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Reply Subj: Stirring the pot? Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 at 07:46:05 pm EDT (Viewed 770 times) | |||||||
Quote: Sorry for the late reply, I've been behind schedule all afternoon.I reckon I'm a good week late now. Quote: The last person to give Lara Night a difficult choice like that ended up being taken along for the ride - and she's not above doing the same to Dark Thugos, teleporting him along and dropping him on Slithis' head. Not terribly effective for neutralizing him, but definitely a nuisance on par with the Fighting School of CrazySugarFreakBoy! It's Thugos' fault for suggesting that she can assault him.One reason for taking Lara to the edge of the Parodyverse is to make it harder to do teleportation tricks. That's what Thugos meant when he was saying that Lara's current command of her powers couldn't get to to Liu Xi in time to help. And of course, Thugos himself can teleport and can probably resist being snatched; otherwise he'd have been taken out by Goldeneyed years ago. And Thugos was genuinely offering to enter into combat with Lara if she chose that route. I'm guessing she wouldn't fall for it. Quote: And it's not because she likes reoccurring themes, it's because she hates being told what's impossible and what her only choices are. Whenever she's told that, she'll usually defy that and make up her own choices.The drama here comes from Lara facing difficult decisions with a major villain twisting things and the siren call of the wonderwall. On the bright side Thugos is genuinely interested to see what she's going to do next. Quote: She could also feel the need to bring Thugos to Slithis to inform the latter that Thugos probably lied and won't honor their bargain anyhow, and that Thugos also set up Lara to become powerful enough to destroy him. Then she could watch them argue while her friends free themselves. That's not necessarily the only path - I'm just driving the point home that Lara isn't afraid to create her own options.As we'll see in the final segment, there's a very specific transaction between Slithis and Thugos, for a very specific set of goals. Quote: Unfortunately Liu Xi doesn't have the experience to do that without prompting, usually. At the very least, maybe Chiaki can inform her that if Slithis is the god of necromancers, that means even if she wed him she has to be dead, or they can't be wed for all eternity - and that's probably also what he means by saving her from that creature in the void. He's probably actually going to kill them all even after she says yes. He didn't say he'd release them, he said he'd let them "go free". And even then he's probably a good liar anyhow.These mystic pact deals tend to preclude lies but not deceptions. Quote: I also had to laugh at Chiaki's strategy because I believe it actually has a name - it's the martial arts "Crouching Tiger" strategy, isn't it? Conserve your energy, don't fight, appear to be motionless and unimportant, and then strike viciously and mercilessly when the opportunity presents itself.As we'll see again next time, Chiaki clearly understands the technique. Quote: Oh, and after this wonderwall has been built up so much, I have a feeling it'll turn out not to be so dramatic after all. Like it'll probably raise more questions than it answers - it's the *beginning* of a quest, not the end. Oh, it'll change anyone who reads it all right, it just might take a lifetime. Or another possibility is someone got there first, and will turn Lara away.I think that "the writing on the wall" is certainly only the start. But it's knowledge that can't be unlearned or forgotten. It's like discovering sex - the discovery changes a person's outlook forever. It's like suddenly learning to see in a universe of blind people - your perspective can never be the same and you're very different from everyone else. It's like taking a caveman, educating him to college level, then dumping him back in his cave - he can't possibly be the same and under some circumstances he's become a shaman or a god. Whatever it is though, it can't be ignored. Those who make it as far as the wall (very few) are either driven mad by what they comprehend, are absorbed to actually become part of the wall, or return altered and empowered. Thugos calls these people the new gods, to differentiate them from those pantheons accreted from worshipper belief. Quote: Actually all those questions come from what Dark Thugos said himself. That the wall will change anyone who sees it. But what if everyone who has seen the wall was seeking change? In that case it wouldn't change Lara because she doesn't seek change, she seeks answers - so in her case, she would gain knowledge, not change.It's always a possibility. I don't want to write an absolute set of rules because that would take away the wonder part of the wonderwall. Quote: After all, you don't see Thugos volunteering to go see the wall himself. I believe it may be because he wants nothing from it other than to possess it. That means he'll get nothing from it.Thugos has been to the wall. He's become a new god. It's his origin. | |||||||
