InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Wait for the shake!"

'Bootscreature (deepbluesquee) wrote,
@ 2009-11-02 14:06:00

Current mood:	awake
Entry tags:	artemii, harem, headcast, wtf

Um.
I am mildly perturbed.

Apparently Mischa and 'Mis had a stand-up fight at one point - well, I say a stand-up fight; it was more like a knock-down-drag-out-try-to-throttle fight - about whether or not Seph would go the way of Daddy Dearest and...dispose of his harem when he got married. It seems Mischa was around when the last harem got rather nastily killed off just before he married Lucrecia...

Speaking of Mischa, I'm getting recurrent mental images of him in an outfit that looks alarmingly like the one from Assassin's Creed, and I don't think he's just wearing it for Halloween. O_O

Yes, yes, I know it looks far too like Assassin's Creed. Give me five minutes when he's actually standing still and a better lump of paper and maybe it won't. XP

(Post a new comment)

	raisedbymoogles 2009-11-02 05:10 pm UTC (link)
	hides under blanket... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	curls up with ...I think he was sent by one of the big ambitious families to kill Seph's father, once upon a time. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 08:50 pm UTC (link)
	Assassins: the centrepiece of any good harem [well, who else disposed of the previous harem? ;)]. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	... wait a minute. If Mischa was around when the Sultan married Lucrecia, and Lucrecia's Sephiroth's mother, then how old is Mischa? O_o (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 08:53 pm UTC (link)
	.....OH. No, it wasn't when he married Lucrecia, it was when he bumped her off. O_O Good grief, I bet he's one of Vincent's distant nephews or something. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	Didn't Lucrecia get bumped off when the Sultan wanted to replace her with Jenova? Which would be before the triplets happened? Err? The relationship might not be that distant ;) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

deepbluesquee
2009-11-02 09:03 pm UTC (link)

Yes and yes - Daddy Dearest bumped Lucrecia off, her family suspected but couldn't prove it (because hey, Sultan's word is law, what more proof do you need than 'guards! Chop their heads off for disagreeing with me!') and the Sultan gets rid of his harem around the same time as Mischa appears, kills things and misses the Sultan. A little while later, Sultan's formal mourning period ends, he marries Jenova, Vincent gets banished somewhere around then and the Sultan drags Mischa out to either play with his son or get his head chopped off, probably to both amuse his royal self and piss off Mischa's family - he had to work his way up in prestige wherever he came from, so he was probably either a lesser branch or someone's bastard, so his getting dumped into the harem was more an annoying failure than something to be rescued from.

...Gah, Mischa, infodump gently, please!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

koi_lungfish
2009-11-02 09:16 pm UTC (link)

Right, right, I think I see now ...

... but when did the Grand Offing happen? How long ago? The way you described it to me before I got the impression that Jenova replaced Lucrecia before the triplets were born, and if Mischa was running around being stabby back *then* he'd have to be, well, stabby-age-plus-age-of-triplets, or, in short, not nearly as young as he looks in that picture you drew of him.

So *why* did the Sultan off his harem? It seems a bit odd to kill the lot of them unless there was some reason, like, say, they saw what happened to Lucrecia ... ?

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	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 09:25 pm UTC (link)
	I'm still trying to un-knot everything. :/ I think the Grand Offing happened when Seph was around fifteen-ish - I need a pad, pen and a timeline. headache! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 09:28 pm UTC (link)
	Ahh, right. I find Excel's damned good for working out timelines in. You just set people up as columns and move then up or down as needs be. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 09:45 pm UTC (link)
	This is giving me one hell of a headache. XP I can't make things match up so that Kadaj is old enough to be more than annoying while Seph is younger than about forty! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 09:52 pm UTC (link)
	Well, the options I can see are: * - Kadaj & co are illegitimate, born before Jenova replaced Lucrecia * - The Grand Offing happened early enough for Kadaj & co to be old enough, it's just that Mischa looks way younger than he should * - Sephiroth's a well-aged forty * - Jenova's brats grew at an inhumanly fast rate * - Hojo did it (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 10:00 pm UTC (link)
	...Jenova was boffing the Sultan as a haremgirl and used her ~~Alien Boogaloo~~ Feminine Wiles to get him to off her and marry Jenova instead and the troplets are legitimate-with-hindsight. SO THERE. flops Argh. It'll have to be that, since while Seph probably would age well, it's making my head hurt. ;P sticks fingers in ears and washes hands of it (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	Makes sense. All-female harem = illegitimates. Presumably that comes in handy when your heir apparent is also your general. If the heir gets offed, the sultan marries one of his harem and retroactively legitimizes their children. The hassle comes when the sultan does that whilst his heir's still alive ... [... you're washing your hands in your ears?] (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 10:26 pm UTC (link)
	And presumably why Jenova worked quite so hard at making sure she was the one the Sultan picked to marry - three boys to follow on from Seph, amongst her other attributes, I imagine. XP [I'm washing my hands of the whole mess of a timeline and then sticking my fingers in my ears and going LA LA LA very loudly.] (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-03 10:11 am UTC (link)
	True, true. Being able to provide that many sons must've been a big point in her favour. Especially the Sultan had any sort of falling out with Sephiroth. [But sorting out messy timelines is fun! You find characters trying to find backstory in all the knots! :D] (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

deepbluesquee
2009-11-03 12:33 pm UTC (link)

I'm being told she made sure to have more than one son at once, which suggests hoodoo, voodoo and Hojo, not necessarily in that order. (Plus I have a tiny bit of pet fan-theory that the Snows around Mount Nibel are offshoots of Jenova in some fashion, which may explain why the Sultan murdered the rest of his harem at Jenova's suggestion - or 'suggestion', depending on your opinion. ;P)

[True, yes, but it was getting late and frustrating at the time last night. *snerk* Mischa wasn't really being coherent...)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 08:52 pm UTC (link)
	...Actually? Someone else. Mischa was definitely not well inclined towards the Sultan. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	How'd he escape being disposed of? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	I think he was dangling by his wrists in th dungeon at that point. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 09:03 pm UTC (link)
	... eh? How does being imprisoned prevent one from being gacked when the people doing the gacking and the imprisoning are the same people? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

deepbluesquee
2009-11-02 09:06 pm UTC (link)

...'Gacked' is a new one on me. *blinks and tries not to think of Crisis Core*

I think mostly because Mischa was a lesser member of the family that was pissed off with the Sultan for offing Lucrecia, so no-one would really care if he died or not on their end, and it would be a better punishment for him to take his weapons away and get someone to break him than just kill him, since Mischa promptly tried to do himself in when he got buried under a pile of guards and failed to kill the Sultan. *pokes him*

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 09:13 pm UTC (link)
	Ahh, right, so he wasn't part of the harem at the time of the Grand Offing, yes? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 09:49 pm UTC (link)
	Nooo, definitely not. ~~President~~Sultan Shinra's harem was all about the pretty girls. ;) ...Oooh. Maybe that was why he offed them all - Jenova wiggled her way into his favour and wanted to make sure none of the other harem girls were having baby Sultans/going to be a threat to her, so she offed them as well. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 09:54 pm UTC (link)
	Right, right. Quite possibly, if she'd been one of the original harem. She may even had had accomplices in there, whose silences would best be assured by death. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 10:03 pm UTC (link)
	...She might even have suggested giving Mischa to Seph as a welcome-home type present - if he kills Seph, that means the way's clear for her boys. If not - meh, he's broken and only worth keeping an eye on for safety's sake. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	koi_lungfish 2009-11-02 10:09 pm UTC (link)
	Indeed. Which might explain the oddness of taking a new wife and new heirs when the heir apparent is still alive ... unless he'd been reported dead by accident? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-02 10:25 pm UTC (link)
	Well, there is always the thing of having the Heir and the Spare - if Seph ends up getting offed himself, it's always best to have a second offspring in the wings. ;P Jenova was probably getting impatient herself, as well. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

koi_lungfish
2009-11-03 10:20 am UTC (link)

Yes, although it does leave one wondering what triggered the Grand Offing. If, say, Sephiroth had been mistakenly believed dead, or something had happened to cast aspersions on his legitimacy, or he flat-out refused to get married ... but it seems odd the Sultan would go through with the bloody process of legitimizing his spares when he still has a perfectly good heir.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

deepbluesquee
2009-11-03 12:39 pm UTC (link)

I did at one point get a semi-hysterical account of how Jenova wanted Kadaj to be the heir apparent when it was made clear that Seph wasn't going to comply with every single damn thing she wanted, and actually really, really disliked her and probably wanted to stick her in some far-flung provincial manor out of the way; something about being tricked into drinking the blood of the planet that would make him go berserk and kill everything in his path, including his father, which would lead to Kadaj killing him in turn/Seph getting his head cut off and Kadaj getting crowned 'legitimately'. This is where 'Mis listening at doors came in handy.

I'm not sure if that's still 'canon', though. *pokes*

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	sternenstaub 2009-11-03 05:37 pm UTC (link)
	Indeed. -A. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	deepbluesquee 2009-11-03 06:55 pm UTC (link)
	Either Mischa's a fanboy or I need more extensive reference pictures. -_-; (Reply to this) (Parent)