Hmm, that kind of tends toward a vote for plant control for Nanoha, I guess. Given that at this point I'm havering between that and Breathe Underwater, I'd call that question mostly solved - I'll use whichever allows for the best critical moment. Now, on to the stuff I wrote offline - which I'll warn contains a rather large digression but one I don't want to delete and forget about - you never know when some oddball idea will work for something else.
-------------------------------
3rd arc? Is there another OVA, then? I've seen a couple of fanfics with the premise that Miz had to find an apprentice before she could retire, but one was crap and the other (by Ammadeau, may not have been released since I was prereading for him for a while, way back when) put a locked Ranma in as the apprentice, so I'd figured they arrived at the idea independently. (I think one or the other featured a curry-eating contest at Nanami's restaurant, but with Ifurita as a contestant that had to be set after the 1001 nights and I doubt Miz would wait that long.) As for the Bugrom being the ancient enemies of the other peoples of El-Hazard... Well, sure. Like England and France, or Japan and China; that doesn't mean there aren't periods when they get along better - an active, intense conflict that goes more than a handful of years tends to kill off everyone interested in fighting, without huge populations and strong authority driving them.
Granted, this paints the Bugrom as relatively human in terms of their reasoning and reactions, but while they may be a bit dim the rank-and-file bugrom in Jinnai's retinue seem to bear that out. Geiger Xenomorphs always seemed overdone to the point of being ridiculous (and tech like 'their' ship from the first movie is never seen again, as if even the writers retroactively decided they didn't want the damn things spreading on their own) so I'm inclined against the notion of man-sized insects overrunning the landscape like locusts unless actively contained and eliminated. Even 'A Plague of Insecticons' struck me as plot-broken - if the Insecticons could clone themselves so much, whhy didn't Megatron use them lik the disposable massed troops they are and crush the always-strecthed-thin Autobots once and for all? No, if the Bugrom have shared the planet for hundreds or thousands of ears and haven't wiped out the humans or been wiped out themselves, they can't be all that aggressive most of the time.
Under an "England and France" paradigm, the previous Queen would have pursued more peaceful relations (or at least a period of rebuilding) and sent a Royal Diplomat, the near-human looking Deva to become an acolyte as a show of good faith, or possibly out of a genuine interest in/respect for the religion of El-Hazard since the characters make a big deal of how out of all the many tribes only the Phantom Tribe are heretics. Too bad for the peaceniks, everything Deva sees during her apprenticeship and term as Priestess of the Wind just reinforces her belief that humans are vastly inferior to bugrom - weaker, less durable, prone to argument and discord - and hence when the old queen dies and leaves her the senior Royal Bugrom she embarks on a new campaign of conquest after taking the throne. This requires laying down a little backstory as you can see, but has the virtue of avoiding the 'evilizing brain sucker' cliche.
As to her being a literal queen mother, I'd explain the wildly variant physiology of various bugrom breeds as being partially a matter of what her biochemistry is (part conscious control, part emotional state, part diet) when she gets a batch of eggs fertilized (a few thousand at a go, laid a few days later and seperated into hatchery cells like a beehive) and what the newly-hatched larvae are fed before they undergo metamorphosis into the adult forms. Being a 'royal bugrom' means having all the genetics neccessary and fully developed genitive organs, being a 'diplomat breed' means looking mostly like a human (or possibly other intelligent races - whatever the green fuzzy hot springs attendant was, frex) and the two are not neccessarily linked. The idea that Deva (and Jinnai) can repopulate the depleted Bugrom forces also speaks against her being a human with a brain-sucker; at most offspring in such a case should be mostly human but born with their brains already sucked. Of course, cross-fertility between humans and insect-based (however human looking) people is implausible in its own right but eh, Hot Alien Chicks are Biologically Compatible. For some reason, so are tentacle demons going the other way, but the bugrom aren't QUITE that ugly.
Anyway, back to this '3rd arc' - I suppose there's probably at least a small amount of information on Wikipedia (and I really should get over my software-docuwiki "Dammit, I want a downloadable manual!" induced dislike, as an encyclopedia they work well) but does anyone know a good detailed source? Even just a couple of fanfics that follow much the same plot with a Ranma-Insertion or something would work for the gist, I expect to change too much by that time for it to matter and would want to get back to the waiting Nanoha A's plot anyway.
On an unhelpful tangent, I played a lot of Macross Ace Frontier the past few days (Waah! I want the sequel, Ace Combat!) and was doing one of the Enemy Missions as a red Bajura when it struck me, "Jinnai would absolutely love these things!" Then I thought about it some more... red Itano Circus multishot = Photon Lancer or Divine Shooter, ship-wrecking big beam with a few seconds charge time = Lightning End or Divine Buster, energy-tail-thing (for the little brown bajura) = Levatein's Shlangenform, even physical bullets are at least approximated by Vita's Schwalbe Fliegen; they would actually fit as an elite type in a Nanoha cross. Oh, and what's this I was trying to write? A Nanoha cross! How handy! (No! Not gonna do it, not at this juncture.)
It was 100% story research that I fished out that game again, absolutely. Nothing to do with reading some backlogged Wednesday's Child chapters and wanting to whoop up on Yar-Dartz and L'Eggults like Tail Kinker's Ranma-Insert while slacking off, no sir! I need to see if Sketchley's updated his Macross timeline to incorporate the stuff from Frontier, though, my local copy is from 2009 and only includes up to 2050 when the VF-X2 game ended, to have the Bajura history in context.
Now if I could just figure out how to live more than thirty seconds in the EX missions I'd be golden. Well, yellow-anodized aluminum, at least. Iron pyrite? Still not writing, so I doubt anyone but myself would call it being ahead I suppose.
But, yeah, bajura as bugrom. Deva is a way hotter queen, no foolin'. Jinnai's ambitions may be aimed at planetary territory (if in no other way 'down to Earth') but with the Garden of Time showing up as well as the Trigger of Destruction, and several characters at least aware of the Mid-Childean interdimensional ... federation? Alliance? Whatever their government amounts to, though it seems like the three canned brains were it for civilian oversight with a General directly responsible for controlling crime and the trio of Old Admirals credited with pulling the TSA treaties together, so it may actually be a military junta - and the various fiction of Earth (even if he thinks it's for nerds Jinnai at least has to have heard of Star Wars, not to mention the various space anime - wasn't a Science Fiction Club mentioned in the first ep? One of the ones who lost their funding and were complaining, or something) there's enough to turn some interest skywards. Since it's not a mecha show, it would probabbly be better to scale the bajura down to be the same relative to human adults rather than variable fighters, though. The tight spot would be creating the integrated Devices grafted into the big cannon spike; if the Bugrom had that technology they'd have won long ago. Maybe Precia trades it for access to their looted Ancient books and machines?
The VF-0 Pheonix and SV-51 may have been in limited service in 2008 in their native continuity, (see Macross Zero, set in September) but Nanoha's Earth hasn't had an alien ship full of dead giants to prioritise methods of fighting oversized humanoids and reverse engineer compact fusion powerplants, super-alloys and energized armor, nor a grueling world war to push military technology. It would almost be worth the extra jackhammering to make it fit just for the image of a Pheonix squadron getting mixed up in one of the aerial magical girl battles, though, or die Wolkenritter interfering in the Maya Island incident. There's quite enough to chew on with MSLN/EH, but I'm sooo tempted, and it's not like we actually see anything beyond a couple of (relatively minor) cities in Nanoha and just a single school and a few stills of daily life (widest shot being Mt. Fuji) post-EH, so the Earth United Nations Government could technically be getting together and consolidating itself in the dying days of the Unification War, with Japan signing on peacefully early in that process. Alien Star Ship-1 would have crashed when Nanoha was one, the fighting is far away, and she's (as she says) an ordinary third-grader; however important they might be such things don't neccesarily register with her as more than background noise on the TV News.
The TSAB travels interdimensionally, after all, they don't neccessarily explore spacially at all. I don't think Nanoha is the sort to run off to Mid-Childa rather than help the reconstruction if Earth had been bombarded in February 2010 and nearly wiped out though, so StrikerS continuity would be even more blitzed than I'd planned. Operation Jail Bait would draw the direct antagonists to them rather than the other way around, but that doesn't help the problem of corruption in the TSA Ground Forces any.
I can't see even Nanoha, Fate, Yuuno, Mage-Makoto, and both Ifurita combined realistically being able to protect more than a city each at most (via Barrier magic) and probably just a few blocks each against millions of capitol ships spread evenly around the entire planet, even if they knew about it ahead of time. Hmm, would a big magic attack register as channeling superdimension energy to overtechnology sensors? I'd expect so, in a fused world like that. As for why the repairs-well-underway ASS-1/Visitor/SDF-1's fold drives don't register as a Lost Logia... BECAUSE MAGIC! Okay, less Chibi-Reaper, more ClassicDrogn: Because they haven't been repaired yet, overtechnology is tricky after all. For that matter, maybe they have, but the world government obviously has their hands all over it and the covert ops reports are that the leadership is extremely xenophobic after having the huge thing crash into their planet and wipe out a few major cities on its way down. The Cyclops spacetime radar can detect magic as a superdimension energy pulse, but only major things or very nearby (it is designed for sensing huge starships, not individual magi after all,) and the activity with the Jewel Seeds as Fate gathered them and then the dimensional quake as Precia left in the Garden shortly after getting them working would give the impression that a lot of background noise is normal, only a sustained storng signal (like the one put of by AFOS near Maya Island) is worth following up on.
Hmm, time travel is canonical for transit to and from El-Hazard, assuming there's no real way for them to persuede goverment officials to listen if they try to warn them about these events, what could they do to try to mitigate? Mass-trasport offworld maybe? What would the TSAB respond, assuming they've never encountered Zentlaedy before? What connection if any does the Proto-Culture have to Alhazared? The various flashabacks do often mention that there was more than one ancient culture that fell to their own technology when lost logia are explained, even if Alhazared is the only one specifically named. The Proto-Culture's split into Supervision Army and Inspection Army and fighting until the only survivors are their engineered warrior race definitely fits the bill.
Arg, but I was trying to reaffirm the decision to keep it purely MSLN/EH rather than let the Mecha-Bunnytank hijack things! (You know, the bunny-eared variable tank from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross? You might remember a horrid 'rabbit-technology' pun from the Harmony Gold/Macek dub for that scene.) It's just that Macross (and Transformers and GaoGaiGar and FLCL and BGC and Megazone 23 and Dai-Guard, and Naruto up until Tsunade returns) is one of my top-tier, SS-rank fandoms while Nanoha and El-Hazard (and Slayers and Pretty Cure and Hellsing and Kingdom Hearts and Excel Saga and Read or Die and Steel Angel Kurumi, and Harry Potter up to GoF) are only A to S, and despite the massive difference in physical scale the collateral damage hints that combat power is about equal, or close enough for fic. Mistah Gears, that's me. I wuvs me my mechas I doos. They are... my preeeciousss.
... How many pages could the Book of Darkness drain from the Mayan Island Bird-Man? Could it even hold all that energy? Just hitting up Sara and Shin would be a lot, she absorbs four simultanous H-bombs with a little help from the bird-man before space folding away and Shin... well, it sure looks like he SPACE FOLDS AFTER HER ON HIS OWN POWER. No McGuffin alien. No Device. No training. VF-0 Pheonix with a maximum no-atmo endurance of 2-3 minutes if it WASN'T powerles and falling apart around him. Nothing but raw talent and the song on his lips. Space slaggin' fold. He's way over 9000. I have to wonder if the songbird of Macross Frontier Sheril Nome is descended from Little Sis who stayed behind, or if Shin and Sara eventually decided to defold and set up house together somewhere, and it happened to be on the colony she came from? I've been letting the antici ... pation build before finally watching Macross F while stirring this pot, but I may just dive in at last.
... What would the final monster-form of the Book of Darkness security program look like with a significant amount of its power stolen from the Bird-Man in Song of Death mode? Talk about trading one problem for another! And while I'm talking about the Bird-Man, look at that thing's chest and tell me it's not all about the Spiral Energy. (Not even if I go insane and use this stuff will there be Gurren Lagann involved. Not that I hate it or anything, but the cosmology is too incompatible.)
... For extra-deep hurting, plug in the (#1) Naruto fusion I (should have unless I forget between now and getting to the library) just posted seperately in a few more years. Except a continent-sized Barrier would definitely have shown up on TSAB scans, even if it's only a small continent. Unless, BECAUSE MAGIC! Chibi-Reaper is right, that's such a great catchphrase.)
... even if I do all of this, I promise not to subject you to Magical Bridge Bunny Pretty Shammi.
... probably ...
(Unless it becomes too tempting to resist.)
... Double arg, now BACK - TO - THE - POINT. Yes. I'm really not planning to do any extra crossovers, just MSLN/EH.
Bugrom as a bioweapon/supersoldier from the Ancient War... well, maybe. I kind of thought of them as a less inimical version of the Phantom Tribe, dimensionally transplanted inadvertently by the Eye of God. They're certainly not on a level with Demon-Gods as fighters, (as SOLDIERS, yes, teamwork and uniformity within specializations is their whole thing, but there are some qualities which quantity can't match, and demon-god level individual power is one of those things) but I suppose they might have been the product of a lesser nation that didn't have the moxie to produce an ifrit or ifurita or the connections to get one from an ally, and did the best they could with a variation of the Familiar enhancement magic. That explanation MIGHT make way for a 'Deva was a human Priestess, then got turned into a bugrom' plot, but the Priestesses are the pinnacle of modern magic in El-Hazard as far as we see, and they don't do anything like that level of complexity, just basic combat and direct utility spells like Afura's flight and Miz's underwater travel bubble.
I was thinking, though - Deva has a bunch of bearers carrying her entire, crystalline throne around when she went to visit the troops - is there something special about it? It doesn't look very comfortable, after all, and it would surely be quicker to arrane a howdah on one of the big fliers and have one made at the destination if it's just a traditional design or something, even more so if its value lies in the bottoms that have graced it rather than an inherent ability, and hence taking it to the front lines is a risk for no reward. It's not likely to have any combat ability, or a magically trained Deva who's willing to get somewhere near the battle to rally the troops would probably use it, rather than doing the nothing that we see.
It's not a communications device (my first thought was that it was the Wind Priestess version of the Fire Priestess knowing where to find Ifurita, and conferred long-range telepathy since wind is often linked to thought) or she wouldn't need Messenger Bugrom, one of which is shown arriving while she's lounging on it. It nevers flares with light or makes noises or does any of the things commonly assosciated with relic devices in El-Hazard... With the reproduction process I mentioned above, maybe it magically controls what kind of bugrom are produced from a batch of eggs, and/or synthesises or stimulates the hormones needed to control that stage?
Is it the repository of information for all the various types of bugrom, and not her (or any other single) body/genetics at all? One or more of those hexagonal pillars could be a cloning tank where lots of golf-ball-or-smaller bugrom eggs are produced, and new samples (such as from Deva and Jinnai) be needed only to create new types of bugrom. Maybe it just needs to be programmed and supplied with raw materials, and "producing new bugrom with Jinnai" is with him acting in the capacty of military leader writing specifications for a development program.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
-------------------------------
3rd arc? Is there another OVA, then? I've seen a couple of fanfics with the premise that Miz had to find an apprentice before she could retire, but one was crap and the other (by Ammadeau, may not have been released since I was prereading for him for a while, way back when) put a locked Ranma in as the apprentice, so I'd figured they arrived at the idea independently. (I think one or the other featured a curry-eating contest at Nanami's restaurant, but with Ifurita as a contestant that had to be set after the 1001 nights and I doubt Miz would wait that long.) As for the Bugrom being the ancient enemies of the other peoples of El-Hazard... Well, sure. Like England and France, or Japan and China; that doesn't mean there aren't periods when they get along better - an active, intense conflict that goes more than a handful of years tends to kill off everyone interested in fighting, without huge populations and strong authority driving them.
Granted, this paints the Bugrom as relatively human in terms of their reasoning and reactions, but while they may be a bit dim the rank-and-file bugrom in Jinnai's retinue seem to bear that out. Geiger Xenomorphs always seemed overdone to the point of being ridiculous (and tech like 'their' ship from the first movie is never seen again, as if even the writers retroactively decided they didn't want the damn things spreading on their own) so I'm inclined against the notion of man-sized insects overrunning the landscape like locusts unless actively contained and eliminated. Even 'A Plague of Insecticons' struck me as plot-broken - if the Insecticons could clone themselves so much, whhy didn't Megatron use them lik the disposable massed troops they are and crush the always-strecthed-thin Autobots once and for all? No, if the Bugrom have shared the planet for hundreds or thousands of ears and haven't wiped out the humans or been wiped out themselves, they can't be all that aggressive most of the time.
Under an "England and France" paradigm, the previous Queen would have pursued more peaceful relations (or at least a period of rebuilding) and sent a Royal Diplomat, the near-human looking Deva to become an acolyte as a show of good faith, or possibly out of a genuine interest in/respect for the religion of El-Hazard since the characters make a big deal of how out of all the many tribes only the Phantom Tribe are heretics. Too bad for the peaceniks, everything Deva sees during her apprenticeship and term as Priestess of the Wind just reinforces her belief that humans are vastly inferior to bugrom - weaker, less durable, prone to argument and discord - and hence when the old queen dies and leaves her the senior Royal Bugrom she embarks on a new campaign of conquest after taking the throne. This requires laying down a little backstory as you can see, but has the virtue of avoiding the 'evilizing brain sucker' cliche.
As to her being a literal queen mother, I'd explain the wildly variant physiology of various bugrom breeds as being partially a matter of what her biochemistry is (part conscious control, part emotional state, part diet) when she gets a batch of eggs fertilized (a few thousand at a go, laid a few days later and seperated into hatchery cells like a beehive) and what the newly-hatched larvae are fed before they undergo metamorphosis into the adult forms. Being a 'royal bugrom' means having all the genetics neccessary and fully developed genitive organs, being a 'diplomat breed' means looking mostly like a human (or possibly other intelligent races - whatever the green fuzzy hot springs attendant was, frex) and the two are not neccessarily linked. The idea that Deva (and Jinnai) can repopulate the depleted Bugrom forces also speaks against her being a human with a brain-sucker; at most offspring in such a case should be mostly human but born with their brains already sucked. Of course, cross-fertility between humans and insect-based (however human looking) people is implausible in its own right but eh, Hot Alien Chicks are Biologically Compatible. For some reason, so are tentacle demons going the other way, but the bugrom aren't QUITE that ugly.
Anyway, back to this '3rd arc' - I suppose there's probably at least a small amount of information on Wikipedia (and I really should get over my software-docuwiki "Dammit, I want a downloadable manual!" induced dislike, as an encyclopedia they work well) but does anyone know a good detailed source? Even just a couple of fanfics that follow much the same plot with a Ranma-Insertion or something would work for the gist, I expect to change too much by that time for it to matter and would want to get back to the waiting Nanoha A's plot anyway.
On an unhelpful tangent, I played a lot of Macross Ace Frontier the past few days (Waah! I want the sequel, Ace Combat!) and was doing one of the Enemy Missions as a red Bajura when it struck me, "Jinnai would absolutely love these things!" Then I thought about it some more... red Itano Circus multishot = Photon Lancer or Divine Shooter, ship-wrecking big beam with a few seconds charge time = Lightning End or Divine Buster, energy-tail-thing (for the little brown bajura) = Levatein's Shlangenform, even physical bullets are at least approximated by Vita's Schwalbe Fliegen; they would actually fit as an elite type in a Nanoha cross. Oh, and what's this I was trying to write? A Nanoha cross! How handy! (No! Not gonna do it, not at this juncture.)
It was 100% story research that I fished out that game again, absolutely. Nothing to do with reading some backlogged Wednesday's Child chapters and wanting to whoop up on Yar-Dartz and L'Eggults like Tail Kinker's Ranma-Insert while slacking off, no sir! I need to see if Sketchley's updated his Macross timeline to incorporate the stuff from Frontier, though, my local copy is from 2009 and only includes up to 2050 when the VF-X2 game ended, to have the Bajura history in context.
Now if I could just figure out how to live more than thirty seconds in the EX missions I'd be golden. Well, yellow-anodized aluminum, at least. Iron pyrite? Still not writing, so I doubt anyone but myself would call it being ahead I suppose.
But, yeah, bajura as bugrom. Deva is a way hotter queen, no foolin'. Jinnai's ambitions may be aimed at planetary territory (if in no other way 'down to Earth') but with the Garden of Time showing up as well as the Trigger of Destruction, and several characters at least aware of the Mid-Childean interdimensional ... federation? Alliance? Whatever their government amounts to, though it seems like the three canned brains were it for civilian oversight with a General directly responsible for controlling crime and the trio of Old Admirals credited with pulling the TSA treaties together, so it may actually be a military junta - and the various fiction of Earth (even if he thinks it's for nerds Jinnai at least has to have heard of Star Wars, not to mention the various space anime - wasn't a Science Fiction Club mentioned in the first ep? One of the ones who lost their funding and were complaining, or something) there's enough to turn some interest skywards. Since it's not a mecha show, it would probabbly be better to scale the bajura down to be the same relative to human adults rather than variable fighters, though. The tight spot would be creating the integrated Devices grafted into the big cannon spike; if the Bugrom had that technology they'd have won long ago. Maybe Precia trades it for access to their looted Ancient books and machines?
The VF-0 Pheonix and SV-51 may have been in limited service in 2008 in their native continuity, (see Macross Zero, set in September) but Nanoha's Earth hasn't had an alien ship full of dead giants to prioritise methods of fighting oversized humanoids and reverse engineer compact fusion powerplants, super-alloys and energized armor, nor a grueling world war to push military technology. It would almost be worth the extra jackhammering to make it fit just for the image of a Pheonix squadron getting mixed up in one of the aerial magical girl battles, though, or die Wolkenritter interfering in the Maya Island incident. There's quite enough to chew on with MSLN/EH, but I'm sooo tempted, and it's not like we actually see anything beyond a couple of (relatively minor) cities in Nanoha and just a single school and a few stills of daily life (widest shot being Mt. Fuji) post-EH, so the Earth United Nations Government could technically be getting together and consolidating itself in the dying days of the Unification War, with Japan signing on peacefully early in that process. Alien Star Ship-1 would have crashed when Nanoha was one, the fighting is far away, and she's (as she says) an ordinary third-grader; however important they might be such things don't neccesarily register with her as more than background noise on the TV News.
The TSAB travels interdimensionally, after all, they don't neccessarily explore spacially at all. I don't think Nanoha is the sort to run off to Mid-Childa rather than help the reconstruction if Earth had been bombarded in February 2010 and nearly wiped out though, so StrikerS continuity would be even more blitzed than I'd planned. Operation Jail Bait would draw the direct antagonists to them rather than the other way around, but that doesn't help the problem of corruption in the TSA Ground Forces any.
I can't see even Nanoha, Fate, Yuuno, Mage-Makoto, and both Ifurita combined realistically being able to protect more than a city each at most (via Barrier magic) and probably just a few blocks each against millions of capitol ships spread evenly around the entire planet, even if they knew about it ahead of time. Hmm, would a big magic attack register as channeling superdimension energy to overtechnology sensors? I'd expect so, in a fused world like that. As for why the repairs-well-underway ASS-1/Visitor/SDF-1's fold drives don't register as a Lost Logia... BECAUSE MAGIC! Okay, less Chibi-Reaper, more ClassicDrogn: Because they haven't been repaired yet, overtechnology is tricky after all. For that matter, maybe they have, but the world government obviously has their hands all over it and the covert ops reports are that the leadership is extremely xenophobic after having the huge thing crash into their planet and wipe out a few major cities on its way down. The Cyclops spacetime radar can detect magic as a superdimension energy pulse, but only major things or very nearby (it is designed for sensing huge starships, not individual magi after all,) and the activity with the Jewel Seeds as Fate gathered them and then the dimensional quake as Precia left in the Garden shortly after getting them working would give the impression that a lot of background noise is normal, only a sustained storng signal (like the one put of by AFOS near Maya Island) is worth following up on.
Hmm, time travel is canonical for transit to and from El-Hazard, assuming there's no real way for them to persuede goverment officials to listen if they try to warn them about these events, what could they do to try to mitigate? Mass-trasport offworld maybe? What would the TSAB respond, assuming they've never encountered Zentlaedy before? What connection if any does the Proto-Culture have to Alhazared? The various flashabacks do often mention that there was more than one ancient culture that fell to their own technology when lost logia are explained, even if Alhazared is the only one specifically named. The Proto-Culture's split into Supervision Army and Inspection Army and fighting until the only survivors are their engineered warrior race definitely fits the bill.
Arg, but I was trying to reaffirm the decision to keep it purely MSLN/EH rather than let the Mecha-Bunnytank hijack things! (You know, the bunny-eared variable tank from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross? You might remember a horrid 'rabbit-technology' pun from the Harmony Gold/Macek dub for that scene.) It's just that Macross (and Transformers and GaoGaiGar and FLCL and BGC and Megazone 23 and Dai-Guard, and Naruto up until Tsunade returns) is one of my top-tier, SS-rank fandoms while Nanoha and El-Hazard (and Slayers and Pretty Cure and Hellsing and Kingdom Hearts and Excel Saga and Read or Die and Steel Angel Kurumi, and Harry Potter up to GoF) are only A to S, and despite the massive difference in physical scale the collateral damage hints that combat power is about equal, or close enough for fic. Mistah Gears, that's me. I wuvs me my mechas I doos. They are... my preeeciousss.
... How many pages could the Book of Darkness drain from the Mayan Island Bird-Man? Could it even hold all that energy? Just hitting up Sara and Shin would be a lot, she absorbs four simultanous H-bombs with a little help from the bird-man before space folding away and Shin... well, it sure looks like he SPACE FOLDS AFTER HER ON HIS OWN POWER. No McGuffin alien. No Device. No training. VF-0 Pheonix with a maximum no-atmo endurance of 2-3 minutes if it WASN'T powerles and falling apart around him. Nothing but raw talent and the song on his lips. Space slaggin' fold. He's way over 9000. I have to wonder if the songbird of Macross Frontier Sheril Nome is descended from Little Sis who stayed behind, or if Shin and Sara eventually decided to defold and set up house together somewhere, and it happened to be on the colony she came from? I've been letting the antici ... pation build before finally watching Macross F while stirring this pot, but I may just dive in at last.
... What would the final monster-form of the Book of Darkness security program look like with a significant amount of its power stolen from the Bird-Man in Song of Death mode? Talk about trading one problem for another! And while I'm talking about the Bird-Man, look at that thing's chest and tell me it's not all about the Spiral Energy. (Not even if I go insane and use this stuff will there be Gurren Lagann involved. Not that I hate it or anything, but the cosmology is too incompatible.)
... For extra-deep hurting, plug in the (#1) Naruto fusion I (should have unless I forget between now and getting to the library) just posted seperately in a few more years. Except a continent-sized Barrier would definitely have shown up on TSAB scans, even if it's only a small continent. Unless, BECAUSE MAGIC! Chibi-Reaper is right, that's such a great catchphrase.)
... even if I do all of this, I promise not to subject you to Magical Bridge Bunny Pretty Shammi.
... probably ...
(Unless it becomes too tempting to resist.)
... Double arg, now BACK - TO - THE - POINT. Yes. I'm really not planning to do any extra crossovers, just MSLN/EH.
Bugrom as a bioweapon/supersoldier from the Ancient War... well, maybe. I kind of thought of them as a less inimical version of the Phantom Tribe, dimensionally transplanted inadvertently by the Eye of God. They're certainly not on a level with Demon-Gods as fighters, (as SOLDIERS, yes, teamwork and uniformity within specializations is their whole thing, but there are some qualities which quantity can't match, and demon-god level individual power is one of those things) but I suppose they might have been the product of a lesser nation that didn't have the moxie to produce an ifrit or ifurita or the connections to get one from an ally, and did the best they could with a variation of the Familiar enhancement magic. That explanation MIGHT make way for a 'Deva was a human Priestess, then got turned into a bugrom' plot, but the Priestesses are the pinnacle of modern magic in El-Hazard as far as we see, and they don't do anything like that level of complexity, just basic combat and direct utility spells like Afura's flight and Miz's underwater travel bubble.
I was thinking, though - Deva has a bunch of bearers carrying her entire, crystalline throne around when she went to visit the troops - is there something special about it? It doesn't look very comfortable, after all, and it would surely be quicker to arrane a howdah on one of the big fliers and have one made at the destination if it's just a traditional design or something, even more so if its value lies in the bottoms that have graced it rather than an inherent ability, and hence taking it to the front lines is a risk for no reward. It's not likely to have any combat ability, or a magically trained Deva who's willing to get somewhere near the battle to rally the troops would probably use it, rather than doing the nothing that we see.
It's not a communications device (my first thought was that it was the Wind Priestess version of the Fire Priestess knowing where to find Ifurita, and conferred long-range telepathy since wind is often linked to thought) or she wouldn't need Messenger Bugrom, one of which is shown arriving while she's lounging on it. It nevers flares with light or makes noises or does any of the things commonly assosciated with relic devices in El-Hazard... With the reproduction process I mentioned above, maybe it magically controls what kind of bugrom are produced from a batch of eggs, and/or synthesises or stimulates the hormones needed to control that stage?
Is it the repository of information for all the various types of bugrom, and not her (or any other single) body/genetics at all? One or more of those hexagonal pillars could be a cloning tank where lots of golf-ball-or-smaller bugrom eggs are produced, and new samples (such as from Deva and Jinnai) be needed only to create new types of bugrom. Maybe it just needs to be programmed and supplied with raw materials, and "producing new bugrom with Jinnai" is with him acting in the capacty of military leader writing specifications for a development program.
- CD
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows