[BitPR²] OOCVII: Kidnapping aunts for fun & profit

[Kuroimaken]

You're going to make her run into a convoluted lesbian love triangle, aren't you.

[Rater202]

You're going to make her run into a convoluted lesbian love triangle, aren't you.

She does go for girls...

[Rater202]

I'm legit not sure what to post here.

[Frozen_Feet]

Try to get and keep a discussion going between your characters for a while. I'm going on a vacation so my posting will be pretty sparse for next three weeks. If you're unsure how something works in Finland, look it up on Wikipedia or something.

[Kuroimaken]

Come on Rater, Koutarou is so lonely, he could use a phone call.

Also Frozen, gonna keep going in the SW thread if you're going to take a while.

[Frozen_Feet]

Sure.

I have nothing to add to the Gaiden thread yet, just keep the discussion going while I eat popcorn.

Still need some kind of responsw from you in the MW thread.

[Rater202]

I need someone to do something in the Gaiden Thread.

[Frozen_Feet]

After spending a week in Sweden, I'll try to get back to speed with posting. I still have little to add to the Gaiden thread, though, so move on at your leisure with Koutarou and Sarah. I'll try to have a post up in Spirit and Mortal World threads tomorrow evening at latest.

[KnightDisciple]

I find myself a bit frustrated OOC with how much Chuck and the others are getting ragged on IC when it's not our fault Tamaki's player stopped posting/playing. But sure, they're the bad guys.

[Frozen_Feet]

I suggest you go back and reread the last conversations Tamaki had with people, because the IC dialogue is built on IC events and has little to nothing to do with OOC event of AnimeKid leaving. Especially given that those events took place after I revived the character and have been playing him on and off for something like two years.

Given that you were away yourself for a long time in the interim, it's no wonder of you, yourself, have forgotten what the context is.

[Kuroimaken]

Easy there guys.

I can understand how it looks from both ends. The fact is that Animekid's constant coming and going did not help his character development, though at the same time, Tamaki has always been a bit of an oddball in some respects.

It would probably help if he were less of a grumpy Gus, though.

[Rater202]

I'm basically running out of things to say in beachdown.

[Frozen_Feet]

I'd say that just means you need to move from saying to doing. You can fastforward another day or two to when they're checking out an apartment, or visiting another city, or whatever else.

[Kuroimaken]

I'd say that just means you need to move from saying to doing. You can fastforward another day or two to when they're checking out an apartment, or visiting another city, or whatever else.

I'm fine with that, though a bit of action would be nice. Maybe there's a flying humanoid shark in town or something.

[Frozen_Feet]

The entire point of me taking a backseat for a while is to give a chance for the action to be about something your characters do, instead of something happening regardless of what they do. Flying sharks belong in the latter category.

[Kuroimaken]

"Hey, I have an idea. Let's rob a bank."

[Kuroimaken]

Heads up guys, I'm going camping for the weekend.

[Dorizzit]

...Nobutada wants Koutarou's punishment to be...having to do his job?

[Kuroimaken]

I know, it sounds redundant, but the fact is he doesn't have a point of comparison beyond VG and Jehoel is not a valid target.

[Frozen_Feet]

There are plenty of difficult tasks other than simply killing some adversary. Some of them would be at the very root of why this situation exists in the first place:

While rambling, Wan Li Lin cast the entire Royal Guard as being part of the Eibon's order. If you take Wan Li Lin's words at face value, the Royal Guard always had the goal of installing Izanagi-no-Mikoto on the throne and moving Soul Society on the treshold of the Royal Realm. The latter has yet to happen, because Koutarou gave an order to not let it happen, and because half of Soul Society is still on Earth.

So giving Koutarou a firm deadline for returning Soul Society to where Royal Guard wants it to be, or face a more severe punishment, would be a fitting difficult task. And one where arguably he needs to get rid of Geister on the way, with the sole reason I don't see it happening being that Draken doesn't seem to be around to make it happen.

Of course, it's still ambiguous of whether Wan Li Lin was speaking the truth. Or if the rest of the Royal Guard even know what they said or what were their motives.

[Kuroimaken]

Well, VG also worked on picking up the stray pieces of Soul Society, which Koutarou could use to that end. I assume that's what you meant by saying VG would need to be defeated either way.

At the time, Koutarou ordered the process stopped because the spell was originally designed to move Soul Society whole, not fractured and displaced as it had been, and there was no telling what might happen if the spell were to be activated under such conditions. (Plus there was the whole deal with Yasunobu Sawada that he was still making heads and tails of.)

EDIT: Either way, dragon-slaying was just an example. Nobutada wasn't suggesting VG as the actual task, but rather a standard to be measured against.

[Frozen_Feet]

I meant that Geister has been intent on mining those chunks for his own use and probably would take offense at Koutarou doing something to move the whole shebang out of his reach. Koutarou, specifically, because last time Geister fought him above Russia, he said that if Koutarou so much as sets foot on Earth where Geister can spot him, he'll hunt him down.

[KnightDisciple]

I'm frankly trying to engage with WLL's rantings as little as possible; I'm struggling as-is to have a semi-reasonable character who simultaneously doesn't approve of soul/mind mutilation, but also doesn't just cut WLL loose.

[Dorizzit]

I think the best way to reconcile it, and the way I’ve been approaching things with Rin, is to treat the role of Royal Guards as being amoral. Rin certainly doesn’t approve of WLL’s actions or personality, but the Red Pheasant’s knowledge and history are the only things that matter as far as rank goes. They need WLL, regardless of how danger WLL represents.

[Kuroimaken]

It ultimately comes down to how much stock they put in rank to begin with. Koutarou did what he did because he considered Wan Li Lin's action's unconscionable from basically any standpoint. He didn't care what rank he was, a bully is a bully.

The fact that the role WLL plays insofar as his knowledge goes would best be served by books and databases rather than the man himself should be telling of how important the transmission of knowledge itself is and how neglected it has been in the past millennium or so.

On the other hand, the Royal Guard cannot appear to be lacking in unison. I think it was Rin who pointed out that the act of insubordination in question cannot be forgiven on principle, because if the Royal Guard condones it, then that puts their authority into question (a point I happen to disagree with, but then, they're going by definitions of command and authority that are a lot older than the ones I've learned). It ultimately comes down to choosing maintaining order and tradition versus upholding a greater standard of behavior, so if it sounds like it should be hard to decide what your character does or thinks about, that's because it is.

[Frozen_Feet]

What you think of Wan Li Lin and how you should punish Koutarou are two independent considerations.

Why? Because Wan Li Lin's actions were means to an end. They existed in reaction to larger issues. Even if your characters decide that Wan Li Lin's actions were impermissible and execute them (which is a possibility, who would stop you? Me?), those issues need addressing of their own.

To recap briefly, the issues are 1) cosmology of Soul Society and 2) existence of a conspiracy within the Royal Guard.

For 1), the highest priority in Soul Society's law is balance. Why is balance kept? To keep spiritual and material worlds from colliding. When Geister pulled parts of Soul Society to Earth, this constituted a complete failure on Soul Society's part to do its appointed task. Even if Wan Li Lin's response is deemed wrong, the Royal Guard still needs to decide how much of an issue this is and if Koutarou has some responsibility in letting it happen, or not fixing it earlier, or whatever.

For 2), Wan Li Lin eventually claimed Eibon's Order was three-part conspiracy to infiltrate the Royal Guard and fill it with people loyal to Izanagi, install Izanagi on the throne and move Soul Society into the Royal realm. Even if you decide your characters had no part in it at all or that the whole conspiracy was a delusion and covertly execute Wan Li Lin, they might still need to punish Koutarou just to save face. (Which they seem to be primarily concerned about at the moment anyway.) A whole host of other scenarios could occur here depending on whether the conspiracy is genuine, whether your characters were part of it, or even knew about it.

[Kuroimaken]

Perhaps more importantly, the whole point of a conspiracy is to keep **** secret, which WLL failed spectacularly at, so if the conspiracy is real, he should probably be executed on principle for talking about Fight Club.

[Frozen_Feet]

That depends on if they deem it important to keep it a secret anymore. If they do deem it important, a whole lot more memory wipes and executions than just Wan Li Lin's would need to take place.

[Rater202]

If the Royal Guard primarily want to punish Koutaro to save face, that's kind of hard proof that he doesn't deserve punishment and that they themselves should be punished.

From my purely mortal human western raised opinion, if a high ranking Law Enforcement officer started summarily execution legally opointed law makers becuase he was pissed off about the state of the country and a truce that had been agreed to(as IIRC Wan Lin did cite that as part of the reason for what he did) and a lower ranked ALw Enforcement officer stopped him and brought him into custody, the murderer would be tried and executed and the lesser ranked officer would be commended.

Since that's for all intents and purposes what happened, that's what the just result would be.

Unfortunately, I don't exactly have a character present in the scene to say that so I can't really throw that in there.

I won't have a character nin the main game at all until stuff starts happening in Hueco Mundo again.

[Kuroimaken]

Unfortunately, I don't exactly have a character present in the scene to say that so I can't really throw that in there.

Would you like to MAKE one? Said character would be ostensibly Koutarou's secretary, but still.