Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)

[Waela]

I don't think anyone actually has problems with Heart Flowers? More that some people are convinced they're important, and others either insist they're not or not exactly relevant. The main logical issue was using them mid-combat, but that's been solved by the fact items can be used while transformed. Like, I'm only convinced they're important because that's how Sailor Moon works. It'd be weird if Heart Flowers didn't mean anything. I don't think anybody wanted to make Heart Flowers into a stressful topic, and I'm really sorry about my part in that.

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I don't really care if they're important or not. I don't really care about the mechanics behind them. I come to this thread to unwind and lately I've been leaving it more stressed than I went in. This is my comfort fic/thread. It's generally one of the best parts of my day. If one small part of it has to be removed to keep it that way, since the problem isn't getting solved, well, then it has to be removed. I don't want to dread coming to this thread, and currently I kind of do. I appreciate the apology but unless the pattern changes, I'm going to stand by what I said.

 

[Angelform]

I don't think anyone actually has problems with Heart Flowers? More that some people are convinced they're important, and others either insist they're not or not exactly relevant. The main logical issue was using them mid-combat, but that's been solved by the fact items can be used while transformed. Like, I'm only convinced they're important because that's how Sailor Moon works. It'd be weird if Heart Flowers didn't mean anything. I don't think anybody wanted to make Heart Flowers into a stressful topic, and I'm really sorry about my part in that.

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I have a problem with Heart Flowers. Two actually.
The first in that the GM is spending time and word-count on something that appears to have little significance. The second is a great many reader posts being spent on something that appears to have little significance.

The argument that Heart Flowers actually matter runs into the problem of the glasses being something we could easily have missed. The shop's inventory is randomly rolled and nothing about the glasses suggested they would be more than a gimmick. Plus the fact that the GM has to come up with new flowers as we meet people, rather than having them planned in advance.

At best they are a waste of time. At worst they are an annoying distraction.

 

[GrayGriffin]

Heart Flowers were mentioned as a metaphysical thing that exists in another Precure series, so I assume Lunaryon already had some idea they might come up. Presumably if we didn't roll the Eyes of the Heart, we'd eventually encounter those Precure and learn about Heart Flowers from them in some way. Plus for all we know Eyes of the Heart are a very common thing to get stocked in the shop, considering we literally were able to buy two pairs.

 

[Silverking]

The Director is currently on-route to speak with the Diet about an emergency issue.

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Genjuurou: Something about "is cryptid another word for yokai?" and "exactly how many non-humans live in Japan?" and "being on the wrong side of history for centuries."

"That's fine." Mercury says, with a smile, "We can handle the fighting, but this is why MCAT was formed, so we decided to make sure that we kept you in the loop as much as possible."

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Genjuurou: Well, at least the illegal vigilantes view us as a legitimate organization...which is more than can be said of some members of the Diet.

Unsure of what is happening, Sailor Moon keeps an eye on the creature, trying to make sure that it isn't planning on doing anything, but after a second of watching the girl, it turns, and rockets off to the south with a single flap, blurring out into the distance towards the ocean.

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Night 1
*The Nightgaunt taps on the window outside Naru's room. Naru feels no aggression from it. She slowly comes over and opens the windo*
Naru: W-what are you doing here?
*The Nightgaunt sets a rock on the windowsill that smells of seaweed. It has a rune engraved upon it and still holds some magic.*
Naru: Is...this for me? Um, thank you, I guess.
*The Nightgaunt flies off into the night.*

Night 2
*The Nightgaunt appears in front of Naru's window again. It is carrying an Animated Scrubbing Brush from the Night Market, which it sets on the windowsill.*
Naru: ...I think the girls mentioned something about Pandora sending her followers out to retrieve Life Energy; maybe this is something similar. Thank you.
*The Nightgaunt flies off into the night.*
Naru: Huh, it's like a little raven bringing me shiny baubles. It's almost charming.

Night 3
*The Nightgaunt appears in front of Naru's window again. It is carrying an unconscious 5-year-old girl.*
Naru: ...I probably should have seen this coming. Put the child back where you found it, please.
*The Nightgaunt gives a little head-tilt.*
Naru: No human sacrifices. Put it back.
*The Nightgaunt hangs its head in shame before it flies off into the night.*

 

[Kkutlord]

I have a problem with Heart Flowers. Two actually.
The first in that the GM is spending time and word-count on something that appears to have little significance. The second is a great many reader posts being spent on something that appears to have little significance.

The argument that Heart Flowers actually matter runs into the problem of the glasses being something we could easily have missed. The shop's inventory is randomly rolled and nothing about the glasses suggested they would be more than a gimmick. Plus the fact that the GM has to come up with new flowers as we meet people, rather than having them planned in advance.

At best they are a waste of time. At worst they are an annoying distraction.

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It sounds like the only two answers is to either remove them, as they're canon to Pretty Cure and… boy did that take me too long to realize why messing with Heart Flowers is bad, Desertians. The other is to make them more obviously important, again I point at Desertains. Just revealing everything at once isn't fun, and the whole "Purify the not-gaunt" implied a whole bunch. It probably will become progressively more important, especially now that the Sailor Senshi have reason to consider it actually important.

 

[memoryofglory]

It sounds like the only two answers is to either remove them, as they're canon to Pretty Cure and… boy did that take me too long to realize why messing with Heart Flowers is bad, Desertians. The other is to make them more obviously important, again I point at Desertains. Just revealing everything at once isn't fun, and the whole "Purify the not-gaunt" implied a whole bunch. It probably will become progressively more important, especially now that the Sailor Senshi have reason to consider it actually important.

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Okay I just want to say that purifying the Night-Gaunt doesn't seem to imply anything Heart Flower related. We already knew that Youkai have Heart Flowers, and if that isn't what this creature was before it became a Youma, it's at least probably also descended from Pandora given Naru's feelings toward it. Unless you're still insisting on the 'we're absolutely sure Youma lack Heart Flowers' thing and think that Naru just gave this thing back it's Heart Flower, I have no idea what big revelation you're talking about.

We didn't check the Youma before it got purified, so we have absolutely no data on how Terra Healing Escalation changed the Heart Flower. I mean, we can make the easy guess that the Youma's Heart Flower was at least sickly/corrupted before Naru hit it, but we don't have actual confirmation of even that much.
And Moon/Terra Healing Escalation being able to fix soul damage that's reflected in Heart Flowers is kind of obvious? That's MHE's whole schtick, and Terra's similar name theme doesn't look like a coincidence.

Now if you've actually got info from the relevant Precure show about Heart Flowers, we'd all be happy to hear about it. There's no point in avoiding 'revealing everything at once,' it's not like any of us have bothered to avoid sharing spoilers for any of the other aspects of these crossover settings.

 

[JmonsterNEO]

Bad news: Terra Healing Escalation is not a solution to Youma.

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What do you mean, the Creature that flew off wasn't a Youma, Terra Healing Escalation just doesn't kill them, it certainly doesn't seem to be hostile anymore, we just don't know what the hell it got turned into.

 

[silentorphan]

What do you mean, the Creature that flew off wasn't a Youma, Terra Healing Escalation just doesn't kill them, it certainly doesn't seem to be hostile anymore, we just don't know what the hell it got turned into.

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It wasn't hostile to us. How about to squishy non-magicals?

Heck, I'm a little worried about what kind of crap the Mandate might get up to trying to corral that thing, considering the last time they tried to "contain" a situation in a police station.

 

[Zendrelax]

I have a problem with Heart Flowers. Two actually.
The first in that the GM is spending time and word-count on something that appears to have little significance. The second is a great many reader posts being spent on something that appears to have little significance.

The argument that Heart Flowers actually matter runs into the problem of the glasses being something we could easily have missed. The shop's inventory is randomly rolled and nothing about the glasses suggested they would be more than a gimmick. Plus the fact that the GM has to come up with new flowers as we meet people, rather than having them planned in advance.

At best they are a waste of time. At worst they are an annoying distraction.

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With regards to the second point, I think it would be more accurate to say that they aren't important yet. Honestly, I think the glasses were in the shop as a reference to a series in the multicross, even though they aren't relevant to what we're doing at the moment. Like @GrayGriffin mentioned, and as has been mentioned before, they're an element from Heartcatch Precure, where the Heart Flowers and the associated Tree of Hearts are directly relevant to the main plot. Once we start interacting with other Heartcatch stuff more regularly, we could expect to see the Heart Flowers become more important to Usagi's story than they are currently.

Of course, that is only a possibility, and I am speculating. But considering that the Tree of Hearts is also the only candidate I can think of for that Rainbow Tree we heard about a while back, I do think the possibility is fairly strong. We have had the opportunity to pursue that independent of our involvement with the Heartcatch story for a while now.

At present, though, it should probably remain a smaller part of the story. At the moment the glasses are really just a tool Usagi can use to do Intrigue better, They should be used where it makes sense to use them. Whether that be for little jokes, like the Kintoleski's "Flower" being some gold bars, or more narrative beats like the Not?Gaunt Flower representing Silence, or Uaagi's being basically the Silver Crystal.

 

[JmonsterNEO]

I've been thinking, what if our new friend just randomly pops up to help us out, and he just seemingly appears out of nowhere and scares the crap out of everyone.

 

[Zendrelax]

I've been thinking, what if our new friend just randomly pops up to help us out, and he just seemingly appears out of nowhere and scares the crap out of everyone.

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Gaunty Boi is going to be scaring people no matter what. He might as well lend a hand while doing it.

 

[kokuenDG]

if you're gonna participate in a thread there's a very important thing to remember.
And that is, of course, to ensure that you're participating in a productive manner and debating in good faith. That's very vital to the overall health of the thread that you decide to participate in, so I urge everyone to keep that in mind moving forward.

Those that have not kept this in mind have been handled. So...yeah. Please police yourselves so we don't have to come in here with the hammer.

 

[Tzaphquiel]

Hm, yes, the Senshi should try to trace and monitor the Night Gaunt to ensure that it will not harm civilians. It is their responsibility, as they chose to attempt... rehabilitating the creature.

 

[JmonsterNEO]

Hm, yes, the Senshi should try to trace and monitor the Night Gaunt to ensure that it will not harm civilians. It is their responsibility, as they chose to attempt... rehabilitating the creature.

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Ami: Wait, it just disappeared off of my sensors.
Usagi: What?! How?
Rei: Where could it have gone?
Naru: Didn't you say it's heart flower meant 'silence' Usagi?
Usagi: I believe I did, yes.
Naru: So that could mean it's more than just quiet.
Gaunt: You are quite right on your assumptions on that.
Team Moon: *all screaming*

 

[tygerbright]

I feel like it should be noted that Night-Gaunts are one of the few mythos creatures to not be totally evil and malevolent, creepy and dickish in that they take people to other places without communicating and do random tickle attacks. But they serve (served?) Nordens who in the mythos was actually one of the few forces opposing all the insanity, and was also irl a Celtic deity of storms and hunting.

Though then again I'd probably say it would be wise to take a massive grain of salt on anything wholly from Lovecraft's works as they are absurdly recent compared to any sort of mythology that would form the basis for other creatures.

 

[FictionPack]

Clearly the freed or newly created neutral creature went to the quietest place in Japan.

 

[Elder Haman]

Heart Flowers were mentioned as a metaphysical thing that exists in another Precure series, so I assume Lunaryon already had some idea they might come up. Presumably if we didn't roll the Eyes of the Heart, we'd eventually encounter those Precure and learn about Heart Flowers from them in some way. Plus for all we know Eyes of the Heart are a very common thing to get stocked in the shop, considering we literally were able to buy two pairs.

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Well, there have been two occasions in which the GM has volunteered the heart flowers of characters around us. When we first met Inuyasha, and again when we noticed a girl with a wilted flower.

Those are plot hooks that the GM has fed us, and we have not followed up on the wilted flower girl yet, though we probably should.

On the other hand, we started asking for heart flowers in other situations, and maybe those other situations are not really where the GM wanted to go with them.

So I don't think we should ignore the Heart Flowers hooks, but maybe we shouldn't be pushing to check every single thing to cross our path.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I don't really care if they're important or not. I don't really care about the mechanics behind them. I come to this thread to unwind and lately I've been leaving it more stressed than I went in. This is my comfort fic/thread. It's generally one of the best parts of my day. If one small part of it has to be removed to keep it that way, since the problem isn't getting solved, well, then it has to be removed. I don't want to dread coming to this thread, and currently I kind of do. I appreciate the apology but unless the pattern changes, I'm going to stand by what I said.

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I quite sincerely apologize for my part in the pattern, but I am optimistic that it will change.

Given the 'Lustful' trait appears to give a boost to her Int, I'm pretty sure it's not making her boy/girl crazy. It probably does something different from what you'd expect.

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The Intrigue boost is taken directly from Crusader Kings, whose trait/stat mechanics heavily inspire this quest. The Lustful trait in that game has two main effects: increased fertility and increased Intrigue, with the latter probably meant to reflect greater sociability, greater skill at seduction, and so on.

Now, here I'm not sure the underlying logic is quite so solid, but I have no problem with the idea of Makoto getting an Intrigue boost. The trick is, most CK3 traits the characters have show themselves pretty clearly.

We see Usagi showing Emotional Composure these days, and we've seen her be Compassionate and Forgiving before and likely will again.

We see Makoto being Brave and Compassionate (this gets her into a lot of fights with the top dogs of her respective schools, and nowadays with demons). We see her being Just (that is, committed to doing what she regards as right and honorable even if it's a bad idea for her personally). We see her keeping her Calm surprisingly well given what a life she's had.

But on further reflection, it's a bit surprising, in terms of "deviation from character archetype" and "deviation from observed traits" that Usagithirst is more noticeable in the quest than Makotothirst. Though to be fair, Usagi gets about 5-10 times more screen time as the viewpoint character than Makoto does.

On the other hand, it may tie into hints that Makoto's relationship with this timeline's version of Senpai was rather different and ended differently- see in particular some of Makoto's thoughts around Ranma, which at the moment I lack the time to dig up. Makoto may be suppressing.

So we blame Pluto?
We blame Pluto.

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You know me so well!

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She has access to atemporal or future information, and I strongly suspect she's actually the original Princess of Pluto, in which case she's almost certainly quite a bit more powerful than we are at the moment.

In any given situation where she is present, who else could possibly be responsible for anything that happens?

Well, there have been two occasions in which the GM has volunteered the heart flowers of characters around us. When we first met Inuyasha, and again when we noticed a girl with a wilted flower.

Those are plot hooks that the GM has fed us, and we have not followed up on the wilted flower girl yet, though we probably should.

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"Try to find the wilted heart flower girl" or "follow up on that guy whose heart flower looked weird like a Vileplume from Pokemon" would be interesting write-ins, though I suspect the Intrigue DC would be well beyond us given that we saw them weeks ago. Though I think wilted heart flower girl attends our school, which means finding her wouldn't be that hard, and Usagi might be able to use nigh-superhuman Diplomacy skills to socially network her way to an answer.

On the other hand, we started asking for heart flowers in other situations, and maybe those other situations are not really where the GM wanted to go with them.

So I don't think we should ignore the Heart Flowers hooks, but maybe we shouldn't be pushing to check every single thing to cross our path.

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Yeah, I think that's best.

I'm genuinely curious about the origins of heart flowers and all that, but I don't mind waiting indefinitely for those mysteries to be revealed, personally.

 

[JmonsterNEO]

Though then again I'd probably say it would be wise to take a massive grain of salt on anything wholly from Lovecraft's works as they are absurdly recent compared to any sort of mythology that would form the basis for other creatures.

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Plus the original, purely Lovecraft version of the Night Gaunt is probably also racist in some way, you look deep enough into the man's works and you'll see how racially charged most of his stuff is.

 

[Valmond]

Anything in Lovecraft mythos should be taken with a huge grain of salt consider that racist (or just ludicrous) views the author had.
Also, some of the monsters come of as lot more sympathetic if examined through their actions, motivations, and context they exist in, instead of the biased lense of the narrator/author.

 

[Ternasta]

Plus the original, purely Lovecraft version of the Night Gaunt is probably also racist in some way, you look deep enough into the man's works and you'll see how racially charged most of his stuff is.

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Actually they were based on a nightmare he'd had when he was a child. Explains why tickling was a part of their terror, nightmares are weird.

 

[Winged One]

I heard that Lovecraft eventually got over himself on the racism. Did his later work reflect that?

 

[Ternasta]

I heard that Lovecraft eventually got over himself on the racism. Did his later work reflect that?

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I believe so, at least he seemed to relax on things, but it's not really the right place to discuss him until Usagi stops playing human.
Although given her childhood friend is Shub-Niggurath, I wonder if Umino is Nodens reborn and the nightgaunt was looking for their boss when it was twisted by Cendrillion.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I really don't think this is a genuine Lovecraft crossover, guys.

I think that because Lovecraft is a famous author, and night-gaunts are a monster he made up, there's a lot of fan-art of them. And when Lunaryon trawls the Internet looking for "big scary monster" pictures, night-gaunt pictures show up.

 

[silentorphan]

I really don't think this is a genuine Lovecraft crossover, guys.

I think that because Lovecraft is a famous author, and night-gaunts are a monster he made up, there's a lot of fan-art of them. And when Lunaryon trawls the Internet looking for "big scary monster" pictures, night-gaunt pictures show up.

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"What do you mean this isn't a Monster Hunter crossover? What about that effing huge sword?!"

Maybe we should start donating to the QM's Patreon or Ko-Fi or whatever so she has enough money to commission original artwork for this thread and Questers won't always start chasing after the image sources.