Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Mari stopped eating creaky chicken?
Which, by the way, is a real dish. Or, at least, it was. Back when I lived in New York, lo these many moons ago, there was a Chinese place down the street from me named Empire Szechuan Gardens. Creaky chicken was their house specialty, and it was simply heaven on a plate. Unfortunately, ESG went out of business and nowhere else that I've ever found makes it.
Clearly, her voyage of personal development in pacifism and atonement has led her to vegetarianism. Soon, the pangolin parasite will finish manifesting and render her exclusively insectivorous.
-also, pregnant women should avoid high doses of ginger and the handling of raw chakra-poultry.
Oh, no, Kagome's protective instincts are going to turn him into an absolute monster when he figures it out. He is going to insist on preemptively nuking every cobblestone that so much as looks at her funny. He might start literally barking at strangers.
I could definitely see 'Cooking with Kagome' being a survival training course in how to live off the land in gourmet style. 'Remember children, there's never a good reason to let good monster gibbets left over from explosive traps go to waste.'
Step 1: identify the poisoned ingredients the stinking stinkers have left out to trick you. By the way, this course will be graded ablatively.
Would be cool to get some thoughts on Summon geopolitics as well. What do the Toads think of this? Would they be interested in persuading the Pangolins to be less oppressive, and how much leverage do they have? (military strength, social ties, trade)
I find it interesting that everybody seems to be assuming that the inherently passively defensive insectivores aren't the
least belligerent clan. The Summon Path may well be just as or even more crapsack than the Human Path.
We know that Pangolin High Command is getting itchy for expansionism again. Is it all of Pangolin High Command? Is it just Commissar Panteon and one or two others? We don't know. I think we can take a day of in universe time to figure this out, since it may serve to inform us of effective solutions or more surgically precise strategies of dealing with the problem.
The core driver seems to be economic. They appear to be immortal, or at least so long-lived as to make little difference. Because of that and their natural desire to reproduce they have had to resort to pretty intense population control measures, which we know have caused resentment and friction. The need to clamp down on that naturally leads to tying reproduction and eventually all privileges and social standing to success in contributing to the state's maintenance of order, which naturally leads to militarism. That handily also produces a stream of open slots.
It seems to come down to Lebensraum. The Toads probably have their own spazio vitale.
It's darkly humorous to see attitudes which come across as, "Oh, we're going to have to add a subsection solving the Pangolins in the next update." This isn't just a matter of ideology or society. It's the almost inevitable result of fundamental economic realities. There's no diplomatic solution here. Any real change is going to involve either lots and lots and lots of dead people, or a change in the fundamental economic realities.
Hey, let's suggest to Keiko that we make the multiverse a better place by afflicting her allies with some sort of incurable, progressively wasting and debilitating plague. Perhaps ask Kagome about the wisdom of designing a seal which yanks enormous quantities of insects straight from the Out?
Awwww
E: Honoka is picking up Kagome-speak and it is ADORABLE.
Kagome is going to end up inspiring an entire generation of teenage slang.
