#in a kind of 'on your way to heaven you need to complete the fetch-quest from hell' deal lol

[sketching-shark]

If WuKong gets dismembered, can he still reform? I know he heals rly fast but does each of his cut limbs form bodies of their own regardless of the distance away from each other? If his head is in the other side of the continent and his other limbs in other places, do they reform as one or as different WuKongs?

uh MAYBE?! In all honestly I've never really thought about this anon, but I could easily see it happening given the times he's gotten his head cut off and started to pull eternal hearts out of his chest cavity and pulled off his hair to make clones of himself & still been just fine. So I guess obligatory reminder that there is some PEAK body horror potential in Xiyouji, and that even dismembering the Monkey King would in all likelihood not end with a dead Sun Wukong but rather a case of Infinite Monkey.

[springtimebat]

The Autumn Meeting (Part 1/4)

Six suns peer down from perching clouds, leaving heavy, gilded dents on the heavens. They watch with amused, greedy eyes, their eyelids soft and rusted. They sit and wait for a hymn to be sung.

The city of tomorrow arrives in the early morning, on a thousand dying legs. The crow is beginning its call as the sun sets in the east, and the queen begins to cross the old town bridge just as the sky turns pitch black. The queen is young and full of life. Her hair is dark and wild. Her eyes are electric green. Naturally, the shadows clamber over each other, desperate to touch her skin. They claw at her footprints, grasp desperately at her diadem. The Queen places a shawl, a piece of midnight, careworn and devoid of stars, around her shoulders. She places galoshes on her feet. They snap against the cobblestones. The shadows attempt to bash her brain in. The queen pulls the shawl tighter around her neck and carries on. She must begin her quest before it's too late, before she misses her window. She pulls apart the ghoulish bonds restraining her and slips into the forest, the heavy frame of her home balancing on stilts behind her.

When the clock strikes the right time, three pilgrims meet deep inside the bowels of the forest to tell stories they stole off of wanderers backs. One is skull and bones, the second is more shark than man, the last is cast in iron and gilded armour, kept together with unsteady bolts and springs. The three are old, dear friends with different destinies that lead them to separate for months on end. Still, now they gather for a night in. They gather for the stories and for listening.

The forest is a protective shield, swarming with thistles, brambles and decaying pieces of junk. Years before, during the days of the dust, a king set up booby traps in the forest, hoping to capture some kind of beast. Now spikes and barbed wire festered among the moss, weary of a world full of colour beyond the tree trunks. The queen notices flashes of silver as she races through the trees; simply shadows against the bruised sunset and the sad oaks. Her feet dance around the puddles and quicksands. She flies through the grass and the rock until she comes across the meeting place from her stories. In a clearing stands a roaring fireplace and three men, huddled together like three fates. One stands up and hurls wood onto the fire, his back muscles tensing. He is a fish-man, with silver scales framing his brow and giant saucers for eyes. He wears the same strange uniform the Queen had seen him wear in an engraving once, all frills and ridiculous trimmings. The second man sits watching the third as they recite a poem. His body is masked by a suit of metal armour. Atop his helmet sits a boar’s head, its eyes closed, bored. The final man shakes their bones and clacks their teeth. He disguises his lack of skins with a cloak, similar to the Queen’s. He is standing by the fire, whistling a strange sonnet:

“-so the little girl set off to win back her foot. But the ogre’s own pair of feet were large and heavy. He was quicker than the little girl and it took her months and months of travelling to catch up-”

“Didn’t her parents worry about her?” Interrupts the fish man from his space at the mantle-piece, “Poor girl out on her lonesome.”

His friend groans and stamps his foot.

“She had no parents Abram. She was all on her lonesome to begin with and that’s how she lost her foot. Haven’t you been listening, you knucklehead?”

“Surely she has friends who would wanna know where she is...right? I mean, surely one of you guys would wanna know about my fins being cut up? Or my scales being punctured-”

“Enough! I have a story to finish Abram. Leave questions ‘till after the workshop.”

Abram lets out a tiny squeak but speaks no more. The skeleton grins in the firelight and begins again:

“The little girl carried on, always searching for her missing foot. She asked everyone she came across and slaughtered the many who tried to take her for their own, with their nets and their traps and their cages. By the time she finally found her foot she was covered in blood and guts and body parts. Still, she had found her foot and that’s what truly matters-”

“Where’d she find it Emil?” Abram asks, his eyes widening.

“I’m getting to that! Now where was I- oh right! The little girl, all alone and bloody in middle of a winter wood, found her foot on the low branch of a great oak much like these-” The skeleton waves his arms at the trees encasing the three storytellers, “The bone was still brand new, like a new pair of shoes elastic new. It had been left there many, many moons before by someone very tall.”

“What did she do then?” 

“Well, she grabbed her foot from the oak tree and put it back, snapping it into place so to speak. Then she began the journey back home. As she did she thought to herself, “The ogre must have not needed the foot as much as I did.” The End.” Emil raises his skull to the sky, grinning proudly. 

His friends give awkward coughs.

“What happened to the ogre?” Abram asks, frowning, “Surely something interesting happened to him.”

“Unimportant.” Emil growls. 

The suit of armour gives a squeak and stretches his wiry arms. Emil rolls his head to the side in annoyance. 

“What the girl did once she got home does not matter Gus. Not in the slightest. Don’t you understand what I was trying to get across? What I was trying to convey?”

“Not really.” Abram says, poking at the fire with a stick. 

“The moral of the story, of the stanzas, was that quests of revenge, of bloodshed, are simply pointless. The journey is important and needed. All the other benign details are just...unnecessary!”

“It was good ‘till the ending. You just need to rework the ending.”

Emil scoffs, “Amateurs! Both of you! And Francis, Boris and Johnson and…all of the folding folk at the board up in the mountains! I cannot compromise my masterpiece with...amateurs!” 

“I enjoyed it.”

The three men turn to see a young girl approaching their campground, her eyes an electric green, her pupils dancing. She has an amused smirk on her face. Her hair is a dangerous dark brown. Abram just stands there, blinking, confused. Emil turns his back on the visitor, muttering some obscenities about damned fairy folk under his musty breath. Gus on the other hand, recognises the queen immediately and falls to the ground in a bow, his chest plate and helmet clinking. The queen’s smirk grows into a grin and she pats the knight on the shoulder. 

“I enjoyed the blood and the guts...and the body parts.”

“Yeah you would,” Emil growls, “You and your tasteless, tasteless people.”

Gus gasps and places himself in front of the queen, as if Emil’s words can pierce her skin. Emil simply laughs.

“Look at this old fool! This old, old fool! She doesn't care for you at all my boy! She looks at you as she looks at the bugs swarming around her feet. Learn that Gus! Learn these young girls only want to look at you in amusement and never want to settle down!” 

“I want to settle down,” The queen replies, and she strides towards a chair the men have manufactured from fallen Autumn leaves, “I am going to settle down.”

“Ah see! I knew it! I knew you were that queen I’ve heard gossip about!”

“Gossip?” The queen’s eyebrows raise, “Gossip about me?”

“Oh yes. I’ve heard quite a lot of tall tales about you. Stories about you eating babies, stabbing your own knights with their own swords-” At that, Gus swallows and sits back down on the forest floor, shaking, “-stories of you charming snakes and cobras. Stories of you sleeping in their coils.” Emil stares at the queen, goading her to respond. The queen tuts and stretches her short, stubby legs. They were tired from hours of running as their owner searched the dark places. Her skin stretches and shifts in the firelight.

“I only ate one baby. The rest is just nonsense.”

“Hmmm. All the gossip came from your kind so I never took any of it seriously. Seeing you now makes me think it wasn’t so far fetched.”

The queen furrows her brow and rolls her eyes. 

“Are you all telling stories?” She asks, focusing on the dirt beneath her leaf throne instead of the man in front of her, “ When I was little I read stories about you telling stories together. In an endless loop.” 

The men fall silent. The queen sighs. 

“I would like to join you all. For just one night.” 

Emil growls. Abram roasts a marshmallow. Gus shivers in an invisible wind. His legs make a strange croaking sound and detach themselves from his waist, stumbling about on the rocky terrain.

“What are you queen of, exactly?” Emil asks.

“All sorts of things really.”

“Like what? What do you do? What are your day-to-day ac-tiv-teees?” 

“I look after the lost ones most of the time.”

“The lost ones?” 

“Folks made of time and sand. They come to us, my husband and I, full of regrets and sorrows. They lose themselves in our corridors and become our subjects. We transform their troubled minds into something sweet.”

“Sweet for the monarchy, one supposes, but not for everyone else,” murmurs Emil, picking at his cloak,“ I heard you two aren’t married already.”

“We will be soon.”

“Once your quest is complete, I’m guessing.”

“Yes. Once I return.”

“Do you take babies?” Abram asks, sitting cross-legged on the milkwood grass, “I heard you take babies.”

“Sometimes.”

Emil clears his throat, which makes his bones rattle in a very unattractive way. He then nods to Abram, who nods back. He turns to Gus, who by now is just a bunch of scraps flailing about in the mud. Gus’ head, however, has enough time to tilt his head back in agreement.

“Very well. You may join the club for a night. A single solitary night-”

“No baby eating!” Abram shouts from his corner. The Queen tuts and crosses her heart with a wicked finger. 

“I promise. No baby eating.” She grins. 

“-And you’ll be the last to go. No cuts!” Emil growls.

“Very well.” The Queen sighs and closes her eyes, listening to the whispers in the breeze. 

Emil looks to his companions, sitting by the campfire as they always do, and shrugs.

“Now that…compromise has been met I suppose we can continue with the workshop.”

“Finally,” Abram mutters. 

And as the four take their places in the storyteller’s guild, the woods begin to shiver with excitement. 

The annual Autumn meeting was only beginning.

[something-very-special]

Ask Response-stravaganza!

So I got a buuuunch of Asks in the last couple of days and a lot of them are spoiler-y by nature. Rather than hiding them all until I feel more comfortable addressing them (which won’t be for a couple of months, honestly), they’re all going under a big ol’ SPOILERS AHOY! read more break.

So here we go.

SPOILERS AHOY!

Anonymous: I agree that 2B and 9S's bond is mainly that of a broken family but there also seem to be a few hints at attraction there (e.g. the comments about 9S's heart rate increasing at the beginning of route B). Also, even though Adam's line certainly referred to "kill", the wording itself does carry some ambiguity and connotations that seem intentional - considering the hatred and love aspects of 9S's (admittedly complex) feelings, Adam may be referring to several things here, possibly all at once.

I absolutely believe the context was meant to be ambiguous. This is also why it’s really funny seeing how people reacted to it, and how they kind of project onto it. (And I certainly had the same reaction the first time I saw it, hah hah.)

I like to think that the censored word is actually a number of verbs all at once -- ‘fuck’ and ‘kill’ certainly aren’t the only two four-letter verbs out there -- which is why it’s censored the way it is; it’s an accusation of multiple natures, potentially meaning multiple things, open to a bevy of equally valid interpretation.

But.

In context of the story, whatever is hidden behind that line of asterisks is something that 9S doesn’t want to acknowledge. If it were something related to love or even lust, 9S has already proven that he gets flustered in such a context-- the aforementioned ‘heart rate’ response, and his conversation with the Little Sister. However, in conversation with Adam, his response is violent. It’s violent denial. I don’t think he’d be so aggressive if Adam’s main point had not been trying to stir up his more negative feelings.

So, in context of everything Adam may have said, and in context of what we as the audience could take away from it? I do believe ‘you want to **** 2B’ can (and was intended to) mean a broad range of things. But in context of what 9S heard? Not so nice.

Anonymous: thank you for your in depth thoughts about 9S. I found him to be really unlikeable at first and then somewhat tolerable by the end. but my final lasting impression of him was that he just unsettled me for some reason i could not pin point. With your thoughts, I was able to understand him a bit more. though he will still be my least liked character, i can't deny his whole arc is really thought provoking (also you mentioned that A2 was very underutilized, a sentiment I concur with whole heartedly)             

Oh, I’m glad. I know 9S can come across as being a brat (which I think is more of a knee-jerk reaction to his youthful design), and a racist jerk (which is definitely intended in-game, by his dismissal of the very concept of the robots having their own egos), but he’s definitely got a lot more going on. I had the fortune of accidentally tripping the Mother and Son quest early, so other than 9S being kind of a jerk toward Pascal the first interaction I saw between him and the machines was trying to comfort the little child machine, which was adorable and probably instrumental in my own opinion of him. (Made watching him go from “Shh, shh, don’t cry” to “I WILL MURDER EVERYTHING” pretty disturbing, and heart-wrenching.)

Yeah, A2 needed more love. I think I understand why she was kind of incidental, but still...

kantan-kt:                                                      Do you think that 9S died in route C? If you continue to route E, the pods tell the player that all yoRHa black boxes are offline. Doesn't that mean that A2's sacrifice was in vain? ;~;  But then again, he did stop his data upload to the yoRHa server so maybe there's a chance that he's alive?            

When you enter Ending E from the Chapter Select, it continued directly from Ending C, implying heavily that his black box was offlined. However, A2′s work seemed to be less about keeping him alive (which wouldn’t really be accomplished by hacking into him, since the damage kind of came from repeatedly stabbing him in the final fight) and more about retaining his memories and eliminating the logic virus the clone-arm imparted into him-- saving his soul, if you will, even if the body still died. Kind of ties in to the considerations of something greater than themselves, and the direct contemplation in a few of the sidequests about heaven, and whether they, as artificial life, would qualify for such a thing if it exists.

So even if you ignore Ending E and its possibility of restoring the three characters -- which obviously A2 would not have had any knowledge of, herself -- no. Even though 9S is also confirmed dead at the end of it, her work was not in vain.

Anonymous: On the BBE's Artbook, Commander talks about Jackass making an android combined from two other androids...Do you guess who they are talking about? 

I haven’t taken a chance to really look through the art book yet (didn’t want to spoil myself), but I’ve seen this mentioned and I have to say I don’t actually have a guess. I can’t think of anybody in the game, including sidequests, that would match this description. The only thing I can think of is her lamenting the death of ‘White’ on the bunker, but I can’t think of anything solid.

I look forward to somebody figuring it out, though. That’s pretty awesome, in a legitimately terrifying kind of way.

Anonymous: I thought about something and would like to hear your two cents on it. I personally find that 2B lacks character development, she barely says anything about her throughout the entire game, however, once you learn what her true purpose is, you have to look at the core of most sidequests in the game to (indirectly) learn about her since said sidequests are more or less related to 2B (and 9S to some extent). The "YoRHa Betrayers" and "Amnesia" are the most obvious that come to mind. Any thoughts?  

This is a two-parter, but the Asks split themselves quite neatly.

Regarding this, this is one of the things I really like about both this game and the original (and I remember hints of this in Drakengard, too). There’s plenty of clear development between the characters, but there’s also a lot of unspoken, subtle stuff. I’ve recently mentioned the relationship between Nier and the members of his party, and what’s really brilliant about it is that most of the interpersonal bonding is done without dialogue, or else entirely through subtext. The entire chunk of game from the fight against No. 6 to the post-fight against Kaine in the Lost Shrine is brimming with gorgeous body language and perfectly constructed dialogue that never feels the need to speak too much about what it’s trying to say. It requires-- I don’t want to say thought because it sounds pretentious, but it does require paying attention, especially for the relationship between Emil and Kaine (which turns out to be incredibly powerful even, what, 8000 years later, and I’m completely sold on it for this one hour-long stretch of game).

The same occurs with 2B. We’re introduced to her in a very mechanical context, and she comes across as being stoic, flat, no-nonsense. It serves a pretty good foil to 9S being the most emotional and ‘human’ of the main characters, but 2B herself isn’t emotionless. I marked this even back in the demo; she says ‘emotions are prohibited’ but becomes extremely worked up over 9S being hurt. Seems like a clear contradiction, especially when they ‘just met’, and given how generally well-written and strong the narrative is seems too contradictory to have been unintentional, especially for being right at the start of the game.

There are definitely hints and intrigue throughout, and these little bits from the sidequests and from her more errant dialogue and reactions paint a very interesting and complex picture, especially in conjunction with the “Amnesia” sidequest, which not only reveals the existence of the E-series YoRHa (which 2B dismisses, incidentally) but that they are highly psychologically unstable due to the rather grisly task presented to them. (That was all one sentence and I’m sorry.)

I quite like how her characterization was ultimately treated. It’s not overt, but there are enough indications of what lay beneath to make her at least interesting, and once you’re given full context about her nature it retroactively makes her more unusual decisions and reactions quite a bit more fascinating, and telling.

I was running out of space with my sidequest ask earlier, I thought about another obvious one that might be related to 9S? It's the "Confidential Intel" which ends up pretty badly, where some resistance member wants to build an S android since he always wanted a family, which can be associated with 9S wishes in a way? Maybe this is too far fetched but it all feels too coincidental that most sidequests share the same themes as the main characters' struggle, if that makes any sense?

Oh! Yes, actually, I completely follow. I admit I didn’t make that connection (although I did that quest with 2B so I wasn’t yet in the realm of familial pining), but it does make sense. I imagine something could also be read into the Resistance member’s desire to have somebody to protect.

...now that I think about it, I wonder if an E-unit was sent after them? The Scanner has confidential intelligence, after all, something that could be catastrophic if leaked, and while I interpreted his ‘p-please...’ at the end of the quest being a misfiring need to get away from his ‘family’, it might have been linked to their request: “Don’t tell anybody about us”, “Please”, because if somebody learns where they are the Scanner has to be eliminated, and his protector will go with him.

Got a bit away from the point. But yes, I think that’s entirely possible. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!