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edenfallingYeah, I fail beyond belief at timely updates. In other news, water is wet. (2,175 words)
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Lemonade
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Part XIX: In which the author wastes time with magic and world-building
Faith half expected a flash of light as a pre-loaded spell went off, but all the rock did was leave a reddish smudge on Duo's skin, like colored chalk on a blackboard. The blue demons' shaman clicked to itself as it drew a symbol on Duo's forehead -- sort of a squiggle inside a circle inside a pound sign.
Duo rolled his eyes upward as if trying to see his own forehead. "That tickles," he said quietly.
"Shut up. It's dangerous to interrupt magic," Faith muttered back. Duo pouted, but stayed silent for once.
The shaman crouched and drew a circle around Duo's feet, leaving both an indentation and a scattering of red chalk-like residue to pin him in place. Then it stood, handed the red rock to Duo -- he held it awkwardly in one hand, like a shitty Christmas present he didn't know what to do with -- and began to whistle and click.
Willow's occasional instant dye jobs aside, magic didn't usually look like much until a spell caught hold. That didn't mean it was subtle. Invisible energy built and crackled, like the circle was a bare wire shedding sparks, until the shaman clapped all four of its hands together and something intangible snapped like the crack of a phantom whip.
Duo blinked and shook his head. "Gah. Did that actually change the air pressure, or is it just me?" He swallowed rapidly, working his jaw.
"Beats me," Faith said. "You already understand me and Sasuke. Try talking to our nice new friends and see what happens."
The shaman was already whistling and clicking away before she finished. Duo frowned, blinked again, knocked his fist against the side of his head -- incidentally getting red rock dust in his hair -- and then grinned like the lunatic he was. "Hey! Slow down, lady, one thing at a time! Yeah, I read you loud and clear, and no, I don't feel like my head's going to explode. Thanks for the warning on that, by the way. How about you do up my friends before we get into any more explanations?"
Faith frowned at the mention of exploding heads, because seriously, couldn't anyone invent spells that didn't have that kind of weird-ass potential side effect? Still, if it hadn't killed Duo, she was pretty sure it wouldn't kill her or Sasuke either, and she was sick of not understanding people. "Me first," she said, taking the red rock from Duo's hand. "You translate for Sasuke."
She gave the rock back to the shaman and held herself very still as the blue demon drew on her head. When it pulled back, Faith gestured toward the circle in the ground and lifted her right foot. The shaman spread all four of its arms and waved its pincer hands, scuffing out the circle with its foot, whistling and clicking urgently.
"She says the circle tunes the spell to the person getting the mojo shoved in their head," Duo said. "Trying to use somebody else's brain pattern is apparently a bad idea. And by bad idea, I mean head go boom."
"I hate magic," Faith grumbled, but she stood still and let the shaman draw a circle around her feet. She held the rock in her left hand and tried not to sneeze as the magic built and crackled around her.
Then half the universe tried to jam itself into her head.
Faith dropped the rock and found herself out of the circle with one hand wrapped around the shaman's upper right arm and the other gripping her knife before she realized she wasn't actually in pain. And the blue demon was whistling and clicking in what Faith suddenly knew was a gentle, worried tone of voice, like an adult trying to calm a child.
"--takes some people that way," the shaman said, "but if you stop and let air pass through your chambers for a minute, you'll feel less disoriented. I promise the magic was clean, nothing venom-twisted or rot-snapped. Ah good, there you are -- I see reason in your stance. Can you understand me, stranger from another world?"
"Yeah," Faith said, letting go of the blue demon's arm. "Yeah, I really can."
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Duo ambled over to Faith's side as the shaman began drawing on Sasuke's forehead. "Nice moves, chica, but what set you off like that? Did enlightenment hurt?"
"You're talking Spanish and I understood you," Faith said. She grinned. "Wicked awesome."
"God's own truth," Duo agreed, and waited.
After a moment, Faith shrugged. "The magic that makes Slayers into Slayers doesn't always play nice with other magic trying to get into our heads. I think it's mostly to make sure we don't rise as vampires no matter what they do to try turning us, but nobody knows exactly what kinds of crap can pull the trigger. And Slayers are hunters. It's not just what we do; it's what we are. If something hits, we're gonna hit back. When that spell shoved shit into my brain, it wasn't me running the show for a couple seconds."
Now that was interesting, and also something Duo would have liked to know before the issue came up in practice. Instinctive reactions were an important tactical consideration. No harm done this time, but good luck was fickle and not to be trusted.
The spell went off a third time -- it still felt like a sudden change in air pressure, even when not aimed at him. Sasuke blinked and shook his head, a strangely unguarded reaction, before he clamped back down to his usual attempt at blank distance.
"Like genjutsu but not," he murmured.
"Definitely not an illusion," Faith said. "So hey, now that we can talk directly instead of through Duo, I just wanna say that of all the people I could've gotten stuck in a hell dimension with, you are way far from the worst option."
"You aren't the worst option either," Sasuke conceded. "We should continue as allies until we return to our own worlds."
Faith smiled. "Sounds like a plan."
Duo knocked the heel of his hand against his temple, trying to shake loose the sensation of dust bunnies in his brain. "Man, that is seriously weird. Like, I'm hearing you guys and understanding both of you, but the spell is trying to translate 'cause you're not speaking the same language, so I get this sort of corner-of-the-eye flicker of, I dunno, bad dubbing or subtitles or something. Makes my brain itch."
"The spell takes many-tongued people that way sometimes," the blue mantis shaman said, her whistles and clicks morphing into something eerily reminiscent of Sister Helen's calm teacher-voice. "Most find they can ignore the mirage-ripples with a pinch of practice. If you can't, tell me and I will unravel the spell."
"Will do, thanks," Duo said. He looked from the shaman to the chief demon, who was still lurking nearby on its -- his? her? -- scarab with its obsidian-tipped spear held in a deceptively relaxed grip. This lady seemed friendly, but it would be beyond stupid to forget he was in a foreign world among potentially hostile aliens.
He flicked sideways glances at Faith and Sasuke, then took a half step toward the shaman and her waiting boss. His partners slid to flank him as if they'd practiced the maneuver a thousand times. Damn, he liked working with people who knew the game.
"So, hey, we never got to introduce ourselves. I'm Duo, this is Faith, and that's Sasuke. We're sorry for startling you and grateful for your help. The thing is, now that we can talk instead of playing drunk charades, we'd appreciate if you explained a bit more about the Sarguls and your intentions toward us and them. You seem like reasonable people and I'd hate for our relationship to turn sour when it's only just begun."
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The chief demon laid its spear crosswise over the neck of its steed, as if Sasuke and his companions were no longer a threat. That was either insulting or naïve.
"Our intentions are to avoid more disruption of the trade route. Corpses will only attract trouble, like the claw-mouth whose remains you left behind. The details of your feud with the net-mouth people are none of our concern, but if you wish, West-Running Stream will explain the strand of their history that is woven into our world," the demon said, gesturing toward the sage with the pierced wings. "We leave in a sixth of a twelfth of a day-night cycle. Be ready or be left behind."
The clicks and whistles still came clearly to Sasuke's ears, but at the same time his brain insisted he'd heard a baritone human voice speaking perfectly comprehensible words. He could feel the delicate lattice-work of the translation jutsu wrapped in and around his head like a crown. Or a blindfold.
"Kai," he whispered as the chief demon rode away, but the construct didn't dissipate like genjutsu would.
"Please don't do that," the sage said, an eerie mimic of his mother's voice shadowing her actual vocalizations. "Your magic is strange and I don't know if it will interweave safely with mine. I'd hate to be the cause of unintentional pain or death."
"Yeah, Sasuke, leave the mystical brain implant alone. Bad ninja, no dessert," Faith said. It was less jarring to hear her through the jutsu, since the doubled voice was also her own, but the effect was still strange. Her translated words lacked Duo's distinctive accent, but the slight slurring and the occasional lost ending syllables seemed to carry over from her actual English words.
"What is dessert?" he said, keeping his face carefully straight.
Faith gaped at him for a moment before her eyes narrowed. "Wait a sec. That was a joke, wasn't it?"
Sasuke tilted his head and stared at her blankly. "What is a joke?"
"Oh my god, you little--"
"As entertaining as this is," Duo interrupted, "and as much as I hate to be a spoilsport, I have to point out we're getting off topic. Which would be the Sarguls, and anything our lovely hosts know about what they're doing in this world and what they might try on their next attempt to kill us."
He was right, damn it all; that was the most annoying thing. Sasuke couldn't remember when he'd last been this easily distractible. Not for years, certainly. Focus was a necessity of life under Orochimaru's thumb, in Kabuto's vicinity. In some backhanded ways, this entire disaster was almost like a vacation.
But enough. Sasuke turned back to the demon sage and did his best to express polite interest with his body language as well as his face. He doubted fine details translated across species, but the Sarguls' movements had been human enough and clearly these demons were at least passingly familiar with the ones who had tripped the first wire on this trap.
The sage sighed, a dual-toned thready whisper, and folded her upper arms across her thorax. "Our world is a meeting place, where many realities cross threads and intertwine," she said, gesturing with her smaller, lower arms. "It has always been so. Some six-cubed-year-spans ago, the net-mouth people came to the edge of the great desert and pled for sanctuary. They had been cast from their own world because they followed a dark power. In the ordinary way of things our ancestors would have cast them out once more, but the currents of our world are tangled in a way that prevents their god from touching this reality. So our ancestors let the net-mouth people stay and build a home."
"Little more trusting than I'm inclined to be, but fair enough," Duo said. "What went wrong?"
The sage clicked in a bubbly pattern that the jutsu translated to breathy laughter. "Nothing for us! For you, who knows?"
"I'd say we're what's going to go wrong for the Sarguls," Faith said. "But c'mon, keep talking. Every time I skip the history lecture it comes back to bite me."
The sage blinked her faceted eyes, then the two tiny black eyespots above her nose -- perhaps the equivalent of a nod or a shrug. "Many of the net-mouth people turned to other gods, ones who can touch our world and repay their followers' belief. But some continued to skip between the threads of reality in search of a world they could sacrifice to their dark god. I don't know why the dark-touched-dreamers drew you here or why you objected, but we'll escort you to Bitter Run and send notice for them to meet you in mediated court. That will be tidier for everyone."
"What if we refuse?" Sasuke asked.
This time the sage blinked her eyespots and then her main eyes, the reverse of her previous gesture. "Then we'll continue our journey and leave you to your fates. There are many six-cubeds of the dark-touched-dreamers. They only need to be lucky thrice. And should you by some twist destroy them all instead, why, what is that to our people but a gift?"
She bobbed her head and clicked in soft laughter. "I leave you to your choice."
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End of Part XIX
Back to part XVIII
Continue to part XX
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the errors that implies.)
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As always, if you have any criticism or suggestions, I am all ears! I wrote the first half of this about a year ago, then decided the details of the translation spell were holding up the story and tried to start over, only to decide today that that was a stupid choice and go back to finish the chapter I'd originally started instead of the alternate version I tried to force myself to write. So this is a weird combination of written so long ago I'm out of touch with it and written so recently I have no perspective on it.
Also the blue teakettle mantis demons are a little tricky to write. I have a file of world-building about them which I can post if anyone is interested, but mostly I'd like to know if I'm getting enough description in for you to have a reasonable picture of what they look and sound like, or if I need to backtrack and spend a few more paragraphs talking about them.
(Tangentially, does anybody know if Sasuke's name actually means anything in Japanese? This is vaguely relevant to how the translation spell works, and the coincidence of Faith and Duo both having names that are actual English words.)
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Lemonade
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Part XIX: In which the author wastes time with magic and world-building
Faith half expected a flash of light as a pre-loaded spell went off, but all the rock did was leave a reddish smudge on Duo's skin, like colored chalk on a blackboard. The blue demons' shaman clicked to itself as it drew a symbol on Duo's forehead -- sort of a squiggle inside a circle inside a pound sign.
Duo rolled his eyes upward as if trying to see his own forehead. "That tickles," he said quietly.
"Shut up. It's dangerous to interrupt magic," Faith muttered back. Duo pouted, but stayed silent for once.
The shaman crouched and drew a circle around Duo's feet, leaving both an indentation and a scattering of red chalk-like residue to pin him in place. Then it stood, handed the red rock to Duo -- he held it awkwardly in one hand, like a shitty Christmas present he didn't know what to do with -- and began to whistle and click.
Willow's occasional instant dye jobs aside, magic didn't usually look like much until a spell caught hold. That didn't mean it was subtle. Invisible energy built and crackled, like the circle was a bare wire shedding sparks, until the shaman clapped all four of its hands together and something intangible snapped like the crack of a phantom whip.
Duo blinked and shook his head. "Gah. Did that actually change the air pressure, or is it just me?" He swallowed rapidly, working his jaw.
"Beats me," Faith said. "You already understand me and Sasuke. Try talking to our nice new friends and see what happens."
The shaman was already whistling and clicking away before she finished. Duo frowned, blinked again, knocked his fist against the side of his head -- incidentally getting red rock dust in his hair -- and then grinned like the lunatic he was. "Hey! Slow down, lady, one thing at a time! Yeah, I read you loud and clear, and no, I don't feel like my head's going to explode. Thanks for the warning on that, by the way. How about you do up my friends before we get into any more explanations?"
Faith frowned at the mention of exploding heads, because seriously, couldn't anyone invent spells that didn't have that kind of weird-ass potential side effect? Still, if it hadn't killed Duo, she was pretty sure it wouldn't kill her or Sasuke either, and she was sick of not understanding people. "Me first," she said, taking the red rock from Duo's hand. "You translate for Sasuke."
She gave the rock back to the shaman and held herself very still as the blue demon drew on her head. When it pulled back, Faith gestured toward the circle in the ground and lifted her right foot. The shaman spread all four of its arms and waved its pincer hands, scuffing out the circle with its foot, whistling and clicking urgently.
"She says the circle tunes the spell to the person getting the mojo shoved in their head," Duo said. "Trying to use somebody else's brain pattern is apparently a bad idea. And by bad idea, I mean head go boom."
"I hate magic," Faith grumbled, but she stood still and let the shaman draw a circle around her feet. She held the rock in her left hand and tried not to sneeze as the magic built and crackled around her.
Then half the universe tried to jam itself into her head.
Faith dropped the rock and found herself out of the circle with one hand wrapped around the shaman's upper right arm and the other gripping her knife before she realized she wasn't actually in pain. And the blue demon was whistling and clicking in what Faith suddenly knew was a gentle, worried tone of voice, like an adult trying to calm a child.
"--takes some people that way," the shaman said, "but if you stop and let air pass through your chambers for a minute, you'll feel less disoriented. I promise the magic was clean, nothing venom-twisted or rot-snapped. Ah good, there you are -- I see reason in your stance. Can you understand me, stranger from another world?"
"Yeah," Faith said, letting go of the blue demon's arm. "Yeah, I really can."
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Duo ambled over to Faith's side as the shaman began drawing on Sasuke's forehead. "Nice moves, chica, but what set you off like that? Did enlightenment hurt?"
"You're talking Spanish and I understood you," Faith said. She grinned. "Wicked awesome."
"God's own truth," Duo agreed, and waited.
After a moment, Faith shrugged. "The magic that makes Slayers into Slayers doesn't always play nice with other magic trying to get into our heads. I think it's mostly to make sure we don't rise as vampires no matter what they do to try turning us, but nobody knows exactly what kinds of crap can pull the trigger. And Slayers are hunters. It's not just what we do; it's what we are. If something hits, we're gonna hit back. When that spell shoved shit into my brain, it wasn't me running the show for a couple seconds."
Now that was interesting, and also something Duo would have liked to know before the issue came up in practice. Instinctive reactions were an important tactical consideration. No harm done this time, but good luck was fickle and not to be trusted.
The spell went off a third time -- it still felt like a sudden change in air pressure, even when not aimed at him. Sasuke blinked and shook his head, a strangely unguarded reaction, before he clamped back down to his usual attempt at blank distance.
"Like genjutsu but not," he murmured.
"Definitely not an illusion," Faith said. "So hey, now that we can talk directly instead of through Duo, I just wanna say that of all the people I could've gotten stuck in a hell dimension with, you are way far from the worst option."
"You aren't the worst option either," Sasuke conceded. "We should continue as allies until we return to our own worlds."
Faith smiled. "Sounds like a plan."
Duo knocked the heel of his hand against his temple, trying to shake loose the sensation of dust bunnies in his brain. "Man, that is seriously weird. Like, I'm hearing you guys and understanding both of you, but the spell is trying to translate 'cause you're not speaking the same language, so I get this sort of corner-of-the-eye flicker of, I dunno, bad dubbing or subtitles or something. Makes my brain itch."
"The spell takes many-tongued people that way sometimes," the blue mantis shaman said, her whistles and clicks morphing into something eerily reminiscent of Sister Helen's calm teacher-voice. "Most find they can ignore the mirage-ripples with a pinch of practice. If you can't, tell me and I will unravel the spell."
"Will do, thanks," Duo said. He looked from the shaman to the chief demon, who was still lurking nearby on its -- his? her? -- scarab with its obsidian-tipped spear held in a deceptively relaxed grip. This lady seemed friendly, but it would be beyond stupid to forget he was in a foreign world among potentially hostile aliens.
He flicked sideways glances at Faith and Sasuke, then took a half step toward the shaman and her waiting boss. His partners slid to flank him as if they'd practiced the maneuver a thousand times. Damn, he liked working with people who knew the game.
"So, hey, we never got to introduce ourselves. I'm Duo, this is Faith, and that's Sasuke. We're sorry for startling you and grateful for your help. The thing is, now that we can talk instead of playing drunk charades, we'd appreciate if you explained a bit more about the Sarguls and your intentions toward us and them. You seem like reasonable people and I'd hate for our relationship to turn sour when it's only just begun."
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The chief demon laid its spear crosswise over the neck of its steed, as if Sasuke and his companions were no longer a threat. That was either insulting or naïve.
"Our intentions are to avoid more disruption of the trade route. Corpses will only attract trouble, like the claw-mouth whose remains you left behind. The details of your feud with the net-mouth people are none of our concern, but if you wish, West-Running Stream will explain the strand of their history that is woven into our world," the demon said, gesturing toward the sage with the pierced wings. "We leave in a sixth of a twelfth of a day-night cycle. Be ready or be left behind."
The clicks and whistles still came clearly to Sasuke's ears, but at the same time his brain insisted he'd heard a baritone human voice speaking perfectly comprehensible words. He could feel the delicate lattice-work of the translation jutsu wrapped in and around his head like a crown. Or a blindfold.
"Kai," he whispered as the chief demon rode away, but the construct didn't dissipate like genjutsu would.
"Please don't do that," the sage said, an eerie mimic of his mother's voice shadowing her actual vocalizations. "Your magic is strange and I don't know if it will interweave safely with mine. I'd hate to be the cause of unintentional pain or death."
"Yeah, Sasuke, leave the mystical brain implant alone. Bad ninja, no dessert," Faith said. It was less jarring to hear her through the jutsu, since the doubled voice was also her own, but the effect was still strange. Her translated words lacked Duo's distinctive accent, but the slight slurring and the occasional lost ending syllables seemed to carry over from her actual English words.
"What is dessert?" he said, keeping his face carefully straight.
Faith gaped at him for a moment before her eyes narrowed. "Wait a sec. That was a joke, wasn't it?"
Sasuke tilted his head and stared at her blankly. "What is a joke?"
"Oh my god, you little--"
"As entertaining as this is," Duo interrupted, "and as much as I hate to be a spoilsport, I have to point out we're getting off topic. Which would be the Sarguls, and anything our lovely hosts know about what they're doing in this world and what they might try on their next attempt to kill us."
He was right, damn it all; that was the most annoying thing. Sasuke couldn't remember when he'd last been this easily distractible. Not for years, certainly. Focus was a necessity of life under Orochimaru's thumb, in Kabuto's vicinity. In some backhanded ways, this entire disaster was almost like a vacation.
But enough. Sasuke turned back to the demon sage and did his best to express polite interest with his body language as well as his face. He doubted fine details translated across species, but the Sarguls' movements had been human enough and clearly these demons were at least passingly familiar with the ones who had tripped the first wire on this trap.
The sage sighed, a dual-toned thready whisper, and folded her upper arms across her thorax. "Our world is a meeting place, where many realities cross threads and intertwine," she said, gesturing with her smaller, lower arms. "It has always been so. Some six-cubed-year-spans ago, the net-mouth people came to the edge of the great desert and pled for sanctuary. They had been cast from their own world because they followed a dark power. In the ordinary way of things our ancestors would have cast them out once more, but the currents of our world are tangled in a way that prevents their god from touching this reality. So our ancestors let the net-mouth people stay and build a home."
"Little more trusting than I'm inclined to be, but fair enough," Duo said. "What went wrong?"
The sage clicked in a bubbly pattern that the jutsu translated to breathy laughter. "Nothing for us! For you, who knows?"
"I'd say we're what's going to go wrong for the Sarguls," Faith said. "But c'mon, keep talking. Every time I skip the history lecture it comes back to bite me."
The sage blinked her faceted eyes, then the two tiny black eyespots above her nose -- perhaps the equivalent of a nod or a shrug. "Many of the net-mouth people turned to other gods, ones who can touch our world and repay their followers' belief. But some continued to skip between the threads of reality in search of a world they could sacrifice to their dark god. I don't know why the dark-touched-dreamers drew you here or why you objected, but we'll escort you to Bitter Run and send notice for them to meet you in mediated court. That will be tidier for everyone."
"What if we refuse?" Sasuke asked.
This time the sage blinked her eyespots and then her main eyes, the reverse of her previous gesture. "Then we'll continue our journey and leave you to your fates. There are many six-cubeds of the dark-touched-dreamers. They only need to be lucky thrice. And should you by some twist destroy them all instead, why, what is that to our people but a gift?"
She bobbed her head and clicked in soft laughter. "I leave you to your choice."
---------------------------------------------
End of Part XIX
Back to part XVIII
Continue to part XX
See the original crack pairings meme and the scene that attacked me and became the first section of part I
Read the final version on ff.net. (Trust me, you want to read the final version. The journal version is a beta draft, with all the errors that implies.)
---------------------------------------------
As always, if you have any criticism or suggestions, I am all ears! I wrote the first half of this about a year ago, then decided the details of the translation spell were holding up the story and tried to start over, only to decide today that that was a stupid choice and go back to finish the chapter I'd originally started instead of the alternate version I tried to force myself to write. So this is a weird combination of written so long ago I'm out of touch with it and written so recently I have no perspective on it.
Also the blue teakettle mantis demons are a little tricky to write. I have a file of world-building about them which I can post if anyone is interested, but mostly I'd like to know if I'm getting enough description in for you to have a reasonable picture of what they look and sound like, or if I need to backtrack and spend a few more paragraphs talking about them.
(Tangentially, does anybody know if Sasuke's name actually means anything in Japanese? This is vaguely relevant to how the translation spell works, and the coincidence of Faith and Duo both having names that are actual English words.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-04 12:56 pm (UTC)Why would you want to cut out anything? This was DEFINITELY a case of things looking much bigger because you typed them out, upon reading it slides just fine. Also, fun magic/language geekery is one of the big things that make the appeal of this fic, no srsly liz what were you thinking. :pppppp
Ahh, Sasuke joking, Sasuke on vacation. SO CUTE.
I like that the woman's voice pings Duo and Sasuke in the momvoice gland. Prrt.
As for his name, the kanji translate to things separately (佐 (SA) => help/assistance, 助 (SUKE) => help, rescue, assist) but the name itself doesn't really carry a meaning of its own like, say, Akira or Kaede or Sakura, apart from being a traditionally "awesome ninja" name. I guess it could translate as Helper/Assistant/Rescuer because of Sasuke's awareness of the kanji, even though he seems to write his name in kana (at least it's in kana in the manga), which would be kind of hilarious. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-04 03:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-04 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 03:35 am (UTC)Speaking of the shaman, do you think it would be worthwhile to have her voice remind Faith of her first Watcher (who in this story was a woman named Pritchard, because I am not using any non-show information about Faith's backstory), or would that be overkill?
Hmm. But for that potential meaning to come across via the translation spell, Duo would have to know those kanji since he's the one who spoke Sasuke's name. And while I think Duo may well have heard of Sarutobi Sasuke as a stock "famous ninja" figure, I doubt he'd remember how to write it in anything other than katakana. Well, it's not really a big deal -- I just needed to know if there was a really obvious meaning that Duo would automatically know. (You may have noticed that the translation spell is extremely literal-minded about certain things, which does include proper names. *grin*)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-04 04:57 pm (UTC)I think a /little/ more on the teakettle demons might be good? A bit about how high they are in relation to the pov character, stuff like that, just so the reader can get the spacial image. How they sound comes through really well, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 03:46 am (UTC)I think I included a brief overall description of the Kchee (aka the blue teakettle mantis demons) when they first appeared a couple chapters ago, but I will see about inserting a few more sentences to that effect in this chapter and the previous two. For reference, they average around 6' tall, so they're definitely taller than all three POV characters. Which, yeah, would be something all three of them would notice if only for calculating the best ways to take the Kchee down in case shit hits the fan. They would also note that the Kchee are relatively skinny compared to humans, and they might judge from their movements that their bodies are also somewhat less dense. Oh, plus I should note the way they hold their arms and the way their legs move when they walk. Drat, that's a lot to slip in somehow.
*makes notes for editing*
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-04 07:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 03:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 06:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 02:29 am (UTC)I went back and read the entire offering, and while your writing has improved, more smooth and polished as well
as getting across the mood and continuing to drive the story forward, it is still recognizably an Elizabeth Culmer story.
Did you read any of Mal's work with Gundam Wing?
Thank you for continuing this. I enjoy seeing the three disparate characters work things out.
C
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 03:24 am (UTC)*wince* Yeah, I am not what anyone would call a fast writer. Or perhaps more accurately, I am not a focused writer, particularly for serialized stories. I am glad to hear that the story still works as a unified artifact, though, despite the ridiculously start-stop way I've been writing it.
(Yes, I have read and enjoyed all of Maldoror's GW fic, and most of her Naruto fic as well! She is awesome and I am sad she stopped writing fanfic, though of course I wish her well in whatever she chooses to do with her life.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 02:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-05 03:25 am (UTC)