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Zillatain
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:11 pm |
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Admin of Slight Inconvenience |
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Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:07 pm Posts: 6070
Location: Someplace other than where I am.
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Zoe/Maya looks at Cupidine's anima ball and it's all red...
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Webfoot
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 12:12 am |
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Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:39 am Posts: 62
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Zillatain wrote: Zoe/Maya looks at Cupidine's anima ball and it's all red... You get a cookie. That is a lot of red. I think this was bound to happen as soon as they discovered anima absorbing... somebody with the power to absorb anima, who is or absorbs a bedeviled, is gonna go full Cupidine. I am now wondering if she was or absorbed a seer and can see the bedeviled... for all we know she targeted them because they make her extra powerful.
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praisethesun
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:26 am |
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Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:00 pm Posts: 29
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I don't know if it's the artstyle or the inherent creepyness, but Cupidine gives me severe Dr. Crabtree flashbacks.
Also: How does she float? This isn't just psychic projection, this is straight up magic.
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Thom Solo
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:25 pm |
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Joined: Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:00 am Posts: 1837
Location: aboard the Fool's Folly
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praisethesun wrote: Also: How does she float? This isn't just psychic projection, this is straight up magic. Psionics. Telekinesis (including levitation) is a fairly well-known psi-ability in most iterations of the gift. I predict that Torg--or, more accurately, Trevor--will prove key to defeating Cupidine, either by somehow(?) beating her outright or (more likely) luring her into a trap. She was, after all, specifically looking for that "unmodified magnificent two-headed dragon" when she killed Gorf.
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Webfoot
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:58 pm |
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Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:39 am Posts: 62
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Connection between monsters and anina? They are the two distinct things about this world.
Maybe the "electromagnetic field" that causes anima, is created by the monsters? Originally, to hunt prey; later, to choose nice owners.
Kinda far fetched. Also we have no idea what if any are left.
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Jochi
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:28 pm |
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2019 1:22 pm Posts: 36
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I'm still hoping for more information on exactly a 'bedeviled' is, or was, but I'm thinking that Zoe's uniquely small anima may finally find an explanation and/or a purpose here and now.
And I agree with Webfoot, this was bound to happen once someone discovered how to become more powerful by taking someone else's anima.
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ramoss
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:53 pm |
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Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:39 am Posts: 655
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Thom Solo wrote: praisethesun wrote: Also: How does she float? This isn't just psychic projection, this is straight up magic. Psionics. Telekinesis (including levitation) is a fairly well-known psi-ability in most iterations of the gift. I predict that Torg--or, more accurately, Trevor--will prove key to defeating Cupidine, either by somehow(?) beating her outright or (more likely) luring her into a trap. She was, after all, specifically looking for that "unmodified magnificent two-headed dragon" when she killed Gorf. He might be the bait, but somehow, I think either Gwynn or Zoe gets the honor of being the actual hero. I think Zoe, because her anima is so small.
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randomlanguage
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:32 pm |
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Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 7:32 pm Posts: 1642
Location: under a pile of papers
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I'm not sure we'll get any backstory of Cupidine specifically, perhaps she is more an illustration of what happened and threat to defeat than a person we will learn more about per se.
I've been thinking about saving the world vs. escaping. A problem here is that our gang has little invested in this dimension, and indeed there is little to save with everyone, or almost everyone, dead via losing their anima. Therefore, it's more likely that Torg et al will save themselves (and their anima). If they discover a way to stop Cupidine, they will leave the task in a willing Maya's hands and escape rather than save this world personally.
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Spirantz
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:19 am |
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Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2014 5:44 am Posts: 2217
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Or......they escape with cupidine stowing away as yet another passenger. And they make it back home. And the Animas all fade away, restoring her to some semblance of clear-minded humanoid.
But who wants to deal with that in sluggy-prime!
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Webfoot
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:32 am |
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Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:39 am Posts: 62
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Or the animas fade away, but all the alterations to her SELF remain, leaving her with the absorbed knowledge and psychopathy of everybody she killed.
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Jackalope
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 3:38 am |
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Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2019 6:11 am Posts: 23
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I think people are mistaking the significance of all those red herranimas.
So far, bedevileds have only proven the ability to hide what a person is really thinking to other people. However, from the first time Cupidine appears, none of those animas conveys Cupidine's dark satisfaction at killing and harvesting other people, even the blue ones. The only difference between a bedeviled anima and a normal anima would be meaningless to someone like Cupidine, but perhaps being able to examine their hidden nature might be useful in defeating them.
The more important thing I get from this image is that a lot of the animas are spliced, and there is no clearly whole completely bedeviled anima. This could imply they cannot be harvested unless they are spliced to normal blue anima, but maybe this is sort of a forced conclusion, since bedeviled animas have already had their body parts harvested. From how the animas appear when Cupidine is introduced and what her own mask illustrates, I'm guessing all those animas are joined up to become a part of one central anima, so all their facial expressions are more "body parts" than representations of her inner soul.
Perhaps this is Zoe's worst fear materialized after all, a haystack where in order to defeat her, they have to find the portion of the anima that represents her true self. It's also why she wears that mask, so people cannot find her within that haystack because of how much her facial expression would correspond to her own true anima. But I suspect another reason - her true anima isn't bedeviled, so she needs to be much more protective of whom she hides it against - a couple of hundred years back, she would simply have been exiled.
I suspect the most dangerous ones are those that don't even need to hide it, bedeviles without masks. Perhaps one of them even initiated this whole apocalypse. But the most powerful ones might have an sphere of animas so large that to most people, they could project a tendril of the animas under their control to make it seem like they are normal with just one or a few animas, but they were actually projecting a web of animas large enough to cover (and hold in the air) an entire city. It's sort of already hinted that anima balls can reach the size of a moon.
But this isn't megaspeculative enough, so I'll just top it off and speculate that the flying city is a city of survivors that's really led by a psycopath who wasn't satisfied with simply harvesting leftovers, but instead wanted to grow his own. Also, bedevileds are the dystopian survivors of this eras because of their innate resistance to being easily harvested by shifting the form of their animas, they live on the surface in primitive societies because they can't use most of the cool hightech technology without being detected / because they are locked out of it, and the head of the flying city is using them as a escape goat on the sheltered population of the flying city.
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randomlanguage
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 2:49 pm |
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Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 7:32 pm Posts: 1642
Location: under a pile of papers
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Do you think the stolen anima are frozen in the emotion of the person when they were killed? I think so, because they are, in some way, souls. (I'm getting some Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood vibes with the use of these anima).
Or are Cupidine's anima actually rebound to her soul, showing her horror, belieing her expression?
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Webfoot
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 3:00 pm |
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Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:39 am Posts: 62
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I think the stolen anima are still somewhat aware, and they are still rather unnerved about being stolen and leashed to a psychopath.
Bedeviled speculation: I have speculated before that it is not necessarily psychopathy, just strong negative emotions being concealed. Which, of course, is true of all successful murderous psychopaths in this world... but it could also be true of anybody sufficiently disgruntled.
I am speculating that, at some point, Gwynn will be really really pissed at Torg or Riff, and try to hide it with a smile as usual... and Zoe will see red.
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ramoss
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:16 am |
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Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:39 am Posts: 655
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In the first anima chapter, the anima of the bird creature disappeared as soon as it was killed. Frog said harvesting the anima 'symbolicly' killed someone. That means that until the Anima was harvested, Gorf and Mustachio were alive.
Spec: They still are 'alive' but symbolically dead until their anima is returned. Killing Cupidino will release the various anima, which can then return to what ever original body (if still alive), and revive the person (even if twisted up with broken bones and stunned)
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galen
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:46 am |
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Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:49 pm Posts: 50
Location: Harcourt, Australia
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A couple of random thoughts: 1) Does anyone else think Cupidine and Maya look rather similar? 2) Why do the buildings in http://sluggy.com/#2020-01-17 this comic (Friday 17th January) have handles on them?
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