A scattershot update....

Just a recap on the State Of The Fandom...

I managed to hunt down the drama CD for a certain Reyvateil we all know and love (ironically enough, on the same day my actual physical copy came in the mail), so for those looking for Ar Tonelico II's Drama CD Vol. 3 - Side Jakuri, head on over to the AT soundtracks thread on FFshrine and let MegaUpload sort you out, courtesy of Aquagon, who was kind enough to add this to the huge collection of AT stuff already there once I pointed him its way. I'm sort of proud of being the first one on the forums to find this... and to think that if I'd only waited a few hours, I could have given him the version ripped straight from my own copy, too.

Now laugh at me as I attempt to figure out even the barest bones of what they're saying...


Also, because I have to show this off, here's the (un)officially certified proof of my Mir fandom, as served up by this quiz:



...what the image doesn't tell you is that getting this perfect score took me a considerable amount of trial and error (probably about forty tries), but hey, I'm sure Mir of all people would have respect for my brute-force hackery. Translated by Lazy, here's the little dialogue I got from this...

Shurelia: Finally you reached this place... Ayulsa-san, nice to meet you.
Mir: Wait, don't be saying everything yourself!!
Tastelia: Isn't that nice? Ayulsa-san, now you'll be known by everyone for getting absolute 100 points!
Mir: ...

Mir: Just this time, I'll express my gratitude.
...Th, thank you.

Ayulsa-san's Lucky Item
ELMA-DS


And last, but most certainly not least, Mir hopes you're all registered to vote...

Avoid Mana Energy Potions -- this stuff has the power to mess you up!

I interrupt my normal blogging theme here for something of a product safety warning. Recently I sampled a product called the Mana Energy Potion, meant to boost energy and provide mental stimulation for gamers. My experience with it was... worrying, to say the least, and since I'm not allowed to leave a review on Amazon.com or any other major site unless I actually buy the product there (I bought it in person from Fry's Electronics), I thought I'd review it here in hopes that this gets out to at least some people who are looking for information on this product. I will note that I've consumed energy drinks and other highly caffeinated products before, with no ill effects.

It tastes quite disgusting, and there were some minor side effects almost immediately (such as slight nausea, although that could have been from the taste), but that's not what's really relevant here. What is relevant is that, an hour or so into the experience, I lost my ability to think clearly or to experience any kind of emotional reaction except a frustrating, depressing apathy. I couldn't even get a clear handle on who I was, which was extremely worrisome. I drank a lot of water and ate some food in an attempt to get it out of my system, which seems to have mostly completed itself (possibly partly due to the water, and I think in large part due to the fact that my body wanted rid of this stuff, I've been using the restroom constantly).

I feel somewhat back to normal now, and I'm sure I'll be completely fine soon, but my experiences make me worry that someone already in a depressed mood might have a major reaction triggered by this product. I was willing to do pretty much anything to make me feel better, which could have led, if I were less stable, to some very dangerous actions. I don't think it's safe, and I want to warn people away from using it. I didn't really experience any positive side effects, and I didn't even feel that energetic.

So, yes. Not Worth It, in my opinion.

Feel free to link to this review or reproduce the text of it elsewhere.

eating, sleeping and breathing song magic

So I'm playing through Misha's path right now for the first time, and I've noted that she says that she really was singing constantly: from sunrise to sunset, and to sunrise again. It really sounds like she didn't sleep, and I seem to recall that one of the talk topics around this time confirms that she was only able to sleep normally recently.

So it's pretty much assured that she didn't eat, drink or sleep as a regular person would need to. Therefore, I'm imagining she must have had to be on some sort of life support; constantly hooked up to a machine that would give her nutrients, shut down parts of her brain on a preset schedule so that she could get something resembling rest while still singing, and so forth. Or perhaps the lack of rest is why Star Singers die so young; but presumably she would need at least some infusion of chemicals and energy to keep her awake, and this assumes that Reyvateils don't quickly go mad from lack of sleep, as humans would.

Does anyone have any ideas on how the heck Misha, or any of the Star Singers, stayed alive all that time?

Also, I've noted that she talks about "a silver fence with treasure behind it" in one of her talk topics, but we couldn't see a fence like this in the Chronicle. What specifically is going on with this? (Yes, bear with me, this is the first time I've played Misha's path. Not actually having the game with me impedes my ability to replay somewhat.)

On Mir and redemption.

So I was musing about something I said to elhermano/Dustiferous back in a comment on one of my earlier entries: about how Mir didn't want redemption.

Redemption is a tricky phrase to clarify. There are a number of concepts involved in treating your enemies sympathetically and giving to them rather than defeating them, and the associated changes that might occur in them, and I think "redemption" gets used as a catch-all; it's the word for "what happens to villains when you don't kill them", but that's not always it. Redemption implies saving someone from themselves, taking them out from under the weight of their own cruelties and giving them perspective.

I was saying that Mir didn't want redemption, and I think that that's not strictly true in that sense of redemption; I do think she wanted to be saved from her own cruelties. But I think I had an impression of what redemption meant at the time that wasn't quite correct. I was sort of thinking of... a heavy-handed kind of redemption where someone goes up and goes "by the superior moral wisdom invested in me, I hereby declare that you were utterly wrong by some absolute standard, and now you'll turn into a contrite little bundle of tears and regret as I lift your sins from you". Which... sort of is what happened, but not quite; I think the word was implying to me at the time that she was a capital-V Villain who needed to be forced out of her normal personality and made to see the error of her ways, rather than someone who fundamentally could have seen them anyway and just had a layer of confusion laid on top of that.

Basically, I got the feeling that what Mir needed was not to be subjected to litanies about why she was bad in order to make her contrite, but to have the part of her that would have naturally contradicted those things shine through. "Redemption" implies that something fundamental about her needed to be altered; we say things like "this program/project/piece of art can be redeemed if we just add this and this to change it, to shift it from its original intent". Mir's heart was already good; she didn't need to be changed. She just needed to be realigned with her original intentions. She was right (she wanted a peaceful world), she was just doing the wrong thing, and telling her she needed to be redeemed would have only got her hackles up and made her defensive, because she knew she didn't want anything bad, she was just having a hard time seeing her way to it.

Things Mir doesn't ever want to hear you say...

Old analysis is old (a couple of weeks old, as it happens), but posting it anyway, because I had it written up and the forgot about it...


Just listening to some clips of EnglishDub!Mir over here, and wow... while I generally dislike the dub of AT, and I know this particular part is almost certainly unintentional given how sheerly random the VAs seem to be with matching up their intonation to their intent... the part of this scene where Mir's saying "Don't worry. Everything will be fine." at 4:49 is just dripping with bitterness, to my ears, in a way that made me shiver. I'm just hearing such an undertone of "...yes. Everything will be fine, humans. Just like back when I was under your control and you always told me, 'Don't worry. Everything will be fine.' just before you put me through the next round of agony. So I hear you think suffering is just fine? Then I'm sure you'll like this."

I know I'm reading way too much into it, because frankly I just don't trust the dubbers to be that good (even if Mir's English VA did do some work on Silent Hill), but still, effectively cringe-inducing if you think of it like that.

(I'm now imagining her actually having a kneejerk reaction to the phrase if it's said to her by other people, in a "yes, that's what people always say when they want me to lie down and take it. Do you really think I'm going to fall for it again?" sort of way.)


Also, been poking through Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's works on YouTube; she's the English VA for Mir, and she's done a good deal of work for the Silent Hill series. I don't consider her voice to be very Mir-like; I personally think Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS in Portal, should have voiced her instead, though NISA probably couldn't afford to hire her, since they're a small outfit. I haven't actually played the game, but from the song Still Alive I can tell that she's got the right mix of childlike innocence and bitter sarcasm down, and if you listen to her in the verse beginning "Go ahead and leave me" in particular, she sounds a lot more like the Japanese Mir than McGlynn does.

Still, though, what I've noticed about McGlynn's works for Silent Hill is that they actually fit Mir very well, for the most part. I've personally fallen in love with "I Want Love" as a potential song from Mir to AT2's protagonist, depending on how I end up feeling about that pairing; it's exactly the kind of love song I think she'd offer, a desperate plea in recognition of the fact that nothing less than deep and genuine caring can stop her feeling like she can never be sated. "I need a miracle and that's what I'm hoping for" is basically Mir in a nutshell; she needs and wants something utterly transformatory, and she won't stop holding out for it. If a certain hero can fill that role for her, I'll be pleased, but they'll have to do it right.

"Let Me Out" and "Shot Down in Flames", on the other hand, are two rather creepy songs that I think fit Mir's time spent in captivity and her subsequent escape, respectively, very well. Going to do a little breakdown of the latter as I think it relates to her, because I can:

Swear at the walls
They make fun of me
Day after day
Eyes that follow me
Is it you again?
Can this be the end forever?

This first verse is fairly obvious; it's all about being trapped and being watched. The walls make fun of her because she can't escape; their existence mocks her, and she can't escape the eyes of the researchers with their cameras constantly trained on her. "Is it you again?": the same old faces, never offering her anything she needs. "Can this be the end forever?" makes me think of Mir's witnessing her old personality, her good-natured self, being smothered beneath her rage and wondering if this is really the end of the self she knew.

See through your eyes
Child's heart that cries
Raven flight, flies

Mir saying "look at this as a human being for once, not just as a scientist, and see how horrible it is". Plus bonus bird imagery!

And the meaning dies
As it was before
It will be no more
Time does that

Time is taking its toll on her; she's trying to hold out hope, to continue to be who she was, but it's becoming harder and harder to see the good in life as her anger consumes.

Say it again
Like you said
Does it sound like you?
Where are you now?

Mir saying to her captors, "have you ever listened to the words you say to me? Have you looked at yourselves in the mirror lately? Do you know what monsters you really are?"

Does the young one know you're here?
Breath on the glass
Once again
Feel her pull you in
Nobody leaves
You won't let you
You're afflicted

Like most of the song, this is all a bit disjointed and hard to parse, but I see it as Mir imagining her captors looking in at her through the glass and being unable to forget the cruelty they're witnessing, but being unable to leave the project because they're too afraid to admit their own guilt. Though, in my fanfic universe, a few people did leave the project early on or were fired from it, more people stayed than you'd expect; leaving would have forced them to confront the fact that they'd done something wrong, and that admission would have been too traumatic for most of them, so they buried the guilt further and further down under layers of scar tissue, becoming utterly callous and cold.

Can you hide who you are?
Take a look at yourself

Mir reiterating that those who hold her prisoner need to face up to themselves.

Can you stop what will be?
You think running will help?

This is one of those lines that I just think fits Mir's raging bitterness perfectly. It's the classic triumphant crowing of a villain as they prepare to destroy everything in their path. "You can't outrun me! You can't escape my wrath!"

Can't give up on the past
When the past never ends

Mir doesn't feel like she can escape the pain of her past, and now she's going to manifest that pain and bring it into the present for everyone else. The repercussions of the past never ended for her, so why should they for anyone else?

Now the dead that you raised
Live in me

They tried to kill her emotions, and now they've raised up the angry, twisted things they created and crushed down by continuing to provoke her.

What have you done?
You're insane
Can you bring God down?

Mir's commentary on the scientists "playing God" with her.

Plans that you made
Don't include me
One more time

Oh, their plans included her; but not as an equal, not as a person, only as a slave. Their plans never took into account what she wanted.

But I will dance
On the wind
Breathing in your heart

Mir is free, and she guarantees you'll never forget her. The images of the fragile, gentle creature you broke will continue to haunt you.

Your sacrifice
Wasn't wanted
Still you try

There's sort of a parallel here between Mir's own sacrifices (the energy and love she put into her songs) not being wanted, and the idea that all the energy the scientists have invested into controlling Mir is something she ultimately rejects.

Thy Fearful Symmetry -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Mir/OC, 1,400 words, mild aggression, mild intimacy)

I've been hanging onto this one for a while, but here's something from the AT Whistleblower universe, set two days after what is currently Chess' final log. I would have entered it as one of his logs along with the rest, but I thought it was a little too long and too elaborate to be a true blog entry, so I'm posting it as a standalone (though it probably won't make much sense if you haven't read at least his earlier logs).

Probably rates as about a PG-13, American standards? It's unsettling, but in a way that's all suggestion.


Oh, and before we break into the fic proper, a few musical sidenotes (this is Ar Tonelico fic, after all): the dialogue in this was heavily inspired by Want [lyrics|download], a rather villainous little spoken-word track by Recoil, though the song I've found myself associating most with their relationship is Break Me Shake Me [lyrics|download] by Savage Garden. ("I used to move you in a way that you've never known/But then I accused you in a way that you've never known/But you hurt me in a way that I've never known...").

Also, for those who've read Of One Blood, I got recommended a song that befits it wonderfully, Bound in Blood by Hungry Lucy. Lyrics here, and the song is here. It really does match what's going on from Mir's perspective in that fic incredibly well, so I heartily recommend you go listen.

And without further ado, fic time.




--November 14, 3420--

Sunset turns the blood in her eyes into thick, black oil, impenetrable. I search them for some glimmer of life, for some reminder that she's human, but of course, she's not. All I see is the reflected haze of the dying sun, drowning in her eyes like she's drinking it in, swallowing it up. Her gaze is a tractor beam because behind it, there's only a vacuum.

She used to be human, but we tore out her soul, and now she's sucking in life to fill the void, but she's never going to stop being hungry. And soon the world will be a small, dead, shrivelled thing in the palm of her hand, and she'll be alone in nothingness, crying and clinging to dust.

At least, that's what flashes through my mind, the primal part of my brainstem that I try to bury in rationality, when she fixes her eyes on me. I feel like a tiger's prey must feel, stripped of all emotions save wonder and fear; the inevitability of death grips me, and my pulse is sharp and icy in my throat, but I cannot help but marvel at the form, the sinews, the cruel and perfect grace of death's arbiter. Lean, like a starved animal, she's a human with all humanity burned away: all the excess, all the lies. She's less than animal. She is pure intent.

"I would always hear songs... about the stars," she says, and just like that day when I discovered the truth, her words catch me off guard. I'd been so wrapped in my imaginings, my dark-goddess fantasies, that coherent words from her were a surprise. They don't taint the image, though. They fall from her tongue like sour benedictions.

I look where she's looking, and true to her words, a few bright points of light are already visible. The strong ones, not swamped by evening glow.

"I never thought I'd see them. You have to remember... it was thirty years before I ever saw this world, this... real world, outside of corridors and empty cells." Her fingers rub the guard rail, a self-comforting gesture. I see this, and hear her high, frail voice, and I hear the words thirty years, and it doesn't quite fit together. "And when I did, I was so angry."

"Angry... why?" I'm surprised I dared to speak. My mouth tastes of evening dust, airship fuel.

She turns around, and my heart jumps: this is it. "Because it always sounded like humans felt such powerful hope when they looked at the stars, and nature, and all those things. And I couldn't see anything meaningful at all. They were dead to me." She pauses, feeling out her words with the tip of her tongue, letting the meaning sink in for both of us. "And I knew then that they'd taken something I could never get back."

I nod; a poor response. She says it all. There's nothing really left to add.

As such, she changes topic.

"I didn't think I would ever see you again."

I'm trying to make out the tone in her words. It's not relief, not curiosity... there's no fondness to it, no softer emotion. It's almost mocking, but there's something else behind it, some little undercurrent that worries at my veins like a knife-edge. Pure hate I can handle, but now I've lost sight of her intent.

She moves before I can track her, liquid shadow, and my wrists are in her hands. Tiny, thin hands, like a child's. My stomach churns in memory, and she feels me squirm, and she smiles at me, and that is almost fond. Oh, gods. She hates me so much she's almost infatuated with it. I've been waiting for death, but now instinct kicks in. Her hands are all clammy. Please, have mercy I don't deserve, and make this quick.

She leans her head against my shoulder, against my collarbone, hmming softly. An audible smile. "This feeling. This little flash of emotion, in you, now. Is it worth it?"

"Feeling?" My voice is a croak. I don't actually know what she means.

"You know what I mean." She jerks me closer. I wish she had a scent so I could get my bearings, wish she smelt like sweat or soap or ash. Everything feels unreal. "Your desires. Have they been worth the price you're paying, now? Worth my hatred, worth my anger, worth my using you up and throwing you out like you-- used-- me?"

Yes. No. I don't know? I don't have any desires! I just wanted to help... I'm so confused.

"I know you knew." From the sound of her voice I know her teeth are bared, her lips pulled back. There's a dull pain in my wrists, but it's eclipsed by the blood rushing in my ears. "I just wanted you to know that."

I watch as she drops me at all once, walks back to the railing and takes hold of it again with bloodied nails. I can tell now: she's restless, erratic, like a tiger in a cage. She doesn't seem to know what she's doing or what she's after. She's boiling over with heated emotions, and they're breaking the surface in tiny molten trickles. I wish the sun were a little higher so the image would be complete, evening's crimson making magma of her tears.

I don't know why I'm looking for poetry in this. I shouldn't be caring about how it looks, should be wanting to help her. But I don't really care, I think, about much any more. That's why I want something to move me. I'm looking for some symmetry in her anguish, like she's looking for hope in the stars.

Likely neither of us will get what we want tonight.

"Hold me."

I laugh, disbelieving, as I walk over to her. Only a goddess like her could threaten to tear out my throat one minute and want me to hold her the next. And only someone as dead inside as me could comply. I wrap my arms around her naked shoulders. She's shivering; her damp skin is drying in the wind.

"I thought you hated me," I say.

"I want to stop hating," she says. "But I can't."

"It's funny." As long as we're being honest, I suppose. As long as my life's on the line anyway. "I want to feel something, but... I don't think I can, either."

"I wish you could take all my burning." She wraps her fingers, tacky with my blood, around my arm.

"I wish I could know what it's like. I've forgotten."

She looks up at me. From all but this close it's easy to forget she's so small. "Maybe this will help you remember," she says, and plants a searing kiss on my lips. There's desperation to it, but it's not lustful. It feels more like she's trying to pour herself into me.

I think I smile as she pulls away, out of sheer incredulity. I don't really understand, but... all right. Whatever you want. "Maybe it will help you forget." Instinctively, I tangle my hand in her dark hair, stroking the back of her neck as I coax her closer to me.

"Unlikely," she says, sadly, but she closes her eyes anyway.



She clings to me, wrapped in my coat, as we lie out on the deck. I'm sure she knows how to acquire clothing, but her mind's too disorganised for her to follow the whole process through. She probably tried before, and ended up pacing up and down some alleyway somewhere, eating stolen fruit and looking for something to kill.

She's crazy. Crazy, and that makes me immoral, but we're already so broken it hardly matters any more. We've already torn each other to pieces. If we hurt each other a little more, it's not going to make that much difference.

Her eyes are glassy, reflecting the blue-black dome of the heavens, and all the little lights therein. Without warning, she presses closer to me, and her shoulders hitch.

"It's... really beautiful up there," she says, crying like she doesn't believe and like she knows it's true all at once.

I feel my heart wrench, and a cold agony balls in my stomach. No. It does matter. It matters so damn much.

We're still alive, and as long as we're alive, there's a chance that we can be saved.

One Byte And You're Hooked -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (Lyner/Ayatane, 822 words, shounen-ai, parody/comedy, extreme crackishness)

The second of two fics for you today (the first one is here), and this one is a little... well. Suffice to say I did this on a dare. XD

Nothing explicit, but it's pretty suggestive (about as suggestive as AT itself). Spoiler-cut in case there are people who'd rather not read Lyner/Ayatane hintings. It's pretty much just meant to be silly.



"Lyner~!" called Ayatane as he walked into the living room, hair swept back in a headscarf and a baking tray held proudly aloft. "Come and see what I made!"

"What did you make?" Lyner rose up off the couch, one eyebrow warily cocked. The sight of Ayatane in an apron was never something that quite sat well with him, for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint but seemed to have to do with vague images of dyed pink poodles and those home decor shows they ran on the Platina Lifestyle Network.

"Cookies!" said Ayatane, his voice positively dripping with delight. "They're what I always make for Mother."

"For Mother... Mir?" said Lyner. "Ayatane, I don't think I've ever seen Mir eat anything. She certainly wouldn't be as thin as she is if she actually ate something with all those calories."

"Well, not for her for her," Ayatane said with a wave of his hand, balancing the cookie tray adeptly in the other. "For her as in... on her behalf."

On her... behalf? There was something in the tone of that statement that Lyner didn't like, but he didn't have time to protest as Ayatane slipped a morsel past his open lips. "Try it, it's really good," Ayatane gushed.

"Mmrgh mrmf mm mrlf." Lyner attempted to protest, but it was too late now; he wasn't very well going to spit it out, and besides, now that it was in there, he had to admit that the velvety smoothness of the chocolate against his lips was quite compelling. Half-resignedly, he swiped the cookie piece into his mouth with his tongue, chewed, and swallowed. "Hey, that is pretty good."

Ayatane plunked himself down on the couch, setting the tray on the coffee table and tugging Lyner down with him. "Have the rest." He handed the cookie to Lyner; it was warm and crumbly against his fingers, the chocolate just a little bit melty on the outside, the sweet aromas of baking mixed in with the fresh scent of Ayatane's hibiscus and peony shampoo. (At least, he assumed it was Ayatane's. It could have been Mir's, but only one of them struck him as the type to really care whether their shampoo was hibiscus-and-peony-scented, although he did have to admit that Mir was keeping a wonderful glossy head of hair these days now that she wasn't trying to nuke all of humanity.

"Oh, that," he heard Mir say dryly, as if she'd been reading his thoughts, which she had to have, as there was no other explanation, really. "Shurelia came over last night. Slumber party. We did each other's hair and talked about boys."

Lyner thought it better not to ask.)

That little aside dealt with, Lyner turned his attention back to the cookie (as eating and listening to someone talk at the same time would have been, he had to admit, a tricky task for him). The last wisps of chocolate still lingered on his lips from the previous bite, and he licked them off, his eyes falling half-closed in blissful reverie. "Ayatane, this stuff's really amazing. I don't even really like chocolate, but this... it's even better than Funbuns." And that was saying something, given the many long, dark nights he'd spent thinking about eating Funbuns, preferably with Misha.

And was there something else behind the taste of cocoa, something darker, more bitter-- more, dare he think it, manly? Something different from the rich sweetness of Funbuns, but appealing in its own way; it lingered on his senses, taunting. He just had to know for sure. There was no resisting it. He took another bite, this time with unabashed desire.

"It's coffee," said Ayatane, as if he'd been reading his thoughts, which he almost certainly had as well. "Java chips, to be precise." That or he was just gauging the expressions on Lyner's face, but right now Lyner didn't care if Ayatane was in his head. The feel of sweet, chewy dough that melted against his tongue, the heady scents of chocolate and coffee mingling in his nose and throat-- he could indulge in this forever, and the more he did so the more it really did feel like there was some other presence inside his mind, and the less he really minded. In fact, it was starting to feel distinctly pleasurable. Ayatane, inside him, sating his hunger, filling him up completely....

It was a while before Lyner came to his senses enough to notice Ayatane gazing at him intently. "How do you like it?" the virus purred sweetly. "Is it good?"

"Oh, yes," breathed Lyner.

"Do you want more?"

"Please, Ayatane. Please, let's not stop."

And so Ayatane "fed Lyner cookies", all night long. Oh, and he might have "set up a connection to his server" and "pinged him with data packets", too. Honestly, we're really not in a position to say.

But only because we won't get any more cookies if we do.