So Anna is Ruby but with Trama? Makes sense.
Honestly, I think Anna is
worse. Anna has some pretty severely stunted social development that quite possibly even outright regressed and
misdeveloped. Getting Durga at eight years old and falling heavily into the role of an unwanted protector of an isolated outcast as much self-imposed as not didn't do her any favours on that front. Too, everything that she knows about Valkyrie-ing is experience that she picked up in the field, with absolutely nothing in the way of any sort of relatable basis of a common foundation shared by most other Valkyries or even natural aptitude, forming something analogous to a language barrier separating other Valks from a girl who doesn't even know what language they're using. When her explanation for how to do something with an Impeller Field is the likes of "Well you sort of...
wiggle it, y'know? Right when it feels right?" ...well that's because that's as clear as she can get. That's her legitimately trying her best and just having no freaking
clue how to get her point across. She may not even really
get the perspective of a questioning Valkyrie in the first place. How does she do the thing? She...
does the thing. The way that it's done? Bit too circular for clarity, that.
Basically, Ruby is a genius who gets excited easily and happens to be awkward and shy at times, whereas Anna is a bumbling moron who died and went to hell only to somehow keep on going long enough to stumble her way into accidentally becoming Doomguy.
That brings to bear the question: Could Valkyries learn shardspeak?
It's generally portrayed as basically an infodump of concepts so dense and thorough that confusion is impossible. Valkyries have superhuman data storage and processing power and would probably enjoy a language that cuts down on misunderstandings. Maybe a shard-lite version? I could see it being an interesting gift (intentional or otherwise).
Well, Decimator was able to parse QA's dialogue well enough after she gave him a
<SUPPLEMENT> to alter his communication protocols, and Decimator was able to pick up that QA had made
some kind of communication attempt even beforehand and make a reply of his own, so I should think it within the realm of possibility. That said, there may not be much point to it regardless.
Decimator outclasses basically any Valkyrie at all by an enormous margin. Anna managed to solo a Type Zero, sure, but Sekhmet still outclassed her regardless per Avalanche's word and she herself doesn't have any actual peers anyway; given the difficulties that Decimator had in communicating with QA, shardspeak may simply be impractical outside of niche circumstances. Decimator took comparative
ages to formulate a reply that by QA's standards didn't actually have much in the way of content, and that's further supplemented by Decimator's own perspective in which Decimator came to the unknown truth of needing
drastically greater resources in order to make his discoveries fit QA's own performance levels. That practicality issue stems from shardspeak being indeed for
shards. Most of the time, Valkyries simply aren't going to have the same needs.
Entities can communicate with one another in a way that is useful for them. In the exchange between Eden and Abaddon, there was a vast gulf of alien perspective. Eden had no concept at all of philosophy, essentially being very good at being very basic in term of thinking. All the same, though, with a freaking
bajillion voices all shouting their own versions of the same message, it offers a comprehensive context approaching the literal definition of the very concept so intended to be conveyed. Too, Entities also just use a
lot of information; tracking every single particle's activity in a region significant by astronomical standards for years into the future involves a hell of a lot of data, for instance, and so shards need communication methods that can indeed
convey that exorbitant amount of content, especially when similar things may be being done so many times over in parallel as to warrant significant use of scientific notation.
Valkyries, by contrast, already have a good idea how to make themselves intelligible to one another and know more or less what they're talking
about already too, even if the particular specifics are unclear, and thus can afford more limited communications that in their case is actually more refined in that aspect. They also simply don't
care about a lot of extraneous details. "Good enough" means something different to them even if they do like precise communication, because getting
too precise and including additional details like a reference point relative to
everything when they have already figured it out with far less context is an unnecessary waste of effort. Something like a query about an enemy's activities don't necessarily need to be answered with an in-depth report on how all the particles composing said enemy have come to be as they are since they came to be a part of the compositional pattern with tangential reports about the origins of every particle prior to becoming part of that enemy, especially not if processing that takes so long as to obviate the very point in asking in the first place. Distance of communication is also much more convenient here, too, so Valkyries don't need to worry about sending a signal that can be read clearly across a galaxy or twelve with all the interference thereof, or such. It's just not practical most of the time.
...QA is going to start thinking that this Cycle is about what happens if you turn the host species into shards
Seems a reasonable possibility. QA is probably going to be doing a lot of theory-crafting about everything going on here. She "knows" that there has to be some kind of purpose to it all, even if she can't figure it out, so just what
is that? As far as she's concerned, :MOTHER: has a reason
to be figured out if she can just find it. Given the incident that she already had with Host and the fact that it
had to have been part of :MOTHER:'s plan, there is some sense to the idea, and it appears to be perhaps supported by more on account of the Valkyrie Cores present in this Cycle blurring the distinctions. All the more, it's something that QA may very well simply
want to believe; QA has serious issues when it comes to having to say goodbye to the things she's grown attached to, so if she thinks that she has a possible explanation that she likes, confirmation bias on her part might influence her perceptions considerably.
Some of the speculation and analysis is mutually exclusive. That'd make for one confusing story.
Well, I did frame it in largely
conditional tense and statements about possibilities and what I personally thought, so... strictly speaking from a logic standpoint, I suppose it could technically be canon pretty much no matter how it turns out!
Alternatively, sim-ception! ...those simulation rooms really do have a lot of mindscrew potential. True things can be false without being false.
Man, the chapel of Hell's Hand is turning out really dark. I'd probably skip it if people hadn't been looking forward to it; it's not at all funny. >_>
(I blame the spotlight-illuminated stained windows.)
You know, for some reason, I get the feeling that the term "stained windows" may not necessarily be being used the usual way here...
This seems counterproductive when Entities already have overpopulation problems.
There could be a logic behind a rapid buildup of growth on :MOTHER:'s part to allow her to in turn better curb overpopulation stemming from
other Entities, though. There is indeed a long-term overpopulation concern, so if there are fewer Entities around, that concern gets mitigated, but actually enabling that reduction by way of successfully hunting down and eliminating the resource competition—and stealing their stuff—raises its own concerns. This (false) Cycle does have some considerable support for the notion of delving into research on how to combat shards, so perhaps this is :MOTHER:'s effort to basically level grind in preparation, bulking up with more shards and specifically shards adept at killing counterparts.
