Iku Quest Deka: A Z-Machine Adventure

[GuyYouMetOnline]

Okay, I'll keep going, then.

Purvis: My first reply to your most recent post lacked the '>' indicator thing, so I edited it (just wanted to make sure you knew).

[Hello Purvis]

>"Exactly. You would take a middle ground. Yes, they wouldn't know who you are, but they would know someone was there, and they'd probably start trying to find you. But you could likely evade them without difficulty. You do increase your risk of exposure, but only by very little. The fact that you would do so implies that assisting me is more important than avoiding that tiny amount of risk."

>"It's not that much of a trade-off," she says, frowning. "You're making it sound like it's more than there is. It's only a tiny risk."

>_

[Kilgamayan]

All right, it's probably easier to produce where I'm coming from in general.

Since about thread 4 or 5, whenever it was when we first learned Team Brocket's true identity from Yukari, I have been playing in an effort to get her to be a regular fixture in the stories. Since she is of the mindset that self-exposure is bad, it had ended up being the major obstacle to overcome. Even given what I had Iku say to Patchouli, I am only interested in the elimination of that mindset. I want a resolution where she becomes ingrained as a member of Gensokyo society, doing normal-people things, having conversations with people she's never met, and just generally being another citizen, and I will consider anything less than that a total failure.

Now, we've been given an opportunity to go this route by establishing a second truth. Exposure (or anything else) in the name of survival is permissible for obvious reasons, so generating exceptions to rules with that instance is meaningless. But we've found another truth much better for the situation, one that will fairly easily clash with her existing one about exposure - she cares about us. It has clashed with her exposure instincts several times already, and it is actually this clash that I suspect is what's causing her to feel so shitty. She demonstrably cannot comfortably choose between the two; picking one and hating herself for it has been the result basically every time so far, most notably with her refusal to take our shadow. To me, this indicates that she needs to concretely choose one or the other as the true absolute truth, and accept that the other isn't necessarily a universal truth. Accepting that exceptions to rules may be forced by other rules will go a long way into making herself feel better.

Or she can live in misery for the rest of her days, but somehow I doubt she'll take that path.

[Kilgamayan]

And for the curious, since I'm sure someone is going to wonder about it given how impossibly steep a task it sounds, as of the last time I asked about it (which was one or two threads ago), it was possible for Team Brocket to drop the belief, join normal Gensokyo society and enjoy herself for it. As long as the possibility is there, I'm going to keep shooting for it.

[GuyYouMetOnline]

See, I don't agree with you on that one. Complete exposure isn't necessarily the only option, and proof is all around; some people are more private than others. All Shuuei needs is enough exposure to sustain her existence; if she doesn't want to expose herself past that, she does not need to. I think that you're wrong about her needing to choose between the two extremes; a middle ground would be, I think, much more effective here.
 
And yes, maybe getting her to go all the way and join normal Gensokyo society is possible, but that can still be the end goal. We don't have to jump all the way there at once; this could simply be a step in that direction.
 
>"You're right; it's not much of a trade-off. But it is still a trade-off. Allow me to bring up another example, one that is more than just a hypothetical. Before our first encounter with each other today, you exposed yourself to nobody, and in fact attacked people simply because they had seen you, myself among them. But now, you and I have reached an arrangement. You need things from others; information, primarily. The two extremes would be to forget about asking questions to others or to expose yourself to anyone you have a question for. Instead, you have exposed yourself to one person, me, and I am the one gathering the information you need. And you obviously consider this arrangement preferable to not having the information at all; if that were not true, you would have taken my shadow by now."

[Hello Purvis]

>"You're right; it's not much of a trade-off. But it is still a trade-off. Allow me to bring up another example, one that is more than just a hypothetical. Before our first encounter with each other today, you exposed yourself to nobody, and in fact attacked people simply because they had seen you, myself among them. But now, you and I have reached an arrangement. You need things from others; information, primarily. The two extremes would be to forget about asking questions to others or to expose yourself to anyone you have a question for. Instead, you have exposed yourself to one person, me, and I am the one gathering the information you need. And you obviously consider this arrangement preferable to not having the information at all; if that were not true, you would have taken my shadow by now."

>"That's only because you were so damn persistent I was hoping to put you off for awhile," she says.

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

"That doesn't fit with your actions. If getting rid of me was the objective, taking my shadow would have been a much better option."

[Hello Purvis]

"That doesn't fit with your actions. If getting rid of me was the objective, taking my shadow would have been a much better option."

>"I already told you this," she says, "I was waiting for the right time to strike! Just...you know..."

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

>"You had the right time to strike. You had hold of my shadow. I cannot think of a better opportunity for you to take it. And yet you did not. And now, it seems, you may very well have more than one reason not to, as we have already shown that you have come to care about me."

[Kilgamayan]

You're misunderstanding my position. I don't want her to run around with no shame whatsoever, going out of her way to expose herself to as many people as possible as often as possible. Just a regular Josephine. I just want her to be a normal functioning member of society. Like I've told her, even someone as extroverted as Iku has been knows the value of privacy.

You bring up something Patchouli mentioned, about taking it one step at a time. While perhaps a good idea in general, there's two reasons why trying to take tiny bites does not interest me:

- This game is five months old, and even ignoring my personal goal desires, the two main problems are still not close to being resolved, and a new major problem has sprung up in the last 400 or so posts. This game has been exhausting and it is showing no signs of being remotely close to done. God only knows the number of times I've taken whatever opportunity I can get to pitch in to it. Sneaking on in tiny intervals at work, posting from church, posting in the middle of handbell concerts where I was performing. I have come close to quitting this game on several occasions out of a combination of disgust and exhausting and each time I've decided against it I've come back with a bit less energy. I want this done, and I want it done fast. I am beyond out of patience.
- And even given all the time and energy, I not only still have no clue how I'm supposed to be able to accomplish my personal goal or any of the game-presented goals, I don't even know why we're where we are now. I see no reason for the poltergeist to care about us, let alone to the point where she refuses to take our shadow, and yet she does. I see every reason for her to want us dead five times over, and yet she wants the opposite. What little joy can be taken in this tiny amount of progress is quickly overwhelmed by the extreme frustration in realizing that I have no fucking clue how I did it. It's almost taunting at this point, because, given I don't know how I got here, I can't reproduce whatever successful measures I had taken in the past. As far as I can tell I might as well communicate by sitting on the keyboard a few times and hitting Post because who the fuck knows, that might actually work.

[Hello Purvis]

>"You had the right time to strike. You had hold of my shadow. I cannot think of a better opportunity for you to take it. And yet you did not. And now, it seems, you may very well have more than one reason not to, as we have already shown that you have come to care about me."

>"I thought it was a trick at first," she says.

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

I understand your position. I'm just saying that she doesn't have to jump straight to that point. Also, this quest won't necessarily have to continue until she reaches that point, would it? We need to get her to a level that allows her to survive, and then get her to restore Bhava-Agra's shadow and stop taking people's shadows. Aside from that, making sure she's on the right path should be enough (and if you really want to see her complete that change, well, I'm sure there will be quests after this one).
 
>"In what sense? Are you saying you thought I was going to do something to you if you began taking my shadow?"

[Hello Purvis]

>"In what sense? Are you saying you thought I was going to do something to you if you began taking my shadow?"

>"I don't know," she says. "It was too strange; what you did. I wasn't sure if you were trying to trick me in some way or not."

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

>"Well, clearly you have since concluded that I was not."

[Hello Purvis]

>"Well, clearly you have since concluded that I was not."

>"Well, yes," she says, "But at the time it was different."

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

"But now, your thinking seems to be as I said, that our current arrangement is preferable to either extreme."

[Suwako Moriya]

Also, this quest won't necessarily have to continue until she reaches that point, would it? We need to get her to a level that allows her to survive, and then get her to restore Bhava-Agra's shadow and stop taking people's shadows. Aside from that, making sure she's on the right path should be enough (and if you really want to see her complete that change, well, I'm sure there will be quests after this one).

I refuse to bank on being able to continue this in a later quest given I've been told it's possible in this one. I have no idea what's coming up next - it's quite possible it'll end up being someone completely unrelated to the situation that would basically need OOC knowledge to find Team Brocket and get to know her (remember that Iku is normally not very easy to reach), and it's entirely possible we'll be given a player character I don't even want to play that much. Sacrificing a stated possible thing for an unknown with no extra benefits doesn't sit well with me at all. :C

[GuyYouMetOnline]

And I'm not saying we should. I'm saying that personal change takes time; we can't expect Shuuei to simply change who she is that quickly.

[Suwako Moriya]

I've waited nine bloody topics of near-constant interaction potential for Tenshi to reach a level people that aren't me would call "tolerable". I really don't want to have to wait another nine topics for this.

[Hello Purvis]

"But now, your thinking seems to be as I said, that our current arrangement is preferable to either extreme."

>"I don't know if it's preferable," she says. "Just..."
>She trails off.

>_

[GuyYouMetOnline]

I don't think we'll need to. I apologize if I'm not being clear, but what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't force her to reach that point immediately. What's important is that we get her to want to move in that direction, and to then do so. Although if my Satori/Koishi idea is possible, that might actually get a quicker change.
 
>"Well, you don't need to be sure. I'm not asking you to reach any conclusions. All I am doing is pointing out that the best course of action is often somewhere between the extremes. I simply would like you to keep that in mind as you consider what should be done about your current situation."

Okay, so I have to go, and I won?t be able to reply for a while. So here?s what I?ve been going for:

The idea of the current conversation is not to completely convince Shuuei that the answer lies between the two extremes. Rather, the purpose is to get her thinking about such options, thinking about choices other than the extremes. And I think that?s been accomplished at this point. So unless anyone wants to say anything else, go ahead and finish up with her, get her reply to Yukari, and head towards Maribel?s place to find Chen and, hopefully, Utsuho. The information I want from Okuu is as much about Koishi as she knows, especially in regards to Koishi?s powers and what closing her third eye has done to them. And if it gets that far, the info I want from Yukari concerns how one?s power could be sealed, and in particular if it?s possible to completely rid one?s self of a power that is part of what one is, such as a satori?s mind-reading ability.

[Hello Purvis]

>"Well, you don't need to be sure. I'm not asking you to reach any conclusions. All I am doing is pointing out that the best course of action is often somewhere between the extremes. I simply would like you to keep that in mind as you consider what should be done about your current situation."

>"This is easy for you to say," she replies. "You like debasing yourself."
>Despite her words, her tone isn't particularly malicious.

>_

[Suwako Moriya]

> "Then may I ask what you think a preferable arrangement might be?"

[Hello Purvis]

> "Then may I ask what you think a preferable arrangement might be?"

>"You know my answer to that before you asked," she says. "And it is apparently not something I can actually do without keeping that shadow, which is what has let me this impasse in the first place."

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> "Oh, my apologies. I meant my question in the sense of a more ideal arrangement in dealing with that problem."

[Hello Purvis]

> "Oh, my apologies. I meant my question in the sense of a more ideal arrangement in dealing with that problem."

>"I've told you what the ideal solution would be," she says. "Ideally I keep the shadow and am left alone."

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> "Then I need to rephrase my question. What would be the optimal alternative to that? The least of all evils, as it were."

[Hello Purvis]

> "Then I need to rephrase my question. What would be the optimal alternative to that? The least of all evils, as it were."

>"If I knew, I would be doing it," she says.

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> "All right, fair enough."

[Shadoweh]

I've been trying not to interfere with the poltergeist conversations because of how much work you've put into them. I'm not fond of Iku or of the pacifist run style you took but it's an interesting run. I'm not Purvis but from my perspective the poltergeist tried to silence Iku forever, Iku somehow got better, and it confused her enough to let you talk her into submission. Having to put up with Iku may go against her isolationist beliefs but she still has normal feelings. She adjusted from tolerated to friend despite herself.

If your goal is for her to get integrated then convincing her to meet with Yukari in person would be a huge step. Or with anyone one-on-one. Tenshi already saw her, so if you work that angle she might tolerate Tenshi's presence. If you can get her comfortable or just tolerant of more then one person her philosophy should change naturally.

> Did we ever get a straight answer from Shuuei about why she took Bhava-Agra's shadow in specific?