radio414

i'm too much of a coward to participate but i can provide two thousand (2000) points as a prize for the winner hope this helps

can i put a super crown on mine

Beauty*2 Whoever or whatever had removed Simon from Dia’s inner sanctum had not also removed his attendants, and yet, when Simon disappeared from their sight, they were not exactly concerned. One of them -- their name was Rose -- even remarked, “Ah, that was quick. I did not expect the fight to only last those few moments.” “You think it is over already?” the other, Gil, said. “There are very few ways I can think of for someone to disappear like that without the influence of a god’s will. In fact, I might even be able to guess as to who won.” “I imagine Nuumu’s dog wouldn’t bother with the snatching business. She would just tell us.” Rose nodded. “Mm. Well, I suppose we should try to follow him.” They paid a few brief respects to Dia for allowing them to use her sanctuary before coming back out to a completely empty temple. Even the girl, who had so boldly threatened Simon’s life just moments before had gone. There was a crowd gathering outside the temple, though, and Rose and Gil could just hear Simon giving a sermon. It was not like the ones they had heard him give before, though. “Is he pleading his case?” Gil said. “He could just be stalling for time.” Rose would have said more on the subject, but stopped short, distracted by light glinting off something on the ground. “Oh, look. Is that the sword that girl was using?” “Best return it to her.” Rose raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You do not think she will kill Simon with it?” “I think he will be dead before she gets the chance,” Gil said. “And it is a nice sword. Nobody wants a sword like that getting lost. At the very least, let us take it with us.” Soft Power “I will do my best,” Aiden had told Kitt, and yet, he had never had a high opinion of “his best” with regards to dealing with the religious council. Not recently, anyway. His last few attempts to get through to Levanna had been rebuffed, and his attempts with the other members of the council -- the few times he managed to find them -- had largely gone just as well. Even Elliot, the man Aiden had had the most hope in, had given him nothing more than an “I’m with you, and I’ll be sure to fight for this at the next meeting,” which, given that nothing ever seemed to come from said meetings, actually felt worse in Aiden’s mind. At least Thomas and Mercy simply refused to speak to him. Still, this was a watchdog’s order. Just because he didn’t believe in himself didn’t mean he couldn’t try. The guards outside the room, though, had other ideas. “The council is in session right now, and are not to be disturbed,” they said, a phrase that was already bad enough but they also added, “especially by you,” which, well, was that really necessary? Aiden pressed on. “A watchdog of Taros has requested the council’s presence in the Temple Square,” he said. “I am merely the messenger, come to collect them.” That, at least, got the guard to pause. To waver, even, and soon enough, they were peeking their head through the door, even giving it a slight knock to get the attention of those inside. Aiden heard the chatter of the council cease and his words repeated by the guard into the chamber. “A request?” Aiden could hear Thomas’ voice from within the chamber. “I am not going to move to adjourn our meeting due to a request. If he wants to discuss Simon Weatherson, tell him we were just about to discuss his matter further before this interruption.” “They might kill him!” Aiden shouted back. There was a long pause, but Thomas did eventually respond. “Well, we will certainly factor that into our discussion.” It was the expected answer, even one he was used to, but Aiden found it disappointing all the same. Still, he gave a polite nod to the guard and turned to make his way back. Destroy Everything You Touch Emily felt nothing watching Simon Weatherson collapse dead on the ground. She had wanted him dead, after all. The fact that it was not by her hand stung a little, but it really only affected her personal sense of pride. But it was still performed by a watchdog, which meant that the gods -- or a god, at least -- had still performed the deed in her stead. It was the closest to her doing it, in her eyes, almost as if they were an extension of her in addition to the god they represented. Besides that, the only other feeling Emily experienced was one of reinvigoration. At least, she felt confident enough to try walking again. Which just so happened to be when Nuumu’s watchdog pointed over at her and said, “Bring this girl to Taros’ temple, would you?” There was more, but that was all Emily needed to hear to understand. Now came the consequences. It wasn’t that Emily had been entirely ignorant of the consequences of stealing what was likely a ceremonial sword and using it in her vengeance quest, it was just that she had decided thinking about such things outside of tacit acknowledgment that they existed was detrimental to the actual plan. They’d been distractions, things to brush aside. So yes, only now that they were concrete were they something to be feared, and even then, what regrets did she have? Whatever came next, she could at least know that her parents could rest a little easier. But she did not follow just yet, even as people were gesturing for her to do so. She still had to do things properly, Emily thought, and that meant that she would need the sword with her to return. And again, just as she thought this, she found something cool and metal being pressed against her back. She turned her head and saw a figure she felt she was supposed to recognize, even if she could not quite place from where. In their hands was a sword. The sword, rather. “You had best hold on to this,” they said. “At least, for the time being.” Emily took the sword from them, nodded, and watched as they disappeared back into the crowd, before turning back around and dutifully following behind the man she was supposed to. Fighting In Built Up Areas Simon Weatherson was dead. Aiden did not even need to actually see the body to know that -- he could tell by the way the crowd was slowly and silently dispersing. Still, he pushed through against the current to the gap in the center, desperate to see for himself. He immediately regretted it. Death was not Aiden’s department. The closest it had been was when an acolyte managed to get a rather nasty burn, and even that was not something he preferred thinking about. Even then, there had been little blood, mostly charred flesh (and also the acolyte had survived, albeit minus that arm). Here, the blood was already seeping into the cobblestone. And yet, his first thought was, “We should probably clean this up before the mess gets any worse.” He even said it out loud. With what, though? With the little water they had? But at the same time, Lar was god of the hearth, and what was the Temple Square if not a hearth for all of Galatea? It very well may be his duty to maintain it, Aiden reasoned, even more so than the other temples. He spotted an acolyte of his leaving the crowd, and he called out to them. “Fetch one of our water barrels and a scrub. The body, I imagine, we will have to leave in the care of Nuumu, but the blood we can take care of.” The Last One Standing Rose and Gil looked on, neither moving from their spot at the edge of the crowd. Simon Weatherson was dead, but there was no time to mourn. In fact, they had listened intently as Nuumu’s watchdog continued to plead a case that was decidedly pro-the dead man lying on the ground. “You may have escalated a problem I was trying to fix diplomatically,” she said, which got Gil to nod. “But we are not going to escalate, are we?” Rose said. “Not against watchdogs, certainly.” “I do not think so. But we should definitely do something.” “I have to go see if I can’t find someone else willing to tell me more about the void after this scene Hinder's watchdog made,” the watchdog said. “Ah.” “Yes,” Gil said. “You return the sword and I will start after her. Do try to catch up, though. I might miss you in the meantime.” OOC

beta yoshi is my child and i will not have you disparaging them

Oh, Makoto had won. Peter had to admit to himself that he hadn’t really been paying attention; his most recent distraction had been Hana latching onto Terry, trying to get her to elucidate her opinions on the match more forcefully than Peter thought necessary. Even worse was when Hana leered at him (or as close as Peter had ever seen Hana get to leering), a move that could only lead Peter to assume he was next to be shaken down. He scooched his seat away from them, but only a little. It was probably a useless gesture -- any distance could be assumed to be negligible with Hana involved, really -- but the idea behind the action still mattered to him. He also tried to focus on other things, like Makoto walking back to the rest of the team and David moving to replace her. “Nice job, Makoto” and “Go get ‘em, David,” were things that came out of his mouth in those moments, though his mind was still elsewhere. He tried to follow along, too, when the duel actually started, but he kept making offhand glances over to Hana and Terry on the bench, and he continued to scoot away each time. Peter did pay enough attention to watch David nearly halve his opponent’s life, total, though, and he did clap along for that. “One or two more attacks, just like that, David,” he said.

←Previous Post -- Next Post Duel 24 -- The Secret Nanami Diary Or: Three Elephant Transformations And At Least One More Cow One interesting thing the manga does to continue to reinforce its floral theme is the chapter titles. The prolog is just titled that, and the side stories have their own name scheme, but the five main chapters are all plant-based in some way. Today’s topic, chapter one, for example, is titled “To Till”, and as we continue along, the flower will continue to grow. I’ve mentioned this before, but the story starts in basically the same way every time, no matter the medium. Utena challenges Saionji to a duel and is swept into the dueling game. I don’t mean to make assumptions about the anime’s development process, but that may have been a factor in the similarities in this instance. The earlier plot points were more set in stone, I mean, and some of the lines are, if not word-for-word identical, at least very similar. Saionji even makes the same passing comment about the castle in the sky being more like a mirage. That doesn’t mean it’s all the same, though. A lot of this is in the aesthetics -- Utena still wears her rose-pink uniform, for example, and the student council meets not in the ivory tower above the school but in a building with more religious aesthetics, or at least a building with a lot of stained glass -- but there’s also a sense of abridgment to the manga. In my opinion, fair enough, like, you wouldn’t expect a five-chapter manga to cover all thirty-nine episodes of the show in perfect synchronicity, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t noticeable effects. Overall, this chapter covers not only the events of Episode One, but also parts of Episode Three and Episode Eight; I would call this the “Saionji” chapter. But the biggest abridgment continues to be in theme. The anime has had its moments of wearing its heart on its sleeve, but the manga continues to say it outright. Utena wants to be a prince, not a princess, because she wants to be the one doing the protecting. There’s a moment during the first duel that even says this outright. “Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. One of strength and nobility is always a prince.” And it’s this sort of melodramatic opinion that Utena is going to have to grow out of, at least on the anime side of things. I guess that leads into a discussion on at least a little of the publishing process. According to vague sources, Saito had to go through multiple (I’ve read up to five?) editors, which then led into arguably a watering down of the basic Utena theme of bringing revolution to outdated gender roles. Some of this, I imagine, is apologetics for Saito initially being against the main relationship being anything more than ambiguous (the movie manga is much better in this regard; Utena was an established property by then). Because of this, the themes are going to diverge rather quickly, so that statement above is going to mean something different soon. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, as Saionji comes out of nowhere to get his revenge. We can get an idea of what happens next from the anime, but I’ll talk about it more next week. I made a joke about this last week too, but one of the higher-up Youtube comments remarks upon how instead of recapping and finalizing the theme of the previous arc, this clip show instead focuses on Nanami, specifically through the lens of Tsuwabuki’s obsession with her. He’s injured by a runaway horse, and his diary is found and read by Utena, Anthy, and Nanami, which in turn leads to the recap of Nanami’s escapades. First, though I do want to focus for a moment on the horse. In the discussion for Episode Six, I made a comment about the symbology of the horse in relating it to princeliness. Tsuwabuki continues to want to be Nanami’s quote-unquote “prince”, and that, combined with the mirror of his initial savior moment in Six, makes this a rather significant choice. The majority of this episode, though, like I said, is a recap of Nanami’s escapades, and we find out that Tsuwabuki’s obsession continues even outside of the episodes he’s visually been a part of. He witnessed Nanami’s initial revenge plots against Anthy, followed her to India during the curry episode (as well as the three identical triplets, who had their minds swapped with elephants while we weren’t looking, apparently), and even snuck into the Student Council meeting room to get a closer look at Touga. What’s important to note here, and this will apply to upcoming Nanami episodes, is that while the audience has always had this information, a lot of it was outside of Utena’s awareness (it’s implied Anthy has known since the beginning, though she tends to feign ignorance as well). In those initial revenge plots, Nanami still had that veneer of kindness; it was only when Touga got too close that Nanami began revealing her true colors. So this episode just about breaks that barrier of trust entirely. It’s out in the open now. Just in time for other aspects of Nanami’s persona to start breaking down as well. It’s not all for the worse. Nanami and Tsuwabuki’s general relationship has maintained its improvements since Episode Eighteen, and we see Nanami thank Tsuwabuki for his help at one point. One can hope that this Nanami will continue to make this an area of improvement as she matures as a character. But there are still some barriers that need to be broken. Things are going to get worse before they get better. -r Next time: The start of the spookily-named Apocalypse arc, complete with a new living space and a fancy car. ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→

All anyone had ordered so far was ducks and Chris was already concerned that the table was going to collapse under the weight of future orders. Or maybe finding a cook who could get their ducks in a row was what feasting meant now; it wasn’t like he’d been paying attention to culinary trends in the last year or so (not that he’d really done so before that either). Whichever, it didn’t matter. Now he had to focus on integrating himself into the conversation. “We were just talking about how we learned to do what we do.” “Yes, do tell, Chris! The ease with which you handle a blade must not have come easily.” It was a reasonable enough topic, Chris thought, especially if everyone planned to venture into the dungeon together again, but he still instinctively hesitated at the suggestion of talking about his past. Wasn’t that, like, the reason he’d left Julian at the bar in the first place? At the same time, though, he also had kind of skimped on saying much of anything when similar discussions had come up after that kobold fight. It probably wouldn’t hurt to say a little bit more. He glanced over at the bar where Julian was alternating between idly chewing her pen and scribbling in her notepad. There wasn’t really a way to tell if she was paying attention or not more than that, not that Chris wanted her living in his head any longer than necessary, so he started answering. “‘Had,’ I guess. Not ‘have,’” he said, as his hand drifted to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Dunno where they are now. But yeah, I learned some of the basics growing up.” The other parts of thievery, those he’d had to pick up on the go or adapt from ideas he’d learned in his youth. But fencing was something his parents had found a mentor for, and it was something he’d hated then. When he said he’d learned the basics, it was because that was all he had cared to learn, and no form of discipline could force him to learn otherwise. “Once you know where the squishy bits are, it’s really just about making sure you hit those.” Maybe he relied too much on raw speed? Not that he was willing to admit that out loud, and besides, he was still alive, wasn’t he? His hand wandered from his sword to another blade on his person. “Daggers, though, I first picked those up at a fair, actually. Someone was doing a performance where they were hitting fruit balanced on people’s heads, and the fruit got progressively smaller as the act went on, like, watermelon all the way down to grape, if you can believe that. I know I couldn’t, and I saw it happen! So I got” -- begged, more like -- “them to give me at least a little instruction. Probably couldn’t knock anything off anyone’s head but I can make the pointy side go into a rat consistently enough.” He paused to take a sip from his drink. “Or, I guess, whatever we find on the next few dungeon floors, if it’s not those.”