Witch Chat - .hack//Gay Undertones

I honestly am not totally sure what is meant by this

22:35

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22:37

so to understand what Haseo's getting at here I'll just pull up Taihaku's real world info

22:37

In the real world Keisuke Kurokai The Player behind Taihaku is a 28 year neurosurgeon living in Aichi whon works for CC Corp at their Hospital in Tokyo. Offline Kurogai is described as a young man is in his early thirties with a gentle appearance and handsome face. His mission is to help heal Lost Ones who have fallen comatose while in The World. Seven years ago during 2010 while Kurogai was still an intern he often played with the younger Ryou Misaki [Haseo's player] who was once recovering from an experience with paralysis due to a long term coma. Kurogai started The World to learn about the effects of internet games on the human brain and would later join the arena as the best place to observe people while becoming an arena champion as he proceeded with his research.

22:41

Sirius mostly just re-iterates what's been said already

22:41

oh now here is an interesting e-mail in our inbox

22:41

22:42

Sakaki really is just the worst

22:42

Haseo isn't even mad at this point, he's just resigned to dealing with this bullshit

around here is where I stopped in my replay

Anyways for the moment we just need to go visit The Guys

22:44

and oh jeez

22:44

Cyber bullying continues

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anyways at this point they recognize Haseo

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yes, like that Haseo

22:46

Yes, The Terror of Death

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and they run away

oh boy

as Atoli approaches like "hey what's up guys"

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sadists and sociopaths, mostly

Now this is posting

a ten year old

22:47

a ten year old did this

same diff

22:49

you know, it's almost not even worth bringing up because it's so blatant

22:49

but it is funny how Sakaki builds his entire persona around suppressing PKers through rule of law and order

22:49

and the minute he eats shit he immediately decides to go all in on PKing basically out of personal spite for Haseo

kids, man

yeah no he does act like a 10 year old when you lay it all out, huh

22:51

anyways Gaspard is like "how can I even play the game like this?"

22:51

honestly? same.

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Atoli does comment on this if you talk to her

22:53

I actually LOL'd

I spent money on an install disk of Lineage 2, but quit within a couple of hours because I couldn't set foot out of the starting city to level without getting PKed almost immediately

meanwhile the idea I am getting from the Posters is that actual children are all excited about doing Online violence

global PvP is my idea of an MMORPG nightmare

The Cash Prizes are also probably a factor for some

....sounds right

and then you just get guys like this

22:55

~~the democrats~~

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so basically you can imagine this standing in for like, a 100 page megathread debating this issue on the official The World Forums

honestly, an aggressive healer driving off a PKer out of frustration is a legit funny idea

22:56

"he's down to 10HP - dammit!"

lmao

LMAO

22:57

I love all the posts about "Good god what kinda moron at CC corp came up with this idea"

hard agree

yeah

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dothack/images/4/4a/Tooru.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/400?cb=20060808071905

22:58

this little shit

LettuceKitteh

honestly, an aggressive healer driving off a PKer out of frustration is a legit funny idea

There's a side plot in Roots about a medic union forming for basically this purpose

Enemy of Posters

"Who's the dipshit who came up with this, I just wanna talk"

Skeith

There's a side plot in Roots about a medic union forming for basically this purpose

amazing. I'm surprised Atoli didn't fall in with them tbh

Skeith

There's a side plot in Roots about a medic union forming for basically this purpose

Yeah you run into the Medic Union at various points in .gu and they just heal and buff you in areas. Nice guys

22:58

Atoli SHOULD have joined the medics union

you can find the medic union in some fields- f,b

CC Corp better hope nobody else wants to burn them down

...again

snicker

Silabus sends us an e-mail that Gaspard is taking a break from the game until this all blows over

(random side note: it is both funnier and makes Sakaki's character better if we assume the Sakaki who groomed Atoli and the current Sakaki are two different people. V1-2 Sakaki fell into the abyss and then his punk-ass little brother took over the character and is wreaking havoc)

I kinda love that lmao

the older brother got grounded

anyways we are gonna meet up with everyone to discuss what's going on

there's some precedent for characters being taken over and also it's really funny if Haseo drove this edgelord off the Internet and his little brother is like "...ooooh."

1

I'm just gonna roll with that

23:02

because Vol 1 and Vol 2 Sakaki and Vol 3 Sakaki are both extremely shitty but they are shitty in very different ways

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And while, I think the idea is that Vol 3 is the real sakaki without all the pretense and bullshit

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I like your idea too

they're equally fun takes to me

same

Vol 3 Sakaki, despite the fact that he got a job at CC corp is a guy I absolutely believe is a 10 year old

Yuuup.

23:03

V3 Sakaki is absolutely 10.

23:03

How long did Sakaki and Atoli know each other pre-game, anyway?

not too long but we haven't gotten into how they met yet

23:04

which is something I'm holding onto for later

Sakaki thus far is very much a 10-year old

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just like

love a meet-cute in an online game with a 9-yo megalomaniac

the epitome of a 10-year old gamer

23:05

like you look at that email and it's just like

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Sakaki

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touch grass

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grow up

okay I don't know if the game will ever get into this directly

23:06

so I'm just going to copy it directly from the wiki

23:06

I am not 100% sure where this is sourced from but I know I remembered this from 15 years back

There's so much trivia scattered across all the various .hack media

CW Suicide Atoli's player is a 16-year-old girl named Chigusa Kusaka (日下千草), who lives in the Chiba prefecture. During middle school, she was bullied frequently. And her parent would scold her about her failing grades and decision to wear designer clothing. One day they also criticized her loud and noisy attitude, believing that girls should be always quiet. All of this led to Chigusa into shutting herself in her room and browsing suicide websites. In one of those forums, she met Sakaki, who befriended her. Around the time she entered high school, Sakaki suggested for her to join The World.

Sakaki was likely there looking for someone like her

Well that’s depressing

As I said, Sakaki of Vol 1 and 2 is a straight up realistic groomer

it's really hard for me to believe a ten year old did that

23:08

hence, you know,

Luckily, a boy who is clinically unable to cover his abs?

23:09

He’s looking out for her now :)

Yeah Sakaki does feel like two different characters it's kinda fascinating

2

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I think I like LK's theory

23:10

Both of these character work

yeah there's just - there's just so much dissonance

it's just not as the same person

it's definitely a good theory

and it's apparently really bugging me! so I Make Fan Theories To Cope

I don't blame you! It's this fascinating blend of like, serious, interesting ideas, but combined very haphazardly

nod yeah exactly

23:12

like you said they're both Good Characters just not....as the same person

on the other hand I do think it does fit with like, a 10-year old playground bully type

There is that

23:12

And what we get from Online Jack is that Sakaki's player just...does this

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he turned half of his class into a personality cult around them

and I'm going to be honest, I don't think Atoli was in a place that she really needed that much

and got them all doll syndrome

23:13

so there is that

see I feel like meeting someone at least 5 years older than you on a suicide site and entrapping them in a long-term plan...

Even the whole "CC corp, in their incredible short sightedness and desperation, gave a charismatic 10 year old control of the game" just feels like an entertaining plot point

I've seen abusive types do complete 180° turns when exposed

I'm not actually certain he had much of a long-term plan

That part tracks with me, CH

Sakaki does not seem like a very good planning person

it's just they aren't usually actual children

Mysterious Stranger "Cyouni"

I'm not actually certain he had much of a long-term plan

Yeah, that's fair (re CatHerder, too)

like the best I can tell his plan was uh

23:14

hack moon tree

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????????

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aida

I think he was pretending to be older than he really was, but then the mask slipped too far so he decided "fuck it, I'll go full megalomaniac"

/????????

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profit?

CatHerder

I think he was pretending to be older than he really was, but then the mask slipped too far so he decided "fuck it, I'll go full megalomaniac"

this absolutely is the case. Sakaki was pretending to be an older man.

I thought he wanted Atoli for something specific re AIDA but I could be remembering wrong

He wanted an Epitaph fused with AIDA that he could control

23:15

Ovan implied to him that this would give him the ability to control AIDA

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and maybe he's right! After all, Ovan is an Epitaph fused with AIDA and has at least some sort of control over it

23:16

but like, it's clear that this hasn't turned ovan into some sort of net god

in the end Sakaki still dancing hard on Ovan's strings so

Ah, okay, I think I thought Sakaki specifically targeted Atoli for that when it was more of a coincidence

right

he's not really that great a manipulator

Sakaki is, very specifically, Ovan's puppet

23:16

he is an enemy for Haseo to face for his "growth" into what Ovan wants him to be

23:17

so as much as he is charasmatic and manipulative, he is also way out of his depth and absolutely being used himself

23:18

So, from that angle, it's almost kinda sad. They don't really make this text in the game but I can't help but feel that Sakaki is intended to be a foil for who Haseo was as a kid--the sociopathic PK Sora

23:18

Who also acted like an adult and manipulated grown ass women--though nothing so severely as this

1

I think a key part of how AIDA works is by totally screwing one's judgment so it can encourage more extreme actions

that too, though tbh I prefer to think Sakaki is just like this.

23:19

he wasn't actually INFECTED by AIDA until VOL 3

oh, absolutely. but if not for AIDA, no one would've noticed until he possibly abuses a romantic partner

yeah I could see it

23:21

in the end if nothing else he's a real interesting character, I think you gotta give him that

yeah

true!

true

Up there with Shinji Matou in terms of "Wow you really gave me a guy to hate"

4

hah

23:21

right up there in the Hall of Bastards

If you were here for Vol 1 you'll know I didn't even try to hide my absolute contempt for Sakaki even then

23:23

I wanted to make sure that fact wasn't lost in the LP lol

yeah, Zedd let me read the updates lol

anyways I am doing a dungeon now and I do want to note we have crossed the line into fighting things that are not, technically, in game monsters.

23:31

as an aside, fighting enemies that are heavily bugged is one of the core features of the og .hack games so it's interesting that they have been holding back on introducing that until now, as things approach a climax

23:34

Endrance...is too busy to see Haseo?

23:35

anyways, we start without them

23:35

I mean, yes I read the forums