There was a storyline I made a long whiles ago about a character named Plagal. I used this name twice in RPGs I played in; the story I made up about her is based on the first RPG. I kind of like the name Plagal... Anyway, I've been thinking about the story more recently and thought it'd be best to write something down about it. The story has a pretty elaborate setting so I'll start with that, then get into the actual characters themselves.
The setting is around the Medieval times complete with knights and wizardry of that sort. It revolves around the concept of Necromancy and puts a slight twist on it. Basically, its a story about Necromancers not quite being as "evil" as everyone always percieves them to be (even IRL, Necromancy is associated with the "dark side" and those who conduct it must be "evil" or using black mana in Magic: The Gathering). But Necromancy can be good just as well as it can be evil; like all magic, it all depends on how it is used. It's quite efficient, actually; here you can reanimate a body to do some menial and often dirty tasks that one wouldn't always want to do with their own hands... besides, the bodies usually would sit there and rot, wouldn't it be better to make some use of a body before it completely decomposes? Nevertheless, the concept of Necromancy is still taken as to be "evil", even in this sort of world, save a small village which practices it as tradition. This precents a conflict for the characters in the story, as they practice a taboo form of magic that many outsiders would outcast them out of fear.
Despite their ability to "reanimate the dead", it should be taken into account that the dead aren't brought back to life, but the body merely used like a tool, whether it be savagely raiding a city or doing plow work in the field on a farm. This is the case, most of the time. The concept of soul and body exist in this world; while the body can be reanimated (relatively) easily, the soul is usually the "living" part of the being eternally gone after they had died. So can the soul be captured back and, ultimately, the body be repaired enough to bring a person back to life? And can this lead to immortality? Many Necromancy researchers in the village look into this extensively. As so far, the only method that comes close to bring back a person to life is a method they call "Soul Capture".
"Soul Capture", however, is highly looked down upon in the village. This method essentually does what it says: capture the soul and forces it back into the body. The method prevents the soul from going into eternal sleep (whether that is Heaven or whatever comes after death) and makes the soul-enchanted undead basically a slave of the capturer/re-animator. So how is this different from regular reanimation, save that one now enslaves a poor soul? Basically, though the soul-captured zombie cannot disobey its master, it is able to do many things that a zombie cannot do, one of the most notable being able to think and reason without its master doing it for them. Hence, they can act on things without their master's commands, and therefore make excellent companions/warriors/whatever the necromancer wanted to do with it. Therefore, while morally this is a bad thing to do, "Soul Capture" is a powerful skill.
There are many downsides to "Soul Capture". One of which is that, since the soul almost immediately goes to the Great Beyond after death, it is IMMENSELY difficult to capture the soul in the first place. There are very few necromancers, therefore, who have achieved this. The second is that, since the Soul, along with its body, must be, in a sense, "kept alive" for it to continue serving its master, the master usually must constantly provide energy/magic, or essentially, his own soul, for both bodily and spiritual repair; otherwise, the soul would die out as soon as the body is ripped apart (and hence becoming rather pointless in conducting such a powerful spell). This is important; in normal zombies, a master can often repair the body a bit and use it again, but having it take part of their energy it usually not worth it and much more efficient to find a new body to reanimate. However, the Soul can ONLY be associated with its own body, therefore the body MUST be repaired if it suffers any damage; likewise with the soul itself (IE there are spiritually damaging skills in the era).
Before ending the discussion (or rather, lecture) on this new form of necromancy and spells, there are several loose ends to tie up. One is, if a really powerful soul is captured, one that was able to do powerful magic (or had the potential to) when it was alive, then it is still able to do powerful magic when it is in its soul-captured form. This, in the record of the story, has never really happened except for (obviously) Plagal's case, and even Plagal doesn't quite realize her own capability. In this case, they can even "divide" their own soul and control other (soulless) bodies, quite an astonishing feat from a deceased person (Normal necromancers can also control multiple bodies, but they have to be skilled in necromancy and even then have a limit to how many bodies they can control; the whole "raise an army of a million dead warriors" is, to say the least, a very tiring task). Another thing, dead bodies don't age. This should be fairly obvious. Finally, the question of bringing a person back to life has never been answered, but there have been legends and fables within the village about such a thing. This is fairly important, since one of the main goals for the main character of this story is to try and actually bring Plagal back to life, not just as a zombie, but back into an actual person. He often looks into these legends for hints as to how to help his once friend/crush (yes she was probably someone he loved) emerge back into the world he lives in now.
Well... that's one part of the story I wanted to write up. I'm feeling too lazy to write up more now, so I'll stop. (The internet does that to do, seriously) I'm thinking of putting up a little intro/prologue thing of this story rather than a straight out character profile... at least not yet, because I think the intro would make more sense then just putting in characters like I've been doing with the other stories.
Who knows, maybe I'll even make some sort of story out of it.
Or I can just procrastinate forever and never have anythign else to do with Plagal ever again!!! XD
29.11.06
21.11.06
Asakura Ryouko
...from "Meloncholy of Suzumiya Haruhi". Consequently, I was reading (and feeling quite guilty from doing so) Haruhi about up to a half an hour before my Organic Chemistry test, pretty much laughing up till the time I needed to take the test (test must be serious). And somehow I now have the 2nd highest score on the midterm in the class (well, I'm tied with one other person). IS THIS THE POWER OF HARUHIISM?!??!
Uh, I think not.
But nevertheless, I'm quite happy. So, because I have an essay due next week and I need to practice my BSing skills, I'm actually going to have a little analysis on the character of Asakura Ryouko, who I really find as a really interesting symbolic character. No, I am not obsessed with psycho emotionally-broken murderers smiling innocently and with much moe while carrying a knife ready to kill you, though I will admit this is somewhat more attractive than Nagato at the moment... >.>
HOWEVER, I'm going to be going through a lot of stuff from Volume 4, so it does spoil some things... Ah who cares, only I really make a fuss about spoilers. *ends spoiler warning*
Now, in Volume 4 Asakura comes out of nowhere to save the modified Nagato from Kyon's weird needle-gun-to-change-the-world-back, then attempts to murder Kyon without much second thought. Is this the same Asakura from Volume 1? Most likely not. This Asakura seems very different from the first Asakura in several ways. First off, the first Asakura was created by the Data-Integrated Entity dude, as backup for Nagato. At that time, she served the Data-Integrated Entity and tried to do what she thought would be best to achieve the Entity's mission.
In Volume 4, however, she could care less for what the Data-Integrated Entity wants; this Ryouko served to protect Nagato. She is in a sense the manifestation of Nagato's "Erroneous Files" which have accumulated and ultimately, when the large change occurred, taken up a form of the former Asakura Ryouko. Unfortunately, these files aren't exactly just a bunch of jarbled junk and seem to be more like a virus, or a program gone wrong in a sense. This is NOT the same Asakura as in Volume 1, even though she also is like a program gone beserk. So then, what IS Asakura and why is her form constantly used, and not say, a giant cave cricket?
One theory I recently developed was that, perhaps, if we relate a Data Integrated Entity to the body of a human being, Asakura would, literally, be the virus. Perhaps Asakura is a virus that lives on the Entity, Nagato being part of the Entity; Asakura relies on the Entity to stay alive and does harm to it. However, the Entity knows this and continually tries to purge it, but like any virus it will continue to spread itself throughout the body. Because the program is so similar, the figure of Asakura Ryouko remains the same; that's why she is constantly used as the "evil moe murderer" type of person. So, although she is not the same virus as in volume 4, she is very much a replicate of it; alas, it would not be unusual if more Asakura viruses were to appear in the future.
Oh bother, I'm starting to feel like I'd really be happy if an Asakura Virus came over to kill me with a cute smile on her face. Damn my weakness to irony! DAMMIT! I should stop now.
Uh, I think not.
But nevertheless, I'm quite happy. So, because I have an essay due next week and I need to practice my BSing skills, I'm actually going to have a little analysis on the character of Asakura Ryouko, who I really find as a really interesting symbolic character. No, I am not obsessed with psycho emotionally-broken murderers smiling innocently and with much moe while carrying a knife ready to kill you, though I will admit this is somewhat more attractive than Nagato at the moment... >.>
HOWEVER, I'm going to be going through a lot of stuff from Volume 4, so it does spoil some things... Ah who cares, only I really make a fuss about spoilers. *ends spoiler warning*
Now, in Volume 4 Asakura comes out of nowhere to save the modified Nagato from Kyon's weird needle-gun-to-change-the-world-back, then attempts to murder Kyon without much second thought. Is this the same Asakura from Volume 1? Most likely not. This Asakura seems very different from the first Asakura in several ways. First off, the first Asakura was created by the Data-Integrated Entity dude, as backup for Nagato. At that time, she served the Data-Integrated Entity and tried to do what she thought would be best to achieve the Entity's mission.
In Volume 4, however, she could care less for what the Data-Integrated Entity wants; this Ryouko served to protect Nagato. She is in a sense the manifestation of Nagato's "Erroneous Files" which have accumulated and ultimately, when the large change occurred, taken up a form of the former Asakura Ryouko. Unfortunately, these files aren't exactly just a bunch of jarbled junk and seem to be more like a virus, or a program gone wrong in a sense. This is NOT the same Asakura as in Volume 1, even though she also is like a program gone beserk. So then, what IS Asakura and why is her form constantly used, and not say, a giant cave cricket?
One theory I recently developed was that, perhaps, if we relate a Data Integrated Entity to the body of a human being, Asakura would, literally, be the virus. Perhaps Asakura is a virus that lives on the Entity, Nagato being part of the Entity; Asakura relies on the Entity to stay alive and does harm to it. However, the Entity knows this and continually tries to purge it, but like any virus it will continue to spread itself throughout the body. Because the program is so similar, the figure of Asakura Ryouko remains the same; that's why she is constantly used as the "evil moe murderer" type of person. So, although she is not the same virus as in volume 4, she is very much a replicate of it; alas, it would not be unusual if more Asakura viruses were to appear in the future.
Oh bother, I'm starting to feel like I'd really be happy if an Asakura Virus came over to kill me with a cute smile on her face. Damn my weakness to irony! DAMMIT! I should stop now.
18.11.06
Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research
Or SCCUR for short. Ironically I came online partly to write this blog entry up (and partly to print out ochem practice tests) but ended up completely forgetting and getting lost in a sea of no-new-posts message boards. :/
I figured since I do blog posts for things like Anime Expo and game gatherings, this would be rather significant to post too.
Overall experience of the conference: It was decent, I liked it. It feels a bit better when you have something to present and go to these conferences than to just visit them and have the "everyone is better than me because they actually have something to present" feeling that I got last year when visiting a science conference similar to this one... And its also not a "dammit I'm wasting my time here I have an OChem test on monday" feeling either, a feeling I get when I go off to anime club on sundays :p.
Regardless, some nickpicky criticism. So I paid 50 dollars, worked an absurd amount of hours in Lab and risked damaging my academic status to get, basically, a paragraph in a Guide to SCCUR 2006, a lunch (consisting of a ham sandwich, Sunchips (I think that's what they were called), can of Sprite, a Ba(Na)2, and a fudge cookie which I lost shortly after I finished the rest of my lunch :( ) and a few questions from people confused about my poster and brave enough to ask me what it was about. Which, in turn, made them 1. Understand it a little better or 2. confused even more. Let's hope for the most part its the former. Oh! And some pamphlets about a Undergraduate Studies Journal that looked really interesting. I want to write an article for it but I'm wondering about my lack of motivation to do so. :p
Analysis of Poster Presentations: There are two critera for a really good poster: 1. Make it look really interesting and 2. Make it confusing. Usually, making it confusing can very well lead to making it look boring, so this is a pretty difficult task to do. Nevertheless, its quite necessary, because if someone understands your poster, even if it does look pretty, there's no questions to ask because its all self-explanatory and people just walk over, nod your head, and leave. At first I didn't understand why my lab advisors made it so technical (and basically write my entire poster for me *cough*) but now I realize they made it so that people are encouraged to ask questions... provided what I do looks interesting enough.
I personally think my poster didn't look all that interesting, so that's why (I believe) I didn't get as much appeal as I could have. I found one poster that met this "Interesting but Confusing" criteria; it had something to do with Artificial Livers and it had a really nice diagram that looked really pretty but I had no clue what the hell was going on. This does, of course, encourage me to ask the poster presenter what he was doing, but he was talking with other people so I kind of just left him and moved on. :p
Yea, that's also a personal trait of mine, as a poster-viewer, I don't like large groups so I'd rather go visit posters where the person is just standing there looking lonely and unhappy that no one is viewing their poster... although, I can only ask questions if I can genuinely be interested in what their presenting. Obviously, not everything is interesting to me since there are a variety of fields (Seriously now, one poster expects you to know what CT-something is in Electrical Engineering... I'm only in Linear Circuits :( ), but a lot of it seems curious enough.
For the poster presenter himself/herself, I found many are more open to those who ask people "Do you have any questions". This is particularly applicable to me, since I can stare at a poster for 10 minutes without saying anything. Well, sometimes its just me trying to figure out how to put what I'm confused about into a question, other times its because other people are talking with the presenter... Regardless, its something I need to work on, there has been a few people that stared at my poster for a while and I probably should asked them if they had any questions. But I got my fair share of questions. Even got locked up in one of them, that was kind of embarassing...
Questions of the day:
Most Asked Question: "What's your poster/experiment about?" << This is an annoying question. Even if I'm confused about a poster, I don't want to ask this to them because their poster SERVES to explain what the experiment is doing. It is more easier IMO if they be more specific like "What does this word mean" or "What are you doing in this picture" Rather than me trying to explain (for the 8th time) what I'm doing which is basically noted in the damn title. Come on, if you're generally interested at least read the damn thing rather than just ask me "What's it about". -_-
Most Useful Question (well its a comment): I got a tip off of someone who's apparently doing the same research :O I'm sure my advisor already knows him/her, but I thought that was kind of cool. The guy not only read and figured out what I'm doing, but also knew a source which is doing something similar to my experiments and gave me a name... Most helpful guy for the entire hour I stood in front of my poster. :)
Most Entertaining Question: "LOLZ USC hAs a nEURoSciEnCe PrOgRaM???!!1" <<< My internet-talk perception of the question asked... yea... we have a Neuroscience program... that's why I have this poster... (I didn't answer that sarcastically of course :p)
Interesting Posters: Artifical Livers (mentioned above), "How Happy are Chicanos in LA" (My advisor found this one funny), "Learning Statistics through an Online Game" (It was an online dating simulator with statistics! XD) and another poster having to do with the differentation of stem cells... it had a word which I had no idea what it meant and now I completely forgot what the word is, but I remembered what it meant! (has to do with the process of the cell differentiation)
I figured since I do blog posts for things like Anime Expo and game gatherings, this would be rather significant to post too.
Overall experience of the conference: It was decent, I liked it. It feels a bit better when you have something to present and go to these conferences than to just visit them and have the "everyone is better than me because they actually have something to present" feeling that I got last year when visiting a science conference similar to this one... And its also not a "dammit I'm wasting my time here I have an OChem test on monday" feeling either, a feeling I get when I go off to anime club on sundays :p.
Regardless, some nickpicky criticism. So I paid 50 dollars, worked an absurd amount of hours in Lab and risked damaging my academic status to get, basically, a paragraph in a Guide to SCCUR 2006, a lunch (consisting of a ham sandwich, Sunchips (I think that's what they were called), can of Sprite, a Ba(Na)2, and a fudge cookie which I lost shortly after I finished the rest of my lunch :( ) and a few questions from people confused about my poster and brave enough to ask me what it was about. Which, in turn, made them 1. Understand it a little better or 2. confused even more. Let's hope for the most part its the former. Oh! And some pamphlets about a Undergraduate Studies Journal that looked really interesting. I want to write an article for it but I'm wondering about my lack of motivation to do so. :p
Analysis of Poster Presentations: There are two critera for a really good poster: 1. Make it look really interesting and 2. Make it confusing. Usually, making it confusing can very well lead to making it look boring, so this is a pretty difficult task to do. Nevertheless, its quite necessary, because if someone understands your poster, even if it does look pretty, there's no questions to ask because its all self-explanatory and people just walk over, nod your head, and leave. At first I didn't understand why my lab advisors made it so technical (and basically write my entire poster for me *cough*) but now I realize they made it so that people are encouraged to ask questions... provided what I do looks interesting enough.
I personally think my poster didn't look all that interesting, so that's why (I believe) I didn't get as much appeal as I could have. I found one poster that met this "Interesting but Confusing" criteria; it had something to do with Artificial Livers and it had a really nice diagram that looked really pretty but I had no clue what the hell was going on. This does, of course, encourage me to ask the poster presenter what he was doing, but he was talking with other people so I kind of just left him and moved on. :p
Yea, that's also a personal trait of mine, as a poster-viewer, I don't like large groups so I'd rather go visit posters where the person is just standing there looking lonely and unhappy that no one is viewing their poster... although, I can only ask questions if I can genuinely be interested in what their presenting. Obviously, not everything is interesting to me since there are a variety of fields (Seriously now, one poster expects you to know what CT-something is in Electrical Engineering... I'm only in Linear Circuits :( ), but a lot of it seems curious enough.
For the poster presenter himself/herself, I found many are more open to those who ask people "Do you have any questions". This is particularly applicable to me, since I can stare at a poster for 10 minutes without saying anything. Well, sometimes its just me trying to figure out how to put what I'm confused about into a question, other times its because other people are talking with the presenter... Regardless, its something I need to work on, there has been a few people that stared at my poster for a while and I probably should asked them if they had any questions. But I got my fair share of questions. Even got locked up in one of them, that was kind of embarassing...
Questions of the day:
Most Asked Question: "What's your poster/experiment about?" << This is an annoying question. Even if I'm confused about a poster, I don't want to ask this to them because their poster SERVES to explain what the experiment is doing. It is more easier IMO if they be more specific like "What does this word mean" or "What are you doing in this picture" Rather than me trying to explain (for the 8th time) what I'm doing which is basically noted in the damn title. Come on, if you're generally interested at least read the damn thing rather than just ask me "What's it about". -_-
Most Useful Question (well its a comment): I got a tip off of someone who's apparently doing the same research :O I'm sure my advisor already knows him/her, but I thought that was kind of cool. The guy not only read and figured out what I'm doing, but also knew a source which is doing something similar to my experiments and gave me a name... Most helpful guy for the entire hour I stood in front of my poster. :)
Most Entertaining Question: "LOLZ USC hAs a nEURoSciEnCe PrOgRaM???!!1" <<< My internet-talk perception of the question asked... yea... we have a Neuroscience program... that's why I have this poster... (I didn't answer that sarcastically of course :p)
Interesting Posters: Artifical Livers (mentioned above), "How Happy are Chicanos in LA" (My advisor found this one funny), "Learning Statistics through an Online Game" (It was an online dating simulator with statistics! XD) and another poster having to do with the differentation of stem cells... it had a word which I had no idea what it meant and now I completely forgot what the word is, but I remembered what it meant! (has to do with the process of the cell differentiation)
16.11.06
So...
A couple days ago I presented to you the best picture to represent myself.
Today I present to you the best Webcomic to represent my life.
www.phdcomics.com
Today I present to you the best Webcomic to represent my life.
www.phdcomics.com
14.11.06
Greatest picture I have found
If there is one stupid picture from the internet that can represent me, this is the one.
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