A Prayer for Peace(?)

Presented without comment.

What makes me stranger doesn't kill me.

A little less of a fannish post, today, and a little more of a post on life in general.

So, as some of you may know, I keep up with the awesome Slacktivist blog. I'm solely a lurker, but I've learnt a lot from the discussions that pan out in that blog-- not just on religious fundamentalism, which is the main topic of its popular Left Behind Friday posts, but on everything from Norse gods to werewolf myths to the politics of job loss in the newspaper industry. It's a fascinating forum full of thoughtful minds, and even when I don't agree with them, I feel my understanding of the situation broadened by seeing people hash it out, and gain a better appreciation for both sides. Oh, and it's often pretty funny, too.

But I'm going to have to stop reading for a few days, because the current thread is bugging me too much. It's nothing big or drastic: just an ongoing discussion, which is dragging out way too long for my comfort, in which a lot of the stereotypes about obsessed fans/nerds/"otaku" are being used to justify derision and mockery towards people who lean towards the geekier side of the social spectrum.

The thing that's grating on me, though, isn't the usual bugbear that people have with this kind of rhetoric: "well, my friends and I aren't like that, so stop tarring us with the same brush as all those losers who can't hack the real world". That's the main party line that the geek side of the argument is turning out here, and I don't disagree with it entirely. Not all geeks are people who have problems handling the mundane world, and it's terribly unfair that the media and society invariably paints all geeks in the worst possible light, even if some are like that.

But my problem with the issue is that I've had friends on the end of the spectrum that most frequently gets ripped apart in these discussions, even by other geeks. People who didn't quite know when to stop talking about their comic book collection, even past the point when people seemed to be bored. People who couldn't face a 9-5 job, or social interaction, because they simply broke down every time they tried. People who would happily have become hikikomori if only they could. People who turned up to conventions smelling kind of bad.

And yes, some of the people who fall into these categories are obnoxious, destructive, abusive.

But some of the people who just aren't that good at mundane life are also some of the most compassionate, gentle, thoughtful, philosophical and interesting people I've known.

And some of the people who live perfectly mundane, normal lives are obnoxious, destructive and abusive, moreso than the weirdest geeks and nerds I've ever known.

The person who was being down on the "loser geeks" the most self-identifies as a "bitch". Quite frankly, when it comes down to it, I'd much rather talk to someone who identifies as an elf than someone who identifies as a bitch. Calling yourself an elf, unlike calling yourself a bitch, isn't a declaration that you're inherently hostile and vicious towards all other intelligent beings.

I guess it basically makes me sad to read discussions like that because when people say "it's okay to mock and attack loser geeks", they're saying "it's okay to make the lives of some pretty nice, thoughtful, intelligent people miserable just because you think you're better than them". And I know some people do think that. It just makes me sad, that's all. And I know some people will laugh at the fact that it makes me sad. To some people, the only acceptable response is to deride these people; any attempt at compassion is a laughable weakness. I don't mind, at least not when they think it of me. But I still reserve the right to say it.

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.

monsters are small lives

I haven't posted in here in forever, I know. But I felt like sharing this one, undoubtedly never-screenshotted-before line of dialogue with a wider audience. If it turns up even once on a Google search, perhaps it'll make people think twice. It's something RPGs rarely think of, and while AT2 isn't exactly the best at not making monsters out of its monsters, it was nice at least to see this snippet of text in there.

A Reyvateil's Melody forum revival!

http://artonelico.isisview.org

Long story short: please go here for the new unofficially-official forums, which will be run by a team of moderators (the better to spread power) and backed up daily with database dumps so that we can restore them if something should go wrong.

Many, many thanks to wizzardx for hosting and technical advice, and Deciare for more technical advice, in the face of this problem-- and to all who contributed, listened, or were simply there for us.

Here's to Metafalica: the new green land.

Also, please post in your blogs about this if you can. We need as many people as possible to know that these are the new forums in order to avoid confusion and community fracture. Please tell everyone you know!

State of the Reyvablog

Just to let you know, for the time being, the Reyvablog will be private-access only. Anyone is perfectly free to access it-- you just need to contact me, via PM on the forums or via a comment here (or via my email if you have it), and give me an email address I can send an invite to. If you have a Gmail account, use that; if not, you'll have to create an account with Google.

Apologies for the inconvenience! We hope to return to public status at some point in the future, but until then, you just need to drop me an email and I'll get you an account set up.

Go~ go~ Miracle Editing Force~! Also, GODLY ART.

So, looks like the translators are done with the first batch of scripts! Now it's the editing team's turn to take these apart, pretty them up, and generally get on with the task of making everything sound fluid and natural. Having unofficially grabbed the editing coordinator role for myself, I'm going to be starting in on these first, and passing them along as I complete them. Hope you're all okay with that. <|

In other awesome news, please, feast your eyes on this absolutely magnificent Reyvablog request pic by Linearis. It's a beautiful sketch (I was particularly fond of heartofharmony's rendering, as I've had so much trouble with getting pictures of her to look right-- this captures her personality and her fashion sense so well-- but they're all cute!), and it just gets even more impressive when you discover that the artist did this in four minutes. FOUR. MINUTES. Timed to a song, apparently.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Soon as I get the URL for the translation project stuff (as I'm woefully bad at remembering where things are), I'll get cracking on that.