We're All Human

A Supplemental Afterword

WaH was published just short of two years ago. It didn't feel like my story, at the time. It felt like something divine and from on high that rang through me like a bell. I wrote it, I sat around and tried to figure it out, I wrote what I could find out in the previous afterword, and I called it a day.

Mostly. WaH's been sounding through me ever since, I think. It gave me something religion-shaped, for starters. More importantly than that, WaH is how I dealt with having been in a cult. I won't really go into that story because, like I said, that's a closed book. But when I wrote this? Or, the me I was writing this about, at least? That was Glass. The sad kid, growing up and growing wrong and a monster setting his hooks in. Atai was everyone who tried to help. Everyone who, in the end, did help. Everyone who loved me enough, and who could see, and who wanted me to be me, and not a shadowy imitation of the tower of light.

And it payed off, I think. I'm Atai now. At least, that's who I'm becoming. I know too well the black self-eating snake that lives in the back of your head, but I'm trying, and... that's what Atai does best, and that's what I want to do best too.

I reread WaH probably about once every three months or so. Call me egotistical, but like I said, it never really felt like something I wrote. Yet.

As time went on, I realized that there was something wrong with the narrative. That the themes I was trying to get across, as much as I said them (this is a spiritual, I'm allowed to do that), weren't really woven into the words of the novella proper. I didn't really have any ideas for how to fix that, so I just let it sit, and when people whose opinions I valued told me it was good I kind of blushingly insisted that no, actually, it needs SO MUCH WORK.

Then something strange happened.

There was a girl I loved more than I loved myself, I think. She showed me wonderful things and she taught me new ways to think and she held me as I sobbed and fought at invisible monsters, as I learned how to deal with my body and how to face difficult truths--

And then she vanished. I haven't spoken to her in over a month and she is missing from me. I know she's alive. I know nothing else besides.

The astute among you might recognize this as Glass and Atai. It took me a while to do the same. 

And so I realized that there was still something left for Atai to teach me, if I'd let her. But I had to fix the story, first. 

And I found, quite unexpectedly, what was missing from the story. It was Panpan. From the original afterword:

Panpan. An interesting element. Panpan's sole purpose in this story was giving the impression of a larger world, and on giving the "relying on strangers" theme just a tiny bit more reinforcement. She's a bit character in this book, but who's to say what she'll become?

Yeah, who.

Most of Panpan's lines in this draft are stolen from Ringo, who is ultimately a fairly uninspiring guy. But there's a big block at the end of "Routing and Updating", previously the weakest chapter, that's all new. Panpan is a lot like Atai (who isn't?). She's, I think, a truer expression of what I was trying to say with Ringo: she's Atai, but she's afraid. I gave her a far less pathetic ending line because she, someday it is certain, will have Atai's strength and nobility.

Speaking of which, I added a new running line. "Never lose that strength and nobility". This is a line from Revolutionary Girl Utena, my new great fictional love. The girl I'm missing showed that to me, and so you see should the world fall around my ears I could not hate her. It seemed fitting to describe that... inner thing, that Atai has, and that all the characters have in greater and lesser parts. It also seemed fitting to infuse this with a spark of something I love, and with something that girl gave to me, that's part of me now.

So, that's the story, and I think it shines through now, how Atai's thinking changes over the course of the story. Moving the catalyst for her enlightenment from the man in Paris to her fight with Panpan is just... so much better, honestly.

That's the story, and yet you'll see that I added a new chapter. Glass is mostly a distinct vignette but, you know, whatever, it gets to go in here. Saves me cover design.

This is, pretty explicitly, me grappling with losing the girl. Not really the whole thing, but uh.

>Was she just a gateway

>Were you hurting in a way I couldn't tell?

>Glass

>I'm sorry and I forgive you.

Gee, I wonder where that came from.

It's indulgent but fuck it, art is indulgent. Holistically the artistic merit of this matters a little less than being able to move on from a yawning sucking heartache.

Yet. I think it's also important to humanize Atai. She became a Messiah at the end. But what I tried to show with a halfhearted "it was about Glass" I show much better in the vignette. Atai was scared. She only managed to limp through this, to stay strong and to find peace and to save the world, because of what Glass was to her. 

And I finally stop waffling around between whether Atai was in love with Glass and just fucking did it. I was waffling largely because a) I'm too gay for heterosexuals and b) ace representation is good (but we have Mud for that).

Then I noticed this quote in ">Hey"

  She and Vlad were opposed in so many ways, but they were so close, too-- Atai, at times, found herself growing jealous, wishing she could share herself as freely others as Nadeshiko with Vlad.  

Wow Atai, that doesn't seem very ace to me.

So anyway, Atai was in love with Glass, but he was also part of her found family, and honestly that's the more important relationship. I want to make it clear that Atai didn't do this out of romantic love. She did this for the person who saved her family, who adopted himself into it when they needed him. And she did this for the rest of her family, who were hurt trying to help her. And she did this for the girl she couldn't stand for all the wrong reasons. And she did this for the world, the whole world, to have a chance to build a life, because every life is a bright and precious shining thing, all the more beautiful for its distance and its secrets and surprises.

Thank you for reading.