Halloween [Digital Devil Saga, Roland/Gale, G]

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

Title: Halloween
Artist: dogmatix_san
Rating: G
Warnings: none, worksafe.
Summary: Roland introduces Gale to Halloween
A/N: Arg, again not smutty, darn it. Although now with bonus drabble. XD;
Prompt: Feb 19 - Digital Devil Saga, Gale/Roland: roleplay - Gale just doesn't get it

Halloween

"So, then it is a weapon, like a firearm?"

"Uhh, no," Roland floundered. "It doesn't itself contain the energy. The energy comes from the person."

Gale's expression had been set to 'I do not comprehend' for the past five minutes, and it didn't look like it would be changing anytime soon. "Then what is its purpose?"

"It. Well it's-" Roland tried again to put what he could remember of the fantasy logic of a children's story into terms that a guerilla warrior AI could understand. "It's like a conduit, for the energy to flow through. Sort of."

Gale pondered this bit of information. "Then, would it not be more efficient to make it from metal? Wood is not an optimum conductor."

Roland tugged on his red and yellow scarf. Trust Gale to have no trouble with the concept of magic, but to need its use explained in logical scientific terms. No wonder they'd stuck him in Ravenclaw "It's not that kind of energy," he tried.

Gale still looked highly dubious, but was fortunately distracted as Cielo flew past them laughing delightedly, bee-striped scarf trailing in his wake. "Gale, Rolan', come on, we're gonna miss de candy!"





..and yes, now I want to do another drabble where Harry was messing around with a high-level spell he shouldn't have been to get a certain someone back from beyond the Veil and he gets several highly annoyed teenaged cannibalistic AI guerilla warriors instead XD (and, and Serph would be in Slytherin and all the others would be in various other houses and they'd still follow Serph instantly and without question which would completely floor all the students. And Cielo would be in Hufflepuff because above all he's about loyalty. And, yeah. XD;;; )

Comments

Re: Hmm... as you're speccing about houses continued.

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

Part of why I want Serph in Slyterin is also plot-type stuff - it would completely mess with the student body's heads if the new students in the other three houses followed the new student in the Slyterin house. I also don't know if Embryon would even stand for being placed in separate houses in anything except name, since I suspect they'd see it as Dumbledore trying to break Embryon apart.

Re: Hmm... as you're speccing about houses continued.

[laryna6.livejournal.com]

...determining character traits by even looking at how you want them to be for your plot is kind of one of the warning signs you might be heading towards badfic! territory. If you've got scientific training, think of it in terms of experimentor bias. The good scientist tries to prove himself WRONG.

Of course they wouldn't stand for it. Consider Gale's reaction to Roland keeping Cielo!

'Dumbledore lets random people stay' fics are hard to make realistic. Teachers? After what happened with Lupin? He needed Lupin there for Harry's sake and he couldn't keep him. He couldn't even keep Umbridge out. Also, these are kids there. The kids it's his duty to protect.

One parody fic was ironic to me because the choices for teachers were supposed to be obviously bad and I read it and told the person who recced it that since one of them was a principal in a school training people to fight evil magic-users and the other was in canon amazingly good with messed-up kids, they were the most reasonable teacher choices I'd seen in that sort of fic for a long time, and it was quite odd that THIS fic, a parody, thought these were ones that were obviously bad when they were actually people I'd want to hire if I were him. If I could get away with it, which Dumbledore at the point in timeline this fic was set would not have, sadly.

Re: Hmm... as you're speccing about houses continued.

[dogmatix-san.livejournal.com]

Mmm, it could be fun to do something with the 'Dumbledore lets random people stay' thing if Embryon came through looking to be in their mid-teens instead of late-teens/early-twenties, where, perhaps

* Trelawny(or someone else) had a prophecy that pretty clearly indicates they need to stay,

* for some reason (perhaps a tie to beyond the Veil, perhaps they saved his, Ron, and Hermionie's lives) Harry's pitching for them to stay, or

* they're just plain too dangerous to let loose among the general citizenry, or

* something else came back through the Veil with them and they're specialized to fight them (Bat or Varin or such), or

* Harry would get in all kinds of trouble if the Ministry found out he'd been messing around with those kinds of spells and so Embryon's being hidden in plain sight, or, yeah, something like that.

I'm guessing Dumbledore would take every precaution he could, and that the Embryon would retreat to the Forbidden Forest for midnight snacks, since they can't very well munch on the kiddies.

I can write, and yes I can plot my way out of a wet paper bag, but I'm not an author so much as an artist. So I'd write maybe a few thousand words for this, max, as a fun thing to play with. On the other hand, it sounds like you could get eight or nine chapters out of this. *g*

and now I'm starting to have trouble getting words to look right, so I'm off to bed. Thank you for the input, by the way :)

Looking at your list:

[laryna6.livejournal.com]

a) reason to keep them there
b) reason to get them out of there, possibly Sirius' house.
c) reason to hand them over to the ministry
d) ...this is Dumbledore. N/A. Power level nothing, he's got spells that would totally blindside Junkyard types.
e) He's not actually that good at hiding stuff that large.

He might find a safehouse for them, but Hogwarts is already a safehouse for people that are a higher priority to him, and he's having a lot of trouble keeping it a safehouse already without adding another possible internal threat/reason for the Ministry to give him a hard time.

Re: Hmm... as you're speccing about houses continued.

[laryna6.livejournal.com]

...actually, I think I'm going to have to do some more thinking about Roland.

You can make arguments for all four houses for him, but he house there's a large counterargument for is Hufflepuff: it's hard to see a Hufflepuff abandoning Greg.

So, if I'm going for opposite of Hufflepuff, that would be Slytherin. We all know Roland's more rationally than emotionally driven even despite the fact that he has huge freaking issues. He doesn't let his death wish overwhelm him until he knows rationally it's the correct decision to make.

Roland... expresses himself as Greg's follower to a large degree, but that might just be paying homage to his memory/Roland thinking of himself as a sucky leader for failing Greg and guilt tripping. If he were the type to get sucked into a Gryffindor's orbit, he'd be taking orders from Adil, not the other way around.

At that point, the Greg - Roland Lokapala becomes a clear two-man leadership, the two covering both strategic and tactical aspects between them. It's interesting that Roland's replacemtent for Greg, Adil, is a Gryffindor: the hands-on approach is what the Greg-less Lokapala needs.

His attempt to gain control over the Embryon isn't by just handing them information Ravenclawish or talking about ideals Gryffindorishly. He's using a combo of moral suasion, information, and the fact he holds Cielo hostage to get these people under control.

When he joins the party, it's very much under his own terms. He doesn't ask permission: he just shows up in their colors. That is one hell of an audacious act in the type of setup the Junkyard had, I bet he knew that. He's saying that he has the authority to make himself an Embryon, which is saying that he's Serph's equal.

While he feels that he failed as a leader and thus his issues make him want to be a follower, his base personality is fighting that tooth and nail.

I think the difficulty with him is the same as with Jenna: the issues are distorting the reading.

Roland's a Slytherin who wishes he was a Hufflepuff, because maybe if he had been stupid and impulsive enough to stay... they both would have died, but, he would have made the effort and he wouldn't be stuck in this hellish world trying to hold it together as it falls apart around him.

So, at that point the odd thing would be that the 'natural leader' Gryffindor with Hufflepuff and a Ravenclaw followers would be putting up with a Slytherin trying to steal his authority. They wouldn't be wondering about Serph, they'd be wondering why Serph's letting Roland lure his minions to the dark side with evil tricks like taking Cielo hostage and giving him Stockholm Syndrome. I mean, good lord. Imagine how easy it would be for a writer, who's essentially trained in spinning lies, to convince Cielo he's the greatest thing since Serph except for being unfortunatly Gale-like?

Re: Hmm... as you're speccing about houses continued.

[laryna6.livejournal.com]

Something interesting to think about as just as in Greek Myth when the gods fight Athena wins, when the houses fight Hufflepuff wins.

A fic author did something with the 'Hufflepuff mafia' and I was all, yeah...

The issue is Ravenclaws have the brains to be quite dangerous, but they're likely to work solo and not do much with it. If they were mad scientists of the world-takeover variety, they'd be in Slytherin.

Slytherins have the rationality and drive to do things, but they're reluctant to stick their necks out. If someone shows up with a good enough argument to convince Slytherins to follow him, though, then you've got a smart and dangerous leader with smart and dangerous followers and you're in trouble. However, notice that despite the goals of the Slytherins being mudbloods out, muggles slaves/gone, etc, they never actually accomplish them. A lot of this is, as in the post-Voldemort trials, that they do see themselves a leaders/valuable figures. They are willing to pull back to fight another day and screw others over for that purpose.

Voldemort comes back to find his army kept itself in good condition, but they did that by hanging him out to dry.

Gryffindors are idealists, but the issue is that a rogue idealist without a plan isn't going to be much more effective than a Ravenclaw. Opposite reasons, but the same situation. The Gryffindors that are successful are the ones that manage to motivate other Gryffindors.

Since Gryffindors are hero-types, they tend to do crusade type things. Since idealists have different ideals, they tend to oppose each other until it's time to all pull together to fight the latest Slytherin group.

The Hufflepuffs have what the other houses all lack: fundamental unity. Notice that the Harry/Draco conflict wasn't that much of an issue, but when he looked like he was messing with a Hufflepuff...

They end up being the silent majority that wants stability and a lack of people they like being hurt. Despite the constant rises and beatdowns of Dark Lords, wizarding society is fundamentally stable, and it's thanks to Helga Hufflepuff, who took in the 'unwanted,' the people who weren't especially clever, well connected, or jock-like and gave them friends and a supportive environment.

It's interesting that in the books Hufflepuff House is the most insular. I mean, the geeky Ravenclaws socialize outside their own house more than they do!