At 12:01 AM 5/1/00 -0400, DB Sommer wrote:
Wow! Only slightly over a week late for this one:
...and only slightly under a week for me to reply to your commentary. Our
mills grind slow but sure.
I've had this finished for over a month now, but was hoping to make more
progress than I have on Chapter Thirteen before releasing it. My
obsession
with Utena has prevented that, however.
Yes, but since it is Utena, that's all right.
Yeah, but it's post-series Utena, which limits the readership potential. ^^;;
Like the crucible of Dis
In which those sinners offensive to God
Are burned eternally with righteous fires
That is how fierce burns brothers' hatred!
Which places it slightly below that of teh rage you get when standing up
your girlfriend. Believe me, I know both and which is worse.
Hell, indeed, hath no fury like a girlfriend spurned.
I knew those lines before my consciousness was born in the
So, utilizing first person for this chapter for Mardruk. The change works,
in this case.
I hope so. :)
forges of the Sanguis Mekhos. Even before I could think, learn,
feel pain,
get a poker face so I wouldn't keep losing all of my cash at cards
No one to play cards with anyway. All Lethiaphan ever wanted to play was
"Go Fish!"
In me is the memoriam of Dasim. Whatever may have been
preserved, far more has undoubtedly been lost. I hold the songs
and poems and stories of Dasim, the images of their painting and
sculpture and architecture, the secrets of their technology...
not of the creation of hierodules such as I, though, for my
mothers and fathers did not see it fit
Don't know is I'd use the 'it' there. Used to seeing 'not see fit' I
suppose, since the other doesn't seem grammatically wrong.
Hrm. I'm in agreement with you; I'll change it.
I wrote that. I do not think it is very good. I have never
shown it to anyone. When this is over, I will share it with my
Makoto.
Ah, so he was created to be independently minded enough to create poetry.
Helps to understand why Lethiaphan was able to be corrupted as well if he
too was that far along with an artificial intelligence.
Somewhat similiar to Kahlia in OVA2 (Kahlia--Why EH OVA2 Doesn't Completely
Suck) in that way. The more independent a personality a Demon-God has, the
easier it seemingly is for it to become corrupt.
I am reminded of the warring brothers, and of the songs that
sing their tragedy, because I am trying at this moment to kill my
own brother. If I may call him my brother any longer, this mad,
faceless thing that drips darkness that burns in the sun.
Lethiaphan: It's not my fault. Society's to blame.
Makoto: Don't worry. We can work it out. It's all in my new book, "Our
Demon-Gods, Ourselves". And if that doesn't fix you, I'll make your head
blow up.
Both of us are in our elements in this battle; he in water,
I in air. My lightning is absorbed by shields of water; I cannot
reach him. Yet I am more maneuverable, and he cannot reach me
either. He makes few attacks; what ones he does would fly wide
of me even if I did not dodge.
Afura: Darn. Now why didn't I do that when I attacked the oversized hunk of
metal?
Utena: Because that didn't fit the plot.
Afura: Hey, you're not even supposed to be _in_ this series.
Utena: You forget how obsessed the author is.
Does some remnant of my brother remain, trying to keep me
>from harm? Or is there some other purpose to these tactics? We
are both damaged, but I far less than he; all that keeps him
moving, I believe, is whatever rides him. I must conclude that
the strategy is not a conflict between my brother and his captor;
it is a concerted effort to change hosts.
Oh? Why would he assume that? Because Lethy isn't coming close to hurting
him?
Basically.
In Makoto's mind--our bond cannot be broken so long as we
both exist--I can see that he has never thought of my brother as
a him. Only as a faceless it. I will not become an "it" to him.
I will not let that happen.
'"I'll redesign my outer casing to look like Ifurita. That'll do it."
"At least until things get to a certain point of intimacy, and by then..."
The prey is caught; he stands upon the waves, helpless, as
the lightning writhes around his body in a burning web. A flat
keening fills the air--he is trying to scream, but no longer has
the ability to express pain.
All he had left was the ability to give the finger, and even then he could
only do it with the non-trident hand.
And even that was tragically impotent, due to Mardruk not being programmed
with 20th-century sign language.
I do not have my spear any longer; where it is now, I cannot
say, if it even remains at all. So I form a spear of cogent
lightning from the blade on my remaining arm;
Shoot. Been so long since I read the physical description of him, I forgot
what Mardruk looked like. Forgot about the blade on the arm.
This is the problem of serials. ^^;;
Oh, Leth,
I don't know as I care for abbrieveating the name like that. It just
doesn't sound right coming from the Mardruk.
Hrm. I'll have to disagree on that point; the use of the diminutive is
essential to the tone I want. The fact that it doesn't sound right is
partially my intention.
oh my brother, youngest, fairest, most beautiful
of us all,
"Or so you would have been if you had had a face instead of a videoscreen
and had something other than seweed looking stuff as your hair. In
hindsight, I suppose you really weren't much to look at. Downright ugly, in
fact. I guess I was wrong about you. But I've been out of commision for a
number of years, so I suppose I can be forgiven for that."
"You're no great looker yourself, you four-eyed, one-armed freak."
"Ahh, c'mere, you. I can't stay mad at you for long."
"Oneesan!"
<cue violins>
Samm? How will they explain
how brothers, once so close,
Could come to such a state?
Like this:
Sage: They just didn't get along after a while. Nossir. Not one little bit.
See? It's easy.
Yes, but too short. Epic poets are paid by the line, after all, just like
Dickens.
The poet Othya, whose name is unrecorded, who is called by
the name of the city in which his great saga was composed;
Which, by some sheer coincidence, was his real name.
Unfortunately, no one knew this, and so scholars debated for years over the
possibilities, culminating in the great Pinkie Jones/Cedric the
IVth/"Edbob" War a century after the Holy Wars, which is considerably less
well-known, mostly due to the great embarassment of everyone who
participated for the two and a half minutes it was officially conducted.
The lightning hums death's harmony upon my arm;
"Curiously, it sounds a lot like an Enya song. Coincidence? I wonder."
o/~ Sail away, sail away, sail away...
What do you need the most, my love? What do you desire?
Not the songs of Dasim; no, not them. Take this, my last gift to
you. My love. The lightning spears towards the dark clouds
above. My love and his friends are far away, they have reached
the shallows now--they are in no danger.
However, Mardruk's ability of prophecy was just as crappy as Afrua's was
earlier, and Makoto and the others stepped on a bunch of poisonous sea
urchins, killing them all instantly.
Jinnai, without opposition, went on to rule the world after discovering a
way to harness the power of human love to produce unstable antimatter.
Nanami, Perra and Deva ran off together to shack up in a shameless display
of pandering to the fan's erotic fantasies.
The bodies of Makoto and the others bloated, turned purple, and were
eventually eaten by carnivorous baby seals.
Wakaba didn't even appear in the fic, but we decided to mention her anyway.
We like Wakaba.
He felt the surging pain of Mardruk's dying, and, the last
thoughts of love rushed into his brain; riding on them were
numbers and equations and diagrams, facts and figures and
theories... he couldn't hold them all, his skull was going to
burn out and explode into fragments that would litter the
all-pervading whiteness of the lightning strike...
Hmm. Downloaded something useful. Not about units like him though. I wonder
what.
"Recipes... it's all RECIPES?"
Lethiaphan bobbed to the surface. What little flesh
remained upon it was blackened by lightning; muck and fish skins
and seaweed still draped it in places. Most of its surface
seemed taken up by the burning, oily substance. Makoto knew that
it was... alive. That it had been Lethiaphan's rider and
Mardruk's killer. It was the cold darkness he had felt earlier;
the great devourer.
Perhaps capitalized 'Great Devourer'?
Hrm. No, I don't want to use it as a proper noun.
A psychic scream of agony and hate battered at his mind;
then, in a flash, the dark shape had concentrated itself into a
downward-pointing arrow, and fled into the cool, dark, oceanic
depths.
Bummer. Now it can come back again and harrass them later. (possibly)
Well, dramatic necessity requires that if it escapes, it's only so it can
come back later. :)
He expected Shayla to express some enthusiasm; instead, she
turned an agonized gaze upon him. "Makoto..."
"Take the boat to shore, Alielle," he said, almost a
whisper.
Curious. Why is he trying so hard to avoid her?
He's trying to keep everyone at a distance, for numerous reasons.
Makoto shook his head. "I didn't take nearly the battering
you two did, and you're still standing."
"We," Shayla said, "are Muldoon Priestesses. You are not."
The lack of breasts is the dead giveaway.
Well, it didn't give him away when he posed as Princess Fatora for about
four episodes... :)
The trees
themselves had the same familiar-but-alien quality common to most
of the flora in El-Hazard (the fauna, too, for that matter); it
all seemed a little too colourful, too exotic. Little blue and
white puffball flowers grew amongst the roots of the tall trees;
Jinnai had irritably kicked at one soon after entering the woods,
and it had left an ugly stain on the cuffs of his trousers which
made his mood even worse.
Come to think of it, unless the bugrom have been washing his clothing for
him, his clothes should be pretty crappy by now with what he's been
through, unless he changed to El-Hazard garb.
Actually, I noted in one of the earliest chapters that the Bugrom have a
"weaver" caste, which Jinnai's been using to produce duplicates of his
school uniform. He undoubtedly brought a number of them along on the
journey.
Even the catatonic Nahato, firmly ensconced beneath the arm
of the largest Bugrom, didn't seem to be having too bad a time.
Yeah. Right. When was the last time he relived himself without his clothing
on, I wonder. He's going to be pretty rank before too long.
Yeah, but he's catatonic, so he won't care.
At least the mountains were the same;
except for the lime colored snow.
"Does it taste like lime, Jinnai?"
"Bleah. No. Apparently, the yaks in El-Hazard have lime-coloured urine.
Bleah. Bleah."
The certainty that his eternal foe was no longer in any
position to be his eternal foe left him feeling... nothing. It
was something he'd long ago prepared himself for, as soon as he
realized Makoto was his adversary; every adversary must
inevitably be vanquished.
I like that. Very Jinnaiish.
Gotta love Jinnai, the adorable little megalomaniac.
"Don't you serve the Bugrom Queen?"
"For now," he replied, casting more furtive glances at the
distant Deva.
Eh? Why? I thought Deva acknowledged that she served him.
Yeah, but he may not believe it, or he may be lying... or he may be
confused. :)
Further back, Deva paused in her examination of the flora.
"The sun, the earth, the scents of the air... why are they so
unfamiliar?
Because you've never seen or smelled them before?
Hrm. Gonna have to make clearer what I mean; Deva's basically wondering
why everything seems _too_ unfamiliar. *clickety-clack*
Should have killed him, by all rights; but for the changes
made in the passage from Earth to El-Hazard, he'd be fish food
right now.
Of course if not for the changes, he'd never have confronted Lethiaphan in
the first place.
Well, he might have; this is Fujisawa, after all. :)
Well, this is nice, he thought. You've done pretty well for
yourself, Fujisawa, much better than you ever did back on Earth.
A nubile young girlfriend (fiancee? They had to have a talk
about that whole marriage thing), super powers, no more pangs
when you can't get a drink, no more desperate cravings for
cigarettes... So why don't you feel happier? Why aren't you
enjoying this more?
Probably going to die soon. That's why. ^_^
Or have something horrible happen to him, like being forced to watch the
Utena live-action musical all the way through.
"Oh. Are they dangerous?"
"Not at the moment."
Wait until the black stuff gets them, though.
<theme from "Jaws" begins to play>
Not, after all, a cliff-face. A door.
Oh, fine. End it there. The ole' 'Doorway coming out of nowhere suddenly
leading to who knows what' gimmick was always a favorite of mine. :)
"And let's see what's behind Giant Mysterious Doorway #1..."
Have to admit, not much of a drop off after Lethiaphan's final hurrah. I
thought there would be some downtime or feeling of accomplishment over
eliminating one of the major bad guys and primary muscle in this fic, but
things pretty much rushed on without a second thought about it. Just didn't
feel like that much of an accomplishment, I guess.
Lethiaphan was only the vessel. :)
Still, it makes sense
>from the story's perspective, and chasing the giant inkstream to the
mysterious doorway was a bit of an unexepected twist. Jinnai and company
moving right along too. Hope to see more of this soon.
Depends. Working on it would leave me with less time to work on Utena
fanfiction. :)
Nice work.
Thanks. Nice commentary, as always; half of it's insightful, the other
half makes me laugh until I snort cheese crackers onto my keyboard. Wait,
no, that's bad.
Ciao,
-Alan Harnum