Postscript (Torna)

Writing this part, one'll admit, is difficult. The alignment of one's emotions with the character's emotions, trying to understand what the character, based on their behavior and personality, would do, is very difficult. Sometimes, one just felt like one should write how one want to write -- one don't have a specific idea, and one just write along, as if it comes out naturally, that's the way how it should be written; but eh, one don't know. One don't know if one had written it correctly, whether one had gotten them right, whether one was sufficiently in sync with the characters that one said what they wanted to say. Yes, it's just a translation from cutscenes, and the dialogues one can assure you, they're correct; but what about the intermittent sentences? Should one include their feelings, describe it? Or should one leave it to you, dear reader, to try to interpret what their feelings are, and one merely observe and write down what was displayed by the characters? And for the former, did one even interpret them correctly? Trying to interpret how a character feels, one ultimately add in how one feels. And there's no way one could clean oneself out of the picture.

Also, when it reached the last part, because one is no longer starting a new book (one's lazily trying to write one's own book, but that will be taking a while, and sometimes, one just don't know how one should put it down), one had been quite lazy in the editing section. Before, you might see that they seem to match, their voices; there's a sense of coherence between head and tails. But now, because one may be editing one part of it on one day, and another part of it a week later, you might see a gap in between. Indeed, because one might learn more, or lost more of what one learn, one might change the tactic of how one write stuff; and that's why you see, why suddenly the tone changed? One had not noticed it, because one had lazily been avoiding, after editing, to re-read one's edits. Supposingly, one should be rereading edits again and again until they had coherence and that one feels they speak about the characters -- but one's too lazy for a translating role, as a practicing role for writing my own book. Hopefully one would do better if one write something myself, without some strong anchor like a cutscene to hold it in place. Then, perhaps one will understand the need of the pain to do the editing again and again, rinse, wash, dry, repeat.

Sometimes, one's feelings also affect how one wrote them. One may feel pessimistic at a time, so the part one edit during one's pessimism was more mellow. One may feel stressful at other times, like one feels now, anxiety, so the writing may be full of anxieties. One may feel happy at other times, and if it coincides with a happy scene to edit, great; but if not, one may skip it for a while because one's not very happy with it, or one may go with it and came out with a sub-quality writing. One don't remember what one did, but they certainly aren't perfect, not even close! But what can one do? This is about the only way one can write it. One's not a professional writer, only a hobby writer, and one write to salve one's soul, so it's more important for one to get one's soul salve than to get everything right to maximize readers. What starts as a story don't end as profit, but ends as a story, or perhaps, another story that told me how it should be written rather than how one set out to write it in the first place.

Although this story isn't that long, being the first ever add-on story that Xenoblade released, when you're attached to Rex and the others in the main story, you felt that the protagonist, Jin, deserved to tell his life story. A reader may hate the protagonist, hope that their hero will win the day, and live happily ever after with someone (s)he's in love; but the writer, or rather, the artist, whom write not for money but to salve his/her soul, needs to feel compassion for each and every single character (s)he created, however temporarily they appear to serve whatever purpose, and however bad they'd created them. That means, compassion especially for the bad guys/gals! The author need to write it in a way that the reader would see the black and white, as the reader wanted; but that (s)he needs to retain the grayscale image (s)he held on the enemies. (S)He need to feel compassion, need to give a reason for the bad guys to come into his/her life. That it isn't their fault to be bad, but it's due to a life circumstances that caused them to be bad. If you don't believe it, let me ask you, why, when someone else drives at 160 km per hour, they're considered speeding, but when you drives at that speed, it's considered hurrying to the hospital where someone you love might be dying? Or why someone whom broke down on the bus, shouting at another passenger, is considered a person that their parents didn't teach them to behave well, but when you did it yourself, it's considered venting because you came back from a workplace where your boss pressured you to complete something that you know you certainly can't complete, and however you appeal, the boss insist that you finish it or else lose your job, and that if you lose your job you cannot feed your family and you don't want to lose your job but your boss is making it impossible for you to keep your job, and you try to keep it for yourself until someone on the bus suddenly triggered you and you could no longer hold it?

It had to do with depersonalization -- seeing others as NPCs rather than real characters that acts like you do, that're as complicated as you do, that feels as wide a range of emotions as you do, that did things for a reason, whether good or bad, just like you do. And the only reason you don't think them as so is because the news don't want you to think so, or perhaps people of the higher ups don't want you to think so. News are a weapon to sway emotions by depersonalizing the individuals, classifying them as groups, even if individuals don't fit into a group, even if that individual don't belong! The first thing that came into one's mind when someone said they had a lot of friends whom are Nigerian was the scam text messages that comes from Nigeria, as if all Nigerians are scammers. But what had that to do with Nigerians? Perhaps a company based in Nigeria hired a lot of people to use scam to earn money, one don't know, but it's certainly not the lowly inhabitants whom just live their life as you did, whom went through life's difficulty and harshness as you did, that had anything to do with it. But news omitted that, selectively report statistics that only includes the negative. Anything positive, being deemed as not worthy of reporting, is omitted. And hence you're subject to what Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called "availability bias." You know something (bad) so much that you thought it spreads to the rest of their live, that there's nothing else (the good) there.

The important thing about not depersonalizing is to look at each person as an individual, and be curious about them! Everyone had a stereotype that other people attached to their face, labeling them without asking for their permission. Tax collectors especially are scared to tell their friends they work as tax collectors, because it's a job that only bring shame to the family, and it risked them losing friends, because everyone whom want to preserve their wealth is against tax, rich or poor. And rich people whom want to make friends with the poor might want to be extra careful of what they wear and what they say, lest the poor, feeling a hatred toward the rich, or rather, a jealousy, might kicked him/her out of the group. But we have hope -- when we know someone deep enough, we tend to take away the stereotype from them, seeing them as it is. Or so one hope that's what happens. But alas, many people, brainwashed by the news, may have made up their mind that people in the bad classification would all be bad without ever coming into contact with them and knowing them better. Or they may, if work asks to, work with them, but because they suppress their hatred, they don't want to know them deeper, hence emanate hatred towards them, essentially making the workplace toxic. Only they can change their mind, and if they'd already made up their mind about something, unfortunately, it's a shame. They're a shame. But they may not feel ashamed.

Statistics don't say much either. They make everyone a number on the graph, or even just partially contributing to the number on the graph, ignoring that each and every one of us are unique, that classification are awkward. Have you ever answer an MCQ and found that you either belong to none or belong to a few, or something else entirely 'others'? That's the drawback of classifying people -- we don't behave black and white, but rather in grayscale, and different behavior thrives in different situations, so we act differently according to how we want to deal with them.

Back to the story. A story had to come to and end; and this is the end of this story. Perhaps in the future we may see again, one don't know. But one's not planning to do Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade X; they no longer appeal to one, nor salve one's soul anymore. The former one had played and replayed multiple times it numbed; the latter, it never salved one's soul, though one felt addicted to driving the skells (vehicle machinery) around planet Mira, but that's the gameplay, not the story. The story is good at best, but not emotionally demanding, not even when those died cannot be resurrected does one cry. Feels haunted instead. May we see again in future Xenoblade, if the creator had created new ones, or if it's another story, we'll see if it's worth one to recreate them in words. Hopefully by that time, one would have improve one's fictional writing that one could write better than one did now. In the meantime, enjoy. It's time to turn outside the dreams of fiction and back to reality, or if you'd like, jump to another fictitious story of your own creation. Farewell.