Solacia

[7:11 AM] Kiri: god, fuck...
[7:11 AM] Kiri: there's...
[7:11 AM] Kiri: I want to tell you what this makes me think of
[7:11 AM] Kiri: but it would require me explaining
[7:11 AM] Kiri: a lot more of Terra's Lament
[7:11 AM] Kiri: specifically regarding Solacia, my character
[7:12 AM] Kiri: do you have time and/or patience
[7:12 AM] JayMonoto: It's funny you mention that becuase for me what this makes me think of is that really edgy FE thing you and cadey were really into
[7:12 AM] JayMonoto: Like especially the bad artifact end
[7:12 AM] Kiri: mmm yeah I see that
[7:12 AM] JayMonoto: but yeah, feel free
[7:13 AM] JayMonoto: i'm not busy at all
[7:13 AM] Kiri: okay, so... I guess to start with, I've told you before how in general, her personality is a bit... Ophelia x Joseph Joestar
[7:13 AM] Kiri: but, like... that kind of skirts a lot of the development she gets.
[7:14 AM] Kiri: she's the mage of the party. And there's always been something... wrong with her.
[7:15 AM] Kiri: Ever since she was little, she's been... almost 'too magical'. As a child she literally couldn't help but have these weird little will-o-wisp flames follow her. Sometimes her skin always looked a little too pale, almost like it glows, but just... not quite looking right.
[7:16 AM] Kiri: She was very actively considered a freak because of this. Half her family fucking hated her before her father finally divorced her mother and she got away from them. Even that didn't stop everyone at school from hating her for what they were afraid she might be,
[7:16 AM] Kiri: That's the real reason why I've described to everyone that her narrative is like
[7:16 AM] Kiri: she is the least reliable narrator out of the entire cast.
[7:16 AM] Kiri: And it seems like a joke at first-- she's always playing everything up to sound infinitely cooler than it actually went, and more anime
[7:17 AM] Kiri: but really it's just that she's... just, too in her own head.
[7:17 AM] Kiri: She hates thinking about the reality of things because thinking like that was what made her life hurt so much.
[7:17 AM] Kiri: framing it like she's the angsty outcast protagonist made things sound nicer. Easier to cope with.
[7:18 AM] Kiri: The thing that actually started turning things around for her, for all it did, was when she met Lilac when they were both only... like, somewhere between like 9 and 12. They were really young.
[7:18 AM] Kiri: Lilac is Leaf's character. She's the gunner of the group.
[7:19 AM] Kiri: She was an orphan, having literally ran away from her own home for reasons that at the time she refused to tell anyone about.
[7:19 AM] Kiri: Everyone presumed it was because of her arms, because they're... One of them looks almost insectoid and made out of chitinous plate, the other one is some sort of bright pink stone.
[7:19 AM] Kiri: she doesn't look right. She doesn't have something she could at least hope to hide, like Solacia did.
[7:20 AM] Kiri: And she was the one who stood up for Solacia, when her sisters wound up coming back to school and started picking on her Lilac was literally up and ready to start a fucking fistfight with them over it.
[7:20 AM] Kiri: That's how they became friends, because I mean, what else happens after that
[7:21 AM] Kiri: and, well... Solacia fell pretty madly in love with her at some point.
[7:21 AM] JayMonoto: Sorry gonna have to stop you there, you know i'm homophobic after all
[7:22 AM] Kiri: Nearly everything Solacia does and thinks about revolves around Lilac. Lilac is genuinely the one thing Sol thinks she has in this world. They're inseperable and it kills her inside whenever she remembers the real relationship she wants is only real in her head.
[7:23 AM] Kiri: The thing is, Lilac... It's both that she's both a little on the oblivious end, and that Solacia is really good at retreating all these thoughts into her own head.
[7:23 AM] Kiri: So Solacia lives each and every day with this palpable fear of treading this line of what amounts to writing internal fanficiton about her and her best friend, to put it inelegantly.
[7:24 AM] Kiri: And, there's the other thing about Solacia
[7:24 AM] Kiri: I've told you before about her Overloader in passing.
[7:24 AM] Kiri: At one point or another, years before the story takes place, she winds up making this device.
[7:25 AM] Kiri: It's specifically designed to take advantage of the... bizarre nature of her own soul. The uncanny willingness with which it undoes itself.
[7:25 AM] Kiri: It let her turn the thing that always made her weird and unlikable into something massive and spectacular. She was a spellcaster like no other.
[7:26 AM] Kiri: She wound up getting the nickname 'Cinderella' over the fact that, any time she steps onto a battlefield, she'll only leave ashes
[7:27 AM] Kiri: It felt like something that validated her. Some tangible, undeniable icon that she's done something, something that might even be good.
[7:27 AM] Kiri: ... And it's killing her.
[7:28 AM] Kiri: She's effectively turned her own entire body into a surreal magical science experiment. For the sake of blowing things out of proportion, to make her feel like she's bigger, more important, and worth something, she's literally burning up her capacity to live
[7:28 AM] Kiri: because she can't make herself feel like she's worth anything otherwise.
[7:29 AM] Kiri: By the time the story takes place, its effects have been so subtle that it's almost unnoticeable.
[7:30 AM] Kiri: She's a little ungainly, being rather tall but really thin. Her hair's nice and long yes, but it's frail and grainy to the touch. She has the palest skin of anyone in the settlement.
[7:30 AM] Kiri: But,  the thing is, in Terra's Lament itself... the stakes are higher than just being a guardsman for the town.
[7:31 AM] Kiri: Before then she'd never turned it past even, say... 200% capacity.
[7:31 AM] Kiri: But, that's legitimately nothing compared to what she ends up needing to do even shortly after her arrival.
[7:32 AM] Kiri: Which, by the way-- she is the only main character who shows up 'late', because specifically she had other obligations until they all got cancelled when word got out that one of Lilac's arms shattered.
[7:33 AM] Kiri: So just... as the story goes on, it becomes more and more clear that what Solacia is doing is slowly pulling the life from her.
[7:34 AM] Kiri: When they need to fight in the jungle, she winds up getting suddenly and violently ill. It takes the witch doctor to diagnose her properly. And to tell her that the disease she caught has, supposedly, been dead for hundreds and thousands of years.
[7:34 AM] Kiri: She managed to come down with a virus that humanity evolved past.
[7:34 AM] Kiri: She's killing her own immune system.
[7:35 AM] Kiri: There comes a point where she stops being able to taste Lilac's cooking-- her favorite food in the entire world.
[7:35 AM] Kiri: after a few sleepless nights she winds up being brought in unconscious, having 'starved' because her body stopped digesting food.
[7:36 AM] Kiri: All of this is just to say that... this isn't some 'your power level is tearing you apart' plot element.
[7:36 AM] Kiri: this is something that is genuinely, slowly, painfully taking her body apart
[7:36 AM] Kiri: and she refuses to stop.
[7:37 AM] Kiri: At this point, not out of anything regarding her silly fantasies, but because she feels like pushing herself like this is the one thing saving her and her friends anymore.
[7:38 AM] Kiri: By now in the plot, the group has literally fought off a sentient circle of hell composed of flesh and the wailing damned, the reanimated god of life and death, and a false image of the Moon Lord
[7:39 AM] Kiri: An invading army of aliens showed up and nearly destroyed everything they had built up until now, nearly killing Lilac entirely
[7:39 AM] Kiri: And... that pushed Solacia to finally confess her feelings.
[7:39 AM] Kiri: Solacia actually feels like she has the one thing that gives her life meaning and she genuinely puts Lilac and their other friends above any preconceived notion of value in her own life.
[7:40 AM] Kiri: ... And then come the days of Ragnarok.
[7:40 AM] Kiri: I told you about Gaia, and how she was in Witch's Journal
[7:41 AM] Kiri: She wanted to become the one true god of Terra, to the point that the balance of the world was thrown so harshly off balance that she needed to be dethroned entirely
[7:41 AM] Kiri: Which drove her to such madness that she killed each and every one of the heroes of that book, short of Celia who was the Moon Lord's new Terran envoy
[7:41 AM] Kiri: ... She did this by calling on the Ragnarok.
[7:42 AM] Kiri: She was barely a fraction of herself then, having her power stripped from her by the Moon Lord, but she could just barely eke out something. Enough to get revenge.
[7:42 AM] Kiri: A shade of one of them-- Omnicide, the Nameless Void, the Defiler of Life
[7:43 AM] Kiri: It appeared in the settlement without warning, incapable of even being touched. It obliterated everything in sight.
[7:43 AM] Kiri: And before anyone could even begin to consider how to fight back, the battle was over.
[7:43 AM] Kiri: Somehow, instantaneously, everything all at once was dead.
[7:44 AM] Kiri: Celeste and Green lay there, dying together in each other's arms, while Skeletron simply watched on with this unnamable, existential sensation of dread within him
[7:44 AM] Kiri: This was when he threw them into the cycle as they were. That's what made Red and Lilac.(edited)
[7:45 AM] Kiri: And... with Gaia having returned in Terra's Lament, she's bringing about the Ragnarok once again.
[7:45 AM] Kiri: This time, with everything she has. All three seperate entities making up the Ragnarok.
[7:46 AM] Kiri: Their image appeared in the skies without warning and they foretold in chilling, emotionless words that the living on this earth have 3 days to make their peace.
[7:47 AM] Kiri: There will be a storm of biblical proportions that will drown the earth
The skies will burn and turn the air to smoke and ash
And the inescapable reek of death will be evermore(edited)
[7:48 AM] Kiri: Across these three days, the world flooded
It literally hailed meteors
And a miasmic haze of death settled in, killing anyone that breathed it in
[7:48 AM] Kiri: And on the fourth day, the Ragnarok would come.
[7:48 AM] Kiri: These three days are the most dire in the entire story.
[7:49 AM] Kiri: Everyone is trying their absolute hardest in their own ways. Red and Amande are sparring dawn to dusk. Lilac never stops tinkering with her arms, since at this point they've been replaced with martian nanomachine replicas.
[7:50 AM] Kiri: ... and Solacia is driving herself to madness.
[7:50 AM] Kiri: Each morning and each night, she comes to Skeletron and asks to be shown the scene again. Each time, he recreates the exact same illusion of the exact same ten minutes.
[7:51 AM] Kiri: She asks him, begs him, pleads to him to be shown Green and Lilac's final moments, again and again, desperate to find something, anything she can cling to that could give her a glimmer of hope
[7:51 AM] Kiri: some idea, some hint, some clue as to what it was that Omnicide even did
[7:51 AM] Kiri: and every time... Panic. Fleeing. Screams. Death. Silence.
[7:52 AM] Kiri: So she pushes herself.
[7:52 AM] Kiri: She delves into the dungeon and challenges the strongest spirits to have ever walked this earth that lie dormant within. She feels nothing.
[7:52 AM] Kiri: Dusk comes. Panic. Fleeing. Screams. Death. Silence.
[7:53 AM] Kiri: The next morning, she literally drops herself down to the bowels of Hell.
[7:53 AM] Kiri: In one of the most numbing experiences she's ever had, she challenges the entire circle of Wrath, all on her own.
[7:53 AM] Kiri: While wearing a blindfold.
[7:54 AM] Kiri: When she feels nothing from this, she turns to Serenade, who came to accompany her
[7:54 AM] Kiri: and asks her to break her arm.
[7:54 AM] Kiri: After the initial hesitation, she does this. Solacia continues to fight.
[7:54 AM] Kiri: She feels nothing. She feels no stronger.
[7:55 AM] Kiri: She's hit a wall. There's nothing on this entire god-forsaken planet that could even hope to compare to what the Ragnarok will be. To even just Omnicide.
[7:55 AM] Kiri: Even leaving herself handicapped, crippled, and drained from sleep deprivation, there's... nothing left.
[7:56 AM] Kiri: Dusk comes. Panic. Fleeing. Screams. Death. Silence.
[7:56 AM] Kiri: The next morning, she comes to Skeletron again.
[7:56 AM] Kiri: Panic. Fleeing. Screams. Death. Silence.
[7:56 AM] Kiri: Panic. Fleeing. Screams. Death. Silence.
[7:57 AM] Kiri: In a moment of weakness like she's never shown before, she just... asks Tartarus if there's any hope left. Any at all.
[7:57 AM] Kiri: And he doesn't know if he believes anymore. He's never known, since his only friends were taken from him.
[7:57 AM] Kiri: Since his efforts to save them only ruined the lives of others.
[7:57 AM] Kiri: and Solacia just... breaks.
[7:58 AM] Kiri: On the spot, she starts screaming at him, crying her heart out that he can't possibly believe himself
[7:58 AM] Kiri: That he wouldn't have done those things to save Red and Lilac if he didn't care about them and believe there was hope
[7:59 AM] Kiri: In the darkness of the dungeon, she drops to her knees and she pleads, that if Lilac and Green and Amande and Serenade and Rilicia, if they all die, and it's her fault...
[7:59 AM] Kiri: she's not as lucky as Tartarus. She's never going to see them again.
[7:59 AM] Kiri: They're her everything. And she'd give them that all to even give them a glimmer of hope.
[8:00 AM] Kiri: And she begs-- demands that he give his all for them too
[8:00 AM] Kiri: "Fight me like you have something to lose!"
[8:00 AM] Kiri: ... And, for the first time in either book...
[8:01 AM] Kiri: he turns to her, and after the deliberation he always gives
[8:01 AM] Kiri: he reveals each and every one of his thousand arms with which he shaped the very concept of magic
[8:01 AM] Kiri: And responds in kind, "... As it shall be."
[8:02 AM] Kiri: And... for the first time, in the entirety of Terra's Lament, a fight is entirely skipped from Solacia's point of view.
[8:02 AM] Kiri: Because... what they did then wasn't as important as what it meant.
[8:02 AM] Kiri: in spite of everything Solacia's part of the story has stood for until now, there's just this... respectful gap, where the meaning is more important than the action.
[8:03 AM] Kiri: At the dawn of the final day... when the Ragnarok descends from the void, everyone is giving their all
[8:04 AM] Kiri: But these three beings, these monsters are entirely implacable. Their defenses, between the three of them, are impenetrable, and every single step they take, their every motion is heaven-rending.
[8:04 AM] Kiri: And Omnicide has declared a countdown.
[8:05 AM] Kiri: As he lords over from behind Slag Fury and Aquarius, he announces aloud each time. "Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight."
[8:05 AM] Kiri: Solacia feels nothing from him. No magical sign or feeling. No heart. No soul.
[8:05 AM] Kiri: "Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen."
[8:06 AM] Kiri: She's throwing out everything she can, but she's choking back bile in her throat from the idea that it isn't enough.
[8:06 AM] Kiri: "Four. Three. Two."
[8:06 AM] Kiri: And she feels like she needs just... a little more time.
[8:06 AM] Kiri: "One."
[8:06 AM] Kiri: So she tries to give herself that much.
[8:07 AM] Kiri: Solacia has, at this point, shown off one particular thing she's capable of. With a very specific set of rules.
[8:07 AM] Kiri: She can stop time. Not for 'long', but she can. She can't move. She can't breathe. But it's enough time to think. She's used that to her advantage before. It has to work now. She needs something.
[8:08 AM] Kiri: She's thinking at a thousand miles an hour. She's never felt this desperate. She's never felt this hopeless. There's nothing she can think of. Nothing at all.
[8:08 AM] Kiri: Nothing could ever explain the way this abomination works. In one instant, there was an entire village of living, breathing people. And the next... dust. Ashes. Fire. Nothing.
[8:09 AM] Kiri: She's holding back her own tears as the despair begins to crush her...
[8:09 AM] Kiri: when Omnicide stirs.
[8:09 AM] Kiri: He rolls his neck. He clenches his fingers. He looks to his left, and his right. As if something's amiss. As if something's wrong.
[8:10 AM] Kiri: And his eyes level with Solacia.
[8:10 AM] Kiri: Every ounce of sadness turns into an unrivaled, primal fear as he steps toward her. She can't move her body an inch. She's never done that before while time was frozen. And he's just... doing it.
[8:11 AM] Kiri: This is the first time any member of the Ragnarok shows any hint of emotion. And Omnicide is furious.
[8:12 AM] Kiri: He spares only a few words to muse on the idea that a mere mortal could ever intrude upon the realm of a god. That someone as meaningless as her could ever, in all aeons across time, try to stop the inevitability of death.
[8:12 AM] Kiri: And he crushes her in his grasp. Tosses her aside like she's nothing.
[8:12 AM] Kiri: ... And her overloader starts glowing again.
[8:13 AM] Kiri: 750%. 760%. 770%. Higher than she's ever even considered taking it.
[8:13 AM] Kiri: And finally she can move.
[8:13 AM] Kiri: Her body is broken. Most of her bones are barely a powder. She feels a sharp pain in one lung, probably a rib. But she can move.
[8:14 AM] Kiri: and with her magic animating her body, she can fight.
[8:15 AM] Kiri: In one of the singular most desperate and climactic battles in the book, she fights Omnicide in his own little world, among her friends in a frozen battlefield, faced with the constant reminder of the reason she's still alive and the reason she can't stop to breathe anymore
[8:16 AM] Kiri: Her narrative legitimately keeps a running tally on all the mortal injuries she suffers--one of her lungs is entirely collapsed. Her spine is shattered and she feels nothing from the waist down. One clash of blows is so fierce she legitimately feels her heart collapse, and needs to dedicate 20% give or take simply to manually making sure it beats
[8:17 AM] Kiri: And eventually, despite everything... she defeats him.
[8:17 AM] Kiri: He tricks him into revealing his own heart-- the children of Ragnarok's one true 'weakness', lying within their armor-- and manages to drive him to an absolute breaking point
[8:19 AM] Kiri: in a crater caused by a literal galactic-scale blast Solacia caused, she lies there on her knees. She can't hear anything, her eardrums shattered from the force she was moving at. She can't see anything-- one of her eyes was crushed when he collapsed almost half of her skull. She can hardly think-- part of her brain is actually torn apart.
[8:19 AM] Kiri: And Omnicide pulls himself back together.
[8:20 AM] Kiri: At this point a slobbering, gibbering beast made from the shards of his once implacable, flawless body, he takes uneven steps towards Solacia's helpless form-- at this point, every ounce of her magic is dedicated to simply making sure she is capable of life
[8:20 AM] Kiri: She's left with just one thought at this point.
[8:21 AM] Kiri: Something Omnicide had told her earlier. Something meant to viciously spite her.
[8:21 AM] Kiri: "Your friends mean nothing. Your mortal life holds you back."
[8:21 AM] Kiri: ... And so she stopped being mortal.
[8:21 AM] Kiri: For just... this instant. This flicker. An imperceptible blip.
[8:22 AM] Kiri: Her overloader reached 1,000%.
[8:22 AM] Kiri: The theoretical extreme. The point at which there is no human being anymore. There is only magic.
[8:22 AM] Kiri: And she had this moment of godhood. She could see again, with more clarity than ever before. She could feel again, and she felt everything there was to feel.
[8:23 AM] Kiri: She could hear again. Omnicide, behind her, frothing from his fiery maw, screaming with the force of a dwindling god, demanding her death.
[8:23 AM] Kiri: So she turns to face him. And she outstretches her hand a single time.
[8:23 AM] Kiri: In one instant, there was Omnicide, the child of ragnarok, the defiler of life, the ceaseless, nameless void.
[8:24 AM] Kiri: The next, there was nothing.
[8:24 AM] Kiri: The embers of green flame making up his body broke on her form, at this point only a violet light suggesting a human being.
[8:24 AM] Kiri: ... And then, the moment was over.
[8:25 AM] Kiri: With her right hand outstretched, her fleeting vision let her watch as it happened.
[8:25 AM] Kiri: The jewel inside the overloader-- the thing that let her grow to be something like this-- was reduced to dust on the wind. Just a fine, amethyst glitter.
[8:26 AM] Kiri: She couldn't hear anything, but she thought she felt something. Something carried on the wind, far behind her.
[8:26 AM] Kiri: She could only just barely see the shapes. The colors. The fire. The mountain. Everyone else is still fighting the rest of Ragnarok.
[8:27 AM] Kiri: None of them knew what had happened. They didn't know how to fight them. They didn't know what she had done.
[8:27 AM] Kiri: ... Not that she understood any of that, of course.
[8:27 AM] Kiri: At this point, Solacia could barely think.
[8:27 AM] Kiri: The only thing that she understood was that there was where she needed to be.
[8:27 AM] Kiri: That was the place she belonged.
[8:28 AM] Kiri: Those were the people who needed her.
[8:28 AM] Kiri: When she stepped forward, her legs buckled, cracked, and gave out. Nothing kept her upright anymore.
[8:28 AM] Kiri: She moved to crawl desperately, but there was nothing left to move her arms.
[8:29 AM] Kiri: She reached out her right hand as if to grasp it. And it turned to dust.
[8:29 AM] Kiri: And... she was left there. With her face in the mud, the last thought she knew to think was a simple whimper...
[8:29 AM] Kiri: "... I thought I loved you enough..."
[8:30 AM] Kiri: ... It's moments later that Tartarus appears.
[8:30 AM] Kiri: He pulled himself from his dungeon the instant he felt it. Whatever that last attack was, the one that rocked the earth and left nothing in its wake-- it felt too familiar. And that was the part that scared him.
[8:31 AM] Kiri: And he saw her there, a battered, broken, bloodied, empty shell.
[8:32 AM] Kiri: Feeling the same vulnerability he did, all those years ago... Only after convincing himself this was real, he picked up Solacia's ruined body.
[8:32 AM] Kiri: He felt in the air the void left behind Omnicide. He looked to the mountains and saw the others, still fighting. She had won.
[8:32 AM] Kiri: He didn't know how, but she had won.
[8:32 AM] Kiri: ... She had won, and she was dead. It happened again.
[8:33 AM] Kiri: He's left with this moment to himself to think, to shame himself, to glorify her.
[8:33 AM] Kiri: To cry. For the first time since the day he was wrought from ether, as rain poured into his skull, he felt as if he knew what it meant to cry.
[8:34 AM] Kiri: And...
[8:34 AM] Kiri: ... In the quiet of that moment, he heard something.
[8:34 AM] Kiri: It was so imperceptibly dim, so faint that he hadn't even realized it before then.
[8:34 AM] Kiri: Solacia was still stirring.
[8:35 AM] Kiri: Somehow, someway, in spite of everything, against all conceivable notion of reality and logic... something in her was fighting.
[8:36 AM] Kiri: This was nearly the breaking point for Tartarus. Even after all this, even after her victory she was still intent to burn herself up, to leave nothing left for him to even hope to salvage... Even now, after she had earned her eternal rest...
[8:37 AM] Kiri: And he just... couldn't bring himself to understand. That was what he wanted most. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know what it was that could possibly drive one innocent girl to this extreme. To break her each and every limit, and each and every life and limb. To throw away her fragile, mortal life like this.
[8:37 AM] Kiri: And he got his answer when he listened more closely.
[8:37 AM] Kiri: "... needs me... I have to... I have to save her... she needs me... I have to... I ha--... I have to..."
[8:38 AM] Kiri: He fell silent again.
[8:38 AM] Kiri: ... And spoke up once more. With more clarity in his voice. More purpose. Real purpose.
[8:39 AM] Kiri: "... It is awful. It is an affront to the world. It's a sin against the nature we deigned to create.
That is what we always said. That is what they always told me. Nothing was worse in this life than to bring someone back from beyond the brink.

... You should thank her, then, when you next meet, that you aren't that far gone yet."(edited)
[8:41 AM] Kiri: And, with his thousand arms he hadn't used for this in hundreds and hundreds of years, Tartarus pulled the violet sparks from the air, left flitting in the wind from the explosion that she had made that parted heaven and earth alike.
[8:41 AM] Kiri: He weaved the magic back into her. All focused on this one, tiny, meaningless speck that, even in the end, she never gave up for the world.
[8:42 AM] Kiri: It was only just enough. Her body was still mangled and ruined. It would be a miracle for this to be anything but a worthless gesture.
[8:42 AM] Kiri: But she was breathing. She was alive. He made sure of it.
[8:44 AM] Kiri: All of this is what gave Tartarus his new, renewed sense of self. A feeling that spoke to him, in the coldness of his own ego. One that gave him his new purpose.
[8:44 AM] Kiri: And so he joined the battle at the mountaintop, fighting alongside the heroes for the first time, against the Ragnarok
[8:45 AM] Kiri: When the fight had come and gone, when Gaia was finally subdued once again, when the Ragnarok was erased...
[8:45 AM] Kiri: Solacia was still broken. Still unmoving.
[8:46 AM] Kiri: It took every ounce of effort from each and every person qualified enough to be considered a 'healer' to do much of anything. Her body wasn't providing anything for them to work with anymore. Were it not for Skeletron's own admission, she would medically be considered a corpse.
[8:47 AM] Kiri: Weeks pass. Lilac visits each and every day. She drowns out with her earbuds anyone who tries to talk to her. Anyone who tries to convince her Solacia was a hero. Who pretends that what she did in the end mattered. Who pretends this is worth it.
[8:48 AM] Kiri: If she can't have anything else in this life then all she wants is to say goodbye to her friend.
[8:49 AM] Kiri: She does things that realistically would be considered entirely deranged. Bizarre things the nurses wouldn't attempt, like siphoning her own mana directly into Solacia's body. She'd bring in fresh plates of food every day just to see if she'd come back to find them eaten.
[8:50 AM] Kiri: Eventually, Serenade confronts Lilac while she does this. Catching her without her earbuds in for the first time in the entire story.
[8:51 AM] Kiri: Lilac's entire character is based around her music. She's always humming something, listening to something, thinking about something. It's how she copes with what amounts to an undiagnosed sense of OCD.
[8:51 AM] Kiri: And now she's lost that, because 'the silence is the one thing that keeps her out of her own head... from giving up entirely...'
[8:53 AM] Kiri: She breaks down crying in Serenade's arms at the side of Solacia's bed.
[8:53 AM] Kiri: And she feels something tug at the hem of her shirt.
[8:53 AM] JayMonoto: 'ay gurl wus poppin'
[8:53 AM] Kiri: Just... the tiniest suggestion of movement.
[8:54 AM] Kiri: And... not even words. not even a whimper.
[8:54 AM] Kiri: Just a hoarse noise.
[8:54 AM] JayMonoto: ah, so she's evil now
[8:54 AM] JayMonoto: she's gone off the deep end, she's become a horse
[8:54 AM] Kiri: Just...
[8:55 AM] Kiri: To finally actually get into why I started talking about this
[8:55 AM] Kiri: the song makes me think of just... everything at the end of this.
[8:55 AM] Kiri: The melody that, every set of notes wavers between a sense of hope and crushing despair
[8:56 AM] Kiri: The sound of a distant battle reminding you why you're fighting
[8:56 AM] Kiri: But, specifically the gunshots, the way they could represent Lilac
[8:56 AM] Kiri: Literally the beat of the song, the one thing driving this aimless melody forward
[8:57 AM] Kiri: The idea of this... empty, repetitive, dire tone being the only thing left to echo in Solacia's head
[8:57 AM] Kiri: it just kinda... struck something in me.
[8:58 AM] Kiri: I probably went on way too long, just... trying to give enough context to why this sequence makes me emotional
[8:58 AM] JayMonoto: I mean i get it you know like
[8:59 AM] JayMonoto: This undying desire to keep fighting
[8:59 AM] JayMonoto: and the crushing follow up
[8:59 AM] JayMonoto: that she becomes a horse.
[8:59 AM] JayMonoto: Jokes aside
[8:59 AM] Kiri: I was laughing but I was just gonna ignore you until you stopped :p
[9:00 AM] JayMonoto: this track fits in a way that's almost scarily accurate
[9:00 AM] JayMonoto: Almost like it was made for terra's lament
[9:00 AM] JayMonoto: Except it wasn't
[9:00 AM] Kiri: yeah
[9:00 AM] JayMonoto: It was made for dingus zombie game
[9:00 AM] Kiri: It just... encapsulates the entire theme I wanted Solacia to represent
[9:00 AM] Kiri: in one simple, four-minute loop
[9:01 AM] Kiri: That there's something there. There's something worth fighting for. There's something you're hoping to achieve. That there's enough hope that you can do it.
[9:02 AM] Kiri: But... that it's dying. That there's only a few moments from there being nothing left. The doubt that, maybe this isn't building up to anything at all. That your effort is going to get you nowhere.
[9:03 AM] Kiri: god that was fucking 2 hours, I'm really sorry
[9:03 AM] JayMonoto: Wow 2 hours
[9:03 AM] JayMonoto: WHat the Dingus You Are.
[9:03 AM] JayMonoto: I don't know if I get that same meaning from it though, to be honest
[9:04 AM] JayMonoto: For me, this track represents two states of mind
[9:04 AM] Kiri: If you say 'Chungus and Wungus' then I'm going to come to Arkansas and murder you on the spot
[9:04 AM] JayMonoto: The absolute end, and what you are right before you give up. The final moments of who you used to be before you succumb to the despair that was eating at you for your whole life
[9:05 AM] JayMonoto: or silent strength.
[9:05 AM] Kiri: Mmh...
[9:05 AM] JayMonoto: When you've come far, done so much, and become stronger than anything life could ever throw at you
[9:06 AM] JayMonoto: You simply walk forward onto your future.
[9:06 AM] Kiri: for the record...
[9:06 AM] Kiri: I think I've told you before. There's... 'more' to Terra's Lament after Ragnarok.
[9:06 AM] Kiri: Like, there's the Devourer of Gods, and there's Calamitas, and there's Yharon
[9:07 AM] Kiri: but as far as Solacia is concerned, Ragnarok is unambiguously her final boss.
[9:07 AM] Kiri: Omnicide is the climax of her character.
[9:07 AM] Kiri: There's tension and stakes for everything, still, absolutely, but... for Solacia, once she's actually, you know, able to participate again
[9:07 AM] Kiri: it's a victory lap, as far as she's concerned.
[9:09 AM] Kiri: I just really, really feel attached to the idea of like
[9:09 AM] Kiri: using Solacia's impossibly grandiose sense of scale to convey something so small as just... the genuine feelings of helplessness that come from the fear that your best isn't good enough.
[9:10 AM] Kiri: "I just fought half of hell with one hand behind my back, blindfolded" here amounts to, like...
[9:10 AM] Kiri: "I just graduated from college with a medical doctorate, but god help me if that helps me find a job"(edited)
[9:11 AM] Kiri: "I've given a friend all the love and support I possibly can, but they just hung up the phone after threatening to kill themsleves"(edited)
[9:11 AM] Kiri: I think... I think I like Solacia so much, because she's what I've always been trying to do.
[9:12 AM] Kiri: Use the absurd, power-trip-y background of something on a scale in which I can tell you 'a god of death gets suplexed from the moon, and lives long enough to get uncreated entirely' and you probably won't even blink
[9:12 AM] Kiri: to get across an idea so... plainly human.
[9:13 AM] Kiri: And use it to get across a real, genuine sense of hope.
[9:13 AM] Kiri: Not just some pansy-ass 'power of friendship' nothing of a moral, something that could actually inspire somebody.
[9:14 AM] Kiri: I mean... I think my recent life choices are genuinely a little bit of her rubbing off on me.
[9:14 AM] Kiri: I'm tired of feeling like 'everything I can' isn't good enough, so I'm pushing myself to do more for the people I love.