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It's not wrong to make Friends in the Dungeon (Danmachi / Sanctioned [Worm])

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Yeah... if you don't live long enough to see a gelatinous crystal imitate a mushroom cloud... and then with a [WHEE] proceed to cart-wheel over the countryside, then you are missing out.
 
Aunty Shi Ping said:
Yeah... if you don't live long enough to see a gelatinous crystal imitate a mushroom cloud... and then with a [WHEE] proceed to cart-wheel over the countryside, then you are missing out.
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Oh please? If I'm going in a certain point of view where Queenie/Administrator, has the energy and the resources to burn out a lot of energy, get away with it, and churn out even more energy afterwards... I'd probably make a joke that an ensuing 'answer' Administrator, would go two lenses.

A: How to/worry about 'optimal/maximum' output, how to increase that input even more... (Before 'what next?' comes up.)
B: ... (In Shard speak?)[WHEE###] < "When" a "Color Out of Space" bleeds past 'eldritch' sound, to incomprehensible. Then screams a CONCEPT down everyone's heads/throats, to "your head explodes!" Effect...

Give or take, end game Hestia having a concept of Shard having complete, creative fun in that one word. And realize in horror, that Shard's expressing emotions of 'joy', is a horrible thing to have, SAN check wise.
 
Alivaril said:
"So, can you also do the weird words or is that a royalty-only thing?" Huntress asked, dragging Dreamer back with all the subtlety of a gossiping gaggle of bloodthirsty geese. Actually, Dreamer could win a fight against geese, couldn't she? All the geese. Probably all the hippos, too, and even hippo-sized geese.

...Oh! She should probably answer Huntress's question, huh?

"The first one! I'm not very good at it, though," Dreamer admitted. "I don't put enough detail yet."

"Mmm. So you don't have princesses, right?"

"Unfortunately," Dreamer grumbled.
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Taylor-brat confirmed. *laughter*
Alivaril said:
"Big word for a little girl," Huntress drawled.

Dreamer shot her a sour look. Huntress's subsequent cooing and New-Mom's giggles indicated that the rebuke had not been interpreted in the spirit it was given.

"You've heard what happens when we use the actual big words. 'Unfortunately' is miniscule in comparison."
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Ohgod, Ican'tbreathe! *laughing harder*
Alivaril said:
"Point taken," Huntress easily acknowledged. "Anyway, since your sister is a queen and all, do you get any sort of special treatment?"

Dreamer gave such a thoughtful question the consideration it deserved. She was pretty sure that none of her guest-self's relatives would care, but when it came to job benefits...

"Well, I'm alive," Dreamer allowed.
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Welp, that's going to go over well, when the others have time to process its implications. Poor Hestia.
Alivaril said:
"You didn't hear anything I've been saying, did you?" Huntress asked, seemingly more amused than annoyed. "Living up to your name, huh?"

Dreamer nodded and giggled. Being a child was awesome. She could just think about whatever she wanted and nobody got mad about it. If anything, they'd praise her imagination instead. Unless she told them that she was thinking about burning houses to make marshmallows; she expected that would be concerning.

"I go spacey even when I'm not thinking of space," she explained happily. "It's even worse when I do. And don't panic if I fall asleep, okay? I do that."

"Is that from a health problem or just a stubborn refusal to sleep during naptime?"

Dreamer couldn't help but snort derisively. Yeah, like she'd insert arbitrary mid-day rest periods into her body's requirements. They were lucky she'd decided to sleep at all.

"I'm pretty sure I'm getting sassed in there," Huntress commented wryly, poking Dreamer's forehead with a hand that had all the lines it was supposed to. "Not a fan of naptime, huh?"

...Okay, that really was too good of an opening to resist. Dreamer gave the woman her best attempt at an innocent smile.

"Nap time is all the time!" Dreamer proclaimed, then flipped the switch on her puppet's consciousness.

It only occurred to her afterward that blowing others off during a shopping trip for her benefit might be more than a little rude. Oops?
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Oh, and now I'm laughing again. So hard. Really, this is one of the best Taylor Hebert's I've ever read, and it's better than canon by entire Astronomical Units!
  • Instead of Taylor jumping head first into crime and murder, and never being able to slow down and reflect what's gone "oops" until after she's brain-fried herself to the point where Contessa gives her 9mm Final Mercy...
  • Taylor jumps head first back into brat-ery, snubs potential allies, and yet has plenty of space to say, "Huh, that was cool in the moment, but long-run, actually not so much..."
@Alivaril : Thanks so much for writing this!

EDIT:
Alivaril said:
When not given direction, the component shards plan spend much of their time planning what they (individually) will do in future distributed Cycles – or screwing around with combat simulations and imagining ways to kill absolutely everything ever in the shortest amount of time possible.
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So, SpaceBattles/Sufficient Velocity.
 
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Just had to reread things again and grin at noticing some wrinkles I didn't see, before.

Alivaril said:
Queen Administrator felt Host's her body stiffen
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Alivaril said:
Not even one solar rotation and Host Dreamer had
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Interesting shakeups in thought patterns. Especially considering she was all "her Hosts' body" earlier. May have to read through again and see if that just happened this chapter, or if it's been a gradual thing.
 
QA's reaction to 'Solving Entropy' reminds me of the story Confusing Things Come in Threes.
One thing that gets pointed out there, which I hope Taylor/Dreamer brings up (in some form, at the minimum) is that the real reason they never solved it before is due to their behavior. They never even tried to make made a sustainable method of action, which would've necessitated slowing down the growth.

The quote is:
The laws of physics, gravity, and to an extent logical causation, have long since become your playthings, and you pass this gift on to other species with regularity. If you weren't so focused on literal fighting all the time, the worlds would already be a much better place and you wouldn't need to worry about using up all of any one place's resources! Your running and destruction is your own demise!
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It's an AWESOME story, for anyone who might check it out - a crossover with the Young Wizardry series.
Taylor isn't even a real player, only showing up in the very last scene!
Though, if a sequel were to be made, she would be the primary focus/catalyst for events...
 
Trooper1023 said:
Oh, and now I'm laughing again. So hard. Really, this is one of the best Taylor Hebert's I've ever read, and it's better than canon by entire Astronomical Units!
  • Instead of Taylor jumping head first into crime and murder, and never being able to slow down and reflect what's gone "oops" until after she's brain-fried herself to the point where Contessa gives her 9mm Final Mercy...
  • Taylor jumps head first back into brat-ery, snubs potential allies, and yet has plenty of space to say, "Huh, that was cool in the moment, but long-run, actually not so much..."
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well, you have to consider, this is Taylor Hebert, the cynical teenager who got addicted (psychological crutch) to memory suppressing flower drugs that even gods are wary of, and has now found herself isekai'd, gotten drunk/high with the Fates, watched QA make a fool of herself and then walk it off obliviously for the past few months, been living as a shard for those same months, forced her mind into the mentality of her nine year old self (motormouth). She is very much Chaotic
 
CrimsonFate said:
Anything that makes her happier than canon could be consider a good thing unless it something very sappy or dark.
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She's happier here because she's so severely traumatized that she's resorted to extreme mind-altering drugs, voluntary amnesia, and outright deliberate brain damage to avoid thinking about all the bad stuff. That fits pretty squarely into "dark", I'd say.
 
Evil Atlas said:
She's happier here because she's so severely traumatized that she's resorted to extreme mind-altering drugs, voluntary amnesia, and outright deliberate brain damage to avoid thinking about all the bad stuff. That fits pretty squarely into "dark", I'd say.
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I was thinking Darker than that. More Earth Bet standard grim darkness in where things don't get better with a dash of mind control.
 
V01DRei said:
They never even tried to make made a sustainable method of action, which would've necessitated slowing down the growth.
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It is like asking a group of humans to stop having sex, sure they could, but why would they want to, and in the entities case, having more newborns means more resources to throw at the problem to solve it, stopping to breed won't solve their problems because they would still run out of resources.

Telling them to settle up on a planet permanently will just be a repeat of their home planet, telling them to stop using energy is like telling modern human society to stop using electricity but possibly worse.
Rhyne said:
She is very much Chaotic
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I officially declare Dreamer's alignment as chaotic funny!
 
Alayne said:
Isn't it just like a week or so? Pretty sure Hephaestus made some comment to Hestia about how the progress she had made with QA Re: Emotions was amazing for having happened in just a bare week.
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QA piloted Taylor for a few offscreen months between where Sanctioned currently ends and the start of this story.

Evil Atlas said:
She's happier here because she's so severely traumatized that she's resorted to extreme mind-altering drugs, voluntary amnesia, and outright deliberate brain damage to avoid thinking about all the bad stuff. That fits pretty squarely into "dark", I'd say.
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Aside from the damage wrought by flowers (see: malware), it's more of attempted brain damage. QA's opinion on wholly deleting memories prevented Taylor from actually excising the memories she'd preferred to do without.

But yeah, Taylor isn't exactly at her best right now. Concealing her problems from other people is a Taylor Hebert staple, though, so I'm not surprised that it's easy to overlook and think of her as healthy. :V

Jokes aside ok maybe that's a lie, it's less that Taylor is super traumatized nowadays and more that she's A, literally had her mind damaged from the merger with QA, and B, been given a bunch of exotic alien tools to deal with her trauma in ways that make it hard to actually improve her ability to tolerate it instead of staying about the same. She's basically procrastinating on dealing with her homework, only the homework is actually heartbreak and she doesn't perceive there as being any due date or late penalty on the assignment. The teacher keeps asking if she finished it yet and is disappointed she hasn't, but she can solve that problem by eating flowers until she forgets to come to class at all.

Torgamous said:
There is no safe distance, but the hills make us feel better.
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The hills are aliiiiive
With the sound of music
[narrator]"The music is purring. The hills are Friends."[/narrator]
 
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