Subject: This is the sort of corkscrew thinking I like to see. {= D
Author:
Posted on: 2015-05-19 13:34:00 UTC
Remember, boys and girls and starfish: the Sue is only as powerful as her story is well-written. Use their own plotholes against 'em!
~Neshomeh
What do we do with them?
I don't just mean really freaking tough to kill, or ageless. I mean honest-to-god incapable of dying.
I'm talking about the kind of immortality granted by a third taste of the Hourai Elixir, where even if they're completely annihilated, they pop back into existence good as new.
I suppose that if it was specifically the Hourai Elixir, you could just kill the Sue before she has a chance to taste it three times.
This may be a bit late, but what about the Dragonrend shout from TESV: Skyrim? Shouts literally force the concepts on the target, and that particular one goes with mortal, finite, temporary. Use that, kill them while they're vulnerable, then let canon reassert itself, wiping the immortal from having ever existed.
Isn't the Dragonborn the only living thing that can use that Shout?
Anyone can use it if they know the Voice, like the Greybeards and the ancient Nordic heroes who created it. The exception is dragons themselves; the concepts it embodies are so alien to dragons that they can't project them. Also, the Last Dragonborn isn't the only Dragonborn.
And I thought of something else: wish. The D&D spell, that is. It lets you literally rewrite reality. There's a creature - the tarrasque - that can regenerate itself from being disintegrated into its constituent atoms. Wish is the only thing that can put it down, and only then if it's as close to dead as it can otherwise get. Its resilience sounds a bit like what that elixir you're talking about grants.
If even that doesn't suit you (because of the different rules governing various continua), there's this other nice little thing called soul bind. You said that the elixir prevents its drinker's soul/body/whatever from being confined to the underworld/afterlife/whatever... but nothing about it not being able to be confined in a gemstone. It's basically a magical alternative to sticking her in a black hole - there is no escape.
If you can risk taking your immortal 'Sue to a reality room, it should impose entropy on her and force her to become mortal, and if you are lucky, the injuries she's survived by being immortal should kill her.
But every godmode 'sue is different, and every writer should endeavor to find interesting, creative, and entertaining solutions to the godmoding. When you're writing about scrappy underdog-type agents, finding sneaky ways to deal with a way-overpowered, way-undercharacterized fictional glitterthing is pretty much in the job description.
Well, probably. At least partially.
I don't have much of an answer, but what I do have is that there was a Jack Harkness character replacement (the guy can die, but he always comes back) who was left somewhere in the Underworld in a Greek myth. That's one way of doing it. Black holes or suns are also things that get used, I think, though again, I'm not completely sure.
Anyone care to elaborate? That's all I've got, besides a suggestion to search the wiki in case there's an article on it.
~DF
The Touhou games specifically state that people that drink it can never be bound to the netherworld. Yuyuko, a character who literally has the power to make things dead, has no power over creatures that have taken the Elixir.
Suns qualify as annihilation, which the Hourai Elixir cancels out.
Black holes... there, I'm not too sure, because Touhou doesn't really go into black holes.
Like I said, the only way I can think of to deal with the Hourai Elixir would be to prevent a Sue from drinking it in the first place.
Black holes, realistic ones at least, probably would work. Even if they wouldn't kill the Sue, she wouldn't be bothering anyone again. This happens for several reasons:
First, the Event Horizon. Absolutely nothing escapes once it's past the Horizon, not even light (that's why they're called black holes). The Sue sure wouldn't be able to.
Second, any realistic black hole has insane time dilation. Even if, by some miracle, the Sue did manage to escape, it would be in the far future (how far depends on how massive the black hole is).
Third, there's this Fun thing called Spaghettification (I'm not kidding, that's its actual name) that happens when you get too close to black holes. Spaghettification is when tidal gravity (the difference in gravity between your top and bottom) rip you apart. And then it happens again, and again, and again, until you're a cloud of disconnected atoms. Meanwhile, you're being squeezed into a tube of matter resembling a spaghetti noodle (hence the name). Even if the Sue had drunk the Hourai Elixir, this would happen to her. Heck, because she wouldn't be able to stop falling into the black hole, it would happen to her continuously.
One of the few ways this wouldn't work would be if it was banned as torture. Black holes are a very, very thorough way of killing stuff.
Find a way that works and would stay working, something that would freeze the Sue somehow but not kill her. That way she's stuck and can't reform or whatever it is.
Just need to make sure it's something that won't break...and then find a safe place to leave her.
~DF
That maybe the Sue thinks it's the Hourai Elixir, but is mistaken.
The Elixir is incredibly rare. There's only one person who knows how to make it, Eirin Yagokoro, and it's not known if she has any more left or even if she has the ingredients to make it.
Only four characters have actually taken it: Eirin herself, Kaguya Houraisan (the exiled princess of the moon), Fujiwara no Mokou (the daughter of a man Kaguya spurned), and Chang'e (the Chinese goddess of the moon).
It's highly probable than a Sue claiming to have taken the Hourai Elixir probably got ripped off... especially if it's misspelled. >:3
Is portal ahead and swap it out for, Iunno, bleach or battery acid or one of the horrifying local poisons, and charge them while they're on the ground. To paraphrase a talking raccoon in my acquaintance:
"Hehehe. Writhe, little Sue."
If they had the "Horai elixer" or something like that, it probably wouldn't be the real thing. But I have another idea...
Drinking the Hourai Elixir, according to Fujiwara no Mokou, comes in three stages. With the first taste, you stop aging. With the second, you can never become ill. With the third, you become completely and utterly immortal.
A misspelled Hourai Elixir might not create a Touhouverse mini, but rather an incomplete version of the Elixir that only grants the effects of a first or second taste, no matter how much the Sue drinks.
Thoughts?
Let's see if this will work...
Remember, boys and girls and starfish: the Sue is only as powerful as her story is well-written. Use their own plotholes against 'em!
~Neshomeh
Both sound suitably dangerous, thorough, and creative. Isn't that what we look for in assassinations? >:)
(The black hole one would only be ironic if space was actually mentioned in the fic; the fake Elixir can be ironic anywhere.)