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. . . meme . . .
It's been over a month. Ha ha ha.
Ask me stuff about Mukuro or Aeris or Dream or Three or Beauty or Cheshire Cat I suppose!
I prefer specific questions to general! And any plot or NPC questions I reserve the right to deflect.
Ask me stuff about Mukuro or Aeris or Dream or Three or Beauty or Cheshire Cat I suppose!
I prefer specific questions to general! And any plot or NPC questions I reserve the right to deflect.
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. . . . CAN I ASK YOU TO JUST BABBLE ABOUT CLAYMORES AND STUFF . . .
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But in general: claymores are made through magically-assisted surgery by grafting yoma flesh onto young girls, because the Organization - yes, that's their name - decided that female subjects would take to the training in how to repress and control their emotions and overthrow their own bodies' demands better (even if Riful is a shining example of how that just isn't true at all). And then they treat them like shit and sell them out to villages who pay the Org to come save them from yoma who are attacking. It's exactly as creepy as it sounds. It's even creepier once you find out the only reason yoma exist are because they were an invasive species deliberately introduced to the island Claymore takes place on by the Organization in hopes of finding a way to tame them and create a serviceable bioweapon against their culture's mortal enemy, the Draconic Tribe. (This is why I extrapolated yoki sense in Fred the way I did; 'cause yoma are supposed to be weapons against these monster things that are worse than they are, and all.)
Unfortunately the yoma proved too a: dumb and b: instinctively aggressive to be controllable, so the Org moved on to the next stage: HUMAN TEST SUBJECTS. Because this was logical. The idea being that a human mind could control and temper the yoma instincts through their own conscious awareness of their actions and suchlike. So they took some dead yoma - presumably they were dead, but where the Org is concerned never assume their desire to cut things open requires a corpse - and they grafted this flesh into human bodies in such a way as it could bond with the host and be accepted by the body as its own, or whateverrrrrr, and thus because of the nature of the beasts grant these humans access to the same abilities as a yoma but with more regulation. The nature of the surgery is such that it scars the subject's lower abdomen and groin/waist ... rather horrifically, to the point that at one point a claymore manages to stop a rape attempt in progress simply by disrobing. As a side effect of taking in a monster's flesh, too, their skin turns unearthly pale, their hair turns silvery blonde, and their eyes turn reflective silver and slitted like a cat's. Why? Because monsterfuck, that's why. Other side effects are that claymores can survive on little more than a fresh strawberry and a sip of water a month, because they are ridiculous.
Every claymore gets ranked by a number, ranging from 1 to like ... it might actually go up to 50, I'm unsure, from strongest to weakest, respectively, altho I think the lowest one we ever meet is Clare who is ranked 47. This is to demonstrate, IIRC, the interaction of a couple things - a: how much yoma flesh was grafted to them compared to the body mass, b: how strong the yoma that was grafted to them was before it got stuck inside them, and c: how much skill, aptitude, and/or talent they possess in manipulating the yoki this provides them. The most dangerous number ones, ofc, are the ones who hit the yoki lottery and got all three, but not every number one in a generation is actually the one with the most raw power. Rankings can also change over time as claymores grow more experienced, and sometimes the ranking is wrong because things have happened the Org doesn't know about. They also distinguish themselves into "offensive" and "defensive" types, which are basically: offensive types are better at dodging and putting holes in things, and defensive types are better at blocking and surviving things putting holes in them. The distinction gets hazier the higher up in numbers you go, though, to the point that all number ones may commonly be offensive types but they're still typically strong enough on defensive skillsets that they're better than anyone else not a single digit. And if a single digit Awakens, all bets are off.
The first crop were all soldiers, canon more or less admits, and the instinctive bloodlust of the yoma nature overwhelmed them. Once I get around to writing that memory up: this is where Isley comes from y'all. This is also where Dauf, who Sakura and Goku hilariously kicked off a cliff in Rifulheart, came from, this "first generation of male claymores". The implication there is that they just "couldn't control themselves" and went berserk and Awakened and became yoma themselves because they were just boys and couldn't help responding to being horny. This, btw, is complete bullshit spin on the Org's part, because Isley and Rigaldo ... exist, but that's something I don't need to go into rn, but it's bullshit the Org operates according to and informs why they moved on to ladies next. Because the Org are fucking misogynists and chauvinists, bless 'em, the bastards.
So the next generation were all girls, and one of them was Riful. And Riful is, canonically, one of only two confirmed claymores we ever, ever meet who are on that razor edge between adolescence and prepubescence, and the other one is terrifying, clinically insane and wants her mother. Presumably this is because the Org took one look at what happened with Riful and decided that was a bad idea; she was astronomically powerful - she outclassed basically everybody in her generation by leaps and bounds just on pure raw talent, even untrained - but she was dangerously uncontrollable and when she Awakened, she nearly wiped out the Org's forces, claymores and all.
"Awakening" is the canon term for when a claymore loses control of their own body/emotions/mind/everything and can't hold onto their humanity anymore and becomes a yoma. Because to fight yoma they draw on the power - called yoki - given to them by the yoma flesh they've been grafted with - it's magic, roll with it - but they are constantly in a push/pull battle with how much they can use; if they push themselves too far and cross the 70-75% release mark, they lose control of the power they're using and it takes them over instead. (It is actually possible for claymore to have willpower strong enough to still be able to pull back all the way up to 80% release, but the Org either doesn't know about it or doesn't want the claymore to know they have that ability.) This will also happen if they just like ... lose control of their feelings, because the intensity of how they draw on yoki is affected by how many feelings they're having and how much they're letting themselves feel them. Hint: claymore can have all the feelings in the world and they often do, but to keep from Awakening they have to learn how to express them in very limited ways!
Conveniently, they exist to fight shit and fuck shit up, so one of the most common ways they show their emotions is by hitting things, sometimes each other. You know the old shonen maxim of "you can't know someone's true feelings until/unless you fight them (preferably at full strength)"? Yeah. Yeahhhhh. For claymores that is legit one of their most effective ways to maintain their mental health, they love to compare battle stats and shoot bullshit about how good a fighter they are and have friendly spars and stuff and go on battle dates and legit one of the most bonding signs of affection between claymores is to share the same pillow when on a mission ("to go murder something" goes unsaid because claymores never go on a mission that isn't to murder things). (It's hard to say if that's a euphemism for claymores like it is for historical soldiers IRL thanks to it being unclear just what the grafts did to their bodies down there, but regardless it definitely means the same thing wrt how emotionally intense the claymores in question were about each other.)
However they have to not get too into it because battle battle violencelust also makes people awaken sometimes. Claymores: eternally stuck in repressionland, sob. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
And on top of this, their inhuman appearance marks them out when they have to deal with baselines and so people are terrified of them and discriminate against them even when they're in the area to help (by killing yoma, obviously, since claymore quite literally have nothing else to do with their lives but murder the things that made them) - and usually, claymore just ... stop giving a fuck about humans as anything that deserves their consideration, because caring would be too much, and also it's nice to just be like "well fine fuck you I'm saving your ass anyway ... because you're paying for it." Because the Org really does extort money from towns for the services of a claymore. Every claymore has a "handler", an Org rep/member who oversees their activities and goes around collecting the fee the Org charges for a claymore's successful service. They will even do this if the claymore wasn't even sent there and stumbled on one anyway. But yes. Claymores can easily be prone to giving zero fucks about the lives of the humans they protect beyond, you know, the necessary steps to protect them, and in fact often have legit reasons to dislike them intensely, which is why the Org has a strict zero tolerance policy about claymores who kill humans, any humans at all - they're declared Awakened Beings/yoma immediately and a hunting squad is sent out to kill them with extreme prejudice.
... these "handlers" are also in charge of going into villages and suchlike that have been destroyed by yoma attacks to look for young girl survivors who can be volunteered into service as new claymores; they're also in charge of using those same Org funds extorted from villages to "recruit" any suitable children put up in slave auctions for claymore purposes, I think, but that may just be implied, I'm unsure. Don't quote me on that last bit. The fact that it isn't hard to believe about them should tell you something, though.
... also. "Claymore" is an epithet, it's not a name claymores invented themselves, humans called them that and they more or less adopted it because it fit well enough and it's hella useful for OOC discussion, but they don't reflexively self-identify with it as a descriptor ICly.
OKAY I THINK I AM TEMP-BABBLED OUT. ... does that help?????
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SO WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU SEND RIFUL TO HER HAPPY END...
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but now it's different!!!!! because of what happened with Sion and Aeris, so I have two options that I'm vacillating between: she's either gonna ask to go to Sion's world and troll it troll it troll it but I'm not sure she actually cares enough about Sion's situation so much as that Sion made her accidentally have dokidoki MUST ABUSE TENDERLY feelings for him, orrrrr she's going to request to stay in Aather, because Sion's actions + Aeris' firmly cemented Onyx as her new "home", as 'twere (among other things), and other people's actions made her pull away from her identity as "Riful, the Abyssal of the West" for various reasons so she no longer feels ... like she needs to follow that up where it lives, so to speak. She is now more like ... "Riful, the Abyssal of Onyx" instead. Which is why she just intro'd herself to Edmund as "Maleficent's Sword", because that is now a thing .... it's not so much out of loyalty to Mally, as it is the combination of "this is my place!!!" + "they are miiiiine, my companions, and I'll be hers while I choose to be with them, yes".
It's all very hilarious to me, you guys really did a thing. So yes, prrrrobably
SOMEONE APPS SPADE, WHAT DO
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What does Riful want MOST?
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Her self-ident as Mally's rn has more to do with her own heartgame-induced possessiveness of/proprietary feelings towards Onyx, and a renewed willingness to accept that as a hopefully-temporary condition of keeping that sense of "rightness" about it than any sense of belonging to Onyx.
WHAT DOES MUKUHO WANT MOST, REVERSE
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What he really wants is some stability and comfort :u
App options for post-Riful?
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I want to app a knight again, but if I did they'd be very different from Riful - my candidates so far are Natsume Maya from TenTen and Belgarion from the Belgariad/Malloreon ... and Chrome ...
As for teams I keep being ridiculous - I still nurse the desire for someone from Mai-HiME, unless someone apped Madoka and I didn't notice I told Homerun a few weeks ago I was considering that pretty hard and I still think I am, I have an Alfred Bester in my head and he isn't going away, there's still the idle consideration of like, Simca or Kururu from Air Gear but that requires me to get over my hnnnn at ... rereading ..., I AM ALSO CONSIDERING THE MADOKA FROM TENTEN because ... violent lolis, it's a thing, Saya from the Blood+ manga, Atom from Pluto because I flopped out of apping him to Sabra but I think Astro Boy with memoryloss would be hilar (I think it even happens to him at one point in Astro Boy proper), I am seriously giving thought and have been for some time to apping Church or Tex from RvB and if Wash sticks around I just might, and Kumi from Alien 9 or Nakiami from Xam'd because linefacing motherhen types who can't cope with responsibility!!!! are a thing.
Also there is the inevitable Asuka reapp that is going to happen someday because yes.
Hurrr ANY THIRD APP PLANS AFTER ALEXIEL GETS IN AND YOU GOOD END AERIS?
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X-23! Because I love Laura //// and she'd be interesting. Reapping Break! Possibly Soujirou from Ruouni Kenshin. HAHA IF YOU APPED FROM TENTEN I MIGHT APP HIROHIKO because he amuses me greatly (dance_okok).
I have a looottttt of options but it depends on how Alexiel settles because that will change my internal balance a lot.
What memory would you start your possibilities with :o?
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Madoka I would probably start with one of the alt timelines, because canonically post-ending she remembers them and I'm a terrible person who wants to watch Homerun's sanity crack when Madoka gets excited about it at her.
The other Madoka I don't have a firm idea on, I would probably give that one really fucking cracky extra chapter that I remember made me make faces of "what" at, because I live for giving characters misleading memories and also I'd need to reread to decide how to handle her memoryfuck before I could really get a grip on what to do there. Maya I'd give the "fuck! Aya stole Reiki!" memory, I'm pretty firm on that; it's the best way to make her make faces at everything that actually gives it context before and after imo. We have a pattern of giving characters "soft" or misleading first memories developing here, I think it's a thing.
Atom .... I'd give Atom one of Gesicht or Epsilon's memories first, I think; it would disorient him and do interesting things with his identity in Aather, and I like it when characters don't reflect themselves so much as refract.
Chrome - I'd give Chrome a semi-headcanon of feeding Kokuyou (based off the canon fact that they used to make her do all their food shopping, IIRC) to give her Kokuyoudere and an awareness+acceptance of her devotion to Mukuro w/o the understanding of why, because I both want to play with the relationship shape canon works them in and break it from the canon "weight" enough to see how it redefines itself outside of the context that originally shaped it. She would also get Mukuro's name back right away but not her own, because ... yes.
Saya would get a Rikutrauma memory because I'm terrible.
Kumi would get "and then the eyeballs ATE ME" because it amuses me to have a character who would hear "eyeball vore" and assume it was the eyeball doing the eating instead of the other way around. Nakiami would get finding Raigo half-stoned and flipping the fuck out quietly.
Simca would probably get the memory of swearing to conspire against the world with Spitfire because lol I love that scene. Kururu would get the scene where she goes to visit Ikki in the hospital maybe? Starting her off with Ikkidere is a must, anyway.
Church would get a GRKGRKGRK memory or getting teamkilled by Caboose, whichever strikes me as funnier at the time to play with, because him trying and failing to possess people and going "I'M A FUCKING GHOST" would be lols but he'd have the same reaction to getting headshotted minus the possession attempts, regardless of how he'd obviously have a body, because Church is a special snowflake like that sometimes. He's no Caboose, but everyone in RvB has tendencies to latch onto really stupid beliefs and hold to them in the face of all rational attempts to explain otherwise to them. Tex would probably get that time she blew herself up to save the galaxy so she could go "FFF I HATE EVERYTHING" and be a grumpy cranky freelancer for a while, but if Wash was still in game when she got in I'd probably give her either the fight with Wash and Maine in Revelation or the one with Wash, Maine, and York in season 9, depending, quite honestly, on where Wash was in his memories and how much of a hilariterrible jerk I felt like being to his sanity at the time. Also i guess Tex would be a knight candidate as well, not a team one, because it amuses me to imagine her actually getting to wear her usual colors when no one else from RvB would have the same luxury and would have hilarious bitchfits about it. And meanwhile Tex is like "I don't know what you guys are complaining about, my armor's fine." Because she's a giant jerk.
Where would you start your possibilities memorywise? Besides Break and Alexiel, because lol reapp and I know you haven't settled on anything for Alexiel yet, at least IIRC from plurk.
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LAURA i would probably start with something awful from her childhood like being skinned alive or her first meeting with Kimura. Toooo prepare her for the rest of her life sob.
SOUJIROU would either be something from HIS terrible childhood or a moment that definitely said THE STRONG LIVE, THE WEAK DIE.
MINATSUKI would be the butterfly hallucination of her mom strangling her so I can be a foul mouthed fakeloli.
GOD I CAN'T REMEMBER WHO ELSE I SAID I WOULD WANT TO APP BUT THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.
And what teams would you like to see them on :o
HIROHIKO would be something WITHOUT Mitsuiro so I could try and see how he'd be for a bit.
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I would ask for REVERSE but it occurs to me if Aeris kept the stat effect Riful will notice and follow the ping, so now I WOULD LIKE TO ASK ABOUT IT AGAINNNn
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A drop of Riful all up in your Aeris '-'