Line #49 HeadScratchers/TowerOfGod


1	[[foldercontrol]]
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3	[[folder:Rak, Bam, and Black March]]
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5	* The only reason Rak wanted to fight Bam was because of the Black March. So why was he still following him around and calling him his prey if the reason for hunting him was gone?
6	** He didn't want to fight the current holder of Black March. He wanted to fight Bam because within the tower, wielders of 13 series weapons are universally agreed to be total badasses. Bam was holding Black March, hence he must be a badass, hence he must be worthy prey. Black March was taken away - but Bam is still a badass. As of season 2, with him being the most powerful on the 20th floor by a wide margin, Rak's assessment of him is totally accurate.
7	*** Rak states himself that the black March is what makes Bam a worthy foe. He didn't even know what the Black March was, only that it was apparently extremely powerful. Bam even taunted him with this, throwing away his weapon and tellin Rak to "hunt him," which he was pretty pissed about.
8	*** There are multiple ways to interpret this. One is that Rak's opinion changed over time. Another is that he felt Bam tossing aside Black March showed an attitude unworthy of proper prey.
9	** FireForgedFriends is a trope for a reason. The whole prey deal was shown after the Maze test to be little more than Rak being a bit {{Tsundere}} about it.
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11	[[/folder]]
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13	[[folder:FUG and Bam]]
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15	* I really don't understand the way FUG is going about manipulating Bam. They need him to kill Jahad, who is more powerful than any of them by a huge margin (possibly excepting Phantaminum and Enryu - but their ranking is done by an outside agency, who don't necessarily have accurate reads of their full power, so arguably not even those 2 are assured of victory). I get that. And they plan to do this.... by essentially kidnapping people he cares about and using them as leverage. I get that too, it's really not a bad blackmail plan normally, but what exactly are they planning on doing if he actually SUCCEEDS in killing Jahad? BY DESIGN, their plan requires Bam to be more powerful than the guy powerful enough to kill every one of them on his own. The problem with any blackmail scheme is that eventually the person being blackmailed has had enough - sooner or later Bam is going to snap and decide he's just had it with FUG. So now they have created at a minimum the 3rd most powerful person in existence.... and he's pissed at them. And this looks like a good plan WHY?
16	** Bam doesn't necessarily have to be stronger than them; it's just that as an Irregular, only he can kill Jahad. Others can help him or weaken Jahad. Likewise, when Mazino showed up, he talked about how a few hundred Rankers would be a "fair" match. It's almost certain an organization as powerful as FUG would have some sort of backup plan to make sure Bam doesn't defy the wishes of the organization.
17	*** That can be easily discounted by the fact that FUG hasn't already overthrown Jahad. If they were strong enough to take Jahad on, they actually don't need to KILL him at all - all they have to do is overpower him and then permanently imprison him somewhere and keep watch on him. They need Bam because they are no match for Jahad even WITHOUT his immortality, and they know it.
18	*** They are a really good reason that kill Jahad is better and simpler than just overthrown him. Assassinate logistic is much smaller than overtake all the 10 family (and guardians since they are binded to Jahad). Because they won't accept Jahad kidnapping or overthrown. And fight will be really more tough. On the other hand, murder Jahad need just one powerful attack one time. And the capacity to kill Jahad. It's TruthInTelevision, assassinate is a easy way to take a crown.
19	*** The problem is they train Bam/Viole to become a god. They do anything possible to make him over powerful, more stronger than them. They clearly want Bam become their god-like slayer. And Bam is a genius, he will certainly exceeds that. How can they hope to control him when he will be ranker?
20	*** Alternatively, they were a lot of possibility to manipulate him. They had choices of plan, the opportunity and the means to control it. But what? Yu Hansung just tell the true to Bam and pissed him off. Okay. It's just sound stupid if Yu Hansung works really for FUG. This blackmail gambit is really bad, because Yu Hansung reveals it and because it includes a lot of hole.
21	** Alternatively; they wouldn't care. Slayers to FUG are absolute gods, and to have Bam fulfill their prophecy and allow Mirchea to achieve his own power grab, they might not even care at that point that Bam would take his friends back or even give them back as a reward.
22	*** The point is that Bam would not just 'take his friends back.' If he's pissed enough to do that, he's probably going to be pissed enough to kill everybody in FUG for manipulating him down a course of action he never wanted to begin with.
23	** Bam himself addresses this in a recent storyline, [[spoiler: threatening to kill Xia Xia if she tries to manipulate his friends again]]. It seems that if Bam truly becomes a monster, FUG won't be able to stop him.
24	** WordOfGod has stated explicitly that while Bam is powerful, he's not outrageously powerful compared to some of the other people in the tower, and that FUG's reason for wanting him is solely because only an Irregular can kill Jahad, not because of his strength.
25	*** WordOfGod don't address the issue. FUG clearly want and work to make Bam outrageously powerful. And pissed him off. Together, both of these actions can only conclude to a EpicFail.
26	*** They don't want to make him outrageously powerful by the standards of Rankers. They just want to accelerate his growth to the point where he stands a chance of harming Jahard as one combatant in a pitched battle. This requires a lot of strength, but not necessarily the completely unbeatable powers you're picturing - he needs to be able to stand on the battlefield without instantly being vaporized, and he needs to be able to do enough damage that Jahard can't ignore him with his ordinary durability, both of which make him seem absurdly powerful ''by the standards of a normal Regular'' (or even a lower Ranker.) But they don't need him to be, say, in the top ten or anything like that, just strong enough that he doesn't vaporize the moment Jahard looks at him and capable of inflicting damage when a bunch of other FUG Rankers dogpile Jahard in order to give him a shot.
27	*** Also, it's important to understand that not every member of FUG wants the same things. [[spoiler:It's been heavily implied that the FUG members who have been antagonizing Baam the most or pushing to antagonize him either don't want him to be the candidate (so they would prefer that he flip out early on and give them an excuse to kill him), don't actually want FUG to succeed in the way it intends (so they ''want'' him to defect and are turning him against FUG intentionally), or want FUG to succeed but disagree with the current leadership, so they're trying to manipulate Baam into a position where he will help overthrow them and will then have to fight Jahard after revealing his strength.]]
28	** Even being really powerful doesn't mean you can protect your friends from a terrorist organization 24H/24, so Bam should remains quiet if he value their life after he defeat Jahad. Even if that isn't the case, their only goal is to kill Jahad, they don't seem to care about what will happen after this.
29	** Even if Bam becomes far more powerful than anyone else, that doesn't mean he has the political clout or skill to be in charge. Killing Jahad would still destabilize the power structure in the tower. Opportunists in FUG would figure they can take advantage of that and avoid getting killed by Bam later (especially since he doesn't know many people in FUG). Revenge-focused FUG members might not care if they get killed as long as they have revenge. And of course there's the fact that Bam doesn't seem the type to kill others normally, so FUG might be safe from death even if they force him to kill Jahad. They just have to ensure they can threaten his friends which is so far easy enough no matter how powerful Bam might get.
30	** Alternatively, they might think that tormenting him enough will turn him into an emotionless killing machine, which it seems is what they REALLY want. It's possible that what the training and isolation were meant to accomplish was to make him someone that doesn't care about anything except the goal they've been driving into him for years, so they don't have to hang the threat of his friends' lives over him. [[EvilCannotComprehendGood Which doesn't seem to be working in their favor, because Bam simply isn't like that]] - even if he seemed a fair bit out of it at the start of Season 2, his better nature rather rapidly reasserted itself. Hwaryun and Ha Jinsung, at least, seem to have accepted that this approach is doomed to fail, and perhaps also realize that [[ThePowerOfFriendship Bam around his friends and allies is stronger than Bam in isolation.]] (Especially since said friends are no pushovers themselves.)
31	** This is hinted at later on; the tl;dr answer is that Yu Hansung is a backstabbing manipulative traitor who is playing every side against each other. [[spoiler:Yu Hansung is trying to overthrow FUG's old guard, who he believes will never actually kill Zahard, which means he is ''intentionally'' pushing Baam into a position here he will rebel against them. His plan seems to be to put Baam in a position where he will seize control of FUG and then find himself an enemy of Jahard due to his strength, forced to kill him because Jahard won't back down or give him any other choice. Baam taking orders from FUG is, in Yu Hansung's view, unnecessary because Jahard will not allow the existence of someone who could threaten him and will target Baam's friends of he can't target Baam, forcing a conflict. The old guard of FUG who Yu Hansung is trying to manipulate into a conflict with Baam are going along with this, in turn, because they would prefer not to rely on Baam - who they see as Yu Hansung's pawn - and want to force him into a corner so he will rebel and they can kill him; they're unaware of how fast he is growing because they haven't seen much of him personally, so they don't realize they're playing into Yu Hansung's hands by doing this.]]
32	[[/folder]]
33	[[folder:Team Shibisu and Rachel]]
34	Did team Shibisu just forget about Rachel when Khun "died?" She's their entire reason for climbing the Tower, and they completely forget about it? I know they're preoccupied with Viole and all, but really? Was she not important enough? Even if Shibisu did know about Rachel's betrayal, did he never think to consider a connection between her and Khun's death? Or at least think "hey, I wonder what happened to that Rachel chick we were ''supposed to be helping climb the tower?''
35	* They know she is a traitor, so if they meet again, I suppose she will need something to protect herself, but I don't see what make you think that they forget about her.
36	** ''Shibisu'' knows she's a traitor. He never told anybody else on the team, because it would destroy the team and eliminate their reason for climbing. While it would make sense if he told them about her after Khun's death, there's nothing to suggest that he did. No matter how preoccupied they were with revenge against Viole, it's baffling that they never once ''thought'' about her.
37	*** Just because it wasn't show on-panel doesn't mean it wasn't discussed at some point. Her attempted killing of Khun was VERY recent, chapter-wise. In the months since Khun's 'death', I'm sure they've talked about hundreds of things. If the author wants us to know, I'm sure it's going to come with some kind of flashback when one of Team Shibisu comes face to face with Rachel.
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40	[[folder:Miscellaneous]]
41	* The reason that the princesses of Jahad aren't allowed to be with a man is to prevent them from becoming pregnant. So why not use some form of sterilization? ''Surely'' they can do something like a tubal ligation.
42	** [[spoiler: The real reason is because the first one to collect all the 13 Month Series was to become Jahad's wife/lover. Actually, that's also a false reason, but it solves your dilemma]]
43	** [[spoiler: considering the concept of the prince of Jahad and Jahad one true son exists it is entirely possible they are not made sterile because the one man they are allowed to love hasn't reached the top yet.]]
44	*** [[spoiler: how horrible is it of me not being able to decide if that is horrible objectification of women or Jahad being the best dad ever?]]
45	* How much of the "Bam grew up in a hole" thing is allegory/metaphor, and how much is literal?
46	** He grew up in a cave which only opening was on the ceiling. He was isolated from the entire world except for the light coming form the ceiling and Rachel. So completely literal. Depends on what you call a hole I'd say a cave which only exit or entrance being in the ceiling make it a hole.
47	* If the world where Bam and Rachel came from had no light, where did the food come from?
48	** It is heavily hinted by Flashbacks and statements and scene by Rachel and Bam there was a lot more going on then what we know and were lead to believe. That and Rachel was able to leave the cave or head to another place constantly which Bam could not follow and she probably brought some with her. Though that doesn't answer what Bam did before Rachel arrived though it could be possible that Bam wasn't in the cave long enough before Rachel arrived to starve.
49	* Why does the Tower have a day/night cycle?
50	** To symbolise and mimic life outside the Tower?
51	** So people would know when to sleep and not go crazy by a seeming lack of time in the tower.
52	* How was Ran and his team able to reach the Name Hunt station before the Hell Express, despite the train being said to be a much quicker way up the Floors and with Ran & co leaving the 35th Floor after the train did??
53	** You forgot about all the crap that went down with Hoaqin and how much time that took without taking any test?
54	** Except that everything involving Hoaqin occurred either while the train was in transit or when the train had paused at a station (the station in question being Wooden Horse). And at Wooden Horse, Aguero's brother barely stalled the train for several minutes ''at best''. That's definitely not enough time to make a difference when going from station to station, especially since the train apparently takes '''months''' to get from one station to the next. This troper is still baffled...
55	*** Given how Poro Poe was able to speed the train up on the way to the Last Station, maybe after all the Hoaquin stuff he adjusted it to go a lot slower than usual on account of Yuri killing the conductor Pedro, and Poe having to learn everything in his place. This explanation has absolutely zero support in the story, but its the only one this troper could think of.
56	* How did [[spoiler: V]] was able to kill himself and [[spoiler: Arlene]] not? [[spoiler: Both climbed the Tower with Jahad and the Ten Family Heads, so why only Arnele was immortal? I don't see a scenario where V and Arlene would make different decisions, as in only one of them make a contract to be ''immortal''.]]
57	** Maybe he lacked some conditions? Hendrock Bloodmadder didn't get the immortality too, and that definitely not because he didn't want to live forever.
58	* How was Phantaminum able to ascend to the 135th floor when it is clearly stated that the only key in existence was split into 13 parts and never since made whole again; the war over this key between Zahard on one side and V and Arlene on the other even being a major plot point.
59	** Probably because of [[spoiler: Axis Powers, or something else? ]]
60	* If King Jahad is supposed to be totally unharmable by residents of the Tower, as opposed to "merely" unkillable like Arlene and the Ten Family Heads (except Bloodmadder), then how did he get his ears pierced in order to put on those red crest earrings?
61	** He could have done it himself, or one of the Ten Family Heads who entered the tower with him could have done it (they are Irregulars like him and therefore capable of harming him.) It's also possible his ears were pierced before he entered the tower.

Context HeadScratchers / TowerOfGod