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canmom · 8 months

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The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere: 013-032

Previously: 000-012, spinoff post about entropy [all Flower posts]

Time for more flower...

youtube

...no, not that flower!

Unless...?

Welcome back to my liveblog of sorts for web novel The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by @lurinatftbn! Shout out to the Flower discord for giving me such a kind welcome. You're making me want to go all out on this liveblog, but, I musn't...! So I'm going to try to just comment on things that jumped out as especially noteworthy rather than write down everything that went down.

Especially since... a lot happened in these chapters. We have a perfect androgyne tree thing! Magical duels! Questionable student/teacher relationships! Steamed hams! Intense political arguments at dinner! Metafictional assurance of fair play! Prosognostic events! Transgender AIs! And of course........

a murder!!!!!

...ok that one was kinda obvious. But the first body has hit the floor! I don't feel like I have nearly enough information yet to start speculating about who might have dunnit.

That's a lie. It was definitely Kinzo Ushiromiya. That bastard.

So, from the top!

We're introduced to a few of the members of the Order, with by far the most screen time going to Su's mentor and ah, kinda-girlfriend? Neferuaten. And like, damn, lot going on there!

Before I get into the meat of that - first the bit where I search a character's name on Wikipedia. Neferuaten's name is most likely a reference to an Egyptian female king/pharaoh (a rank that's apparently distinct, conceptually, from a queen) variously called Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure, Waenre, and Aten Neferneferuaten. Most often shortened to just Neferneferuaten.

Her exact historical identity seems to be a little unclear - she may or may not be the same person as Nefertiti for example. Whoever she was, she apparently reigned for a couple of years around 1334–1332 BCE, and was then succeeded by the famous child king Tutankhamun. Or maybe Smenkhkare came in between them? Seems to be a matter of some debate. Girl really needed to leave a few more vast and trunkless legs of stone so we can figure this stuff out.

In any case, this version of Neferuaten goes way back with Su. Her introduction is to launch a magical attack on our poor girl while she's contemplating the 'everblossom'. One of those classic 'master surprise attacks the student to see how much they've learned' deals. This servers as a fine exposition for the exact mechanics of magical duels.

Zettai! Ummei! Mokushiroku!

Let's briefly note how magical duels and magic works here, since it seems like it will be very relevant later.

The more we learn about magic, the more explicit is that this system is not some natural property of the universe, but something that's designed by the mysterious Ironworkers. It seems like it's kind of an API to the Ironworker admin console. The Ironworkers wanted to make it difficult to do magic on human bodies, and therefore they designed a system for detecting what is 'human', based on three heuristics - anatomical, motion and neurological.

Humans, being the freaky little hackers that we are, of course set about figuring out how to bypass this system, and created standardised means, consisting of three spells, termed [x]-beguiling arcana. In a sense the three criteria are something like three 'hitpoints': the primary way to win a duel is to get all three spells off, thus making your opponent vulnerable to magic.

To achieve this, you can either speak the words of a spell or sign them by drawing them with your fingers - i.e. one way or the other express the appropriate string of symbols. This is risky because if you're interrupted at the wrong time, your spell can backfire and blow up, and getting a spell right requires precise pronunciation and also rapid mental maths. So the general 'gameplay' of magical duels involves attempting to disrupt the opponent's focus and aim, while fast-casting the spells that are most familiar to you.

We're introduced to a few spells that could be useful in battle, such as

Matter-Shifting (telekinesis spell with a geometric bent, used to move a cube of dirt to act as a smokescreen),

Matter-Annihilating (deletes stuff),

Entropy-Denying (essentially a shield that freezes objects and fluids in relative motion),

Air-Thrusting (creates a shockwave air blast),

Light-Warping (fucks up the light for visual cover),

World-Deafening (mutes all sound, which can interrupt casts)

Entropy-Accelerating (disrupts coherency, causing rapid aging-like effects - can be used on a 'higher plane' to disrupt all magic in an area)

Entropy-Reversing (rewinds matter along its path of motion - reference to entropy here seems a tad dubious but w/e)

It's clearly a pretty carefully thought out system - I appreciate that it's approached from the point of view of someone trying to exploit the shit out of the system and figure out what the real meta would be. It does kinda seem like if you got the drop on a wizard and shot them with a sniper rifle they'd be toast, but we'll see later that much more powerful weapons than mere chemical firearms exist in this world, and presumably in a combat situation everyone would have entropy-denying (or equivalent) shields up, so maybe that's a moot point.

Anyway, we are later informed by the closest thing to authorial voice that everything we're told here about magic can be assumed to be axiomatically true, similar to the red text in Umineko. Which pretty heavily foreshadows that this is going to be on the test, if you like!

the magical metaphysics

With apologies to Neferuaten, who will get more detailed comments shortly, there are some other big revelations about magic and the nature of this world that I should talk about while we're on the subject of magic!

In the last post I wondered whether casting magic is an innate quality or a 'skill issue' situation. It turns out the answer is sorta 'neither'. In fact, it's something that has to be unlocked, using special equipment and a particular ritual. The cost of this ritual is not yet entirely spelled out, but we definitely get an inkling. It's rather ominously implied by this exchange in chapter 22:

"We're supposed to want to save people, to make the world better. To defend a bunch of people who practically committed murder--" "You're a murderer too, dour girl." I stopped, and blinked. It took me some moments to process the words. They'd come from Lilith, who now seemed to have finished with her dessert. Now she was just slowly swirling her spoon around in the last remnants of the chocolate sludge on the plate and, occasionally, dipping a finger into her cream bowl and licking little bits of it up. Her expression was irritated, but disconnected. "All arcanists are," she said. "It's how it happens. So having fights over moral high ground like this is very stupid and annoying. Please stop."

In the same chapter, Su uses something called an 'acclimation log', in which she records her 'association' with a series of diary entries from her childhood self. It all suggests that Su's present consciousness has somehow taken over the body of another character, who we could maybe call original!Su.

A few chapters later, we find out what's the deal with prosognostic events. In fact we get a pretty extensive exposition. It turns out that iron is magical in this universe, providing access to higher dimensions, FTL and all sorts of shit. However, because the Mimikos and other worlds are running on a 'substrate' of iron - sort of like a simulation - we are told this is why they can't recursively include iron within. And since the human body includes a certain amount of iron (most notably, in the haemoglobin protein in red blood cells), it is not possible to fully realise the human body inside these artificial worlds.

a self-referential quibble

Here's how Su puts it:

A substrate cannot exist within itself. That sounds awkward when I put it so directly, but it's not too hard to understand if you think about it in abstract-- A foundation obviously can't support another foundation of equal weight and nature, because… Well, it would make nonsense of the whole premise. A book is a device for storing information, but it cannot contain within its letters everything about itself and what it contains, because that is already more than it contains. A box cannot hold another box of equal size, unless it is bent or otherwise changed. A mind cannot hold another mind…

On the face of it, this seems on the face of it... not entirely true, at least in some domains? You can run a virtual machine program on a computer, representing any particular combination of hardware and software, which is from the perspective of software 'on the inside', essentially indistinguishable from a computer running on 'bare metal' hardware. The only real difference is that operating the virtual machine has some computational overhead, so it will be slower. The more virtual machines you nest, the slower it gets.

But 'from the inside', the only way to tell which layer of virtual machine you're on would be to refer to some kind of external clock signal (which can trivially be spoofed) and notice that it's running slower than it should!

We could also mention here the subject of quines, which are programs which print their own source code.

Let's consider Su's examples. The book that completely describes its contents might be able to get around this problem in a similar fashion to a quine, by exploiting redundancy and self-reference.

For example, let's try creating a string that completely describes its own content, using a quine-style technique.

This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: "This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: " wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

In fact the '100 letter ws' could literally be the entire string that follows. Suppose the length of the 'real content' of the book is S, and the length of the rest of the 'metadata sentence' describing properties of the book is M; then the total length of the book is 2M+3S.

You can add as much additional information to the 'metadata' string as you like, provided you quote it again afterwards. If you don't like having a book be three times the length it needs to be, you could compress the 'real content' string using an algorithm like DEFLATE, and include instructions in the 'metadata' on how to decompress it. (Text tends to compress really well.) This is where we run up into notions probably all too familiar to rats, or indeed anyone who recently read Seth Dickinson's new novel Exordia, such as Kolmogorov complexity.

But... I think this might well be intentional. Given how common notions like 'stacks of simulations' and 'self-reference' are in rat space, I suspect we may be being misled! The 'rules' of the game - more on that in a moment - say that Su won't deliberately lie to us, and won't withold information without saying so, but her perceptions could be mistaken. Maybe she's been given a false explanation of why the world works the way it does.

It's also totally possible that while the general point (you can't contain a thing in itself) may have some edge cases, the specific instance - you can't build a universe on a giant higher-dimensional iron spike and still have that universe contain iron - may still be true. We don't know the first thing about building universes using magic iron after all.

anyway... the Deal with Prosognisia!

The Ironworkers had a hacky workaround to the 'no iron' rule: they had a few tens of thousands of preserved human bodies on board their Tower of Asphodel. Asphodel, incidentally, is a genus of flower, said to carpet the Asphodel Meadows, one of the three divisions of the realm of Hades. (In their game, Supergiant decided to convert it into a lava zone.) It looks rather pretty actually!

So, they were able to instantiate these bodies in their rebuilt worlds by sort of making them into a reference to one of these stored human bodies. Here's Su again, chapter 26:

Some human bodies, or at least the impression of them and the iron within, had been preserved as part of the Tower, frozen in a timeless place. And because of that, it was eventually discovered it was possible for them to exist in the artificed planes as a sort of stable paradox. After all, while a book can't exist within itself, it can still reference other stuff it does contain internally, even if it makes for somewhat awkward reading. A few tweaks and workarounds solved the problem of the iron associated with that human body staying a part of it, and just like that, human beings were walking something at least akin to the earth once again. However, this only permitted replicas of those bodies within the Tower to exist. The creation of new ones remained impossible, and births not incubated by anima taken by the same mechanism would inevitably fail. And there were far fewer preserved bodies than minds; scarcely more than ten thousand or so for each party.

So every human born in the Mimikos is forked from one of these human bodies. For... mysterious reasons, if you recognise that someone nearby is forked from the same body as you, you both straight up die. If you touch such a person (a 'contact paradox') it's even worse, and all the iron in your body disappears, leaving behind a 'greenish sludge', which seems to be a severe enough disaster to cause deaths of nearby people as well.

(This is a little surprising given that the iron in the human body is only about 60 parts per million by mass, but it would kinda destroy your blood's ability to carry oxygen, so it would definitely be pretty fatal.)

The 'distinction treatment' we heard about is able to mitigate the risks somewhat - with quick medical intervention and time magic, it's possible to allow the people involved to make a full recovery. An interesting wrinkle is that it's implied either Ophelia or new character Balthazar is trans, because normally people of the same gender can't share an upstream body.

That definitely leads to a very fascinating fucked up medical emergency scene, but the reason I'm discussing it now is because it's got bearing on this big-deal question of 'what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway'...

so what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway?

Having finally answered one of the major questions, we can start zeroing in on another. In a flashback scene in chapter 30, we learn that the 'original' bodies have innate access to the magic API, but when you're given a distinct identity at birth you quickly lose it. To have your sv_cheats 1 restored, you have to go through a process that, it would seem, downloads a new mind into your head from one of those original bodies...

The man sat back a little in his chair, crossing his legs idly. "It's intimidating in concept, but please do understand that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are no observable effects whatsoever. Around half of the individuals who go through it don't even lose consciousness, and of the other, four out of five don't report any abnormalities when they reawaken. And even of the remaining 10%, the symptoms are negligible for nine out of ten-- Fleeting false memories, minor alterations in temperament that self correct, usually in under a day..." "And the others?" I inquired. "The remaining one percent." He considered this question for a few moments, obviously choosing his words carefully. "The technical term for the rare cases where confusion persists in the longer term is pneumaic assimilation failure. We have a program for treatment, using a combination of various phychological and medical means. It's time-tested. It brings people back to themselves quickly, usually within only only a few months at most." 'Confusion.' 'Brings people back to themselves.' I wasn't feeling fond of the way he couched everything in euphemism. It wasn't helping. "What do you mean by 'it brings people back to themselves'..?" I furrowed my brow. "They just... Forget everything?" "Not immediately," he said. "But they lose a sense of association with... Well, with anything that shouldn't be there, and that leads those memories and feelings to fade over time." He smiled. "The human mind is very adept at excising anything it judges to be out of place. All it needs is a push in the right direction."

The new mind tends to rapidly adjust to its new context, connecting to the memories stored in the body and assuming continuity of identity. But in rare cases it fails! Nuts! And we can infer poor Su appears to be one such case.

Presumably this is what Lilith is referring to when she says that all arcanists are murderers. It's not clear if there is continuity of consciousness when you get /mode +o'd - since you (usually) inherit the memories it is perhaps hard to say whether such a thing is meaningful.

In any case, Su's mega-guilt complex, the reason she seems to want to visit the mysterious egomancer Samium, seems to be at least partly that she's evicted the previous consciousness to inhabit this body. I don't think that's the whole story though! Her grandad seems to be involved somehow too. I don't think Su is literally the reincarnation of her grandad, because it seems unlikely that he'd be motivated to carry out ego suicide like this.

introducing teacher mommy

All those major revelations aside, let's get back to the subject of Neferuaten, aka 'Grandmaster', Su's old mentor in entropic thanatomancy. She quickly establishes herself as one of the most likeable of the inner circle of the Order - she's funny, understanding, generally affable and a little self-effacing. Su definitely puts her on a massive pedestal - though other characters such as Ran find her a little more sussy.

I gotta say, the author is really good at writing old academics. Each one of them comes across as strongly believable, distinctive, motivated and flawed characters. I'll talk a bit about the others in a bit but first let's talk age gap yuri! lmao

Anyway, at the end of chapter 20 we get this:

Then she leaned over and, in an impulsive, almost casual gesture, kissed me on the lips. Before turning, heading to the exit.

'Huh!' thinks the reader. 'That sure is an unusual thing for someone's teacher to do.'

It is quite a few chapters later before Su gets round to telling us a bit more about what's going on...

After that, we met outside of the university more and more often, her becoming sort of a source of emotional support. At some point, I became aware that what was happening was probably quite inappropriate. It's not like I was underage, having turned 25 two years prior, but she was my professor. But I'd been bad at making friends in both of... Well, in both my past contexts, and I'd felt so lonely living in Tem-Aphat, away from Ran and any reminders of the resolutions we'd made. And it all somehow felt so natural. Things got out of hand. One day, I'd had a fight with my father over the logic bridge, and had got a little drunk when I was due to see her. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I did something uncharacteristic of me. Inappropriate. But she didn't respond in the way I'd expected. To my shock, she didn't act like it was inappropriate at all. It wasn't as if we ended up dating. That would never have worked, and I was pretty sure she was past wanting that sort of thing anyway. On some levels, she always kept her distance. But it became something we did together, an avenue of private expression that became part of her support for me - and mine, eventually for her.

Su then expresses a bunch of guilt over the whole thing. (Not least because it's a 'selfish' thing she's doing in a body that, implicitly, she doesn't think of as hers.)

The issue of age here is interesting lol. Definitely my gut reaction, and probably the one the story is aiming to elicit, is to be a bit 'wuh oh' by all this, maybe think of Makima wrapping Denji round her finger. That said, by vastly expanding the range of human ages, it's definitely poking pretty hard at our intuitions about what's 'appropriate'. The vibes are like... the students are constantly referred to as 'the kids' by the hundreds-year-old wizards. I don't think we're told Su's current age, but if she was 27 in this flashback, and in the present she says a 29 year old computer is close in age to her, so I would guess currently early 30s. Neferuaten's age is not stated at this point but given her position she's def a few hundred years up there.

The vibe though is that Su is infatuated with someone who has vastly more emotional maturity and experience of the world, not to mention social power over her, and that person is all too happy to encourage it.

The way Su tells it, it sounds like this fling went pretty ok for them? But I definitely feel like things are probably not gonna stay ok, given how clearly the 'inappropriate' nature of this relationship has been foregrounded!

Dark yuri is literally one of the things I'm here for, so I'm looking forward to the fireworks lmao.

Anyway, besides that, we get a bit of a sense of Neferuaten's ideology. She actually shares a lot of Su's skepticism about the viability of the whole immortality project. She makes a big point of making sure the gang get a sense of the order's culture and rituals, apparently viewing this as a chance for their project to be judged by outsiders for the first time. On a personal level, she raises the issue of if the project might be able to save only the young - whether they might be the last humans to not become immortal. Nef's attitude seems to be that she'd be good with that - something she clashes with Kam over.

Otherwise, she's kinda... world-weary, I suppose you could say. She seems to look at the firey youngsters with an attitude along the lines of 'wish I still had that'. She does love to perform to an audience, asking leading questions to set up some lesson or another.

She's a fun character, I enjoy reading her a lot.

Also she seems to have made a sapient AI in the basement! Only everyone says it's definitely not sapient - it is in some sense not agentic, it can't change its motivation, allegedly. Still, it definitely has a 'passing the Turing test' sorta vibe.

don't mention the war

Besides Nef, we get introduced to a few of the remaining members of the class, and also the masters of the Order. Of note is Bardiya, the former revolutionary. He's a very 'speak his mind without preamble' sort of character, which can land him in hot water.

So, returning to Chapter 22, we have a really juicy scene in which a dinner conversation gets very heated after Bardiya mentions his role in the war, provoking a political row with Durvasa, a member of the order. It's a really well observed social dynamics scene - the characters dancing around the topic and the way a row is almost avoided, and then it isn't - Bard's determination, Kam's brown-nosing, Su getting drawn in against her better judgement in a deeply relatable way.

Thanks to this convo, we get a sense of the events of the revolution! So, as @nightpool helpfully informed me, I actually got things a bit mixed up in my rough timeline last time. The 'gerontocrats' were not a feature of the distant-past imperial era - rather it's a figure identified as an oppressor class by a very recent movement, still within living memory for even the youngsters.

The events broadly seem to reflect something like the Paris Commune. There was a famine under the hand of a 'Meritist' city council, killing thousands, which led to a popular uprising let by a 'paritist' movement. The paritists executed a handful of people and redistributed property based primarily on age, intending to break the power of the 'gerontocrats' who had neglected the 'younger generations' by hoarding resources. The Administration overseeing the whole world alliance then cracked down hard - deploying a poison gas that, though it was intended to be nonlethal, turned out to have unexpected lethal side effects.

In the aftermath of the revolution, it seems many reforms were made - besides relaxing the rules on what magic is banned, they changed the equation of scarcity so that food could be replicated more readily? Little unclear on this part. Su mentions that the situation is different now than it was when the Alliance was built, with the material scarcity mostly gone, but clearly there was a famine in recent memory.

Anyway, there is naturally a big generational divide over this. The older generations lived through some pretty fucked-up sounding wars, called things like the 'Great Interplanar War', and in the aftermath built a political system that was supposed to secure peace. (c.f. League of Nations, UN). Although she broadly sympathises with the revolutionaries, Su seems to extends the older generation a fair bit of understanding for having built this system and fearing what would happen if it were destroyed. Though the most relativist view comes from the mouth of Neferuaten:

"I think a common problem with inter-generational communication is an inability to really convey context and scope," Neferuaten said. I noted she didn't actually convey if Kam's understanding of what her point had been was correct or not. "Someone who lived through the Interluminary Strife might tell a young person from the modern day that they have no understanding of hunger, only for the latter to stubbornly retort that they lived through that Ikaryonic famine that preluded the civil dispute… Except that one was a catastrophe that lasted decades and killed tens of millions, while the other slew less than a thousand." She sighed. "People try to relate the experiences of others to their own lives in order to contextualize their understanding of the world and how it might be bettered, but those second-hand experiences inevitably become caricatures, conveying no useful truths. It makes me wonder if human beings, both young and old, are capable of learning from history at all."

Around here is raised the question of a person's political development - the arc from a young person's anger at the state of the world and determination to tear it aside for something better, against the resignation of an older person who fears losing what is already there, however flawed. (We might note of course that there exist young conservatives and old radicals. Circumstances have a lot to do with it.)

Of course, with this whole 'gerontocrat' business at stake already, the mission of the Order hoping to achieve immortality is naturally cast in a dubious light. Fun conflict. On the one hand we have 'can immortality be achieved, and what will it cost', on the other 'who will benefit from it, if it is'! So much narrative force is obtained by politicising this, attaching it to characters with personal motivations and histories, instead of leaving it up to an abstract 'living forever good/bad'.

But it's not all political debates and shagging your teacher...

Over the course of these chapters we get a sense of what the order's been up to!

Let's talk flowers. Just prior to the meeting with Nef, Su comes across an enormous freaky plantlike thing. This turns out to be an experiment to create a being that can survive in even the most extreme environments, like the bottom of the ocean - an attempt to demonstrate that immortality is possible at least in principle. This lifeform is termed the Nittaimalaru or 'Everblossom'. It seems like a pretty good candidate for being the story's eponymous Flower - symbolically, the underwater immortality-granting plant that appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It's worth noting here that 'indefinite lifespan' is actually not entirely impossible in our natural world. I was talking about this with a friend who raised some interesting points:

reading the first post i wanna bring up that while the concept of cancer is fundamental to any multicellular organism the presence of cancer as a problem is actually pretty niche. same with telomere degradation, which is a purposeful anti-cancer measurement. like pretty much all perennial plant life is capable of absolute immortality. while the lobster grows forever until it can no longer use its legs to push its great weight along the sand towards food, if a tree overshoots its growth it's more than happy to break off its unnecessaries, though with both of them at a certain point it's always good to have help after a while. as mammals we're very obsessed with the concept of like ending death as this sort of ultimate goal, prime directive, whatever, when that shit was deliberately turned on in the first place (assigning intent to evolution sue me), because in terms of cost benefit it gave us something in return that we as students of medicine or biology are still not fully grasping.

After a little more discussion:

@play-now-my-lord wrote:

even if humans weren't causing climate change, climactic fluctuations over centuries upend a lot of what is normal in specific areas. if the people on a farmstead in bronze age sweden lived 500 years, the methods and habits they internalized when they were young would habitually be incorrect for the conditions as they existed, the weather, the soil

other friend:

that's how most trees die in the end the root system operates as a weak parallel to the tree's neurons, with a more physiological bent than say our chemical one. patterns around balance, nutrient access, hydrology, and wind are ingrained and learned over centuries and the more regular/consistent that cycle is the more a root will grow. if a tree's roots are built around buttressing from a wind tunnel due to forest conditions and the trees around it fall for whatever reason, it has to relearn what used to be a hundred year old certainty that it needs to lean against the westerly gale every winter, etc. - this is generally a pretty brittle process altogether when it comes to the base of the plant n stuff

some caveats:

should be noted i overlooked a lot of nuance about perennial mortality, like, some plants are more used to investing into survival than others i'm thinking of like how beech bark disease doesn't affect the roots of the beech, so the trunk dies but new shoots continue to grow out and eventually catch the disease and repeat, so the plant is essentially still immortal but forced into a perpetual state of adolescence. but i think for a great number of trees if the tree falls it just goes "eh the rot consumes us all " and dies

Among mammals, we could also note the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat, which loves to defy all sorts of generalisations (also one of the only non-arthropod eusocial animals). They're not exactly immortal, living around 37 years on average, but their chance of dying at any given year is pretty much flat rather than increasing with age.

Of course, longevity and resilience are different things. Nef mentions the resilience of tardigrades as an inspiration. As far as their experiment goes, the 'everblossom' is not an entirely successful experiment, requiring twice-yearly maintenance to address an imbalance.

Given how prominently it features, and the invocation of Gilgamesh, it seems pretty damn likely that the everblossom will in fact be a key to immortality, or something like it.

Religion exists after all!

Other parts of the facility are also pretty funky. We learn that it was patterned after the old headquarters of the Order, which was destroyed when they got found out; that headquarters was built in an old church compound. What sort of thing does a church worship in this world? Actually it's kinda goffic as fuck. Makes Catholicism look downright tame. It's a polytheistic religion and the deities involved are figures like this...

In the center of the circle was a statue, about 8 feet high, and of the kind of ornate-but-formulaic design that characterized art from the Second Resurrection. It depicted a tall, skinny woman, though her two sides, left and right, were very different in nature. The left was beautiful and youthful in a generic, almost ethnicity-less way, dressed in the most delicate of silk peploi, with long and unrealistically tidy curls falling elegantly over her shoulders. Her lip was curled into a gentle half-smile, kind but slightly mysterious, teasing. Her right... Well, her right, to say the least, was very different. On that side, she appeared to be skinless, although it was hard to tell with a statue; I recalled it being a matter of hot debate among the boys in my class back in secondary school. It was possible she was simply incredibly emaciated, or that there were supposed to be growths - like scales - erupting from her flesh. Her hair was made up of hateful, eyeless wyrms, biting and hissing at each other, and her flesh, which was naked save for a tasteful rag covering one area in particular, was covered in numerous stab wounds, bleeding openly. As for her face, it was grim and wide eyed. Mournful and contemptful both. I recognized the figure depicted at once; I passed one of her temples whenever I went to the distribution hall to pick up groceries. This was Phui, Dying Goddess of Love Given Way To Anguish, one of the eleven deities of the now largely defunct Ysaran-Inotian Pantheon.

In the stories, Phui was the third-to-last of the gods to fall during the end of the world, who attempted to take her own life after the death of her lover. But the breaking of the heavens had left her unable to die, meaning that no matter how she much she cut into her flesh, how much she starved herself of food and drink, reprieve would never come. Only relentless, unceasing pain, and grief for that which she had lost.

Metal album cover ass-religion, I'm into it.

The mysterious Ironworkers seem to have really drummed into the population of their new Mimikos that there was a very nice world once, and they'd better be damn sad about what happened to it. However, religion has waned in the present day, and it seems most characters are atheists of some sort.

What did happen to it, anyway? It's referred to as 'the collapse' with a lowercase c; I noticed an author's comment where the author says it's not a case of just a name for the apocalypse. A few people in the comments started speculating about false vacuum collapse. This is a physics thing. Basically, a remote possibility exists in the standard model of particle physics that the existence of matter in our universe could be in a kind of local energy minimum, but it would be possible for it to locally fall into a true minimum, creating a kind of bubble that expands at the speed of light and just deletes everything. We're pretty sure that isn't true though. If it did happen we literally would not be able to do anything... at least in a universe without FTL.

(Curiously, Su mentions special relativity at one point. With all the funky cosmology stuff I kinda wondered if special relativity is still real, but apparently it is! Electromagnetism has been mentioned as still being a thing a couple of times now, so rather than being totally absent it seems like the physics is a bit different, with an electric shock being sufficient to cause radiation poisoning.)

The fair play interlude

In between chapters 22 and 24 we get a curious little interlude called Intermission ∞ 1. The introduction presents it as something that is happening on one of the 'higher planes', translated into terms we can understand, which is grounds for it to get metafictional.

Two entities, calling themselves the Playwright and the Director, discuss the direction of the story so far before laying out the version of fair-play mystery rules this story will be operating under. They are as follows:

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PROTAGONIST IS ALWAYS TRUTHFUL

ALL EVENTS FOLLOW THE RULES OF CONVENTIONAL REALITY, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

ALL SYSTEMS INTRODUCED CANNOT BREAK THEIR OWN RULES AS DEFINED WITHIN THE NARRATIVE, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

I made them red because it feels like they would be red in Umineko.

Further clarifications and caveats allow that Su can withold information (for dramatic tension or whatever I guess) but she'll always tell us when she does, and an example of 'system introduced' is the magic duel sequence: the characters know accurately how magic duels work.

The two entities are performing this story for some sort of audience, and during their double-act credit themselves with control over the direction of the scenario, sometimes disagreeing. (Another one, the chorus, enters at the end.) Probably best not to think too hard about what that implies for our characters on the 'main' level of the story being 'real', it's probably just a cute bit to take the audience aside without completely breaking the fourth wall. Then again... who knows!

What this means is that my concerns about professed liar Su being an unreliable narrator are unfounded. It's still a limited POV, so Su could fail to notice things or be deceived, but she's not trying to pull one over on us.

I bring this up because...

There's been a mordah!

So, in the last chapter I read - strictly the beginning of a new arc - we find someone dead!

Well, this was kinda foreshadowed earlier. The chef disappeared, the assistant chef was knocked out by magic, and some kinda crazy time magic happened in the pantry - with the heavy implication that someone was trapped in some kinda hyperbolic time pantry for many years. At least they'd have plenty to eat..? The characters don't pick up on the implication of the tally marks and write it off as a stasis field malfunction.

So, it was natural to suspect the cook is dead. Indeed they are: Su finds a mysterious note in the book given to her by an academic at the school as a parting gift, warning her not to trust the inner council - inexplicably written two years prior and warning her to check the archive in a certain position. Investigating this, she and Kam find a secret armoury room. In there is a tunnel, and at the bottom, the cook appears to have committed suicide, leaving a suicide note vaguely implying the Order is up to some seriously sussy shit.

Of course, Kam and Su immediately suspect foul play. But they also both have ulterior motives for coming to this conference, so they agree to keep it hush-hush. This is definitely a great idea that won't get everyone killed by Beatrice... I mean uh. Whoever the murderer is.

The obvious question is, who dunnit? And why? Unfortunately, we don't really have alibis for most of the characters. Many of the inner circle haven't even shown up on screen yet. So there's a lot of people who it might have been.

More suspects! More suspects!

I haven't even mentioned several of the characters. We also have Sacnicte, steward of the house - she's an arcanist, and Su is kinda insanely horny for her aesthetically appreciative, in a way that the other characters notice and are literally like 'I don't see it'... which makes me wonder if we have a situation where someone has fucked with her perceptions. She's very down to earth and casual.

Her name is probably a reference to the Maya princess Sac Nicté, meaning 'white flower', who according to legend was involved in the migration of the Itza people from the Chichen Itza. Mind you the article I'm getting this from is kinda horrendous; the sole source is in Spanish and appears to be some random website from 2004.

Among the older generation, we have Theo's dad, Linos. He is a generally affable chap, kinda socially awkward (he's responsible for prolonging the political discussion by a botched apology) but otherwise not particularly standing out among the Order members.

Linos or Linus is another Greek name with a few referents.

The Order member who really does stand out is Anna, or in full, Amtu-hedu-anna. She's the one who's properly old, having dodged many of the 'kills people around 500' bullets of this setting, and not especially inclined to make nice. Very 'straight to the point' kinda lady. We meet her fairly briefly - Ran seems to have landed in her good books.

This one really took some digging! It seems to be based on Enheduanna, who was a Sumerian high priestess of Nanna and the oldest named author in history, credited for tablets like The Exaltation of Inanna, although it seems there's some debate over whether she definitely wrote them. Her rank in Sumerian was Entu, and I could fully believe 'amtu hedu anna' is a different transliteration of 'Entu Hedu Anna'.

As mentioned above, we're introduced to two logic engines, Sekhmet and Eshmun, built respectively by Neferuaten and (the as yet unseen) Hamilcar. Sekhmet has more biological components and wants to be a human. She wants to be human, and she's also expressed a distinct pronoun preference and gender id, which I suppose makes her trans. Eshmun is a more traditional logic engine with a lot of cogs; Sekhmet calls him 'big brother', so I guess he gets he pronouns from that.

Sekhmet is of course named for the Egyptian lion-headed warrior/medicine goddess. Eshmun is a Phoenician god of healing. Hamilcar was a name used by a number of Carthaginians, mostly generals.

Ezekiel is another one of the student gang. We haven't seen much of him yet, so I don't have a lot to say about him. Abrahamic prophet.

Balthazar is a student from another school - another thanatomancer in fact. He's something like the protégé of Zeno, and his presence is Zeno's condition for having this whole affair go ahead. He's got the same eyes as Ophelia, and Zeno failing to do his paperwork and allowing to happen is a big deal. But Zeno's kind of a bigshot so it might not come to anything. Anyway, Su is kind of suspicious towards Balthazar, but he takes it all in good humour.

Balthazar was one of the three magi in Christian mythology. There were a few Zenos, but the best known is surely Zeno of Elea, who came up with his famous "we need to invent calculus to solve this" paradoxes around infinite sums.

Yantho is a member of the Order staff, who was cooking when whoever did shenanigans in the kitchen... did shenanigans in the kitchen. His roast was ruined, but sadly he was too unconscious to order fast food and pass it off as his cooking. He can't speak and communicates by writing on his tablet.

The name crops up as an obscure Maya deity, part of a trio of brothers with Usukun and Uyitzin, but I can't find any source that seems particularly definitive.

Samium is an old egomancer, whose presence is a secret that only Su and Ran are in on. Su wants to speak to him, for reasons that are probably to do with finding out if he can restore 'original!Su' into her body, or maybe resurrecting her grandfather, or something?

...is that everyone? I think that's everyone. At some point I probably need to make an Umineko-style character screen lol.

can we solve anything yet?

Since this chapter is the beginning of the arc, I suspect there's more info to divulge before we can think about trying to solve this one. And, given the Umineko inspo, the problem to solve probably isn't simply 'whodunnit' but something more fundamental to the nature of this world.

Still, it seems all but spelled out explicitly that current!Su failed to properly assimilate into her body after she became an arcanist. Her grandfather's final 'kindness' is less clear. Her intentions with Samium... I've mentioned the obvious theories about already. She's mega guilty about overwriting this poor girl and has decided the only course of action is to try and restore the mind that inhabited her body originally. But I don't think we have the whole picture just yet, because I still can't figure out what her granddad did.

Given her discussion of 'dragon' vs 'phoenix' resurrection, and of how her meeting with Samium might change the order, I also theorised - before I really twigged the arcanist thing - that she was here to resurrect her grandfather in her own body. Body-hopping is like, the classic immortality strat after all. But... I'm less convinced of that one now? It doesn't seem like Su particularly liked the old man, she definitely doesn't want to follow in his footsteps, and 'saw him die unexpectedly during the revolution' does not seem like it would inspire the same sort of guilt.

Still, he surely did something to her, she's definitely cryptically alluded to that enough times.

Besides that?

Obviously really digging this story! Honestly, this one rules. It helps that the author is clearly into a lot of the same shit I am. All the long discussions and beat by beat narration could potentially feel a little dry, but honestly, I'm pretty hooked, it's definitely pulling me forwards. It's a fascinating, conflict-rich setting, that raises all sorts of interesting concepts. It's confident in knowing what it wants to be. Umineko is a hell of a tough act to follow, but this one has a distinct identity of its own. Can't wait to see what happens now the mystery seems to be about to kick off for real.

With that in mind, I'm sure it won't be long until the next one of these. I may have to dial back the detail a bit, this is kinda having a bad effect on my work right now. There's just so many fascinating corners to follow up ^^'

Anyway, I realise these posts are kinda massive for tumblr, so I'm gonna start copying them over to canmom.art soon. <See you next time>.

#the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn #sff #novels #fiction

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duhragonball · 1 year

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Super Dragon Ball Heroes 44-46

It... kind of isn’t, really.

All right, so this is the second round of the Super Space-Time tournament. The figthers are all off in different battlegrounds, each fighting one of Aeos’ four warriors to win a fairy which they’ll bring to Aeos to claim victory. I think that’s how this works. I’m not sure if the first one to bring Aeos a fairy is the winner, or if it’s whoever brings the most. I guess it doesn’t matter much. Anyway, Goku’s on what looks like Earth, facing his father, Bardock. Goku doesn’t know Bardock, but Bardock knows him. Like Future Gohan, his powers were amplified by the Dark Dragon Balls when he entered into Aeos’ service. I guess this is the same guy who kept getting involved during the New Space-Time War arc. He didn’t have the Bardock headband like he does now, but unless Aeos has a fifth henchman, I don’t see who else it could be.

Meanwhile, Bardock’s comrade, Vidro, is fighting contestants on a different battleground. She can create clones of herself and fight multiple opponents at once. What I don’t understand is what happened to all of the other fighters. She’s taking on Yamcha, Hit, and Vegeta at the same time, but there were guys from two other teams involved here. Those two teams don’t seem to have anyone at the place where Goku and Bardock are fighting.

Anyway, Hit manages to get the drop on what I assume to be the ‘real’ Vidro, but then someone stops him before he can finish her off.

It’s Yamcha, and he tells Hit that he can’t just let Hit kill her, even if she is an enemy. I mean, yeah, there was no rule that said he had to murder Aeos’ warriors. He just needed to take the fairy from her, so I don’t get what Hit is doing. Hit seems insistent, though, so he concludes that he’ll have to kill Yamcha first.

This display from Yamcha has deeply touched Vidro, though, so she jumps to Yamcha’s defense.

Even her clone is confused.

Meanwhile, Bardock and Goku father-son beam struggle blah blah blah get back to Yamcha I want to see if he marries this lady!

Seriously, though, Bardock loses, but he doesn’t mind because if a fellow “low-class” Saiyan can improve this much on his own, then there’s hope for Bardock to do the same.

Meanwhile, Chronoa confronts Aeos while disguised as one of the competitors. The Time Patrollers had their own team in this tournament, and Chronoa infiltrated the tourney that way, probably so she could get close to Aeos on her own, since that’s the objective of the second round. She wants the Scroll of Eternity back, but nothing’s changed. Aeos tells her to take it by force if she thinks she can.

Then they power up to their super forms. Aeos goes first, expecting a fight, but Chronoa says she’ll only use this form to talk.

But Aeos sees this as pointless, as her mind is made up. Okay, the problem I have with this show is that they never explain anything past a superficial level. Aeos is the former Supreme Kai of Time, and now she’s come back because she believes Chronoa, her successor, has failed in her duties and allowed too many timelines to exist. Okay, fine, but why did Aeos step down from the office in the first place? Where has she been all this time, and why did she choose to come back now? And what gives her the right to just waltz back into her old job and take over? Does Chronoa have no authority in this? If she doesn’t, then what good is her title?

They struggle for a bit, and Chronoa concedes that all the timelines are a problem, but recent events have shown her that there are great possibilities in some of these timelines, and they’ve helped her overcome all the threats that have shown up in this web-anime. Wait, have they? Goku and Vegeta have handled the bulk of the work, and while there are two sets of them running around, that means you really only need two timelines, tops. Maybe a third, depending on how Trunks’ whole deal is.

I mean, from the layout of this tournament, Hearts and Cumber are from a separate timeline, since they were on a different team. And they may have helped out in the previous arc, but they were also villains. Seems to me that all these alternate timelines are usually the cause of the problems in this show, not the solution.

Anyway, Aeos overpowers Chronoa and gets ready to time-freeze her, when Goku shows up to turn in his fairy and claim victory.

He also wants to ask Aeos to not erase all the timelines where the losing teams came from. Well, we’ve been over this, but Aeos refuses to budge. So now Goku has to do something about this.

So now we’re doing Goku vs. Aeos, and he uses his Ultra Instinct speed to stay one step ahead of her time altering powers. She can’t time-freeze him if she can’t hit him with it.

But Aeos is pretty sharp, and she sets Goku up in a Hellzone Grenade situation. But Goku knows a counter to that, a move that’s near and dear to my heart...

Instant Transmission Kamehameha! Ha ha ha! Get Goku’ed, idiot!

This doesn’t defeat Aeos, but it does disrupt her time field over this area, which... I don’t know what that means. She then decides that the alternate timelines are much graver threat than she realized, if they can produced fighters like Goku.

Meanwhile, back at the site of the Universe Tree, we find Mechikabura’s... ghost? Essence? I assume this is a manifestation of the “Dark Factor” that he released when Trunks killed him in Episode 20. Towa collected this energy and bequeathed it to Fu, who then lost to Goku. We still don’t know what became of Fu, but apparently the power he got from the Dark Factor is still lingering here, cursing Mechikabura’s enemies.

Then Demigra shows up and attacks this Mechikabura ghost and claims the power for himself. Okay...

Then Demigra attacks this tournament grounds Aeos has set up.

Once Aeos sees Demigra, she realizes that he was the “premonition of evil from space-time”. So I think the idea here is that she was worried that something bad would come from the alternate timelines, and she did all this to erase the alternate timelines and eliminate the problem, but now she sees that Demigra was the true threat all along? All right...

She also calls him “Majin Demigra”. I’ve noticed this a number of times in this series. For some reason, a number of characters have referred to Demigra and his underlings as Majins, like it’s a synonym for “demon”, or a specific type of demon. I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work, but it’s definitely not a translation issue. I can hear the voice actors saying “Majin” plain as day, so I think the subtitles are just going along with it.

So Demigra grabs the humidor where Aeos has been storing the Scroll of Eternity, and declares himself the new Dark King and the ruler of space-time. So this is basically just like the story mode in Xenoverse 1, where he broke out of the Crack of Time, took over the Time Nest and absorbed Tokitoki. In the back of my mind, I’ve been trying to figure out if any of this material in SDBH can be worked into the Xenoverse continuity, but it’s really just telling the same story with different characters. It’s still the Time Patrollers, main timeline Goku, Towa and Demigra. The only difference is that all of these side characters keep showing up in the present, instead of the bad guys manipulating them in the past.

The first thing Demigra does is summon a goofy version of Omega Shenron from the Scroll of Eternity, sort of like how Goku Black did it before, only this one is much sillier. He looks like he fused with Demigra’s final form from the video games.

Then Xeno Gogeta shows up, because he really wasn’t that far away, and he’s a Time Patroller with a hobby of clobbering Omega Shenron. I’m not sure why he’s pink, though.

They basically go through all the spots from the original Gogeta 4 vs. Omega Shenron fight in GT. Well, not the bit with the streamers. It’s supposed to be a callback to GT, but ironically this fight is actually way, way better than GT. Better animation, better colors, and Gogeta’s fusion doesn’t dissolve.

Omega Shenron can’t even touch the guy, so Gogeta 4 polishes him off with a Big Bang Kamehameha like he should have done 26 years ago.

Aeos finally grants that she has to work with Goku and Gogeta to beat Demigra, so it looks like everyone’s on the same page now.

Meanwhile, Demigra’s right-hand woman, Robelu, is here to observe the battle, and she’s brought a plus-one to this event. Who could her mysterious ally possibly be? It’s Broly. Let’s just get this out of the way, it’s fucking Broly again.

#dragon ball #super dragon ball heroes #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #goku #bardock #gogeta #supreme kai of time #aeos #demigra #mechikabura #robelu #omega shenron #broly #hit #vidro #yamcha

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koifishart · 2 months

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I want to be Your Koi Fish - Nine Tails

Warning: +18 content, criminal underworld, intercourse, strong language - and so on

Fanfiction based on: "Baki" by Itagaki Keisuke

>18<

The police rarely showed up at his place for casual chat. Inspector Sonoda was the one exception with which the arrangements even paid off for him. In addition, they were both involved in the case of the escaped prisoners, he delivered to his police station, as he then believed, a barely alive Spec. In fact, he did because he was closest there - Morio was active in Shinjuku, as was Kaoru. He did not intend to do more than this one incident for the police, but the inspector did contact him from time to time. So they sat sipping whiskey, talking about a few loose topics and a few less. After all, they were bound by territories, it was proper to live in proper terms, unless the situation called for something else. However, he knew perfectly well that Sonoda did not want to mess with him. With Hanayama, the police at all levels preferred to be careful. Hanabi didn't even flinch as the inspector waited for her to leave. He thought they would be alone, he was wrong. This time he was not going to drive her out. He knew he was prancing up his ears and would probably cut in at some point, but that didn't bother him. She let her hair loose, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear to reveal a row of earrings. She was seated again with her laptop on her lap, wearing a light, floral sleeveless blouse, white slacks, and openwork, heavily cut ankle boots with a high, narrow heel. On the finger there was an inseparable ring with three diamonds arranged in the shape of a lotus. The visitor was clearly embarrassed to talk in front of her, but the yakuza didn't care. The key is not to waste his precious time.

- At least we've got the escapees out of our minds! - He laughed finally, a bit nervously.

- I would hold back on such judgments, Inspector. You sound like you've forgotten how much damage they've done. - Hanabi said, turning her head. - I recommend extreme caution.

- They're harmless now. - he snorted, waving his hand.

- I may be ignorant ... but due to my experience, people like them become harmless when they are dead. - she replied firmly. - I hope your superiors, Inspector, have at least offered to look at what is happening to them and that it will be done properly. We don't need a repeat of the entertainment in Shinjuku. I suppose not the police either.

- Yes, I'm going to do this myself. - he grunted reluctantly.

She was wonderful at expressing his thoughts in words. Although he perfectly remembered the condition in which he had thrown a 97-year-old serial killer on the hospital bed, his wife was right - not just any hurdles, but a bunch of guys with the opinion of the most dangerous murderers in the world. The probability that they were pretending to be insane or gathering strength while allegedly dying was very high. Which meant the police would have a problem again any minute. He was quietly hoping for a repeat, though the Spec had spoiled him enough.

As it turned out, she was not much wrong. In less than a few weeks, television was buzzing with news of a fugitive running happily through the streets of Tokyo. He didn't need to listen further to know that law enforcement didn't deal very well with this type of opponent. He had absolutely no business helping them. The specialist personally barred their way as they strolled around the city in the evening. It was unfortunate that the cops were following him. Hanayama noticed this as the side alleys were swarming with special forces. Hanabi stopped short at the sight of a two-meter-tall bald man in a dark, loose tracksuit. He could almost feel it being bristled, and goose bumps peeked under the light sweater that draped over the dark skirt. She remembered him, recognized him even though she had only seen him once, on her first visit to the Arena. Worse, she had no plans to back out. He wasn't going to let a hair fall off her head. He took a step forward, tucking his glasses into the pocket of his suit.

- I was hoping to meet you boy! - the condemned man laughed, taking off his sweatshirt. - We have a small, unfinished business.

As usual, he delivered the first blow that hit Kaoru right in the face. Hanabi stepped back slightly, respected his methods, rather not intending to intervene unnecessarily. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Sonoda coming out of hiding. He did not have time to wonder what the police would do in this situation. The opponent tried one of his aces again: an extremely fast attack with apnea. The blows turned out to be much faster and stronger than before, he didn't know by what miracle, but despite lying still in intensive care, as Hanayama imagined, Spec returned to his former form and even strengthened. Not only him. Kaoru curled his hand into a fist and, finding a gap in the hail of blows, struck right in the jaw, sending him running far ahead. The latter, however, recovered surprisingly quickly, setting the loosened jaw joint with his wide hand and struck it with a high kick this time. The young yakuza landed right under his wife's feet, he was not going to give up. The spec, on the other hand, changed the goal. He walked as if nothing had happened to the frozen dark-haired woman.

- What a beauty ... and that fearless look! You'd probably be very pissed if I broke her neck? - he asked innocently, extending his arm towards her. - Your girlfriend?

The great tattooed paw was held back by a tiny hand, a steel grip holding back the attack so the other could dig her fingers into a sore point in the armpit. A man's muscled arm dropped loosely, and a moment later another followed, barely trying to slide towards her. The spec stood stunned, and in a split second she was on his shoulders, sitting like a small child on the nape of his father.

- Maybe I'm not as strong as my husband, but definitely faster. - she murmured in a low tone, pressing down on another vital point.

The fugitive lost control of his whole body, fell like a long one on smooth asphalt, and she landed with her own lightness, tapping the lacquered pumps with her high heels. He had spent so much time with her that he forgot what she was doing. In fact, he never asked for details of the contract killer trade. Not only Hanayama was surprised to see the tiny woman who knocked down a huge, insanely dangerous man in seconds. With a staggering step, disbelief clearly written on his face, none other than the police inspector approached them.

- Do you have a wanted poster for that fugitive, Sonoda-san? - she asked innocently.

- Y ... yes ... - he muttered, still in shock.

- So you'll call for the full amount for the DEAD option. - she replied firmly, adjusting the tie on Hanayayama's massive neck - In cash, preferably in beautiful brand new, colorful yen.

- The ... hehehe ... I escaped the death penalty, girl ... - groaned the still immobilized Spec.

- Relax, it will catch up with you. Judging by the tattoos you like rituals ... so I'll give you ritual death. - she muttered, crouching beside him, examining the drawings on his hands, then added, turning her head slightly. - Of course you are invited, Inspector. You will be able to confirm that the punishment has reached the fugitive.

- Kizaki, we have something big to transport. - Kaoru muttered into the phone.

He wondered what she was planning, he was a bit afraid of what would happen next, but ... at the same time he was terribly curious. He didn't mind killing those who deserved it, and the death penalty had long hung over Spec. Hanabi did not reveal the details to him, but she took care of a certain setting. As she promised, it was supposed to be a ritual death. He thought he would rely on traditional seppuku*, but it's hard to get someone like that to commit suicide, right? As soon as he expressed this suspicion, she quickly shook her head and added that the gaijin** was not worthy of a samurai death. Prepared as usual, he admired the accuracy with which she was able to handle such tasks. She learned a little about her victim and combined with her own knowledge ... to create a quite coherent whole. American, globetrotter, fighter. There was only one way out of this equation.

At her command, a makeshift sacrificial altar, unlike anything he had ever seen, was erected in the valley outside the city. He was not from Asia. He was too crude, crude, and the patterns of wolves or snakes did not match any of the beliefs he had heard of. In the middle is Spec, slung by his hands, restrained by shackles blocking the flow of chi. She was not going to let him escape, he was absolutely going to die there. Behind him stood two fireplaces, one with a knife heating in it and the other with an ax. The cream of the triad he headed has gathered. The Mafia wanted to see how ruthless their boss's woman was, or rather whether she was what she was meant to be. Hanayama was absolutely sure that Shiro Kitsune would not disappoint their expectations. Sonoda appeared along with Bisquit Oliva, which has been inseparable for some time. Out of the corner of his eye, somewhere in the trees, he also picked out the silhouettes of Baki and Kozue. He guessed that the girl did not believe that Hanabi was capable of murder, and the boy did not want to let her go alone to such a dangerous place. Finally she arrived, completely calm, in a white fur tightly covering her with a large hood. All he could see was a light, flowing, long black dress, or rather its lower part, covering the legs. Judging by her height, she arrived barefoot. She stood in front of the condemned man when he woke up and tried to break free from the shackles. She neutralized him while he was asleep. Sometimes this skill terrified him. It was enough to touch a few places that a person would not be able to use their full potential. So petite, so tiny, and she could easily knock a large man down to force him into submission. The prisoner looked at her very differently than before. Despite his rather cheerful disposition, he was furious. It's hard to be surprised.

- You'd have to bring in the Death God himself to kill me, little girl. - he gasped with difficulty.

- It's funny that you ask for it, because that was my plan. - she muttered, tossing the fur over her back.

A long, flowing, yet tight-fitting black dress, revealing the shoulders, with a slit at the left leg, reaching the hip bone. He took a closer look. If she pampered the smallest detail of each of her orders in this way, he was not surprised that she was sometimes exhausted, and also so much in demand - long after the wedding she received messages to which she stubbornly replied "NO". She made her victim fear. The left side of the body, including the face, was painted to look like an anatomically perfect skeleton, glistening with green, fluorescent paint, strongly reflecting against a black background. It made her look half alive. Even her eyes seemed to glow differently than ever. The character she chose was familiar to the fugitive.

- The Norse goddess Hel*** ... - he muttered, shocked and as if impressed. - Why ... she?

- I'm just going to send you to her. - she replied again in that low, creepy tone. - Vikings, great travelers, like you, I suppose, believed that all the unworthy, dishonorable and filthy go to this goddess ... so why not?

She entered the altar, still completely calm, even winter and professional. But through his skin he could feel her excitement, excitement. He had felt it before when she prepared the whole plan at home. She was enjoying it as if she had returned to her beloved, long-abandoned job. Before she stood behind Spec's back, she reached for his increasingly frightened face, though it might as well be a play of appearances, and hissed:

- You will howl in pain to fly into the clouds like an eagle with outstretched wings. You will not know the goodness of Odin's honey after death.

Kaoru held his breath as she finally walked over to one of the hearths and took a hot knife out of it, which she skillfully used to cut the skin on the man's back. The condemned man let out a long howl, unable to endure the searing pain. The first drops of blood fell to the ground, slowly gaining strength. When she had made the right incision and spread the dripping flaps to the sides, she put the blade into the fire to take the ax handle with both hands and forcefully slash it straight in the back. The stench of burning human flesh rose in the air, the crunch of chopped ribs and a wild scream, and she continued, completely ignoring the red stains on her face. The man was losing consciousness more and more with each passing moment. Finally she put down the gun to open his chest with her own hands covered with black gloves. Nobody twitched or made any sound, only heard Kozue's muffled groan from the distance, at the sight of the still throbbing lungs laying on his muscular arms. Spec's head dangled loosely, Hanayama could see only a few last tiny nervous tics. To finish the ritual, she reached with her dirty right hand, leaving a streak of blood on her cheek.

- Hel, the ancient goddess of death, worshiped by the great Vikings, accept this stray soul for she is unworthy of Valhalla. - she said sternly, descending the altar, disgusting at the same time lapping the rest of the juice on the face of the dead man with the rest of the juice from her hand.

He had never seen anything like it, but he could not afford to lower his jaw to the ground. The yakuza boss should be tough and unshakable. Instead of showing surprise, the most calmly in the world he approached his wife and draped a pale fur over her shoulders. She accepted it gratefully, taking off her gloves and taking his massive hand. As she walked a few paces away to speak to the stunned and also apparently disgusted inspector, a large African American stepped in front of her, bowing to her.

- I salute your artistry, Mistress Unchained **** - he muttered proudly.

She didn't react, just looked at Sonoda to remind him of the money for cleaning up the mess.

____________________________

* seppuku - honorary suicide, the ritual of taking one's own life in ancient Japan, which is a privilege of the samurai caste; it resulted from the Bushido code;

** gaijin - foreigner

***As the White Kitsune is sometimes taken as an omen of death, it was logical to associate it with one of the goddesses of the world of the dead; for Hanabi it was natural to choose the Scandinavian goddess Hel;

****Mistress Unchained - a title loosely given to her only by Oliva, meant to mean the equivalent of a freed prisoner (Hanabi has never been in prison);

#iwanttobeyourkoifish #hanayama kaoru #fanfic #fanfiction #baki the grappler #oc x canon #kaoru hanayama #fire and blood #spec baki #hanayamaswife #hanayamahanabi #baki hanayama #hana yakuza #married couple #baki dou #baki son of ogre #baki headcanons

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danganronpasurvivoraskblog · 10 months

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If Sara ever did get into Death Battle, her opponent would probably be Hajime over any other DR character. Why pick Kaede as her opponent?

[WARNING: This contains game spoilers for Your Turn To Die, but you probably shouldn't read the DB matchup series unless you're ready to be spoiled, so...]

//Technically I didn't pick her. She won from majority vote (oh, hehe...)

//If you're asking why we put her in the poll among Kaede's lineup of opponents, the main connections are that the two are female protagonists of death games who are both high school students and possess a high amount of charisma that draws people to them almost immediately upon meeting them; and at some point in the story of V3 and YTTD, this is brought into question. Namely Kaede's heavy-handed and forceful methods of trying to keep the group together, like convincing everyone to keep running the death road in spite of their exhaustion, leads the group to become divided as a result; and though many come to trust Sara, people start to find out that her and her family are somehow more heavily involved in the background of the Death Game overtime, and aside from that, they begin to look at the reality that putting all your eggs in the one basket that is an ordinary high-school girl is not particularly a good idea.

//Also, in spite of their genuine kindness and charismatic personalities, both of them have done rather derisive things in order to achieve their own ends, like how Kaede has attempted murder and Sara has attempted manipulation.

//Lastly, in terms of a narrative perspective, Kaede's death at the end of V3's first chapter is actually pretty similar to Joe Tazuna's death at the end of the YTTD's first chapter. Kaede is shown as the protagonist innately, but at the end of the first chapter of V3, she's executed and the role is passed onto Shuichi. Joe, while NOT the protagonist, was also set up to be a very important character, and throughout the game's lore is portrayed as such, yet he also dies from an execution at the beginning which leaves Sara traumatized and defines her character for the rest of the game. It's the same plot told from two different perspectives.

//In regards to the connections with Hajime though, is IS true that there are a LOT more.

//Like Kaede and Sara, Hajime is ALSO a protagonist from a visual novel death game series, and despite being treated like typical high school students, Hajime and Sara's true selves are somehow connected to the entire game they are forced into.

//They both had an acquaintance prior to the game who assisted them in resolving issues in their day-to-day lives at school. As a result, they developed a respect for the person and an implied crush on them, and they then turned into their main partner in the death game. That is Joe for Sara and Chiaki for Hajime. Eventually, though, after realizing they had unintentionally fallen victim to a trap set up to have them executed, they become the ones to "kill them," (Sara prolongs Joe's suffering in his death trap after being tricked by Sue Miley and puts the blame on herself, while Izuru Kamukura oversees Chiaki's execution in DR3) keeping the particular object that reminds them of them (their hairpins). Both of their companions are also eventually reborn as artificial intelligence.

//Additionally, a boy who both characters first befriended turned out not to be who they first appeared to be, and that boy ended up becoming their main rival; obviously being Nagito Komaeda and Shin Tsumiki/Sou Hiyori.

//So generally, there are a lot more connections between Sara and Hajime, and if Sara DID have a Death Battle opponent, it would probably be Hajime over Kaede. The reason why Sara was given to Kaede and not Hajime is because this series SPECIFICALLY deals with the characters in the main Danganronpa/Survivor canon, which means we'd mainly be using Hajime as he is shown in DR3 and Survivor.

//You know...where he is a VERITABLE GOD AMONG MEN!

//I totally get this matchup in the context of DR2 where he doesn't have his powers, and I would very much prefer Sara as an opponent for him over Apollo Justice, but even then, it's still basically a stomp in his favor. Even in the game world, Hajime was able to reawaken his powers and seize control of the virtual reality he is trapped in.

//So the simple reason why we didn't go for that is because it leads to the complete and utter decimation of Sara, and subsequently, a boring ass fight and analysis. Kaede has more connections than any other DR protagonist to Sara besides Hajime, and the fight stands to be a lot more fairer.

//Effectively we just wanted to avoid the Hydrogen Bomb Vs Coughing Baby fight.

-Mod

#mod #death battle

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the-ninja-legacy-whip · 2 years

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How does Cole feel about Jesse at the moment? Cause we know that he still has a crush on Zane but it also feels like Cole is treating Jesse like more than a friend? And Nya and Olivia, not as in dating but as friends, I mean Olivia Did Cut Kais face up pretty bad and tried to kill both of them and i know there was some tension so is it resolved now? How does the gang stand with Olivia? Could we maybe get a quick feelings uptade on everyone? (Sorry I love Olivia and literally everyone else but I always get pretty confused about how everyone is feeling about each other, sorry if that is intentional)

Cole likes Jesse too but doesn’t know it yet

Right now Cole’s just excited to have a friend that’s so invested in him specifically (he very much enjoys being appreciated and tries to return the favor). But this causes him to often mistake Jesse’s more romantic gestures as strong signs of friendship and winds up reciprocating the same way without the same intent. This drives Jesse absolutely nuts but he’d rather have the attention than not have it. Cole’s really, really bad at picking up on signs/signals otherwise, hence why Kai and Jay are adamant that Cole is terrible with romantic relationships, but he’s just someone that has to be confronted with it directly (which Jesse is not good at.......yet).

Zane, meanwhile, gets too many mixed signals on Jesse and Cole’s feelings for each other so he mostly stays out of it unless they come directly to him. Despite somewhat catching onto Cole and Jesse, he is entirely oblivious to Cole’s crush on him (because unlike Cole, Zane is not actually oblivious to romantic gestures; he’s just only ever seen Cole’s more “flirty” behaviors towards him as his normal and essentially doesn’t have a baseline to compare to otherwise. This gets more elaborated on later when it’s relevant.) and he......does not actually like Cole back in that way. But we get to learn THAT the fun hard way.

Nya is entirely oblivious to all of this until mid-Season 3. Lloyd is not and more or less treats it like an annoying sporting event.

And I know I’ve been slacking on Nya and Olivia’s relationship, it is one of my biggest regrets for the current story as it was supposed to be a much bigger deal, but it gets way more time to breathe during Season 2 because: the Shark Army doesn’t have to take a backseat to the Serpentine as antagonists, Nya has more room to properly be involved, and their dynamic is actually a contributing factor to what goes down in Season 3. It was better to shove their subplot into a season where it could be fully explored (and mesh better with the overall narrative) rather than squeezed between everyone else’s.

Anyway, Olivia dynamics:

Nya still currently sees her as a best friend, given that she did apologize and did attempt to try to better their friendship while they still could, but because Nya’s got all these new friends and Samurai/Ninja distractions, it not only officially put them on opposite sides of the battlefield, but left Nya with less time to actually spend with Olivia, which Olivia starts getting a little too bitter about (especially once Lloyd properly enters the picture) and that starts to drive the wedge between them deeper. But Nya’s not dumb either—another big, wrong move from Olivia could be enough to shatter her entire trust, past friendship be damned.

Kai does absolutely refuse to forgive her for everything she’s done to Nya and to himself, but the more he learns about her outside of the army, the more he begins to see her as a person rather than just an opponent, and that throws him off from time to time. They kind of eventually reach a mutual respect with each other, but like with Nya, another wrong step will not be kindly tolerated. If she proves she’s still willing to battle to the death, then so will Kai, especially if Nya’s in the middle of it.

Jay’s kind of the neutral faction—he doesn’t actively have a personal reason to dislike her, but knows she’s a threat. He knows that she’s someone Nya feels very strongly about, but is still as wary of her as Kai is. But either way, he’s not starting any altercations with her—though he will finish one, if need be. They have more interactions during Season 2, and Olivia does get a little jealous of how fast Nya basically dropped her for Jay, but they know the other makes Nya happy so they generally leave the other be.

Cole and Zane don’t take her seriously and honestly find her kind of annoying (although they haven’t actually seen her at her worst yet either), but put up with her mostly for Nya’s sake. They try to avoid her in public when they can knowing how much of a nuisance she can be. Otherwise, she’s essentially just another member of the Shark Army to them, and as long as she doesn’t provoke them, they won’t react, but they won’t hesitate to go all out against her either.

Jesse currently still doesn’t even know that Olivia’s a member (let alone leader) of the Shark Army, but finds her knowledge of the Elemental Compass extremely suspicious, as it’s unusually high even for a Shark Army member. Also would rather not interact with her if he can help it but unfortunately he has a lot of classes with her like Kai. To him right now, she’s just a particularly aggravating classmate that knows too much. Olivia’s opinion on him though will be shown in an upcoming chapter.

And Lloyd...um. Hmmm. Well. Things are tame now but. Ah. Umm. Let’s just say there’s some...extreme animosity, eventually.

#Also hand-holding is not inherently romantic and I will die on this hill #all of this chaos reaches a head in season 3 #and by season 4 the dynamics become much more clear-cut i promise #it's a bit muddled now so it can be developed later #if that makes sense #info tag

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katyspersonal · 2 years

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I want to know moooore about Archie, so 5, 6 and 9 for him!

( Asks from this ( x ) meme)

Whew! Funny that you asked about him now of all times, because just today I finally got to HIM in my list of Bloodborne characters' face refs, so I can even show him! (Yahar'gul hunters are next)

Wellll... I did draw him before, but only in a meme xD

To think of it, I do not have too much stuff about the guy to write down, the vibe I get from him is rather intuitive, but I'll try!

5) Social headcanons (what do they think of their friends/allies if they have any, what are they looking for in relationship, what people tend to think about them...)

Archibald tends to measure a person up very quick upon first meeting them, almost unmistakeably knowing whether they're smart, have potential, are reliable, all that. Not that he never been wrong, but usually his esteem is right, and he ends up forming contacts and investing only in people he considers "worthy" - be it them being useful in time of need, good helpers in his research, or even just good debate opponents to sharpen his mind with! All this is to say, he chooses his friends carefully and knows to not invest time, trust or emotion into "wrong" people. Him being involved with Healing Church was a calculated risk though, seeing how Laurence is "ends justify the means" person, but being under his wing while it lasted would benefit him.

He takes advantage of the impression of 'an eccentric weird guy who is better not distracted from his research' he gives to people, to not attract unwanted attention and instead observe others unnoticed. He knows about what's going on around him more than it seems, but his behaviour can fool even ones like Brador!

From how Archibald speaks of his connections, people often assume that he is a callous person without morality that will simply join the winning side during any conflict, but that is not entirely true! He often bends and adapts, yes, believing that 'he is more useful alive', but he has his limits and honorable values he will defend. In my story, he dies killing a very bad person devouring the already tormented Yharnam after Laurence passed away, after all! But Archibald won't reveal his vulnerable side, values and even people he cherishes easily, in fear of being easily manipulated over them.

Archibald is not relationships person at all, albeit able to fall in love. But instead of forming anything akin to functional relationship, he will simply look for someone equally curious, active and inventive to share a bond with. A type to only date a colleague, which in his case would be someone entirely caught up in research - a shared one or their own. But the idea of putting his best effort into 'feelings' and not inventing another mad thing is absolutely unspeakable for him!

He is, however, rather insensitive to things like peer-pressure and moral control unless abiding by them benefits his goals; he is an independent person. Thus, moral pressure Healing Church caused on "fearing the beasts" did nothing to him when he saw potential in studying them more. Again, him having 'just a little guy' public image helped him to avoid problems for that for a long time.

6) Psychological headcanons (tastes, fears, talents, regrets, how they deal with anger, just anything that comes to mind on the topic)

Archibald appears to be rather reasonable in emotionally charged situations, sometimes even pissing other people off by being "too calm" when he should not be, but the truth is, he is able to grip and control his anger very well. That though... applies to his other strong negative emotions too - staying a person who simply "tries to understand the situation uwu", he might be absolutely boiling with rage inside, or experience bone-chilling fear, but the only true hints will be his sweat or twisting an object in his hands nervously. When he plans to ACT on his negative emotions, he will probably not tell even to his closest friends, as he doesn't want to worry them. Like, the fucker will return all bloodied after having committed act of revenge and just write it down as falling into a blood puddle left after a hunt, and so on.

Acting on emotions IS easier for him than sharing them, yes. Talking about how much someone upset him with a close friend? Nahhhh. Go in complete secrecy to beat the hell out of that person, ranting out his frustration for their ears and their ears only? Hell YES!

He is very focused on his work, to the point of abandoning a lot of potential social activities and emotional needs, living in permanent fear that he does not have enough time in this world to complete all his plans and invent everything he is capable to. Archie has a strong fix on being productive and making his time 'count', but this is a hard tension. Even before the whole 'Yharnam is hardly real anymore and the world is doomed' turn, he missed out on many important events in lives of his friends and failed to be there for his friends when they needed him. You know, the whole 'you wasn't there when my child was born / you wasn't there at funeral of your friend' struggle? In a way, it counts, however; I headcanon that there are many unseen inventions and discoveries Archie made that we could never see within the game. We only find the weapons he invented, but there are many things that could advance the humanity back in his lab! If only times peaceful enough to reach and use them will EVER come in Yharnam, of course...

In regards to the previous paragraph, he does experience permanent hidden guilt and suffering for being 'a bad friend'. Occasionally, he even curses the fate for burdening him with the curse of "brilliant mind" that he feels obligated to use, unable to live normally.

It is kind of plain, but he IS a very smart person, IQ certainly goes further beyond 120. He also has extremely good orientation in the space once he figures even a minimal about it; once he saw a map of the area, he will never get lost in it again.

He gets rather impressed and at times even flustered by big, strong, masculine men that might squeeze him into a pulp with one hand even though he himself is a rather capable fighter; like something naturally balancing him being more brain than brawl. I think Micolash was one exception Archibald can recall in his entire life; Mico IS a twig, but his passion and madness were the strongest ones Archibald ever seen in his life, and that was enough.

9) Headcanons about their past

Archibald is a foreigner, however, not very far from Yharnam culturally - his family moved into one of the off-brand European countries even before he was born, hence British name! One of the things I like about Bloodborne is how history in that setting went different from our world's, while saving all the metaphors and social commentary. We get plenty of evidence that Yharnam is way more middle European than UK-inspired; however, I can't help but feel like Archibald DID come from off-brand UK!

He showed being gifted and developing faster than his peers since childhood, yet funny enough, the pressure to 'fulfill his potential' was not inflicted by him on parents or teachers. Instead, the development of his anxiety and obsession to use the gifts of his mind was triggered by being rather neglected as a kid. EXCEPT for the times when he was demonstrating his ahead-of-age mind capacity... That is not to say it is just the internalised lack of recognition that ended up driving him. In fact, a bigger reason is that as neglected kid, he had opportunity to stand aside and observe the society... with it's flaws and the obvious things they were lacking. That realisation that he could help and change things on larger scale is a more crucial motivation. Lack of acknowledgement was the battery, but wish to help is the charge stored in it.

Like I hinted previously, in the periods of being especially caught up in studying and research, he'd end up not being there in important events in his close people's lives. The life-turning ones, even. That guaranteed a long chain of getting friends and losing them a few years (or sometimes months) later. He lived his life known as 'a reclusive prick who ONLY cares about studying! :/' and departed in Yharnam without even having someone who would miss him! On the more positive note, the friends he would GET to keep were found in Yharnam!

He is the most 'had education and degrees prior joining Yharnam' character out of foreign ones I got, with Eileen being the second! My version of him is rather young but he had the capacity of skipping classes, thus having a bit more scientific knowledge under his belt than his peers.

Archibald was never an artistic person, nor he was able to have a pet. Thus, he tended to fill the emptiness by cooking, cleaning, patching ruined clothes and fixing broken furniture often. Sometimes he'd even ruin a thing himself just to check whether he could fix it! As result, he has fantastic practical skills. He might be caught into experiments and research, but is never in a bad physical shape or poor hygiene because of it!

Like Edgar in my 'official' timeline, Archibald arrived in Yharnam a little too late to join Byrgenwerth - something he resents deeply, because it seems like it was a PERFECT place for him to fit into. That only further cementer his permanent, instinctive fear of 'running out of time' - what could be a bigger hint that his life was turning the wrong way than being too late for an institution basically CREATED for him and how he approaches things? There was no way news about large monsters who naturally produce electricity could have travelled to him faster tho.

__________

Maybe not that much, but I think you get what the guy is like by now! Thank you for the ask! <:3 I needed a reason to put my ideas on him together in verbal form, haha

#bloodborne #archibald the eccentric of the healing church #bloodborne archibald #ask replies #bloodborne headcanons #doodles #honestly his past life feels rather uneventful #it almost feels like his life only truly 'started' after yharnam #i mean fair enough?

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milesonthenet · 2 years

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Broly: Comparison between selves

Who's the big bad Legendary Super Saiyan?

Dragon Ball Z: Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan was released on March 6, 1993. The film has created a fairly influential character who has gone on to join the canon timeline. This year marks its 20th anniversary since it's inception.

It is no secret that Broly is a prevalent Dragon Ball character. He has had two sequels and a reboot film that brought him into the canon. He almost always has a designated appearance in a video game. Broly's even gone on to gain new forms that he never displays in canon.

Today, I welcome you to join House of Milesverse as we talk about Broly. In fact, we will be studying the differences between his two most popular incarnations. By the way, you should know that Broly's power is maximum.

Broly: Z Version

To start our discussion off, we should talk about the original. As I said above, Broly first made his debut in the Dragon Ball Z era of films. He is the eighth film in the line and has two sequels behind him.

This version of Broly is introduced as a complete monster. When he's not under the control of his father, he's destroying planets. Z Broly is an embodiment of chaos that wreaks havoc against his enemies.

What I like about this version is just how evil he can be. Unlike his successor, Z Broly is unrepentant in this fact. He is willfully sadistic and cruel toward his enemies. Broly just does not care, he will attack you just for existing.

In the first film, Broly's father was Paragus, a Saiyan who used him. Paragus used Broly as a weapon to destroy numerous planets. However, even Paragus was aware that Broly was hard to control. He created a mind control inhibitor device to stop Broly from becoming berserk.

Paragus had an entire plan to trick King Vegeta's heir, all out of petty vengeance. He used a desolate planet that was in the path of a comet. His plan was to abandon Broly and let him occupy the Z-Fighters. All so that the comet would hit the planet, destroy Vegeta, and kill them all.

Unfortunately, Paragus' pod was grabbed by Broly. The legendary super saiyan crushed his father inside of the pod. Paragus' last moments were in fear.

He engages in animalistic brutality when dealing with his opponents. This is to a degree I think has never been seen in the franchise before. Despite his size, he's also surprisingly fast, and able to blitz his targets.

Both times against Broly required outside assistance. Goku and Gohan had to rely on their allies to even slow him down. Despite that, they both managed to end his rampage and destroy the monster.

What is notable about this version is that he always comes back. Goku first destroyed him by using a combined energy punch to the stomach. The resulting force of the punch ruptured his skin and detonated his body.

Even then, he would come back to hunt Gohan. Gohan, alongside his father Goku, and his younger brother Goten, defeated him. They had to use a combined Kamehameha wave to blast him into the sun.

Broly always comes back, stronger than before. More than that, his power has no limit. It continuously rises while he is fighting. This near-infinite level of power makes it hard for people to keep him down.

Overall, Z Broly really proves what a monster the Saiyans can be. His battles always showcased his animalistic brutality. I think he best embodies the ruthlessness and savagery that the Saiyans once had.

Broly: Super Version

Super Broly is similar to his predecessor but offers a few differences. He first shows in the 2018 film, Dragon Ball Super: Broly. In addition, he also has a different personality.

What truly sets him apart is his behavior. Unlike Z Broly, this version is kinder and gentler. He does not desire to fight unless it involves protecting his loved ones.

Super Broly is a prodigy when it comes to combat, however. He was able to keep up with both Goku and Vegeta. During their battle, he was able to rapidly improve to combat their forms.

I love how this version puts a distinct spin on Broly's story. In the prior films, he was portrayed as a mindless beast. Super decides to reinvent Broly as someone who is desperately trying to maintain control. He does not want to let out his inner monster because he will lose control.

In fact, this is exactly what happens over the course of the movie. The death of his father (Something Z Broly himself did in his first film) caused him to freak out. He became a berserk creature, and he destroyed everything in his way.

Speaking of Broly's relationship with Paragus is different here. Super Broly is aware his father is a terrible person. Despite how abusive he is, Broly still loves them. Losing Paragus was enough to trigger his transformation into a Super Saiyan.

Broly also has a noteworthy bond with Cheelai and Lemo. The two Frieza Force soldiers quickly took a liking to him. They helped get rid of Paragus' shock collar. By the end of the film, Cheelai and Lemo even went to live with Broly.

Broly is the title character of this film for a reason. He is portrayed as the underdog of the story. His battles against the more experienced Goku and Vegeta pushed him to new limits.

Ultimately, Super Broly shows the potential tragedy of his original self's story. This makes him easier to sympathize with viewers. It also carves out a wonderful niche for his character.

Who's the better monster?

The truth is that they are both monsters in their own right. However, the question is what kind of monsters they are. Both of the characters are two sides of the same coin.

Z Broly represents the horrifying, unbeatable nightmare. He is a monster without limits or rivals. Because of this, he is a tremendous threat to, well, everyone in his vicinity. Even in outside material, Broly still comes back to haunt the Z-Fighters.

Super Broly represents unwavering power, but he is still an unstable asset. He desperately clings to his sanity because of his world-shaking abilities. This makes him a danger, even to his own friends.

Overall? I do not think there's a right answer on which one is the best. They both have something that makes them interesting. Both come with their own advantages and disadvantages to deal with. I think it all comes down to what type of character you are looking for.

Overall, I hope you had a Legendary time reading the House of Milesverse. I enjoyed talking about one of my other favorite Dragon Ball antagonists. I will come out with another post this month.

For now? See ya!

#dragon ball z #dragon ball super #broly #dragon ball

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paradise-in-k4 · 1 day

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The Gap in the Evening, Entry 4: The Resolver Files

Aya’s newspaper must reach some unusual figures here, since not only did we have a witch knocking at our door in the middle of the night, but now we’ve attracted the attention of a shrine maiden. Was this one of those important figures she was talking about? There’s nothing much we can do about that now since the boundary between “some time” and “no time” has since passed. Open sesame…

(Two hour time skip)

That wasn’t as bad as I thought. After explaining what we were doing in a kappa warehouse and how we were involved with investigating an incident in another universe, she noted everything- including the condition of her parallel self- and asked for someone else to step inside to negotiate the specifics of our residency for her to make a personal note of, which was none other than Nitori Kawashiro, the same kappa we met the other day. She knew us decently enough to negotiate a solution to our residency problem by single-handedly moving our stuff to the upper floor and moving all of the kappa’s inventory into the back room of the lower floor. Afterwards, Nitori seemed to yank Aya- who was also called in for her role in recommending this supposedly vacant space to us and making our presence known to several big names in Gensokyo- by her pointy tengu ear down to her height and told her something that made her flinch in fear, then asking Aya to help her and Reimu get settled into this place for the long term. If only all of our apartment issues could get settled as easily as this, but perhaps that’s just what happens when you deal with their main incident resolver as a mediator between someone who sells real estate and someone who holds real estate. Stuff gets done quickly to a happy compromise. Once everything was settled, Reimu told us to contact her in case we needed help with investigating our incident for any reason or if any of the youkai gave us a problem before leaving. They seemed like a decent welcome party, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’d need more than those three to help us out with our case…

-Maribel Hearn

——————————

Muse Notes: Reimu Hakurei

Title(s): Hakurei Shrine Maiden of Paradise, Arcane! Shrine Maiden of Barriers

Universe of Origin: L1

Size (headcanon): Moderate, 5’4”

Species: Human

Pronouns: She/Her

Age (headcanon): Young Adult, exact age unknown

Personality: Reimu is easygoing and optimistic while also being a mix of both dutiful and lazy depending on the day. Her sympathetic nature allows her to get along with a lot of the people she encounters after their first interaction, even if they were the ones to cause an incident. However, this doesn’t bar the possibility of wrathful anger when provoked for a number of reasons such as pranks, incidents, unexpected obstacles, or someone messing with her donation box.

Occupations: Shrine Maiden, Incident Resolver, random odd-jobber

Home Region: Hakurei Shrine

Abilities: Capable of flight and being the Hakurei shrine maiden

Flight: An extension beyond physical flight seen with many of Gensokyo’s residents. Reimu’s ability allows her to fly through life with extraordinary intuition and luck, seemingly putting her in the path of least resistance unless she acts with impure/arrogant motives or gets distracted by something else.

Fantasy Nature: The final form of Reimu’s ability of flight- Fantasy Nature- allows her to float away from reality and become impossible to hit, making her capable of defeating everything from threats to pressure, stress, and most notably, gravity. This was considered too powerful to use against opponents for a long time until Marisa gave it a name and time limit to make it a regulation-legal spell card, which allows opponents to time it out and win the duel by dodging it. If her opponent can time out this bullet hell attack, she is forced to concede as per the rules if she either (A) has no more spell cards to declare, or (B) she and her opponent(s) aren’t actively engaged in close-quarters fisticuffs that render spell cards as secondary special attacks and only ending said fight once someone is out cold. In any fight where spell cards are declarable, this ability is essentially her Last Word; her strongest spell card and her final attack in a standard danmaku battle.

Hakurei Heritage: As the current Hakurei Shrine Maiden, Reimu can handle the clan’s Yin-Yang Orbs as effective weapons against youkai. She is also versed in youkai extermination techniques and other duties common with shrine maidens such as performing rituals and blessings. Reimu is also capable of channeling the gods of Gensokyo as part of her lineage, but her lack of training makes her unable to do it reliably. In the latter case, she usually fails. She also doesn’t know the identity of her shrine’s deity, which somewhat hinders her faith collection.

Barriers: A series of techniques involving magical barriers which Reimu can channel as a utility for numerous situations. This ability also makes her capable of- while uncommon in necessity on the surface- dismantling other barriers and seals that seem too complex for magicians like Marisa and Patchouli, as well as maintaining the Great Hakurei Barrier on the outskirts of Gensokyo.

Gaps: For the duration of the Urban Legend Incidents at least until the end of the Perfect Possession Incident, Reimu could open gaps similar to the ones used by Yukari as an ability gained that was based on the “Gap Woman” urban legend, where she can use them in her attacks or to use them as portals. It’s unknown if she can still do this, though many suggest that this ability has weakened since the end of the incident.

Skills: Rudimentary athleticism, a mean-looking Ascension Kick, capable of making food for herself or an entire festival if she has one

Possessions:

Yin-Yang Orbs (harnesses the power of Hakurei Shrine’s deity to exterminate youkai either as standalone projectiles or as a means to shoot danmaku)

Gohei (purification rod created by Rinnosuke, used in Shinto rituals, exorcisms, and as a melee weapon)

Ofuda (paper talismans/charms with anti-youkai properties, often used in massive quantities as danmaku)

Persuasion Needles (large throwing needles often used for their divine connections and ease in throwing as danmaku in battles, most likely created by Kogasa as of recently)

Red fabric tubes to be worn on her sidelocks

Large red ribbon on the back of her head to tie back her hair

Hakurei shrine maiden uniform consisting of a red skirt, red sleeveless shirt with a white collar, a yellow (can sometimes be blue or other colors) ribbon to tie along the shirt, and white detached sleeves (also created by Rinnosuke)

One identical shrine maiden uniform complete with ribbons and all similar to the above two items, but with a blue color scheme instead of red

Black clogs (shoes to protect her feet, standard production)

Large wooden donation box (used to collect donations and offerings from visitors for her services as her main source of income)

Muse-Specific Headcanons:

Reimu makes just enough money from donations and providing her services as a shrine maiden to afford food and maintain her shrine, sometimes a little bit more when Yukari plays the role of her benefactor or when she holds a festival

Her definitions of exorcism and extermination change depending on the context. These definitions are sometimes violent, but they’re usually non-lethal and more of a way to tell them to stop what they’re doing because they’re causing problems, unless it pertains specifically to humans becoming youkai intentionally. That’s the exception.

Her shrine is almost always prone to collapse and spontaneous destruction (explosion, implosion, combustion, danmaku, etc) for some of the most ridiculous reasons imaginable. This risk of destruction is as bad as the risk of random spontaneous destruction that constantly overlooks the Scarlet Devil Mansion, although luck is a major factor in whether this happens or not

She admits she isn’t always perfect, but that she’s more of a specialist in her field

Blog-Specific Lore Notes:

Reimu has attended the 2nd Multiverse Fighting Tournament as a spectator with Sunny, Luna, Star, Cirno, Daiyousei, and Nitori after Star Sapphire stole her donation box

Only aware of the Parallel Satellite Incident after being informed of it during a personal visit to Renko and Maribel’s now-occupied “apartment” which used to be a kappa’s warehouse in the Human Village, and pledged her willingness to cooperate in resolving it during the investigation

After an accident during a Lunar New Year festival of 2024 that started a series of events known as the Resolvers Incident, she along with Marisa, Youmu, Patchouli, Koakuma, Shinmyoumaru, and Alice got involved with the Frost Miko Incidents and Beasts’ Menagerie Incident after being gapped across time into multiple different realms beyond Gensokyo. This RP blog takes place after the Frost Miko Incidents were resolved, but she along with the others are willing to answer questions about it. Yes, the shrine collapsed at the start of it all. No, the Beasts’ Menagerie Incident hasn’t been resolved yet.

Spell Cards:

*intended solely for use in close-quarters fights where Spell Cards are considered secondary special attacks

**can be utilized as a special attack in close combat, but mainly utilized for longer range danmaku fights

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal” (“Dream Seal”)**

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal -Spread-” (“Dream Seal -Spread-”)

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal -Concentrate-” (“Dream Seal -Concentrate-”)

Spirit Sign “Dream Orb”**

Spirit Sign “Yin-Yang Sign”

Spirit Sign “Hakurei Illusion”

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal -Circle-” (“Dream Seal -Circle-”)*

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal -Dreamfinite-” (“Dream Seal -Dreamfinite-”)*

Spirit Sign “Dream Cherry Blossom Seal”

Spirit Sign “Indiscriminate Exorcism Without Reason”*

Spirit Sign “Wild Yin-Yang Dance Without Reason”*

Spirit Sign “Extraordinarily Absurd Indiscriminate Exorcism”*

Scattered Spirit “Fantasy Seal -Worn-” (“Dream Seal -Worn-”)

Migrating Spirit “Fantasy Seal -Marred-” (“Dream Seal -Marred-”)

Divine Spirit “Dream Seal”*

Divine Spirit “Fantasy Seal -Blink-” (“Dream Seal -Blink-”)**

Dream Sign “Evil-Sealing Circle”**

Dream Sign “Wild Exorcism Dance”

Dream Sign “Duplex Barrier”

Dream Sign “Dream Dimensional Rift”

Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Demon-Binding Circle”

Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Dragon-Slaying Circle”**

Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Oni-Binding Circle”**

Divine Arts “Sky-Conquering Wind God Kick”*

Treasure Sign “Yin-Yang Treasured Orb”*

Treasure Sign “Dancing Yin-Yang Orbs”*

Holy Relic “Yin-Yang Kishin Orb”*

Sign I “Dream Orb Sting”*

Sign II “Yin-Yang Scattering”*

Sign III “Exorcising Border”*

Power Sign “Yin-Yang King Piece”*

Dream Battle “Illusionary Moon”*

Dream Land “Great Duplex Barrier”**

Boundary “Duplex Danmaku Barrier”

Great Barrier “Hakurei Danmaku Barrier”

Jewel Sign “Orbs of Light, Cast into Shade”*

Prayer “Disaster-Dispelling Prayer”*

Barrier “Expanding Barrier”*

Barrier “Paparazzi-Repelling Barrier”

Barrier “Seams of the Tumultuous World” (Occult)*

Barrier “Fantasy Boundary Crack” (Occult)*

Amulet “Youkai Repelling Charm”*

Talisman “Exorcism of the Newspaper Subscription Solicitors”

Treasure “Yin-Yang Asuka’i”*

Charm “Shrine Prosperity Prayer Talismans”*

Charm “Fantastic High-Speed Prayer Talismans”*

Charm “Anti-Youkai Houi-Yoke Prayer”*

“Most Evil Surprise Miko Orbs”*

Bewitched Weapon “Merciless Purification Rod”

Needle Sign “Needles to Seal the Lunar Nobles” (Occult)*

“The Donation Closest to Heaven”

“Danmaku Millionaire”

Petroleum “Polluted Wild Yin-Yang Dance”*

Blood Curse “Indiscriminate Curse-Killing Exorcism”*

Blood Curse “Bloodstained Wild Yin-Yang Dance”*

“Full House Amulets: Bullet Money Bonus Packets”

Finishers, Last Words & Impossible Spell Cards

“Persuasion Needle” (Impossible Spell Card)

Mikuji “Rule Violation Barrier” (Impossible Spell Card)

Untitled “Flying Mysterious Shrine Maiden”*

“Lurking Boundary Spirits and the Mysterious Shrine Maiden”*

“The Most Powerful and Fortuitous Shrine Maiden of Incident Resolution”*

“A Lid of Violence Atop the Former Hell of Blood Pools”*

*To Think There’d be a Shrine Maiden in That Gap!* (Occult Last Word)*

“Fantasy Nature” (“Innate Dream”) (Last Word)**

Shared Spell Cards:

“Faith-Augmentation Prayer Ceremony” (Toyosatomimi no Miko)*

“Main Two Religions’ Nine-Syllable Self-Defense” (Byakuren Hijiri)*

“Great Menreiki Expulsion” (Miko and Byakuren)*

“Trinity Religion Finale” (Miko and Byakuren)*

Barrier “The Home Where One Lays to Rest” (Likely derived from Yukari Yakumo)*

Spirit Hawk Sign “Dream Seal Hunting Done by a Hawk” (Kasen Ibaraki)*

Wind Spirit Sign “Iwafune Kawarake Seal” (Mononobe no Futo)*

Star Spirit Sign “Sprinkle Star Seal” (Marisa Kirisame)*

Needle Spark Sign “Needle Spark to Seal the Lunar Nobles” (Marisa)*

Thunder Spirit Sign “Mukou’s Thunder Shot Dream Seal” (Kasen)*

Dragon Kick Sign “Dragon’s Asuka’i Kick” (Kasen)*

Perfect Possession and Dream Seal” (Yukari Yakumo)*

“Boundary of Master Spirit Medium and Slave Divine Spirit” (Yukari)*

“Sneak-Photographer’s Exorcism Master Spark” (Marisa)

“Sneak-Photographer’s Exorcism From the Back” (Okina Matara)

“Unauthorized Danmaku Photography is Strictly Prohibited” (Yukari)

“Crow’s Darkness” (Aya Shameimaru’s shared Spell Card Bomb)

“The Underside of Uncommon Sense” (Yukari’s shared Spell Card Bomb)

“Gathering Spiritual Flowers” (Suika Ibuki’s shared Spell Card Bomb)

#muse: reimu #rp muse #reimu hakurei #universe l1 #parallel satellite incident notes

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