There's also the question of "allowing for the existence of free will, can a single individual with the highest power 'improve' the universe?"
Would the belief in the ability to do this constitute 'Hubris'?
Is an entity that can do 'anything' capable of 'Hubris'?
All excellent questions, ripe for philosophizing on even outside the context of this fic. However...
Hubris is defined as trying to reach into the realm of gods when one is not, soooooo per definition no.
...I kinda like this answer better.
On that note is there a version of this without the unreadable font posted anywhere?
It... it's
in the header of the chapter. I'm sorry, but I don't know how much more obvious I can make it???
That seems like a very very sad "war." Like, they're completely unable to even indirectly harm each other in any way? The best they can do is ineffectual slap fights?
Oh, they absolutely do still harm and kill each other en masse β we see just such a fight in the opening scenes of Bayonetta 2, in fact. The problem is that while each side can win individual battles, the
war is eternal, because while demons and angels can fight in Purgatorio, they can't access each other's home territory, and therefore cannot actually stop the other from just holing up and rebuilding their forces for a while when they're losing. Not that Inferno is collectively likely to act that strategically, but not every demon is leaping out of hell towards the angels frothing at the mouth, meaning there will always still be more demons down in Inferno that the angels can't reach β just as the inverse is true that there will always be angels who were
not on the battlefield of a major loss, and can build the forces of heaven back up over time. Thus the sort of dual-siege the two realms have going on with each other for the past 10000 years.
Weren't they fighting by proxy? I thought the sages and the witches made contracts with angels and demons and then battled each other in Purgatorio.
Of course, that does run into the brick wall of "once all the proxies for the other side are dead, what next?"
Nope β the sages and witches were in fact coexisting "overseers of time" originally, and weren't even technically enemies, so much as that they simply feared each other and forbid interrelations between their clans. Then the angels came along looking for the Eyes of the World (which the clans had) to revive Jubileus, Balder got corrupted and started up the Witch Hunts (after being tricked into it initially), the Umbra and Lumen went to war, annnnnd pretty much everyone got wiped out in the process. Fun times...
I actually had a hypothesis on why the war hasn't gone anywhere for 1000 years: the differences in structure between Paradiso and Inferno.
Paradiso, on paper, has fewer total forces than Inferno. But Inferno does not really have any sort of central authority or hierarchy. Rather, it's every demon for themselves, as well as whatever followers the higher level demons can scrape up for themselves.
(This is sorta-supported by the fact that Bayonetta 2 does not give Gomorrah a rank. A title of renown, but not a rank. Angels all get ranks, from low to high.)
Hence, Paradiso repeatedly makes gains into Inferno, only for the demons to make a temporary alliance and throw them back out. With the immediate common threat posed by Paradiso gone, Inferno once again falls into fractious infighting, and Paradiso can lick its wounds and launch another attack.
And so on and so forth.
...so much for that hypothesis.
You aren't actually incorrect! Paradiso IS considerably more structured and organized than Inferno, which I've noted previously over on the SB thread, and does very likely have less total forces. However, there's also a bit of lore from the notebook in the first game, which states "the inhabitants of each realm are unable to interfere with each other's affairs" β and, as this specifies the inhabitants of
each realm are barred from doing so with the others, I decided to interpret the statement as such.
Now, mind, that information is coming from a human β Luka's father, specifically β who isn't completely in the know about how angels and demons work, even if he's very well read. However, pretty much all of his other information
does ultimately turn out to be correct... and, notably, we never see angels or demons enter the human world proper. We see angels in Purgatorio with the human world as a backdrop, but they never make themselves visible to ordinary people as any more than shimmering outlines, and it's seemingly the same with demons, to the point that even when Gomorrah tears his way out of Inferno and into the NYC skyline, he
still remains in Purgatorio, even though he'd have essentially no reason to care about being seen. Similarly, angels are never seen in Inferno except when Balder summons them, and demons are never seen in Paradiso except when Bayonetta or Jeanne summons them, which together seems like some pretty strong evidence for the above conclusion. The Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages seem to be the sole exception to this rule, being inherently part of multiple realms, and even then requiring out-of-the-way portals to travel to and from any of them except Purgatorio.
...of course, this is just the way I'm personally deciding to interpret all that, and could easily be invalidated by Bayonetta 3 if it ever comes out. Hopefully, however this at least helps to explain my thought process.
and to the entity who said Jubilina (flairina+jubileus) had a godly figure, hide. Jubilina is wholesome and cute, and will not be lewded without her express and direct permission, and to ensure this, a host of war angels is being led by me, and i have minmaxed my everything.
judgement is coming. and it is coming at sufficient velocity.
Lady Jubileus, Pingas' talking about going all 'Ye Olde Testament' on 'fast enough' again...
Pingas, kindly put those angels back where you found them. Hyanblade, stop being a tattletale.
(Side note, I rather like "Jubilina" as a third person reference; flows better than "Flairbileus" or other variants I've seen. Turnbull on Discord also suggested "Youbileus" as a second person reference, which I honestly find hilarious.
)
Threadmarked! Heh, you always come up with such creative ways to do these.
This ought to be longer and have a proper ending, but doing it right would require a bunch of research. And possibly spoilers for the fic. So you get the "everything I know about Bayonetta I learned from this thread" version.
No worries, I'll fill in for you β in the end, Jubileus!me finds out that the power was actually inside me all along! I just had to believe!
(...and also beat it out of Loptr, who was hiding it from my awareness the entire time and trying to absorb it all into his own being, but same difference.)
Thoughts on the slider format? I wanted the rhythm you get from page breaksβand to avoid spreading 180 words across 70 linesβand this was what I came up with. Might not work so well for mobile users.
I think it works pretty well! It gives off the same impression as those chunky little picture books I remember from when I was really little, which I imagine is exactly what you were going for. Works fine on mobile for me, so I'm gonna say it's a success.
Still haven't played Bayonetta, but I love the heck out of this fic.
I'm glad! Always a lovely sort of compliment to hear. <3
I love what that says about how you peaced out in the last chapter, if Enochian is a structurally formal language. How surprised were Rodin, Bayonetta, and Jeanne to hear this highly formal language get twisted into "See ya!", I wonder?
It might have been translated into
"UNTIL WE MEET EACH OTHER AGAIN."
Could be seen as either a threat or a promise, from an outside perspective.
Heh, I actually have an official answer for this. See, I can't use the Fraktur font/unicode characters over on FFN, so I translate any of Jubileus!me's centered speech/proclamations into actual Enochian as best I can. The translation I went with for that line ended up being "
BAEOUIBE NOAN GI C", which essentially should translate into "God Be With You" β AKA the original, unshortened form of "Goodbye".
Whether or not that's what Bayo and company actually heard, or what they actually thought I was trying to express by saying that, I'll leave up to you to interpret.
