glorious | 𝄞 Memory 17: Significant Neutral

Deciding on the replica plan

Earned: Day 142, afternoon from Three's imaginarium game
Taken: Day 147 Afternoon
Shareable: n/a
Form: A small, blank, flat square of rice paper.

Content note: Suicidal idealization

The Memory Itself
Translation from hidden-currents; the Famitsu PS2 interview. It's an awkward translation (that I tried to brush up and gave up on) but it gets the overall point across.

The point that sparked the Replica Scheme

Miyajima: The key that caused Van to carry out his Replica scheme was to find out Hod will be destroyed on the Seventh Fonstone found in the underground of Hod. Although there are times that Van did want to overwrite the Score written on the Seventh Fonstone, this isn't the major thing that caused him to commit something like this. Yet, knowing that in reality, the people and the land of Hod are about to be abandoned, and the fact that people in Yulia City don't care about the future of this planet. For that [the fact that people of Yulia City don't give a damn], he was convinced that people are poisoned by the Score and they can no longer be saved. As one of the descendants of the Fende family, he knows better than anyone how the Score will fulfill itself. Because of that, he theorized and concluded that as long as the originals are still living on this world, the Score will be fulfilled. He planned to commit suicide with the Six God-Generals after the plan succeeded. Which is why he tried to get Tear and Guy, these two important people, on his side to share the precious moments with him. He truly believes that with his own hands, he can let them die a painless death. To a certain extent, it's a special feeling that Van has for them. It's just as Tear left Yulia City as his enemy, and Guy became Luke's comrade. This is really painful for Van because he neither wants to kill them sooner than he had planned, nor to see them die a painful death. From this point of view, I guess I could understand why he took such an extreme approach to this matter.

Miyajima: However, if one were to say that Van loses all the humane in being a human, that isn't true. Not only did he protect Tear with his life in Yulia City, but also planted the selenia flowers for his sister who likes cute things. Before he came into contact with the technique of fomicry, he spent a lot of time thinking about Tear's future.

THAT TRANSLATION IS A MESS. But the memory itself for Van will be worrying for Tear's future, frustrated at how no-one cares, then learning of fomicry and having that moment of hope...And then, with despair in his heart, realizes that the best he could offer Tear was a painless death. This memory will not have knowledge of the Final Score, but he'll still have the strong feeling that he and Tear didn't have a future.

And from what little I can gather from the timeline, he decides on this around 15/16-ish.

What Van learns:

♪ He decided on his plan as a teenager. At that age he had lost all hope for the world.
♪ There was no future for Tear -- or himself for that matter.
♪ If his plan was to succeed, he would have had to kill Guy -- his former lord -- with his own hands.
♪ And then his only sister, Tear.
♪ And then, finally, he would take his own life.

What this means:

...Know the phrase "two steps forward, one step back"? Van's development in Aather may be more accurately described as "one step forward, two steps back". He's had a lot of talks about the value of life and of living and the possibility of having a future and this will probably shake that a bit, if he decides to go into lock-down mode.

Alternatively, he will flip the fuck out.

One of the two.