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Constellations (Worm/Okami)

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Dark Mage said:
Crap, unless Taylor gets some healing, she's going home with a large bruise (hopefully that is all it is) on her face. Will Danny notice this or will he remain Capt. Oblivious?
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"Hey kiddo how- Taylor, what happened!? Did you get into a fight?"

"Yeah, but don't worry about it... I think Lung is going to be okay."

UnwelcomeStorm said:
This got tossed around in the SB thread for a few pages. It basically boiled down to "If Taylor's white, then she's appropriating culture!"
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The dumbest thing to complain about, seriously.

Fun fact: when European explorers took potatoes from the americas and grew them in Europe, it was horticultural appropriation.

Marla said:
And the house market value argument.
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"It'll make their insurance costs go up!"

I can't imagine any insurance provider operating in Brockton Bay, at least not in the bad parts of town.

"I'm sorry, but we don't offer homeowner's insurance for people whose homes are actively being destroyed by parahumans with no regard for collateral damage."

"But it's quiet right now!"

"Sure, but you live in a city with both Lung and Glory Girl. Give it ten minutes."

ReadsByLamplight said:
Isn't it nice when, instead of calling a question "dumb" or saying that something is "retarded" we can have a civilized discourse about this thing that we all mutually enjoy.
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Your question was retarded, though, and somebody pointing it out as such was the only way that that exchange could have possibly been enjoyable.

ReadsByLamplight said:
I apologize if my use of profanity in the previous post offended anybody.
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Oh for fuck's sake, you're on the Internet. You are talking to other people on the Internet. If anyone can't handle someone saying a swear word, they have no business being online.
 
STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS.

This never even deserved to be discussed in the first place- can we please let it die now?
 
Pax_Empyrean said:
Oh for fuck's sake, you're on the Internet. You are talking to other people on the Internet. If anyone can't handle someone saying a swear word, they have no business being online.
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My personal values require me to apologize to the offended and I apologize if this offends you. :)

In all actuality after sitting back from my computer for a few minutes and thinking about the series of posts which I have made in this thread recently I have decided that several of the things I said were either, discourteous, incorrect, or misguided. Therefore I would ask for some amount of forgiveness. In order

I apologize for reacting in the manner I did to Vyor's first and second reply. I should have let it go and for that I am sorry.

I apologize for being condescending earlier though I would like to thank Marla, non condescendingly this time. The first time I thanked him/her I was being insincere and it shows.

I apologize for the rant I posted earlier. That was an asshole thing to do and I shouldn't have done it.

I won't apologize for learning about nested spoilers. They're still fun.

I'm setting a fifteen minute timer upon clicking the post reply button and after that deleting the aforementioned posts at the end of it. This post, and the quoted material in other peoples' posts, will be all that remains of my own ill-advised actions.

Thank you and once again I am sorry.

Imp'd I guess.
EDIT: There. It's done. This subject is over with. I messed up and I apologized and now the thread can move on.
 
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...Y'know I think that's the first time i've seen somebody on the internet apologize for something.

I've really gotta get off 4chan
 
ReadsByLamplight said:
My personal values require me to apologize to the offended and I apologize if this offends you. :)

In all actuallity after sitting back from my computer for a few minutes and thinking about the series of posts which I have made in this thread recently I have decided that several of the things I said were either, discourteous, incorrect, or misguided. Therefore I would ask for some amount of forgiveness. In order

I apologize for reacting in the manner I did to Vyor's first and second reply. I should have let it go and for that I am sorry.

I apologize for being condescending earlier though I would like to thank Marla, non condescendingly this time. The first time I thanked him/her I was being insincere and it shows.

I apologize for the rant I posted earlier. That was an asshole thing to do and I shouldn't have done it.

I won't apologize for learning about nested spoilers. They're still fun.

I'm setting a fifteen minute timer upon clicking the post reply button and after that deleting the aforementioned posts at the end of it. This post, and the quoted material in other peoples' posts, will be all that remains of my own ill-advised actions.

Thank you and once again I am sorry.

Imp'd I guess.
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*tips hat*
Kudos to you. It's one thing to have an argument on the internet and be wrong about it(we've all been there), but it takes serious humility to admit that to everyone.

Hell, you're way better than I ever was(or will be, realistically)
 
Wobulator said:
*tips hat*
Kudos to you. It's one thing to have an argument on the internet and be wrong about it(we've all been there), but it takes serious humility to admit that to everyone.

Hell, you're way better than I ever was(or will be, realistically)
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I... am not sure if that sort of thinking should be encouraged, realistically...
If you spend all your time worrying about offending others, or apologising about maybe doing the same, you're not actually going to get anything done.
It's always jarring for me to see others so concerned for the overly tender sensibilities of others...
 
Vox De Harlequin said:
I... am not sure if that sort of thinking should be encouraged, realistically...
If you spend all your time worrying about offending others, or apologising about maybe doing the same, you're not actually going to get anything done.
It's always jarring for me to see others so concerned for the overly tender sensibilities of others...
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There are two extremes. On the one, somebody hears a swear word and rushes off to make sure everybody is okay. On the other, young children are given a small animal to take care of and bond with, and they are expected to kill it with their bare hands as a part of their rite of passage into adulthood. Between these two extremes lies a happy middle, wherein people can swear on the Internet and if somebody freaks out about it we call them a fucking crybaby and tell them to grow up.
 
Vox De Harlequin said:
I... am not sure if that sort of thinking should be encouraged, realistically...
If you spend all your time worrying about offending others, or apologising about maybe doing the same, you're not actually going to get anything done.
It's always jarring for me to see others so concerned for the overly tender sensibilities of others...
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But it's hard as fuck to apologize for things you did, especially when there's no real expectation of it. Also, it makes everyone's debating better.

He admitted he was wrong and apologized for derailing the thread, and that's something that everyone should do, even if nobody will.
 
... Hm.

Well, first of all, I have to say I love this story. It's healing, in a very ... down to earth way. Taylor not smiting evil but actually working good, healing and fixing things.

With regard to appropriating culture - I think there's a really good reason for Taylor to be white here, actually.

It means that she won't be limited to the ABB.

The ABB were first, because they had the culture to appreciate and back her. But there's no reason to stop there. Her race - as dumb as it is for that to matter - will give her one more route into expanding that healing to the E88.

I don't quite see how to make it happen yet, but. *shrug*. Let's see how it goes.
 
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Camrad_RIP said:
It's all - mental bugs. Some times mind reading mashine breaks down and you start see insincerity everywhere.
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Some people get off on apologizing. Think it makes them feel like the better person or whatever. Or they do it just to be smarmy, or for social status if they're part of a group that praises that sort of thing.

linkhyrule5 said:
The ABB were first, because they had the culture to appreciate and back her. But there's no reason to stop there. But her race - as dumb as it is for that to matter - will give her one more route into expanding that healing to the E88.

I don't quite see how to make it happen yet, but. *shrug*. Let's see how it goes.
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The E88 wants to create a prosperous society... for white people. They might take the recent beautification of the ABB territory as a challenge, opening up a new front for their gang war. The E88 gets super into it, determined to showcase the inherent superiority of Aryan gardening. Hookwolf gets in trouble for planting rose bushes in the shape of a swastika around the Medhall building because "We are trying to keep that secret and your lack of subtlety just ruins the whole aesthetic, just oh my God this looks so tacky!"

Meanwhile, the Merchants territory still looks like shit, and everybody else gets yet another reason to look down on them. Like they don't even care that their yard is so awful.
 
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Pax_Empyrean said:
The E88 wants to create a prosperous society... for white people. They might take the recent beautification of the ABB territory as a challenge, opening up a new front for their gang war. The E88 gets super into it, determined to showcase the inherent superiority of Aryan gardening.
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oh god that would be hilarious! have the E88 go I can do better than the ABB!" and starts to be more beneficial to BB all of this of course leads to more pets and belly rubs for Ammy Sunshine.
 
Yog said:
What I am wondering about is Taylor's own thoughts and reactions. Because before now she didn't really think (from what we saw) about supernatural, or acted as a miko in an informed fashion (knowing she's a miko). Here? She clearly asked questions with symbolic meaning, likely prompted by Amaterasu, and, well, there's the whole lightning from a clear sky. Taylor herself now knows that either she's a parahuman, or a servant of a spirit / parabeing.
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Her line of thinking was already hinted at the chapter with the tree saplings -- she isn't. She _knows_ something is going on, but if no one is going to say anything, she won't. She's actively trying not to think about it. No wondering if she's a parahuman. No wondering if Ammy is something other than a dog, despite the numerous instances of Ammy not acting like one (really, ordering stuff on the internet with a credit card?). Even if she saw the lightning (which she may not have), that's just another thing not to think about.
 
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BRG said:
oh god that would be hilarious! have the E88 go I can do better than the ABB!" and starts to be more beneficial to BB all of this of course leads to more pets and belly rubs for Ammy Sunshine.
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Given enough time, she may yet turn the gangs of Brockton Bay into basically just really racist competing homeowners' associations. I can see people getting really confused on PHO as the barbs and insults from BB gang member throwaway accounts gradually shift more toward things like scathing critiques of somebody's choice in landscaping.

Daughter_of_Gaia said:
Quick question, can Contessa see Ammy with the PtV?
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The more pressing question, I think, is whether Sunshine can hijack Path to Victory for her own purposes. Contessa would begin spending a small but noticeable amount of time telling people to stop acting like dickwaffles, and delivering sake and headpats to the nice dog at the shrine.
 
Pax_Empyrean said:
The E88 wants to create a prosperous society... for white people. They might take the recent beautification of the ABB territory as a challenge, opening up a new front for their gang war. The E88 gets super into it, determined to showcase the inherent superiority of Aryan gardening. Hookwolf gets in trouble for planting rose bushes in the shape of a swastika around the Medhall building because "We are trying to keep that secret and your lack of subtlety just ruins the whole aesthetic, just oh my God this looks so tacky!"

Meanwhile, the Merchants territory still looks like shit, and everybody else gets yet another reason to look down on them. Like they don't even care that their yard is so awful.
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BRG said:
oh god that would be hilarious! have the E88 go I can do better than the ABB!" and starts to be more beneficial to BB all of this of course leads to more pets and belly rubs for Ammy Sunshine.
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Highwind said:
I want to see a Armsy watch the city get better, the ABB less villainous and the Empire reconsidering their Nazi ways and get increasingly more paranoid that a large scale Master is taking control of the city.
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Ah, Lung, Kenta, whatever you chose to call yourself. You really messed up this time. In multiple ways too.

1) You entered holy ground with the intent to do harm, whether physical or mental, it doesn't matter. You planned on doing violence on holy ground. A huge no-no.
2) You willingly entered into a word game with a spiritually powerful person. I don't know much about how Asian mythology works here, but in European mythology when a spiritually powerful person (witch, sorcerer, wizard, Fae, magic user, what have you) starts a game and you enter it, especially willingly, you stick with the rules laid out. Trust me, if you break the rules, just stab yourself in the heart, it's faster and far less painful.
3) You willing struck a person who is acknowledged as sacred. Taylor might not quite realize just what she is seen as by the people around her but a miko, or any person who works on holy ground, is sacred.

I could probably lay out a few more, but I'm tired and these were the ones that stuck out at me.

To sum up; You really messed it up this time, Lung, Kenta.
 
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Camrad_RIP said:
He just unlucky guy. Ton of people do the same (entered holy ground with the intent to do harm) with no aftermath.
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Sorry, I meant he entered holy ground with the intent to harm to one of the people who worked there, a miko in this case. You really don't do that, especially in a spirit heavy religious place like a Shinto shrine. That's just asking for a divine being to smite your ass.
 
Marla said:
So, it begins.

Kenta triggered from a confrontation with Contessa? Or he's a Cauldron cape? I've never read Worm.
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Selias said:
Basically, she came in, killed all of his friends, and pressed his face into a pile of cocaine, forcing him to overdose. IIRC.
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Interlude 22.y said:
Daiichi and Ren led the advance into the back room. Kenta followed, looking over Ren's shoulder to take in the scene.
There were five people in the room. Two were Chinese, sure enough. Businessmen, they seemed to be, kneeling on one side of a squat dining table that was neatly stacked with cash and 'bricks' of white powder in plastic wrap, as well as various dishes laid out with vegetables and meat. A Japanese man sat at one end of the table, hands folded in his lap, eyes wide.
But there were two more gaijin in the room, kneeling opposite the Chinese foreigners. A black woman in a white suit jacket and a knee-length dress, and a twenty-something woman with a European cast to her features, with dark hair and a black suit.
The black woman spoke, and the Japanese man translated it to Chinese. "The woman recommends we stand back. Her bodyguard will take care of the situation."
"The woman in front is a bodyguard," Kenta told Daiichi.
This was wrong. The two women were too confident.
Daiichi drew a gun and pointed it at the woman. Kenta felt his heart leap at the sight of the weapon.
Then Daiichi fired, a warning shot. Kenta flinched despite himself. He'd never heard a gunshot before. Loud.
The men were cowering, trying to hide beneath the table. The women hadn't even reacted.
"One bodyguard?" Daiichi asked, sneering. He made the first move. He flared a brilliant green, then jolted as a phantom replica of himself leaped forth.
The phantom Daiichi flew across the room like living lightning, a trail of neon green smoke in its wake.
The bodyguard was already moving, her hand on a plate. She turned it upside-down and threw it in a single motion, and it caught the air like a frisbee. It turned in mid-air and crashed into the real Daiichi's face.
He staggered, and the phantom he'd created dissipated a fraction of a second before reaching the bodyguard. She shut her eyes as the residual smoke carried past her.
Kenta stared. He'd never seen Daiichi's ability fail him like that.
Daiichi raised the gun, and the woman raised one knife from the table, turning it around so she held the blade, the metal handle extended. She held it out with one hand, pointing it at Daiichi's shoulder.
Daiichi fired, and the knife went flying. It ricocheted, spinning rapidly, striking the doorframe behind the bodyguard before flying over her head in a tall arc. She caught it in her other hand, resuming the exact same position as before, then shook her right hand for a second.
She said something, murmuring it in English. The knife, still held in front of her, had a dent on the end.
The black woman behind her said something else.
"What are they saying?" Daiichi asked.
"The woman in the suit just got permission to kill us," Hisoka said. "But the black one said not to spill any blood."
"We should run," Kenta said.
"You scared?" Daiichi asked. "We have muscle."
"So does she," Kenta retorted.
Daiichi only smirked.
Can't run, we're going to get hurt if we stay…
Ren rolled his shoulders, then inhaled.
Wind rushed out of the room, and small objects were drawn towards Ren. The intensity of the suction grew as the fat boy sucked in more and more air.
The bodyguard kicked one edge of the low table, and the wind caught it, helping it rise. Money, plates and the bricks of white powder slid to the floor, sliding and rolling towards Ren.
Daiichi opened fire again, indiscriminate, but she didn't even react. Her knife blocked one shot that was directed more at the black woman, flying out of her grip, and the bodyguard walked between the rest of the shots without even dodging. She seized a table leg in one hand. It would have been too heavy to lift, but Ren's suction was hauling it off the ground. Two bullets bit into the thick wood.
Daiichi unleashed his power, creating another ghostly replica of himself, incredibly fast, stronger than he was.
The woman kicked the table, and it spun through the air as it flew towards Ren, clipping the ghost. The phantom lost an arm and a chunk of its chest, got its bearings, then charged the bodyguard. The damage to its chest was too grave, and it crumpled into neon green dust a pace away from her.
Ren was struck by the moving table, hit with enough force that he stumbled backwards into Kenta, Hisoka, and the other mundane members of the group.
Ren blew, and the table went flying across the room. Kenta's heart sank as he saw the woman, crouching low to the ground. Her hand reached up to strike the flying table, altering its course as it flew towards the Chinese men. It came so close to hitting them that Kenta thought it would be like the cartoons, where someone was cut but didn't start bleeding until seconds had passed.
Except it hadn't hit them, and the woman was too close to the ground to really be affected by the wind.
"Suck!" Daiichi shouted.
"Don't!" Kenta said, though there was little point.
It was too late. Ren had stopped blowing, buying her a second to move. She stepped forward, closing the distance to the group. Daiichi created a third ghost, rushing towards her, but she avoided the first strike.
Ren started drawing air in once more. Daiichi's spirit opened with a flurry of attacks, moving twice as fast as she was, but failed to land a strike. The bodyguard took a step back and used the toe of her glossy black shoes to flick a brick of powder into the air. She threw it, and the suction only added to its velocity as it soared to Ren's right.
Daiichi's spirit was fast enough to avoid the brick, but Daiichi wasn't. It bounced off his head, and the ghost dissipated again. She kicked the table, and again, the suction caught it. It flew into Ren's shins, and he fell.
Thrice, both the ghost and Ren had been countered, almost casually.
Daiichi shouted, uncharacteristically angry. Uncharacteristic, maybe, because he'd never lost a fight before.
The others pushed forward from behind Kenta. Had they not just seen the fight? They really thought they'd accomplish something?
But the force of the others charging forward from behind started him moving forward, and he was driven to keep advancing by the vague, incoherent idea of what might happen to him if he, the largest, physically strongest member of Daiichi's group, turned coward.
He knew in an instant that it was a mistake. Daiichi's ghost, twice as fast and twice as strong as Daiichi himself, an expendable assailant, hadn't accomplished anything. Why would six or seven teenaged delinquents?
She tore through them, every movement precisely calculated to disable, to crush, blind, stun and stagger. They were driven to stumble into one another, their weapons knocked from their hands. She wasn't any faster than any of them, not a martial artist, though there was a degree of elegance to what she did. No movement wasted.
Her foot caught Kenta in the diaphragm. She planted one hand on the back of his head as he winced from the blow, then pushed him face first into the ground.
His teeth bit into a brick of powder, puncturing the plastic itself. Kenta tried to rise, but she stepped on the back of his head, driving him facefirst into the brick a second time, hard.
Someone else fell to the ground a short distance away. Kenta turned to look, simultaneously coughed, and loose powder exploded around his face, filling his eyes.
The powder caked his nose, thick in his mouth, to the point that he couldn't swallow.
Drugs weren't a 'big' thing in the East, even among gangs. He didn't know the particulars of any powder or substance. Only that they were bad, possibly lethal if too much was ingested. He tried to spit it out, but couldn't help but feel like he was swallowing more than he was removing. The weight of the woman bodyguard was on his head, holding him there, suffocating.
He felt the rush of it taking hold, intense and seemingly without a ceiling to top it off. His face in the dirt, in the dust, he was overwhelmed by the paradoxical sense of being like the king of the world.
That rush lasted too short a time. He could feel the rush building until it felt like his heart was going to burst or vibrate itself into pieces. He felt nauseous, as if he was going to throw up, but couldn't bring himself to.
Kenta's left arm started going numb. He knew what that meant.
With a cold feeling in his churning gut, he thought, I'm having a heart att–
He found himself out of his body. He was an observer, an outside agent, without body or mind. He couldn't think. He could only exist, as a part of some sequence of events.
Two entities, communicating in increasingly short bursts as they drew together. Two entities, each unfolding and folding through realities, through multiple worlds at the same time. Two entities, singing ideas through mediums he could barely comprehend. Through light and heat and space and half-lives and gravity.
And they were looking. Looking at a planet that was broad, more gas than solid. A world of perpetual storms. There were lifeforms in there, lifeforms in countless possible variations of that world. Bloated bags of gas that flowed through and in the storms, in kalleidoscopic patterns.
He could see what they were focusing on, see them examining those possible worlds, declaring something. Ownership here. Claim there. Territory elsewhere.
–ack.
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Marla said:
The arguments in SB weirded me out because they argue about the littlest thing. The page count for this story is six times this site's too. Is that normal there?
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Yes. Check out the number of mod interventions in the Manager threads over there sometime. Also, SB has a much larger memberbase, as it's the mother site SV spawned from when the servers tried to explode a few years back.
 
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