( 4 / 35 ) : Ambition, Acclaim And Popularity

In the previous two posts (2 and 3), the themes of Black Pencil and River Trap were explained. This post focuses on Aurora Fall again, and will describe my ambition regarding the project.

To illustrate the point best, I will start by saying that my ambition for Aurora Fall is not that other people like it, or even that I myself like it – my ambition is that people sooner or later envy me for creating it. The envy I aim for is not people envying any particular quality of my work or some measurable success. The envy I am looking for is envy that I have done something like this, and they haven’t yet. And while it’s true that I could also have worded that statement differently by saying that my ambition was that “people are inspired” by it, I still think the “envy” statement is better, because even though saying “I want you to envy me” has an arrogant feel to it, the line between envy, honesty and motivation is not only very thin, these terms in many ways and in many situations overlap.

I will explain this in more detail. Aurora Fall was always the one project I was hoping to make, the one project that would express everything I ever wanted to express, but (perhaps because of all this) also the one project that always seemed to remain in a planning stage. So I was happy enough to finally have the skills, clarity, contacts and equipment to do something like this and the mere ability to create Aurora Fall itself was in fact all the reason, motivation and purpose I needed to start working. What drove me all this time was the desire for my own self-expression in the purest sense.

However, I always felt I needed to release Aurora Fall publicly as well, much like the other Original 22 works. I never felt like it didn’t matter to me if no one ever saw it. But why? Wasn’t the personal motivation enough? It is, after all, the purest motivation possible, so I should not care about what others think of it, or even about sharing the work with them, it should be enough to have the fulfillment of creating it. But it isn’t, and that’s a problem which I believe is affecting almost everyone who does creative work. In most cases, you will have the inner motivation, the “personal” side of the project figured out. There are typically no great doubts as to why you are creating the work you are creating, or you simply don’t really think about why you are creating – you naturally follow your instinctive desire to make something. While the latter is not the most convenient approach for longer-running creation timelines, it works in most of the cases, and creators aren’t normally faced with self-doubts because of their inner motivation.

Critical acclaim and popularity

The self-doubts, the feeling of a loss of direction, the fear of embarrassment and many other negative feelings usually appear when the other side, the “public” aspect of creation is taken into consideration. What happens when I release the work, will others value it (critical acclaim), will it become widely known (popularity)? Judgments from others, negative reception, being seen as incompetent, a bad person or not sufficiently skilled are all those things that are subconsiously on the minds of even “thick skinned” artists, or those who seemingly have “nothing to prove” anymore, not least because as much as people may say the opinions of others don’t affect them, the only ones who are truly not affected by the society around them are, of course, sociopaths.

But back to the topic. The critical acclaim on one side and popularity on the other are considerations I have almost always encountered when being faced with “releasing to the public”, up to the point where it appears they are the main external success (and self-worth for the artist) determinants. They split up nicely, too. Critical acclaim for the qualitative side, popularity for the quantitiative side. So if renowned critics say positive things about my work, I have succeeded. If I have many site hits, downloads, and many people make derivative creations and lively discuss the work, I have succeeded as well. And it’s best, of course, if both are achieved at the same time, and even better if measurements of such a success compare favorably to the successes of those who I consider to be my “peers”, or – more likely – “competitors”. And that’s a good way of putting it, because even though when something is popular and fresh at the given moment, the artist usually doesn’t feel like competition is a factor when he is being engrossed by feeling his success and accomplishment. However, it starts to become a factor once the art work loses the immediacy and excitement of being new or popular (which inevitably, it does). Competition is always there when acclaim and popularity are involved.

Aurora Fall, then. While working on it, the above ambitions of critical acclaim and popularity came to my mind, as perhaps the “default” ambitions. They were, effectively, the only external ambitions I knew, and I didn’t want to be dishonest with myself – I therefore accepted that I do care about them, and examined how Aurora Fall looked at that time. Unfortunately for me, it was obvious, that looking at what people I was going to show it to liked, I wouldn’t be able to meet that ambition. I couldn’t see it getting much critical acclaim, and I couldn’t see it being very popular, not least because it was putting very little emphasis on characters and story, and I knew the visual aspect and style we went for with photographs was not going to be valued as highly as hand-drawn or computer generated imagery, yet, the people I was going to release it to liked a good story, relatable characters and nice visuals, preferrably hand-drawn in Japanese manga style.

I was (expectedly) frustrated by this finding, because I did have absolute confidence in the project. It was depressing to have to admit that other people will never value Aurora Fall at the same level that it fulfills my self-expression ambition. Of course, this is normal – and conventional wisdom says acclaim and popularity are not necessarily tied to the intensity of artistic expression, but still – releasing Aurora Fall and having someone say it’s “crap” and they didn’t like it… well, almost universally, people who like to have opinions about “how life works” will tell you it’s normal and that you can’t please everyone, and that you should just forget about things like that. But I don’t really buy that, because no matter how much you try to convince yourself that you don’t care, you really do, and dealing with negative opinions about you or your work is only being pragmatic – it doesn’t make the bad feeling go away, it either consciously pushes it back, or drowns it out, or it just gradually lets you forget it.

So I do care, and I tried a an almost formal thought experiment to see how this could work – in my (ultimate) scenario, everyone would need to actually like Aurora Fall, because otherwise the quantitative aspect couldn’t be achieved (based on the very same default ambition assumption that if one were to offer an artist more acclaim or more popularity, deep inside everyone would want it). I would need to have true statements from all people in the world that Aurora Fall is indeed the best work of art for them – but that’s not all. Not only would it have to be from all people, but those people couldn’t ever change their minds, and new people who would be born over time would also need to feel that it was their favorite. This would also include people who are in the same line of art medium (i.e. your competition), and, and, and… In fact, there were so many other factors, that unsurprisingly, all this ended in a ridiculous philosophical construct that merely proved that any ambition of popularity is only temporary, determined by how the times, values or numbers of fans (and people in the world) change.

It wasn’t a surprising revelation, and because I popularity is the opinion of many and critical acclaim is the opinion of one, I would arrive at the same conclusion if I did a similar thought experiment. It would end in absurdity, with the conclusion that critical acclaim and the associated topic of personal impact (which I would like to discuss separately at a later stage) is also temporary, and more dependent on circumstances. I did remember that some of my works have received positive feedback at the times they were released, and although they made me genuinely happy, down to the almost stereotypical feeling that knowing that I was able to reach at least one person, made the whole effort worthwhile, I came to realize that that joy and respect or praise from others while they are a source of my happiness a person, are not the source of my self-worth as an artist. This is because opinions and reactions from people – whether uplifting, motivational, life-changing – that they were saying “about the work” were in fact words they were saying about themselves. By making perceived objective statements about a work of art, the person making the statement is talking about how his personality reacted to the facts (the work). They are always biased, because their bias is in fact the objectivity of their personality. Therefore, if someone’s life was changed by my work, that can make me happy as a person – but it does not increase my work’s artistic value, and crucially does not fulfill me as an artist.

It doesn’t mean that I want to negate the concept of other people judging your work, because it’s a very useful mechanism. By popularity and critical acclaim by people who are seen as authorities, works of art are filtered and a “canon” is formed for the given era. The factors that contribute to the creation of the canon (as will be discussed in a separate article about personal impact) are not relevant for this discussion – the thing which is relevant is that no matter what the pool of the works of art in a given era, a canon would always be created. There would always be the few pieces everyone knows, and they would serve the same purpose – creating a symbol of the era, and with it a way for any individual to see their own uniqueness (by partially or fully disagreeing with the canon, or having reasons why they agree with it), so that it’s never the works themselves which have qualities, it’s the people who experience them who assign those qualities to them and we want to know from the people we like and care for about their opinions and reasons, not because we are interested in the work or a discussion of “what is truly the best” no matter how objective it feels, but because we are interested in the personality of those who have experienced the work and want to let the others know our own.

Negative opinions, then, are always hurtful, because they are (contrary to how they are often formulated) not objective, but subjective, as well as personal. And so I guess I had to come to terms with the idea of someone always being “better” than me, or at least of there being the possibility of that, meaning that any success I would achieve by measuring critical acclaim and popularity would be temporary at best. I am still willing to discuss with a specific audience the decisions I took with Aurora Fall – explaining why I used photographs, why I chose not to have any music, or why my “characters” are more than anything symbols and not people – exactly that which is the subject of quantifiable success (critical acclaim & popularity). But that is not my ambition. While working on Aurora Fall, I came to realize something that was much more fitting to what I wanted – not just for Aurora Fall, but retrospectively, for the entire Original 22.

The honesty of envy

To finally make my point about other people’s envy for me as my goal for Aurora Fall, I would use “being in love” as an illustration.

The thing is, when you are in love – and I mean really in love, when “all the songs make sense” – do you feel the need to compete with other couples who are in love? Not really. The reason is, being “in love” is an ultimate, complete feeling, that anyone can experience. It is not quantitative or qualitative. There is no “best kind of love”, and there is no such thing as it being better if you “loved longer”. You could have loved your whole life and yet the person who just loved a few days has felt the same depth of that feeling (I’m not talking about a possible resulting relationship and emotional attachment, only about “being in love”) as you did.

In this, all those who are actually in love feel the same, and I think instinctively the absolute nature of being in love is clear to those people, because if they see a different couple in love, they do not feel envious, they do not feel the need to compare or evaluate whether their love is more intensive or “better” than the other people’s love. In other words, if you are in love, you don’t envy others who are in love, because your own love fulfills you completely. If it comes to a relationship, things get more complicated, but talking purely about feeling love – there is one which is for all intents and purposes absolute and you know when you feel it.

Hence, envy as the feeling that points this out to those who don’t have it, as my goal. I would like those people who have not yet experienced the completion of finishing something which expresses them completely to experience it. I believe that those who have done so do feel the same way that I do. And before, I did feel that exact envy myself, on numerous occasions – there are works of art which made me feel envious in that I was not necessarily envying the art itself, how it looked, but the person who did it. Works that were special in that the artists did not feel proud of what they done with them – they felt affectionate, loving or attached to what they done, because that piece of art, regardless of reception was a materialized piece of their minds and feelings.

And if you happened to create something like this, Aurora Fall will remind you of it and it will feel close in spirit. You will not be envious, because your painting, your novel – whatever you created in that spirit – will not be “surpassed” by it. Quantifiable success is not my goal for Aurora Fall, and neither is it for all the Original 22. Once you create “your Aurora Fall and the Original 22″, you will know – despite the fact that now it may feel very pretentious to say something like that. But think back to love. It is the same, you may criticize the society, be angry at some couple or feel frustrated and vow to never be “like those people” and work out logically how pointless love is, but then, once you fall in love, all that will be gone, you will be at peace and your mind will not feel the need to justifty, compare or compete. Such is the nature of love, such is the nature of self-expression.

Hypocrisy and sour grapes

Of course, no matter what point you try to make, there is always some sort of derogatory phrase that can be used to invalidate your claim. In this case, I think if you wanted to undermine Aurora Fall’s external ambition (envy of others), you would most probably use the phrase “sour grapes”, which indicates that because I can’t have something (such as decent popularity) because of my own incompetence, I convince myself I didn’t want it in the first place, finding reasons why that is the case, to support my claim and make me feel better about my failure. In my case, I found some analogy and philosophy designed to protect my ego (avoiding art criticism, avoiding popularity votes), and so I am making the point that the aspect I am aiming for is not quantifiable. It’s not my aspiration to talk about the theory of arguments, but I did want to make it clear that I am aware of this particular popular one that can be applied to my goals described in this article.

I am not going to try to disprove that argument, or any others, because in the end, it’s all about trusting in the honesty of what I am writing, and by now you will probably have joined either camp. So expanding on the point I made a few paragraphs earlier, that I have felt envy, on numerous occasions with works which I did before the Original 22, or during the time I was working on them – well, I used to be good at one specific artistic craft, but despite fact I was better than most of my peers (as agreed by “critics” or simply reasonably competent people), what I was doing was not fulfilling to me. I liked doing it, but I could imagine a life without it as well. And then, I watched a person who was clearly worse at it than I was, but his enthusiasm and happiness was so apparent (because his personality was already a part of the way he performed the craft), that it left me feeling envious. I was better, more popular, but still I envied him. Even at that time, it felt like the most stereotypical anedcote you could tell, and yet it was the truth. It changed how I looked at art and made me start perceiving it as a means of self-expression, a long process which culminated in me identifying the Original 22 as such, and made me formulate and formalize the principles on which they have been (initially instinctively) built.

It’s the same way I feel about declaring that I want people to envy me. It feels like “sour grapes”, it sounds like “sour grapes”, and yet it isn’t “sour grapes”. It is the truth. And I guess it all boils down to how you will decide to judge Aurora Fall externally. If you judge it as entertainment, something made for others, then critical acclaim and popularity are a good way of assessing its success. However, it was meant to be a work of art, and that’s how it should be judged.

And how does that apply to the rest of the Original 22? Well, I started working on my first work, Black Pencil, in late 2003. I know now it represents “loneliness”, but I guess didn’t know it as clearly that at that time. It was only after I started making more works like that, that a pattern started to emerge. I realized that I found my artistic medium, an outlet for all that I wanted to materialize, and as I created more and more works, I was able to see what I did, and what I was still feeling I wanted to express. I started to arrange the works on my websites into groups (separating original works from participations or productions), forming what would later become the “Original 22″. Those were the works I felt I was close with, because they were all written and created by me and expressed certain “types” of feelings and moments that I was slowly realizing I wanted to have captured in their entirety. They are probably best explained as the “feelings or moments I care for“, because they are all recurring and every time I feel them, I am reminded of their importance to me. And the more time passed, the more clear it became to me, and the less I felt I needed to express. It all ends with Aurora Fall, but the truth is, I didn’t wake up one day and defined everything. It was a slow process, but one that sorted itself out because of one crucial thing – honesty. So even though I did not know before, and only formulated it so clearly now, I don’t feel it’s morally wrong at all.

Realizing what the entirety of the Original 22 means – my artistic self-expression – doesn’t mean that if I started working on Black Pencil today it wouldn’t look and feel different than in 2004. But its point was expressing loneliness and that’s what it did – therefore I don’t feel like it needs to be expressed again, through a different approach, merely to make it feel more connected to me and my personality at this particular moment. In other words, the Original 22 are final. They do not need to be changed, because they have already served their purpose.

Envy the person, not the work

It’s a particular kind of moment that I am after, when I formulate my ambition for Aurora Fall and the Original 22. I’m looking for the kind of moment of envy which I had described before when it happened to me. I don’t want to reach all people – I only want to (and only can) reach those who have not yet experienced this feeling of artistic fulfillment. The feeling that all you ever wanted to say, all that is dear to you and all that makes you who you are is somehow materialized through your work. Not your opinions, not your skills, but your “soul” – all that which you consider beautiful.

( 3 / 35 ) : River Trap

This time, the analysis of Original 22 works continues, explaining the second work, River Trap. Please note however, that the below text contains spoilers for River Trap (first section) and to other Original 22 works in the second “Connections to other Original 22 works” section.

Love

Of all the little moments that Shigeko and Akemi share in the course of River Trap‘s story, the one that is at the core of the work is the moment when Akemi realizes she forgot to buy rice and Shigeko suggests the two of them go back and buy it. It is an evidently wasteful trip, because they have just come from the shops and now need to go all the way back. The loss of time and the negative economy of such an action just to buy rice is apparent. Shigeko still insists, and finally the two of them go back to the shop.

We are going to buy some rice.
Because we have no rice at home.
That’s why.

There is no judgment in Shigeko’s thoughts, because he feels that this trip back must be performed regardless of any other external circumstances, specifically with Akemi, more specifically alone with her, as to also isolate people (like his sister) from situations which he feels should only exist and happen between him and Akemi. The penalties for this – such as having to endure a potentially socially embarrassing situation when negotiating this trip in front of a third person, or the plain economical disadvantage, representing subjective (in this case society) and objective (in this case money) drawbacks – is being disregarded whenever a situation occurs where being alone with the other person is needed by only one of the two.

That desire to share moments exclusive to them is the love that Shigeko and Akemi share. Akemi’s love is further explored in the construct of the story, where, unreciprocated, it’s reduced to a desire to be alone with the one she loves and having that person exclusively for herself, turning her feelings into the pure form of (romantic, loneliness-based) affection.

Connections to other Original 22 works

This is not the last time “love” would be featured prominently in the Original 22 works. The love in River Trap however, is the one that is “truest”, a love which discriminates everyone else and egoistically wants the object of one’s love to belong only to oneself, even at the expense of hurting other people, even those one that are close, even “oneself” (the soul-copied self, in River Trap‘s case).

The (emotionally) hurting oneself in River Trap in hurting one’s own copy when the AKEMI (spelled in capital letters for distinction) who is the “soul-duplicated” copy of Akemi in Shizuka’s body sets out to fight the “orginal” Akemi is a completely detached experience, purely moral, rather than emotional. This specific situation is later revisited in Anthridercynantide, where no emotion can be felt by either Isabella or Olivier, making their acts only retaining their moral and not emotional implications. In this work (Anthridercynantide) however, an epilogue to the idea that is most prominent in Ori, Ochi, Onoe. is present, where physical attraction and closeness creates a bond without love or any other emotion.

The love in Ori, Ochi, Onoe. is emotional, but not equal. Ochi’s bond to Yoshiyuki is dependent on his submission, because while he needs both physical attraction and emotional love, Ochi can only feel physical attraction. The difference between this situation and the one in Anthridercynantide is that Ori, who is Ochi’s alter ego, can give Yoshiyuki fulfillment, since she embodies the emotional love that is missing in Ochi, and Yoshiyuki knows that this love therefore “exists” within Ochi, who is the dominant alter ego.

In Transfer Teacher, the love between Han and Lai is the same kind of love Shigeko and Akemi have, but it is only shown as the reason for their happiness (happiness being the main theme), while in The Morane Crisis, the same kind of love is acting as a counterbalance to the philosophical implications of the non-existence of quantification-oriented purpose.

Finally, there is another form of “love”, a philosophical kind, which can be found in two other works.

In Gakuen Redux, the protagonist Azasuke is writing a philosophical work in which he is inevitably drawn to the conclusion that love is not permanent (which he interprets as that love doesn’t truly exist). He feels uncomfortable accepting this finding and therefore asks his teacher to change the topic of his work. Originally, the plan for this work was that Azasuke discusses and comes to terms with this, however the topic of the non-existence of love and the consequences could not, I felt, be resolved in the Gakuen Redux setting. As it was tied to beauty and its destruction, the theme is a part of Aurora Fall.

In Aurora Fall, love is separated between the physical relationship and the philosophical – there is never a deep relationship between Adrian and one of the women, there is never the selfishness of Akemi and Shigeko, or the happiness of Lai and Han, or the strength of Marie and Angus. The relationship between the woman representing “fear” and Adrian in Aurora Fall is never love, nor is any other relationship, not even with the woman representing “humanity”. This is because of the destruction of beauty, and the fact that egoistic love cannot exist without beauty.

( 2 / 35 ) : Black Pencil

In the last post, I introduced the concept of the blog, the idea of the Original 22 as well as giving an overview of Aurora Fall. What was promised was an analysis of the themes present in each of the Original 22 works, in single posts. This is the first of such posts, explaining the first work, Black Pencil. Please note however, that the below text contains spoilers for Black Pencil (first section) and for other Original 22 works in the second “Connections to other Original 22 works” section.

Loneliness

Because a kiss is normally the culmination of two people getting closer and closer as time goes on, it may be that the first kiss of Yuki and Kiyoshi will be seen in that romantic context. It’s the middle of the night, they are in an empty building, confined to the small space of a stuck elevator. They have met during their night shifts, and that accidental situation moves their relationship to a stage where they are more comfortable with one another and willing to share their first intimate moment – a kiss. This starts the formation of a relationship, their connection deepening with every subsequent day.

But the connection that Yuki and Kiyoshi have at the time they kiss is deeper than what they would normally have developed by being together the way they have since they first got to know each other. And this connection isn’t based on the fact that Kiyoshi has nightmares where Yuki dies and thus feels closer to her. The connection – the reason why their kiss felt to them not just as a romantic climax, but also as something more – is a realization. It’s the realization of both of them, that for as long as they can remember, until that kiss, they have not been aware that all that time they have been lonely.

The scene in the elevator, the heart of Black Pencil, exists to make them aware of it. It brings together two lonely people, puts them in a people-less environment (the company at night), into a situation where they are alone with no one but themselves (being in an elevator), and with time virtually stopping (stuck and waiting for an indeterminate amount of time). Yuki and Kiyoshi are still lonely, because they don’t yet have a true, full relationship, yet they are now also alone together, which makes them realize their loneliness. They are now feeling not just their own, but also the other one’s loneliness.

I let her come to me.
She touches me.
Rests her head on me.
She must be dead tired.
I lean on the elevator wall, because I am dizzy again.
Yuki…
I am… lonely too…

It’s the physical nature of a first kiss that expresses feelings, which for the first time is able to make them realize and understand that what has been hidden from them by their mind. The situation itself – being stuck in an elevator – is not romantic by itself, it is the awareess of their own and the other one’s loneliness that creates the romance of that moment. And after their bond becomes clear and conscious to them, it will, with time, grow into love, and love within a relationship. And when they are finally together, the romance of Yuki and Kiyoshi will always be the subconscious fear of losing the other one and being alone again.

The story goes on to ultimately allow Kiyoshi to save Yuki from her fate he saw in his dreams, if they form a deeper relationship which makes them aware of the source of their romance (symbolized by two “together” decisions and one “lonely” decision). This means you, as the player, need to be “mean” to Yuki once, otherwise a romantic relationship will not happen. This appears to be a paradox, since the one you like should always be treated nicely. But the story’s choices aren’t there to be logical – they are there to be symbolic, because Black Pencil does not exist to tell the tale of a mistyped year. It exists to express the romance of loneliness.

Connections to other Original 22 works

Loneliness would become a recurring theme in other Original 22 works as well. Almost all of the main protagonists in the other works are noticeably lonely, not least because of the implication in all but one of the Original 22, that none of the protagonists or the people featured significantly in their stories (such as romantic pursuits) were ever in a relationship or love before their interactions with said people.

Possibly the most intensive cases can be seen in Embraced By Green, when Yumiko and Etsuya decide for the first time to spend time together outside of work and both of them at that moment are being made aware of the way they both live. Loneliness is also at the centre of the “company party” scene in Ori, Ochi, Onoe., in the way that Onoe expresses her discomfort with all other people, save for the protagonist, Yoshiyuki. And although many more scenes or moments like that could be found in the Original 22 works, it is only in Black Pencil where loneliness is the true theme, the feeling that is was meant to express with its existence.

Apart from this, there is also one relevant element, pertaining to the way the game is structured. You influence the relationship of Kiyoshi and Yuki through a series of choices. To get to the “good ending”, you need to give one negative response and two positive ones (their point described earlier). Finally however, the last choice should always be “happiness” over “love”, a prelude to the point of Transfer Teacher (which is a work that has “happiness” as its main theme) and to the philosophical implications of Gakuen Redux for Aurora Fall (both of which through their characters have variations of the situation where a proof of the non-existence of love is deemed too de-stabilizing for the psyche and thus either ignored in favor of other feelings (Gakuen Redux), or expressed through someone who is not the protagonist (Aurora Fall).

( 1 / 35 ) : Introductions are in order

My name is mikey and I have been creating visual novels since 2004. So far, I have I have produced 3 visual novels, participated in the making of 3 more, and have translated 3 others as well.

My main work however were 21 original works, which I have created and released with the help of other people many of which I can now consider my friends.

To these 21 original works now comes the 22nd, called Aurora Fall, after which this blog is named.

This is my last original work, and will complete the “Original 22″, which, in visual novel / game form, are expressing everything that I have ever wanted to express.

Why a blog, why only 35 posts

This blog will attempt to not only prepare you (the potential reader / player) for Aurora Fall, but also give you an insight into the Original 22, what they express and how the themes they portray link to one another. In themselves, all of the Original 22 works were created to be single works, meaning for a single work’s purpose to be understood, you only need to read said work – and not all of the Original 22. However, there are some connections and elements which appear in multiple works, and identifying them will make more understandable the entire scope of the Original 22′s themes, and what they are portraying.

This blog, then, will first and foremost include the philosophies with which the Original 22 were created, with most emphasis on Aurora Fall, as that is the work that contains the most of them. In addition to this, any remaining philosophies about the art form and expressions will be discussed. Think of this as something of a guide – to Aurora Fall, but also to the entire Original 22, how to appreciate them and the entire concept of artistic self-expression (one of the reasons that this blog intends to have a finite number of posts, 35).

Not a dev blog

Because most project-related blogs are “development blogs” where challenges with creative processes are explored from a human / artist’s perspective, or “promotion blogs” which build up expectations and demand by releasing partial information or previews, it’s important to know that this blog isn’t any of those. The purpose of our blog is not to record the stages of art creation, or to discuss art creation itself – it’s an explanation of something that is already existing. The Aurora Fall blog is therefore intended for those people who want to understand, rather than those who want to be informed or updated.

Why spoilers

Because of its nature, this blog will contain many “spoilers” for all the Original 22 works. It is my belief that having spoilers for Aurora Fall will not be detrimental to your experience, in fact I encourage anyone who wants to experience Aurora Fall to read this blog, which will then be made part of Aurora Fall‘s “readme” file, before you start with Aurora Fall. As for articles about other Original 22 works (they will come with a separate spoiler warning and always be single blog posts), you can choose not to read them if you plan on reading / playing them at a later date. The majority of the Original 22 works do de-emphasize the story, so chances are it is not going to ruin your experience with them to read the spoilers anyway. If you do not want to see any spoilers for the Original 22 whatsoever (not even for Aurora Fall), do not read further – and do not read any future posts on this blog at all.

Welcome to Aurora Fall

Now, a few words about Aurora Fall.

Aurora Fall is my biggest creative project to date, one that I have been wanting to create for more than 15 years now and one that has evolved and changed over the four years that it is in the making. It uses the Ren’Py engine and employs static pictures and words to convey its theme – which may lead to the conclusion that, like most of the Original 22 before it, it is a visual novel.

Except, it isn’t. And I will try my best to explain why this is the case, with the limited number of posts (this being the first of 35) that I now have left.

But back to the introduction. All of the Original 22 works have had a theme, something that they expressed. It was loneliness, love, inspiration, affection, expectation… and many more, all of which will be discussed in in the scope of the 34 remaining posts. Aurora Fall, as the last project, aims to express “beauty”.

My plan is that people spend more than 10 hours engaged with Aurora Fall. This will probably not be the maximum time that will be possible to spend experiencing everything in the work, but I think that 10 hours should be enough so that the theme can be expressed. In other words, one needs not to “finish” the game to experience the theme being expressed. This is one of the reasons why I feel Aurora Fall is not a visual novel in the traditional sense.

To support the argument, I will also point out that not all of the time will be spent reading, because partly the time will be spent by going through (let’s call them) “filler segments”, tedious and repetitive clicking tasks that have no underlying purpose to them.

There is more, though. The words that will be read on the screen aren’t part of anything I’d personally classify as a narrative, or plot, in the “storytelling” sense of the word. They simply describe things that happen, and not even I, as the author, am interested in “how it ends”. Hence, Aurora Fall does not have an ending – instead it emphasizes its “segments”. Because the story is not the point.

With that out of the way, it’s not all completely plot-free. There is some framework to the situations and moments that happen, most prominently it is the “aurora fall”, a disaster that kills all men of the world (a world which is fictional, though more or less equivalent to present-day Europe). All of the events are presented from the perspective of the protagonist Adrian Ilianu, one of only a handful of men who survived, in a society which is inevitably facing extinction. Depicted will be mainly his interactions with five specific women, and once again, on the face of it, it looks like these are the “characters” of the story. But they aren’t, because their personalities (opinions and moods) are – for all intents and purposes – never shown.

It isn’t all this clear-cut, and you could argue about semantics, but the idea is, if all this sounds very boring, it’s because it should. Aurora Fall, for most people (including me) should not be exciting or entertaining, it should not be something you “can’t wait to get your hands on”. It should be something you challenge yourself to, it should be something that you don’t necessarily like, yet the philosophy of which should inspire you to try to do something with a qualitatively similar approach for yourself – be it music, text, or any other form of artistic expression.

This is, however already getting into the ambition of Aurora Fall, which will be the subject of another post.

Meanwhile, thank you for reading and see you next time.