.hack recap: Subaru went off alone to keep an appointment.
(I recommend actually buying .hack//Sign since my words don't really do it justice. One can get either the DVD this episode is on, or the full series as a set.)
.hack//Sign, Episode 3: Folklore, 4:50 - 6:08
Thus far we've seen Subaru in her
position as head of the Crimson Knights, and just seeing her in that
position somewhat masks one of the effects of holding that position.
There is a vast gulf between Subaru head of the Crimson Knights and
just plain Subaru.
As head of the Crimson Knights Subaru
is one of the most powerful players in the game. She is the only
person we will see in the series who commands an army. Other groups
tend to be your standard adventuring parties with just a handful of
people. They're in one place at a time, and they can't muster
overwhelming force. The Crimson knights can be in many places at
once, as seen in the second episode when they were able to guard
every Chaos Gate in their attempt to catch Tsukasa, and they can
mobilize a sizable force when they feel the need, as we'll see in
episode five. They are a force without parallel, and they're loyal
to Subaru (to varying degrees.)
On the other hand being head of the
Crimson Knights has left Subaru as a very low powered player. Most
of her time appears to be spent administrating, which she does from a
boat on a canal in the root town that I call Venice (again, real name: Mac Anu)
and even if she weren't occupied by running the knights, she never really needs to fight her own
fights. She has never had opportunity to level up. On her own
basically anyone can push her around. (Physically at least, when it
comes to willpower she will not be moved.)
Something similar has happened on a
social front. As head of the Crimson Knights she's a celebrity, one
of the most visible players in the game, people copy her style and
she's popular and adored (and hated) and theoretically at the top of
the social heap. But she's also isolated. Her position doesn't lead
to her mingling. When she does interact with people outside of the
knights it's on knight related business. She doesn't have friends,
she has subordinates.
She originally came to the game because
she was drawn in by the social aspect of being able to interact with
people without real life limitations and prejudices getting in the
way. When she came she found that a certain segment of the
population had taken the, “Decide how to play for yourself,”
mandate and used it as an excuse to enjoy themselves at the expense
of others. There was no rule saying, “Don't be an ass,” so they
decided to be utter jerks.
The Crimson Knights were founded,
almost by accident, as a response to this. They were built around
the idea that just because you can push people around doesn't mean
you should. Just because it is possible to be a jerk doesn't mean it
is all right to be one. They exist to get everyone to play nice, and
that's what Subaru has been devoting herself to ever since. It's the
responsibility that she ended up with and she takes it seriously.
But lost along the way is that whole
social interaction thing. She doesn't do it, she doesn't know how.
She doesn't have any practice when it comes to how to interact with
friends. The social contact she originally came to seek out is
something she never really got. Instead all of her time is devoted
to maintaining the peace.
And just as she's not likely to start
making friends with others, others are unlikely to approach her.
She's not Subaru who you ask if she wants to hang out just to hang out, she's Subaru
who commands an army and is famous and probably seems like she's
above your station if you're a normal player. In that way her
position really isolates her. As time goes on and things go wrong it
will become more explicit, with one member of the knights taking
steps to keep people he considers bad influences from contacting
Subaru.
-
Subaru is, at this moment, heading off
alone to meet with Sora.
Sora is also one of the most powerful
players in the game, for completely different reasons. At some point
he worked hard, leveled up a lot, and is now stronger, faster, more
deadly, voted most likely to win in a fight and so forth. His power is entirely
individual, he even goes so far as to tell other people that if they
side with him he will betray them, and it is based wholly on violence
and the threat of violence.
He's a player killer, and thus the
exact kind of person that the Crimson Knights was founded to stop. (Subaru is almost certainly unaware of the fact that Sora is a
playerkiller going into this interaction.)
Subaru’s power flows from an idea,
and the hard but not level-up gaining work that went into supporting
that idea. Sora's is from physical power, and the hard work that
went into gaining that.
-
Sora, as is common for him, jumps down
from a high place to make his entrance, because simply saying hello
is never enough for him. (It also has the effect of startling
Subaru.)
After checking that this is the right
person, and Sora saying he's not used to being called “Mister”,
Subaru asks why he wanted to talk, he doesn't tell her at first, she
threatens to leave, and then we get this:
Sora: The Key of the Twilight.
Sounds interesting, huh?
Subaru: There is no such thing.
And she turns and walks away. Bear had
a similar response when BT mentioned it not-by-name. (This is the
first time the name has come up.) Those who have been around have
pretty much dismissed this. Part of the reason we know that Sora
hasn't been around is that if he had he'd know that Subaru is well
acquainted with the idea of the key since at one point, back when
Crim was still a part of the Crimson Knights, the knights searched
the entire game for any evidence of it.
As it turns out, those who have been
around are wrong, and the new generation of believers, as represented
by B.T. and Sora are right.
Subaru actually took a bit longer to
dismiss it than Bear. She started audibly thinking about it when
Sora said “The Key of the Twilight,” and still let a moment of
silence hang before responding that there's no such thing. Possibly
mulling over her personal history.
Anyway, Sora doesn't give up that
easily.
(While walking:)
Sora: Oh, so you don't listen to
what other people say. That's not good.
*short pause*
Sora: Stop.
*extends a blade directly in
front of Subaru's face, forcing her to stop*
*short pause*
Sora: C'mon, let's talk about it.
Remember what I said about violence and
the threat of violence?
Subaru decides to listen to him.
We'll see later on that, “I can kill
you, so do what I want,” isn't actually something that can be used
to control Subaru, but in this case I think that she decided that it
was simpler to just go along with the jerk. As it turned out the
jerk had things to say that did interest Subaru and convinced her to
tolerate his presence even once the threat of violence no longer
applied.
Unfortunately that conversation happens
off screen, and we only get a vague description of it afterward, so
we don't actually know what information Sora brought to the table.
It ends here with her deciding to stay
around at bladepoint.
-
As a programming note, I'm having
trouble figuring out exactly how to break things up in this episode,
made somewhat more difficult by the fact that, while I have no
problem going out of order within a post, I'd like the posts
themselves to be chronological, so there are things I might want to
put together but they're separated by things that don't really fit.
I think that, for the moment, I'm just
going to go with having several shorter posts. The down side is
they'll have less content, this post basically has one scene worth of
content and a page of talking about Subaru padding it out. If I
stick with the idea of shorter posts then they'll have about the same
content from the show, a scene each, but won't have a page of talking
about Subaru. So they'll probably be pretty thin on substance. The
up side is that it won't require me to jump from topic to topic to
fit disparate scenes into a single post.
I'm not completely sure, but I think
that's what I'll be doing. So expect the next three posts to be
shorter ones without a lot to them called, “Can't give up,”
“Color my world,” and “These points of data make a beautiful line.”
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