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DHBirr Wrote:As a sort of amends for the viciousness of my last suggestion, consider a story set in Aria, before Alice, Aika, and Akari graduated to Prima.
The focus is a visitor from Manhome, not just a tourist but a businessman whose work brings him to Neo-Venezia a lot. Still, almost if not every trip, he makes time for at least one tour with an undine -- nearly always a different undine, because he wants to enjoy the city from a new perspective each time. He's been making these visits for long enough that he rode with "Grandma" back before she retired ... maybe even when she was still with Himeya Company.
He's not one of the difficult customers; this is as laid-back and cheerfully undramatic an episode as any in the canon, and his personality is rather like a male version of Alicia's and Akari's, though he could have daughters their age (and perhaps he does). Humor may result if Aika is mortified to catch herself starting to tell him that embarrassing remarks aren't allowed.
So, this would be somewhat like the episode with Amaranth, but without all the (self-inflicted) pressure on Akari...
DHBirr Wrote:He also provides a bit more fleshing-out of what Earth is like in the 24th Century. He comes from the Submarine Kingdom of the Netherlands -- sea levels were rising so much a century or two ago that the Dutch realized that they couldn't make the dikes high enough for much longer. So they roofed the polders over with transparent high-strength materials, and at least half of the country is warm and dry under a meter or three of seawater. They were so proud of that accomplishment that, yes, they formally added "submarine" to the name of their nation.
http://www.behindthename.com/names/gend ... sage/dutch]Dutch masculine names
Of course, you only need the ones that start with "A"... and there are a few of those that look like they can be pronounced easily by native Japanese speakers.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Quote:robkelk wrote:
So, this would be somewhat like the episode with Amaranth, but without all the (self-inflicted) pressure on Akari...
I'm still working my way through the anime and hadn't come to that episode yet, but now that I've looked its synopsis up, yes, I'd say your description is spot on. I'd had the impression all along that he's an enjoyable customer for most if not all undines -- it wouldn't feel like a test or competition to Akari, but like sharing a pleasure. As I said, he's kind of Akari-like himself, so he becomes an "old friend" at first meeting unless the other person is really, really nervous or starchy.
Incidentally, though I don't want to impose this choice on anyone, I've consistently thought of him as "Anton." On the other hand, no matter how friendly, the girls would probably feel it more courteous to address a middle-aged man by his family name, and I never pinned that down.
-----
Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
Behind the name also does surnames, although 'Van Dijk' would be appropriate, as it means 'from the levee.' Although it could be hard to pronounce.
Also, as a Dutchman I entirely approve, even if I can't quite buy the Dutch being that proud of the accomplishment that they'd legally change the name after managing it. Maybe after a century has passed and other people kept adding it? Not that we wouldn't be proud, but we're perversely humble.
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Well, I described the accomplishment as being "a century or two" ago, and I didn't specify when they modified the name, so there's time.
While I certainly didn't expect any Dutch people to be displeased with this idea, it's quite pleasant to see a Dutchman explicitly like it. If only I were skilled enough to write the story myself....
-----
Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
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As an Insertion Agent, you become accustomed to unprecedented situations. You could say we often put the "precedent" in "unprecedented." But this... this took the "un" to whole new levels.
Of course, I'd known that Dropping into a cheerful spree-killing psychopath (shorthanding for a very complicated and frankly, ahem, unprecedented diagnosis) could entail a number of risks. But I'd been expecting vengeance-seeking family members, outraged willing-to-kill heroes, rival villains looking to make a name for themselves. I hadn't been expecting the target's psyche to somehow... compartmentalize me, for lack of a better term.
Granted, if you take Recursion Theory seriously (which I don't... quite), the warning signs were all there in the canon source material. Not that that helped me in this situation any.
Well... no help for it. Since all I could do was see, hear, and "talk", in a fashion, to my host... I might as well settle in and figure out how to best make use of having become Wade Wilson's Little Yellow Boxes.
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Quote:SkyeFire wrote:
As an Insertion Agent, you become accustomed to unprecedented situations. You could say we often put the "precedent" in "unprecedented." But this... this took the "un" to whole new levels.
Of course, I'd known that Dropping into a cheerful spree-killing psychopath (shorthanding for a very complicated and frankly, ahem, unprecedented diagnosis) could entail a number of risks. But I'd been expecting vengeance-seeking family members, outraged willing-to-kill heroes, rival villains looking to make a name for themselves. I hadn't been expecting the target's psyche to somehow... compartmentalize me, for lack of a better term.
Granted, if you take Recursion Theory seriously (which I don't... quite), the warning signs were all there in the canon source material. Not that that helped me in this situation any.
Well... no help for it. Since all I could do was see, hear, and "talk", in a fashion, to my host... I might as well settle in and figure out how to best make use of having become Wade Wilson's Little Yellow Boxes.
... FUND THIS. NOW!
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Quote:SkyeFire wrote:
As an Insertion Agent, you become accustomed to unprecedented situations. You could say we often put the "precedent" in "unprecedented." But this... this took the "un" to whole new levels.
Of course, I'd known that Dropping into a cheerful spree-killing psychopath (shorthanding for a very complicated and frankly, ahem, unprecedented diagnosis) could entail a number of risks. But I'd been expecting vengeance-seeking family members, outraged willing-to-kill heroes, rival villains looking to make a name for themselves. I hadn't been expecting the target's psyche to somehow... compartmentalize me, for lack of a better term.
Granted, if you take Recursion Theory seriously (which I don't... quite), the warning signs were all there in the canon source material. Not that that helped me in this situation any.
Well... no help for it. Since all I could do was see, hear, and "talk", in a fashion, to my host... I might as well settle in and figure out how to best make use of having become Wade Wilson's Little Yellow Boxes.
Still, it could have been Worse. It could have been the Badger.
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Quote:Manytales00 wrote:
Quote:SkyeFire wrote:
As an Insertion Agent, you become accustomed to unprecedented situations. You could say we often put the "precedent" in "unprecedented." But this... this took the "un" to whole new levels.
Of course, I'd known that Dropping into a cheerful spree-killing psychopath (shorthanding for a very complicated and frankly, ahem, unprecedented diagnosis) could entail a number of risks. But I'd been expecting vengeance-seeking family members, outraged willing-to-kill heroes, rival villains looking to make a name for themselves. I hadn't been expecting the target's psyche to somehow... compartmentalize me, for lack of a better term.
Granted, if you take Recursion Theory seriously (which I don't... quite), the warning signs were all there in the canon source material. Not that that helped me in this situation any.
Well... no help for it. Since all I could do was see, hear, and "talk", in a fashion, to my host... I might as well settle in and figure out how to best make use of having become Wade Wilson's Little Yellow Boxes.
Still, it could have been Worse. It could have been the Badger.
Indeed. Wade Wilson is only one kind of crazy. The Badger, et al, is seven kinds of crazy!
"Those are my gut wrenches. I have a feeling this will be a gut-wrenching experience.""And these?""Those are my butterfly knives. In case I get butterflies in my stomach.""Sir, you'll have to check these." -- The Badger and Airport Security, "Hexbreaker"
(It does turn out to be a gut-wrenching experience... for the other guy in the fight at the end of the story.)
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
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On their deaths Robert Baratheon and Robb Stark are reborn - as each other, at the point each was told of Jon Arryn's death.
Robert Stark is probably quite pleased to have a younger body and not to be bothered about kingly duties (although his new father may not be as pleased about his behaviour). Learning that in addition to Jon Arryn's death that the King (Robb Baratheon) has placed his own wife and children under arrest may be a bit concerning though...
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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"Cortana."
"Yes, Chief?"
"My HUD display is showing nothing but '>9000'."
"Ummm...."
"You've been reading Tropes on the Internet again, haven't you?"
"Eh-heh-heh...."
Just thinking about what a Halo crackfic would look like.
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I dropped this today on a discussion list that was going over "Why Wrong-BWL Stories Suck".
Quote:My thoughts on "Wrong-BWL" stories:
They all make the same basic assumption: That Harry has to suffer for the
mistake. Thus he is condemned to the Dursleys while the "BWL" is praised and
welcomed in the wizarding world, raised knowing he's a hero, etc, etc, etc. It's
a vehicle to generate additional conflict and angst for Harry. And it usually is
pretty clumsily handled.
So why not turn that on its head?
Harry is supposedly not the Child of Prophecy. Someone else apparently is. Let's
call them Billy. And just to make it more fun, let's make it a Fem!Harry story.
So Billy gets sent off to the Dursleys and goes through all the tripe that Harry
goes through in canon.
Meanwhile Harry himself - er, herself - gets dumped in the Muggle orphanage
system and is adopted by a couple of nice young Muggle dentists.
Since they're well-educated sort and take an interest in Harri's life, she grows
up a bookish sort, voraciously reading everything she can get her hands on. Then
out of the blue comes a visit from Professor McGonnagle...
And you can already tell where this is going, right? It's just a retelling of
canon from a different PoV.
Not much of an actual story to it until you get to the point where Harrymione is
revealed to be the genuine Child of Prophecy and the key to defeating
Moldyshorts.
It might be interesting to have a few vignettes happen to show Moldy gathering
evidence and slowly realizing what's going on, and maybe a "She's your SISTER
you doof!" moment where Billy and Harri learn who each other really is, cut to
fourth year and ... well, I dunno. I'm not gonna write it, but if you want to,
it might be fun.
Do what you will with the plot idea.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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I've always wondered how different things would have been if it had been River, that had hired the Serenity to get her and her brother off world
"No, I am just an escaped government super soldier. My Brother is the dangerous one."
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Had a wild idea that would make a perverse sort of sense:
In Familiar of Zero, what if Brimir had actually been Satan himself, or at least the Son of Satan, and he had everyone fooled by turning him into some sort of Jesus-like figure in their eyes?
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I had some cross-pollination between MLP fics and HP ones, taking a touch from a few MLP SI/HiE fics: a Peggy Sue/SI/Similar where the inserted character winds up in the "continuity" of one of the unauthorized Wizarding World Harry Potter "Biographies" -- or, even worse, some student's torrid/awful/crackish fanfic of the same?
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Ross Van Loan
Unregistered
Monolith Disney
10-16-2015, 01:14 PM
We've replaced Gregory Ligeti's 'Requiem' with 'I Wanna be Like You' : Let's see if Moonwatcher notices!
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Here's a thought....
When Willow performed her Great Working to activate all the Potential Slayers near the end of Buffy S7, we can probably assume, based on canonical evidence, that each new Slayer gets their own replacement from the Potential Pool when they die. But, I started thinking about the mathematics of this, and two items popped out at me:
Short term: what happens if too many Slayers die before the Potential Pool has a chance to regenerate? That is, if a Slayer dies when there are no current Potentials... what happens then? (And as a side note, with all of the Potentials either dead or activated at the end of S7, how long is it before new Potentials become available? Do the Scoobies have to wait for children born post-S7 to hit their teens? Or are there preteens who will gain Potential status in only a year or two?)
Long Term: Canonically, we went from one Slayer, to two, to a... (Mall? Ensemble? Band? Bouquet?). But, aside from certain special events, the number is always fixed. So... what happens once humanity really spreads out? Take Star Trek, the Honor Harrington Universe, the Vorkosigan Universe, whatever -- forget one Slayer per 5-10 billion humans, we're talking Slayer/Trillion ratios less than 1.0. Heck, what happens when you have more inhabited planets than Slayers?
... I like the idea of a group of Slayers being called a 'mall,' it's silly. Band is probably the best though.
Depending on how Willow's spell works out it might be that all potentials get called as soon as possible, but also keep in mind that Slayers rarely get called younger than, what, 14 or so? This means that so long as whatever makes a girl a Potential doesn't get axed there should be a bunch of Slayers on every planet with at minimum half a billion people, and quite likely there's one for every million or so people at minimum.
Of course, if none of that is true you are likely to get something quite like the Council, quietly shipping Slayers around regardless of any possible official interference in the matter.
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What if potentials are actually selected by the spirits of the slayers? There are bloodlines of slayers, but that alone does not guarantee a potential candidate. There is something that is a rare find in soul of females, a need to protect the innocent, a need to be stronger, but most important is a need to hunt for truth.
There are signs to watch for, however most of these backup potential slayers, are treated as troublemakers, and problem children. So what happens when one wakes up?
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Usually all hell breaks loose, most times literally.
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So, I've been hitting a lot of EVA fics lately, and something slowly bubbled up out of my hindbrain for an alt-EVA scenario:
Postulate that somehow, some of the cast (my money is on the Kaji/Mits/Rits trio) manages to lose the Idiot Ball and decides to try derailing the Scenario. But there's damn few strategic windows of opportunity, so they have to find a crack to stick their wedge in....
Perhaps further postulate that some member of SEELE decides that being merged into a nigh-omnipotent group mind inside EVA-01 isn't worth being stuck with Kihl&crew for all eternity, and either helps out or turns a blind eye.
Things proceed mostly as in canon... until Asuka finds herself facing the Production Models. Three of which suddenly turn on the other six... because Kaji sneaked corrupted copies of the Dummy Plugs into them, and Ritsuko came up with a short-range remote-piloting system... and Toki, Hikari, and Kensuke are in Reiquarium-derived tanks in Terminal Dogma driving the rogue Harpies.
On the one hand, 1-v-9 is now 4-v-6. On the other hand, the three "good" Harpies are being piloted by amateurs, with all the issues of a remote piloting link. On the gripping hand, they have the same lolnope rapid-regen as the rest of the MP EVAs.
Fridge Logic suggests that, in the EVA-verse, this would have to lead to an even Worse End, with any combat victory over SEELE being merely temporary. But if Misato hasn't been so obsessed, maybe Shinji hasn't been so alone. Maybe Rei's been approached from a "choose Shinji over Gendo" angle. Maybe, just maybe, with a somewhat prepared Rei, a not-so-broken Shinji, and the Lances, something like a end-of-HERZ scenario might be achievable....
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Stop me if you've heard this one.
Guy who's just had his world ripped away walks into a bar, looking to either drink himself into blissful oblivion or start the bar brawl to end all bar brawls -- victory irrelevant. I come into the story just before the branch point.
"Good morning, Agent. Your mission, should you choose to accept it...."
Guy #2 walks into aforementioned bar, walks right up to Guy #1 at precisely the right moment (these things are all about timing), and whispers just the right words into the ear of the anthropomorphic prompt-critical mass.
Cue eruption.
Cue violence.
Cue Guy #2 (that's me) thrashing Guy #1's ass all over the bar (after having pre-paid-off the barkeep, bouncers, and the local patrol cops -- these things are all about planning and preparation).
Cue yours truly pinning one Gendo Ikari nee Rokobungi against the bar in a combo half-Nelson/Sleeper (my own technique, double-jointed people only need apply).
Cue the recruitment pitch.
"So, now that you're too tired not to listen, here's the deal. You want her back? I can give you your best chance to make that happen. Here's the catch: you have to save the world to get the girl. No shortcuts. You're going to beat the Angels, destroy SEELE, and be the kind of father she expected you to be. Because short of that, she won't come back. And trust me, you're not dragging her back out by force."
Cue a taxi, a burner phone with some special features, and a truly epic bar tab. "Call me once you sober up. We've got decadal project ahead of us, and no time to waste -- we've got a century-plus of conspiracy to catch up on."
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The fact that a commercial for MI:Rogue Nation was playing when I read this really sells the idea
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And on a much less serious note:
It's occurred to me that Captain America needs more people to fill in the ranks on his team. Rankers like:
Private Parts
Corporal Punishment
Sergeant ?????
Lieutenant ????
Captain... no wait, that's already filled
Major Catastrophe (ignoring the existing DC character by that name)
Colonel Panic (think about it)
General Pandamonium
I just can't find any good puns for Sergeant and Lieutenant.
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SkyeFire Wrote:And on a much less serious note:
It's occurred to me that Captain America needs more people to fill in the ranks on his team. Rankers like:
Private Parts
Corporal Punishment
Sergeant ?????
Lieutenant ????
Captain... no wait, that's already filled
Major Catastrophe (ignoring the existing DC character by that name)
Colonel Panic (think about it)
General Pandamonium
I just can't find any good puns for Sergeant and Lieutenant. Sarge Suppressor?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Sergeant Major? Lieutenant Commander? Major Disaster? General Issue?
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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