Creating a myth, and the reality of love.

These are the days, the end complete
A world still turning to the sound of the suffering
You are the jury, we are the saints

Our minds divide, the past repeats
A war still brewing in the hearts of those we once bled
I am the knowing...the living dead
-- Coheed and Cambria, "The End Complete"

I have been thinking lately about Anthegenia, Sophia and Lonan.

The whole concept of Anthegenia was born from the B&B RP, which I consider one of my biggest screwups as an ST. :x Actually, I'm a screwup as an ST in general, because my anxiety fucks me up SO badly. I've looked at how I run when I'm not anxious and I think it's actually ok, even good. But when I am, every post is a struggle. :/

But anyway, Anthegenia -- inspired, as I've mentioned before, by Avenberry, the legendary city of alchemists in Atelier Iris -- is one of the few things that came out of B&B that I still like. The name is taken from Greek (anthe-, flower; geneia, genesis) and was originally Sophia's surname (still is, except it was affixed posthumously. Quite possibly, her name may not even have been 'Sophia' in life, as in "present time" it is used more as a title, a name for a woman of great wisdom and grace.) As an Exalted concept, it is the ancient home of Sophia and Lonan, Alexsei and Ryshassa's First Age selves, a floating city of exemplary learning and beauty.

In B&B it's established that a great deal of Anthegenia is designed by the Eminent Weaver, Thalia, the city's most prominent master crafter and a close friend to Sophia. (Thalia is the First Age incarnation of Kraken's B&B char, Amethyst Brilliance. I'm debating whether she will be in the non-Exalted version of Anthegenia, as it will be something I may very well publish, whether as a short story or a novel or a campaign setting or song lyrics or a screenplay or a game. It's really up to Kraken himself, of course. I just mention it because I've always had an attachment to Amy, and that lets me get carried away at times. :D) It's not a coincidence I've been taking names from Greek, including Greek mythology; Anthegenia itself is styled to evoke the feel of ancient Greece, mixed with the grandeur of fantasy. It's not meant to be realistic, but it evokes that feeling that the prominent citizens of Anthegenia -- those who created its arts, taught its wisdom, wrote its laws and ruled its people -- were akin to gods. But not so much the perfect, omniscient sort of God you see in Christianity. More like the gods of the Greek pantheon, or perhaps the Norse, who wielded great and fabulous powers, but were far from perfect, a god-sized reflection of human nature.

In Exalted, of course, the Solars of the First Age were very much like what I described. Solars even in the Second Age are still quite powerful, but in the Age of Sorrows they are the hunted ones, and have lost a great deal of their knowledge in the Usurpation and the devastation of the Contagion. In the First Age, though, the Solars as they are remembered have an almost mythic quality to them. They had access to charms, artifacts and sorceries that are difficult, if not impossible to duplicate in the Second. Of course, a lot of their 'myth' is exaggerated, or perhaps even fabricated, but it was long enough ago that those of the Second Age would hardly know the difference. And some of it was true: they created new races, they built grand manses and fabulous artifacts, and -- as the Great Curse undermined their Virtues -- their wars and petty arguments wreaked havoc on the kingdoms they ruled.

So Anthegenia's history is not something 'unique' I believe I've created. Of course not. I don't even want it to seem unique, which may sound like an odd thing to say. What I want is for the story of Anthegenia, and that of Sophia and Lonan in particular, to possess a 'familiarity' to it similar to what we feel when we read a Greek myth or a Norse myth or a Chinese myth. These are stories of the gods, or godlike beings, yet they depict some fundamental aspect of human nature, human emotions, human wants and needs. But because those feelings and wants belong to beings with amazing powers of creation and destruction, their impact on the world and people around them is multiplied manifold.

Now, I'll confess -- the story of Sophia and Lonan is, at the core, a love story. It is a story important to Jon and myself, a representation of our view of the world and ourselves through the lens of myth. Whether we choose to share it or not, no matter what medium we choose to express it through, that core will never change.

Love is a powerful emotion, and one that many people feel is overdone and overused in the media. People will look at what Jon and I share, and think it unrealistic or stifling. Well, love is not the same for everyone. Every person has their own ideal of what romantic love is for them, and that ideal can be affected or changed altogether by experience. Enough negative experience turns a person into a cynic mistrusting of love, or a bitter individual burned by love yet yearning to be liberated from loneliness. They'll say it's impossible for them to have a relationship where they can truly be themselves, where they can truly trust others to respect them and their needs.

Besides that, Jon and I do not have a 'perfect' relationship. We disagree sometimes. We argue, sometimes about stupid things. We've threatened to leave each other before. Once, it came true. We've tried things that should've been enjoyable but only ended in strife (the B&B RP is one of those things, incidentally.) There have been terrible things between us that even I, for all my candidness, hesitate to admit on this journal. For each time I am thankful that Jon is in my life, there's a time where I resent him, disrespect him, tell him harsh words and even lie when I feel guilty about something. There is a dark side to love. It is not always a happy and uplifting feeling.

Sometimes, you must suffer for it. But there is a difference between accepting abuse (which is not love at all) and standing WITH your lover while he or she suffers. Sometimes there are truths about your lover that you must accept even if it hurts at first, because loving someone involves accepting every aspect of them, even the difficult ones. Sometimes you must go through great lengths to convince your lover they are participating in an activity destructive to them, even if they end up despising you in the process. Sometimes, love is not returned, and that can be the most painful realization of all. But to force someone else to love you, or to change themselves for your sake rather than theirs, is not an expression of love -- it is only selfishness.

And I can be a very selfish person. Depression, anxiety, these are things that make me selfish, because it makes me afraid. I expect people to abuse me, mistreat me, ridicule me, take advantage of me. So I instinctively lash out, or I demand to be recompensed for my suffering, or I simply shut off and disappear. Sometimes it's against people who deserve it, but when I react in this way even to those who have done nothing to me, that is a sign of paranoia: I cannot tell the difference between those who mean me harm and those who do not.

Yet I still believe I can love, and that I am loved. When I say something hurtful to Jon, even without meaning it, I always apologize afterward. When I am calm, I try to explain my feelings, and I listen to what he has to say. I am a person of many faults, but I believe he will forgive me, because I trust him. And he believes that I did not mean to hurt him -- that I want to become a better person who is NOT ruled by her depression -- because he trusts me. If there were no trust at all between us, our married life would not only be full of arguments and accusations at the first sign of stress, but those arguments and accusations will never truly be resolved into a mutual understanding. As a result, our respective resentment will fester inside ourselves, unchecked and unexpressed, and the outward relationship will become a lie, or die from this lack of love.

This was quite a bit of a tangent, but what I am trying to say is that I have no illusions that romantic love is some ideal and perfect emotion to aspire to. It takes work and dedication to maintain, and through it, you will witness both the best and the worst of a person. To embrace both of these while respecting one another, and to trust your lover will do the same, is what devotion means to me. And it is something that I have failed at before, more than once. But I try again and again, because I have decided that is what I want with life, and because I believe that Jon is the only person I want to give that to in my lifetime.

And, if they exist, in lifetimes to come.

Sophia and Lonan's story is a love story, as I've said, but it is also a tragedy. For Sophia's love for Lonan is eclipsed only by her life's work -- to promote peace in the power-mad years of Anthegenia's imminent end, the "Anthegenian Twilight." In the Exalted version, these would be the years just prior to the Usurpation that topples the Solars from their once-glorious rulership of Creation. But such a tale can just as well be conveyed without the Exalted flavor, for it is just one of many stories and histories written throughout time about the fall of a great kingdom, the damnation of a great empire. From the mythos of Atlantis to the reality of Rome, it has been done and written before. So I'm not trying to create anything new. I'm only creating my version of what has already been depicted countless times, set apart only by my personal flavor and the emphases I choose to make.

In the twilight of Anthegenia, Sophia's efforts to unite her colleagues -- driven by a near-obsessive sense of purpose that leads her to overestimate the impact of her words on others -- ultimately leads to her death. She is killed by those whom she wishes to convince not to fight, those for whom her efforts would have made the most difference in averting Anthegenia's fall. Lonan, who not only believed in her cause, but cared for her as a student and a lover, was stricken with a potent mix of grief for her loss and wrath for those who killed the woman who bravely, if naively, represented peace in a time of conflict. It was not merely those who held the weapons that took her life that he despised. It was those who allowed themselves to become so drunk with ambition and accomplishment that the war that embroiled Anthegenia became uncontrollable, and escalated into chaos. It was all of those who represented the opposite of what Sophia wished to achieve.

And thus driven, Lonan himself became an instrument of destruction. Lonan himself gave up on the peace that Sophia dreamt of. With the blade known as Swan Song, he sought out and cut down those he labeled the 'betrayers', who put their own personal gain above creating a harmonious Anthegenia. He knew that Sophia, had she seen him this way, would have wept for it. For Lonan, in doing so, gave up that part of his soul that loved Sophia purely. But even that thought was too late to stop what he had become. He became a cold-hearted killer, motivated by his desire to avenge the lover that the world took from him, the one woman that wished no harm to anyone except herself.

When his task was done, there was no Anthegenia left to call home. He left behind him a bloody trail of murders, his personal record as judge, jury and executioner. And Lonan the Unforgiving, the Bringer of Swift Death, disappeared into the unknown. Some say he killed himself, believing himself to be the final betrayer. Some say he became a god in the true sense of the word, or perhaps a devil -- and still, through the actions of those chosen by his will, punishes those who would betray the pure-hearted.

And what of Sophia? Perhaps her spirit lingered, and she wept for him as he stalked his prey day and night, his face masked in quiet sorrow and tightly controlled rage. But her love for him has never died, despite knowing he committed those sins in her name. Her deepest desire ever since has been to be reunited with him again, to forgive him and make her lover broken by grief whole once more. The love between Sophia and Lonan is a link that endures throughout time, as they are reborn again and again in the world that remains after Anthegenia is long reduced to ruin, as they rediscover each other and the love they shared, and learn from the tragedy that befell them.

I've long been a fan of stories that involve reincarnation, rebirth and cyclic events. It started with Breath of Fire, of course, and Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, both of which exhibit a theme of such things (the recurrent characters of Ryu and Nina, for example, as well as IDD's Jane and her lover, whom she meets four -- five? -- times in different forms throughout her life.) I do not doubt that the Wheel of Time series appealed to me for a similar reason. And eventually I became a fan of White Wolf's Exalted, in which reincarnation is not only a belief, it's a real aspect of that world. Not only that, but Celestial Exalted are, in many cases, able to retain memories or at the very least encounter the achievements, failures, belongings and relationships of their past lives. Inserting Ryshassa and Alexsei into the Exalted world ultimately led Jon and I to link the idea of reincarnated lives and destined lovers with two of our favorite avatar characters. And that, in turn, led to the conception of Sophia and Lonan, their mythic first incarnations in the twilight of a golden age.

I call them "mythic" not only because they reputably wielded great power (Sophia, according to the legends of Anthegenia, was the greatest healer of her time, and Lonan was the deadly hunter of betrayers, slayer of the mightiest of Anthegenian warlords) but because they represent the extremes of human emotions. Sophia is a woman who loved to a fault, who wished to heal all of humanity at her own expense. Lonan, too, loved to a fault, but his love was for Sophia foremost, and her death led him to discard his own beliefs in a peaceful future for the cold sting of revenge. In doing so, he became an incarnation of Death itself, a man better suited for endings than love. Still, a trace of that love endured, in the guilt that overcame him with every killing, in the belief that Sophia watched over him and disapproved of his every move.

I have a feeling that most people would identify more with Lonan than Sophia, simply because the desire for vengeance, particularly in the name of a loved one, is something that humans often feel. The love that Sophia felt, though -- her love for the people of Anthegenia and her desire for everlasting peace -- seems like an unrealistic dream. In this way, Lonan is the representation of cold hard reality, and Sophia is the unattainable ideal. Yet Sophia herself is inspired by someone very real. That person is me. I truly wish that people could govern themselves wisely, and deal with their disagreements in a civilized and intelligent manner, and concentrate what energy they put in conflict to creating things that benefit humankind and the planet. The difference between Sophia and me is that I understand that this cannot be a reality. It's an impossible task to make every one of the billions of people in this world happy, what with limited resources and opportunities, differences in faith and opinion, and so on. And too much agreement would only lead to a stagnant world, where everyone's wants and desires are perfectly uniform.

The key, I believe, is balance. Sophia and Lonan represent two different extremes, and together, their seperate outlooks on life create a harmonious whole. There are times when people ought to cooperate and believe in working out their differences, and there are times when the differences are too great to simply forgive and forget. There is a time when the blade must be drawn, to defend what you truly believe. There is also a time when you must realize the sacrifice is too great, and simply walk away. And there is a time when you are the one who is wrong, and must be capable of asking for forgiveness, or giving it when it is asked of you. Somewhere in between Sophia's overflowing compassion and Lonan's unforgiving blade exists the best way one can aspire to live.

Whether one manages to achieve it... is a story all its own.

Dig deeper, remember
All that you've ever been and all you've left behind
Wave goodbye, my dear
-- Coheed and Cambria, "The End Complete"