#tot analysis

曾是我 寄身在黑暗中 Ceng shi wo ji shen zai hei’an zhong I used to be stuck in the dark 走尽夜路也盼有灯属于我 zou jin ye lu ye pan you deng shuyu wo Walking the night path with a lamp/light of mine 是否等候我的窗将有微光涌动 shifou denghou wo de chuang jiang you wei guang yong dong Whether a (soft) light shimmers through my windows 绽放成你 温热在我手 zhanfang cheng ni wen re zai wo shou Gently blooms into you in my hands

你是未定的希望 ni shi weiding de xiwang You're the undetermined hope 却是注定的光芒 que shi zhuding de guangmang Yet the fated light 照引我的心 zhao yin wo de xin Light up my heart 到黑夜退去 dao heiye tuiqu Retreat into the night

愿我也能温暖你 yuan wo ye neng wennuan ni Hope that I can also warm you up 走向未定的真相 zouxiang weiding de zhenxiang Walking towards the undetermined truth 解除命运的捆绑 jiechu mingyun de kunbang Untie the restraints of life's path 无所畏惧和你相倚 wu suo weiju he ni xiang yi Fearlessly lean on eachother with you

在余生每个黎明 zai yusheng mei ge liming At dawn, for the rest of our lives 你是谜 封锁住我眼眸 ni shi mi fengsuo zhu wo yan mou You're the riddle that locked my eyes shut 你是意义占据我所思所有 ni shi yiyi zhanju wo suo si suoyou You're the reason occupying all my thoughts 你是未定的美好我开始猜不透 ni shi weiding di meihao wo kaishi cai bu tou You're the indetermined perfection that I can't figure out

现在我才懂 为何萦梦 xianzai wo cai dong weihe ying meng Only now have I realized why we dream 你是未定的希望 ni shi weiding de xiwang You're the undetermined hope 却是注定的光芒 que shi zhuding de guangmang Yet the fated light 照引我的心 zhao yin wo de xin Light up my heart

走向未定的真相 zouxiang weiding de zhenxiang Walking towards the undetermined truth 解除命运的捆绑 jiechu mingyun de kunbang Untie the restraints of life's path 无所畏惧和你相倚 wu suo weiju he ni xiang yi Fearlessly lean on eachother with you 在余生每个黎明 zai yusheng mei ge liming At dawn, for the rest of our lives

已注定 yi zhuding Already fated

你是未定的希望 ni shi weiding de xiwang You're the undetermined hope

却是注定的光芒 que shi zhuding de guangmang Yet the fated light 照引我的心 zhao yin wo de xin Light up my heart 到黑夜退去 dao heiye tuiqu Retreat into the night 愿我也能温暖你 yuan wo ye neng wen nuan ni Hope that I can also warm you up

走向未定的真相 zouxiang weiding de zhenxiang Walking towards the undetermined truth 解除命运的捆绑 jiechu mingyun de kunbang Untie the restraints of life's path 无所畏惧和你相倚 wu suo weiju he ni xiang yi Fearlessly lean on eachother with you 在余生每个黎明 zai yusheng mei ge liming At dawn, for the rest of our lives 已注定 yi zhuding Already fated

NOTES:

绽放 specifically means the opening of the flower petals when a flower blooms Also MC is very flower-coded (rosa) So i thought that was a nice detail

Now the "warming up" specifically means the type of comforting warmth that campfires or torches will give you on a cold dark night

解除 (untie) could possibly be a reference to how the NXX investigation gets more and more complicated, with an overwhelming amount of cases practically "tangled up" in eachother, so you're slowly picking it apart one by one with the team (aka your soulmates)

Also I specifically used "lifes path" for 命运 because that phrase is only used to talk about the course of a persons life, aka the events/path that life has laid down for you (your canon events, if you will)

意义 means like, the significance, meaning or reason/motivation behind someone's actions, but idk how to translate that

黎明 was hard to translate, cause it can mean both dawn and dusk, or any time of day (altho dawn and dusk are the most used, hehe crepusculum and diluculum) but it basically mean that the two relies on eachother every single day for the rest of their lives

Background

I found the Big Data Lab entry for the poem in Luke’s proposal card, which I had previously translated as “Going Home After the Holidays” and was unable to find the source for. Here’s the BDL entry + my translation of it.

《节庆后回家》，是由德国诗人赫尔曼，黑塞于1913年创作的诗歌，收录于诗集《孤独者的音乐》中，1914年由海尔布隆Eugen Salzer出版社出版。 原文写作“但要么至善要么至恶——可怜的灵魂恰恰喜好，或是痛苦，或是欢乐——因为它只为燃烧而燃烧。夏彦母亲在引用时，进行了略微的修改。

“Going Home After Festivities” is a poem written in 1913 by the German poet Hermann Hesse. It was included in his collection of poems titled “Songs of the Lonely”, published in 1914 by the Heilbronn publisher Eugen Salzer. The original text reads, “[the four lines of the poem which comprise the last stanza]”. When Luke’s mother quoted it, she made some slight changes.

I’ll get to the actual content of those four lines soon, but that last stanza is what appears in the game and reappears for the BDL entry. It seems to use the translation by Lin Ke (林克) that appears in Herman Hesse Selected Poems (黑塞诗选), published 2017 by Sichuan People’s Publishing House (四川人民出版社). Although the BDL entry states that Luke’s mother changed it, the only difference I saw in what appeared in the card story was the omission of “But” at the start of where she quotes.

Translation

You can find the original German text here, along with an English translation “The way home after celebration” by Sharon Krebs and a French translation by Pierre Mathé). Below is the last stanza in English:

The poor soul wishes to cherish

Only the most evil and the best,

Be they agonies, be they celebrations --

For [the soul] glows for the sake of glowing.

@enheduanna-bfv also found the German version of the poem, and would translate the title as "On the way home from a feast".

And finally, here’s the Chinese translation that seems to be the same version used in the game, alongside my translation of it (possibly influenced by Krebs’s). Please note that differences in translation could be due to different interpretations or errors at any step of translation, especially my own.

节庆后回家 Going Home After Festivities

又一个节日响成了碎片， Yet another holiday splinters with a sound.

恐惧令人窒息，我蹒跚 In suffocating fear, I stagger

走过冰雪覆盖的农田，across the frozen-over farmlands,

害怕再也回不到家园。fearing I can never return home again.

 你呀，缘于痛苦的沉醉，You, the intoxication that comes from pain –

喜乐的杯盏破碎之后，After the joyful cup shatters,

我愿在心里，我情愿将你 In my heart, I’m willing to

当成半是欢喜来承受。endure you as a half-joy.

 但要么至善要么至恶—— But the greatest good, or greatest evil  –

可怜的灵魂恰恰喜好，it’s just what the sorry soul is after.

或是痛苦，或是欢乐—— Whether suffering, or celebration  –

因为它只为燃烧而燃烧。because it burns for the sake of burning.”

As a note, my original translation was:

“The greatest good, or greatest evil – it’s just what sorry souls are after. Whether pain, or pleasure – because it burns for the sake of burning.”

Taking the cue from Krebs’s translation, I changed the “sorry soul” to singular, so it can connect more explicitly with the last line (the “it” in the last line would also refer back to the soul). I also changed the pain/pleasure word pair since it didn’t evoke quite the right dichotomy, and suffering/celebration at least let me keep the alliteration I used to reflect the parallelism of the line in Chinese.

Discussion

I think it’s pretty striking how the title evokes such warmth with the idea of home and celebration, then completely subverts that with its opening stanza – the celebration ends violently, and the poem paints a wretched, despairing picture of someone in the mindset of fear and anxiety. The tone of the rest of the poem is never quite as bleak, but even at best it’s a bittersweet one where pain is always on the other side of the coin.

There are a few ways I find this poem quite fitting for Luke’s engagement card. The first I thought of was that the more somber tone belied by the innocent title was like the experience of reading the story. Instead of the engagement being the happy occasion that we’d expect, Luke shows us the grave that the bought for himself. We’re faced with Luke’s mortality and fears and resignation in a way that we’ve never been before; instead of a pure celebration, it’s something that’s in pieces and bittersweet.

Rosa is indisputably “home” to Luke, and with that in mind, the narrator’s desperation in their journey back home seems emotional enough to describe how Luke must feel about Rosa.

For the second stanza, I’ll try to base it on Krebs’s translation since it makes more sense with the rest of the poem. The narrator declares that they would rather carry the pain with them than the “half-hearted joy” that remains when the “cup of bliss” shatters. Luke certainly intended to choose pain instead of allowing himself what happiness he could have, but I also think he ended up compromising many times for that half-joy, in the many compromises he makes himself when it comes to Rosa: be part of the family, but don’t ever cause them trouble; reunite with Rosa, but don’t ask for anything more; officially be with Rosa, but don’t let yourself take the next step. Luke may not align perfectly with the main message of this stanza, but the ideas here are similar to his mentalities that were explored in the card story.

“To The Nightingale” by John Milton

full poem text here

This is the poem that MC posts on her online profile to attract the PUA mentor, Wayne (Story 2-10). MC couldn’t think of anything, so she just posted a poem that Kiki had showed her earlier.

I’m... uh.... not great at original literary analysis of older poems, so I’m just gonna link this analysis here that I’m basing my discussion on, and honestly I think everything mentioned fits extremely well for Vyn and MC. The poem presents the contrast between the nightingale, the bird of love, and the cuckoo, the bird of hate, and the speaker wishes that the nightingale will win in the end. With their wildly different personalities, MC and Vyn consistently have opposites as a theme in their stories: yin and yang in “Cool Summer”, light and dark and “Between Good and Evil", optimism vs pessimism in viewing human nature (”Blazing Colors”), and another poem that Vyn quotes in the main story (thanks to @salt-and-vynegar for pointing it out).

The end of the poem also slightly reminds me of Vyn and MC’s relationship. The nightingale sings later than the poet would like, but poet is still willing to serve as Muse or Love for it. Vyn has long been in love with MC but has been waiting patiently for MC to realize and decide on her own feelings, and is ready to accept her answer either way. (Though there’s a difference in that Vyn is much more content with waiting than the speaker of the poem is.)

One last thing about this poem that I saved for the end since it’s a nice transition to the next one: hope.

(Story 1-5) When Vyn explains the common PUA trap and how it’s a form of twisted manipulation under the guise of love, he says this about what actual love is:

Love brings light and hope into your life. Love lifts you up.

The poet proclaims that the nightingale’s song fills the lover’s heart with hope, and pleads that it sing before the cuckoo’s song can “[f]oretell [his] hopeless doom”. MC has brought optimism and hope into Vyn’s life, and over their relationship, her positivity has given him a new perspective on painful subjects such as his past.

“Seeing You Carry Plants In” by Robert Bly

(the tot wiki Big Data Lab entry says that this is unlocked in Story 1-05, but I don’t have this entry and I checked the story and I’m not sure if it shows up in that part? so idk, but the poem is interesting for our purposes so I’m going forward with this.)

[EDIT: turns out this poem is unlocked in Story 3-15. i’m just going to leave my analysis here because i think the poem is extremely fitting even for the earlier chapters of the personal story.]

full text here (thanks salt-and-vynegar for the link! originally i used this link)

So, there’s the obvious “plants = vyn’s garden” haha. But this poem also has to do with hope, though maybe it’s a bit meta since it’s not directly from the poem text? Many people posting the Chinese translation of this poem use a non-literal translation of the title, calling it “你手捧希望而来” which is something more like “You Come, Holding Hope in Your Hands”. Honestly, I’m not sure why it was translated this way because the translation of the poem content is otherwise quite direct, and the literal title seems fine, but I think it’s worth mentioning since this version of the poem title possibly reflects how Chinese readers interpret this poem.

Going through the middle of the poem,

The night is moist, and nourishing as your mind that lets everything around you live. I saw you carry the plants inside tonight over the grass, to save them from the cold.

The second stanza of the poem describes the kindness and positive effect of the “you” in the poem; MC’s compassion is something that Vyn frequently admires and is struck by, even if he sometimes considers those receiving it to be unworthy.

Sometimes I slip behind a door, so that I will not be called on, or walk hunched on sandbars below earth, not sure if anyone in my family can love.

Uh.... need I explain more? Vyn's cautiousness with the possibility of “love at first sight” stems from having personally seen the failure of this kind of love between his own parents, and he has a complicated relationship with his father and what seems to be a very distant relationship with his mother.

How much I love you. The night is moist. The air is still, as when I love you. It is not every evening that I love you. I come back like the stars, sometimes out of clouds.

[...]

Your voice is water open beneath stars, collected from abundant rain, gone to low places. The night is moist, the ground wet, air still, trees silent, and tonight I love you.

Finally, a comparison of the first and last stanzas of the poem, where we circle back to nighttime scenery and “I love you”. The speaker of the poem doesn’t love her “every evening”, and I would say this would be untrue of Vyn, who is completely enamored with MC every time he sees her. However, I think the overall journey of this poem fits Vyn’s journey through the first two chapters of his personal story very well.