The translation of the last section was yanked from an old entry.

( Timeline and summary. )


( Birth as Cain's copy, his connection with Miang. )


( The Demon of Elul, the Elements. )

Ahhh. I forgot what a pain in the ass the Perfect Works is. Stupid book. Er. I didn't realize I was using 'Elul' instead of 'Elru' until it was too late. Oh well. :D

In any case, this sort of answers our questions about Bekka - since Kahr had not yet taken a humanoid form, I guess he just... latched onto Bekka like a parasite. That's kind of the implication. There must be more to it though, because that doesn't explain why or how. I guess you can reason that he was able to fuse with or absorb the kid because he was still in a malleable stage of development (a writhing mass of cells and such?), but... ^^;

Somebody needs to write up a theory on this and turn it into a story - but it won't be me!

I've been thinking about the Xeno essay ideas I came up with lately. (Warning: f-locked post. Unfiltered.) They've been a long time in coming, but that isn't a bad thing, if you think about it; looking back at them now, I can see that some would make really bad entries if I'm determined to make them essay-like.

The parallels between the Zohar and the game's Wave Existence, for example, is no more than a glorified Reference entry. I think it would be an interesting one, but still just a direct comparison. There isn't much to argue as far as the meaning is concerned, and I'm not interested in trying to prove I know which books Takahashi or Mrs. Saga read before writing the game proposal.

Religion in Xenogears and the story's stance on the issue is a more essay-like idea. That involves theories that can be argued - that were up for debate everywhere, too, when the fandom was still going strong. Authorial intention can be argued too, and I had plenty to say about that in the past.

And why would I bother? Maybe because I'd like to try articulating my ideas with a clear head, and without worrying about keeping face within the fandom. Opinions of my ability probably vary, but I'm better at this now than I was in 2002.

I don't know what to call these. They're not really essays - more like editorials or 'articles,' only those names are just as pretentious.

Now that we've hit the second part of the semester, I'm working overtime to find ways to slack off. :P Craptastic icon generation is one of the ideas I came up with during midterms, but I can only stand to play in Photoshop so long before my eyes bleed and I have to think of something else.

The things I do for dead fandoms. Geez.

The longer I do this, the more I love the early interaction between Jesse and Billy. I wish I had a save at that part of the game.

So here we go: Shitan's full profile, including the bits I've already posted for the sake of completion.

( Timeline, character summary, Cain's Directive. )

( Hyuga in Solaris - the plague, Ramsus, his connection with Jesse and Sigurd, etc. )

( The Third Invasion, sealing his skills, Yui and Midori. )

( Life in Lahan. )

... and then THEY ALL DIED.

That is, the townspeople. The character blurbs (for Lee, Timothy, Dan, Alice) aren't worth translating. They tell us exactly what happened during the game, or what you can learn by talking to the townspeople, and nothing more. They aren't even as important as the strike team, so they don't get any goodies from me.

I didn't want to do anything major. Here, have some characters nobody cares about. :P

( Dominia, Kelvena, Tolone, Seraphita. )


( Elly's Strike Team, Vanderkaum, other Solarian peons. )


Edit to add~

( On the Elements, from Kahr's profile; info on the Strike Team. )

I'm sorry, but even I don't care about Vanderkaum, poor guy. So I skipped the paragraph on his ship. :P

Gods, Zephyr's history is depressing. I finally got Word to be useful, but it's notorious for causing problems when one copies and pastes from the program to just about anything else. I'll fix whatever I spot, of course. If you have a problem displaying anything, let me know via comment. :D

Also, I must say... brand really does make a difference when it comes to grape soda. There's no getting around it!

( PW p.193: Zephyr's history, Gaspar, Melchoir, Joshua Black. )

That finishes Shevat. Balthasar is somewhere else, and I don't feel like picking over his profile at the moment. That would almost obligate me to do Maria and Nikolai, and I want to stick to my list for now.

... HOWEVER, since Livejournal is down for some scheduled maintainence that I don't think was actually scheduled, I guess I'll have to do some more work. WTF, LJ. (I just know there's going to be an issue with the text I copied, and I'll have an extra long entry to painstakingly edit after this.)



( Mystina: 'from the developer's room' Q&A. )

The entire VP section was troublesome because of its conversational style. I was going to wait on posting it, but sleeping on it probably won't yield any sudden answers. And if it does, I'll make the changes tomorrow. Believe it or not, I do sleep. :p

Okay, I have to ask. For those of you who use Japanese input in Windows, how retarded does it get for you? Because there are times I can type up whatever I need, and other times when it won't register common words, whether I type them correctly or not. It is such a pain in the ass to piece words together by individual kanji just because my program can't get it together during the full moon, or whatever the hell its problem is.

I can't get it to render 'tsuzuku' either, but that might be a genuine program flaw. Dunno. Am pissed off whenever I run into the issue, regardless. :D

( Jesse: profile is more or less complete with this installment. )

Now, back to our scheduled entries. >_>

It turns out I didn't have as much on Mystina as I thought, so she'll take a bit longer. What I have now is the "From the Developer's Room" box, , which is the same section I did for Jayle. The latter's relation to the knights wasn't what I needed, so I didn't do anything with her character sketch, but I'm much more interested in the insight Mysty's section will give for her character.

That can wait until tomorrow. :p I had a Suiko-themed entry that will also have to wait. Oh well.


Edit (06.30.07): corrections made with totorojo's insight~

Edit 2 (07.20.07): silly me. Shitan says during the game - or implies, anyway, as good as - that Billy was the cause of Jesse's 'shotgun wedding.' I guess that explains the timing of his marriage. :p

This has been half done for at least a week. I kept meaning to get back to it, but distractions keep popping up! Girl #3 will soon have an adorable dragon plushy, for instance. :D

Every entry, I think I'll have to remind myself of what I actually plan to read. >_>

Planned:
- XG: Miang (Zeboim)
- XG: Krelian (everything re: Solaris war)
- XG: Billy's profile (and related people)
- XG: completion of Solarian social structure
- VP: Hai-Lan national data
- VP: Freya and Frei
- VP: Jayle
- LE: Delphine
- FFXII: timeline
- Suiko: Sarah
- XG: Queen Zephyr
- XG: Jesse

In progress:
- XG: Shitan
- VP: Mystina

If I have time:
- XG: Rico and Hammer
- FFT: timeline (in V-Jump strat guide)

I'm just doing what interests me right now - this could change. I hadn't decided on Hai-Lan for my VP spree until today. Limiting my fun with the gods to just Freya and Frei (which is actually mostly done, as is Mystina) will make this easier, too. And then some of this is me trying to confirm information I already have (Krelian, Sarah).

Now, for the entry I've been sitting on for the last few days. It isn't much, but I've been playing Zelda doing very important things.

( More on Jesse, PW page 191. )

( Oh, and some Zephyr. )


Completely unrelated, I'm so glad I'm not the only person who thinks the VP Silmeria guide sucked. It really, truly did. Someday I'll compare scans of the Japanese publication and the US excuse for a guide, because the difference is truly stunning. Aside from getting information wrong, they chose the worst possible way to render dungeon maps. It's so bad that I concluded they wanted to make the game more confusing - there's no other explanation. :P

There's more - oh so much more! This book is well over three hundred pages, after all. I'll try not to spam you, between this and any pointless rambling I decide to do, but I mean... it's going to be hard.

Slicing this book out of its binding was the best thing I could have done. It's so much easier to work with now! I should've done this years ago.

( Primera. )

Stone better not be as much of a pain in the ass. :D

( Ethos and Orphanage: Bishop Stone and other related characters. )

Well, guys. I may suck at this, but it is helping me remember all of that kanji I thought I forgot! For that alone it's worth the effort. And look how I get sucked into doing work I wasn't planning to tackle:

( Jesiah: history box. )

The first entry, "While in Solaris" has been started, but I'll do that and Jesse's other entries tomorrow. I spent a lot of time on part of Prim's, and now I'm just tired of playing with Japanese.

I'm not sure I'll do the paragraph on why he left his family, since the game explains that to an extent, and the timeline tells us the rest. His summary paragraph expands on the timeline, and tells us that he left Solaris when he found out about the M Project... actually, I think I might bother with the first paragraph of the summary, never mind. (Geez, you know that if I do one, I'll do the other. -_-)

After all of that, I'm still not much closer to deciding what to do about that Billy fic.

I love this music track so much. Oh Kajiura. Between Kajiura (Xenosaga III) and Sakuraba (Valkyrie Profile Silmeria), I'm in music heaven.

Okay, on to business! Now translating Billy Lee Black, p.190:
Remember, kids, I use the official version of in-game terms as often as possible!

( History box (timeline). )

This profile has an unmarked summary paragraph that kind of covers what we already know (what he is, what he does, etc. - basically repeating the timeline), so I'll do that last. :D It does say, however, that the 3000G Billy nearly sold himself for is the equivalent of three hundred thousand yen, which is about $2500 USD. (That can't be right, can it? Um...) I think he should have asked for more ala virgin price. :P Unless... no. No, we won't go there. What the hell was the Ethos doing, anyway?

It... also tells us that he has a bit of a complex, and always wears his hair short because he is so easily mistaken for a girl.

This speaks for itself, doesn't it? I'll try really hard not to laugh. XD There is more on this further down!

( His mother, Raquel. )

After this section, Prim is all that's left. Stone has a short paragraph on the next page; I'll probably get to those tomorrow, although you never know. I'm not in the writing mood today.

( Becoming an Etone, and the Orphanage. )

Hmm, okay. Prim and Stone definitely wait until tomorrow. Along with corrections! The cat has decided it's time to take a break.

Finally.

Fic for reynardfox is finished! The Burden of History - pre-game, whence Hyuga is plagued by seemingly divided loyalties. It feels way too long, but I haven't had time to get used to it yet. First real Xeno fic in... gods, ages. I'm amazed I can still manage one.

I'll start on the others next week, ditto for translation bits. There probably won't be time to do either on the weekend, and internet access is about as unlikely. Such is life.

Guess I should go pack.


ETA: awesome Trillian! You just keep going out like that. Go on. I'll show you what-for!

And:

For my own reference:
1. fanaticalone --> Jayle before the knighthood
2. sethrenn --> Billy and a crisis of faith
3. karthur --> Chris and Percy
4. twh --> sequel to Hrist drabble

Just in case I forget. :P