[in a mostly conveniently empty boys' cabin sleeps a Hazel. he is not really in the Christmas spirit. also it's early.]

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Am pretty sure it was the whole genocide thing that did him in. "DO YOU ENJOY SEEING PEOPLE IN PAIN?" IT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE.

( LA LA LA SPOILERS FOR THE MOST RECENT CHAPTER LA LA LA ACTUAL SCANS HAVE YET TO GO UP LA LA o god )

EDIT: WELL OKAY THE SPOILERS ARE TRUE

I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS A LOT BECAUSE LOL

YES YES YOU'RE ALL SICK OF ME NOW

( MORE ESSAYS, parts three and four out of four )

OKAY OKAY I AM DONE QUESTIONS/CONCERNS PLEASE TO DIRECT THEM MY WAY :|;;

It has been ages since my last essay, I think, and Reload has been good to me lately. So ITP: rambling! The bits of my thoughts on Hazel already in this journal have sort of revolved around Hazel as we see him from the point I took him, which was about--the end of volume five or so after he's made his bet with the Sanzo-ikkou, but before he runs into Ukoku; now, now I am writing about recent Hazel and the need for a canon update, though I will wait till after this counselor round to decide when/where. o/

Linked scans and most dialogue snippets lifted from the good folks down at saiyuki_manga. SHOW THEM SOME LOVE 8D

( LOL ESSAYS LOL SPOILERS LOL: parts one and two of four )

Redoing Hazel's icons and tinkering with his stats and permissions meme over the course of the week. Probably shelling out some essays too.

I love my canon :{

Characters due for icon renovations: Abel, Kid, possibly Yamato and Chika?

Characters whose accounts I ought to renew: ERR MOST OF THEM I THINK

Characters for whom I have post ideas: Abel, Watanuki, Rufus, Hazel

• possible drop action in near future
  
• comment count goals for March
  
• character mixes
  
• calendar update (if only for sole purpose of wincing at inactivity)
  
• de-hiatus this week

I THINK THIS ICON IS HOT

( ESSAY: Hazel, sexuality, people, sex. Also spoilers. )

Watanuki/Kid/Abel/Hazel/Chika/Yamato/Rufus here. Hiatus...

...declared officially over!!11!

Will be around a hell of a lot these days, blah blah blah stuff is not happening so much anymore. I am really seriously super sorry for being pretty MIA for the past three weeks or so.

In short: let me make it up to you. I will be happily running threads and YES EVEN POSTS. If there's a thread you want with any of mine, please please please don't hesitate to let me know!

THESE ARE REALLY HARD TO TRANSCRIBE since trying to get in some solid lines is way hard I'll be like, listening to this shit all day. Unless I don't have to. Hint hint :(

ANYWAY FOLKS this is the story of Harley pimping Blue Beetle over voicemail last night. I have approximately four messages along these lines in which she summarizes Blue Beetle and calls me a whore and says she doesn't love me, etc. Which we all know is a horrible falsehood, but. Yes.

More coming forthwith only if I am not absolved of my duties. THIS IS HARD OKAY

"Blue Beetle issue two, June '06, 'Friend Or Foe'--the cover of this issue features Jaime in his armor standing in front of a really fat guy, a girl with big tits, a midget, and a couple other people. Page one, Jaime is--oh, he's naked. He's naked in the desert. So yeah, yeah, I don't think I need to read anymore. We've got naked Jaime. We're good. That's all you need to know. And there's a SUPERNOVA, which is a metaphor for Jaime masturbating in the desert. Yeah I--I'm pretty sure I interpreted that correctly. ALRIGHT. Bye."

SO ANYWAY, the most recent Saiyuki chapter (available at radiofreebanri) is the beginning of an apparent short arc called "Sunspot," which is apparently Hazel's backstory a la the Burial chapters.

There hasn't been a translation yet, but there's something kinda important here. In one of the previous volumes--I think when Hazel was referencing his master, Bishop Filbert, to Sanzo--Filbert was wearing a pendant much like Hazel wears now. However, in these chapters Filbert's got a crucifix.

On one hand this means we can safely assume Hazel was raised Christian! As for what particular denomination I don't actually know, since I don't know beans about religion and can't distinguish denomination based on stuff like what kind of hat Hazel is wearing. If he's from overseas west--I've generally gone with "whatever the hell equates to colonial America in Minekura's brain"--then definitely not Catholic, at least. I DON'T KNOW THOUGH any takers?

On the other hand uh. Possibility of continuity error? :(

TRANSLATIONS, SAIYUKI FANDOM. HOP TO IT.

EDIT: Jaime and I chatted a little about it and are thinking Episcopalian or Protestant! For a couple of reasons, IE the prominence of certain Christian denominations in would-be colonial America, the absence of Jesus on Filbert's crucifix (for Catholics)...'course the cross on the church wall has Christ on it but I'd still like to rule out Catholicism, since Catholic populations in faux colonial America wouldn't be all that high, would they?

Also there is the distinct possibility Minekura hasn't thought it through that much but ;;

REVENGE OF EDIT: So Harley said, WHAT IF HE'S A JESUIT

And I said, wow, a Jesuit! I forgot they existed!

Anyway she said that they had a missionary presence in China, India, and Japan, probably wouldn't have been in colonial America--but then she used her powers of INTERNET.

Harley: Hrrm.
Looks like it started in Spain, bled into France pretty quick, and they were heading over to America by the late 1400s
Jesuit crosses also don't have necessarily have Jesus on them, though it's been KNOWN TO HAPPEN, and a Jesuit priest would be about as likely to be wearing a circular pendant
me: ... ooh.
Harley: Here's a better picture of the traditional hat, which Hazel's could easily be modeled after http://stclementpc.org/images/clip_image002_001.jpg
Yep, based on my five minutes of extensive research and zero knowledge of the character, I'd say he's proooobably a very bastardized branch of Jesuit


o/ See people are better than me. ♥♥

BITCHES APP ME SANZOS

counselor apps open on my birthday that has to mean something to you heathens :(

Name: Hazel Grosse
House: Slytherin
Talent: ...yeah, yeah, straight from canon. Hazel is rumored to have the ability to bring people back from the dead with his shiny bling. Not that no one knows what the hell the story behind that is, though.
Special Cases: Hazel is on Hogwarts's governing board! Is a dick. Will be in your base, inspecting your schools.
Other: ...god, I don't know. Okay, pulling some canon conversion out of my ass: Hazel was an orphan, his master was just a DANDY wizard till...he...cavorted off into the distance and never came back. Eventually probably came to blame his master's demise on Muggles or something, ergo DIET RACISM and totally bent on keeping Muggles the hell out of his shiny wizarding world. Yes, he is snotty and pure-blood. Likely a prominent figurehead in the Ministry of Magic as well. Will punch out Mudbloods.

Sometime prior to his master's nasty demise, Hazel ran into this guy (COUGH COUGH) who may or may not have been a dark wizard who "drew out his inner power," thus pushing him on his path to Generically Powerful Wizard. The types of things he can do with his pendant? Strictly classified.

Angel, Hazel's song from the second Gunlock vocal album. sexy_roach sent it to me and it is KIND OF HOT.

Ordinarily I don't believe in this meme but. MOTHERFUCKING HAZEL smiles at you and discreetly wants to paint the walls with your blood.


FIRST IMPRESSIONS GO

SO UH

Hazel hates him some youkai.

So if you're a youkai or anything like a youkai--note that this probably doesn't extend to, like, VAMPIRES although I'm sure he'll find a reason to hate you too--let me know so he can hate you. \o/

LINGUISTICS WITH BISHOP HAZEL, SOUTHERN BELLE

So no matter how you look at it, really--in almost every single translation there is of his dialogue, in any language, Hazel is intelligent, often outright eloquent. Also, accent--Kyoto accent in the anime--which Tokyopop has chosen to translate as...well, see app. Yes, I was aware of different interpretations of Hazel's way of speaking, and I know there are some Hazel fans on the net who didn't like the western dialect Tokyopop slapped on him, but. Reload has been out for some time in the US, and in the end the amount of people who would recognize western trophy wife Hazel edge out the amount who, well, wouldn't. That's pretty much all there is to it. ;(

Does this mean I'm dumbing him down? Mm, no. Hazel IS intelligent, well-spoken, throws around big words now and then and waxes philosophic to those he thinks deserve to hear it. He's pretty much gonna be the Hazel he is in every translation, but the accent is purely Tokyopop. RESPECT.

NAME: Hazel Grosse. There's a bird named Hazel Grouse which was probably what Minekura was goin' for, but I went with the Tokyopop rendition because I love TP :( Doesn't bug me, though.
AGE: No idea. Around the Sanzo party's ages, though, so I put him in his early twenties, especially since in his flashback he doesn't look older than, like, fourteen at the most.
HAIR: Whitish, silver, gray, what the hell ever.
EYES: Blue, not too light--kinda close to purple, I guess, but that's Sanzo's thing. :(
HEIGHT: He's about Sanzo's height, maybe an inch shorter. 5'9" or 5'10".
WEIGHT: NO IDEA on the skinny/muscular side, typical Saiyuki boy build.
BLOOD TYPE: I AM GETTING SICK OF ANSWERING "HELL IF I KNOW"

MEDICAL INFO: Fit as a fiddle, as far as I know. Like most Minekura characters in their twenties, he has a very low body mass index. :(

PHYSICAL TRAITS: See above. Pretty typical good-looking guy, on the muscular side.

WHAT'S OKAY TO MENTION: I try to shy away from the whole "PS: YOU'RE FICTIONAL" thing with my characters, but anything else is fair game. ♥

NOTES FOR THE PSYCHICS: Hazel's brain is a pretty pleasant place to be. He's an optimist, he's into the whole "good will towards men" thing, he has a general appreciation for the finer things in life and the universe and all that jazz. He's also extremely cunning and analytical, and also discreetly more dishonest than he lets on--and he's also got a dark streak in him, namely his long-standing hatred of youkai and his willingness to use and discard other people to achieve his own ends.

Namely, yes, he is kind of crazy and kind of racist and sometimes pretty damn cruel. BUT HE'S NOT A BAD GUY.

ABILITIES: The big one is his ability to bring the dead back to life using his shiny pendant, as seen in his default icon. Each opening in the pendant can stock one soul, and he manipulates these souls to bring back the dead or heal people. While I don't expect this ability of his to come into play a lot during his time in camp, it should also be noted that he...apparently has some level of control over people he resurrects? I'm not entirely clear on this one. The people he's originally seen reviving all go berserk and attack youkai, but he says it's because they were killed by youkai and he can't erase that hatred from their hearts. But I think he can manipulate them on some level, what with the whole snapping his fingers and having the whole town go nuts on Hakkai, Goku, and Gojyo in the fourth volume. Also, if the people he revives are killed again, their corpses crumble to pieces, so if he pulls anything you might wanna have a backup plan. :(

Outside of that, though, Hazel also possesses a decent level of hand-to-hand combat ability and isn't helpless at all on his own. His fighting style is "impressively acrobatic" and there's a lot of...gay flippy things.

SHAPESHIFT/BODY SWAP/ETCETERA: As always, ask. ;(

HUGGING/KISSING/NICKNAMING: ...sure, why not. Hazel does the polite dissuasion thing as far as physical contact goes, but nicknames would probably make him laugh. NICE GUY EVERYONE

FIGHTING: He's pretty prudent about his personal limitations. Also, puny human. If he stands any kind of chance, though, go for it, since he has a special knack for pissing people off.

MAIMING/KILLING/DEATH: Nothing too severe or permanent unless the situation calls for it. Not too sure on the dying thing.

COOKING: I think he's decent at it? Nothing too spectacular, though, and he knows it. He's better at getting other people to cook for him.