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Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)

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Alphaleph said:
Suggestion: throw Shuri at Koji and let the Harem Protag do all the work.
:V
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This does seem to be the best solution. If Anna can keep the back and forth between her and Shuri low-key until Coke-zero catches her attention it will change the context of their interactions for the better. Unless there's a Yandere shift waiting.

If we can pull this off it will please Sandra because it makes her harem more stable :V
 
kelllogo said:
This does seem to be the best solution. If Anna can keep the back and forth between her and Shuri low-key until Coke-zero catches her attention it will change the context of their interactions for the better. Unless there's a Yandere shift waiting.

If we can pull this off it will please Sandra because it makes her harem more stable :V
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But isn't Shuri already with the harem protag (Sandra)? :p
 
Dark as Silver said:
Ah the frog in a hot pot of water versus slowly warming up the water annecdote thing. To throw mods off incase they're about to jump out if the pot.

How do we prevent Anna and Shuri hating each other. As far as I'm concerned this is very likely if we make poor choices down the line, Avalanche mentioned in a post somewhere that their relation can still collapse to 'Zettai Yurusanai' although I can't seem to find it now.

The problem to my mind is that Shuri is sort of walking down the road where you loose stuff and gain power. She's lost enought that she is too invested to turn back. However Anna is far enough down that road that she knows it never ends and no matter how hard you hit bedrock, if you didn't break through you can still loose more, and she doesn't want others following her. Not to mention that Anna didn't choose this but was forced down this path by circumstance. Any effort to warn Shuri about this however will cause her to dig in her heels and become defensive because it might seem like she's making light of the deaths of Shuris squadron. Especially given that Anna and Shuri are both awful at social interactions.

The best solution I've come up with is to show that Anna does indeed know about loss, and that listening to her is likely a good idea. However this plan is vauge and awful. Need suggestions.
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I think the key is to keep direct tensions between Anna and Shuri to a minimum until Shuri's "arc", when we will gain more information about what exactly happened.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't interact, but I think there's a different approach to trying to mould the Anna - Shuri friendship ideally or whatever: Sandra. Sandra is obviously completely dedicated to Shuri but she also goes out of her way to smooth over whatever clashes Shuri gets into. I think if things get bad between Anna and Shuri, we might consider expressing our frustration to Sandra instead and see if we get any help.

I think that we shouldn't try to probe Shuri's past but instead focus on working with her in the present - getting used to working with someone else who can fight on our level and gain some level of trust / cooperation in a combat situation. The idea that we, vaguely, might have each others' backs may help us if there's ever a falling out.



I also think, @Dark as Silver , that you're inserting a whole lot of speculation into what you believe happened to Shuri exactly and her motivations. Is she obsessed with being the most powerful valkyrie she can? I don't really see it - she pushed the others in her squadron hard because it was what she knew and because they asked her to. And possibly because they would leave her alone faster if she drove them away on purpose? Note that while Sandra's leadership has something to do with it, Shuri remains quite relaxed about having lower-level valks in her squadron now. Possibly because Kouji and the rest of us didn't seek her out or shower her with attention; she found people willing to work hard who will probably make Elite on that alone, but who didn't see her as The Golden Ace. Plus there were definitely mixed messages about Anna's status as an Ace - worried about the perception of competition / status, but at the same time wanted Anna in her squadron. It fits the idea that she prefers people that see her as a peer rather than as part of the power level rat race.

I'm certain there are issues related to growing up a child soldier, in a valk squadron with a disproportionately high casualty rate. And also to engaging multiple Type Zeros and coming out unscathed each time but losing even more comrades. Maybe that's why she wants to surround herself with strong valks, maybe not. Or maybe that's why she sees her squad members as transient and doesn't bother getting attached, if she even does that (idk). But I don't see this as the defining feature of her character. In fact, it was in fan omake that she was the only survivor of her squadron, not in canon. And having re-read the history, while her squadron had high casualty rates, they were never really annihilated like say, our town.

I think we have to remember, this is the Broken Ace, not the Golden Ace. The key, defining feature will lie in the difference. The Golden Ace was never shot down. The Broken Ace was shot down once... by humans.

Avalanche said:
The two seem to speak over comms for a moment before Sandra turns towards you again and broadcast in open channel, "Anna would you like to have a match? We're practicing for the inter Academy tournament later this year, would you be interested in joining?"

"I'm not interested in the Tournament," Shuri cuts across the channel, a faint hint of exasperation suggesting she's had this argument before, "You're much better served practicing against Antagonists Sandra. Any humans you face on the battlefield as a Valkyrie will not be facing you out in the open."
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We know that Shuri was badly injured attempting to rescue Sandra from a kidnapping and that it was by humans in some way. I don't think that's enough, though. I think we need to read into Shuri's statement above: the humans she faced used underhanded means to down her, but more than that. I think it was a betrayal. Someone she knew and trusted in some way - my best guess is another survivor of the Pakistani Armed Forces Valkyrie program.

Now, there's still the matter of Zettai Yurusanai, which in itself is a decent hint, but I have a pretty good idea where that might come from.

Anna's biggest mental block - her biggest "thing", so to speak, is that she can't hurt humans, and she can't allow humans to be hurt. Anna makes the mistake right after the conversation quoted above, of assuming that Shuri agreed with her that We Should Not Fight Humans. But what Shuri actually said was nothing of the sort - in fact, Shuri rather presumed that human enemies would appear on a battlefield, just that simulator practice would not prepare anyone for fighting them.

I don't think Anna could forgive the idea that we should prepare to fight other humans, that betrayal by our human allies is possible or likely, and especially if Shuri had to kill others even if in self defense or in defense of others. That goes doubly if a betrayal of some sort happens again. I don't think Shuri could forgive a naive stance that we must never fight humans even if they attack us or act against us - such an idea would have gotten her only friend killed rather than rescued.

There are of course, far less likely items - maybe Shuri only survived unscathed so often because others sacrificed for her, or perhaps more insidiously, she deliberately sacrificed others. I don't think this is the case (refer to Avalanche's quote on Shuri's luck), but it fits Zettai Yurusenai. Maybe Shuri isn't capable of understanding or sympathizing with Anna's history. Maybe...well, a lot of things.

But that's all just speculation. Really, what we need is for the specifics to come up in Plot, or for this to come up to Anna privately by way of Sandra. I don't think we should push too hard for an understanding between Shuri and Anna beyond learning to fight cooperatively and whatever happens naturally.
 
Anna's shtick is a bit complicated though. We have two example where Anna, on reflex, automatically aimed and prepared her cannon against other people. I think it's closer that Anna's stance is more on "don't trigger aggression against other human," while she's fine with countering with defense using lethal force as a reply.

The thing with Shuri is probably that Shuri is likely to go on the offensive first, which Anna doesn't like at all.
 
@Alphaleph Shuri is (close to?) the kind of person who would shoot somebody for cowardice if her superiors told her to. Anna is the kind of person who would be gobsmacked at such an order and then hold those superiors at gunpoint.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I think the key is to keep direct tensions between Anna and Shuri to a minimum until Shuri's "arc", when we will gain more information about what exactly happened.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't interact, but I think there's a different approach to trying to mould the Anna - Shuri friendship ideally or whatever: Sandra. Sandra is obviously completely dedicated to Shuri but she also goes out of her way to smooth over whatever clashes Shuri gets into. I think if things get bad between Anna and Shuri, we might consider expressing our frustration to Sandra instead and see if we get any help.

I think that we shouldn't try to probe Shuri's past but instead focus on working with her in the present - getting used to working with someone else who can fight on our level and gain some level of trust / cooperation in a combat situation. The idea that we, vaguely, might have each others' backs may help us if there's ever a falling out.



I also think, @Dark as Silver , that you're inserting a whole lot of speculation into what you believe happened to Shuri exactly and her motivations. Is she obsessed with being the most powerful valkyrie she can? I don't really see it - she pushed the others in her squadron hard because it was what she knew and because they asked her to. And possibly because they would leave her alone faster if she drove them away on purpose? Note that while Sandra's leadership has something to do with it, Shuri remains quite relaxed about having lower-level valks in her squadron now. Possibly because Kouji and the rest of us didn't seek her out or shower her with attention; she found people willing to work hard who will probably make Elite on that alone, but who didn't see her as The Golden Ace. Plus there were definitely mixed messages about Anna's status as an Ace - worried about the perception of competition / status, but at the same time wanted Anna in her squadron. It fits the idea that she prefers people that see her as a peer rather than as part of the power level rat race.

I'm certain there are issues related to growing up a child soldier, in a valk squadron with a disproportionately high casualty rate. And also to engaging multiple Type Zeros and coming out unscathed each time but losing even more comrades. Maybe that's why she wants to surround herself with strong valks, maybe not. Or maybe that's why she sees her squad members as transient and doesn't bother getting attached, if she even does that (idk). But I don't see this as the defining feature of her character. In fact, it was in fan omake that she was the only survivor of her squadron, not in canon. And having re-read the history, while her squadron had high casualty rates, they were never really annihilated like say, our town.

I think we have to remember, this is the Broken Ace, not the Golden Ace. The key, defining feature will lie in the difference. The Golden Ace was never shot down. The Broken Ace was shot down once... by humans.



We know that Shuri was badly injured attempting to rescue Sandra from a kidnapping and that it was by humans in some way. I don't think that's enough, though. I think we need to read into Shuri's statement above: the humans she faced used underhanded means to down her, but more than that. I think it was a betrayal. Someone she knew and trusted in some way - my best guess is another survivor of the Pakistani Armed Forces Valkyrie program.

Now, there's still the matter of Zettai Yurusanai, which in itself is a decent hint, but I have a pretty good idea where that might come from.

Anna's biggest mental block - her biggest "thing", so to speak, is that she can't hurt humans, and she can't allow humans to be hurt. Anna makes the mistake right after the conversation quoted above, of assuming that Shuri agreed with her that We Should Not Fight Humans. But what Shuri actually said was nothing of the sort - in fact, Shuri rather presumed that human enemies would appear on a battlefield, just that simulator practice would not prepare anyone for fighting them.

I don't think Anna could forgive the idea that we should prepare to fight other humans, that betrayal by our human allies is possible or likely, and especially if Shuri had to kill others even if in self defense or in defense of others. That goes doubly if a betrayal of some sort happens again. I don't think Shuri could forgive a naive stance that we must never fight humans even if they attack us or act against us - such an idea would have gotten her only friend killed rather than rescued.

There are of course, far less likely items - maybe Shuri only survived unscathed so often because others sacrificed for her, or perhaps more insidiously, she deliberately sacrificed others. I don't think this is the case (refer to Avalanche's quote on Shuri's luck), but it fits Zettai Yurusenai. Maybe Shuri isn't capable of understanding or sympathizing with Anna's history. Maybe...well, a lot of things.

But that's all just speculation. Really, what we need is for the specifics to come up in Plot, or for this to come up to Anna privately by way of Sandra. I don't think we should push too hard for an understanding between Shuri and Anna beyond learning to fight cooperatively and whatever happens naturally.
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You. I respect you and I agree with you... I think.

I need to re-read all quest posts before I formulate a definite opinion on this, and I'm definitely not doing that until the update.

Regarding your guess at Shuri's circumstances... I think we can go a step deeper, there. If it was a betrayal, I think we can conjecture that the human trafficking ring the attack on Sandra piggybacked off of had at least some hand in selling Valkyrie-compatibles to the Pakistani armed forces. That's the sort of thing that breaks somebody. That would make Shuri and her comrades kidnapped, brainwashed child soldiers. And Shuri would be discovering this trying to find her new friend. Who is getting kidnapped by these people who, she finds out, took her when she was young... and all of her friends. So all along, everyone she knew was a monster or a victim of this shit. Mad bonus points if the people/person she eventually confronts turn out to be parental figure/s.

*shrug* just guessing. And for the record Avalanche if you read this and its spot on... dont tell us <3 we need our conjecture.

Also, I think Shuri seemed to be more focused on not letting her squadmates die which might suggest more AG-based trauma. She puts all this emphasis on harsh training... but idk. Im not coherent right now.

But the plan you have given us.

Yes.

We should adopt this as our strategy. Bring out the corkboard and pin this shit up. This post, in its luminescence, must guide our future choices.
 
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Kaizuki said:
@Alphaleph Shuri is (close to?) the kind of person who would shoot somebody for cowardice if her superiors told her to. Anna is the kind of person who would be gobsmacked at such an order and then hold those superiors at gunpoint.
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ehhhnnnn.... If you read the supplemental bits in the character sheet and reread Anna's intro?

Human on human violence is treated as if the instigators were Antagonists. She dealt with that in her town "the only way she knew how". Hold at gunpoint in the sense that firing takes a nonzero amount of time, yes, but any violence against humans is met with superior force, and lethal force is terminated instantly. Remember, Anna almost shot down one of her fellow trainees in simulation (and who knows if it would have been a simulated kill, but I doubt it) because the trainee didn't have perfect fire discipline in their first ever target marking exercise.

She was accidentally talked out of doing something permanent to Setsuna, the very first time they met, and I'm pretty sure it's safe to say nobody else involved has any inkling of how very serious that question was ("Do you regularly beat him?")

At the story start, Anna has only two settings; 'ready to kill you,' and 'already killed you'. Currently, she and Durga are working on 'not killing' but it's gonna be a long row to hoe.

Also, every time I read about her scanner pings, it evokes the imagery of a bird of prey's hunting scream- that sort of, "I am death to any that hear this. Cower and flee, for I am coming for you."
 
Anna seems entirely willing to use lethal force on humans. It is entirely reasonable to consider Anna a weapon system created by circumstance to protect humans, for 9 years she devoted the entirety of herself to that goal, dehumanizing herself in the process. Its only after she failed and is starting to socialize that she's starting to consider herself human again.

Shuri, on the other hand like most child soldiers is a deliberate attempt by humans to create a weapon system. From her actions she seems to desire strength and strong team mates so as to prevent her comrades from dying again. It seems she doesn't want to be limited/lonely by her ace status compared to her

Shuri *seems* to believe that soldiers need to be strong so as to contribute, whereas Anna believes its the duty of the strong to allow others to be weak. The problem is Anna is proof that her ideals are sort of unworkable. No matter how strong you are you can't stand alone, but she also knows that the pursuit of strength ultimately leads to having nothing left when said strength gives out. It sort of seems both IMO that both are right to an extent for the wrong reasons.
 
Sooo... how long does editing usually take for this quest? Is there a recording of the times a post was finished writing and the time it was actually posted? If we take the rate seen in Avalanche's profile posts, it was so far 4 pages in 5 days, so 1 more month from then would be September 29th to finish the 27 pages.

I can't handle checking this thread a few times a day for updates.
 
pinkturnip said:
Sooo... how long does editing usually take for this quest?
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Depends on how busy LegacySC is. Sometimes as short as 3 days, most of the time up to a week. Sometimes, longer.

You can use the "OP update alert" feature if you don't constantly want to check a thread. Just ignore the normal alert, then when I make a post over a sufficient length, you will receive a special alert in the form of "The OP; John Doe, posted an update to thread "Algebra" with n words.".
 
Avalanche said:
Depends on how busy LegacySC is. Sometimes as short as 3 days, most of the time up to a week. Sometimes, longer.

You can use the "OP update alert" feature if you don't constantly want to check a thread. Just ignore the normal alert, then when I make a post over a sufficient length, you will receive a special alert in the form of "The OP; John Doe, posted an update to thread "Algebra" with n words.".
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But what if it gets buried under several other alerts?!? No, I cannot take that chance! I will keep my eyes on this thread, until it makes me go blind! Then, I will make someone else watch it for me!
 
NotAKobold said:
I'm quite insulted.
I'm not a kobold on Florida, the state-sized alligator.
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FTFY
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Much Insightful, very wow.
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I don't mean that really, the fact that Shuri is here on the regular course rather than the accelerated one is proof that she doesn't want to be alone more than she wants to be the most powerful in the world. What I meant was that shes been trained and lost so many people that if it where called into question it would be akin to casting doubt on her whole life. Additionally there are more things you can sacrifice for power than lives, take Anna, she sacrificed sleep, digestion, and a her ability to interact with humans. The most obvious however was free time.

I do feel that she is pressing her teammates to hard because she thinks its in their best intrests. I don't feel she was pushing them away, more that she was hoping they'd get good fast and could bond together other being aces. I would wait to see how she reacts to whatever training schedule Sandra sets up before saying how relaxed she is about having low level Valks in the squadron. Although your ideas do ring true on that.

I do generally agree with your speculation on how Shuri veiws fighting humans however I disagree how you think Anna does. The training incident has been brought up however I disagree slightly with Armorfiends interpretation. Anna did not target that trainee because she put human lives at risk, she did it because the trainee didn't show remorse when the fact she was told that those missiles would have killed humans. Basicly I feel that Annas philosophy boils down to; If you don't value human lives, you aren't one.

Kaizuki said:
or see how deep the rabit hole goes
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We've got to go deeper.

armorfiend said:
more seculation
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As I mentioned responsding to SynchronsiedWritersBlock I disagree with your interpretation, as Anna didn't target the trainee until the idiot said something like "So what?" when told she would have hurt humans.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Anna's biggest mental block - her biggest "thing", so to speak, is that she can't hurt humans, and she can't allow humans to be hurt. Anna makes the mistake right after the conversation quoted above, of assuming that Shuri agreed with her that We Should Not Fight Humans. But what Shuri actually said was nothing of the sort - in fact, Shuri rather presumed that human enemies would appear on a battlefield, just that simulator practice would not prepare anyone for fighting them.

I don't think Anna could forgive the idea that we should prepare to fight other humans, that betrayal by our human allies is possible or likely, and especially if Shuri had to kill others even if in self defense or in defense of others. That goes doubly if a betrayal of some sort happens again. I don't think Shuri could forgive a naive stance that we must never fight humans even if they attack us or act against us - such an idea would have gotten her only friend killed rather than rescued.
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I'm fairly sure that Anna's combat instincts are simply so wired in, perhaps literally, that she only has to identify something as a threat for her subconscious and instincts to begin processing how to end the threat the only way she knows how.

This may bypass her ideals entirely, because she's on twitch reflexes, because she would be dead without 0 second response time kill instincts back then.
 
armorfiend said:
Remember, Anna almost shot down one of her fellow trainees in simulation (and who knows if it would have been a simulated kill, but I doubt it) because the trainee didn't have perfect fire discipline in their first ever target marking exercise.

She was accidentally talked out of doing something permanent to Setsuna, the very first time they met, and I'm pretty sure it's safe to say nobody else involved has any inkling of how very serious that question was ("Do you regularly beat him?")"
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I actually think it was a bit different. At first Anna was fine, as she thought that the other did not know about the humans in her target area. She simply told her that "hey, there are human targets there." It was only after she was told "yeah, so what?," that she shifted into murderdearhkill mode. It wasn't the fire discipline she had issue with, it was the attitude that human casualties did not matter.
 
Chaosbrain said:
It wasn't the fire discipline she had issue with, it was the attitude that human casualties did not matter.
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Right, you are both correct that the attitude matters. Though, this was also something she let play out because Anna herself was safely able to intercept the munitions, so the friendly fire incident didn't happen. The 'problem' was that the trainee indicated that she'd do it again, whether or not Anna was there to safeguard the imaginary people.

So the point I'm getting at is, Anna very nearly shot down a classmate over an exercise that is designed as a learning experience. As the instructor commented, that sort of thing always happens in the first training mission, and is expected. Presumably they would normally just give the offender(s) a public chewing out and try again. It's only by quick talking of her flight-mates that Anna doesn't simply extinguish a trainee for something that would ordinarily merit a "hey, don't do that thing you just did"

Anna's not necessarily happy about shooting other humans, but she'll do it in a heartbeat, or faster.

Assuming she still has a heartbeat goin' on instead of some sort of shiny DurgaChrome OxyBlood PumpMaster 5000.
 
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armorfiend said:
So the point I'm getting at is, Anna very nearly shot down a classmate over an exercise that is designed as a learning experience. As the instructor commented, that sort of thing always happens, and is expected. Presumably they would normally just give the offender(s) a public chewing out and try again.
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Bit of ambigous syntax here, to clarify; friendly fire is expected in the first few times Valks do these, not everytime.
 
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