(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, 16:05-17:32
Remember where Tuskasa first met the Crimson knights? Blue and pink skies, a well, funny looking
windmill? It's ok if you don't.
Anyway, it is here that we find BT
waiting. A shadow appears behind her, when she turns no one is
there, when she brushes it off Sora starts talking. Then she brushes
him off.
He thinks that's a rude way to act
since he assume she invited him, she assumes he invited her, and
while they're having a back and forth over that Subaru and Silver
Knight appear.
Silver Knight: What are you two
babbling about?
Yes, Cullen wannabe, everyone else's
discussion must be babble or prattle or something like that. No way
they could possibly matter. Think I'm overstating his jerkishness?
Very next sentence:
Who told you to talk to each
other?
Because
apparently speaking to one another without permission is a hideous
sin.
Sora: It just happened.
Silver Knight: Why you... *begins
to draw sword*
Subaru: *stops silver knight with
a gesture*
BT: *looks at interaction between
Subaru and Silver Knight with interest*
Ok,
so I'm no BT fan and Sora is just a jerk, but Silver Knight seems
intent on out-jerking everyone in this encounter. He's going to draw
his sword and start a fight because two people who happened to be in
the same place at the same time started speaking to each other
without his permission?
Is
it any wonder that Subaru thinks she has to remind this guy that he's an ordinary player not some mythical (by which I mean nonexistent)
special class of system support staff that stands above the regular
folk?
Also,
remember our introduction to the Crimson Knights, which happened at
this very place? They're supposed to value courage, civility and
tolerance*, which part of that involves pulling a sword on someone
because they just answered your completely uncalled for question in a
way you don't like?
Anyway,
at this point Mimiru shouts out for everyone to come over to the base
of the windmill, where she and Bear are waiting.
-
And
now we find out why Bear wanted to bring the Crimson Knights in.
Subaru: The player's information?
Bear: You can communicate with
the system administration staff. It should
If
I should seem to get distracted or lose my place or something like
that at this point it probably has something to do with the hanging
plant across the room from me suddenly crashing to the ground and me spending the next half hour to hour dealing with the fallout from
that.
If
you've never had that happen to you, let me tell you, it will change
your entire plan for the day.
I
have no idea if that happening will have an effect upon the rest of
the post, I haven't written it yet, but I was writing a post during
the day, there was a crash, I had to disentange the plant from things
that hadn't even been on the floor in the first place, things were
uprooted, notably roots, I had to find containers to put water in so
I could put the parts of the plant that were no longer parts of the
plant into those, I had to locate rope to tie a backup in case the
hook that's supposed to hold the plant up fails again, I had to run
around trying to find stuff a lot. I had to move a chair so I could
be high enough to tie off the rope.
When
so much as one part of the sky falls it's a major hassle.
Oh,
and I never picked back up on the “ during the day” thing. It's
night now. Not dusk, not twilight, certainly not sunset. It is
NIGHT.
Back
to .hack:
Subaru: The player's information?
Bear: You can communicate with
the system administration staff. It shouldn't be too difficult,
right?
Subaru: That's impossible.
Score one for Bear making bad assumptions. “Shouldn't be too
difficult” and “Impossible” are worlds apart.
Why is it impossible?
Subaru: A player's personal
information is highly confidential. There's no way the sys admin
would reveal it even if I requested it.
The
subtitles don't place emphasis, and so we're free to read that as
seems best and I read, “Even if I requested it,” as saying that
she's not going to request it. She won't ask and they wouldn't tell
because she and they both believe in the confidentiality. The dub is
different, it's, “even to me,” thus placing the emphasis on who
would be doing the requesting. Yes, Subaru has a closer relationship
with system administration than most players, but that still doesn't
get her confidential information.
Either
way, I have to say that I'm liking the CC Corp here. My
understanding is that if I continued the story into the games and OVA
they'd turn out to be evil or, at the very least, like the Mayor who
refuses to acknowledge that there's a shark in the water and so ends
up with blood on his hands because he's more concerned with tourist
dollars than the public's safety. But right here, right now, in this
TV show, I like them.
They're
never on screen, we hear about them only second hand, but what I like
is that they seem to have this moral framework, and they stick with
it. Even as the impossibilities stack up and they see things get
more out of their control than should be physically possible, they
never budge from this stance. At no point do they decide, “Screw
it, things have gotten too far out of hand for us to be fettered by
minor moral qualms, let's just use the confidential information.”
Tsukasa's
information is confidential and damn it, it's staying that way.
That's how CC Corp rolls and I'm in favor of that. Yes, Bear can be
trusted and telling him wouldn't have harmed anything, but they can't
know that and they can't operate on that kind of faith. Keeping
their players safe means keeping the information confidential and
they will do that even in the face of the impossible.
Or
maybe it's not even at a level of keeping the players safe, maybe
it's just maintaining trust. They promised the information would be
confidential and damn it they're going to keep that promise.
Whatever
the reasoning, I like the fact that the CC Corporation doesn't budge
from this position. A player's personal information is confidential
and that's final.
Bear: I understand it's not easy.
But can we at least track where he was accessing from?
Silver Knight: If it could be
done, I would have done it by now.
Silver
Knight doesn't end there, he'll state the obvious in patronizing
tones as well until such time as Subaru says his name which shuts him
up. (She does say it in a, “Back off,” kind of way.)
And
the obvious that he states sort of serves as a reminder that the
people here are coming at this from different angles. Bear wants to
track down Tsukasa's player because he's worried about that person.
If Tsukasa has been online all this time, what's going on with the
player? Is the player currently dying of dehydration? What?
(The
player is in a coma in a hospital bed.)
Silver
Knight doesn't know that Tsukasa can't log out, for him it's just a
question of simplicity. Trying to track down Tsukasa on the net
isn't exactly the easiest thing ever. They haven't found him yet.
On the other hand talking to a player offline should be simple. Make
a phone call, send a letter, knock on their door.
People tend to be tied to a physical address in the real world, if you know that address tracking them down should be easier than chasing them through the game.
-
There's
a pause in the conversation so I'm going to stop here. The plan was
to follow this through to the end, but the plant thing really ate up
a lot of time.
-
*
For whatever reason I want to map this onto the Harry Potter houses
but I note that only one of those is considered a house worthy virtue
in Harry Potter. Gryffindor values courage. I'm going to go out on
a limb and say that Ravenclaw is civility and Hufflepuff is
tolerance. Slytherin gets left out here. (Don't they always? The
poor things.)
Of
course that's just making stuff up, an argument can be made that
Hufflepuff is tolerance, but Ravenclaw being civility is just playing
on stereotypes of bookish people.
Though,
regardless, if it were true it would mean that Hufflepuff and
Ravenclaw would be the ones to root for.
And
if one is going to follow this pure BS mapping to its logical
conclusion Silver Knight is bringing in the Slytherin with his
ambition to be more than an ordinary player, but like the book
Slytherin he seems to have completely overlooked the other virtues of
the house (cleverness resourcefulness) and someone convinced himself
that the way one becomes better than everyone else is just by
declaring themselves to be so and expecting others to go along with
it.
And
when they don't, out comes the wand... I mean sword.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment