Why just Rockna?
Apr. 30th, 2010 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedA few things before I begin with the next section:
1) As far as Katsuo's story in Monster Collection Chronicles goes, the only bad things I intend to keep anymore are the stuff he does in NYC. Just gonna make one reference to that as I go along, and don't worry, I do intend to actually develop his (and everyone else's) character. (I was gonna wait until I'm done with something Jake has requested of me, but considering how long that's been taking and that I'm done with the first part of it, I think I might ask him earlier, maybe next time I speak to him.)
2) For anyone interested, Saya no Uta, which will be referred to much more here, is not really a game so much as a visual novel, in case I didn't mention this the first time. While it is hentai, it's actually mostly plot-oriented, and what sexual scenarios there are do contribute to the overall story. The person hosting the videos on YouTube has blocked out the explicit parts. Also, despite how we see her throughout the game, Saya is NOT actually a human child. NOT recommended for the faint of heart.
Anyway, here in the following lj-cut are some stuff I've been thinking about regarding Rockna's sixth sense, something unrelated, and then an idea I've been toying around with since having watched Saya no Uta the first time around.
So, I've started re-reading Soul's Window just yesterday, to see just how bad Rockna really had it in that fic. For the record, I had remembered the nightmares she had at the beginning of the fic, her time in the labrynths, the humiliation she must have felt when she started practicing golem creation in front of her friends (although Mondo did epically humiliate himself as well at a different point), the aura overload she felt at the restaurant, the Dread Dragon's suffering that she had to have felt when finding its head, the visions she had towards the end of the fic, and she mentioned that her friends at school are afraid of her reading their minds. Just looking for anything else I might have missed or forgotten, though I do remember a few foreshadowing things that Chelle seems to have deleted (such as her describing her sixth sense to Zaha and asking him to keep it between the two of them).
After thinking things through, I think what bothers me (not necessarily about the fic) is the fact that she had her ability to enjoy certain things in life taken away from her for the purpose of serving people. Compare this to autistic people being more prone to stress than neurotypicals? That's because of the way they were born. Compare this to the male protagonists' situation in Saya no Uta, who is much worse off than Rockna? We learned that this was true even before the story began, and what happened to him was only done to prevent his death. Another Break the Cutie fic I've read before? Egregious Exile, a Sonic fic where said cutie is Amy, though I'm not sure if I minded at the time, even after I became well aware that that was the point behind that fic. And finally, it’s ironic that even though I feel sympathy for Rockna, I intend to make the titular character of Magical Idol Ellen the center of a Kafka Komedy, but that’s another story altogether.
Well, I’m not gonna deny in any fanfiction I write that Rockna’s sixth sense is as much of a problem as it is. I think what it is, though, is that for one thing, she seemed okay with going to places like a carnival, the city where the cooking contest was held, the audience in the Ogre wrestling tournament, the town with the cactus people, etc. I understand that this was when her sixth sense was limited to monsters, which it no longer is towards the end of the series. Chelle did explain that she was scared shitless when the Time Realm opened, which Mondo wasn’t and which she was composed before and afterward, although I missed this the first time reading Window, and upon reading it again, it seems to have been deleted accidentally. But anyway, I do remember from the fic that Rockna mused early on “It would’ve just been like Google, right?”, and later, “To what extent of the imagination was the suffering mentioned in the prophecy?” With the latter quote, it wasn’t until shortly after she said it that she figured out that she was pissed off, and I would imagine that it was about the aforementioned fact that she had been alienated for the sake of Mon World.
But not only that, there’s also the fact that I somehow hadn’t been aware that she even had such a thing as the sixth sense when I was watching the anime, and considering that there are others (such as Fallen Pheonix, author of Being With You) who are at least oblivious to the stress that would come with an active sixth sense, if not the sixth sense itself, one might wonder how many potential fanfic writers would fail to incorporate that into any fics they write where Chelle knows it would become relevant, and simply let Rockna enjoy activities like anyone else would.
-----
Another thing that bothers me whenever I get reminded of it, is when Rockna was trapped inside the Dread Dragon towards the end of the anime. In this case, I have actually seen it happen while watching the series, and have remembered since, but when I see it again in, say, an AMV on YouTube…
Here’s what I do to get my mind off of that: If there’s any worse situation than what she was in, imagine being tied naked to a chair inside an abandoned apartment while some ax-crazy does various unthinkable things to you. Such is exactly what Katsuo did to the girls he captured while living in NYC, and even though the walls aren’t made of flesh (which is arguably as creepy as scenery can get), those girls have no sixth sense to hold him back with, and whereas Rockna would’ve perished within minutes or seconds at Redda’s hands, Katsuo wanted his captives to suffer for as long as possible until either they died anyway or he saw fit to finally release them.
-----
So, what could be worse than having your ability to enjoy certain things in life taken away from you? Just start watching or playing Saya no Uta, and you’ll see.
With that said, I’ve been toying with the idea of having such a thing happen to one of the Knights (likely Mondo), after he loses a fight to something known as a Shoggoth, either during the third fic of Monster Collection Chronicles, or towards the end of the fourth fic. I find it quite interesting to imagine some story arc that would involve various things starting with him freaking out and attacking everyone in sight upon waking up completely fucked up (assuming Rockna isn't one of the first people around him when he wakes up), and his personality generally becoming heavily altered by such an experience. The song that you hear at the beginning of the game and voices that Fuminori perceives? Yeah, I watch it to listen to those every now and then.
Unlike Fuminori, though, Mondo (or whoever would be afflicted, if the plot demands it be someone else) would even see himself physically as much of a tentacle beast as he would everyone else, ditto for his own voice, as opposed to perceiving himself as still a human. On the plus side, anything in light-based images such as photographs or TV screens would still appear quite normal to him (not so for mirrors or camera lenses, though). Meanwhile, assuming this happens in the fourth fic, I might also have Pfizgiy (a being that might resemble Red Falcon, mentioned before) or some servant of hers, secretly meet with him at times appearing as some variation of Ryoko from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, assuming an alias, "befriending" him, and feeding him human organs (the only "food" he'd be able to enjoy in his condition), all in an attempt to brainwash or otherwise manipulate him for her purposes. Most importantly, though, Rockna's sixth sense would be the only thing that could possibly restore his senses to normal and save the person she loves.
Well, yeah. As one could figure out, this wouldn't be something one could hide from an empath like Rockna, and it's a good thing she's not one who would have him hospitalized instead of trying to help him recover first.
1) As far as Katsuo's story in Monster Collection Chronicles goes, the only bad things I intend to keep anymore are the stuff he does in NYC. Just gonna make one reference to that as I go along, and don't worry, I do intend to actually develop his (and everyone else's) character. (I was gonna wait until I'm done with something Jake has requested of me, but considering how long that's been taking and that I'm done with the first part of it, I think I might ask him earlier, maybe next time I speak to him.)
2) For anyone interested, Saya no Uta, which will be referred to much more here, is not really a game so much as a visual novel, in case I didn't mention this the first time. While it is hentai, it's actually mostly plot-oriented, and what sexual scenarios there are do contribute to the overall story. The person hosting the videos on YouTube has blocked out the explicit parts. Also, despite how we see her throughout the game, Saya is NOT actually a human child. NOT recommended for the faint of heart.
Anyway, here in the following lj-cut are some stuff I've been thinking about regarding Rockna's sixth sense, something unrelated, and then an idea I've been toying around with since having watched Saya no Uta the first time around.
So, I've started re-reading Soul's Window just yesterday, to see just how bad Rockna really had it in that fic. For the record, I had remembered the nightmares she had at the beginning of the fic, her time in the labrynths, the humiliation she must have felt when she started practicing golem creation in front of her friends (although Mondo did epically humiliate himself as well at a different point), the aura overload she felt at the restaurant, the Dread Dragon's suffering that she had to have felt when finding its head, the visions she had towards the end of the fic, and she mentioned that her friends at school are afraid of her reading their minds. Just looking for anything else I might have missed or forgotten, though I do remember a few foreshadowing things that Chelle seems to have deleted (such as her describing her sixth sense to Zaha and asking him to keep it between the two of them).
After thinking things through, I think what bothers me (not necessarily about the fic) is the fact that she had her ability to enjoy certain things in life taken away from her for the purpose of serving people. Compare this to autistic people being more prone to stress than neurotypicals? That's because of the way they were born. Compare this to the male protagonists' situation in Saya no Uta, who is much worse off than Rockna? We learned that this was true even before the story began, and what happened to him was only done to prevent his death. Another Break the Cutie fic I've read before? Egregious Exile, a Sonic fic where said cutie is Amy, though I'm not sure if I minded at the time, even after I became well aware that that was the point behind that fic. And finally, it’s ironic that even though I feel sympathy for Rockna, I intend to make the titular character of Magical Idol Ellen the center of a Kafka Komedy, but that’s another story altogether.
Well, I’m not gonna deny in any fanfiction I write that Rockna’s sixth sense is as much of a problem as it is. I think what it is, though, is that for one thing, she seemed okay with going to places like a carnival, the city where the cooking contest was held, the audience in the Ogre wrestling tournament, the town with the cactus people, etc. I understand that this was when her sixth sense was limited to monsters, which it no longer is towards the end of the series. Chelle did explain that she was scared shitless when the Time Realm opened, which Mondo wasn’t and which she was composed before and afterward, although I missed this the first time reading Window, and upon reading it again, it seems to have been deleted accidentally. But anyway, I do remember from the fic that Rockna mused early on “It would’ve just been like Google, right?”, and later, “To what extent of the imagination was the suffering mentioned in the prophecy?” With the latter quote, it wasn’t until shortly after she said it that she figured out that she was pissed off, and I would imagine that it was about the aforementioned fact that she had been alienated for the sake of Mon World.
But not only that, there’s also the fact that I somehow hadn’t been aware that she even had such a thing as the sixth sense when I was watching the anime, and considering that there are others (such as Fallen Pheonix, author of Being With You) who are at least oblivious to the stress that would come with an active sixth sense, if not the sixth sense itself, one might wonder how many potential fanfic writers would fail to incorporate that into any fics they write where Chelle knows it would become relevant, and simply let Rockna enjoy activities like anyone else would.
-----
Another thing that bothers me whenever I get reminded of it, is when Rockna was trapped inside the Dread Dragon towards the end of the anime. In this case, I have actually seen it happen while watching the series, and have remembered since, but when I see it again in, say, an AMV on YouTube…
Here’s what I do to get my mind off of that: If there’s any worse situation than what she was in, imagine being tied naked to a chair inside an abandoned apartment while some ax-crazy does various unthinkable things to you. Such is exactly what Katsuo did to the girls he captured while living in NYC, and even though the walls aren’t made of flesh (which is arguably as creepy as scenery can get), those girls have no sixth sense to hold him back with, and whereas Rockna would’ve perished within minutes or seconds at Redda’s hands, Katsuo wanted his captives to suffer for as long as possible until either they died anyway or he saw fit to finally release them.
-----
So, what could be worse than having your ability to enjoy certain things in life taken away from you? Just start watching or playing Saya no Uta, and you’ll see.
With that said, I’ve been toying with the idea of having such a thing happen to one of the Knights (likely Mondo), after he loses a fight to something known as a Shoggoth, either during the third fic of Monster Collection Chronicles, or towards the end of the fourth fic. I find it quite interesting to imagine some story arc that would involve various things starting with him freaking out and attacking everyone in sight upon waking up completely fucked up (assuming Rockna isn't one of the first people around him when he wakes up), and his personality generally becoming heavily altered by such an experience. The song that you hear at the beginning of the game and voices that Fuminori perceives? Yeah, I watch it to listen to those every now and then.
Unlike Fuminori, though, Mondo (or whoever would be afflicted, if the plot demands it be someone else) would even see himself physically as much of a tentacle beast as he would everyone else, ditto for his own voice, as opposed to perceiving himself as still a human. On the plus side, anything in light-based images such as photographs or TV screens would still appear quite normal to him (not so for mirrors or camera lenses, though). Meanwhile, assuming this happens in the fourth fic, I might also have Pfizgiy (a being that might resemble Red Falcon, mentioned before) or some servant of hers, secretly meet with him at times appearing as some variation of Ryoko from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, assuming an alias, "befriending" him, and feeding him human organs (the only "food" he'd be able to enjoy in his condition), all in an attempt to brainwash or otherwise manipulate him for her purposes. Most importantly, though, Rockna's sixth sense would be the only thing that could possibly restore his senses to normal and save the person she loves.
Well, yeah. As one could figure out, this wouldn't be something one could hide from an empath like Rockna, and it's a good thing she's not one who would have him hospitalized instead of trying to help him recover first.