[Xenogears] Of Two Minds.
May. 9th, 2006 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreI don't know why. Except that I have a lot of work to do, and don't want to do it. :P
His touch, she remembered in the end, had always been gentle. The tips of his fingers were calloused from years of typing and manipulating delicate instruments, and possessed of a still, even precision that only five hundred years of training could produce. They never trembled or weakened, even in the very last moments, when death and failure faced them both.
The hazy, ethereal existence within Deus was an odd one to remember. One part of her recognized its metallic heartbeat and the hymn of millions of tiny machines operating in unison, and the other part remembered it as the warmth of the womb, the waters within the eye that envisioned her existence for the first time.
She was meant to merge seamlessly with one or the other, not to be torn between both. The program was imperfect, she realized now - not even the advancement of Abel's civilization was able to fully synchronize machine with biology. The currents were different, or the function of memory still eluded their grasp. Or the program had overstepped its bounds, and they only realized it now that it was too late.
Now, she was of two minds about everything. The pale dresses on their hangers in the closet, the two great angels of the cathedral, and the man sleeping beside her now, blissfully unaware and breathing easily in a wash of moonlight. So many memories crowded to the fore when she beheld his face. His voice when she bled her life into the ground, his vehement denial of her other half -- his despair as she spoke to him from the prison in Shevat, which had held her body in thrall but left her voice free to serve the will of her master.
Ramsus was commander, but she remembered him also as a lover. Elly had been a toddler when the Elements were first commissioned, but Miang remembered Hyuga with his hair cut short at his chin, when the feigned innocence he wore now wasn't even a glimmer in his mind's eye. She thought she liked him better that way, when his gaze was direct and she knew that, yes, he was dissecting her with only a glance, and might take any opportunity to cut her open and see if his visualizations were correct. It reminded her of Krelian.
And of Krelian? Her dual memories were one. She remembered a time when she was afraid memories of him would bring pain, but they brought only relief.
Death had come to neither of them in the end. Though she found happiness in her existence with her compliment, there were moments when she envied Krelian his place at the edge of the waves. As it was her first memory, so it was his last. One day she hoped to say the same.
. . .
This was actually inspired by an old prompt about dead lovers. It really depends on how you look at this, but sure, it fits. In a really twisted way!
His touch, she remembered in the end, had always been gentle. The tips of his fingers were calloused from years of typing and manipulating delicate instruments, and possessed of a still, even precision that only five hundred years of training could produce. They never trembled or weakened, even in the very last moments, when death and failure faced them both.
The hazy, ethereal existence within Deus was an odd one to remember. One part of her recognized its metallic heartbeat and the hymn of millions of tiny machines operating in unison, and the other part remembered it as the warmth of the womb, the waters within the eye that envisioned her existence for the first time.
She was meant to merge seamlessly with one or the other, not to be torn between both. The program was imperfect, she realized now - not even the advancement of Abel's civilization was able to fully synchronize machine with biology. The currents were different, or the function of memory still eluded their grasp. Or the program had overstepped its bounds, and they only realized it now that it was too late.
Now, she was of two minds about everything. The pale dresses on their hangers in the closet, the two great angels of the cathedral, and the man sleeping beside her now, blissfully unaware and breathing easily in a wash of moonlight. So many memories crowded to the fore when she beheld his face. His voice when she bled her life into the ground, his vehement denial of her other half -- his despair as she spoke to him from the prison in Shevat, which had held her body in thrall but left her voice free to serve the will of her master.
Ramsus was commander, but she remembered him also as a lover. Elly had been a toddler when the Elements were first commissioned, but Miang remembered Hyuga with his hair cut short at his chin, when the feigned innocence he wore now wasn't even a glimmer in his mind's eye. She thought she liked him better that way, when his gaze was direct and she knew that, yes, he was dissecting her with only a glance, and might take any opportunity to cut her open and see if his visualizations were correct. It reminded her of Krelian.
And of Krelian? Her dual memories were one. She remembered a time when she was afraid memories of him would bring pain, but they brought only relief.
Death had come to neither of them in the end. Though she found happiness in her existence with her compliment, there were moments when she envied Krelian his place at the edge of the waves. As it was her first memory, so it was his last. One day she hoped to say the same.
. . .
This was actually inspired by an old prompt about dead lovers. It really depends on how you look at this, but sure, it fits. In a really twisted way!
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 06:54 am (UTC)hotawesome and I loved having him in my party.Ouch. XD Some bastard erased my ultimate Secret of Mana save ages ago - and the last time I let anyone near my games? AGES AGO. :P Gods, ten hours of Xenogears is like forty hours of any other game. That sucks. :P
... so, is nihongo!Billy as fem as he sounds? Because he sounds positively girly in the sound bytes I listened to!
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Date: 2006-05-10 09:50 am (UTC)Hmm. I don't remember finding Billy's in-battle voice particularly girly, but I'll have another listen. (Voice probably hasn't broken yet, bless'im!) But from the script alone, the nihongo Billy comes across quite different to his translated counterpart (caveat: from what I remember). I like nihongo Billy far better. He makes so much more sense, somehow. And some of the initial interactions between him and Bart are hilarious! I remember that being there in the English, but I don't remember it quite working so well.
I was trying to think of how to describe Billy's character in the Japanese version, and I found it really hard to find the right words. But I suppose this is as good a time as any to try and get my thoughts down about it. I hope you'll bear with me! ^^;
-- Billy psychology 101 ---
I guess he comes across something like this to me... A serious-minded and genuinely kind kid with a slight pole up his backside, who is just the right level of warm politeness to his elders, and who takes his responsibilities seriously. But a certain degree of petty childishness comes out in the way he deliberately winds up Bart. Serenely delivered (smacking of "oh I am sooo much more adult than youuu") criticisms, and playing the role of the favoured and well brought-up young man, while actually being nothing of the kind. That kind of infuriating kid :P. I sort of see the person behind the attitude being a genuine, sweet and sensitive person, but one who's nursing a lot of insecurities and uncertainties stemming from his mother's death and his relationship with his father, and trying desperately to be an adult. Which he manages much of the time. But still the sort of awkward moody teenagerness comes out a lot too, much more than with Bart, say.
This may be far to Jo-skewed to be an accurate description, but that's kind of how he comes across to me. And although he was one of my preferred characters, I don't remember even getting a coherent sense of who Billy really was in the English...