turn, turn, turn -- and a time for every purpose under heaven

So I really haven't posted in here in forever. I guess I may as well say a few things about why.

I still love Ar Tonelico. Very much. I'm eagerly anticipating the third instalment in the series. But I guess, maybe, I haven't had anything new to say about it for a while. The more I see of AT2's Luca, the more I realise she is not my Luca, not the Luca I inexplicably became attached to in the first few hours of the game, before the scene in the prison. At some very early point in the game, my brain decided that Luca was a certain type of person, and it wouldn't let go. The cognitive dissonance hurt, but I've learnt to accept that the Luca I know and the game's Luca just aren't the same individual, or even really related. And so, though I'm curious about Luca's path in AT2, I know I'm never going to get attached to the person that path explores. The Luca-shaped hole in my heart, to paraphrase a Christian saying, has been filled by another.

I'm still annoyed by the far too frequent, far too glib use of the word "human" in NISA games in the company of, and even directly describing, non-human sentient species. I'm still annoyed by Croix and how he'll brush off Luca's descriptions of magic and intensity with "I don't get it..." yet still think he's suitable for a 400-year-old cranky Beta who's spent most of her life as formless data, who can destroy walls with a flick of her finger, who lives and breathes and feels magic more than she feels the physical world. I'm still annoyed that the game puts them together, too, and prefer to believe that Croix's own strong feelings for Jakuri warped a Cosmosphere in which she only wished to tell someone the story of what Harmonious meant to her.

I'm branching out a little, too. I'm playing Atelier Iris 3, and so far it's very enjoyable-- I'm loving the quest-centric format, and the way it provides challenges that aren't wholly combat-based. I'm really wanting Cross Edge, but I don't want to buy a PS3. I'm considering it's probably inevitable if AT3 happens to be on it.

I still think up ideas for short stories, flashes of imagery. I consider writing fanfics about what would happen if Jakuri killed Croix, or about the surges of unexpected, uncontrolled emotion that come with harmonising, how a calm and peaceful mood can be ramped up to bright and brilliant surges of feeling in a matter of moments. I still imagine the sparks going off behind the eyes of someone so entranced. I still imagine. I still live.

Mir is still my favourite canonical Reyvateil, and probably always will be. I still love her story, and I hope it gets the conclusion it deserves. I'll be cheering for that as hard as anyone, if not moreso.

I believe that monsters are small lives, that time is eternal, that hopes and dreams and fantasies are worth pursuing for as long as your heart still beats, and beyond. I believe in living like a Narnian, even if Narnia doesn't exist. I believe in many things, and I like believing. If you think you're too old to believe, or I'm too old to believe, I believe you should probably wake yourself up before you die completely inside.

My life is full of believers, and I like that.

I haven't been writing. And I haven't been reading, really, all of your blogs. I forget, when I'm not logged in here. But I have been living, and dreaming, and thinking of you all.

I pray that you all keep living and dreaming too.

The Mirball!

At long last, I have acquired that one thing in SL without which my Mir avatar was not complete.... the Mirball, perhaps better known to most people as the shield she surrounds herself in at the end of AT1. Thanks so much to Eolande Elvehjem, who made this for me absolutely free of charge! (Warning: some small degree of obscured nudity.) 1 / 2

You have to see it in person to appreciate it fully; it animates, causing the texture to swirl prettily over the surface, and it works perfectly in flight, wherein Mir can hover and float around just as she does in AT.

We're Ar Tonelifying Second Life... one step at a time. =D

Mir's "180".

Something I've been musing about.... (Spoilers for AT2 will follow.)

I've seen a number of fans, in various place, evince surprise at Mir's appearance in her Cosmosphere Level 8, going as far as to say things like "I can't believe Mir was really like this" and "she doesn't seem anything like the Mir we know". For the longest time, I never really understood what these people were getting at. As someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story since AT1, her appearance in her Level 8 didn't just seem congruous with her personality; it seemed almost mandated. I didn't find myself surprised by it in the slightest.

In fact, that was perhaps the one big downside of AT2 for me (or, perhaps, the downside of my immersion in Mir fannishness); practically nothing that came to pass regarding Mir surprised me at all. With the exception of a few odd little details of correlation between my internal concept of Mir and the game's concept that I couldn't have ever expected would be represented so accurately, I remained largely underwhelmed, because I'd thought about all of this, and retrodden it in my mind in painstaking detail.

I suppose the fact that it was all so accurate in itself should have surprised me, but... it didn't. I didn't feel like I was seeing anything I hadn't already seen in my mind. I worried a lot before playing AT2 that it wouldn't match up with my internal image of Mir, and I was glad that it did, yet the downside of having my mental image of the game match so well was that I didn't feel like I was playing a new game, but one I'd already played. The idea that Mir was really just a fragile, caring child inside, who wanted to build a better world... that seemed evident from Harmonious, from "Reyvateilia" (which always seemed such an explicitly childish name that I was sure that either she must have come up with it as a child or just had a very naive mindset), and, in AT2, from her various costumes and actions leading up to that. There are plenty of clues that Mir is awkward, naive, vulnerable, and socially undeveloped, that she was kind as a child and then lost her mind, and that what was being restored when Harmonious was sung was her innocent, pure way of looking upon life. All of these things, in fact, were what made her stand out to me as more than just a typical "abused villain" character. Yes, she fits the trope, but she's also so much more than that. The interesting part of her is that she's always been purehearted, and she's always held onto that dream.

But I guess the key phrase in all of this is "as someone who's immersed myself in Mir's story". If you don't think about Mir very much, you won't notice these subtle developments, this buildup to her character. You have to analyse her to see it. And the fact that she is so analysable, that AT2 was capable of presenting to me an image identical in almost every respect to the Mir I'd been imagining, despite the fact that basically all we ever see or hear of her is a voice roaring and screaming about wanting to destroy all humans... the fact that there were so many little clues there, from her shield-encased graphic in the final battle to the hymn Harmonious, and that they all did lead exactly where they looked, with enough thought, like they were meant to lead... I don't know. Something about that impresses me, in retrospect, even though it seemed so obvious at the time that it oddly didn't impress me at all.

You can analyse a piece of literature, and come up with elaborate, intricate theories about what the authors might have been trying to invoke with the symbolism, what was really underlying each and every scene, the deeper message that's being told. And while these theories are useful in examining what readers get out of a text, one gets the feeling that they don't often correlate with authorial intent. A simple piece of literature can suggest a million complex things, and yet these complex patterns are largely in the eye of the beholder. A good work will generate them, but they tend to have little bearing on the author's conscious intentions. That Tsuchiya and co. were conscious of all these little things, to the point where the sequel explicitly spells them out, seems impressive.

I remember people saying, back before AT2 was out in English, that Mir's heart wasn't something I understood, because I'd only played half the series. I understand what they meant, and yet at the same time, it makes me smile, a little, to look back and see people saying now how right I was all along, and realise that I did, always, know her heart. Not out of any smug feeling of "haha, I was right and you were wrong"; that's not it at all. It's simply that it makes me happy to realise that I did, after all, truly comprehend my favourite character, even without all of the extra information.

Mir's shaping up to be the most interesting character in AT thus far, and-- again, not in a smug way, just in a sort of... satisfaction-of-having-solved-the-puzzle way, I guess-- it's nice to be able to say "I knew she was interesting before it was cool".

~reyvablog: behind the scenes (major spoilers follow)~

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!

~fin~

Well, that's it. The end. No more. No more comments on the Reyvablog, please. Sublimation has occurred.

We'll be back with an afterword post on exec_harmonious very shortly, where we'll be holding a cast party for everyone who's been reading (and watching) who wants to add their thoughts-- so please keep watching this blog for that. It ain't over 'til the Mir sings... oh. Never mind, then.

Hymmnos lacks words for a lot of things.

That little comic I talked about yesterday. (Warning: contains spoilers for today's Reyvablog plot.) Born as a result of the problems we had translating Mir's speech....

Secret Jakuri costume!

For those following the current Reyvablog plot arc, just letting you know that our next update is planned to be on Sunday; do tune in for that. As of now, all our characters can do is wait for news, and control of that is in Mir's hands....

In the meantime, tide yourselves over with this awesome discovery I made in AT2. By fulfilling certain super-secret criteria in game that have been previously undisclosed, you can access Jakuri's ultimate, hidden costume... the "Standard (AT1)" costume.

Yes, it is what you think it is. (Slightly NSFW image; nudity covered by hair on tiny pixel person?) And yes, the silly damage numbers are because I was trying to take a picture of the screen and get to a decent frame of the battle at the same time.




...okay, okay, so this was totally 'shopped, but you have to admit, when you first found out Jakuri's secret, you all wondered whether she'd have this costume.

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Not normally the kind of subject I cover over here in my fanblog, but... this is absolutely fascinating, and bears mentioning everywhere.

Wikipedia article
An excerpt from Walter Wink's original essay on the subject

Even before I got to the point in the Wikipedia article where it mentions videogames, I was thinking, "this is my problem with most RPGs". Discovering this myth allowed me to locate the missing piece that's always eluded me when talking about how I think violence is too often assumed to be the default solution even in games that otherwise promote pacifism; how the concept of a "battle system" undoes the good that many games try to encourage through their storylines; how developers seem to be incapable of realising the conflict between their use of battle mechanics and the messages of their games.

They are incapable of realising it.

It's endemic. "Good arises only when you have defeated (the physical manifestation of) evil; therefore, beat the bad guy" is such a standard plot that even cartoons for very young children feature it. Sure, they'll include caveats so as not to appear too bloodthirsty, like the bad guy retreating while cackling "I'll get you next time!" rather than being killed, but the core plot remains: we mst conflict with the servants of evil, and we must triumph.

If I believed in Satan, I'd be up for saying this is Satan's biggest lie; I certainly now know how Christians feel when they make that kind of statement. Of course, the idea of Satan is in itself forged from this myth, from the idea that an entity can personify evil and that this entity must eventually be hunted down and destroyed, but the sentiment behind at least that statement-- that humanity has, for countless years, operated under the influence of a lie so seductive that the vast majority don't even know they're being seduced-- makes sense enough. We're pretty good, as a species, at telling ourselves lies; it's an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we make sense of our lives through telling ourselves stories. We're good at telling ourselves that the current hated group of the day is really out to get us, that freedom isn't and by implication never should be free, that the good guys always triumph and, as such, if we triumph then we must be the good guys.

There's nothing wrong with good winning, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, to quote one insightful individual. If we use violence to attempt to best evil, we only play into evil's hands; for there is no such thing as evil, really, other than our oppression of each other with violence in word, deed and thought.

I want to see society stop using the master's tools to try and dismantle the master's house. I want the lie that we should strive to fight evil, to maim evil, to laugh in the face of evil as it dies-- no, even to reluctantly glance back at the fallen corpse of evil, and say "it was regrettable, but it had to be done"-- to be undone. Because evil isn't a living thing; it's a concept. What lies before you is no more or less than the corpse of a being that was once alive, slain by evil itself. You can't kill evil, can't stick a knife through its heart.

And that disturbs people who've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence, because they feel powerless unless they can lash out, unless they can stab, unless they can subdue, because that's what society tells us winning is. And that's why we need to stop teaching people that myth, because it makes us feel sure that to do good, one must hurt evil, and leaves us feeling hollow when we can't hurt, when we can't attack, when we can't conquer. Most people would feel unsatisfied if they got to the end of an RPG and there was no final boss battle. We need the "satisfaction" of defeating our enemy. We need it because we've been raised on the myth of redemptive violence.

Once we recognise that this is holding us back, as a species, from resolving all of our problems, we'll finally begin to grow. I'm confident the world will come to realise it in time. After all, so many of you already do.

Peace won by the sword will fall by the sword. I've always thought this statement was profound; turns out I hadn't even realised the extent of its profundity until now. With one carefully-tuned phrase, Mir both echoes both the words of feminist writer Audre Lorde and attacks-- no, not attacks; she rebuts; see how easily it creeps into our language-- the myth of redemptive violence. Tellingly, she says this when you're about to kill her, when you take the bad path in AT1. Even more tellingly, perhaps, she says this even while preparing to fight you, even after a lifetime of fighting. She knows it's true, but she can't escape, because the myth is such a seductive one: just beat the ones oppressing you, and your oppression will be gone! But it doesn't work like that, because every act of violence is an act of oppression, and the oppressed, and those who cared for them, will strike back in turn; and on it goes.

This is the lesson Mir teaches. This is the lesson that, if you fight against her, she recognises yet fails to embrace the whole way, because someone has to drop the sword first; and if it's not you, why should it be her? Why should she concede? It shouldn't have to be any of us, we think, but it needs to be one of us, because, as the bad ending shows, otherwise the violence never ends. It needs to be one of us, even if that one is the one who was attacked first. Even if we're in the right. Even if we have every reason to want to fight back. Someone has to. Someone has to, or else no one will.

Showing off my talk topic collection....

Gratuitous completion-bragging ahoy! Don't click if you don't want to see pics of maxed-out affection stats/talk topic grids (also shows one of the late-game costumes). Really, that's all it is; nothing special here. Just shameless "yay, I maxed out Jakuri!" picspam. See my previous post if you'd like something more meaty/informative/interesting.

Talk topics, 100%

Stats, 100%

The way to Jakuri's heart....

Apparently, this is to be the 100th post on exec_harmonious. Given the purpose for which the blog was opened, I can't think of many more fitting subjects for this anniversary post than my completion of AT2, on Jakuri's route.

Spoilers for the entire game and for Jakuri's path follow, blacked out for your convenience. Don't read until you've finished the game. (Spoilers for WALL-E, too, if you were planning to go see that movie. Yes, I am comparing the two. Don't ask.)

Ever since I finished AT1 and started dwelling heavily on Mir's role in the game, I've been hoping to see a game in which Mir finally fulfils her childhood dream: the creation of a perfect world. Her dream was never a flawed or selfish one; it was only the methods by which she attempted to realise it that left something to be desired. I'd always hoped that we'd get to see her in a position to finally craft her utopia-- one much more positive, one much more pure, than one that requires genocide in order to bring it about.

From the events that transpire in AT2, one of my biggest speculations about how the series will go has, I think, been confirmed. Simply put, the AT series is, overarchingly, about Mir. It's about one person's quest for a paradise.

Born the most powerful being in the world with a heart full of hope, she was pushed so far into negativity by human mistreatment that for a time she sought to tear the world in two in order to accomplish her dream of utopia. Yet eventually she overcomes this, and continues to work for a perfect world. For large parts of the first game, we've no idea that it's her story. She's not even named. But over the span of the first and second games we see that her plan for the world's future has shaped, underpinned and intertwined with a good portion of the events of the series so far, and that the individual struggles that happen along the way, while important, are also wholly dwarfed by the sheer scale of her plan. Metafalica is small beans to her; she doesn't, ultimately, have a huge investment in its happening. She's got bigger fish to fry, much bigger than Metafalica, much bigger than saving the people of an entire continent. She wants a paradise for the world.

In AT1, she is thwarted from making it, and ends up realising that her way is not the right way. In AT2, one is created, but it won't serve all the people of the world. In AT3, presumably, she plans to finally bring her world-renewal plot to fruition... and what a wonderful world it will surely be, better than either Metafalica or Reyvateilia could ever have been, exclusive of large parts of the world as they were.

Very few other stories to date have followed such an interesting character as Mir: a good-guy-turned-bad-guy-turned-good-guy-again who dreams on a much grander scale than most of the other characters can conceive of, and who, if the plot's focus on her is anything to go by, is likely to ultimately make her dream a reality. True utopias aren't often created in RPGs. Mir is one of the few characters who I believe could do it.


Turning away from Mir's grander dreams and towards her more immediate life plans, I did rather like her ending. It's full of all the same ambiguities and conditionalities that have characterised her Cosmosphere; she's constantly at pains to point out that she has a lot of reservations regarding ever being with a human, and that it may very well not work out long term. She's not willing to say forever. She's not even willing, even at the climactic moment, to say that she loves Croix. She's making it crystal clear, in case he had any doubts whatsoever, that things won't be easy for him and she won't go easy on him. The relationship is to be conducted entirely on her terms. I wouldn't expect any less from Mir, and I'm glad she was done justice here.

I also do particularly like that the way to her heart, ultimately, was through a song. This seems particularly fitting for Mir, who needs, perhaps, more than any of them, to be related to as a Reyvateil, to be approached on her own terms rather than forced into a human-normative mould regarding relationships. Croix, in the end, couldn't win her over with human gestures, human kindness. She'd seen in the past how fake such things could be. The only way he could persuade her was through the language that could speak to her on a core level, the language she knew could not lie; the language of song.

If any scene between the two of them was truly romantic, I think it was this one. It's a love story in which a human encounters an alien being, falls in love, and, at the climax, professes that love using the alien's own methods of communication, foreign as they are to him. I think this is important, because-- if you'll allow me to delve into film/literary criticism for a spell-- there are far too many stories in which the alien character, who in symbolic terms is representative of "the Other, people who are Not Us", eventually comes around to human, "normative" ways of thinking, and thus transcends their "lesser" alien nature and becomes acceptable as a being equal to the humans. The climactic moment of these stories, often, comes when the alien finally learns to do something humanlike that we see as endearing, such as hug or kiss or say "I love you".

Take WALL-E, for example, Pixar's latest blockbuster movie about robots in love. Even though neither of the main characters are human, or have reason to act in human ways, the climatic moment of romance comes when the more alien robot is able to imitate the more human-like robot. At first, she doesn't understand the meaning of holding hands; but WALL-E, who's watched human movies, teaches her that this sentiment is a great way to express her feelings. When she finally does so, abandoning her alien-like personality temporarily in exchange for a more human-normative one, we recognise this as a good thing, a beautiful, positive moment. She's changed. She's become more appealing to us-- because she's become more human.

Now, I rather liked WALL-E, don't get me wrong. I thought it had a lot of good feminist messages in it, for one thing. I'm just pointing out that this is a trope that's endemic to Hollywood, perhaps to our current understanding of narrative in general, and that it's not a particularly good thing. If the unfamiliar always has to become like the familiar before it can be seen as "good", that sends the message that those who aren't like most of us, those who seem strange and foreign and Other, must succumb to our way of thinking, to the normative, dominant culture, to be acceptable.

And so I liked AT2's twist on this message. All Croix's human words will not woo Jakuri, nor does she particularly want to be wooed. She's not eager to concede to him; she's not a savage looking to be made civilised. She's perfectly content to remain as she is, and she'll quite happily move on without him if he doesn't do something. He is the one who has to prove himself worthy of her, not the other way around. He is the one who has to change, to show that he understands her way of life, because she will not bow to him, not one inch.

So he sings to her, in Hymmnos. Because that's the language she understands best. Song is the energy that drives her life. She's not just a human with an install port; she's a Reyvateil, through and through, an utterly alien being. Croix will have to understand that if he wants to have any chance of building a life with her. And so he shows her that he does.

And while I'm still not convinced that any human is truly a good match for her, if Croix did anything, in the whole of the game, to prove that he comes anywhere even close to being potentially worthy of her-- to prove that he's even in the ball park-- it was that. And I liked that, because I wouldn't have wanted her to settle for anything less.

(It was a nice song, too.)


Also, note that I probably won't be updating Reyvablog until Monday, due to generally being busy with personal stuff (and having to work out precisely where the current plot arc is going). Expect the next post then. :)

Cosmospherical reflections

Spoilers for Jakuri's Cosmosphere, up to and including level 9, in the blacked-out text.

...So apparently Jakuri's dream is "all you can eat pancakes". In honour of this, we went out for pancakes the other day; they weren't supposed to be the all-you-can-eat variety, but in practice the servings were so large that a regular one ended up being all we could eat and then some, so there were leftovers for breakfast the next day too. Mmmmm, IHOP.

I've now cleared Jakuri's Cosmosphere-- with aquagon being an invaluable help in my quest to heal her heart, as I ran into sticking problems with acquiring several of the talk topics-- and I have to say that I'm surprised at how much I got right about her, in my reflections and in my various writings. I was pretty sure that most of the stuff I wrote about in the AT Whistleblower was going to be blown out of the water by canon, but they're really pretty compatible, and some of the coincidences regarding minor details I'd imagined being present in her Cosmosphere are downright spooky. It's heartening to see that I really have understood her, in some ways, all along.

I was also pleased to see the game acknowledge that she'd still have some reservations towards even a human who'd cleared her Cosmosphere. She couldn't bring herself to hug Croix at the end, nor could she guarantee that there wouldn't be times when she'd be angry at him for being what he was, when just seeing his face would remind her of all she'd been through and upset her. I thought that was a fairly realistic depiction of the troubles any relationship between her and a human would face, all said. I didn't feel like they forced her into being too OOCly fluffy in order to pair her up with Croix, which was my main concern; I felt like in AT1 the characters were often warped out of proportion and made to concede points they wouldn't concede so that they could be more amenable to a relationship with Lyner, and I feel like that happened a lot less here (probably in part since for the vast majority of people to consider a relationship with Lyner you'd have to warp them pretty badly out of character).

That said, there are a few things I would have liked to have seen in there that I didn't. For one thing, I wanted to know more about precisely what happened during her rebellion; what that was like for her, what she felt about fighting a war in which countless people died. Not just her guilt and her struggle to accept herself afterwards, but what, exactly, the experience was like at the time. I think I also wanted to know more about what humans were using her for exactly; we get hints that she was being used as a weapon against the rebelling Reyvateils, but I'd like to have heard more about that.

It would have been nice if Harmonious had got to be a spell, too, but that's kind of wishful thinking. XP

More thoughts on this later once I've digested the whole game, perhaps.

Also, if you're following the Reyvablog, you'll probably want to check today's post, as the plot is moving on in quite a surprising direction....

reyvateil rights filks

So we were driving in the car listening to "Mr. Roboto" and being very amused by how well it correlates with certain happenings in AT2, and... well, this happened.



Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto
Mata o-hima de--
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto
Himitsu o shiritai.

You're wondering who I am, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
Machine or deadly rage, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
With parts made in Japan, (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
I am the modern mage!

I've got a secret I've been hiding under my skin.
My heart is loving, my blood electric, my brain is /bin.
So if you see me acting strangely, don't be surprised.
I'm just a girl who needed someone and some kind of faith,
To keep my heart safe. Just keep my heart safe,
Some kind of faith, to keep my heart safe.

I'm not a robot without emotions; I'm not what you see.
I've come to help you with your problems so we can be free.
I'm not a killer, I'm not a loony, forget what you know.
I'm just a girl whose circumstances were beyond her control.
Beyond my control. We all need control...
I need control. We all need control,

I am the modern dame, (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
And hide with a new name, (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
So no one else can see (Secret secret, I've got a secret)
My true identity.

Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo. Domo.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo. Domo.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Domo arigatou, Madame Roboto.
Thank you very much, Madame Roboto,
For helping the girls nobody cared for.
And thank you very much, Madame Roboto,
For helping me escape just when I needed to.
Thank you!
Thank you, thank you!
I wanna thank you.
Please, thank you!

The problem's plain to see:
Abused technology.
Machines that feel things too,
Please treat them like they do.

The time has come at last (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
To throw away this mask. (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
Now everyone can see (Secret, secret, I've got a secret)
My true identity!

I'm Mir! Mir! Mir! Mir.

Aaaah!

A friend sent a Second Life screenshot to me with the following caption: Omg, a scary weird-looking version of Mir has hacked into Aurica's brain and kidnapped Don Leon!

...and that really is exactly what this looks like. (Warning: this image may disturb you if you're a Mir fan who doesn't like seeing messed-up-looking images of characters you like.) I know it's not actually Don Leon, and it's probably not actually someone trying to be Mir, but still, the similarities in the whole composition of the image are just unsettling.

For comparison and comfort, here's my version of Mir all decked out in kimono.

A very Ar Tonelico Christmas, and a hopeful New Year!

First up, letting you guys know that the Angry Reyvateil is back up and posting for the New Year! Do share your holiday stories in the current threads if you can; I'd like to base my characters' awareness of what things are like in Tenba and the Church over the holidays on your characters' reflections.


So despite the lack of AT2 this December, we still managed to have a pretty Ar Tonelico-esque Christmas over here. For your enjoyment, I present pictures of the highlights. :)


This snow-Teru might interest IC-winters. With a few twists of the foil, even an ordinary chocolate snowman can become an AT cameo! Comes with hat, too.

At Borders, we found this packet of strangely Pom-like Japanese treats.

The packaging bears pictures of all of the possible designs, including this musical Pom... Reyvapom!

Unfortunately, there aren't actually any candies decorated with "Other".

And last, but most certainly not least... someone brought a pair of tiny kittens over to the house. One in particular had a fairly familiar-looking expression on her face, and I ended up spontaneously nicknaming her Wrathface. Totally makes me want a black cat called Jakuri (who I would then also nickname Wrathface, because I've decided the word amuses me more than just about anything else in the world). This one's actually called Spooky, but... c'mon, who names a cat "Spooky"? So generic. You know that cat would make the best Jakuri-cat evar.


So now we've officially rung in a brand new year, and all that remains is to wait out these final three weeks-- less, actually!-- until the shores of Metafalss finally loom in sight. The release of a game such as this one is always a time of hope: a time of anticipating the new worlds and new wonders that will unfold before our eyes, the people we'll meet and take into our hearts for a time, the lessons we'll take away, and hoping that they will become truly beloved. Many of us know at least a little of what's coming, but who can truly say what will end up impacting us the most? What things will we learn, and how will this experience strengthen and enrich us? There's a lot to wonder about, a lot to hope for-- and in such a place as Ar Ciel, in particular, hope is one thing we can expect to find in abundance. We can even wash down release day with an extra helping of hope; as the first day of AT2's US release draws to a close, so will we also have seen Obama's first day in the US presidential office. No matter where in the world (or universe) you're from, this is the dawning of a new era, on many levels.

January 20 will bring us, I believe, a great deal of hope. Let's all take a little time to reflect on that, when the day does come.

Reyvateilian hair accessories!

So today I made a really neat little accessory for my Mir avatar in SL: a tiny set of organ pipes with a ribbon attached. Sadly, I couldn't find an existing ribbon that had full permissions, and I didn't think I was up to crafting my own, so this item is no-copy for now-- meaning I can't sell or give them away. I will hopefully soon have an appropriately-permissioned tiny ribbon, though, so these should go live soon-- with a larger range of instruments, assuming I'm up to crafting them. Pipes are pretty easy. XD

The neatest thing about this little charm? If you click on it, it plays a sound clip. Currently a ten-second clip from Harmonious Fusion, as that's what I had uploaded to that account to test with, but I'll look up some actual organ clips soon.

See the pics here.

(Also, the, uh, giant pixellated pointer is just something she happens to have attached to her head. It's not meant to be pointing at the pipes, though its position was coincidental and amusing enough that I left it in the photographs.)

Worksafe warnings apply....

So I did say I'd be posting some fanart of Mir using SL as a generating tool, and here are a few from a photoshoot I did today in a great set of sims by La TusSim. I stumbled across these earlier today, played about with some of the poseballs, and went, "hey-- this would make a great setup for an awakening-Mir shoot". Some Photoshop involved, to varying degrees, though the third image needed almost no edits (and was also a fluke, since the pose from the first image accidentally carried over through the teleport)-- and the pseudo-Ar Tonelico in the second was there to begin with!

The problem with fanart of Mir is that it generally either involves nakedness or costumes that are next to impossible to come by (or, I suppose, Funbun t-shirts), so I opted for nakedness in these images-- which, despite the fact that this is how official art and pretty much all fanart draws her, somehow manages to look more explicit than I'd tend to go for. I think it's the 3D.

Still, I think these are tasteful-- or at least, as tasteful as Mir ever gets.

Mule Birth
Virus Code
Wake Up, Mir

Three red lights means you need Diquility... but what if you're a Beta?

While working on an install port design for Mir, we unfortunately encountered a few... stability issues. (Work-safety warning: nudity, mosaic-censored, behind link.)

Poor Mir; looks like she's going to have to be shipped back to the Tower for repairs. Thankfully, like most other problems in the AT universe, this one can be fixed with towels, at least temporarily. Just wrap her up, keep her warm, and she'll be good to go again pretty soon.

Funbun t-shirts and Black Mugs now available in SL!

Okay, I'm still figuring out how to do this whole "selling" thing, so apologies for any bugs; but even though I don't have a store, you can now grab the Last Boss's Black Mugs, as well as a box of Funbun t-shirts in both long and short sizes (modelled here and here by our glamorous assistant Mir, on location at the scenic Obscure Sandbox), for 50L each by pinging Jakuri Halostar in Second Life. Hopefully. Maybe. I will try to actually make this work.

Install ports coming soon, perhaps? XD

Bringing the glory of The Last Boss's Black Mug to worlds beyond....

We all love The Last Boss's Black Mug. With its endearingly Engrish name, its wrathful vibrating action, and its sleek, Jakuri-adorned features, what's not to adore about this unique piece of crockery? Now, the infamous mug has made its debut in a whole new world: the world of Second Life.

Click, click and click again to see the mug in action! Modelled here by my very own Mir avatar (in fetching HTTP status-code 403 pajamas, no less), the Jakuri mug provides an unlimited supply of caffeine to lagging Reyvateils on the go, and its wrath will keep any avatar's hands warm for hours. So even if you can't have the glory of the Last Boss's Black Mug in your own home here, you can still have one in Second Life. (Well, if you're me, I guess. I don't actually have a shop to sell these things from....)

More Mir portraits from Second Life coming soon; this avatar makes a great model for insta-fanart.

Sometimes, even a really sketchy image can capture your heart....

Do you ever get that? When you run across an image that isn't the best of fanart, not the most detailed, has plenty of errors, yet still somehow manages to evoke something so sincere that it ends up becoming a favourite?

That's how I feel about this. (Worksafe warning: contains naked Mir curled up; just a sketch, vague.) Simple, yes, yet there's something about the lines of her face that evokes such sympathy from me. I've always been touched by this pose of hers; it's a striking pose for the very final boss to have. Instead of being an imposing, monstrous demigod at the end (okay, she's that in her penultimate form, but still), she's just a frail little girl hiding away behind protective shields, hugging her knees in fear. That combined with the fact that beforehand, all she's basically saying to you is "go away... don't come near me...", creates such a heartrending image of someone who, more than anything, just wants all this conflict to end, even if she's scared that if she's the one who ends it, things will only return to the way they've been before.

Mir can't give in; she needs the world to change before she is prepared to stop fighting. If she concedes, she has no guarantee that they will. But Lyner proves that humans can be safe by being the first to back down, and once she's convinced of that, she gives in easily. She never wanted to fight.