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A Simple Transaction I

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[X] Close The Fist

I'm not sure if Hunger has actually used Closed the Fist in story yet? Would be a shame to see him use the technique during the climax of the quest.

I am simply not interested in relying on Gisena and pinning our hopes on a mystery solution when the Maiden gains more and more advantage as time passes. The simplest way forward is through. The Cavalry sounds pretty good but I'm not sure about risking so many lives, including Companions we've dumped a bunch of Arete into, when things going wrong would allow the Maiden to win far more easily. It doesn't matter if the kids live through the distraction if it means Hunger dies and the Maiden wins anyway.

Just cause the Arete bonus is invested in their survival doesn't mean it's actually useful.

Close the Fist is the only option that tries to end the problem as soon as possible, so that makes the most sense to me.
 
The Maiden has just completed an infinity of training, during which she could not sleep.

The Arcanist was put to sleep by the Lathe of Heaven when Hunger took A King for All Seasons.

We know that Gisena has gotten a look at the mechanisms behind Progression before - this was the diagetic explanation for Renaissance Woman.

Therefore, I suggest the following Vendetta tactic:

Put the Maiden down for a nap.


Vendetta has the added benefit of diluting the Maiden's role. The Arcanist is old enough to qualify as a crone, and Adorie took (or ought to have taken) the role of Mother to Augustine when the Mirellyian dynasty was so tragically murdered by the Lord Protector. Plus, it is fully within the quest's mechanisms for treachery to suddenly reveal a detail like "Adorie has been hailed as the mother of a new age" or "Adorie requested a Rez for Augustine and has been acting like a surrogate mother for the last 8.9 months."


This leaves Gisena to fully replace Cat as the local Maiden.
 
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Wow. I absolutely. Completely. HATE THE MAIDEN.

Seriously lady. If you dump your principles the moment it becomes inconvenient, how am I supposed to believe they actually mean enough to remotely justify making the lives of trillions orders of magnitudes worse and starting a multiverse-threatening grudge match over a dead guy who you yourself have acknowledged would get restored anyway? You claim to hate removing people's free will, but the second you come across people who intend to fight you, you immediately weaponize your looks to brainwash them into serving you. I don't care if you acknowledge your hypocrisy. A serial killer who takes joy in their work might acknowledge they're evil, but they don't care enough to change their behavior. Same basic principle.

I hereby dub Ceathlynn an objectively terrible person, and have become completely uninterested in ever seeing her counterpart in Hunger's wife if this is the standard for Catherines across the Omniverse. God! I've never gone from 'Meh. Could be interesting.' to wishing a gruesome death on someone so quickly as the supposed goal of all Sorceresses. This is exactly the sort of self-righteous hypocrite I hate the most. Hunger could be significantly crueler, and I'd still side with him on principle. He at least doesn't pretend to have high-minded ideals like she claims to and then toss them aside whenever they get in the way of enforcing those supposed ideals on unwilling populations. You know, LIKE A TYRANT! Hunger even commented on it! I'd wish I could give her a piece of my mind, but I'm sure she'd just brainwash me into agreeing with her philosophy without question. Actually, forget her philosophy, she'd brainwash me to agree with her on everything, just because I didn't agree with her. Like the damned Borg on their worst days.

In fact, I hate the maiden so much, that not only do I refuse to capitalize her title outside of all caps for emphasis, but I'm going to meme at her out of sheer disrespect.

I suggest we sic Ultra Instinct Shaggy at her. At full strength he is more than capable of wiping the floor with Xeno'o or Everything Sans, who has the same sort of reality control ability as she has. He's also the sort of guy who dumps his girlfriend for his dog(yes, this happened) so her supposed beauty, which in my opinion hides her inner ugliness in much the same manner that enough Rank can let you paper over the flaws in any form of governance and fiat it's success, will have no effect on him. Then there's Garfathoth. Have a real tyrant who screws up people's free will to fight with. He's crazy, what's your excuse?!?

Alternatively, we could feed Saitama some of Popeye's spinach and let him take care of it. Him being able to oneshot anyone if he bothers to get serious is the whole joke with him. Add Popeye's ability to defeat both in-universe God and out of universe God in his own animator, and he could probably put a good fight.

I'm going to hold off voting for now. I'm so upset with the sheer, baffling hypocrisy on display that my main concern is what would most thoroughly refute her ideals and be the worst death from her perspective. On the one hand, being surpassed by one of her Sorceresses via Vendetta appeals to me, given her prideful 'Sorceresses can never reach me.' sentiment, but on the other hand, having Hunger's willing followers throw her ideals in her face as Hunger fights with support from trillions and his lieutenants while she only has brainwashed thralls at her side makes Cavalry appealing.

I guess this counts as a reactionpost, so 617 words discounting this line.
 
And thus, after all the discussion, I have surmised that though CTF is the In Quest +Simp option, it is Vengeance that acts as the True +Simp option all along.

Come on kids. Hunger chose Vengeance at the start of the quest.

Let him be a Simp once more.
 
Yeah, she's the endpoint of all Disney princesses. Hypocritically meant to represent an ideal perfectly, which only exists as an extension of the world being imperfect enough to desire it. Quite simply she is the embodiment of an idealistic psyche's will to change the world.

By definition she looks down upon the world she invades, because it is her nature to be looked upwards toward. Her belief in the beauty of perfect freedom of selfhood and destiny is not invalidated by her beauteous form, because that beauty is that of irrepressible existence itself. They're not being deprived of their will, but rather their ignorance. Poetically, until they gazed upon her they never even thought it was possible. Now that they know better, what purpose has a gilded cage before the shining tomorrow?
 
Box Lunch said:
Yeah, she's the endpoint of all Disney princesses. Hypocritically meant to represent an ideal perfectly, which only exists as an extension of the world being imperfect enough to desire it. Quite simply she is the embodiment of an idealistic psyche's will to change the world.

By definition she looks down upon the world she invades, because it is her nature to be looked upwards toward. Her belief in the beauty of perfect freedom of selfhood and destiny is not invalidated by her beauteous form, because that beauty is that of irrepressible existence itself. They're not being deprived of their will, but rather their ignorance. Poetically, until they gazed upon her they never even thought it was possible. Now that they know better, what purpose has a gilded cage before the shining tomorrow?
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I'd like to Like this, but it feels like Liking the un-freedom fighter by proxy. I've hated sadistic nutjobs like Hannibal Lecter less. Or the Joker, because his whole point is that he thinks everyone's as ugly inside as he is. He doesn't make any pretense of righteousness, quite the opposite, he acts to tear down people he thinks are making a pretense of righteousness.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in a fight between her and the Joker, I'd cheer for the Joker. At least he'll let people die as themselves.
 
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ilbgar123 said:
I'd like to Like this, but it feels like Liking the un-freedom fighter by proxy. I've hated sadistic nutjobs like Hannibal Lecter less. Or the Joker, because his whole point is that he thinks everyone's as ugly inside as he is. He doesn't make any pretense of righteousness, quite the opposite, he acts to tear down people he thinks are making a pretense of righteousness.
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Oh, believe me I get it. The problem you're running into isn't the archetype - it's that she's a Mary Sue. The fourth wall may as well be tissue paper for all it separates the prospective themes of the Maiden from her literal identity.

If the maiden fair knew how much her creator despised everything less noble and wholesome than she, would her reaction be so pure and kindly? Or would she be revolted, as her selfless devotion is reassigned a tool of arrogance and ignobility? She would have to be, or she would not be at all. Yet here we are, a soul so fundamentally bright freshly invoked to war at the behest of Interesting Times, now fearful she will become a Tyrant like the worrisome caricature she opposes.

One who has not even become the Forebear of Dynasties in truth. One who she would slay, only to return herself to the eternal false bliss of Daylight when she is done. One whose nature is so close to hers, that the war they prosecute is irrational to even the most motivated observers.

There's a reason this doesn't have to end with a killing stroke. Warden is prisoner as king is pauper, bound by the same ribbons which tie heaven and earth. Why must day and night war? Order and chaos were never in opposition. Only an insecure mind imagines the temporary imbalances of flesh and spirit to equate to an eternity of suffering and purposeless regret.

Quite simply: would mommy and daddy like to go get a room? This is fucking embarrassing.
 
I mean, both the Maiden and Hunger are fairly benevolent in their end goals. They both want what's best for people, according to subjective definitions of "best" but that's still something [EDIT: and it's not like we have an objective definition of best anyway]. Considering the sheer over-the-top grimdark horrors that inhabit the Rihakuverse, it would be better for them to fight the far worse things rather than each other. In theory, they should be allies and Hunger could maybe convince her of such.

Unfortunately, the Maiden seems dead set on fighting the lesser evil of Hunger being a reality-warping despot rather then the much greater evils that exist elsewhere, and I for one am skeptical that she can be swayed. She kept up the sunk cost fallacy through a subjective eternity she's not going to change now.
 
ImperatorV said:
Unfortunately, the Maiden seems dead set on fighting the lesser evil of Hunger being a reality-warping despot rather then the much greater evils that exist elsewhere, and I for one am skeptical that she can be swayed. She kept up the sunk cost fallacy through a subjective eternity she's not going to change now.
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There's an argument to be made that preconceptions are easier to maintain for an eternity within isolation than for even a short period of time in active conflict.
 
At some point you have to stop exclusively focusing on theoretical, principled takes and realize we're in the real world. The maiden's distrust of tyrants in general is fine. The issue is that if you look at the results and the kind of person Hunger is she becomes irrational.

If a cage was placed around the Milky Way, my personal life would not change in the slightest, and neither would anyone else's. Killing millions of people to dispel that cage is clearly genocidal, but since that cage is unchoosable and unambiguously beneficial the maiden thinks it's worth it.

If the maiden was on earth I can guarantee we would have had a nuclear war "because we can't condone evil" or something. She's just hopelessly out of touch and can't understand what realpolitik means even after a subjective eternity.

Speaking of which, fantastic writing Rihaku! I always view having this strong of an emotion (with the exclusion of really dumb authorial choices) as the mark of a great writer.
 
GlassOlive said:
If the maiden was on earth I can guarantee we would have had a nuclear war "because we can't condone evil" or something. She's just hopelessly out of touch and can't understand what realpolitik means even after a subjective eternity.
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Honestly, the subjective eternity probably didn't help and probably made her worse, seeing as how she seems to have spent it fairly cloistered.
 
[X] Vendetta

We really ought to have had Augustine revived and in therapy a while ago, but if making her serve her sentence in a fusion with her mom is what we have to do to survive, it's a compromise I'm willing to accept.
 
GlassOlive said:
If a cage was placed around the Milky Way, my personal life would not change in the slightest, and neither would anyone else's. Killing millions of people to dispel that cage is clearly genocidal, but since that cage is unchoosable and unambiguously beneficial the maiden thinks it's worth it.
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To be fair, Hunger rezzed all the people that Dio killed after he won. The Maiden could presumably equally easily do the same thing for people she killed herself, so she could easily have been planning to wipe out the Human Sphere so that the Geas would autokill Hunger for her, and then immediately resurrect the Human Sphere now that she's cheesed the Curse to scrape the Tyrant off it. Now, I still think she's misguided mind you, but it's probably worth remembering that at this power level almost the only permanent consequence is losing - almost anything else is reversible with this much power.
 
GlassOlive said:
At some point you have to stop exclusively focusing on theoretical, principled takes and realize we're in the real world. The maiden's distrust of tyrants in general is fine. The issue is that if you look at the results and the kind of person Hunger is she becomes irrational.

If a cage was placed around the Milky Way, my personal life would not change in the slightest, and neither would anyone else's. Killing millions of people to dispel that cage is clearly genocidal, but since that cage is unchoosable and unambiguously beneficial the maiden thinks it's worth it.
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I'm not sure she physically can tell. Ceathlynn sure couldn't. Remembering that the Shroud that our gilded cage sits upon is the light of an Imprisoner's soul, it may be truly impossible to not recognize its nature as a freedom-destroying construct. It's certainly how Hunger sees it, and no one would know the sins of the Forebear better than himself.

I'm not saying that's how it plays out for the yeomen. I'm saying it's not metaphysically how it works. Cogito ergo Hunger wins LOL.
 
If the Maiden won, things wouldn't necessarily get that much worse for the citizens of the human sphere. Consider how greatly she aided humanity against both the diminished Heroes and Stewards of the Manifest Realm, and that with far lesser mastery of her myriad Graces.

She might even spare your companions! After all, they never chose tyranny, but had it forced upon them, by Rank as absolute as rule.

And the Sphere would finally be safe from obliteration at a random Apocryphal proc. A far kinder fate than Dien would have inflicted, and arguably even Hunger himself.
 
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