IN BRIEF (probably not very brief, really)

So! Mau's heart! It was pretty small, mainly because I was worried I'd be incredibly slow and overwhelmed, but I think it went okay. I HAD A LOT OF FUN. I hope other people did too.

I want to start this babble with a relevant quote from canon:

"The wave took away his soul, but he has made himself a new one," she said.
"Wrong! No man can make a soul!" But he's worried, Daphne thought.
"This one did. He made it outside himself. You are walking on it," she said. "And don't try to shuffle sideways. It covers the whole island, every leaf and pebble!"
~~Terry Pratchett, Nation

Now, Pratchett definitely has a thing for making his character's psyches into landscapes that are irrevocably bound up with their homes, but as far as I can remember without actually looking anything up, this is the only time that someone's whole soul as been described as the outside physical landscape without also exploring the inner landscape. I have gone ahead to assume that there is an inner landscape, though, because I would rather play Mau as being eventually able to decide that, even worlds away, he carries his home and people with him than as an empty shell who gradually gets crushed by not being where he belongs! Because that would get very boring. Which gave me the goal -- release the part of Mau who knows he holds the Nation, no matter where he goes.

Anyway, at least in terms of the overall landscape of Mau's heart, the choice had pretty much been made for me -- it had to be the Nation. His island defines who he is and what he is. It's his soul, and as much a part of him as he is a part of it.

But then I guess on the other hand, he only remembers fourteen things from it and has been hanging out in this totally different world for two months, making new memories and connections. So there's that. In the end, his heart was structured around the Nation, but with big blank broken spots, a few things in completely wrong places, and bits of Aather shoved in. The most important thing in his True Heart was the Nation intact, though, because I think he must carry it all, even if he doesn't remember it. As he remembers more, the structure of his overall heart will be modified to include more of the Nation, more accurately, although undoubtably there will still be some way to access aspects of Aather.

So this is what happened, and what some things were that I feel like explaining:

The Beach (Start Area)
You find yourself on the white sand beach of a quiet lagoon, under a canopy of stars. The moon is almost full, and high in the sky. The lagoon is bordered by a coral reef, and even in the darkness you can make out the white surf breaking against it from the sea beyond. A dark spot shows where there is a gap in the reef, through which the current pours. Little blue hermit crabs scuttle across the sand, but there are no shells in sight.

Further up the beach, well beyond the high tide line, is a cabin that looks just like Sapphire's. The fence and shed are there, and a fire is burning brightly in the firepit. You can make out shapes moving around the fire -- is something sitting there? Beyond the cabin, there are a few fields, and beyond that jungle rises up to a mountain peak -- not so distant, it looms above you.

Nothing really got changed in this area. A few things of note:

- It was night because a lot of Mau's heart isn't "awake" yet, as it were. His self awareness and self identity in particular are "asleep." The moon brightened when the explorers chose directions because any exploring or decision, even imposed from the outside, increased Mau's sense of purpose and self slightly -- which allowed people to actually see where they were going.

- The little blue hermit crabs are a canon symbol of Mau's desire for knowledge, his curiosity and refusal to accept easy lies or poor explanations. (I'm paraphrasing.) It's a symbol he's already internalized from a couple of memories, and from the fact that he has a tattoo of one on his wrist, so they mean exactly the same thing in his heart. I was really entertained that Excel was thinking about eating them -- the results would have been hilarious.

The Lagoon
water of the lagoon is clear and calm. Fish swim by in schools. There is a big white stone, a perfect milky cube, lying on the bottom. A horse is carved on the side facing up.

The water swirls out through the gap in the reef.

The lagoon is basically a bridge area before the Dark Current. There was some high-effort low-reward stuff you could do with the big stone, but nobody did, although Wako moved it around a little. And then she and Lenalee both swam out through the gap in the reef, to the Dark Current:
When you swim through the gap in the reef, the water becomes dark and drags you under. You hear a voice, whispering to you how easy it would be to just let the water carry you away, beyond pain, beyond caring. Broken silver threads stream through the water. A tricorn hat is sinking slowly, just below you.

This is the area of despair, more or less. It's where death lives -- the reason it wasn't a giant doom sink was that even when Mau is pretty suicidal, he'll always fight for somebody else's life, so he'd never let what is basically the current of his suicidal thoughts drown somebody else, even subconsciously. Hence, rescue dolphins, who represented Mal, Allen and Excel, if anybody's curious -- the people he feels he can count on and sees as family more than team. The Mal and Allen dolphins were the ones to carry Lenalee and Wako down to the edge of death's city. The Excel dolphin chilled on the surface and guarded the hat (which was Mau's leadership ability as he perceives it).

The Mau who was running to the city down there was the fragment of his thoughts that is always trying to fight death, and always trying to fight despair, but is so totally turned around by struggling that he's doing it all wrong -- by bringing him (and the hat) up to the surface, Lenalee and Wako greatly increased his ability to fight despair by living life to the fullest rather than trying to think his way out of it and end up getting mired down in circular thoughts, as well as his willingness to take charge if he needs to. I really didn't expect anyone to get down that far -- it was supposed to be locked -- but then Lenalee asked the dolphins and I decided that made perfect sense.

Now for the on land part!

Outside Sapphire
Sapphire's cooking pot is just to the side of it, and something smells delicious. The shapes you could see before are four dogs, lying around the fire -- one is soft furred and off-white, another is an extremely friendly puppy, somewhat like a yellow lab but not as solidly built, the third is an intelligent-looking short-haired mutt with a ring around one eye, and the last looks like some kind of racing breed, of a grey that's almost blue. There are bowls and metal spoons laid out beside the stew.

The dogs, in the order they were described, are Naoya, Tamaki, Hakkai and Judith. They really shouldn't have looked like any recognizable breed, but whatever. These are all people that Mau primarily identifies as being Sapphire -- also, they are people he wants to protect, and people he has affection for but doesn't feel he knows very well. Hakkai might not be in this group, but Mau's protective feelings towards him shot up when Dream took him away, plus he's an original member of Sapphire and isn't around, so he's been relegated to Sapphire puppy status. The metal spoons are Mau's memory of Parker, but they don't do anything.

The stew, in addition to being a memory you could view by eating it, was representative of Mau's desire to care for his people (in Aather and the Nation), and eating it slightly reinforces this desire. Feeding it to the Sapphire puppies increased the desire as it pertains to his team. The stew is essentially bottomless if you try to eat it, although you can screw him up a lot by tipping it out onto the fire, since that would empty the pot and put out the fire that is Mau's ability to be useful to his team, as he perceives it.

Inside Sapphire
It looks just like the inside of the real Sapphire cabin -- neat and tidy -- except that a multitude of weapons hangs from the wall. There are mainly spears, but also clubs, a sword and a few old fashioned pistols. Also, instead of food in the food preparation area, there are maps and charts, including a map of Aather and a sea chart dotted with tiny island chains.

The entire cabin is an area of new ideas and discoveries, memories and protectiveness. Opening some of the books that were in the cabinet or picking up the sea chart would have shown memories. The weapons were various aspects of what Mau is willing to do to protect what he sees as his -- or just what he sees as needing protection.

The Fog
You find yourself wandering into a fog. The air is damp and cold and tastes like ash. Dim, jagged shapes stand out of the fog around you, but recede into nothing if you try to investigate them. There is a distant sound of sobbing.

This was the area you would have found anywhere you went off the written paths. Everything in Mau that is still blank, either because he doesn't remember it or because it hasn't developed yet is in here. Parts of Mau that he represses or is heavily disconnected from are hidden here, and can be changed. The young Mau that Excel found is more or less Mau's ability to grieve and be traumatized like a normal human being -- his coping mechanisms got a little damaged by the fact that she brought him into the developed heart, but apparently he will now cope by trying to hug Naoya, as Excel also gave young Mau the Naoya dog to stop him crying. Because the True Heart was opened, this was more a healthy thing than a problem, though -- Mau's ability to grieve and be traumatized melded with the rest of him, rather than running around wreaking havoc on the landscape as soon as Excel led him out of the fog.

The Fields
The fields look like a bigger version of Sapphire's corner of the vegetable patch. They're sown with blueberries, corn, potatoes, yams, kale, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes and strawberries. Most of the plants are small, just seedlings, really -- a few are bigger and in flower, but nothing bears fruit.

Directly in your path is a white stone, a perfect milky cube, about a foot and a half in all dimensions. One side has a set of calipers carved into it. There is a steel crowbar resting on top. Beyond the fields, you can see a path leading into the jungle.

This was another bridge area without much to interact with -- in general it represents the fact that Mau is in a state of growth and repair. The god stone here was technically moveable, but very heavy. Mau remembers that the god stones had religious significance to his people -- they were supposed to anchor the gods to one spot -- but he also remembers they didn't work. The stone is out of place in the middle of the field -- it's the weight of his frustration at senseless tradition, his own ignorance, and people's apparent love of being stupid. The crowbar is related to this; Mau loves tools, but he gets really frustrated when he doesn't know how they work or how they're made, and he doesn't have any knowledge of smithing. So the crowbar, placed on what is essentially the altar of his grumpy incomprehension, is a symbol of both his eagerness to learn new things and change, and his feelings of being unable to do so. Just taking the crowbar off the stone frees up his ability for learning and self-discovery. Actually using it to open the True Heart does so exponentially more.

The Women's Place
There are gardens and a grass hut. Birds sing, and the air is scented with flowers. The sun is warm, but a light breeze blows. It's very peaceful here.

Nothing grows apart from a few flowering bushes, but there are vegetable seeds and a hoe. It looks like something has torn up the ground where the garden was growing before -- trampled plants cover part of the ground. A yellow and white bird, very small, with a high chirping song, flutters down to you.

This is a downright weird area that seems fairly bare and inconsequential, but has a lot going on. You could change things here, but you would have to be really creative about it, and nobody did. This place represents things that are safe and healthy, and either growing or fully developed in Mau, but that he rarely thinks about, is irrationally scared of, is superstitious about or are so sacred as to be untouchable. The most precious things from his childhood are here, hiding -- the garden is in disrepair because big parts of his childhood are either incomplete memories or damaged by trauma. All his hormones and heterosexuality and crushes are also up there somewhere. It's always sunny up here, because this is all stuff Mau is pretty hyperaware of, he just tries to ignore it.

In addition to the yellow and white bird, there was a green and black bird. CAN ANYBODY GUESS WHO THE BIRDS WERE? I will give you a pretend cookie as a prize.

The Grandfather's Cave
You reach a high meadow, from which you can look down at the jungle and the sea. At the end of the meadows is a round stone door up against a cliff. There's a track for the stone to roll in, but it's huge and looks very heavy. The air is hot and a stiff breeze pushes it around.

The gateway to the true heart! The idea behind the Grandfather's Cave is that, at this stage of remembering things, Mau isn't allowed to open it himself -- he wouldn't, if he somehow ended up walking around in his own heart, and also he couldn't. There's no way for him to access this really solid place of self awareness and self confidence and belonging on his own at this stage of development. Also, one person shouldn't be able to do it alone. It should take at least two (and in this case three) outsiders, with the steel crowbar, to shift the stone.

And when it does open, you get…

The True Heart
For a moment, you're in pitch blackness. Then stars shine out in the dark above and around you. The sound of crashing surf fills the air. Light comes, first grey, then a pink glow on a far horizon. You're standing on a beach again, and as the sun rises, a figure rises also, out of the sea. As the silhouette comes closer, you can see that it's Mau, wearing only a loincloth, dripping wet and holding something cupped in both hands.

He comes closer and holds it out, and you can see -- it's an island and the sea around it. It doesn't matter that it's tiny, if it is tiny… you can see every leaf and pebble, every path, the people moving on it… everything. It's like a little jewelled world. It's perfect.

So this is just a clusterfuck of really obvious symbolism. THE SUN RISES! Shockingly it rises everywhere else on the island at the same time (except the foggy places), because now that the true heart is open, Mau's self awareness increases! MAU IS IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT. He's holding the Nation! WHAT COULD THIS MEAN? Well, folks, it means that he now has access to the deep-seated knowledge that he carries his home with him wherever he goes. So who is the Mau that's doing the holding?

It's the one who says, as canon puts it:

"Are you totally stupid, Mau? It was the new voice, and it said: I'm you, Mau, I'm just you. You will not die. You will win, if you pay attention!" (~~Terry Pratchett, Nation)


tl;dr, people went through Mau's heart and systematically flicked on every zen switch available, Excel made Naoya into one of his coping mechanisms for grief and Josh touched his hormones without actually doing anything to them.

THE END now ask me questions if there's anything I forgot.

Now I just have to catch up on memories 8D 8D