>I can't speak for Phil - he's obviously out ahead of the curve on a
>lot of this stuff compared with me these days, e.g. the Mai
>stuff - but I'm not familiar enough with those sources to steal stuff
>from them.

That was addressed more to Phil than to you, really, which I absolutely should have been clearer about. I wouldn't presume to guess what things you are and aren't a fan of without prior knowledge, whereas I do know that Phil loves him some Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, both of which have some very epic scenes in them that show exactly what happens when you put someone who controls water with their mind and body in the middle of a giant field of snow.

Although thinking about it more, I suppose having weird kinetic powers would mean you'd likely be over at Xavier's rather than attending DSM.

>>>"This thing is the snow fort from hell!"
>
>A) Sosuke is not aware that there actually is a Hell, as such.
>He generally takes literally only those things he understands the
>literal meaning of.

I was being slightly tongue in cheek there. :) I wouldn't have been surprised if Sosuke did have knowledge of the underpinnings of the universe, but am equally unsurprised he does not.

>B) He's very slowly learning that being so tiresome around Kaname...
>hurts. :)

That's actually (tangentially) one of the things I like best about DSM Panic. I'm a big FMP fan, don't get me wrong. But one of the more annoying things about the high-school sequences there (as opposed to the 'Sousuke in his Arm Slave' sequences) was that Kaname does NOT come off well a lot of the time. There are real and genuine threats to her life out there that she knows about, and her reaction to them is to lash out violently at the dude who is there to protect her. It's played for laughs, and often it succeeds, but the disconnect between "there are people who want to torture Kaname in order to manifest her Whispered powers" and "oh noes Sousuke set off a smoke bomb and she punched him into the horizon lol" got real, real wearying after awhile.

DSM avoids this by making Kaname much more reasonable (she knows that Sosuke is there for her own safety and is willing to work with him) while still making the conflict between them hilarious (because Sosuke is still mostly-unequipped to deal with social situations that don't involve being a child soldier). Kaname's reactions being more generally "oh, fuck my life" rather than "I'm going to start hurting you now; I'm not sure when I'll stop" makes all the difference in the world.

>Well, no, she is in fact technically underage - for DSM's policy on
>students leaving campus without adult supervision. You're supposed to
>be 14 (for those with human-like maturity curves) before you can do
>that. It's just not usually an issue, because few human students even
>come to the school before that age.

That's on me for having really bad reading comprehension, then.

>>And the second question mark, if not just a misskey, I don't think you
>>need that either. If you're trying to give emphasis to the sentence,
>>maybe just go underline on 'thinking'?
>
>Seriously??? Of all the balls to bust, dude. That sauce is
>weak. :)

Well, that was a genuine stylistic criticism on my part. I'm of course not one of the actual writers, but for the most part (and yes, I did see what you did there on the seriously) you guys tend to avoid using excessive punctuation (WHAT?!?!?!?!?) as a form of emphasis. Which I do like, because I kind of think it looks silly, no offense.

Kaname doing it there is the only example in the story, and the circumstances in which it occurred made me think 'someone hit the ? button twice when they didn't mean to'.

... I may be a bit overly pedantic as a person.

-Merc
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