genessia | 001 ✮ Video

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001 ✮ Video

[ This is a remarkably cool phone, much better than the one she's got, and she was pretty excited about it, too. Of course, now she'll have to change all the desktop pictures and ringtones, but customization is its own reward. She can't find a hook for a phone charm, though, which was an important thing that would need reconciling.

So yeah, have a high school girl that definitely knows how phones work, but is gonna press her face too close to the camera anyway as she records for broadcast. ]

Hello, hello!

This is Konata Izumi. Oh wait, there's a little anonymous thing right here, I should have done that first, maybe I could have spooked some people. Oh well.

[ She starts flicking through some of the other settings on the video, cycling through a few different filters as she tries them out. ]

Anyway, I just woke up in the egg! Hazzah! Unfortunately rather than an adorable wet yellow baby bird you have received a slothful otaku. Condolence cards have been mailed in advance, fu fu fu.

The lady in the hologram was very informative of the parts that I listened to. I was rather distracted because her outfit wasn't really thematically appropriate for a hologram, you need to have the proper costume to fit with the technology level, and a lacy white dress doesn't go with sci-fi, it needs more of a Major Kusinagi vibe but instead it's more like Princess Tutu. Not that crossover genres can't be good, but they're really hard to pull off, and you're probably gonna lose some of your initial audience by going against expectations like that, ya know what I'm saying?

Also I feel kind of cheated because after being interdimensionally transported, my welcoming committee is a hologram that's like 'okay find a place to live and work', like shouldn't there be an intimidating handler who is cynical about my presence but will eventually warm up to me enough to explain how their previous partner died and how I remind them of them, along with a big-breasted personal assistant in a form-fitting suit that never talks but is an expert in four kinds of martial arts, and they're here to explain my pivotal role in a millennium-long conflict with a rival insect empire? It just seems very narratively messy to use this kind of mechanism for such a mundane purpose, that would be like giving everyone super powers like in Inou-Battle but then leaving out the entire plot of the fairy war and just continuing to have them go to school like nothing changed.

It would subvert expectations but you'd get a lot of people who continue to expect that plot thread to culminate in everything, and while there's gonna be some hardcore fans that figure there's gonna be a sequel series that addresses it, in the meantime your main audience is gonna get impatient and just pick up the latest copy of Azumanga Daioh instead.

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[Ted listens attentively, trying to keep all these proper nouns straight. He has a lot of questions, but is so confounded that he only remembers one of them.]

"Um, yes, well...

Uh

What's 'Azumanga Daioh'?"

[ There's a text of addresses for the places his closet otaku boyfriend likes to shop at.]

[ She's not sure if that means that there's no Manga here, or if this is just someone else that doesn't follow comics. The latter wasn't really that surprising at all, since that was most people she ever talked to, but it was disappointing either way. ]

It's a manga series about a bunch of schoolgirls in Japan. Do you even know what Japan is? I'm not really up to giving a crash course on world history and geography or whatever.

[ Perhaps the weight of realization was finally dawning on her. ]

[ She plugs the addresses into her maps app and finds out that they're all comic shops. ]

Nice, thanks!

[ She should probably go find out about like, housing and job stuff first, but... well apparently one of those is really close, so just stopping by real quick shouldn't hurt right? ]

I thought I did. But somewhere past the hair color, the immodesty, and the suffusion, the idea got away from me.

Welcome to Genessia anyway; you'll find many of your countrymen here. Perhaps even one of your goddesses, though I'm sad to say she's the worst of the bunch. I'm sure your narrative difficulties will resolve in time.

[ What are you talking about her hair is naturally this way ]

Don't worry I get the immodesty thing a lot from my "countrymen."

[ She used airquotes there, btw. ]

But tell me more about this goddess chick.

[ Konata has no clue who that would even be, especially since it sounded like the Japan he knew was some alternate universe version where people didn't have highly saturated hair (if you are a main character). Not only did Konota not really spend any time studying formalized religion, but like, which one would you pick? Did Buddhism have any evil goddesses? ]

In what way does she suck? Is she just super petty and jealous, or is she the trickster sort, or is she like Satan or what?

[ She actually knew christian gods a little better than japanese ones just because so many manga loved to make use of poorly translated foreigner material to be 'edgy.' ]

[He's met a lot of you bluehairs. All claiming it's natural, too. Starting to smell like a plot.]

Partly all those descriptors are apt, save 'trickster', for that would require some sense of humor. Izanami, the ah, one who had a hand in creating Japan, and then vowing to kill 100 of its people every day. She says she doesn't do that anymore, cold consolation though that is.

But then I'm reasonably certain it's just a madwoman who has chosen a very poor part to play. Makes me wonder whether older generations weren't wise to drive shrews to the fens under the guise of witchcraft.

Oooh, Izanami? That's a big one!

[ dot dot dot

So how do you react to the news that you could theoretically meet a primordial diety that you only kind-of, like in the most detached way possible even believed to exist? ]

So does she look really ugly with the maggots and rotting skin and stuff, I'm asking if maybe I shouldn't eat lunch before I try to meet her, fu fu fu.

[ Also wasn't it 1000 dead people? But Izanagi was birthing 1500 a day so it worked out. Konata wasn't super up on any of that stuff though and arguing theology sounded boring. ]

Well she's...

[The most pregnant of pauses. That's a perilously close description of the demon-skeleton crank caller he knew and loathed."

"Er, is that how she looks like? Ahem, what else can you tell me of her...aesthetic? Would it involve crimson skeletons, by chance?"

I dunno! I've never met a real goddess before!

She's supposed to be so ugly from being super dead that her husband ran from the underworld in a panic though, so assuming the stories are true....

And when he did she sent ugly hags after him, not red skeletons. But I can totally see someone deciding that bloody skeletons have a bigger 'cool' factor than ugly women...

Of course gods of death are really popular in all sorts of different comics and games, most of them want their goddess antagonists to be smokin', so when Izanami shows up more often than not she'll be all curves and skimpy outfits.

Is there a point to your useless blathering, girl?

[ Patchouli is very much unimpressed with all of this foolishness. It sounds completely ridiculous in every way to the witch's ears. ]

Yes. It was a magical spell to summon you. It worked!

[So many dots are connecting now. A look of alarmed epiphany passes over his features.]

Thank you, you've likely illuminated something deeply disturbing I've been puzzling over.

That being said, she's someone you're better off not meeting, if at all possible. While her treacherous violence has abated, I'm afraid she's still very vengeful. Best steer clear.

Oh, speaking of, did these comics and games ever specify a way of putting an end to her? I'm a little rusty on god-slaying.

[ There's also the arcade, places for buying video games, including dating sims, where bishoujo figures can be purchased, and a book store that sells his brother's manga. Some of those places are hiring.]

(･ω･)b

[ Then he adds the Job Center and Welcome Center.]

Ha ha, you don't kill a goddess of death! They're kind of important? Like even if you could do it, which you can't, it would be bad, in totally unexpected ways. Like there would be a HUGE overpopulation problem or maybe people would get really seriously injured but instead of dying they'd just like keep suffering and it would be a whole new quest to find a way to bring her back!

But anyway don't keep all the cool stuff to yourself what did you just figure out?

[ Bleh, 'Job Center' we'll just conveniently ignore that one.

Welcome center is probably good info too, but MANGA. Mmm, she has worked in a manga store before so she MIGHT consider applying but she wants to figure out whats up with all the magical cities before she does that. There's sights to see, people to annoy! ]

໒(☆▽☆)७

Well, maybe not kill so much as...I don't know, pacify? Neutralize? Convert? Something of that nature. She's not exactly benevolent.

Since you ask...incredible as this may seem, I've been haunted by one such. A maggot-riddled monster, that is. I'm not sure why; it's never articulated in a manner I could quite grasp.

Then there's another--the madwoman--who really claims to be Izanami. I brushed this off as mere ravings, but it wasn't until you connected the deity with the form that the likeness suggested itself. The madwoman has always appeared as a red-eyed woman with grey hair, whom I thought a totally separate entity from the scarlet skeleton who's greeted me twice. But if they really were two guises of the same goddess...a lot of things would add up. Her perpetual grouchiness, for starters.

I don't know, all that sounds really weird.

If it is Izanami why is she bugging you? Did you break a promise? That seems to be her real berserk button.

And you said she's not murdering peeps anymore, so what exactly are you trying to neutralize? Like I said, death goddesses gonna death. You can't mess with her unless you want to mess up how reality itself works. It's like trying to say 'how to you stop a hurricane' or 'how do I prevent this volcano from erupting.'

I mean, I'm kind of curious to find out what would happen but I'm also kind of scared.

How wonderful for you.

[ Said in the most deadpan manner ever. ]

Or maybe it didn't work, because I used sugar and spice and everything nice in the recipe but instead I got you. Bad spell, I guess!

But for real though hi. Wassup.

Are you the one here to deliver my cosmic destiny? You've definitely got the tsun thing going so I guess I should start adjusting myself for our inevitable but frustratingly drawn out will-they won't-they story arc.

There is no 'cosmic destiny' for you. You've simply drawn in and trapped here like many others.

Uhh... what's Azumanga Daioh? ☆

Hah, I'm afraid that's not the only weird thing to prepare for. There's more where that came from. But you've got a good grounding in literature so you're better suited than most.

As for why, I don't know. Something to do about the nature of fear and my philosophy of monsters? As I said, she wasn't very clear.

But you needn't revere that goddess so highly. If she ever had some claim on reality, I doubt she does any longer. This world is very much like a game, and she's a player like us. And death hasn't the same sting; no one can, ultimately, eliminate you from the board. You only stop playing when you tire of the game.

And though she may have had a change of method, there doesn't seem to have been much change of heart. When a villain like that makes themselves known, you know it means trouble.

In other words, I think destiny has it in for us. There must be some means to victory.

No, no, it's not weird that there's a red skeleton and an old lady chasing you around, that sounds pretty typical for a given supernatural narrative. What's weird is that they're using Izanami in such a weird way! Sometimes people like to twist mythologies to suit a narrative but if you're gonna do that its best if you just use a different name and make it obvious that you're drawing on the myth but without invoking it, otherwise audiences get confused. The name Izanami comes with certain expectations so if you're gonna discard major components of the myth it's not a good way to go about it.

Sort of like in Beyond the Barrier, where they introduced the concept of Youmu, even though youkai is a generally understood term in Japan, but they didn't want to call their supernatural creatures Youkai because that came with a certain amount of expectation and assumptions so the audience would be expecting them to work a certain way and the author would find themselves having to expect and subvert those expectations, but instead they called their creatures youmu to make more of a blank slate!

But anyway what was that stuff about no death? It really is like a game, huh? Like a 3PS even, where if you die you just respawn. Is there a leaderboard where you can see everyone's global stats? Who's leading? Maybe its a deathmatch and everyone will be sent home once they rack up enough kills. Do people respawn in the bay? Should I watch out for spawn campers?

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