Saiyuki! meme!
Mar. 24th, 2013 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elsaneOMG MINEKURA holy shipbait.
(You had better be making these two explicit in the end game because if you go this far, HOLY SDKFJ.)
Also, it's wonderful to see Kougaiji again, and he's still being an absolute noble idiot, no surprise there. I'm very curious to see how this will develop.
About meme: I am frazzled enough to play, and the results have so far been deeply amusing, so:
viashati: I've got a list of characters from various fandoms numbered 1-15, give me scenarios/questions with combinations of characters (e.g. 1 and 5 walk into a bar, and get into a fight with 7. who wins?), hilarity ensues.
(You had better be making these two explicit in the end game because if you go this far, HOLY SDKFJ.)
Also, it's wonderful to see Kougaiji again, and he's still being an absolute noble idiot, no surprise there. I'm very curious to see how this will develop.
About meme: I am frazzled enough to play, and the results have so far been deeply amusing, so:
via
shati: I've got a list of characters from various fandoms numbered 1-15, give me scenarios/questions with combinations of characters (e.g. 1 and 5 walk into a bar, and get into a fight with 7. who wins?), hilarity ensues.
i feel like this is a math question
Date: 2013-03-25 03:44 am (UTC)Show your work.Re: i feel like this is a math question
Date: 2013-03-25 04:41 am (UTC)hahahaha shati gdi, what did I let myself in for?
Okay, well, clearly Tenpou has sauntered down from the World Above to pick Combeferre's brain about entomology, 19th century French pop culture, and the philosophy of self-determination -- I can't help feeling like they would have some of the most fascinating and baffling conversations ever -- when season 2!Mai portals in unexpectedly, having read in the library that Combeferre can hook her up with serious gun and steam technology and, per Azula's orders, is trying to import him as the resident Fire Nation steampunk army advisor, at knife point, if necessary. Naturally, Tenpou (and Combeferre!) strongly objects to this, and Mai is squaring off against Tenpou (she's drawn back against the Musain bar with her knives out and sparkling in the slender thread of sunlight through the dirty window, while Tenpou draws his sword, slowly, and his smile, more slowly yet), when all of a sudden Ari Emory II steps through a portal and starts laughing.
(Because it's the best way to stop people from hitting each other with sharpened metal bits while she has a chance to get a sense of the situation.)
Ari has come as part of a historical gene-harvesting effort to grab Combeferre's geneset for azification purposes, since he is obviously a superior genetic specimen, despite the maladaptive self-sacrificial streak which could surely be corrected with the correct tape in infancy, and his genetic legacy should be preserved. (She'll get Courfeyrac for obvious pants-related reasons, and will grab Enjolras, too, out of hubristic curiosity, and though she'll set up his geneset in a sequestered test tube with all kinds of warnings about "experimental" and "extreme caution" it is a recipe for disaster...)
Then Sister Simplice shows up and
and
since she can never tell a lie she will say this is incredibly ridiculous and cannot possibly be taking place, why do you need four walls, oh, were you using that one? gosh sorryshe will cow everyone into quiet submission with the sheer force of her moral authority and self assuredness, even Ari Emory, who is clearly very young here, and who will pack herself off to Cyteen analyzing the conversation backwards and forwards 17 different times trying to figure out what just happened and how she can make sure it never happens again.
Re: i feel like this is a math question
Date: 2013-03-26 12:14 am (UTC)since she can never tell a lie she will say this is incredibly ridiculous and cannot possibly be taking place, why do you need four walls, oh, were you using that one? gosh sorry
ALSO COUNTS AS HANDLING THE SITUATION
Re: i feel like this is a math question
Date: 2013-05-28 01:51 am (UTC)How the hell did I miss this???
(I found it by trying to locate a post of CJC's where she mentioned watching the Saiyuki anime.)
I don't think I've ever done this meme. Maybe I will when I finished trying to wrap up both Hurt/Comfort Bingo and Sutcliff Swap.
Re: i feel like this is a math question
Date: 2013-05-28 08:48 pm (UTC)Did you ever find Cherryh's Saiyuki post? That sounds very funny -- too bad it's the anime and not the manga, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-25 04:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-25 05:06 am (UTC)Azula and Grant ALX are plotting to overthrow the government of Ari Emory II and
FFFFF hahahahahahahahaha
Kuwabara from Hikaru no Go is the cross-dressing spy.
WELL
It actually makes a huge amount of sense for Grant to be plotting to overthrow Ari Emory's government, provides he's convinced that Ari's interests no longer coincide with Justin's. Grant eats twisty manipulation for breakfast along with whatever abomination Union uses for breakfast cereal, so there is no way that Azula can talk him into a false impression where none exists, so this has either happened very early in Cyteen or will happen after unspecified disasters happen in the future.
Let's say post-democratic revolt in Union, led by armies of cloned Enjolrai, following on the inevitable consequences of my response to shati, because that's more fun.
Grant has somehow managed to conjure Azula through portal technology, having recalled her vaguely from Ari's allusions concerning her disastrous historical genetic reconnaissance, thinking that she is sufficiently like Ari that she will be able to help in the evil planning department. This is an overly fluxed mistake due to losing contact with Justin, combined with having a devastating conversation with azi!Enjolrai regarding the lack of self-determination inherent in his all-consuming pair bond with a CIT. (He recovers his equilibrium sooner or later, but Enjolras is supernaturally convincing, and in the meantime Grant has conjured an Azula who has to be dealt with.)
MEANWHILE Kuwabara is the AI in charge of Go education on the Reseune supercomputer, which is unexpectedly self-aware, and because of this spontaneous and unexpected self-awareness has access to all bases on the union network, including Base One! Kuwabara, being Kuwabara, has been presenting as a young girl and encouraging lonely quantitatively minded teenagers to confide in him and possibly commit acts of
rivalrysexrivalry. So he finds out what Grant and Azula are plotting, and offers to help, because, sheesh, Ari II? Needs to make room for a new wave of talent...(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-26 04:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-25 04:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-25 05:27 am (UTC)Well.
This is clearly following on from the universe in skygiants' post. Grant has, in a moment of weakness, summoned an Azula, and now has to deal with the consequences.
Azula, being brilliant and terrible, has discovered the portal technology (superbonus: this is Cherryh canon) and is running through the world looking for ways she can turn this to her advantage, rule the world(s), and earn her father's approval. She's set a bomb behind her in Reseune that can't be undone without fire-bending, so Grant is pursuing her through the portals to try to discover the secret to defusing the bomb before the environmental shields blow and everyone in Reseune breathes cancer.
Azula passes through Barrayar, where Simon Illyan picks up her trail. (It's an emergency, he's coming home on a wet night and sees fire flickering impossibly in the streetlights, he has to follow, and then suddenly he's in Joseon.) In Joseon, Azula tries to blend into the gisaengs with HYSTERICALLY AND PREDICTABLY AWFUL RESULTS, though it must be admitted the gisaengs show a sudden outburst of "not tolerating your crap" afterwards. This sets off Yong Ha's radar, whereupon Yong Ha and Simon Illyan (who is out of place as an out of place person can be in Western-phobic Joseon) have an extremely interesting intense conversation, which, this is an amazing conversation I would dearly love to listen in on -- and then they hear that the King has arrested a foreigner, they grab the foreigner who is dressed all in black, and only realize it isn't Azula when they see the characteristic signature of the timeslip, and they pursue Azula into Korea vintage 1930s, dragging Grant behind them, whereupon the story becomes Farce with a capital F.
Azula gets herself in with Sachiko out of self-preservation, managing to convince Sachiko that Sachiko can ignite things with the sheer force of her will because of Sachiko's inherent awesome, while Yong Ha and Simon Illyan facepalm madly at the antics of ALL THE HAPLESS REVOLUTIONARIES EVER, and draw up a plan that is actually sane
and then Cha Song Joo happens
whereupon Yong Ha has a meltdown, see the fic I wrote for Yuletide which stuck me with crack headcanon, and Simon swallows and says "Alys Alys Alys" to himself, a lot, perpetually, and Grant is the only sane man, asking, very patiently, if they can please go capture Azula now, and yes, fine, we'll free your "Joseon" from oppression if necessary, can we just, please, focus on our jobs and I would really like it if my home weren't blown up?
(Geun Deok likes Grant a lot.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-25 05:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-26 12:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-26 04:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-26 01:36 pm (UTC)5 and 8 are on a plot-necessitated road trip to acquire a MacGuffin from 10. Is 10 willing to give it to them, or do there need to be bonus hijinks? What happens when 4 decides to help them whether they like it or not, when they stop by 6's roadside inn along the way, and why is 14 so determined to interfere with their mission?
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-30 07:39 am (UTC)hmm.
This is clearly more of a fantastical scenario, with dark underpinnings.
Ukoku (whom you probably don't know, but he is awesome in the most nihilistic and horrifying of villainous ways) has discovered how to walk between the worlds and is starting to unravel it all. Key to this is Tacroy's soul: Tacroy had the misfortune to encounter Ukoku, in a moonlit and crow-filled wood, while Tacroy was soul-wandering, and Ukoku smiled, and snarled Tacroy's soul in his fingers. This is possible only because Tacroy still belongs to the Dright at this point, and his soul is not his own, and Ukoku has his way in through this crack. With Tacroy's soul in his hands, Ukoku can start unraveling the worlds Tacroy has touched, and the worlds he's lived in, working his way back toward Series 11, whose existence he senses and with whose sealed self-centeredness he is especially fascinated; he wants to know, who is it, who cares this much about an experiment on the experience of a person's soul? Who else is taking detached and scientific notes on what it means to be human, and alive? Tacroy is fighting hard, but every battle is a rearguard action, and he is prone to despair.
The threads of unraveling run through every universe where Tacroy has walked, so attuned philosophical types like Combeferre and Kim Yoon Hee start sensing a deep wrongness underlying and exacerbating the political/economic injustice of their day, trying to seep its way along the sociological faultlines and break society open in destructive, rather than productive ways. Combeferre dreams one evening of meeting a young scholar, half the world and half a century apart, and they talk over a drink which is wine to him and makgeolli to her, and agree that whatever is going on is real and strange and dangerous, and they walk out of the bar together and onto a hazy mountainside which somehow surprises neither of them, and they follow the threads of unrest one world over, and then another, and then another, as they learn how to track the trail.
Isumi is a little tricky, let's suppose he sees this wrongness in his Go board, in the stones (it's a little mystic, but hey). He wakes up one foggy morning at three am, and walks out of his apartment with his go board under his arm; Combeferre and Yoon Hee are arguing on a street corner about which way to go next, and Isumi plays Yoon Hee at baduk (=go) for the right and the route to passage. He wins, white against black, virtue against audacity, and takes an odd number of black stones prisoner. He arranges the white stones in neat lines, counting his territory, as is customary, but the lines of his arrangement all lead to the west. "Go", he says: "your path lies to the west, to the sunset; and he will not win, if you can count ahead far enough to sacrifice the ko." He gives Yoon Hee a single black stone, and goes back to his apartment, and wakes up with a headache, and a missing stone in his best Go set.
Yoon Hee and Combeferre step west at the next crossing, and come to Simon Illyan's inn. Ukoku has half unraveled Barrayar; Simon remembers himself, and he remembers his memory chip breaking down, and he's no longer sure what is real. He remembers managing an inn (an old undercover operation, going metastatic in his memory), where travelers come, and he writes their stories down in his ledger along with his memories of something different. "I don't remember you," he says to Yoon Hee and Combeferre, and they trade a rueful smile. "Try not to remember us," Yoon Hee says, and Combeferre agrees: "We've come to set things right." Yoon Hee pays their fare with a single coin, a piece of silver, black with tarnish.
Tacroy is drinking in the back room, his soul spilling out of his wine glass. Yoon Hee and Combeferre look at each other, and Yoon Hee has a brief momentary thought of her friends, variously winning and losing at gambling.
"They're playing poker," Combeferre murmurs. "Help me count?"
"Tell me the rules," says Yoon Hee, and a moment later, "good," and the two of them sit down to play the crow in the darkness for Tacroy's soul, and the worlds along them.