Keychain #252 - #255

Oho-ho indeed.


Wondering if Petal is a motherly nickname or if Marena's actual name is Falling Petal of the Last Cherry Blossom On Spring's Parting Cloak or something.
 
Thanqol said:
Oho-ho indeed.
Wondering if Petal is a motherly nickname or if Marena's actual name is Falling Petal of the Last Cherry Blossom On Spring's Parting Cloak or something.
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Woah, you're good at this.


So, remind me what we know about Marena's mother so far? These infrequent updates really kill the sense of story, I regret to say, at least for people like me who don't really read the archive more than once.
 
No, I think Petal is just a nickname, you're awesome naming convention notwithstanding. Given that we learned that Marena's full name is Ragara Marena on the page you linked.
 
Excellent pacing in this comic. Excellent use of angles and concentration lines.


Also -- petal = granddaughter of blossom?
 
I think it's hilarious how ominous and dark Marena's mother looked in her memories, compared to how she looks in reality. Suddenly Karen's reaction to Marena's rant about their mother makes sense.


On the other hand, Marena ran towards her, not away from her. So their relationship can't have been as bad as she implied.
 
Except the part where Marena jumps away from her mother when she see's that it is, in fact, her mother.
 
Aquillion said:
I think it's hilarious how ominous and dark Marena's mother looked in her memories, compared to how she looks in reality. Suddenly Karen's reaction to Marena's rant about their mother makes sense.
On the other hand, Marena ran towards her, not away from her. So their relationship can't have been as bad as she implied.
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She was trying to get away before her mother showed up.


Also, it's possible that her mother isn't exactly the nice lady she appears to be at first, or was exactly as Marena described before but underwent a personality change, or is bipolar, et cetera. We don't really know yet.
 
Aasharu said:
No, I think Petal is just a nickname, you're awesome naming convention notwithstanding. Given that we learned that Marena's full name is Ragara Marena on the page you linked.
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If she'd go far enough to hide her real name from her Circle for 200+ strips, she wouldn't let it spill in a flashback she is narrating. And the only person who could correct her is a mute.
 
I like the little heart on her belt.


. . Also, how does hair color work in Exalted? I'm not sure of the genetics, but Bright Blue haired mothers can give birth to pink/red haired daughters?


Ah, I'm probably seeing foreshadowing and plot twists where there are none.
 
Crasical said:
I like the little heart on her belt.
. . Also, how does hair color work in Exalted? I'm not sure of the genetics, but Bright Blue haired mothers can give birth to pink/red haired daughters?


Ah, I'm probably seeing foreshadowing and plot twists where there are none.
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Even with Exalted's crazy rules, probably not. However, a red haired dragon blooded man can have a red haired daughter, regardless of the hair color of the mother.
 
Crasical said:
I like the little heart on her belt.
. . Also, how does hair color work in Exalted? I'm not sure of the genetics, but Bright Blue haired mothers can give birth to pink/red haired daughters?


Ah, I'm probably seeing foreshadowing and plot twists where there are none.
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Exalted Genetics >:(


You have the hair color of A) The Elemental Pole you're born nearest to B) That most suits your temperament C) Dependent on the mood of any local gods or fey in the region D) assigned to you by the God of Fertility in Yu Shan E) Based on the magical radiation of the nearest demesne.


Why the ftagen do people assume genetics has anything to do with this setting? A setting with an actual divine bureaucracy that oversees everything? Where the laws of physics have an 'if' clause depending on people doing awesome shit?


See also: Hair dye


EDIT: Plus Petal's mother is a Celestial God Blooded. Chances are she's a Lunar-blooded, which means she has shapeshifting.
 
Well, that's a bit unfair. There is some genetics - it's just that it happens to be magical superhuman genetics.


I think Marena's hair color is primarily due to the fact that her father's Terrestrial blood overshadowed any of the other factors.
 
Aasharu said:
Well, that's a bit unfair. There is some genetics - it's just that it happens to be magical superhuman genetics.
I think Marena's hair color is primarily due to the fact that her father's Terrestrial blood overshadowed any of the other factors.
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Having emerged from a long, tedious argument about DB genetics, exalt types and aspect bias I've firmly resolved to never obey any coherent Exalted genetics system.
 
And see, I strictly adhere to the tried and tested method of Exalted genetics called: Whatever seems coolest.


Besides, the only time it would even come up is with player characters, who have the most elaborate and fleshed out backstories, and hey, if they aren't supposed to have hair that color, then it's just because they're special.
 
Creation runs on rules sufficiently different that there's no reason to assume there is a serious underlying system that dictates why you look how you look, such as genetics. It is entirely possible that it's written into the world that children look like their parents "because they do," not "because this elaborate system of biologically transmitting and recombining information exists." (The Primordials seem like they could've been lazy enough to take this shortcut, at least to me. If "it just does, okay?" works, then why make it more complicated?)


It runs on narrativium (of which "Essence" is just another name), where physical laws are formulated by saying "It stands to reason...". It stands to reason, after all, that children look like their parents. Therefore they do. And it stands to reason that the more impressively and energetically you do something, the more likely it is to work -- can't have all that effort going to waste. Hence, stunting.


And now, a tangent.


Probably the only reason normal people don't suddenly Exalt into Dragonbloods even though it'd be cool sometimes is because there's a set of extra rules written into the Terrestrial Exaltation that you need to have the proper bloodlines for it. Why? Probably a trade-off (along with power level) to make it easier for the Exaltation to spread and self-propagate. It's magic, after all, and you frequently have to trade benefits and weaknesses to get magic to work. Immediate applications, like charms, can get around it by burning raw power, but for long-term persistent effects that you're writing into the world or a species (kind of like laying a family curse, only beneficial, in the case of the Terrestrial Exaltation), you have to set conditions to mitigate its awesomeness so it can work.


It might've been even more amazing, for example, for every human to have been spontaneously Exalted to the Terrestrial power level to help fight the Primordials, and would have made a world of superpowered magical heroes. More amazing for about five hours, anyway. It also would have made Dragon-bloods the baseline power level for all humanity, which actually diminishes their overall awesomeness (the Inverse Ninja Law, which is already quite badly against them as is, and makes the success of the Usurpation quite stunning). To preserve sufficient awesomeness in a world that runs on narrativium, so they could help fight the Primordials, they had to be much fewer. Such is the trade-off.


That's why death curses (including the Great Curse) are so dangerous and difficult to throw off, too -- the ultimate mitigating condition, death, has already been taken on by the curse-layer. Good luck fixing that, because in some worlds not even narrativium is enough to undo death. (Conversely, a properly dramatic death permanently shapes narrativium, allowing a curse of especial potency to be laid. The end result is the same.)


Well. That may not precisely be canon, but it's my take on the "real" workings behind most of this stuff.


/tangent
 
Hmm, Could be a workable (If cliched by now) plot.


A Villain whose plan is to make sure everyone in creation exalts as a dragonblooded and always will.


Because if Everyone's special blahblahblah.
 
Naw. Not only does the universe work 'because-it-does', but it also works in the 'what-would-make-the-most-awesome-and-impossibly-cool-story' way.


Also, 'Mama?' This is going to end in tears. Tears of laughter, anyway.


Whew! Good to be back.
 
jokasti said:
So, is someone going to start making Punnett squares and determining which genes are dominant/recessive? :)
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People did that in my Dragon Blooded game. That's why I adopted my "Screw Exalted Genetics" position >: (
 
I KNOW Keychain and Exalted run on magic science rather than anything coherent. I just can't digest the exalted backstory books in one setting and couldn't think of a way to avoid 'genetics' in that question. The main question was whether hair color shifts like that are normal. And flipping back to Marena's back story, I could probably have answered my own question, she has about the exact same hair color as her dad.


Mystery solved, let's all have a drink.
 
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