#(well an asura is mentioned at least)

[wyldblunt]

updated the character list in my pinned with art/caps, at least for the chars i have them on hand for...! it makes the list.... super long and scroll-heavy now lmfao but still better than just a wall of text imo

[valfromonline]

Theidelisa-Vallewellyn, "Val"

1325AE - Durmand Priory

“With respect, Magister, this extends well beyond recklessness. You can’t expect us to just watch while you condemn yourself to certain death for the chance it’ll produce a useful result.”

Scholar Myrra was a patient one, Val mused. She had to have been, to have deigned to join the Priory’s ranks at the bottom, despite her ability. The basis for the Asura’s attachment to her she didn’t quite understand, but it was certainly being brought to the fore now. Not quite the right time or place, in her readied ritual circle.

“I’m not expecting you to watch, Myrra. In fact I’d prefer it if you didn't.” Val’s voice came calm, with the warm comfort of a mentor. Serene, despite everything. “It’s not likely to be pleasant viewing.”

“Lockwood’s already looking into a talisman to hold the spell. Deldrimor craft. That’s bound to work.” Then she added, with emphasis: “Without killing you?”

“Magic of this maleficence cannot be tamed by any object, no matter how well-wrought. Without attended control, it would pose catastrophic risk to any around it, its bearer especially. And if it fell into the wrong hands…” She trailed off. “In any case, the decision has been made. This is my Hunt.”

The Asura opened her mouth to argue - though weeks of this back-and-forth had already led to this point. The ritual was already on the cusp of completion, with no small commitment of resources and irreplaceable relics already drawn and depleted in preparation.

“We shall call this spell Theidelisa-Vallewellyn’s Agony.” Val said simply. “Let this now be the first and final time it is ever cast.”

-

As it ripped into her bark and seared itself into her soul, the malicious magic took root, carving and fanning out in furious lines of rot. The scars drew themselves in perfect symmetry across her features; the mark of Death’s very design.

And even with her every safeguard to arrest it into stasis, the pain persisted. It bled through, in never-ending, sanity-testing waves. But it would become familiar in time. An acceptable cost, for this edge against the endless armies of the Elder Dragons: through necromantic contagion, Val would be able to infinitely bestow this horror in its original potency.

At least, until such time as it claimed her.

[nikikikiko]

hello it is 3 am today we talk about kid’s humanity and how it is vital to him being the way he is mainly by comparing him to the other two shinigami we see in the series. if u expect a coherent structure my excuse is that it IS in fact 3 am and i just woke up from my slumber

but Kid is a character who is mainly defined by three things:

1. He has a huge amount of skill and power alone

2. It is typically overshadowed by his need for perfection

3. He is human. He is also Lord Death’s son.

now, one of these holds seemingly conflicting traits: how can Kid be human if he’s Lord Death’s son? Well, he’s not. He says as much. He’s not human and he’s very easily able to identify this fact. So, how IS he human? How can something inhuman become human?

This , listeners in my walls, has an answer that can be considered very simple:

Lord Death INTENDED for Kid to be human. He intended for humanity to become an integral part of Kid.

At the time of Lord Death’s creation, we understand that inhumanity is needed to deal with immediate threats while humanity is still trying to thrive. This is showcased to us by how Lord Death creates Asura, deals with the Witches, and overall eliminates threats. He’s quick, decisive, and seemingly without any regret. Lord Death does what is best for humanity with a stern hand because that is his purpose initially: to be a present god for humanity, to light the way. Now a god is not, and never will be, human in the ways that they need to be. Especially in Soul Eater where almost all depiction of a god or god like character have them be inhuman in some shape or form. Eibon, Excalibur, the Great Old one of Power, and even Asura have appearances that can be considered monstrous: they are not human.

Speaking of Asura, I would like to call Asura a case of incomplete humanity in the wrong era. Asura is the embodiment of Lord Death’s fears culminated into a person, he did not grow up with a childhood, he simply just was. This, as everyone knows, has had a very negative effect on Asura and led to him becoming paranoid and yearning for power. He is an incomplete human who’s not quite god in the way Lord Death or Excalibur are, but not quite human either. But since he’s not quite human, Asura easily falls into morally wrong temptations to achieve power that would take some or most people at least a few more days of contemplation, and he does so without a drop of guilt or remorse. Can you imagine the absolute betrayal Vajra must have felt in their last moments? The horror and dread? The sadness that this is who Asura is? That it only gets Worse?

Now I mentioned Asura’s incomplete humanity but what exactly does that mean? In my opinion, Asura has some mechanics of a human— the shape to be exact and the general self preservation instincts of one. But where he fails at being human is how he operates. His own paranoia and fear drove him to madness yes but he acts in a way that feels logical to HIM. He does what feels best for himself in incomprehensible wonderland noise, the same way that Lord Death does what feels best for humanity. And because they are gods, they are correct at the time even if they are wrong eventually. Asura, despite having human-esque things about him, is no different than the other gods that walk among the soul eater world.

So how does this all tie back into Kid? Well, Kid is the reverse of Asura. Kid, rather than being an incomplete human, was made to be an incomplete GOD. Intentionally so, since it was the most logical thing to do to keep another Asura from happening. Lord Death created Kid to be an heir but he didn’t want Kid to become Asura 2.0 somehow, so he figured out that reversing the way Asura operated would do the trick. Instead of creating an incomplete human, he would make an incomplete god and that is the Kid we start out with in the manga.

This allows Kid to be human and a god at the same time, allowing him to learn humanity and understand it in ways Asura and Lord Death really just /can’t/. They CAN’T understand it, they simply just aren’t able to. Kid acts emotionally, he takes logical routes yes but he’s very emotional too. He can be impulsive, reckless, everything a human is expected to be. He has a drive to protect humans not because he simply should but because he has walked among them. Kid is friends with and cherishes so many humans, he finds the good in even criminals and that, in a new age where Humanity no longer needs immediate protection of it’s present god, is necessary now.

Kid can create peaceful solutions in place where Lord Death, who can only ever ensure the survival of humanity in a direct way, cannot. He can change and react and evolve in ways Asura cannot. He is human, and the two other shinigami are not. Not to mention, Kid is extremely indulgent in smaller human behaviors: we are shown time and time again that Kid has hobbies he has put time into like skateboarding and he will not hesitate to simply engage in his hobbies, but in comparison, we’re not really shown the hobbies of the other god characters. We don’t even know what Lord Death even does for fun, even though we know what Spirit does for fun.

But Kid’s also not human, and there’s no dissonance created either in this because he simply was made to be human. He knows he’s not human, he admits as much constantly, but he’s not broken up about it. He doesn’t feel disconnected from being a shinigami or from being human, he is both and he is what he is. He is what he was made to be, and his humanity is vital to make him who he is. Without that humanity, we’d most likely be left with something similar to what Kid became under the influence of the Madness of Power: a god determined to make the world into perfect nothingness.

But uh, this is all a 3am ramble ? so. take it with grains of salt LMAOO

[ratasum]

I'd mentioned earlier having this on repeat while thinking about Kippa getting to meet Soo Won ever so briefly for the first time and it's so intense.

(This is in relation to why Kippa's water attunement is so powerful, so it's a good starting point.)

Anyway.

When they visit the reactor for the first time, Kippa feels something tugging her. Like a string wrapped around the core of her being, pulling her away from the group and deeper into the facility. No one notices initially, but she slips through partly undetected, partly using her magic and the influence of the thing guiding her to avoid detection by the guards.

And then she finds herself face to face with Soo Won. Or as close as she can get, at least. Standing where Ankka will eventually arrive, staring up at her, heart racing. She can feel the well of magic swelling up inside her, like violently boiling water threatening to overflow from a too full pot.

This is the source of her magic. Soo Won has known her since before she was born. She's known Soo Won, even if she didn't know her, since she was old enough to understand her own magic.

Had Ankka not intervened here, it's very likely Kippa would've been overridden to be a Herald of Soo Won instead of an Oracle of Aurene.

It is worth noting that when Ankka acts, it's the first time in a long time Kippa acts in violence towards someone, attempting to use lightning against the other asura.

Later, when Soo Won dies, there's a profound sadness, heavy in her in a way that's as difficult to explain as the sense of the pull that drew her to Soo Won. For the longest time, there had always been a soft voice in her, something distant but warm and comfortable. And for a brief breath of a moment, she was close enough to touch the source. She could hear Soo Won's voice, in her head, in her heart.

She was whole, for that brief moment, and she was elated.

But then she was gone. And here is Aurene, tired but complete. Sure, she can feel Soo Won's presence within her, but it's different now. Like hearing soft music from deep underwater. She randomly bursts into tears for weeks after. She can't explain to anyone why this is happening, but it hurts so much.

When Aurene leaves, she can still feel her, but this is drastically different. Losing Soo Won is profoundly isolating.

It takes her a while to become comfortable with that emptiness.

[thekingofwinterblog]

You have the most based takes on the Soul Eater series ever dude. The catharsis I felt when someone described exactly why I was irked with the ending, Maka's characterization later down the line, and several other plot points was amazing.

Ever since you mentioned how compelling the theme of bravery and fear is in the anime ending I've been thinking about it nonstop. I feel like bravery could also tie in with Maka's characterization in the manga with Soul and Spirit, in which she gains the courage to put trust in them (Soul in not abandoning her no matter what and Spirit in wielding him as a weapon confidently despite her grievances with him). Additionally, I feel it would've been an amazing payoff if she also INSPIRES courage to others, especially Crona.

Black*Star wanted to transcend the gods, so what bars Crona from having the courage to want a better life and free themself in the manga ending? Of course, they will face consequences, but that shouldn't stop them from wanting to be happy.

Going from your point in your previous post of how the climax of the story doesn't hinge on Soul much: Perhaps by Maka inspiring courage in Soul with his issues, he will in turn help her in inspiring courage in Crona to fight back. Hell, why not get the others to join in? While kinda corny, it ties into how friendship and camaraderie can help get someone out of a dark place (I'm kinda imagining it like the Homulily fight in Madoka Magica rebellion).

Whilst I'm here, could I ask for your thoughts on Maka's mom? Personally, I think she was very underutilized as a character but I'm curious as to your thoughts on her.

Also, do you think the phrase "A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body" that's constantly repeated in the anime ties into any major revelations? I think it would've been a perfect callback for the anime but I don't recall having an "aha!" moment about it.

Anyways, sorry for rambling a lot and for taking up your inbox, but I was very inspired by your analysis hehe. Have a great day!

Having characters who never appear and yet define other characters is a very tricky business, and frankly i think Maka's mom is not handled well in the manga, but the anime staff gave it a shot of making something worthwhile out of her, and the similiarities and contrast between her and maka. It wasnt perfect, but at least it's something.

In regards to Maka's mom, i think the best course with her would be to confront the fact she'a probably not coming back head on sometime after the sand pit with crona, maybe have her and crona have a chat between doors, and the topic come up, and go from there.

Im actually going to have a post sorta going over this later, but the gist of it is that the postcard and the meaning behind it(that for all their differences and the fact maka does not understand her) Maka still loved her mom, and was able to draw strength from it, and their connection in spite of everything.

This moment could have been so much more impactful though, if you inserted Maka having some harsh truth realization about her mom... And then still have her send that card, and so have Maka's agonising over what it means be much more impactful and full of drama, and the realisation of the fact that even if she is never gonna see her again(and that maka sorta resents her for it), she still loves her mom. Having her accept the fact that she does not understand the message, and her mom's thoughts with it, but that in the end, it didnt matter, because what matters, was what maka took away from it.

That would have made it being framed so importantly in the ending credits worth it, and subsequently have Maka's mom be a much better character by fully exploring the broken aftermath of her and spirits divorce.

I actually think the motto is bunk, and thematically speaking, its this kind of thinking that created asura. "A sound soul resides in a sound mind in a sound body" is a motto that demands perfection, and if there is something Soul eater makes clear, its that perfection is mot aomething to strive for.

Chasing excelence in spite of flaws that often cannot be overcome is at the core of soul eater's themes. Maka, Soul, Liz, Patty, black star , are certainly not people who fit all these 3 catagories all at once.

In fact both of Maka's quotes to Asura at the end is about the opposite. The world is not perfect, and thats okay... So long as we have courage, we'll live in it despite all our flaws anyeay.

It does absolutely seem like something Shinigami-Sama would teach at his school though, cause this is asbolutely something that the personification of order would have as a motto.

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

Putting Sylffa in the spotlight: 1, 8, 13 and 30!

Just an asura ask game

Ty so much for the ask!! Time to stuff another decent wall of lore under a cut! Because yep, this one's definitely gonna be long, too.

1. Do they fit well into asuran society or are they more at home with other races? How do they feel about fellow asura? Is it because of their personality or something else? Is there any deal maker or breaker?

Sylffa tends to be pretty adaptable, shifting gears depending on who she's working with and what they expect. But when it comes to what group she LIKES more... She finds asura society way too stuffy for the most part, too much bureaucracy. Sylffa's more the type to want to just go out and get her hands dirty, paperwork be damned. On top of that, she's more than a bit fed up with their tendency to hoard knowledge all to themselves; Sylffa doesn't see the point in making things that will never actually see a practical usage. It's actually a big reason why she got along with Ruju! They might have opposite temperaments, but their interests are pretty similar. Likewise, she tends to prefer other asura that break the mold a fair bit, too.

Other races tend to find her madcap inventing style of 'throw things at the wall until something sticks' a bit unnerving though, so everywhere has its drawbacks. At least the charr usually like it when she straps laser cannons to everything, so that's a win? The jetpack that also launches shrapnel bombs was a hit, too.

All that said, she found herself most at home working with the Priory and eventually the Pact. There she can really put her wild imagination to work, coming up with all sorts of bizarre ideas that no dragon could possibly see coming. And mingling with all these other races gave her all sorts of new ideas, inspiring even crazier concepts than she'd ever had before. Variety is the spice of life as far as she's concerned; Sylffa's at her happiest getting to meet all sorts of people from different cultures and walks of life. It gives her the opportunity to explore much different perspectives and really stretch her creative wings! A lot of the time their ideas inspire her next project.

8. Do/did they have a krewe? If yes, describe them, their roles and tasks. If not, why?

She did, though she eventually left it behind to join the Priory. They'd been a small band of Dynamics alumni that all graduated together with her, just a few years above Ruju. While Sylffa doesn't work with them directly anymore she DOES keep in contact; they've always got a new story to share about whatever nonsense they've gotten into.

Sometimes they send her some of their newest tech, too.

Their specialty tends to vary a lot, though they have a soft spot for handheld machinery, particularly automated tools and equipment. Most agree that the best plasma-based welding tools in Rata Sum use their designs, and they double as a mid-range blast cannon in a pinch. A fully functional multitool! What's not to like about that?

13. What's their field of research of choice? Are they pursuing it or is something else taking priority? If they don't have one or more, why not?

Sylffa graduated from Dynamics with a specialty in engineering, though what that covers is pretty broad for her! She's worked on everything from the plasma multitool mentioned above, to specialized defensive golemites that bind together to form temporary barriers, to improved scanning hardware designed to increase sensitivity and reduce interference, to figuring out ways to build weapons into things that don't normally have weapons on them. Whatever she's working on, though, you can bet it's designed with field usability in mind. If it can't take a hit from a minotaur charging it down at full velocity what's the point??

Sylffa also assisted with some of the early engineering for the Pact airships, though that massive undertaking was very much a team effort. It's probably what she's the most proud of, though!

She doesn't have much interest in maintaining patents or writing research papers though; Sylffa likes using her knowledge base for practical applications, finding that much more interesting and more fulfilling, too. Seeing her work actually help people-- even if just by making construction a bit easier-- is like a proof of concept. She doesn't need recognition from the Council or a bunch of professors. Being appreciated by the people actually using her designs is worth far more to her than some award she could stick on a shelf.

30. Free space for 3 pieces of trivia about your asura!

- During Sylffa's first year at Dynamics she was BRIEFLY assigned as Ceara's roommate. This arrangement lasted less than a week, largely because Ceara didn't want a roommate and made the experience as infuriatingly insufferable as possible. This little asura tried VERY hard to break through that icy exterior, but Ceara just wasn't having it. Sylffa finally gave up and requested a transfer after she returned to the dorms to find her bed had been "accidentally" subjected to an anti-gravity experiment, and it was now irreversibly stuck to the ceiling. Under less antagonistic circumstances she might've found that funny, though.

- Sylffa's actually a Warrior, Berserker specifically! She has no magic to speak of, but while she doesn't fight much she can hold her own in a scrap when push comes to shove. Sylffa tends to rely a lot on augmenting her weaponry with technology, building bizarre contraptions that enhance the power of whatever she happens to be wielding-- and she really will use ANYTHING. If it's in range, she'll eagerly smack something with it. Sylffa is a firm believer that anything can be a weapon if you're creative enough.

- This girl is actually one of the big deciding factors that shifts Ruju's path across different timelines, and the reason that him going to Dynamics leads to becoming the Commander. They knew each other as little kids, so when she recognized him in college she quickly reconnected and pulled him into her friend group-- which in turn led to him giving up his bully shtick and meeting his own future krewe. The two still stay in contact long after, with her occasionally sending him weird experimental tech once they're both in the Pact. Sometimes he uses it, but he keeps a lot of it for mementos.

[idrawtoomuch-gw2]

Oh definitely Edmund. I know I have mentioned before that Edmund does like cooking/baking and just food in general, but yeah I do imagine him to have a big appetite, probably the most out of my characters. (Well the human/sylvari/asura ones at least, probably not more than norn or charr)

(also hi working with an ask screenshot because 1- I was gonna collect any simple questions together but only got 1 and 2- posting from phone right now and inbox can be touchy on here)

[whymustyouhurtmeinthisway]

Finally read Soul Eater vol. 14 three entire months after initially buying it, and I gotta say, it was fine.

I’m enjoying the series for sure, Crona’s story is captivating as always and I’m interested to see where it goes, but man, the pacing seems to get worse and worse as the chapters go on. Like I’ve talked before about how the series skyrocketed way harder in scope size than it probably should’ve, but Jesus.

The series is so cool in concept, basically all the characters are so sick, I love so many of the ideas and plotlines, and the artstyle is one of the best I’ve seen in manga ever (or really in general ever), but I find it just fumbles the execution not enough to ruin it, but just enough to frustrate you.

Outside of the scale/scope thing I talked about before, there are just so many ideas that start out cool as fuck but then eat shit on the landing. Like Soul’s corruption to the imp has been building up more and more since even before the kishin was released, with him using more and more of its powers hinting towards some huge unraveling where everything comes loose and he becomes a big chaotic threat with a big arc about rescuing him. In the end that kinda happened, and his chaos form was pretty cool, except he got over it in like a chapter and everything’s cool now (though I will say his conversation with the imp and whole character struggle is cool)

Honestly now that I mention it, Soul’s a weird character for me, where I think his internal struggle and arc are interesting and I enjoy them, but I just have no thoughts about him as a character outside of that. I just can’t really think of anything about how he acts outside of his own head that really endears me to him, I find him just kinda bland. The majority of his time acting normally around others really doesn’t display much personality I find, which is unfortunate considering how cool his internal arc and piano thing are.

Speaking of characters, god there are a lot of them aren’t there? From what I can tell Atsushi Ohkubo kinda runs into a rare writer issue, being “I have more ideas than I know what to do with”. He just seems to have so many sick character ideas in his head that he can’t help but add to the series, but as he keeps adding them he finds he can’t handle the increasing responsibility of actually using them all well in the story.

Like think of how many characters are at least active by volume 14:

We of course have the main 7 (Maka, Soul, Black☆Star, Tsubaki, Kid, Liz, Patty)

Then another 7 in the rest of the Spartoi (Kiriko, Fire, Thunder, Ox, Harvar, Kim, Jackie),

Then we can add on the 5 (important) DWMA staff members (Death, Spirit, Stein, Sid, Mira)

Then the 6 other Death Scythes (Marie, Azusa, Justin, Tezca, Dengu, Djinn)

And the 5 members of Medusa’s (former) gang (Crona, Ragnarok, Free, Eruka, Mizune family)

And the 4 surviving members of Noah’s gang after that fell apart like wet toilet paper (Noah, Gopher, Index, the Clown)

And the 3 elder gods we know besides Death (Eibon, Asura, that dude in Eibon’s book)

And 7 assorted characters who are (presumably) somewhat important but don’t fit into any other categories (Blair, Imp, Excalibur, Maba, Angela, Akane☆Hoshi, Clay Sizemore, probably more I forgot)

That’s 44 characters in total, and that’s only including the ones who are alive and shown to be at least somewhat involved in the current conflict and/or important in the world as a whole, which seems to me as very clearly being a lot to keep track of in a series as quickly paced as this one

Anyways, this is a lot of words to say Soul Eater’s very good so far, but I really wish it just got to reach the full potential of its ideas more than it ended up being able to

[laikaflash]

Etymology of the Three Treasures

Or: Why were these magic weapons kept in a Buddhist temple named after eras of Hindu cosmology? Well, at least they are in the English localization of Soulcalibur, and consequently, the rest of the series. Bear with me as I overthink some plot devices in a fighting game! First, I’ll give a refresher on which one is what. In clockwise order from the above image from Soul Calibur VI:

The sword: Krita-Yuga is actually the titular Soul Calibur, the antithesis of the evil sword Soul Edge.

The mirror: Dvapara-Yuga has the power to purify anything corrupted by evil energies.

The rod: Kali-Yuga can absorb any type of energy, be it good or evil.

Note the hyphenation.

These are named after three of the four eras (yugas) of the Yuga cycle. The broad strokes of each one in chronological order, and in order of diminishing spirituality, are as follows (at least in Vaishnavism, to be clear):

Krita Yuga, “the accomplished age”. A synonym for Satya Yuga, “the age of truth”. This is believed to be when mankind lived in perfect harmony with the Dharma, which is symbolized by a bull on four legs which stand for austerity, cleanliness, mercy, and truthfulness (source: Vedabase). The Golden Age, if you will.

Treta Yuga, “the age of three” is mentioned here for completeness’ sake. The aforementioned attributes (the symbolic legs) began to dwindle by one.

Dvapara Yuga, “the age of two”. This refers to the two remaining pillars of religion: mercy and truthfulness as people continued to stray further from the Dharma.

Kali Yuga, “the age of strife”. Named for the asura Kali, not to be confused with the goddess Kālī. This is believed to be when vice and sin are at their highest, and the Dharma is on its last leg. It is prophesied that Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, will end the era with a fiery sword and usher in a new Satya Yuga, beginning the cycle anew.

As I’ve said, this is the theme the English localization went with. Before I get into the Japanese names, I want to point out that I can see the logic behind it. In story, Kilik wields the Kali-Yuga rod, which absorbed a considerable amount of powerful energy from Soul Edge itself, i.e. the Evil Seed. In that same moment, he himself is also possessed by the Evil Seed, which is only contained by the mirror Dvapara-Yuga. In a sense, the Dvapara-Yuga is the last thing between him and the Kali-Yuga, and by extension, his own destruction. The Krita-Yuga, Soul Calibur itself, is the very weapon built to destroy Soul Edge and bring an end to the chaos wrought by the evil sword. The fact that some of Soul Calibur IV’s endings show it ultimately intends to do this by freezing the world in crystal notwithstanding. On the other hand, I think there’s a reason one of the designers intended to convey “a merciless apathy” with regard to Elysium: eschatological figures with swords mean business. (I’m probably applying that retroactively.)

The other thing is that game canon has it that Soul Calibur tends to appear wherever someone is wreaking havoc with Soul Edge. Suffice it to say that it would pick up different names somewhere along the way. Soul Edge is at some points called “the Sword of Salvation” and the “Hero’s Sword”, but it’s clear that these are products of wishful thinking. That was the theory I was working from in the first place; I still think it holds.

The timeline in New Legends of Project Soul places the following at ~800 A.D.: “An elderly man known only as Edge Master gathers the three powerful artifacts once used by a Briton king. He stores them for safekeeping in Ling-Sheng Su Temple.” This is some 300 years after the same timeline mentions the same weapons went missing. I’d imagine that they had to have ended up in India at some point in the intervening years before Edge Master made it to China. While the same timeline all but outright says that Soul Calibur was Excalibur, where the other two figured in that is anyone’s guess.

So, what are the three treasures’ names in the original Japanese? I’ve belabored my other points long enough, so once again:

The sword: Gouhouken (護法剣), literally, “demon-dispelling sword” or possibly “sword in defense of Buddhist doctrine”.

The mirror: Mappoukyou (末法鏡), literally “mirror of the Latter Day of the Dharma”.

The rod: Meppoukon (滅法棍), literally “extremely [powerful] rod” or possibly “rod of the of the law of destruction”.

It didn’t take me long to understand where the localizer(s) were coming from because this as concise as I can get. That and the latter two are just daring me to mix them up when left as is. Maybe tying them to a theme made the names easier to remember. Only one of these is named after one of the Three Ages of Buddhism, and it’s the one that corresponds to the Kali Yuga! Specifically, Mappou, or Mòfǎ in Chinese, it is the third age which lasts for 10,000 years, during which the Dharma declines; at that age’s end, the Maitreya will restore the Dharma through his teachings. (Pure Land Buddhism holds this era to include the present day. Incidentally, in my research on the Yugas, I found quite a few sites with similar ideas about the Kali Yuga. Boy, does that feel familiar...)

A little tangent about the mirror’s design: note how the metal clasps resemble the ends of a vajra, a legendary weapon significant to both Buddhism and Hinduism. In Sanskrit, vajra means both “diamond” and “lightning bolt”, hence its symbolism of indestructibility and spiritual power. Naturally, it’s a major symbol of Vajrayana Buddhism, wherein the lightning stands for enlightenment. (This likely plays into the Himalayan setting of the Proving Grounds stage.) It’s not for nothing that Kilik’s victory animation in SC6 after a critical finish ends with him in a meditative pose, reciting this mantra: “Om vajra dharma Kilik.” I may as well note that his name comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the Sanskrit hrih, variously translated as “conscientiousness” or “self-respect”, one of the virtuous mental factors in Buddhism. The mantra in the Japanese is “On basara daruma Kiriku”. Here’s the latter in Soulcalibur V. Swap out his name for hrih and you have the heart mantra of the thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara. Or it could be related to the bodhisattva Vajradharma. Maybe both?

While in modern Japanese, meppou (滅法) is often used to mean something absurdly powerful, I ended up scrambling to make sure I wasn’t missing anything because I was somewhat literally reading that as “to destroy dharma”. (In my defense, “dharma” is one way of reading the second character.) I suspect the rod’s name may be an allusion to the concept of zesshoumeppou (是生滅法), the law of creation and destruction; in essence: impermanence.

I don’t have a lot to say about the name Gouhouken; the “demon-dispelling” meaning does suit Soul Calibur.

What’s more, the collective name Three Treasures (Sanbou, 三宝) comes from the practice of taking refuge in Buddhism. Generally, this is expressed by reciting a short formula; the metaphorical treasures are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha (the monastic community as a whole). This may also be called the Triple Gem or something similar, depending on whom you ask.

And I thought I would just be picking up from where I left off in this short post, but if I’m honest, I just think it’s all really interesting.

Remember that the night the Evil Seed possesses Kilik is the darkest point of his life. He was the one chosen to wield Kali-Yuga, which coincides with some poor mad lad (who just wanted his dad back) picking up the wrong sword in Spain, unleashing a surge of evil magic on the world. The only thing that saved him from being a bloodthirsty monster was his sworn sister Xianglian putting the Dvapara-Yuga on him—at the cost of her own life. Again, without the mirror, Kilik would have been unable to regain his self-control, and the Kali-Yuga would effectively become another Soul Edge. Then he wakes up at Edge Master’s grotto with major survivor’s guilt, and his training begins in earnest.

Kilik’s arc in the new timeline emphasizes his struggle to balance and master his cursed side, culminating in him using it to defeat Inferno (with Xianghua delivering the final blow with Soul Calibur). Although the Dvapara-Yuga shatters in the battle, the main story ends on a hopeful note. He may not be completely rid of Soul Edge’s curse, but he leaves the Astral Chaos with full control of himself and one sacred mirror shard to remember it by. Whether he will try to follow in Edge Master’s footsteps this time remains to be seen.

[bluebudgie]

random ask and dunno if you said this anywhere else before, but how did Lahpp and Luqqah end up together? How was their relationship?

Lahpp seems the kinda guy who doesn't know where to start with anything romantic and somehow fell into it without knowing why (and why Luq went for him in the first place), and I'm curious to know.

Hi anon!! Glad you ask :> (Edit from Future-Budgie who has answered the ask: Oops this got long! Enjoy, I hope.)

They were assigned to work on the same project together in Thaumanova, a fairly standard asura tale I imagine.

The first time they met was... memorable for Lahpp at the very least. So he's introducing himself in the most proper way imaginable, mentions that he wonders if he hasn't seen her before - they did both go to Statics but considering he's a few years older they never shared classes directly. Still, might have crossed each other at some point.

Now Luqqah's introduction is essentially "Oh. You. I know about you. I looked through your medical records as part of a thesis-" Which, considering Lahpp's been trying his damn hardest to keep his medical history a secret from pretty much everyone at all costs, kinda makes him want to dematerialize on the spot. Until a second later... "Ultimately I decided to study someone else's case, yours was too mundane. Nice to meet you."

And for a moment he's not sure if he should be offended that she has the audacity to imply everything he's struggled with all life long is too mundane but... quite frankly he's just relieved to know she doesn't care. His biggest fear, dismantled right there. Off to a great start!

--

So they start working together in the following weeks, work goes really smooth, communication's spot on, they find out they've got some interests in common (mainly music theory), the chemistry's just right, you know. No pun intended. So they decide to give it a go, why not after all? They're stuck together for a while anyway.

Suboptimal decision, as they'll find out later. Their relationship is... a mixed bag. Platonically they're absolutely on the same wavelength, no issues here. Now the whole romance and intimacy part on the other hand.... ...that's pretty damn miserable. I'll leave the details up to your imagination but let's say there's... not much going on. For a good while they try, talk it over and over, really - Luqqah especially is invested - but it's so, so awkward everytime.

They still have amazing quality time sharing hobbies in the little spare time they've got allocated but unfortunately the longer the Awkward Romance drags on the more it seeps into the rest of their relationship and just... kinda sours the overall experience a little. Apparently not enough for either of them to end it. Perhaps it's the underlying fear of losing a good friend.

--

So they're in this kinda miserable "we would really be off better as friends" relationship for what... 2... 3 years? Luqqah goes having a little affair in the meantime (Inquisitor Dunnh, anyone?), time goes on, and on a fairly mundane but fateful day (that I won't describe in further detail now because this is already getting too long once again) Lahpp finally has the realization that'll free them both: "Oh I'm gay."

At this point he really doesn't wait much longer and just sits Luqqah down to have a talk. He feels like he owes her a quick end now and not waste her time much longer.

And he's so anxious. The generally collected, at this point fairly well-adjusted guy is stammering his soul out of his body dancing around the actual break up. Starting with the all time classic "I promise it's not your fault" and going into long-winded spirals of "you still mean a lot to me, but..." Lots of apologetic blah-blah that's going nowhere. Very unlike him. Anyway, Luqqah decides to gently cut him off with "Just get to the point." Well, turns out he thinks he may be gay. She stares. It's quiet for a moment. She smiles. "Well that explains a lot."

It's still a little awkward for a few weeks after that, but they remain close friends. Their relationship gets better. More relaxed. Oh, and Luqqah does tell Lahpp she cheated on him. He doesn't hold it against her.

And then some time later the reactor blows up and they go completely separate ways. After 10 long years they meet again during the events of End of Dragons in Cantha :>

[commanderjuni]

[ OUTDATED ]🦋CHARACTER TALK | MESMER SRABBA

ok to anyone who knew laff for like. upwards of just a few days. IGNORE HER. HER NAME IS BENCHED FOR NOW. in her place i'd love to introduce.... drum roll please.....

MESMER SRABBA! (or well. personal story through living world season 2 srabba anyways)

as i mentioned in a previous few posts, srabba actually was an older character that has the prestige of being my FIRST toon i levelled, pain stakingly, bowls of apple sauce and crafting balls of bread dough and all, from level 1 to level 80. i remember trying to spec virtuoso on her, but for whatever reason not even i know i must've gotten fed up and deleted her

over time i was a little upset about that choice so i tried. MANY MANY MANY TIMES to remake srabba. she's been through

being made an inquest lab rat (failed)

being made a thief (not really a fail but she sure aint one now)

being made a thief. again. (i wanted a pink spectre. didn't work out.)

positive i made her a necromancer at least ONCE.

being made a ranger? i think?

and many few other attempts. but by some declaration of fate, srabba is back and here to stay as my mesmer and fated commander.

however, since i'm going through story in chronological order and haven't gotten past living world season 4, she very much so has some growing to do! (literally, kinda)

i've also picked and tossed a few things about laff out as to give myself some more creative freedom with srabba: i've realized recently i have this weird habit of constricting myself and forcing myself to go with the same idea, but for now i think it'd be better for me to just. do whatever! improv! toss things in and fish things out!

I'm mostly pulling elements from Laff's story, since she's kinda being repurposed into Srabba! Thus don't mind any parallels yaknow /lh

aaannnyway....

MAJOR RAMBLE BELOW THE CUT!! no spoilers whatsoever, but it's gonna be a long post x)

Srabba, during Personal Story, is about 13 years old. Like most asura her age, she is smart, crafty, and markedly intelligent. Before applying to the College of Dynamics in LWS1, Srabba is a ward of the Progeny Protective Service.

Her parents perished in the infamous Thaumanova Reactor meltdown when she was only four years old; Srabba only escaped after they had to yell and urge her to run away to safety with the masses fleeing to escape, which she did, and it is still something plaguing her to this very day.

Srabba not only faces the challenge of lacking a direct guardian to care for her, but also has to navigate the difficulties of being hard of hearing in a society that revolves around discussing and debating scientific theorems and gizmos… Which isn't exactly easy to do when you can't hear much below normal talking- and all the background noise: the buzzing and humming and clinking of asuran society- it makes it even harder to understand what someone is saying to her.

Srabba relies mostly on lip-reading and making educated guesses to understand what others are saying to her. Although she had experimented with hearing aids in her younger years, as she approached her teenage years, she grew less interested in the idea of being "dependent" on the creations of others.

Instead, she aspires to create her own hearing aid device to assist her. This challenging project is a main motivation for joining the College of Dynamics. She is eager to improve her creative thinking skills and enjoys the freedom of starting from nothing to bring her own ideas to life, which is quite different from the, in her humble opinion, dull livelihoods of Statics students who merely tweak existing designs.

In regards to her personality, Srabba is best described as the following:

Witty

Smug

Crafty

and Stubborn

Very, very, very stubborn. Srabba is a very independent person, who finds that despite not having a primary caregiver, she has strong footing when it comes to operating solo, and takes great pride in it.

... Perhaps too much pride.

Because of this, Srabba never has been the most inclined to working with others or, Eternal Alchemy forbid, collaboration. The idea of having to depend upon others is... a frankly scary thought, and one she doesn't like submitting herself to. If she can do it herself, she'll do it herself- no matter how long it'd take.

And the 'Mesmer' part of her name isn't just for show. Srabba is a certified, bonafide mesmer.

Her abilities sprung to life very recently, when she was about 11 years old. She's had only two whole years to really acclimate herself to the intricacies of mesmer magic, but she has a surprisingly great grasp at it. It may or may not have something to do with, oh, y'know... Being born on top of an Inquest lab experimenting with chaotic energy and all. It happens!

Srabba primarily follows the Chaos specialization. As the quote goes: "Where some see chaos, I see opportunity". Srabba views the tragedy of the Thaumanova Reactor as a unique proposition. Although the reactor exploded, it showed the potential using chaos energy actually had. It could transport people place to place, it could disorient and befuddle one's mind, and most important to Srabba: it could bend time and space.

Because of her close connection with chaos magic and energy, Srabba finds that among other factors, she'd fit in well in Dynamics. Her project aside, Srabba has a bright passion for studying chaos magic and energy, and seeks to be the "big leader" on the subject. She not only wants to know how to use it, but how to conserve it, and contain it, and master her own control of it so well, she could figure out how to either revert or lessen the damage in the Thaumanova wreckage.

As for Srabba's actual manipulation of mesmer magic, she's adept in confusing people: with or without actual conditions. She can be here, or she could suddenly be there. She could be right in front of you, or you could just be talking to a clone of herself and you wouldn't be too much the wiser unless you paid close attention. Her illusions are fueled by her innate psychic ability like most mesmer's, and her innate psychic ability is... frighteningly powerful for her age.

Let's be thankful she doesn't know too much about her potential at the moment.

Between the three signature mesmer masks, Srabba follows the Phantasm of Sorrow: she doesn't actually brandish this mask, but rather wears it on her face. Her sad, droopy eyes and thin-lipped frown and big, down-turned ears makes it easy to think she has something troubling her... But for all we know, she actually could be laughing in her head about how moronic some of her peers look. Nobody is the wiser to what goes on in her head, and she very much so likes it that way. It fuels her ego a little. (Light-hearted)

While she rarely finds herself in need of physical altercations, she always keeps two swords at the ready. She finds manipulating her magic through them surprisingly easy, and she is currently studying the art of mantras and phantasms. She especially hopes to start learning all the cool space and timey wimey magic, too.

She's a girl with a lot of plans, aspirations, and irons she wants to start putting in the furnace.

[alfvaen]

Novel Score

It's sometime around the beginning of a month, which apparently means these days that it's time for me to do a roundup post of the books I read in the preceding month--in this case, January 2024. Once again have been keeping on top of it during the month which helps me actually produce it in a timely manner. Because I started this back in November/December, doing monthly book posts isn't a New Year's resolution, unless the resolution was just "keep doing it". I'm keeping doing it.

Book list under the cut, book-related ramblings may include spoilers for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Martha Wells's Murderbot series, Kelly Meding's Dreg City series, and maybe others. You have been warned.

Ashok Banker: Siege of Mithila, completed January 6

As mentioned previously, I am rapidly running out of books by male "diversity" slot authors in my collection. I read the first Ashok Banker book, Prince of Ayodhya, a few years earlier, and was kind of meh on it, so I wasn't sure if I would continue. But I did pick up the other one as a library discard (ah, the days when I got books and CDs as library discards…back when they used to have a sale rack in the local branch all the time, instead of saving them up for periodic bulk sales…) so I hadn't entirely given up on it. So, in not quite desperation, I turned to Siege of Mithila as my next diversity read.

The series is apparently a retelling of the Ramayana, which is some kind of important epic in India, though I can't judge if it's like "the Bible" or "King Arthur" or "The Iliad" or what, but I assume it's somewhere on that level, at least among certain cultures. My brief skimming of the Wikipedia article on the Ramayana implies that Banker is following the story pretty closely, which means that sometimes it gets a little weird plotwise, but is perhaps more revealing culturally or something. And sometimes it's a wee bit problematic…like the way that the main adversary for the first two books is Ravana, lord of the Asuras (basically demons), who rules over the southern island kingdom of Lanka (like…"Sri Lanka"?), which is populated entirely by Asuras. Which is about like if there was a fantasy series set in England where they had to fight evil demons from the western island kingdom of Eire or something. (Wait…do they have those?) One wonders if this series (or the original Ramayana) are quite as popular in Sri Lanka, then…

Anyway, we mostly follow Rama, the titular Prince of Ayodhya from the first book, and his half-brother Lakshman, but a lot of this book is also set back in the palace in Ayodhya following Rama's father the Maharaja, his three wives, and the evil (and hunchbacked--oh look, it's equating deformity with wickedness, that's awesome) witch Manthara as she and Ravana try to sabotage the kingdom from within. Rama and Lakshman end up going to Mithila instead of back to Ayodhya, and foiling a big Asura attack on the city, which comes unbelievably close to the end of the book and is not quite solved by deus ex machina, but doesn't feel particularly satisfying.

One element of the series is that some of the characters are just like ridiculously powerful sages who were like "I've been meditating for 5000 years so I'm really wise and can do anything, though I guess I should let Rama solve a few things on his own to gain some of his own wisdom". Not that this is all that different from, say, Gandalf or Merlin, of course... There are also some odd storytelling choices, like switching to a different set of characters just at a dramatic point in a different storyline, or, in one major side-quest, just skipping the ending of it and coming back to it a couple of chapters later in flashbacks. Also, one character is given important advice by a ghost which he then completely ignores (luckily other people overrule him, but it bugged me).

The book kind of feels like the second book of a trilogy, but not quite, which makes sense because apparently there are eight other books in the series, so it's not just about fighting Ravana and the Asuras. I'm on the bubble about the series, as you may have gathered, so I don't know offhand if I'll be going on.

T. Kingfisher: Clockwork Boys, completed January 9

I paced myself going through Siege of Mithila, taking seven days for it (I started on December 31st to get a little head start), so it put me a bit behind on my Goodreads challenge (100 books for the year, again). This means, time to read some shorter things! I haven't read any T. Kingfisher yet (though I have read, like, the webcomic "Digger" under her real name, Ursula Vernon, if nothing else), so I let my wife, who has read a lot of them, suggest which one I should start with, and this was the one she chose (at the time; it may have been a couple of years ago). We have it as an ebook from Kobo, which sometimes makes it a little hard to tell how long the book actually is in pages, but Goodreads claimed it was under 300 pages, so it seemed a possible three-day read.

I was, I guess, vaguely expecting a steampunk story involving two boys who were made of clockwork or something, but apparently it's more straight fantasy (not too similar to the Ramayana was far as I can tell, though, which is good because I like consecutive reads to vary in genre if at all possible) where the Clockwork Boys are the bad guys. Also, apparently this is the first of a duology, a "long book split in two" duology as opposed to "book and a sequel featuring the same characters" duology.

The characters seem somewhat interesting, though I'm not sure I'm 100% won over. Sir Caliban for some reason reminds me of both Sanderson's Kaladin and Bujold's Cazaril, but maybe it's just the similarity of names enhancing certain similarities of character. And the demons also made me think of Bujold's Penric books. Maybe the tone is a little light for me on this one. We've got the second one as an ebook too, so I'll finish it off at some point and then maybe take a look at Nettle & Bone or something.

Kelly Meding: The Night Before Dead, completed January 12

As I may have also mentioned previously, I've tried a whole lot of urban fantasy series. Many of them, my wife has enjoyed more than I have, and is all caught up on them, but most of those I'm only a few books in. (I've given up on relatively few--Jennifer Estep and Jess Haines, among others.) For whatever reason, my wife didn't like the first book in Kelly Meding's "Dreg City" series, Three Days To Dead, and this time, to be actually clever about it, I decided to read the book myself and decide if I wanted to continue on in the series before it went out of print. As it turned out, I did like the first book, and I kept reading it on my own. When the series got dropped by the publisher after four books, I even went and bought the last two books (self-published, probably print on demand) to finish the series.

So this is the last one, which is supposed to wrap up the main conflict. Our main character, Evy Stone, started out the series waking up after death in a newly-vacated body; she was part of a group that worked to deal with paranormal threats. This world has beast-form shapeshifters named "Theria", vampires, and lots of types of fey--mostly pretty usual when it comes to urban fantasy--and their existence is unknown to world at large, etc.

Thie book does seem to wrap things up well enough, at least for the main characters, though it's hard to say if all the resolutions are satisfying. Still, it was enjoyable enough. She does have a couple of other, shorter series which I can try next, since we do actually own them. (And maybe some stuff under a different name?)

Lois McMaster Bujold: Brothers In Arms, completed January 15

Next (chronologically) in the reread order, this is the one where Miles goes to Earth and discovers the existence of his clone-brother Mark (spoilers). It starts up with a level of frustration--why does Miles have to stay at the embassy, and why aren't his mercenaries getting paid?--but things mostly work out in the end. Ivan shows up again (by authorial fiat--it's a bit too much of a coincidence, really), we meet recurring character Duv Galeni, and of course Mark, as mentioned already. It's not a particular favourite, but it's pretty good. And without it, how would we get Mirror Dance, and thus Memory?

I feel like I should be able to say more about it, but I've already talked about the Vorkosigan series a lot in previous posts, and, like I said, it's not a particular favourite. I guess I could mention how the first time through the series I read them in publication order, and so this was before The Vor Game and Cetaganda… Also, although we don't see much of Earth outside of London, we do get a good look at the gigantic dikes being used to hold back the ocean, because in the intervening mumble-mumble centuries the sea levels have risen. So presumably the icecaps have melted or something, though it doesn't seem like the Gulf Stream has shut down or anything, so maybe they have managed to mitigate things somewhat. An interesting view of future Earth, anyway, without going too overboard on covering the vast majority of the planet not relevant to our immediate plot.

Seth Dickinson: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, completed January 20

Taking another book from my list of authors to try (currently stored on my pool table); I picked this one because apparently the author has a new book coming out, and I do see people talking about the character from time to time, so clearly this is a book/series that has had some staying power and cultural impact, as opposed to something obscure that apparently sank without a trace. But this is a book that my wife tried, and either didn't finish or didn't want to continue the series.

And, having finished it, I can see why. I wouldn't say that it's a bad book…but I didn't, in the end, like it. I read it all the way to the end, and I've decided I'll leave it there and not try to continue the series. And probably I won't look for other books by Dickinson either. Like Ian McDonald's Desolation Road, which I read last year, I felt, as I was reading it, that this was a book I would have liked a lot better when I was younger, but these days it just doesn't do it for me.

It has the feeling of fantasy, in that it's set in a different world from our own, and there is none of the futuristic technology that would explain this as being a colony world…but there is also little or nothing in the way of magic. A little alchemy, maybe, but I don't know that it's out of line with what you could achieve with actual drugs. No wizards, and I don't think there were supernatural creatures either. But it's fantasy-coded, and maybe there's some minor thing I'm forgetting. It's not about magic, though. It's really about colonialism, and what happens when you're sucked into the colonizer's system so far that you think that the only way to help your people is by going along with that system. And Baru Cormorant is somewhat autistic-coded, perhaps--not only is she a savant, but she seems to have trouble figuring out the motives and feelings of others. Puts too much confidence in the ability to explain everything using economics (the character and possibly also the author, quite frankly), in a way which reminds me mostly of Dave Sim's deconstruction of faith and fantasy in Cerebus: Church And State. Not sure if it counts as grimdark, but it feels like the honorable are punished for their naivety like in "A Song of Ice And Fire". I lost sympathy for the main character partway through, and never got much for anyone else either. One character I liked and hoped to see more of was (gratuitously?) killed in the middle of the book. I was forewarned of the existence of a plot twist at the end of the book, and when it came, although I wasn't completely surprised, I was disappointed, and I didn't feel that it worked.

So, yeah. Your mileage may vary, but this book did not win me over.

Charles Stross: The Annihilation Score, completed January 25

I wanted something a bit more light-hearted after the previous book, but not, apparently, too much so. Charles Stross's "Laundry Files" series is set against a backdrop of cosmic horror and the looming end of the world, but also of British governmental bureaucracy, out of which he can usually pull of a fair amount of humour, as well as humanity. The main protagonist of the series is Bob Howard (named in honour of Robert E. Howard, inventor of Conan and friend of Lovecraft), computational demonologist, and the books in turn have paid tribute to a lot of different sources--James Bond, vampires, American evangelical megachurches, and--in this book--superheroes. But also, in this book, Bob is not our narrator; instead, we get his wife, Mo, in the fallout of a scene in the previous book (which we get from her POV here) with dire implications for their relationship…which has always been kind of a three-way between Bob, Mo, and Mo's soul-eating sentient violin, and this triangle has now come to a crisis. Plus there's superheroes.

Stross notes in the introduction that he never really read American superhero comics, so he had to pick a few brains about them, but the book really isn't about American superheroes either; he references the British superhero anthology series "Temps" (which I never did manage to read, since I only managed to find the second book, but now I feel like I should check out) as contrasted with the "Wild Cards" series.

All in all it's pretty decent, with lots of witty read-aloud bits, but the pacing is odd; there's a lot of plotlines, and some of them don't seem to progress for a long time. Some of them turn out to be red herrings, I guess, but overall it doesn't gel as well as it could. We don't see much of Bob (which makes sense since this isn't his book), though Mo is a perfectly fine protagonist. I'll be fine going back to Bob for the next book. If I can ever find it.

See, apparently this is the last book in the series I own right now, and probably the next one, The Nightmare Stacks, came and went while I was behind on reading it, and now it's out of print (and possibly never had a mass-market release at all, which is still my preferred format) and seems like it'll be hard to find in any physical format. I mean, I went on a site which allows you to search indie and second-hand bookstores, and the title didn't even come up on search. I have long been resisting switching wholeheartedly over to ebooks (a transition my wife has already made), but I can see that at some point I may have to get used to the fact that ebooks are just replacing mass-market paperbacks for the cheap release format. (I still can't manage to bring myself to spend as much as $8, let alone $12 or more, for an ebook, though. Like…what am I paying for? The publishing costs are minuscule compared to physical copies, and I expect that saving to be passed on to me. I guess I don't know if the extra is being passed on to the author in a non-self-published situation, but given our current corporate hellscape I'm gonna say probably not. Note: if you think this makes me a horrible person who hates writers to make money, please remember that I am married to a writer who I would love to make enough money that I don't have to work, but the publishing industry is horrible and they're the ones that actually have the capability to allow writers to make enough money to make a living, and they're not doing it, so I don't know what to tell you. I've bought thousands of books in my life, even if I don't go out of my way to buy the most expensive ones, because that's a good way to go broke. Get off my back, person I made up for this parenthetical aside.)

Martha Wells: System Collapse, completed January 28

I may be the last person in my house to have read Murderbot. My wife had already read some of Martha Wells earlier books (Raksura series, I want to say) before she read the Murderbot novells, and she loved them and read them to/got our kids to read them too. I eventually scheduled one in (novellas are good when I'm behind on my Goodreads challenge) and…it was okay, I guess? And I kept reading them because, well, more novellas. Last year I read the first novel-length story, Network Effect, and I liked it somewhat better than the novellas, for whatever reason.

I had been putting off the latest one for a little while, though, partly because of my Vorkosigan reread--I generally don't like books that are too close in genre too close together, and they're both kinda space opera-ish, though quite different kinds (Murderbot's future is more corporate-dominated), but next up I'm taking a break for a Dick Francis reread, so I thought I might as well put it in now. Though I've got to say that, since we have it as a physical hardcover as opposed to the digital novella ebooks, I'm really not a big fan of the texture of the dust jacket. Like, it is physically unpleasant to touch, being just a little bit rough. But not as bad as some I'd run across in the past few years, so I don't have to, like, take off the dust jacket to read it.

In the end I didn't like it as well as Network Effect, though I did like the middle bit where Murderbot becomes a Youtube influencer. The early part of the book, Murderbot is in a bit of a depressive state and not fun to read, like the first part of "Order of The Phoenix" or something. I guess if a character is too hypercompetent then nothing challenges them, but I wasn't a big fan of the emotional arc.

Dick Francis: Forfeit, completed January 31

I remember precisely where I was when I first heard of Dick Francis. See, I went to this convention in Edmonton in the summer of 1989, "ConText '89". It was an important convention--a reader-oriented rather than media-dominated SF/Fantasy convention, for one thing, and also it resulted in the formation of the first SF/Fantasy writer's organization in Canada, currently named SF Canada. Oh, and also, I met a cute girl there (Nicole, a YA author guest from northern Alberta), started dating, fell in love, got married, had three kids, and we're still married today.

I also saw this posting for a writing course out at a place called the Black Cat Guest Ranch, in the Rockies near Hinton, and decided to go. There I met Candas Jane Dorsey (who was the instructor for the course) and several other writers, and we later formed a writers' group called The Cult of Pain which is still going to this day. Anyway, I went out for a second course there, with Nicole coming along this time (though we may not have technically been dating and didn't share a room)--I think it was in mid-February sometime--and one evening we were all hanging out in the outdoor hot tub, watching snowflakes melt over our heads, and talking about books. And Candas and Nicole started rhapsodizing about this guy named Dick Francis. I said, "Who?" And they both told me I had to go read him, like, right away.

Dick Francis, apparently, was a former steeplechase jockey turned mystery/thriller writer. Now, mysteries and thrillers were not really my thing--I was into the SF & fantasy--but I supposed I was willing to try it. I was in university and trying to read other stuff outside my comfort zone, like Thomas Hardy and The Brothers Karamazov and William S. Burroughs, so why not. Plus, I wanted my girlfriend to like me. And the first one I picked up was one that one of my roommates had lying around, called Forfeit. It was pretty decent, and I went on to others--Nicole had a copy of Nerve, and I soon started to pick up more--and eventually read almost all of them (a few proved elusive, but I tracked down a copy of Smokescreen not long ago…).

Every book was concerned in some way with horse racing, but there was a wide variety--sometimes the main character was a jockey, but sometimes that was just their side hustle, and they had another profession, or sometimes they did something else like train horses or transport horses, or paint pictures of horses, or they didn't do anything about horses but the romantic interest did… He covered a lot of different professions over his books, they were usually quite interesting, and his characters were always very well-drawn. After his wife Mary (apparently an uncredited frequent collaborator and researcher) died, there was a gap of a few years before he started writing them with his son Felix. I think I read all of those ones, but after he died and Felix started writing solo novels, I haven't really kept up on those ones.

Instead, a few years ago I decided I was going to reread all the books, in publication order, interspersed with my series rereads as I was already doing with Discworld and Star Trek books. Forfeit is his seventh published book…and when I went to look for it on my shelf, I discovered that I actually didn't own a copy, and probably never had. I had just borrowed it from my roommate, and then given it back (a rookie mistake). Was it in print? Of course not, don't be silly. I had managed to find a used copy of Smokescreen online, as I mentioned, but for Forfeit there was only more expensive trade paperbacks, or $8 ebooks. They didn't even have it at the library! Except, well, they did…but I'd have to interlibrary loan it. I went back on forth on which to try to do, and eventually went ILL, and it came in for me at the library on the 20th. So there, overpriced ebooks. (And person I made up for the earlier parenthetical aside.)

Dick Francis novels have turned to be pretty rereadable, because they're not primarily mysteries of the sort where you don't remember which of the suspects is guilty; they're mysteries where the main character has to figure out who's behind the crimes and then avoid getting killed by them. Some of it is competency porn as they use their special skills to solve problems. And some of it just because of the engaging characters, which are maybe not quite all the way there in the earlier books (the ones I've reread so far are still books from the 60s, so the female characters could be more nuanced). In Forfeit what I recalled from that first read (some 34 years ago) was that the main character was a sportswriter, it started with one of his colleagues killing himself, and his wife was disabled and bedridden. (And one exciting scene in the middle of the book in which spoilers.) Though it turned out I was conflating two suicide openings (Nerve also starts with one, a gunshot suicide on the first page, whereas Forfeit's is more falling out of a window), and the exciting scene is missing an element I was sure was there.

So that's eight books in one month, which is basically enough to keep up on my Goodreads challenge, but I also managed to squeeze in a couple more on the side track. First of all, there was my brother's book, Paths of Pollen, which came out last year; my mom went to the book launch in Toronto and brought back a signed copy for me. As one might expect, it talks about honeybees (and the time he was working on our stepfather's apiary), but covers a lot of pollen details I didn't know, about all the other bees, beetles, butterflies, insects, and other animals that also do pollination. It's a sobering look at how plants reproduce and how we're screwing it up in a lot of cases. (I hadn't realized before how much insects use pollen as food…somehow I thought they were nectar-eaters and they just picked up pollen because the plants forced them too, but I guess it makes sense that they also eat it.)

Then there was another one of the Love & Rockets ebook bundle that I've been going through. This volume, Esperanza, is around the latest stuff I read in the Love & Rockets Vol. 2 comics (which I have only read once or twice), so it's fairly unfamiliar to me. Despite it being named after Esperanza "Hopey" Glass, most of the book seems to revolve around Vivian, a.k.a. Frogmouth, a hot, buxom woman with an unfortunate voice, who both Maggie and Ray are lusting after, despite her problematic relationships with some violent criminals. Ray and Maggie do meet up again briefly; Maggie's working as an apartment superintendent, Hopey's working in a bar but trying to get into a teaching assistant job, surreal things happen with Izzy, Doyle's around as well, and we see brief glimpses of Maggie's sister Esther. It was interesting but I didn't find it altogether compelling.

With ten books for January, that means I'm really read up to 36.5 days into the year, or February 5th, so I'm a little bit ahead. I'll be taking advantage of this to start off February with a longer book, for my female diversity slot--Fonda Lee's Jade Legacy, to wrap up that series. More about that next month, of course…

[curestardust]

Dust Watched: Machikado Mazoku: 2-choume

Genres: Comedy, Magical Girls (and Demons), CGCDT // 12 episodes // S01 (x)

I did go into this one with the right expectations this time! @ my review of season 1

✧  story  ✧

The story continues directly from season 1's so for an overall plot description please read my review of that.

It's now the summer break and both Momo and Mikan move into the delipidated apartment building where Yuuko lives, making their involvement in the story much easier now that we don't have the school for the characters to meet. The first half of the story is looking for clues about Momo's older sister, Sakura. This portion is definitely more tightly paced, while the second half kiiiiind of focuses on Yuuko improving her powers but that usually takes a backdrop in exchange for the comedy.

Speaking of the comedy, it's very safe, cute, ridiculous, and goofy, nothing that would have you on the floor wheezing but good for an occasional chuckle. They also got better at inserting the occasional "grounded moments" inbetween the comedy so it doesn't become too tired too fast.

✧  characters  ✧

Yuuko has a pretty big revelation this season but she changes the least I'd say. Momo's change is more subtle but has a big impact on the story. She doesn't seem to feel the need to keep her defences up around Yuuko anymore and admits to herself that she actually really likes her and wants to spend more time with her and you know, in a perfectly straight way not at all in a "I invited you out on a date but you didn't realize that it was supposed to be a date and brought other people with you so I'll spend the rest of the episode sulking about it" kind of way. (Momo's pining is very cute is what I'm trying to say.)

Khm, anyway, there are 2 (well, I guess 3 but that's a spoiler) new characters, Lico, a Huli Jing, and her ever-suffering boss, Manager Shirosawa, a talking bipedal tapir. They are both demons, and work at Asura Café. They get involved in the story during the search for Sakura where they play a significant part but pretty much disappear in the second half. They're a nice little addition to the cast but don't make too strong of an impression.

And to my dismay, despite Mikan moving to this town, she barely gets any actual screentime. When her magical girl powers don't need using, or her curse isn't used for a gag, she makes no substantial appearance in the story until the last 2 episodes. Probably my biggest disappointment with the show.

✧  art  ✧

It's very cute, the transformations are smooth and pretty, and the visual gags are great too. It goes a little wonky on faraway shots but nothing too distracting.

✧  sound ✧

The music is *also* very cute and fluffy, not particularly my style but went well with the CGCDT comedy vibes. Of course I need to mention how delighted I was when I heard Itou Ayasa's recognizable Kyoto dialect coming out of Lico's mouth (Revstar's Kaoruko). Everyone else did a great job too.

✧  overview ✧

This style of comedy is a bit too weak for me to fully appreciate but nevertheless I had a fun time watching this season!

My Rating: 7/10

[cheddargoblin]

*knocks on your door and enter without waiting* beach episode. Most to least likely to get sunburnt because they thought they didnt need sun protection between your asura.

Also between the others... most to least likely to snore loud :)

Sunny will do anything to force me to make beach episode content huh. including breaking and entering. Starting off with Sunburn: Coming in at most likely we have Sparrow, spending most of his time in labs or stormy regions he forgets the sun Does That. he'll be too busy hanging out with friends to remember that hes slowly burning. he will be pathetic and say it was worth it. Coming in as the centrist is Meisi: being the pathetic workaholic he is he doesn't get out for leisure much (poor thing needs more beach episodes) and i can see him barely avoiding becoming tonight's barbecue due to friends reminding him the sun hurts or just due to him lurking in the shade the whole time. maybe both. The least likely to get burnt would be Zeeki: Zeeki is more than happy to show off whatever skills are relevant to a day trip to the beach, up to and including remembering proper skincare so that he can lord it over whoever else was less "smart" than he is. He will lord this over you and not help you recover.

Most to least likely to snore loud: Coming in at #1 most likely we have Telka: what can i say man big woman big snore. she takes up as much space as possible when she sleeps, physically and audibly. Woe to anyone whos nearby bc shes in your personal space now. cope. Behind her would be Teia: She doesn't really properly sleep anymore. But i can see some heavy breathing from whatever not-sleep comas he slips into sometimes. The snoring centrepiece is Deidre; who frankly isnt to loud but probably occasionally sighs and makes some noise when zonked out. probably twitches more than snores. Lowest score is Castro: Who might as well be a corpse this mf makes no sound. the kind of person you have to stare at when theyre asleep to watch for the rise and fall of their breath because youre not entirely sure if theyre alive or not. (Dis)honorable mention is Perre who doesnt sleep. L

[ratasum]

Brain violently jarred by remembering the existence of an in-universe card game. Someone mentioned thinking there was ambient dialogue about such a thing in the tags of a post I was skimming and while it's never mentioned in the game proper it DOES canonically exist, even if we don't know all the rules.

Please release the rules, anet.

It's called Ackle-Denth, and it's an old asuran card game mentioned in Sea of Sorrows, where it's brought up by Macha! Little is known about the game other than it being well established and, as of the time of the book, at least 800 years old. Which means asura have been playing that since well before they made contact with the surface races.

It'd be nice to get some canon details on it at SOME point, but I'd love to see someone smarter than me figure out a way to make a playable game out of what we do have.

[wall-legion]

From Darkness, A Light: Zanthe of Yrisa

Their contract wasn’t going to last beyond one progeny. Yrisa could tell that now, only a few months pregnant. Zynos was everything that the matchmaker her parents had hired had promised: a first class genius, well respected for his ideas and inventions, and he had an established krewe that brought in a very tidy income each month so they would be sure to live more than comfortably together. It was true that he was an Inquest agent, yes, but that wasn’t a deal breaker: everyone knew someone nowadays who was in the Inquest, didn’t they? She passed a hand over the gentle curve under her robes as she frowned. Her mother had asked about the gap between his last contract that had yielded progeny and now. The matchmaker said the woman had died doing fieldwork for her krewe, and Zynos had been so stricken by the tragedy he had not sought a contract for some time. It made sense... but it still seemed to pull at her ears nonetheless. That was over five years ago. Surely his family would have reminded him of his obligations? But regardless, she had agreed to contracting with him, and at first he had been charming and cordial. She had even been naive enough to mistake herself for falling in love with his mannerisms. But as soon as she showed the symptoms of being pregnant, the real Zynos appeared: he was actively cruel and condescending towards her, and he relished every opportunity to be that way. Every day there was a fresh insult about how unsightly the pregnancy made her body look, and how as soon as the progeny was born she had better make sure not to stay “round and intolerable”; how the progeny had better be at least as intelligent as he was, since she was nowhere near as clever as he was in spite of her graduating at the same rank as him; and how she never did anything right around the house. “One of these days,” he was fond of reminding her, “you will end up blowing this place up because you can’t clean up anything properly.” She could have ended it then and there, gone back home to her parents and delivered her son or daughter as a single parent. But she knew how they had worked to get her contracted to a prestigious asura, to make sure she had a progeny who would have better opportunities than she or her brother had been able to access in Rata Sum. As badly as she wanted to run back home, she wanted to stay for those same reasons for the future within her. So whenever Zynos left for the day to accompany his krewe to cogs knew what they were doing for the Inquest, she tried to do a better job cleaning up while quietly telling her growing stomach about all the wonderful accomplishments she was sure they would have. === Zanthe didn’t know why his parents weren’t like his friends’ parents. He knew that some parents fought sometimes, but his parents seemed to fight all the time. The eight year old trudged his way home from school, frowning to himself as he tried to puzzle this out. It always felt like Father thought Mother was doing things wrong, while Mother always acted like Father hated them both. But Father loved them. Right? Because that’s what fathers are supposed to do. One of the other progeny at school had mentioned that his mother had ended a contract early with a potential partner before her father because “they hadn’t clicked”. Maybe his parents weren’t clicking anymore. Maybe they weren’t clicking because of him. He came up on the house and let himself in. “I’m home!” he called. “I’m in my lab, Zan!” He set his school bag down and jogged to the back of the house, where his mother’s lab was set up. She had only just resumed working with her krewe in the years since Zanthe had started going to school full time, so she still did a lot of her work on golemancy cores from her lab in the house. “What’re you doing?” he asked as he climbed up onto the stool she had next to the workbench, and that he had designated as his since getting big enough to scale it successfully. “Testing new alchemical lubricants on the cores to minimize damage over time,” she answered without looking up. “How was school today?” “It was all right. Can I help?” “You can help by sitting still right there. There’s some pretty nasty stuff in these jars; I don’t want you getting burned or worse. Got it?” “Yes Mother,” he sighed. He rested his hands on his lab and tried to not fidget so he wouldn’t be a distraction. “What’s that one?” “It’s a combination of distilled yellow ooze, breeze rider venom, ground spark crystals and purified water,” she said as she began to slowly drip the concoction onto the golem core. The core began to vibrate gently, and then more aggressively, before starting to smoke. “Huh. I didn’t expect that for results-” She was reaching for her notes as she said this, just as the core exploded. The last thing Zanthe saw before searing pain consumed his vision and caused him to pass out was his mother tipping backwards off her own stool, a shard of golem core embedded in her chest. === Mortal, awaken. Zanthe felt himself stir, but something didn’t feel right. He felt... disconnected, for lack of a better word. Where am I? he asked without speaking. Am I dead like Mother? No, the other voice answered. You live, but only just. You have found your way into the Mists, however. What?! No, no, that’s- Zanthe tried to look around, but his vision was still black. I can’t be in the Mists and not dead, that’s not how it works! It is for a certain few, the voice countered. You are one of them. Now calm yourself. I must ask you a question. Zanthe swallowed hard and nodded. I’m ready. Do you think your mother’s death was an accident, young mortal? Speak true. His ears went straight up- or would, if he were actually in his body. I... my mother was too careful in her lab and with her calculations for something like that to happen. If it was an accident, it was not because of her doing. But... I know someone who I think would do injury to her. The voice let out a low chuckle. Mortal, I can read your mind and heart at this moment. You do more than think. You know him. I would ask one more question. I’m ready. Would you walk the world again so that he does not get the satisfaction of both your deaths? === Zanthe would not emerge from unconsciousness for another week after being found in the rubble of his mother’s lab still barely alive. When he finally did come to, the damage caused by the explosion and debris had rendered him permanently blind. Zynos was nowhere to be found. The boy went to live with his maternal grandparents, under the unspoken understanding that all of his mother’s dreams for him of achieving what she had not been able to were now out of reach due to his disability. The crueler and more heartless of Rata Sum would loudly comment on his presence whenever he was out, and how he was now of no use to society. Little did they know that they were only adding fuel to a fire they could not see, for the voice that Zanthe had spoken to in the Mists the day of his mother’s death was a demon that latched itself onto his pain and grief. As he grew and realized he could not apply for any of the colleges because of his blindness, he grew more frustrated and angry at the way his life had turned, and the demon just grew more powerful within. After both his grandparents had passed away, he bought a soldier’s kit of armor and weapons and left Rata Sum. After all, he had no reason to stay. He made his way east, meeting the sylvari Khaya and her partner Rhoslinn. They recognized there was a darkness in him and invited him into their guild, figuring friendship might help keep it at bay. It worked for a while: though the nameless one still whispered in the back of Zanthe’s head and gave him dark visions when he slept, during the day his thoughts were mostly his own unlike when he was in Rata Sum and had nothing to aspire to beyond being “the useless disabled asura”. More importantly, the guild was where he first met Qirri. He couldn’t tell you where they were all gathered, or what for, any longer, but he briefly caught the smell of something familiar and turned his head, suddenly homesick. “Old Rhukk’s G.O.N.E. Grease!” “What-?” Khaya said with a laugh. “It stands for Good On Nearly Everything,” someone female replied, “and yes, you’re right.” “I haven’t smelled that in ages,” he replied with a smile. “You can smell it on me? I just came in!” “Oh- uh. Blindness has advantages, I guess? Sometimes?” He shrugged, trying to not blush at how stupid he felt for admitting that he smelled her. “Are you two going to introduce yourselves? Or do I have to step over you, cub?” This was a new, deeper voice. It was the charr he’d met, the one that traveled with Khaya and Rhoslinn’s friend: Gary, maybe? “Oops! Sorry!” There was the pattering of feet (close footballs, a rhythm like he was used to hearing when he ran: was she an asura too?) and the smell of leather and faintly under that, ozone and medicinal herbs. “I’m Qirri of Pazz. Or Qirri Tinkerfirst now. That’s what most of the guild knows me as.” “I’m... just Zanthe.” He held his hand out, shaking hers when she took his. “So you are an asura. I, uh, guessed from you using Old Rhukk’s, but then your steps sounded asuran-” “You can tell someone’s race from how they walk? That’s amazing!” He shrugged, trying to ignore the sparkling feeling around his heart. “It’s just something I’ve learned...” “Still, it must really come in handy,” she continued, before pulling him over to sit down with the charr so they could all eat together. It was from that moment on he was absolutely smitten with the younger asura, though finding out that she was a Snaff Savant and a genius first-rank graduate put him off the idea of ever pursuing anything with her. She was worthy of someone her equal, and he was... not that. Any time they fought together, he would keep her safe and healthy, though. That was only fair to whoever would end up winning her heart. He thought that perhaps now, with a guild full of friends and a feeling of purpose, the demon would stay a sort of silent partner in the back of his head for the rest of his days. He thought wrong. The unnamed one grew louder as Zanthe fought through Orr and towards Zhaitan’s end, falling quiet again once the first dragon fell. Because of this, Zanthe thought perhaps the demon had been linked to Zhaitan’s or Orr’s magic and its hold was broken. As he joined the guild in Maguuma to take on Mordremoth, the unnamed one began to exceed Zanthe’s control and threatened to destroy the asura. It was when Rytlock returned from the Mists that the guild realized what had to be done: that Zanthe potentially could learn to become a revenant as Rytlock had in order to control the demon; or that he had to be taken to the Mists so the demon could be extracted from him and left there. After speaking to him for a few hours, Rytlock decided that he was capable enough to become a revenant and began training him. This would work long enough to keep the demon in control so the guild could take down Mordremoth, but at great personal cost: the loss of Eir and Trahearne, and Qirri falling so deathly ill that Garrus had to lug her back to Rata Sum with her sister Rissia and another asura in the guild, Vezz, close behind. Zanthe trained relentlessly to try and control the demon, but could only just suppress him. Finally, Rytlock suggested reaching out to the Mists to channel another spirit, to see if another would come to him and offer their support in opposition to the demon. In spite of his reservations about the idea, Zanthe sat down to meditate and open himself to the Mists; two hours later, he arose exhausted but looking calmer. “Ventari has come to me,” he told Rytlock. “I think that will do for now.” Zanthe now finds himself in Cantha, in the Dragonwatch krewe (how, he wonders, he never went to college), and with an arrangement that is no longer working since all the unbound magic and Void and what have you floating around is making the unnamed one get louder than ever. Thankfully he’s still the one in charge of his voice... as of now.