans didn't seem to be interested in speculating much on them either, I decided to start exploring them in my own fiction, directly comparing them to existing social issues in this world, with two aims: to get fans to think more about how Reyvateils don't have the same advantages and options as everyone else, and to raise awareness of similar inequalities that currently exist in this world. The plot veered away from that structure a bit at the very end, as it took a more supernatural turn, but judging from the comments I've received, I think I still managed to make a few people think harder about various social issues.
...Somehow, that all came off sounding incredibly arrogant; as if I, a privileged white male, could ever really speak for these people. But, at least in this fandom, no one else was going to if I didn't say something first, and I felt something needed to be said. I hope I did some justice to the diverse range of voices out there, and I'm extremely thankful to all the players who added their voices to the mix and helped keep it from being a monolith.
Thanks to, among others, the people at The Angry Black Woman (who inspired the Angry Reyvateil's name), Feministe, Feministing, Alas, a blog, and Shapely Prose, for being a constant source of inspiration, insight, and perspective as I constructed this work of fiction. Also, special thanks go to innumerable LiveJournal people, whose usernames I've long since forgotten, who participated in various iterations of International Blog Against Racism Week; your posts were what sparked off my first tentative forays into privilege theory and the activist community, and made this whole thing possible.
The media
One of the fun things about writing the Reyvablog was getting to play with various sorts of media. I wanted the blog to be as authentic a facsimile of a real activist blog as I could make it, and so early on I made the decision to link to screenshots of various fictional news articles, which all used templates shamelessly stolen from actual news sites. People seemed to like the feeling of authenticity and gravity this lent to the story, and so over time I used this as an excuse to get even more creative with various forms of media, even going as far as to typeset, print out, and then subsequently scan a four-page article to make it look as if it had been scanned from a real magazine. This was printed actual size, on A3 paper, at a print shop; it's totally the real deal.
Players joined in, too; we even had one of our players compose a poem which one of the characters was meant to have found on an amateur poetry website. It was a good poem in its own right, yet it wasn't even a feature piece; it was casually tucked away within a comment in the middle of a long thread, and largely overlooked. Such was the attention to detail that was put into this work of fiction.
The aural aspect of the blog was particularly fun to play with. I figured Reyvateils probably rely on sound quite heavily, so I'd like to have included even more sound clips, but I'm no audio expert and they're fairly time-consuming to do. For the speeches in Hymmnos, I sent the scripts in English to Lazy and had him translate them into Pastalia Hymmnos and Standard Hymmnos respectively; the Pastalia Hymmnos was so insanely complex that I reduced it to a phonetic approximation of the syllables before sending it off to haounomiko, who performed as the voice of Mir and Shurelia. Deciare also aided in the translation of an important part of the Standard Hymmnos speech. Background crowd noise on the speeches was acquired from various YouTube videos, including some clips of street celebrations for Obama when I wanted the noise to lean more towards cheers than jeers. The song of the streets was created by blending whale song, New Age harmonic chants, and the Hymn of the Fayth from FFX played backwards. XD
The ending
...Yes, I "killed off" all my characters. I "killed off", at least in this timeline (I'm sure iterations of them that belong to any other stories you're writing will be just fine), all your characters. I hope that you're able to be comforted by the words of Sublimation, the knowledge that they truly are now in a better world, and this compilation of thoughts and reflections on the story.
My intention, for what it's worth, was not to craft a bad, cruel or negative ending. Rather, feeling that it got a raw deal in the original game, I wanted to write a story that showed a different side to Sublimation. I believe that change doesn't have to be a negative thing, that even such a complete transformation of the world we're used to doesn't have to be bad. I don't believe, as many stories want to argue, that we're necessarily best served by holding onto everything that makes us human (or Reyvateil, or Teru), including all the flaws.
I've also, since the end of AT1, wanted to see a story in which Mir finally gets to create the utopia she's always dreamed of. AT3 may yet be that story-- but just in case it isn't, I wanted to write this one, because I believe it's a story worth telling. Again, too often in stories (RPGs in particular), the person who wants a "perfect world" is shown to be misguided, because people would prefer to live on just the way we are. I think living on as we are is great-- but we can also, potentially, do better. For once, I wanted to write a story where the person changing the world was in the right.
On the flip side, that's not to say that there was no suffering or loss involved in the transformation. Even those who truly believed in the goodness and necessity of it had their doubts, at first. I had Mir give the characters five days to reflect on their situation because I wanted to highlight that, when confronted with the certainty of their world's ending-- even if they were explicitly told that that ending was for the better-- people would need time in which to process things. For some, even, five days didn't seem like enough. For others, no amount of time could ever truly feel like "enough". For others yet, five days was almost longer than they could bear. The main characters inhabited various spaces on that spectrum, at various points in time. I wanted to provide a space for people to explore the idea of what someone faced with a world on the brink of transformation would think, feel and do.
I hope I did a good job of conveying the bittersweet nature of the transition, from speech and sorrow to the final, hopeful event. If you haven't yet, please do listen to EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. ~omness chs ciel sos infel~, read the lyrics as you listen, imagine Mir and Lyuma's voices singing to create the new world of spirits, and reflect on the time you spent among these characters and what they meant to you.
With your help, I was able to craft a much greater work of fiction than I ever could have alone.
Thank you for playing.
Feel free to add your thoughts, questions, character profiles, bits of info you never got to reveal on the blog, etc., etc. to this thread!
63 comments:
Randomly, in the ending picture of everyone... they're not quite to scale. AR's not really that small. Second Life is a bit of an imprecise tool to work with. XD
They don't feel "killed off" to me, somehow. They feel just as alive in my mind as they always have. Of course, now that the story is a complete whole, we could revisit them at any point in time...
What're the changes in the lyrics?
The original two lines that were changed were:
Was ki ra na fogabe anw sial gyaje (I will concentrate in not forgiving even the slightest mistake)
Wassee fatere gyajlee deata (Let's praise, so the sinners can be judged)
The new two lines are:
Was ki ra fogabe van anw na fogabe cupla (I will concentrate in forgiving even the unrepentant)
Wassee, fatele gyajlee haf alroetsue (Let's praise, so that the sinners can find atonement)
And I'm glad they don't feel killed off to you. If they can live on inside people... well, that's one of the best gifts I could give to anyone through fiction.
Having some food and shower now, but I'll be back soon with more thoughts!
Ascend To A Higher Plane of Existance seems more accurate? (Warning: TVTropes.)
So, was there anything special that could be seen from Singing Hill? `.`
It had a really good view of the whole of the Tower (or as much as you can see from land). Lyuma and Mir basically said that to clue people into the idea that they couldn't see the Tower glow from Metafalss (hard from Firefly Alley, too), and also because... Singing Hill seemed a fitting place to gather people, for the end. As it begins, so shall it end.
Mostly, it was about the fact that it is one place from which you can see the Tower, and when people gathered there, it'd look peaceful and pretty.
I know what'll happen to me if I click on TVTropes, so I'll just surmise what the content probably is. =D I think the idea is something like that.
The idea I got from it all was that while humanity is great, and I can sympathise with heroes who want to fight for humanity's right to live on, not be obliterated, not be turned into any number of boring drone-like creatures, etc. there's also room for improvement, and something to be said for a world where the bad things got better and the good things also got better.
FWIW, Ayulsa didn't start out intending to put the supernatural stuff in. He was just going to mess around and write activist articles until he got tired of it, but then I suggested that it would be better if the blog came to a polished finale rather than just rambling on until everyone got tired of playing-- especially if some people got tired of playing before others did-- and, well, apparently Plot Was Born, the nature of which I was not spoiled for until two days before Mir gave her Sublimation speech (when I had to VA it).
The Hymn Codes were my idea very early on in the blog; I originally suggested a big freak-out where everyone would have to install mandatory antivirus software. But they'd need Hymn Codes... and then that turned into the freakout, itself.
Actually, speaking of that link you posted, winters, it looks like it's usually the case that a single character Ascends To A Higher Plane Of Existence; I haven't really heard of many stories where everything does (except maybe Evangelion, and it's notoriously ambivalent about it). Anyone know of any?
Also, a few notes:
This is ultimately up to Rigil, and I don't know what he will declare to be canon, but I've noted to him that there's a possibility that he could have actually met Mir, before the end. He said that he was going to the inside of the Tower, and if he knew the structure well enough, he might have come across some doors that he wouldn't normally expect to be sealed. If he'd shown too much curiosity, Mir would have appeared to him, and would have likely contained him until Sublimation so that he could not spread the word of her location. I don't know if this happened or not; it's really up to him.
And on pairings, for those who follow that kind of thing: Mir and Lyuma, in all likelihood, spent their last night together. It would have been Lyuma's ultimate dream. (Her parents would have gone nuts.) Though she never would have told anyone, because it was a precious moment and she didn't want to run the risk of anyone mocking or disapproving of it, it's also canonical that Mir has kissed her. She mentioned being able to take off the mask for brief periods of time (a few seconds); that's how she found out.
As young activists, AR and dhezeall were also in a relationship, which dissolved over their conflicting feelings on Mir. After they broke up, they eventually reinstated their relationship as friends. This was why the division between AR and dhezeall over Mir on the blog was a particularly tense time for them....
Install ports, for those who're curious...
AR's never revealed the location of hers: it might be somewhere embarrassing. It's a pale yellow.
dhezeall's, of course, is on her ankle, and it's green with a slight hint of blue, somewhere between the colours of her hair and eyes.
heartofharmony's is a pale china blue, and on her mid-back.
neonsunray's is a sort of reddish-orange, almost like the "fluorescent red" colour you get in crayon sets; it's not really reproducible on a computer, perhaps. It's very bright.
As for the characters who aren't mine: polyhymnia's mentioned that hers is on her shoulder blade, Mayalan's is on her shoulder itself, and briyante's been seen in pictures with it on her upper chest/collarbone area. briyante's is golden; I think polyhymnia's may be vivid blue. I don't know about Mayalan. Their player, I'm sure, can elaborate if they like.
Hi, fourth-wall-breaky polyhymnia! XD
He was just going to mess around and write activist articles until he got tired of it, but then I suggested that it would be better if the blog came to a polished finale rather than just rambling on until everyone got tired of playing
I actually am really glad we did it in part because it kept people from getting tired of playing; everyone kept up till the end, whereas people might have drifted well before now if not. It made the story something that people were willing and excited to follow.
I was so glad Sublimation wasn't spoiled. When Mir said in her Hibernation speech how she'd bring a better world, I wonder if people would guess anything about the world's ending. They probably all took it as a sort of "yay social change" thing.
For the record, I think I came up with the idea of doing Sublimation about the time we were discussing what Mir might or might not do to get back at Tenba for Hymn Codes, and we were playing AT2 and talking about how Sublimation got a bit of a bad rap, and I went, "...you know, I want Mir to make this happen and have it not be bad". And it just all clicked in with what I'd always wanted for her in AT3.
Oh, man. For some reason, these two names register as being very similar in my head, and I'm not sure why. I keep having to doublecheck whether I've logged in as the right one. =D
I'll create profiles for polyhymnia and briyante later, possibly very meta ones.
As for install ports... I just realised that no one has seen a picture of polyhymnia other than her bowing (Ayulsa, would you post a better shot?), but... the main difficulty, once I put together her avatar, was trying to find her something to wear that made her look less like Barbie. >____< I had considered giving her a deep reddish-pink install port, but I'm afraid she'll look unfortunately even more like Barbie, so... I'm not entirely sure whether it's that or vivid blue. Mayalan's install port is... whatever colour Misha's is, for obvious reasons.
Ayulsa, with as much as I heard you talk-- especially early on in your Mir obsession-- that you would love to see a story about Mir's Rapture, I'm surprised I didn't realise it was Sublimation. I had clued in that something supernatural was going on ever since AR told us about meeting Mir, whom you obviously meant to be really actually Mir, but I thought, "The end of the world? Really? You're really going to do this and not have it turn out to be something else after all?" By the time the speech was posted, it'd become clear to me that you really meant to go through with it.
I think the reason I didn't pick up on it at first might be that it's so unusual for what's billed as "the end of the world", in a story, to be exactly what it promises to be, no more and no less. Mir said what she was going to do, and she did exactly that. No hidden agenda, no switcheroo, no things not being what they seem, no turning out that world-ending was just a metaphor, and no big dramatic thing where she is a villain and can be stopped. That's what I feel is the biggest trope subversion about this all: you keep waiting for the hidden catch, and then it finally sinks in that there is none and it's actually going to happen just as billed. That only ever seems to happen in crappy Christian fiction, so it's a surprise when it pops up in a decent fantasy story.
I'll create profiles for polyhymnia and briyante later, possibly very meta ones.
Yaaay!
As for install ports... I just realised that no one has seen a picture of polyhymnia other than her bowing (Ayulsa, would you post a better shot?)
Sure! How about this and this? I might post some more later....
Mayalan's install port is... whatever colour Misha's is, for obvious reasons.
I don't actually think that info's even given... colours for install ports are something I came up with myself. The game doesn't really say one way or the other. But I always imagine Misha's as a sort of dark, dusky violet-blue, near-night sky colour, so....
You're really going to do this and not have it turn out to be something else after all?
I totally would have loved to keep the suspense even longer than that. I couldn't bring myself not to talk to you about Sublimation like it was a foregone conclusion; it would have been neat to have people wondering, until the very end, whether there was going to be a last-minute retraction, an eleventh-hour "reprieve". I wonder, did anyone else think that there might have been a chance that Mir wouldn't be able to sing, at the end?
and no big dramatic thing where she is a villain and can be stopped.
Yes. I liked that as a subversion, too. She looked like a villain, she acted like a villain, she gave Lyuma Creepy Star Wars Villain Accessories, she did the things that, when they happen in a story, cause heroes to pop up and go "you're insane! You'll never get away with this!" and eventually stop them. She took a very traditional villain role... and then as time went on we realised that, wait, she was going to be the good guy. I think Shurelia's defence of her (which was haounomiko's idea!) was the turning point, there. That really helped the story along.
I liked what happened with Rigil, actually. He set out in the classical hero vein, fulfilling the role of the person who will protest this loss of freedom... and he came back humble. Not accepting, but still humble. It wasn't his time, nor his story. I thought it worked well.
And yes, for some reason I actually parse haounomiko and polyhymnia as similar words/names, too....
you keep waiting for the hidden catch, and then it finally sinks in that there is none and it's actually going to happen just as billed.
I think even polyhymnia felt this, actually. XD She was like, "aah, I need antiseptic! Anyone? Anyo-- oh, wait, it doesn't actually matter if some bacteria get in there. A virus is totally getting in there in an hour." She was almost waiting for the hidden catch, or at least unable to let go of the idea that things would Carry On As Normal, until the very end.
As Sublimation took her, I think she realised intuitively, finally, in one blinding moment of bliss and perfect comprehension, that it wasn't going to go on. She understood, on a deep level that she hadn't been able to reach before, that this was truly it. And that that was wonderful. And that she could let go, and never be let go of. And, like everyone else, she ascended to a higher plane, and lived happily ever after.
...also, I just realised-- that cat that polyhymnia is sitting with is totally wrathface cat. Hidden Jakuri cameo!
About Arisa
Arisa began out of a simple idea - I thought the place could use someone who agreed with you a lot less often. But I had neither the desire nor inclination to write someone who was actually *hostile*. Thus I ended up thinking of the Teru, who seemed to be fairly isolationist. Someone coming from a fairly unconnected society might develop an entirely different interpretation of things. (The first example of this, which I don't think ever really got a comment, was "You know, that article about song parlors made them sound like really good things to me.")
The name "winters" was chosen due to a couple factors.
-I'd used the name "Winter" before, so I wouldn't have a hard time mentally connecting it to myself, but it wasn't strongly attached to a particular image of me, the way "Morgan" and "Taria" are.
-It was supposed to be a minor allusion to her personality. Not really cold as such, but... The phrase I often thought of was "pretty but prickly". (A phrase used in an analogy comparing Sara Sidle to a christmas cactus in an Undocumented Features story.)
Quite a few things ended up changing from there. I, for instance, had *completely* missed the "Teru have horns and a tail" part when coming up with Arisa's clothing style. The hat she would frequently mention was to hide her hair. I'd been working under the assumption that unusual hair colors were generally a Teru trait, so she dyed it to stand out less, and wore a hat to not have to touch it up so often. And then someone else mentioned having blue hair. ^_^;;; But since the issue with the horns had already come up by that time, the hat still made sense, and I kept the dye part too, because it still sort of made sense. (Arisa's regular mentions of her hat were in her mind rather similar to shouting "I'm a Teru!" in a language she knew no one could understand. See "prickly". See also "places more significance on hats than is probably justified".)There were also a number of instances of rapid reevaluation of her philosophical views or background to account for facts of the Reyvablog universe that she'd know, but I hadn't. (The number of differences between Reyvablog canon and my own interpretation of the games, on everything from population sizes to basic Reyvateil biology, is pretty impressive.)
There were also a couple instances of making up my own background details, though both were only alluded to. Since Arisa mentioned that she wasn't sure what the horns actually *did*, I wanted her to know a use for the tail. So I decided that when their tail movement isn't restricted, it provides some balance assist, and that most Teru end up having *very* good balance. When she mentioned walking on stairway railings, she really meant on the railings. Also, after reading some of the information about the "unique magic" of the Teru in AT2, I decided that Arisa's ability was a form of microscopic vision - she can see small details inside objects without opening them up. What she sees often doesn't correspond exactly to what something would look like if you actually opened it up and looked at it directly; one of her hidden agendas during her schooling in the lower world was learning how to correlate the two. Arisa isn't certain herself whether her inability to see inside living beings is a limit of her talent, or just a mental block from her squeamishness.
Arisa's Story
(Or at least, what it ended up being by the end.)
Arisa Lynn Kouenji (who may or may not have been known by a different name when she lived in Em Pheyna) was just plain fascinated by machinery. She particularly loved mechanical watches, which she considered just about the prettiest things in the world - at least, from the inside. But while Teru society isn't exactly no-tech, they don't really pursue and explore it the way the society in the lower world does. So, sometime in her mid-teens, Arisa began her trip down the tower. This was, presumably, fairly dangerous, but only one thing of major plot relevence happened - she met Rena, who'd been run out by her family pretty much for the sole reason of being a Reyvateil. They ended up travelling together, and quickly became friends as they covered the rest of the distance down to Nemo. Arisa sometimes refers to Rena as the first person she met in the lower world. This may not be strictly accurate, but Rena was certainly her first friend there. (It would be some years before romance entered their relationship.)
When they reached Nemo, Rena's skill at sewing allowed them to hide Arisa's Teru features, which both felt would unneccessarily complicate matters. At this point, events become vague. Somehow, Arisa managed to get a decent education. As of the events depicted in the Reyvablog, she is 29 and works for a utility company in one of those larger-cities-that-isn't-Nemo. Her main occupation is working on new and improved designs for various bits and pieces, but she isn't senior enough to avoid having to do a periodic round on "watch the monitors and make sure nothing goes haywire" duty. (This last mostly because of the times Arisa mentions working the late shift, which all relate to times *I* had to work the late shift at my job. And we both hate it.)
Arisa's interest in activism actually came about due to something that didn't actually involve Reyvateils that much - except perhaps on the other side. It was the reports of the damage and casualties in Em Pheyna when the Church stormed the tower that lead to some of her main beliefs. (I, the author, no longer remember *why*, but it made sense at the time.)
About Rena
... Your guess is as good as mine. `.`;;;
Barring flashes of inspiration, my characters tend to develop as I RP them. I didn't have the former, and didn't do the latter. (I'm not sure I could have handled playing two characters at once here, even.) So, I only know some minor details. Job unknown, but is economically indendent from Arisa. They also don't live together, though even before they started dating, they would visit each other fairly often. Has a bit of a teasing sense of humor. (Certainly doesn't actually want to have a threesome with Arisa and her brother. If there weren't enough other reasons, she's never even met him, and he was three when Arisa left home.) Not really that interested in reading journals and stuff online herself, but sometimes reads over Arisa's shoulder.
I don't think I ever *had* mentioned ICly that "winters' girlfriend" was a Reyvateil, but it seemed like something that could just be glossed over. So I did.
(Hmmm, this got pretty long, didn't it...)
And I keep thinking of more things to say, but... I think the reason polyhymnia looks so Barbie-like is the CG. Actual people look less Barbie-like; but the CG gives her the sort of doll-like look....
More quick lists: the types of magic people had....
AR's magic was based around unity, reaching out across networks and sensing people's hearts.
dhezeall's magic was... I said it didn't have much of a common theme, but I think there actually was a theme. It was intimidation, aggression, warding off danger. Her magic was her last-resort defence. She can blow things up; she can turn into predators. She's not a healer.
heartofharmony, on the other hand... yes, she's the classic White Mage to dhezeall's Black Mage. She's a healing type mostly, although she probably knows some other things as well.
neonsunray's magic was never talked about, but hers... was probably very similar to Mir's. She and Mir shared a lot of the same ideals, a lot of the same personality traits, a lot of the same hopes.
polyhymnia, I believe, was a rhetoric mage. :) Good at convincing people. briyante and Mayalan... I'm not quite sure.
Long is good!
I thought the place could use someone who agreed with you a lot less often.
It was welcomed. :) It was good for people to have someone with an outside perspective to debate with.
And then someone else mentioned having blue hair. ^_^;;;
I figured that it had probably been genetically engineered into Reyvateils and spread throughout the human population as they interbred; in retrospect, that doesn't explain Teru. But Teru could have it naturally, too.
The number of differences between Reyvablog canon and my own interpretation of the games, on everything from population sizes to basic Reyvateil biology, is pretty impressive.
I think a lot of this was me not realising/remembering lots of little canon details until I'd written something else, with some of it being differences in interpretation. I decided to apply a rule of "if it turn out not to be canon for AT, it remains Reyvablog canon" so as not to contradict myself-- and some things were too fun or too useful not to play with.
The tail/running along railings thing is such a cute little detail! And very realistic-- that's mostly what tails are for. And I like her magical power-- that's pretty awesome. I like how it isn't perfectly analogous to a physical microscopic look, too. Neatly thought out!
Barring flashes of inspiration, my characters tend to develop as I RP them.
That's how everyone here grew, too. It's kind of amazing how solid they became for people I basically had no idea about at the start. All four started out with just some basic traits in place-- heartofharmony was anti-Mir and quiet, dhezeall was kind of a realist, AR was more of a radical, neonsunray was kind of dreamy and energetic-- and got fleshed out later. Lyuma/neonsunray was not, in the beginning, planned to even be a character; she totally manifested out of that article, from whole cloth. That she was able to become what she did was, like many things in the story, amazing serendipity.
I don't think I ever *had* mentioned ICly that "winters' girlfriend" was a Reyvateil, but it seemed like something that could just be glossed over. So I did.
I... don't think you did, and that was a flub on my part. I think I assumed that heartofharmony could have assumed from the post where dhezeall was talking about sexuality and winters said "my girlfriend doesn't think of me as just a human with extra parts", but when I looked back at that discussion I realised it wasn't implied. Maybe they both frequented another forum and winters mentioned it there. That's my hack and I'm sticking to it, anyway. XD;;
Bittersweet! It's been a wonderful run, very well-written, well-researched, an absolute delight to read!
Unfortunately, we discovered AR a little too late!
We'd been considering doing a similar project for years, drawing from feminism and our own personal experiences to advocate equality and rights for imaginary / fictitious people of various sorts. We eventually fell into Ar tonelico, and became almost obsessed with the world. It's lovely, really, so rich and incredibly well-designed. Around that time, we began to reconsider our earlier idea, perhaps we could do reyvateil activism instead?
Then one fateful day, googling "reyvateil activism" brought us here, and we've been plastered ever since, torn between finding a way to contribute, and waiting to see how things go. About the same time we decided to pursue the former, it became obvious that things were headed in a terminal direction. Disappointment!
But you guys did so very well that even the disappointment at not having contributed is easily shrugged off. Perhaps we'll dust off those project ideas of ours, and hope that we don't get a "been done already!"... you've certainly set the bar high for this sort of thing!
Oh, wow! Awesome! chimerae, I think you've made my day. I lamented a bit here how the AT setting was so rife with possibilities for exploring the whole activism thing, and yet nobody ever did it. I am really excited that someone else actually Googled something to do with Reyvateil rights and found me. It's always been my dream that somebody else would think about it!
Meanwhile, if you want to write fanfic in the Reyvablog setting, with my characters or your own (can't speak for anyone else's), you're more than welcome to it. And I won't consider it a ripoff if you write your own thing! In fact, I'd really love it if you'd link me to anything you write on this subject, from a short piece or blog entry to a novel. As you can tell, it's a subject I'm really, really interested in. I think the world can really use more stories about the rights of fictional people/species, and I'd be really excited to see more!
(polyhymnia, who has a copy of breakfourthwall.h?)
The Hymn Codes were my idea very early on in the blog; I originally suggested a big freak-out where everyone would have to install mandatory antivirus software.
That reminds me of my original theory when that started - that the Hymn Codes could be part of a way to protect Reyvateils here from IPD. Arisa (I'm pretty sure) wouldn't be aware of IPD at that point, but I did try to get the idea that it could actually be intended to protect against something in there.
(haounomiko)
I think the reason I didn't pick up on it at first might be that it's so unusual for what's billed as "the end of the world", in a story, to be exactly what it promises to be, no more and no less.
Exactly What It Says On The Tin? *innocent innocent*
Though actually, you could probably get some philosophical argument on whether what happens here is really "the end of the world". (AT2 has a couple of weird-feeling moments about this, when by "world" they seem to refer only to the vicinity of Sol Marta.)
(Ayulsa)
I wonder, did anyone else think that there might have been a chance that Mir wouldn't be able to sing, at the end?
I didn't really expect it, but I did see a potential route by which Mir could have been stopped, which Arisa actually mentioned once - shutting down all the song servers. She actually likes this solution on a concept level (which is to say, looking at it purely as an idea, without considering whether it'd be a good thing to do or not), because it's reversible. Given that her main desire wasn't to *stop* Sublimation, but to get enough details to actually make up her mind about it, that's an appealing quality.
(It's annoying that I still have to do this captcha even when logged in... but I wouldn't mind if it was a good captcha that didn't timeout so quickly. -.- )
That reminds me of my original theory when that started - that the Hymn Codes could be part of a way to protect Reyvateils here from IPD.
I think I never quite figured out exactly what I wanted to do with the Hymn Codes-- that was perhaps one of the story's big flaws, though in the end the Hymn Code plot largely served as a bogeyman to foreshadow the idea that the world might be in serious trouble and be in need of a change. It became something for people to be saved from, rather than anything concrete in itself.
Though actually, you could probably get some philosophical argument on whether what happens here is really "the end of the world". (AT2 has a couple of weird-feeling moments about this, when by "world" they seem to refer only to the vicinity of Sol Marta.)
Hmm, curious as to how you think these two relate. Whether Sublimation here is "the end of the world" is up for debate, since the world doesn't really end so much as change, but I'm not sure how that's similar to what happens in AT2, which seems to be a case of... a lot of people really not understanding what "world" means/saying "world" when they mean continent. Or maybe that's just how it works in their dialect; my immediate surroundings are "the world"....
(It's annoying that I still have to do this captcha even when logged in... but I wouldn't mind if it was a good captcha that didn't timeout so quickly. -.- )
Baw, I really dislike the captcha, as well. I've considered turning it off, but I worry about spam, I guess.
To expand upon the Hymn Code thing... I think I had little idea about where I wanted it to go in part because I was thinking about it less in terms of it as a plot driving force and more in terms of how it affected the chaacters emotionally. I've always tended towards character studies rather than plot in my writing; I'm good at exploring people, less good at plotting. I have haounomiko to thank for a lot of the good plot twists here. :) Hymn Codes, to me, were chiefly something that existed to intimidate the characters and provide fodder for people to explore how they felt about violations of their privacy.
I think if not for this ending I'd have likely ended up using polyhymnia-- there I go again, haounomiko's suggestion, but it never came to having to explain it....
You're excited? Can you imagine, when we had this crazy idea in mind, went to google, and actually got a hit? It was mindblowing. And not only was it a hit, but what a hit it was! It made our month, set our creative juices flowing even more than before. Inspirational!
Your "Reyvateil Rights Carnival" post echoes exactly our reaction to playing the first game. Here is a story... no, a world, that a good number of people would take in a surface impression of and immediately conclude that it is typical Japanese-media misogyny. Women as a subjugated class, patriarchical control, sex/diving as a tool of oppression, objectification left and right... everything needed for a feminist nightmare. But wait, what's this? The main character, as blockheaded as he might be, typical guy-who-solves-his-problems-with-his-sword actually gets it? Just like the average player, his reaction to the state of affairs is utter disbelief at the ability of people to treat each other like this. A feminist protagonist?!? Is this a dream?
Ah, we could go on and on andonandon, but we'll spare you.
If we do end up doing anything along these lines (and it is oh, so very tempting), it would be more likely to lean towards activism than storytelling, essays and the like (possibly even art) as would be written by a character in the setting. But of course, that character would have her own background, and experiences that brought her to the place that she is... Somehow, we suspect that this is exactly what got you guys where you ended up.
Anyhow, not to be creepy, but you have a subscriber for life now, even if you don't find yourself revisiting this particular world, or these particular characters.
"I joined the fanclub to help Ayulsa explore the application of activism to Reyvateil rights!"
<3 <3 <3
You're excited? Can you imagine, when we had this crazy idea in mind, went to google, and actually got a hit?
I can imagine! In fact, that's part of why I'm so excited. XD Because I can imagine how awesome that must be, and I'm really glad I got to do that for someone. (And relatedly, I remember daydreaming, when I wrote one post about various, in my canon, myths and untrue rumours involving Reyvateils-- like the idea that putting Diquility in always has to be painful-- that someone who wanted to know, for some reason, about putting Diquility in would come along and find it. I didn't know who would or why, exactly; I just sort of liked the abstract idea that I was providing an information service for Reyvateils.)
Your "Reyvateil Rights Carnival" post echoes exactly our reaction to playing the first game. Here is a story... no, a world, that a good number of people would take in a surface impression of and immediately conclude that it is typical Japanese-media misogyny.
Yup. I remember at the time scouring for articles on AT and sexism/gender issues, and only came up with a site by one person dissing the series for its misogyny. And that sort of made me go, "yes, there are some issues with this series. It could have taken things a lot further than it did. It could have explored more. But, you know... as a writer, as a ficcer, my response to this is not to write it off because of that. My response to this is to do something about it." I'm really glad I'm not the only one who thought like that.
Somehow, we suspect that this is exactly what got you guys where you ended up.
Yup, pretty much. :)
And your potential!fics already have me salivating. I'd love love love to see essays, art, artifacts from a character exploring these issues... fictional artifacts, snippets from a created world, are also something I find absolutely fascinating, and are part of what I was trying to present here. A little artifact of another world, not one level removed from reality like with a book or game, but presented exactly as if you'd discovered it yourself. The modern epistolary, haounomiko called it. I liked that.
Anyhow, not to be creepy, but you have a subscriber for life now, even if you don't find yourself revisiting this particular world, or these particular characters.
Not creepy at all-- in fact, I kind of hoped you would, as I'd like to keep in touch, and I'll almost certainly be musing more on this subject in the future. And it's quite possible that I'll write more spinoff fics at some point, too. I'm attached to these characters, and I don't want to be done with them just yet (ironically enough, given what I did to them)....
"I joined the fanclub to help Ayulsa explore the application of activism to Reyvateil rights!"
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! <3
Oh, while I'm going with the random factoids here....
dhezeall, I think, considers "dhezeall" (possibly including the lowercase) to be as much her name as her legal name, if not moreso. A lot of people who spend a good portion of their time online, of course, become attached to their handles and come to see them as them, but she takes it a tiny bit further-- she's not at the point where she's completely uncomfortable with her legal name, but she slightly prefers her online handle, I think. It's Hymmnos for "prisoner", a wry comment on the state of oppressed Reyvateils in their own language, but she likes it more because of the sound; it's less feminine than her birth name. (Randomly, also, both her legal name and her online name are, in my synaesthetic mind, the colour of her hair. The name dhezeall came first, which almost necessitated the hair colour, and then I couldn't possibly give her a legal name that didn't match, so they're quite similar. Actually, almost all of their names match their looks, to my mind.)
In Sublimation, she's likely pretty androgynous, or shifts between sexes and forms at will. It's not for nothing that one of her powers is shapeshifting.
(Ayulsa)
I figured that it had probably been genetically engineered into Reyvateils and spread throughout the human population as they interbred; in retrospect, that doesn't explain Teru. But Teru could have it naturally, too.
Hmmm. The only people who I thought had particularly unusual hair colors were some of the Teru NPCs, so that's what I based it on.
Teru are pretty mysterious. Arisa's theory that they were also artificially engineered is something I think might be an actual possibility... But it might be stretching it to apply that to the Drakanoids too. It kind of sounds like they might have been around too long for that to work. Maybe AT3 will give us some background, or there'll be a side game, or something... I'd really like to learn more about what the real story of the Teru is supposed to be.
I think a lot of this was me not realising/remembering lots of little canon details until I'd written something else, with some of it being differences in interpretation.
There were some things where I did wonder what was going on. Like how Tenba was still pretty evil, when it seemed like Tenba was supposed to have gotten... not-evil, with Bourd gone. (I kind of took those basement guys as "so enraptured with how cool this machine is, they're pretty much incapable of having a side now".) My two theories were that either there were a lot more divisions going rogue like the section under Bourd's control had done, and Ayano couldn't keep everything nailed down... or someone had killed Ayano to take over her job. It seemed like something must have happened to make Platina close themselves off again too, given how much they talk about increasing contact between Platina and the lower world in the game.
I also kind of wondered how much of the late game in AT2 happened (ROT13)yvxr jurgure gurl npghnyyl znantrq gb fvat gur shyy Zrgnsnyvpn.
Still, there seem to be a lot of things where we just have really different ideas too. Like Hymn Codes. Under my interpretation of them, the whole plotline would be nonsensical, because they're an identifier only and don't have password-like functions. Well, one of the ideas I got from my AP English classes is that one of the signs of a really good creative work is that people can get many different things out of it. It's still jarring sometimes though.
And very realistic-- that's mostly what tails are for.
Are you sure that's true in the AT world though? Witness the Nyo?, whose tail seems to be uniquely adapted to beating you up. `.`
There was actually another thing that I'd thought up about Teru tails, but didn't get a chance to use - when you were a kid playing tag, it was considered a valuable skill to be able to conciously control your tail to keep it close to your body when you ran. If you could do that, it was like being a foot ahead of everyone else!
and winters said "my girlfriend doesn't think of me as just a human with extra parts"
This reminded me of something else - Arisa's species-coyness.
Originally, I wanted to have there be some uncertainty over whether Arisa "was a human or a Reyvateil". Something she'd attempt to deliberately foster in order to distract people from the third option. ... Didn't really work out quite like I planned it. Still, that coyness remained for some time. Even when she'd finally had enough of the assumptions, she revealed her Teruness in the most vague and indirect way I could think of. She'd also go to a great deal of effort to avoid actually saying the word "Teru" or mentioning Teru-specific traits. As she started to wonder more and more whether her disguises and paranoia were worth it anymore, she got more relaxed in the way she talked about it too, which finally culminated in her shedding her disguise in the real world. (Which was something I was expecting to happen quite shortly even before the Sublimation announcement. Actually, that may have *delayed* it slightly, it's hard to say. I can't remember which day she did it on. `.` ) Revealing her actual name probably wouldn't have happened without Sublimation, but it was still a gesture that had meaning to her in it's context... and it's also something that I originally meant to do a day or two earlier. `.`
That's my hack and I'm sticking to it, anyway.
Heh. That reminds me, I liked the way you handled the "wrong name on post" issue. I almost made a post joking about how maybe it *was* Mir messing with the servers, she had to do something to pass the time until Friday... Couldn't figure out quite how to say it though.
Whether Sublimation here is "the end of the world" is up for debate, since the world doesn't really end so much as change, but I'm not sure how that's similar to what happens in AT2, which seems to be a case of... a lot of people really not understanding what "world" means/saying "world" when they mean continent.
The main example I can think of is Alfman talking about... well, I can't remember exactly what he said, but saying that "this world" was basically done for, but given that there's another perfectly good tower that's *not* falling apart at the seams out there, that seems wrong, doesn't it? Though the dialect thing could explain it.
I remember when I first commented on the Reyvablog after setting up the blogger identity, and thinking "cool! no captcha!" And then my next comment over here, "Arggh! There's still a captcha here!" ^_^;
I'll kind of miss some of the discussions we had... but I guess maybe a grand finale here isn't a bad idea either.
@Ayulsa:
wondering, until the very end, whether there was going to be a last-minute retraction, an eleventh-hour "reprieve".
I think I might have been as disappointed as AR was. I wanted Sublimation. =D One of the major differences between polyhymnia's politics and mine is that I have always loved and trusted Mir, and I was simultaneously sad about the Reyvablog ending and glad that Mir was going to save the characters in such a perfect way.
Once I asked myself if you'd really do it, and I realised you would, though, I was pretty sure you were going to do exactly what you did. Your descriptions, everything, were spot-on for what I expected. I only didn't expect them to be in the Tower. Truth be told, I kept imagining people turning into little Evangelion cross-lights because, like you said, that's probably the most comparable instance to this in fiction.
As Sublimation took her, I think she realised intuitively, finally, in one blinding moment of bliss and perfect comprehension, that it wasn't going to go on. She understood, on a deep level that she hadn't been able to reach before, that this was truly it. And that that was wonderful. And that she could let go, and never be let go of. And, like everyone else, she ascended to a higher plane, and lived happily ever after.
See, and I know you know me well enough to know this will make me squee in delight, and you know I know you well enough to know you'd write a story where this sort of thing would happen, and that's probably part of why I realised Sublimation was for real-- more because of that than because you spoiled it by talking to me as if it were foregone.
@winters:
I thought the place could use someone who agreed with you a lot less often.
Definitely! In fact, this was the purpose behind briyante-- I wanted the equivalent of a conservative getting high and mighty on a liberal blog, not understanding the issues very well, and pushing what they'd been spoonfed. At the same time, I was terrified of making her a strawman, and my biggest worry was constantly walking the line between not wanting to make her cave in and agree that we were right, while also not wanting to make her stupid or too ignorant. She was a conservative who would come in thinking she had all the answers and thinking that her arguments sounded great when in fact they were full of holes. My biggest regret with her was that she didn't push back more, but I also had to make her want to keep coming back. Plus, I believe that Reyvateils, as empathetic creatures, wouldn't flame each other too much. (That's also my excuse for why there weren't as many random trolls as an activist blog would normally get.)
Barring flashes of inspiration, my characters tend to develop as I RP them.
Me too, which is why I knew barely anything about Mayalan, who doesn't use the internet much, except when Ayulsa's comments on dhezeall's behalf prodded me to come up with answers. We invented some dates that they've had together and I revealed Mayalan's secret when dhezeall rushed off to polyhymnia to demand what the heck she knew about Betas and polyhymnia told her to ask Mayalan. She got much of her development this last week at the Reyvahouse, actually, when all the characters were mentioning being together with her.
@chimerae:
You are made of awesome! I really can't wait to see what fics you have in mind. And you're welcome to write my characters into fics, too. I can't believe someone actually googled for "Reyvateil rights"! We always dreamed about that happening. You must have been so amazed at getting a hit... just, wow.
@Ayulsa:
(And relatedly, I remember daydreaming, when I wrote one post about various, in my canon, myths and untrue rumours involving Reyvateils-- like the idea that putting Diquility in always has to be painful-- that someone who wanted to know, for some reason, about putting Diquility in would come along and find it. I didn't know who would or why, exactly; I just sort of liked the abstract idea that I was providing an information service for Reyvateils.)
Well, and that's exactly why briyante found the blog. I'm not sure whether you told me about that daydream or not; maybe that influenced me... I don't know. It sure helped me find a good reason for this random uninformed kid to find the blog. ^^
winters:
Tenba stuff: I spaced a lot. I also forgot about more Reyvateils not having unusual hair. XD
Late-game AT2: no, what you spoilered out never happened.
The tag thing is adorable! ^__^ And I was mostly thinking of animals like kangaroos. I guess some tails are adapted for offensive use, like the scorpion's, but the majority are for balance....
Originally, I wanted to have there be some uncertainty over whether Arisa "was a human or a Reyvateil". Something she'd attempt to deliberately foster in order to distract people from the third option. ... Didn't really work out quite like I planned it.
Huh, you know, I do think it kind of worked. I mean, that is what everybody said, in the beginning. :) We completely ignored and forgot about the third option, showing us up for our obliviousness... it made for good irony. Activists, too, can be blinkered.
I'll kind of miss some of the discussions we had... but I guess maybe a grand finale here isn't a bad idea either.
Aww. We'll still get to discuss plenty on this blog, at any rate.
haounomiko:
I only didn't expect them to be in the Tower.
I so love how that completely threw people off. XD I even told you that Mir could hop around via the Binary Field. She and Lyuma were going "lololololol you all think we're in Metafalss" the whole time. Like, they had no reason to stay! And every reason to leave, making people think they were still there because that's where they'd shown up on TV. XD It was a cunning plan, oh yes.
Truth be told, I kept imagining people turning into little Evangelion cross-lights because, like you said, that's probably the most comparable instance to this in fiction.
If you want to know how I pictured it, it wasn't too far off. People's bodies began to dissolve into beautiful, multicoloured, brilliant light, like tiny tiny pyreflies from FFX, leaving the bright, golden-white light of their spirit forms behind. They began to become lighter as it happened, so they floated off the ground just a little, and while they still remained conscious of the world (for a few seconds), the parts of their body that had become light didn't hurt or feel strange; they just felt a profound sense of pleasure and peace. Everything around them that was physical transformed the same way, leaving behind a world of golden-white light in which energy-beings floated and spiralled and played.
See, and I know you know me well enough to know this will make me squee in delight, and you know I know you well enough to know you'd write a story where this sort of thing would happen
True. My very nature is kind of a spoiler. XD
(I thought, several times, about posting on exec_harmonious after seeing some of AT2 but not having thought up this plot yet, saying how much I loved the idea of Sublimation. I'm really glad I didn't. =D)
(That's also my excuse for why there weren't as many random trolls as an activist blog would normally get.)
Yup, mine too. XD
I liked briyante; I think you handled her development well. She never entirely changed, which is realistic, but she grew some because she was decently smart, which was also realistic.
I can't believe someone actually googled for "Reyvateil rights"!
I knowwwww! I just about exploded in squee that someone else had exploded with squee over this!
Well, and that's exactly why briyante found the blog.
So it is! I'd forgotten about that-- like, I'd never linked the two. Aww. That is really kind of awesome.
I don't remember if I told you or not, either... I'm not sure I ever knew how to phrase it, but I might've.
We need to actually construct Mayalan's avatar in SL....
(More on dissolving people: think of the Mule Birth picture at that link, except with the process that's implied happening in reverse. NSFW link, nudity.)
Also, I like that Ayulsa and I had the same synaesthesiac idea about dhezeall's long green hair. I almost wonder if there's something we're both thinking of, because it was a surprise when I asked what she looked like so I could draw her, and he said long green hair... just, wow.
(Randomly, I think hers turned out to be the prettiest of the avatars, somehow. Not sure why, since she was pieced together from so much random stuff.)
I do wonder! For me, as far as I can tell it's the sound of the name, but maybe there's some subconscious thing I'm not consciously aware of....
(And awww, she is lovely. I rly rly like the way she turned out; it's just very her.)
I do like how, instead of most of the characters being white, most of my characters (AR, dhezeall, neonsunray) have at least some Asian descendency in them. I figured that since the AT world was created by a Japanese person, I wanted to create the kind of characters that that person would have imagined to be in there. dhezeall's father, FWIW, was a pretty short, heavy-set Japanese(-looking) guy with black hair; her mother had caramel-ish skin and, of course, the green hair.
(haounomiko)
I wanted the equivalent of a conservative getting high and mighty on a liberal blog, not understanding the issues very well, and pushing what they'd been spoonfed.
I suppose I should probably be offended by that, since I consider myself a conservative.
Of course, I'm a conservative who thinks that conservative philosophy demands legalizing same-sex marriages, so I'm pretty weird by most people's standards. But, to fulfill the high-and-mightyness quotient, I can just say that I'm right and they're wrong. ^_-
I'm not sure whether you told me about that daydream or not; maybe that influenced me... I don't know.
I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in a post on exec_harmonius, because I remember reading about that before. (Actually, I think it was one of the first things I read here. Though I'm not sure how I found the place. Probably not searching for "diquility" though. Maybe something AT2 related, since if I remember right that was around the time when I was starting to get really excited about the upcoming release.)
(Ayulsa)
Late-game AT2: no, what you spoilered out never happened.
Hmm. Well, that's good. Because, you know, I can imagine people getting *really* cranky about it otherwise...
Huh, you know, I do think it kind of worked. I mean, that is what everybody said, in the beginning.
Well, by her standards it stopped working once people concluded she was human. Prickly... she didn't want to say what she *was*, but she got mad when she was assumed to be what she *wasn't*. (Well, what she wasn't by the then-current operating build of "How Arisa Views the World", anyway.)
Of course, part of her philosophy is supposed to be that it shouldn't *matter* all that much. I may have enhanced the realism of the portrayal in this aspect by forgetting which characters were Reyvateils sometimes... ^_^;;;
Aww. We'll still get to discuss plenty on this blog, at any rate.
Hmmm. Okay. Have I mentioned how I think privilege theory is fundamentally broken? ^-^
In retrospect it actually seems a bit weird that everyone was looking at Metafalss. Forget teleportation, wouldn't *someone* go "Hey, Mir might have her own airship. We need to look around here too."
Huh! I am interested in how you think conservativism necessitates same-sex marriage. (Wow, now I want to ask you where you stand on all sorts of things....)
Of course, part of her philosophy is supposed to be that it shouldn't *matter* all that much. I may have enhanced the realism of the portrayal in this aspect by forgetting which characters were Reyvateils sometimes... ^_^;;;
Hehe. Hey, accidental realism is still realism. XD
Hmmm. Okay. Have I mentioned how I think privilege theory is fundamentally broken? ^-^
You have not, no! (I admit to having had several problems with it at various points myself, notably the choice of word. I still feel a little uncomfortable with things that everyone should have being called privileges, but I see where sometimes they are, like white people having an advantage, rather than just a normal chance, when it comes to getting a job. And I see where it's necessary for people to acknowledge what advantages they hold, and what things they get to take for granted that others don't. I suppose a lot of the time I also just go, "wait, it's not that Person A has a privilege, it's that Person B lacks a right. It's not a privilege not to be at high risk of murder. It should be a right by default not to be murdered.")
(And I admit, too, to being so sure that someone else would guess Mir wasn't in Metafalss! Even when she said Singing Hill, people didn't speculate much on where she might be. I wonder, what did people think, when I revealed that?)
I never thought when I made that first post, that it would feel like this. I just read the first few posts, and was like "This is great! This is the first piece of Ar Tonelico anything that I've enjoyed!" After a while, I read a post that I couldn't just sit quiet on, and from there...well.
You all helped me build Rigil from the ground up. He's now one of the few characters I know best.
He's also the only one I've cried for.
As for the end, I think he likely met Mir in the Tower. He spoke his mind, from his heart, to her. When she would not back down, he accepted, as he said he would. He would then have laughed and sang his mothers song as he left, promising silence. He would have had closure. And he would have gone happily.
All I can say is, on behalf of him and myself, is thank you. It opened my eyes, and made me feel like I haven't in some time. Thank you all. It was a great experience.
As for the Character....
About Rigil
Silver Grahm is the Head of the Medical Department of Tenba, and has been for the past two years. He's an adventurous guy, who is somewhat hard to stop when he sets his mind on something. He's about 36 at the time of this story, having been with the Company for over a decade.
He's a tall, somewhat old looking person, owing to the silver hair he inherited from his mother. He wears a pair of glasses that have additional lenses that can fold in front to act as magnifying glasses.
Silver's mother is a major player in his life. When he was a child, his mother would sing to him, and help him to try and sing back. Her love and song cemented his feelings for Reyvateils for the rest of his life.
When he was eight, his father lost his job, and then their house. Rather than watch her son suffer and starve, she forcibly denied herself diquility so they could have food. After her death, the two of them were able to survive long enough for his father to find a new job and support his raminig family. Silver has vowed ever since that no Reyvateil should ever have to make the same choice his mother made.
Thanks to his years of effort in studying and his dedication to Tenba, he has accrued an astonishing amount of political and economical clout. He has been using that power to try and help the Reyvateil cause as a silent benefactor. It was only after seeing this blog that he decided to step up his plans, while never saying who he really was.
His adventure of years past was to save a Reyvateil that had been kidnapped from the Church by Tenba. Silver didn't agree with his company's actions and fought them to rescue and free her. I won't go into the details, but the adventure took him to all parts of the continent and a good distance into the tower. A lot of his knowledge of Mir comes from this adventure, as well as Krusche's records of the first game.
About Crystal
Crystal is Silver's partner of twelve years. She is very calm, rational, and incredibly intelligent. She has long strait strawberry blond hair, and wears glasses, much like Silver. She's around 29 at the time of the story.
She is always around Silver, and was reading the blog over his shoulder most days. The two of them live together in a very nice home in the middle-class part of Firefly Alley. While they have been partners for over a decade, she has been very hesitant to move further in their relationship.
Crystal was abused and raped by her former partner. While she has made great progress since then, she still has some problems with physical contact. She reacted poorly to Silver's marriage proposal, and ran away. She eventually agreed the day before Mir's announcement, and they were almost completely inseparable since.
Crystal has a love for younger Reyvateils, and loves to obsess over them. It was likely her that inspired Silver to go to such lengths to save celiliss. After her rescue, Crystal would have tried to spend as much time as possible hanging around her as possible.
Her installer port is on her right upper arm, and is light red in color.
Thank you all again. You helped me craft these wonderful people. They're happy now, I'm certain.
I'm glad I could give you that, Rigil. And if I've helped you on your way to having a more fleshed-out character for your own fic, I'm honoured. As for helping you to feel... well, that's what fiction does best. I'm honoured for that as well.
She reacted poorly to Silver's marriage proposal, and ran away. She eventually agreed the day before Mir's announcement, and they were almost completely inseparable since.
That... really makes the whole thing with Rigil going "omg, but what about our marriage?" so much more poignant than even I knew... if it had taken her so long to get to that point... dear thing.
But yes, they are happy now. And will be so, forevermore.
Random conversation with haounomiko:
haounomiko: Hmm, doesn't Lyuma's part [of Sublimation] have her name in it? =D
That's kawaii.
me: Yep!
I noticed that. Complete coincidence. :)
haounomiko: omg teh destiny!
when she was born Mir appeared to her mother and said lo this child she iz my precious Lyuma.
and her mother said OMFG it's MIR.
me: XD!! The Lolcat Bible, as told by Basement Cat.
Reflections on Sublimation, that really should have gone into the blog while it was being written, but....
People have been thinking about it as "the world disappeared", I think. And we kind of just thought of this another way, just now-- it's not "the world disappeared, but it's ok because people were still somewhere." It's more like "people went somewhere very lovely, and the world, well, we didn't need that anymore, so it disappeared."
People left behind all that they didn't need. It was, really, an Ascending To A Higher Plane. Everything meaningful went on. Everything that wasn't needed got left. A purification.
Something that just occurred to me, you might want to change the Author's Notes on the Reyvablog, since in-character comments would no longer be in character...
I am interested in how you think conservativism necessitates same-sex marriage.
Basically, because deciding who can marry who can marry who isn't the government's business. At least, not unless someone can demand tax dollars to pay for the wedding.
I suppose a lot of the time I also just go, "wait, it's not that Person A has a privilege, it's that Person B lacks a right. It's not a privilege not to be at high risk of murder. It should be a right by default not to be murdered."
*glomps Ayulsa* Yes! Someone else who gets it!
The basic *ideas* don't seem wrong, but "prvilege" carries such a connotation of "undeserved" that when it's things that everyone should have, the whole thing just doesn't work.
(I mentioned this in the class where I first ran into this, and I don't think anyone really got why I'd think this was a problem...)
It occurrs to me that you'd probably still like an explaintion of that "hate Mir" crack.
Oh yeah, is this gonna have spoilers for AT2 or what.
Cneg bs vg V fhccbfr fgnegf jvgu n fhttrfgrq rkcynvangvba sbe fbzr bs Zve'f npgvbaf qhevat NG1 gung V ernq fbzrjurer - gung fur jnf fgvyy qnzntrq sebz gur guvatf gung unq orra qbar gb ure, naq vg vzcnverq ure novyvgl gb qb guvatf engvbanyyl hagvy fur jnf urnyrq ol gur rssrpg bs Unezbavhf. Vg ernyyl znqr frafr gb zr jura V ybbxrq ng gur riragf ng gur Cynfzn Oryy. Unq gur yrsg jvat bs Ubehf orra qebccrq, vg jbhyq unir orra ng yrnfg nf zhpu n trabpvqr bs Erlingrvyf nf bs uhznaf. Vg whfg qbrfa'g znxr frafr sbe ure gb or jvyyvat gb qb fbzrguvat yvxr gung (be, jryy, unir vg qbar) vs fur'f ng nyy va ure evtug zvaq. Fb V qba'g ungr Zve sbe gur riragf bs gur svefg tnzr, orpnhfr V qba'g frr ure nf gur hygvzngr vafgvtngbe bs gubfr riragf, ohg zber nf gur svefg ivpgvz.
Vg'f n ybg yrff pyrne gb zr jung jnf tbvat ba jvgu Vasry (gubhtu V'ir orra yrq gb oryvrir gung bapr V frr gur erfg bs Pybpur'f pbfzbfcurer, gung'yy svyy va fbzr tncf.) Ohg jura V fnj gur ynfg frg bs phgfprarf, V jnf vzzrqvngryl fgehpx ol gur pbagenqvpgvba - nggrzcgvat gb perngr n jbeyq jurer crbcyr pbhyqa'g vagrenpg jvgu rnpu bgure if. ure fgebat qrfver gb erpbaarpg jvgu Ararfun. Ohg gurer jrer nyfb gjb bgure snpgbef va ure snibe. Fur jnf irel bcra nobhg jung fur jnf gelvat gb qb, naq fur qvqa'g vtaber cebgrfgf. (Univat n obff onggyr or gur erfcbafr gb gurz vf n ovg jrveq, ohg V thrff lbh pbhyq vagrecerg vg nf "Cebir lbhe jvyy vf fgebat rabhtu", fvapr vg frrzrq yvxr ure pbaprea jnf gung crbcyr jrera'g pbzzvggrq rabhtu gb or noyr gb znxr gur jbeyq orggre ol bgure zrnaf. Jryy, naq vg'f na ECT.)
Gubfr ynfg ner (be jrer jura V cbfgrq gung) zl gjb znwbe vffhrf jvgu Erlinoybt-Zve - gur vasbezngvba fur cerfragrq jnf inthr, naq fur jbhyqa'g erfcbaq gb cebgrfgf. Gur cneg jurer gur zber fur gevrq gb rkcynva fbzrguvat, gur zber crbcyr cnavprq vf frireryl qvfgheovat. Vs rirel gvzr lbh gel gb rkcynva fbzrguvat crbcyr raq hc greevsvrq, gura rvgure lbh'er rkcynvavat vg ernyyl onqyl, be vg ernyyl vf fbzrguvat greevslvat, naq *vg zvtug or n tbbq vqrn gb svaq bhg juvpu bar*. Ohg ab, vafgrnq fur qrpvqrf gung crbcyr whfg qba'g arrq na rkcynvangvba nsgre nyy. Tvira Zve'f onpxtebhaq, V rkcrpgrq orggre bs ure. Gurer'f xvaq bs n srryvat bs zrtnybznavn gbb, juvpu vf qvfpbapregvat tvira ubj tebhaqrq fur vf va NG2.
Vg'f vzcbegnag gb abgr gung guvf vfa'g ernyyl eryngrq gb gur vqrn bs Fhoyvzngvba vgfrys. Vg'f vzcbffvoyr gb whqtr gung jvgubhg xabjvat zber bs gur qrgnvyf, naq yvxr Nevfn, V pna guvax bs zhygvcyr fpranevbf gung jbhyq shysvyy gur fcrpvsvp erdhverzragf gung jrer cerfragrq. Gur shaqnzragny ceboyrz urer vf gung va n fvghngvba yvxr guvf, crbcyr unir gur evtug gb n erny haqrefgnaqvat bs jung gurl ner tbvat vagb. Rira npprcgvat Fhoyvzngvba nf na rssrpg bs cresrpg tbbq jvgu abj qbjafvqrf*, naq nyfb npprcgvat gung vg unf gb or qbar jurgure crbcyr jbhyq fnl gurl jnagrq vg be abg**, sbepvat rirelbar gb tb vagb vg oyvaq vf n ivyr npg.
*Juvpu pna cebonoyl erznva npprcgrq sbe nobhg nf ybat nf lbh qba'g gel gb tvir fcrpvsvpf. V guvax znlor vg'q gnxr na nfpraqrq orvat gb qrfpevor n sbez bs nfprafvba gung jbhyqa'g or fbzrobql'f vqrn bs n pencfnpx jbeyq.
**Juvpu vf n cuvybfbcuvpny xrggyr bs teranqrf gung V qba'g guvax V rira jnag gb trg vagb.
Abj, vg bppheerq gb zr gbqnl gung gurer'f n ernfba jul V qba'g guvax Zve jbhyq pbafvqre Fhoyvzngvba n tbbq vqrn, ohg vg'f zber gb qb jvgu zl gurbevrf nobhg NG3 guna cuvybfbcul be fb-sne-frra pnaba.
Onfvpnyyl, V ernyyl yvxr gur vqrn gung Wnxhev'f yrnearq jung'f tbvat ba va gur Erlingrvy-qbzvangrq fbpvrgl bs gur Gbjre bs Glevn... naq vg'f n pencfnpx jbeyq. Onq sbe uhznaf, onq sbe Erlingrvyf, onq sbe rirelobql. Juvpu gb gur crefba jub pbvarq gur grez "Erlingrvyvn", jbhyq unir gb or n frirer jnxr-hc pnyy. Gur fbeg bs guvat gung znxrf bar guvat, znlor znxvat jubyrfnyr punatrf gb fbpvrgl gung bar pna'g gnxr onpx vs gurl ghea bhg gb unir haqrfvenoyr pbafrdhraprf zvtug abg or fhpu n tbbq vqrn. Ynaq perngvba ernyyl vf cerggl fhogyr ol pbzcnevfba.
In conclusion, have you noticed how sometimes rot13ed text looks a bit like Pastalia Hymnos?
It's more like "people went somewhere very lovely, and the world, well, we didn't need that anymore, so it disappeared."
That's actually fairly similar to what I was thinking. Except maybe more along the lines of "people went somewhere very lovely, and the world is, you know, still there, big towers don't just disappear on their own."
Of course, now that I'm thinking about it, what about the animals? Will Nyo?s achieve sentience one day and wonder what the deal is? (Why yes, I like Nyo?s, why do you ask?)
And if Mei Mei and Kanade were left out, I'll be very sad and cry. ^_-
@winters:
I suppose I should probably be offended by that, since I consider myself a conservative.
But presumably not one that gets all high and mighty on liberal blogs, so it doesn't apply to you. Unless you do, of course, in which case: stop getting high and mighty, regardless of what you are. =D (And yes, I do see it happen on both sides.)
Also, keep in mind that a "conservative" in terms of feminism/racism/privilege-theory-in-general is not the same thing as a "conservative" in other areas of politics, and a "conservative" in the AT universe is something completely different altogether. Are you speciesist? Are you privilege-blind? Etc. The problem with conservatives on activist blogs is that they often ignore the experiences of people actually living that life, and say that things are fine as they are despite all the people saying that things aren't so fine for them. That's what briyante did-- "I'm a Reyvateil and I'm fine, so your problems can't be that bad."
The only way I can think of for conservativism to demand legalising same-sex marriage is all those speciesist humans who think Reyvateils should only marry their own kind because they're not good enough for humans and shouldn't breed. =D (Well, no, that's not true; people who were really concerned about preserving marriage and traditional families should theoretically be behind the idea of letting everyone get married whenever possible, I would think. But usually they aren't.)
@Rigil:
Awwwww, that is really sad about their wedding... Of course, we had no idea. But I can imagine the reaction.
Hmm, I wonder if a lot of people ran out and got married quickly before Sublimation? Couples pushing to get their wedding in before it was too late, etc.
@Ayulsa: I like the word "purification" for it.
@winters:
1) At least you don't have to pronounce rot13ed text. =D
2) Your last paragraph... only really applies assuming she knew that, which we don't know she knew since afaik almost none of AT2 actually happened.
3) I think that Mir is extremely socially inept, and maybe at times not a very coherent speaker in terms of getting a complicated message across. She's used to the Binary Field. She's used to pure information-with-attached-emotion being poured into people's minds. She's not used to the give-and-take of trying to communicate with people via clumsy language that has to stand on its own, without an infusion of raw emotion. She's not used, in short, to having to explain things, or how to fix it when something comes out all wrong. Maybe the words and concepts that would've made sense in the Binary Field sound abysmal in English (or even just Hymmnos), every time she opens her mouth about it she screws it up further, and she throws up her hands in frustration.
...That said, it actually happened because we were looking for an excuse not to spoil the suspense of the plot.
Something that just occurred to me, you might want to change the Author's Notes on the Reyvablog, since in-character comments would no longer be in character...
Good point, thank you. :) I knew there was something; I had meant to do that, but spaced it when the actual time came....
Basically, because deciding who can marry who can marry who isn't the government's business. At least, not unless someone can demand tax dollars to pay for the wedding.
(and re: privilege....)
*glomps Ayulsa* Yes! Someone else who gets it!
Heh, those weren't exactly long debates. Good thing you posted the next part....
Which can probably remain accepted for about as long as you don't try to give specifics. I think maybe it'd take an ascended being to describe a form of ascension that wouldn't be somebody's idea of a crapsack world. (un-rot13ed, since it's not a spoiler for AT2)
Which is exactly, exactly, why Mir couldn't explain. Because however much she explained there'd always be people who went "but but!". Because if you described perfection there'd always be someone who'd say "but I don't like this!", and then you try and explain why they'd be happy with it anyway, and then you get someone else going "but this, but this!"... eventually she starts having to say so many words on the subject that, like a holy book, pretty much anyone can twist them to say anything they want. That's what she was afraid of. Essentially writing a holy book on the subject, something where the more she said the more loopholes there were for people who wanted to be afraid, who wanted to believe she was wrong, to create horrible theories that would terrorise the world.
Example: the Bible speaks of a physical pit of fire in a physical valley where evildoers might be punished, where waste was disposed of, to get across the idea that evildoers were like waste. Subsequent generations have turned that description into the idea of an eternal torment in an ethereal fiery realm, without forgiveness, despite how much Jesus went on about forgiveness. Anything can be twisted if someone wants to see bad. Mir wasn't godly enough to explain Heaven to people, so she avoided describing it because any description she gave would be, as you put it, somebody's idea of a crapsack world.
It's not that she was objectively a "bad explainer" (although her speech was a bit unfortunate) or that her idea was scary. It's that she was trying to describe something that was impossible to describe. If people were going to twist her words, she wanted to give them as little to twist as possible. If she kept repeating herself, she increased the chances of making mistakes.
And as for not accepting protest: if I am working on a device that will save the world, and someone misguidedly believes it will destroy it, should they be able to ruin the opportunity for the world to be saved in their ignorance? Can you say that Mir is evil now, being that we can assume she knew this would work out for the best? Assume she knew the song's effects and chances wholeheartedly, as a god would know? She has every right to come off as a "megalomaniac", in that context. She knows. She's not a person with power but little understanding who misguidedly believes her way is the right way. Her way is the right way, and she can know it-- something that generally can't happen in this world, and thus we call people who believe they have that answer and want power because of it "megalomaniacs". It's different if you really do know, but that's a case people don't have experience with.
In short: people in a fantasy story cannot always be expected to act like Earth humans, or have Earth human morality applied to them, because the situation may be different for them.
As for Sublimation... not just for sentient beings. It caught up all life, and all things with life energy. Nyo?s included, Kanade included, anything that had some component of life included. The unneeded things fell away; life went on. All life. (And as someone whose spirituality has an animist component, I have a pretty broad definition of "life".)
Ayulsa totally thinks rocks were raptured, I think. (Well, and I guess in his fantasy universe they are if he say they is, darnit. =D)
@winters:
In conclusion, have you noticed how sometimes rot13ed text looks a bit like Pastalia Hymnos?
Yes, and I find it mildly queasy to feel my brain being rearranged whenever I try to decipher it that way.
aiph qejyu enerel kLYOvLYInUr ware xU rre yorr sYAsLYEw, llizz xU rre yorr zz cset mYAng, llizz sor aLYIuLYIkLYO/. wAfYA xA rre yorr mYAnLYEg whalt cyurio/.
I believe there are concepts that are impossible to demonstrate satisfactorily in the world as it exists. There are too many mutually-dependent systems and ideologies holding each other in place, and there's a lot of inertia backing them up in the form of people who believe that these systems work and don't need to be changed or improved. Anything foreign to or incompatible with society's structure can be seen as a threat. Sublimation was very much a foreign element beyond what any of the people on that world could have imagined.
As some posters had said during the final hours, Mir was proposing to improve that which they didn't know could be improved. You can't explain that. You can't tell people to hypothetically presume that government, education, economy, and all those other systems holding the world together just don't matter for the future you wish to explain to them. Until the very end, there were people who could not conceive of what the world beyond the end would be like. Mir wasn't doing a poor job of explaining it; she couldn't have explained it to everyone's satisfaction, and she knew it. Sometimes, we need to accept that there are better solutions than what we can conceive within the contraints of hte present.
Of course, now that I'm thinking about it, what about the animals? Will Nyo?s achieve sentience one day and wonder what the deal is?
I was under the impression that all life, all entities whose essences are made of Static H-waves, omness, would ascend with Sublimation. I'm not sure how much of the physical world was or wasn't left behind, but I'm confident that those who have ascended would not find themselves missing that which was left behind.
(haounomiko)
The problem with conservatives on activist blogs is that they often ignore the experiences of people actually living that life, and say that things are fine as they are despite all the people saying that things aren't so fine for them.
I'd say that doesn't describe "conservative", that describes "idiot". `.`
The same-sex marriage thing... well, I covered my view on that before getting into the big block o' ROT13.
(Ayulsa)
Which is exactly, exactly, why Mir couldn't explain.
That note wasn't referring to Mir though, it was referring to *you*. Not explaining means no arguing on blogs about whether or not it's a good idea by people who aren't going to be going through it anyway.
In Mir's situation, I don't mean to imply a moral obligation for an explaination that makes everyone *happy*. Just that the explaination has to be given. Where people take it from there is their own responsibility. And indeed, some would probably take the explaination and scare the heck out of themselves. But that's what they did *anyway*.
By "accepting protest", I don't mean "stop if people tell you to stop". Otherwise, I wouldn't have needed to say something else I said. It's that she didn't seem interested in even paying attention to the fact that people had them that's the problem. The feeling that she sees other people's concerns as just meaningless is a big part of what makes her not seem like the Mir that I came to like playing AT2.
(And like I said, whether it should be done even in spite of protests is a kettle of grenades I don't even want to get into. It's another one of those issues that get so tangled up in my head, I'm no longer sure which side I'm even on. I can't resolve it well enough in my head to discuss it usefully. Which is why I'm accepting it as is, because that gets it out of the way to allow discussion on something I do have an opinion on.)
What I guess it comes down to is that I don't think Reyvablog-Mir is evil. She *annoys* me, and I think she should have explained things better. But I don't think she's evil.
Nyo?s included
Part of my mind is now going "Ascended Nyo?!" Hehehehe.
Guess that means it would take something new to spark life on Earth, which could over umptey bilion years evolve sentience, climb up the tower (not necessarily in that order), and finally wonder what happened here. ^_^
Either that, or aliens. That option would probably involve a much shorter timetable.
(I knew there was something I'd forgotten to say.)
One twist that I actually was wondering if I'd see was if something had happened to IC-Deciare. I was looking at posts thursday night and thinking "Hey, I haven't seen anything from Deciare lately...", and I started wondering if maybe she'd gotten dragged into some kind of trouble... And then I found a more recent reply from her, so decided that probably wasn't likely. We didn't really see much of what the people who weren't taking it well were getting up to. Hmmm, side story potential! I don't really have any ideas though. ^_^;
(Re: Sublimation as foreign element, "sometimes, we need to accept that there are better solutions than what we can conceive within the contraints of the present", etc.: wholeheartedly agreed. Thank you, Deci, for getting this so right.)
I was under the impression that all life, all entities whose essences are made of Static H-waves, omness, would ascend with Sublimation.
Yes. And, underlyingly, I believe there's a part of everything that's like that. Including rocks and everything else, yes, haounomiko. ^_^ Everything in the physical world has an underlying life-network feeding it, driving it, eternal and indestructible, causing it to remain being rather than falling off the face of existence. It's the reason existence exists: because it's alive. Reconfiguring it in a new way, however, would get rid of a lot of the possibilites for hate and hurt.
I'd say that doesn't describe "conservative", that describes "idiot". `.`
To be fair, a number of people on the blog, including you, winters, and including Deciare-- and you are not idiots-- did that to the Reyvablog characters at first, trying to project your own understanding onto them without taking into account that they knew best. It's not a trait of idiocy... it's a trait of not having opened up and listened. You guys did; I think what haounomiko's trying to say is that she's seen conservatives do that much more often than liberals, and so have I. No offence to individual entities, any more than my saying "Christians tend to fail to grasp xyz" means I'll deny the existence of one who comes along and ends up being smart.
The feeling that she sees other people's concerns as just meaningless is a big part of what makes her not seem like the Mir that I came to like playing AT2.
...She doesn't see others' concerns as meaningless. Not at all. She feels bad for them, and she sympathises, and she was reading the blog. She heard their concerns. She just felt it was too risky to say anything. They did twist her words, but if she'd said more, they would have twisted them more. She was trying to minimise harm while also giving people time. She wasn't being arrogant and ignoring people; she was listening, but her hands were tied.
She did what she could; she sang Harmonious for them, in her little bunker, trying to help them to see. (A fact that wasn't revealed....) She cared. She hurt because of their pain. She was just afraid to say more and spark more rampant speculation when she wanted people to stop speculating and let go. She was trying to cultivate Zen, a bit, perhaps: a reduction of thought to what's important. She didn't want to generate increasing amounts of speculation. She wanted people to tire of speculating, and just relax and accept. Eventually, they did.
@winters:
By "accepting protest", I don't mean "stop if people tell you to stop". Otherwise, I wouldn't have needed to say something else I said. It's that she didn't seem interested in even paying attention to the fact that people had them that's the problem. The feeling that she sees other people's concerns as just meaningless is a big part of what makes her not seem like the Mir that I came to like playing AT2.
Mir was concerned about people's feelings. It's owing to this concern that Lyuma had to speak on her behalf on the blog in hopes of calming people down. As polyhymnia pointed out, Mir probably isn't as used to words as pouring her feelings directly into another person, helping them both see it from the same perspective. Jakuri spent most of her time in At2 being wary toward other humans, and reserved toward even other Reyvateils.
Realising her ideas in the real world is a significant barrier for her, whether it's giving speeches or staying balanced while standing on her own feet. It may be a side-effect of centuries of being imprisoned without access to a physical body. I think her difficulty with communicating naturally in the physical world is a source of frustration for her... But it's not something she can talk about with just anyone. She wished for people to be calm, to be content. Revealing character flaws about herself wouldn't have helped inspire confidence, so I can see why she stayed quiet in that case, too.
We didn't really see much of what the people who weren't taking it well were getting up to.
Haha, did you think IC-Deci wasn't taking it well? If you dig far back into her post history, you'll see that she has always had some faith in Mir, mainly inspired by the leaked information posted to the Ar tonelico Whistleblower. She's predisposed to expect that Sublimination will be okay. What bothered her more was the restlessness of wanting to find something to do in the final days that would dispel the residual negativity she felt from the noise and violence of recent weeks.
...re: explaining Sublimation... think of it as like trying to explain death to a kid. A parent does not have a moral obligation to tell a young child the biological facts of death, or explain the many conflicting theories on afterlives, or give anything like full disclosure, when the child says "where did my bunny go?". A caring parent will give an age-appropriate, sensitive answer. Same with sex, or anything else tricky. "When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..." is sufficient until you're older. Anything else just makes the kid panic and get weirded out and start imagining creepy things.
The people of that world were essentially children in terms of their understanding of concepts like those that Mir was dealing in. If she'd given all the details, people would have gone "uhhh, I don't get it, that sounds scary", not because it was objectively so but because they were emotionally unprepared and undeveloped to cope with those ideas. She was sparing them confusion by not saying. She did not have an obligation to say and "let them sort it out". That would have been crueler than kind, in her estimation.
No, it was more along the lines of "Oh god, I hope Deciare wasn't hurt when some person who wasn't taking it well went totally non-linear."
... Ack! Thunderstorm! *starts unplugging things*
Mir was concerned about people's feelings. It's owing to this concern that Lyuma had to speak on her behalf on the blog in hopes of calming people down. As polyhymnia pointed out, Mir probably isn't as used to words as pouring her feelings directly into another person, helping them both see it from the same perspective. [...] She wished for people to be calm, to be content. Revealing character flaws about herself wouldn't have helped inspire confidence, so I can see why she stayed quiet in that case, too.
All of this.
And it doesn't surprise me that IC-Deci was that way disposed... I don't know, it's hard to describe, but the way she wanted magic so much... kind of made me think she was a bit disposed to grokking the way the world worked subconsciously, even if she didn't really see any strong conscious effects of it.
went totally non-linear
...Why is my head now trying to think of ways people might cause harm, accidentally or otherwise, by exploiting non-linear concepts of time? And also playing "if aaaah could tuuuuurn back taaa-aaahm! If aaaah could faaaahnd a waaaay-haaaay...." somewhere in the back of my consciousness?
mainly inspired by the leaked information posted to the Ar tonelico Whistleblower.
Randomly, I find it kind of awesome that the two works linked themselves together like this, creating a wider universe... I never thought of them as interlocking at first, but it just worked that way. :)
Why is my head now trying to think of ways people might cause harm, accidentally or otherwise, by exploiting non-linear concepts of time?
I'm wondering too, to be honest. It sounds like something that might be interesting to be hurt with. *recalls a nightmare about a certain space-time demon* ... Or maybe not.
Randomly, I find it kind of awesome that the two works linked themselves together like this, creating a wider universe... I never thought of them as interlocking at first, but it just worked that way. :)
I like Mir very much, and part of that is thanks to the Whistleblower. ^_^ It was very convenient that the Whistleblower was considered an aspect of Reyvablog canon, as I was able to offer at least a part of my deep admiration, gratitude, and desire to fully understand Mir to IC-Deci.
You know, I think this explaination thing might be something where we have to just disagree on it and move on. Even if I keep responding about it, I don't feel like I'll be saying anything new...
(Ayulsa)
I think what haounomiko's trying to say is that she's seen conservatives do that much more often than liberals, and so have I.
Hmmm. It strikes me as basically the same as behavior I've heard conservatives complaining about liberals doing on their blogs. Since all political ones tend to drive me crazy after a very short time regardless of their positions, I tend to not see it much from anyone though.
number of people on the blog, including you, winters, and including Deciare-- and you are not idiots-- did that to the Reyvablog characters at first, trying to project your own understanding onto them without taking into account that they knew best.
That's kind of an interesting way of looking at it, since I was really trying most of the time to be very careful to have Arisa only talk about her own feelings. She didn't particularly expect other people to feel the same way, and to the very end believed certain things were philosophical dead ends. She just didn't feel it was worth discussing them much anymore.
...Why is my head now trying to think of ways people might cause harm, accidentally or otherwise, by exploiting non-linear concepts of time? And also playing "if aaaah could tuuuuurn back taaa-aaahm! If aaaah could faaaahnd a waaaay-haaaay...." somewhere in the back of my consciousness?
Well, that's an interesting tangent.
I'm not sure where I ran into the phrase, but "going totally non-linear" meant something to the effect of "going berserk and attacking everyone in sight".
And when I saw that first line of lyrics, I thought at first it said "I wish that I could turn back time..."
And then I thought "Oh god, EXEC_KOMM_SUSSER_TODD would be the scariest thing ever."
Although probably still cute, if you didn't know what it meant.
Anyway, that's what I was originally thinking. That Deciare might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and gotten hurt, and that's why I hadn't seen any replies from her in a while.
On the daydream about searching for info on Diquility, and me being sure I'd seen you mention it somewhere... Yep. Though the word "daydream" didn't actually come up. `.`
Ah, okay, so I did say the Diquility thing. I did remember thinking it, just couldn't remember if it had ever come up....
EXEC_KOMM_SUSSER_TODD... sounds a lot like the earlier parts of EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/. "Kowarero, koware koware kowareteyuke!" Except Komm, Susser Tod is pretty much the polar opposite in terms of musical feel. Perhaps it's because it's an inwardly-directed song (self-loathing), whereas ee wassa sos yehar is hatred directed outwards... not that hate directed inwards can't be brutal, too, but it's usually more maudlin.
I do wonder what the other two parts of Mir and Lyuma's Sublimation would have sounded like. Probably not at all like "DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!". I think there would have been a bit of Harmonious-referencing in there, and maybe a kind of fast-paced, relentless yet ultimately celebratory and positive song... something that musically may have sounded frenetic, but lyrically was about empowering and energising and preparing for a new world, not about destruction and tearing down and hating.
I see I forgot to say something again. What I meant to say after that first paragraph was that, even if we don't agree on my reasoning, I have at least explained why I feel the way I do about... Zve, Zve ntnva, naq Vasry... right?
It occurrs to me that I haven't really listened to Sublimation... *starts up game and does at least a sampling* Hmmm. The second part certainly does have a disturbing air to it.
Except Komm, Susser Tod is pretty much the polar opposite in terms of musical feel. Perhaps it's because it's an inwardly-directed song (self-loathing), whereas ee wassa sos yehar is hatred directed outwards... not that hate directed inwards can't be brutal, too, but it's usually more maudlin.
Hmmm. I don't really know. What always stands out to me about Komm Susser Todd is how *cheerful* it sounds if you tune out the words. I think someone certainly could get tthat sort of feeling in a song of outwardly directed hate. Sort of an extension of the "I love you so much that I want to kill you" idea maybe.
That's actually one thing where AT2 didn't work quite as well for me as AT1. Whenever a Hymnn was sung in AT1, I knew that I was, in fact, listening to one, and what it's significance was. In AT2, there's a lot of times when I'm not sure of that, or where I do know it but I'm too busy to pay much attention to it. (See Sublimation, if I'm right about when it plays. A combat system that demands you pay attention all the time can be a double edged sword...) And then here I'm left looking at things like Harmonius Fusion in the Hymnn Concert list, and I have no idea when this appeared in the story, or what it's significance was.
I have at least explained why I feel the way I do about... Zve, Zve ntnva, naq Vasry... right?
You have, yes. I hope I've at least helped somewhat by explaining that what you assumed to be her intent and feelings actually wasn't, even if you'd still react that way towards someone with the intent and feelings you thought she had? That was the one point I still thought was unresolved, personally....
Hmm, true about Komm, Susser Tod. I've always parsed it in context of the series, so I've always found it somewhat bitter and ironic regardless of sound.
And yes, I felt the hymns in general were less well-used in AT2. Harmonious Fusion, I actually quite liked where that was used... gurl unq gb onggyr gur zbafgre perngrq bhg bs gur ungerq naq onq srryvatf bs nyy gur crbcyr va Vasry Cuven, naq bs pbhefr, Zve fhttrfgrq gung fur unq gur cresrpg fbat jvgu juvpu gb pbzong n pbafgehpg bs ungerq, orpnhfr vg jnf hfrq ntnvafg ure va whfg gung pvephzfgnapr gb erfgber ure evtugshy guvaxvat.
I agree about not liking that I didn't know what I was hearing when a hymn was presented in AT2-- I wanted to focus and get absorbed in listening to it and feeling it, but I didn't know how to focus on it, what direction its feelings were going in... and, like you said, the ones during battle were something of a lost cause.
As polyhymnia pointed out,
fourthwall.h was invoked again? =D
That was the one point I still thought was unresolved, personally....
Hm. Well, for the part where to me it was about her intent and feelings, what you said was somewhat reassuring. I just... didn't really have anything to say about it beyond that.
I've always parsed it in context of the series, so I've always found it somewhat bitter and ironic regardless of sound.
I think I might have heard the song before I even saw EoE, which might influence the way I think of it. (There's another song too, that from the name on it is supposed to come from NGE, but I have no idea where it actually appears... That one doesn't have a severe tone/lyrics dissonance though.)
I actually quite liked where that was used...
Ah! Heh, I always loved Wnxhev'f pbzzragf nobhg ubj phgr vg jnf.
I think part of the difference is that in AT1, every Hymnn seemed to be part of something really major. A dramatic and significant moment, a major plot point, or usually both. In AT2... not so much a lot of the time. Despedia's probably a good example. Cool song, and what it did was something that needed doing, but it wouldn't have changed the feel of the game that much if they'd found some other way around the problem.
Though some of this feeling could also be due to my own personal taste in music. Almost all the Hymnns in AT1 I really liked just to listen to. But from AT2, probably the only ones I would do that with would be Spheria and Despedia...
Ah! Heh, I always loved Wnxhev'f pbzzragf nobhg ubj phgr vg jnf.
Hehe, yep, that was really kind of awesome. So Jakuri, to tone it down like that.
I think part of the difference is that in AT1, every Hymnn seemed to be part of something really major. A dramatic and significant moment, a major plot point, or usually both. In AT2... not so much a lot of the time. Despedia's probably a good example. Cool song, and what it did was something that needed doing, but it wouldn't have changed the feel of the game that much if they'd found some other way around the problem.
I do agree. It did feel a lot like each hymn was much less of a significant "ooh, a hymn!" moment and more of an "ah, yay, pretty music" moment.
Though some of this feeling could also be due to my own personal taste in music.
Hmm, I think mine's quite different-- I loved a fair number of the hymns once I started listening to them on repeat. Viena, Metafalica, and Sublimation are all very beautiful songs to me, as well as Mir's songs.
I think part of the difference is that in AT1, every Hymnn seemed to be part of something really major. A dramatic and significant moment, a major plot point, or usually both. In AT2... not so much a lot of the time.
I can see how that would make sense, though. Song magic is fairly common and a lot of it is sung for simple, ordinary reasons. (Even as a sort of biometric security for opening doors, in Rigil's vision.) Hymns are definitely special, but most of them, aside from Metafalica and Viena and maybe Replekia, weren't designed to transform the world or affect the state of the Tower in fundamental ways. Hymns were used to calm, to negotiate, and to connect. They are important applications, but more personally meaningful than world-shaking. In a society with a fair number of Reyvateils, song happens whether it's spectacular or not. I think At2's treatment of hymns may have been an allusion to how integral song can be to even common situations.
I loved At1's treatment of hymns, of course, and there wasn't one scene that wasn't powerfully moving. I'm just saying that At2 kind of had a reason for doing it differently.
That's true, actually; interesting point. AT1 showed us the gravity and specialness than hymns can possess, but AT2 shows them more as an integrated part of life. I do like the thought of both ideas being true. :)
Also, should anyone happen to be looking over this again, I noticed that in posts here, I write the name of Arisa's girlfriend as "Rena".
But the one place it comes up in canon, I wrote "Karen".
So now I feel like an idiot. :p
And that's actually wrong, there's a reason for "Karen", mentioned here. So now I feel ridiculous.
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