Just finished roughly organizing the Stage 2 story and about to start working on events. The attached footage shows Lotus One (兀蓮), a network security system. I created it as a motif of a metal lotus floating on the sea, but since the sea is positioned above, the lotus appears upside down, transforming its silhouette into something monster-like – the complete opposite image, which I liked.
Lotus One was originally 兀然 (Ol-Yeon), meaning “standing alone with dignity.” But when I decided to use the lotus motif, I noticed the Chinese character for lotus (蓮) had the same pronunciation as “yeon” in Ol-Yeon, so it became 兀蓮. Same pronunciation as Ol-Yeon (originally Ol-Lyeon, but let’s just say it’s the same as Ol-Yeon), but now meaning “a lotus standing alone and upright.” The English name also changed from simply “Ol-Yeon” to “Lotus One” (not Lotus 123). It ended up fitting well with the story content too.
I didn’t even know the character 兀 before – I happened to see this Chinese character that looked similar to pi, and since its meaning was good, I ended up using it. Even creating the threshold feels like something that drifted away from my original intention. Beyond is the virtual world where most people live, so it should be bustling with people and more similar to reality, which would be difficult and boring for me to create alone. So I conceived the Threshold as a cache-like virtual space, but due to spoilers I can’t say much – though story-wise, the necessary space and reasons naturally attached themselves to it.
Looking at how all these elements came together, even though I created them, there are so many meaningful coincidences that it doesn’t feel like I made them. I increasingly feel like I’m just fishing things out from the back of my mind and bringing them into reality. I once read somewhere about someone dismissing this kind of experience as nonsense, which I found fascinating. Maybe they’ve had many experiences of their own experiences being denied or not understood.