Spoiler Latest Chapter Discussion Thread for Death Mage Raws

I'm tired. Time to start memeing and let logical thought take the backseat for a while.

I'm not helping, am I?

*turns to Google-sensei*

Damn it, kari.

Mwahaha! He was too late before eliminating the threat of powerful undead even occured to him! And now, well. Good luck killing Knochen, I guess.

 

Yeah, google's definition is quite lacking and reductive with the definition. A better definition would be a goof-off. Or, if you really want to use Google's definition, it's in a slightly more endearing way. I was essentially meaning it as a synonym for peanut gallery.

 

Or just watch chuckle-vision?

 

That looks about right. (didn't watch any episodes after the quick search, but it looks pretty close to what I meant.)

 

SEAL: "You have been sealed for 876000000 hours! Maybe you should take a break!"
Botin: "I WOULD IF I COULD, MOM! BUT THAT IS NOT AN OPTION IS NOT IT?!"

Druid: "Wait, what is your real name?"
Banda: "Vandalieu Ark Hillwillow Solder Zakkart"
Druid: "What!? No, that's a terrible name! What am I supposed to call you as a nickname? Varkhisoza? I-I am just going to call you Banda from now on"

I like how Botin says she is not going to takes sides but still pretty much takes Van side of the conflict. And that the first thing she does after getting to the god area is send Zantark flying with a punch, a classic "anime tough mama" trope. On the other hand she does not gives her blessing to Van (not get at least, let her see what he can do first) and gently admonish him for what he have been doing, kinda like Darcia (who have to get her blessing) but less... spoiling I guess?

 

kinda like how Botin affirmed she has favorable impression to van because he have hillwilow soul when her subordinate god ask about it and makes them gape :v , then explanation about how god practically discriminative rather than mass who no one knows their belief strong or not they more to few or one believer who they favor (in this case heros they chose)

 

Is that an FMA reference?

It seems that Botin has no problems with monsters and evil gods, so that's good. Her only problems with Vida are infidelity and necrophilia.

Personally, I think it's only necrophilia if it's only a corpse. If it has a working soul and you can keep things hygienic, you can still tap it without necessarily desecrating the dead. Undead!Zakkart didn't have a soul, though.

It's nice to see that Botin is responsible (to a fault). She knows when to put her foot down and have Van earn that divine protection. It's not like Van adheres to Botin's doctrine that closely, anyway.

And don't say Van earned it by freeing Botin; he needed only a little time to undo the seal and made short work of the forces in his way. He even got a name change and a title change for it, so adding divine protection to that seems like a bit much...

 

In other words, Botin became yet another surrogate parent for Van. Let's go off a list of Van's effective parents here.

Valen: Biological father, deceased before Van knew him.

Darcia: Biological mother, deceased when he was 6 months old, preserved in spirit form and charmed, alive now but unable to effectively be the tough mother he needs due to having spent so long completely subject to death attribute charm.

Zadiris: 1st surrogate mother and first somewhat tough mother after Darcia's death and subsequent charming in spirit form. Demoted to surrogate older sister at some point, and currently demoted further to girl he thinks is cute. (Possible future true reciprocal love interest. Might note, this is a very healthy direction for a love relationship to have developed from except for the age difference, but the age difference is mitigated due to Zandiris' behavior standards and also by Van having grown up in a more advanced culture in his 1st life.)

Vigaro: Zandiris' effective 1st husband, thus making him also Van's 1st surrogate father. EDIT: Van has kinda outgrown him, demoting him from surrogate father to friend, around the same time Zandiris became "girl he thinks is cute."

Borkus: Prominent figure in Talosheim, becomes Van's 2nd effective surrogate father. Effect increased due to the fact that Borkus is absolutely ripped in terms of muscles. EDIT: Was limited in this role due to being subject to death attribute charm, and has now effectively been replaced with Zod in this role due to Zod just being better in every aspect that attached Van to Borkus in the first place as well as Zod not being fully subject to death attribute charm.

Zod: Van's 3rd effective surrogate father and object of Van's absolute adoration. 1st surrogate father Van actually completely takes a submissive stance toward due to how much he admires him.

Vida: Surrogate grandmother. She spoils him too much and is too permissive with him to be a surrogate mother.

Botin: 2nd surrogate mother, and promising to be the first in the entire list of parents and surrogate parents to give him the tough love and life advice he actually needs. (Zod had the facilities to do this as well in terms of both life experience and the fact Van would be likely to actually listen to and also defer to him (as opposed to just listening and taking what he says under advice as he does with the rest of his friends,) but he seems to not be quite confident enough to take the reigns in the surrogate father role.)

Note: Deferring to someone as I mentioned above means that you will actually take their advice over what you think should be done yourself. Listening and taking under advisement means that you are genuinely listening, but if you decide your own opinion is better you will go with your own opinion.

 

I do not think Darcia is permissive, there have been several times that she forbade Van to do certain things, in the beginning of the series even she forbade Van to use fire for several years, what happens is that in media Van takes actions that once he explains to you are quite logical and aim to avoid future damage, so when Darcia tries to contest something Van is convinced by him ...
Some examples:
Van talks about killing Heinz, Darcia asks him not to do anything dangerous and he promises that he will not try until it is extremely easy for him to do it, and there is still the event where he got hurt the most today that was with the stress of try to forgive Haley and Gordan after killing them, then Darcia has decided that he will no longer ask Van to forgive Heinz and the fact that she hates Heinz is because of the evil Heinz did to Van ...
I asked Van to better choose his lovemaking because the brides are increasing non-stop until he realizes that she can not blame Van because all his brides are excellent girls while she fell in love with a vampire Don Juan who might as well be just fooling she...
the few times he takes hasty actions and if he poe at risk she really complains but for Van's traumas if he hears a very long complaint he goes into shock and it does more...
and I think Botin will also lose to Van in logic...

 

To be fair, Botin says she's willing to be conditional allies with Van, and then says that doesn't mean she'll be Vida's ally or fight with Alda. Botin seems to be very clear about drawing lines between what she finds okay for the gods to do and what's okay for their mortal "children" to do, down to feeling like she owes Van quite a bit for having to have him be the one to unseal her and selfishly pulling him into Lambda's war and getting him killed back when he was Hillwillow.

Anyway, since she apparently wants to work to fix the issue of Van's death = utter chaos in Vidal, I look forward to her and Luciano joining forces to fill Doug's life with even more suffering.

"Doug, drink this potion I made!"
"Doug, wear this tiara I forged!"
"Doug, observe these 1,000 test subjects for us and record all the results!"
"Doug, oversee my subordinate gods for this new round of testing!"

 

SAO Abridged actually.

She is, what, the second to actually show genuine regret of needing to summon a hero, in part because she think she and her siblings should be able to solve the DK problem and in part because she gave their problem to people that had nothing to do with neither them nor Lambda?

I completely forgot Van put Melissa's-not-yet-husband in hell (Luciliano's assistant) for whatever reason. Was it because [Heka] let him operate as if he had many arms and at a safe distance?

 

If I remember correctly, Van asked Doug why he is still working as a research assistant.

 

Stockholm Syndrome? Mmmm, nah, like that could happen with Luciliano of all people. Maybe he actually like doings experiments, even if they are moraly dubious. Suddenly I start to miss those end-of-volume omake chapters...

 

I think one of the reasons where that it's a stable job.

 

I don't think Darcia was ever really tough on Van, though. Loving and occasionally firm, but that's it. Death Attribute Charm just gave her the push she needed to stick around long enough to live again and desensitized her to Van's strangeness.

How?! How do you spell it correctly the first time and then bork it up afterwards?!
...
Ahem. Sorry. I don't know where that came from.

Remember, kids: If you are a god, you should not listen to your isekai fantasy nerd siblings. They will drag in champions from other worlds and ruin your life.

 

I think the real lesson is ... do not listen to your right-brained brother and his egocentric champion and let your champion invoked alone against the DK ...

 

Surely you mean braindead brother and his manipulative asshole champion?

 

More like "completely unable to read another being true self due to unconciously going for the easy way to do things that he thinks is achived by shoving a stick so deep up his rear that he start to have throat problems" brother.

Also we have 10 days to do 43 pages.

 

Way to ruin the very concept of anal sex.

Time to spam shitposts until we reach page 300. :V

 

Glad to be of service

Ok, we need jemini to write a story about how Kanako convinced Van to do a christmas dance routine with her during one of her concerts. Disguised as a reindeer. A really really grumpy reindeer. "Do it for the children, Van-kun!"

That or for someone to draw everyone as sexy santa. And I mean everyone. No one shall escape the fury of Christmas Princess Zadiris!