#Avatar Corbenik

[honestlyvan]

👀👀 rlly interesting read on ovan, would love to hear some abt ur hcs on him n corbenik

(Now on DW!)

So it's been a hot minute since I watched Terminal Disc so my memory of the details of the canon are very vague, but I definitely think it's likely that the Epitaphs attached themselves to players in reverse numerical order, making Ovan the first and unintentionally the template for how becoming an Epitaph-PC would play out.

Corbenik is sort of funny as a Phase because the way it's laid out in the Epitaph, Corbenik serves no function until the Wave wipes out its intended target, and it's left behind to observe the void. As long as the system state isn't disturbed and no new AI begins to emerge, Corbenik stays passive theoretically forever -- but once it is disturbed, it rouses the rest of the Wave to come clean up what was left unfinished.

(I recognise this isn't how we see it play out in R1, I'm basing this on the idea that Morganna designed the Wave to be essentially self-propagating against Aura. The stalemate is the point, the rolling waves razing any fertile ground for her to develop on in favour of perpetual despair and the call of the void.)

With Corbenik as the rearguard of the apocalypse, it could have easily been the most active (least inactive?) of the Phases during the period of calm after Aura takes over Morganna's duties -- with no AI competing with Aura available to suppress, it was essentially on standby, latching onto Ovan the moment he showed up and then doing nothing until it registered the AIDA that also attached itself to Ovan.

Which is the thing that really fucks Ovan over, I think. The body timeshare he has with Tri-Edge is stressful enough, but Corbenik is also perpetually making him identify himself as the greatest threat to system integrity. So he's essentially getting a triple dose of the Epitaph "the solution is Fucking Kill Yourself" heightened self-destructive urge -- from the nature of the Cursed Wave, from the Vagrant AI-fication of the Phases and being (in part) his own natural-born enemy.

On top of this, Corbenik is perpetually calling to the other Phases like "over here! I've identified the enemy! Here is an AI we need to stop from reaching self-actualisation!" So candidates are drawn to him, unconsciously recognise him as having seniority, and then immediately identify him as the threat to be eliminated. People keep forming a kind of proxy disordered attachment to him, feeling compelled to follow his orders but also feeling threatened by his presence and become driven by the urge to destroy him.

Haseo is particularly vulnerable to this because Skeith and Corbenik are so intertwined in their roles, the first Phase is the one the last calls the strongest, and his personal sense of betrayal only amplifies the destructive resonance. And the influence goes both ways, the more Skeith perceives Corbenik's host as the main threat, the more Corbenik calls on Skeith as the vanguard to eliminate that threat. Haseo's (perceived) perception of him directly influences Ovan's perception of himself -- with everyone else Ovan is very particular about asserting his own reality, but with Haseo, the way Haseo sees him takes priority over how Ovan sees himself.

[braveryhearted]

More obscure muses ( Introduction ) series.

Fandom: Dot Hack GU.

Muse #3- Ovan / Masato Indou

Age: 25-26 ( anime, manga, light novels and games )

Ovan is a powerful Steam Gunner and the former leader of the Twilight Brigade. He is also the Epitaph User titled "The Rebirth", being able to summon Avatar Corbenik.

Ovan is a very mysterious person. Generally quiet, when he does speak, everybody listens. He is capable of commanding the attention of everybody around him with little effort. He seems to know quite a bit about events in The World R:2, though his quiet nature makes it unclear exactly how much knowledge he actually has.

He frequently disappears from the game for long stretches of time; while he says it's related to his job in the real world, whether that is true or not is up for debate. As a Steam Gunner of an extremely high level, he has progressed beyond having to worry about trivial matters such as leveling or PKers, leaving him plenty of time to work on his long term goals, whatever they may be. One thing to note, though he never seems to lie, he has the habit of not giving a straight answer, leaving others to make their own judgments.

Ovan's player is named Masato Indou, who once worked as a Network Administration Bureau investigator. He has met with Shino, and seems to keep in contact with her outside of the game. He also has a younger sister named Aina. During the events of .hack//Redemption, in findings by the Network Administration Bureau, Ovan was suspected of creating the AIDA virus in order to shut down the internet, this being only half-true.

Immediately afterword, an international warrant was issued from Interpol for his arrest. Near the end of the G.U. Games, the charges were dropped after an anonymous CC Corp employee revealed that his company was blaming Ovan for its own wrongdoings. Throngs of The World R:2 players were seen protesting CC Corp in support of the iconic treasure hunter.

Ovan is the only Epitaph User who doesn't join Haseo's party in the original .hack//G.U. games.

[selflit-doodles]

happy birthday, big blue!

[ofstarsandskies]

.hack//G.U. AU -- Julius BG Info

Julius Will Kresnik (Crown) -- Adept Rogue (Twin Blade->Steam Gunner)  A fervent player of The World and once Guild Master of the disbanded Clanspia. His reason for the former is due to his younger sister, Elle, being sent overseas to find a doctor who could treat her; the two resolved to meet in The World whenever Elle’s able so they can still be together despite the distance. Unfortunately for them both, an AIDA dubbed “Tri-Edge” PKs Elle and attaches itself onto Julius (who manages to “survive” the attack due to his PC possessing the Avatar Corbenik). 

Julius’ goal then becomes gathering all of the other Morganna Factors to activate the Rebirth and purge AIDA from the internet and in the process restore Elle back to consciousness. He ends up creating the guild Clanspia, whose ultimate goal is to find the legendary item “The Key of the Twilight”. His guild’s second-in-command is Maxwell, whom he’d original met offline prior to joining. Julius also ends up recruiting Ludger, a newer player who he rescues from two newbie-hunter PKers. 

Though the two never meet in-person, Julius does exchange contact info with Ludger and sometimes calls him outside of The World. But once Milla gets PKed, he suddenly goes silent after telling Ludger about “Tri-Edge” PKing Milla and rendering her comatose IRL. He does so to spur Ludger into becoming stronger and be his “Key of the Twilight”. 

Headcanons/Random Thoughts 

Milla’s teased Julius about not classing as just a Steam Gunner since he never makes use of his Twin Blade class. Julius’ excuse is, “By the time I thought of that, I was too attached to Crown.” 

In reality, he does use his Twin Blade class when he’s “Tri-Edge”. 

Julius debated telling Ludger about his sister every now and then, something he never planned to do with Milla. Milla interpreted this weird hesitance as Julius having a crush on Ludger and told him she’d support him once he “came out of the closet”. 

As part of his gathering Avatar plans, Julius ends up manipulating Alt!Milla’s friend Muzet by convincing her that with AIDA, she can purge the world of unkindness by changing peoples’ hearts. Once her use has run out though, Julius PKs her. 

Julius’ favorite Area is Δ Hidden Forbidden Radiation. He finds listening to the waterfall clears his head when he dives far too deep into thought (which he often does).

As a joke, Julius once told Ludger he’d marry the first person to give him a good tasting tomato cupcake. Julius then finds a batch of tomato cupcakes sent to his house a week later with a note saying, “You should be careful with jokes like that.” 

[amberenigma]

stream of consciousness thoughts on ( ovan’s ) will. and about graphics. this is your spoiler warning for volume 4: reconnection.

i spent too long last night playing gu for a hot second and now i have some Thoughts:tm: about plots, ovan, and the notion of will. enjoy some 2015 levels of rambling about objectively minuscule details. 

anyway literal toilet thought but the archives have a very interesting way of creating meaningful iconography using particular design elements of characters ( mainly the infinity eight ) and minimizing it to something both unique and recognizable. namely, the epitaph pattern icons used for each player in the archives---they’ve always been really neat, unique, and it’s been something that the cc2 team has always used in their archives since _02.

ovan’s has changed between trilogy/original gu and volume 4, which i always thought was pretty neat, especially in terms of what’s actually presented.

( but anyone with the book be like: okay but haseo has a different one too in volume 4!! and i say shshshshshshshh this came about purely because of unison skeith’s icon which uses haseo’s epitaph version since he’s.......you know.......skeith’s host. epitaph talk will come up later )

anyway excuse my 5 minute “slap a banner of images” but the difference here is obvious and i just have an appreciation for what it means with aida---mostly that aida was acknowledged and treated as a completely different entity, an anomaly that didn’t belong on ovan at all and depicted as such during the trilogy. but after kusabira fuses back with him as true neighbor ( which i always thought was a very interesting name to give tri-edge ), we get a spiffy new icon for big blue and wah-lah, aida is now cyan! YAAAA!!! whether or not ovan actually accepts her as part of him ( in which he at least seems reluctant in-game, not so much my main verse after 6 years of writing him lmao ) is rather up for debate, but here we can at least verify that she’s not there to be malicious per se ( but that doesn’t quite exclude her as a menace, see haseo’s “it’s kusabira, isn’t it. it’s that aida whispering in your ear.” ), and not to the extent of trying to completely fuck up his day. i found that slight change pretty interesting. this is where i get into the meat of what i wanted to talk about.

the notion of will in .hack---gu in particular.

but first i do wanna say that there’s this blaring fucking pothole when it comes to corbenik and the rebirth that i don’t know will ever be explained. like. if it’s a failsafe that was a one and done thing, then corbenik should have been......destroyed or severely damaged or something.....right...or at least that’s what kind of makes sense to me unless the product of the RA plan really makes epitaphs less prone to the crumbly wumblies like they were in imoq after being salvaged. although that doesn’t seem to be the case given unison skeith is a solid half corbenik/half skeith. it’s bothered me for years and canon doesn’t really lean one way or the other, it just is ( again, i’ve written something out for my corbi blog years ago and tl;dr ovan and azure kite go fish him out of the sea of data, put him together, but he lacks the ability to rebirth again--i need to tag that thread actually ). but maybe he’s never meant to truly disappear as his moniker implies. always coming back ( additionally fitting for ovan, but i digress ). 

will is an interesting concept in gu. and at least with ovan specifically, it’s a strangely powerful trait in him, which may be why part of why he has this sort of enigmatic sort of vibe to him to anyone---this notion of, “i don’t know what this guy wants, but whatever it is, he’ll get it one way or another.” and i think it may really be stronger than at first glance, pivotal almost. we see it twice in dire moments, even though he’s so, so tired.

the first ( and not chronologically, there’s obvious some other off-screen moments we can speculate, these are just two instances that come to mind clearly ) is with the fight with cubia in redemption, where 7 of the 8 are trying to break through ballsack cubia’s final AT field ( forgive me it looks like an AT field what can we expect from sadamoto okay ). yata says they can’t do it without “the epitaph of rebirth”, which always struck me as odd for quite awhile. what did he mean by epitaph of rebirth? didn’t haseo have all of the epitaph data in his pc? he data drained corbenik twice now, they should be okay, no?

but, yata wasn’t referring to corbenik specifically in this case. he was referring to ovan, and in that extension, corbenik as his epitaph. the remnant data skeith absorbed was essentially not enough in this case despite corbenik containing a metric fuckton of data between himself and aida. what skeith can’t devour is human will. ovan’s will.

in the archives, ovan’s specifically noted to have an extremely high mental resilience---it’s the primary trait that attracted corbenik in the first place when searching for a host. this could mean quite a few things, honestly, and taking into account what little of his past we actually know, it makes sense that his sense of direction is incredibly poignant, his will to be essentially unmatched ( although parallel to haseo’s in my opinion, just simply a different flavor ). the man’s just an absolute unit. it’s also noted that ovan didn’t really take into account the repercussions of activating the rebirth and purging the net, thus spawning our good friend cubia, so he truly was just ready to go sleep forever. paraphrasing aura here, the rest of the infinity eight’s praying for ovan to hear their collective voices ( admittedly it just boils down to ovan hearing haseo’s voice, gestures at lost files in the trilogy archives which is a hilarious conversation by the way; “leave me be, i’m tired. i just want to sleep.” ) is what gets him to muster up any remaining strength he has left to come help. 

it’s an interesting sequence of scenes with haseo’s cracked data just magically healing up once ovan enters the picture---his presence alone drives haseo. it’s his image and his voice that’s alongside haseo’s ( which is an interesting choice because it could have been all eight of them in this case ). his will is what catalyzes everything to it’s end, including himself. 

the second is the avatar fight with moralta, where haseo realizes that he can’t do it alone again---and ovan is still surprisingly able to put himself through that kind of strain despite being in the deep freeze for a year ( avatar and all! again! goddamn! ), combining into unison skeith and yeeting the shit out of giant slug baby once and for all. this particular encounter takes a different note compared to cubia considering we hear both of them synced up ( literally all of their dialogue is the same )---and beyond the fact this whole epilogue is about haseo and ovan, it really ends up being the sheer fact that it’s both of them together that overcome and stop moralta from fucking up [the world]. sheer will’s a strong motive for pretty much all of vol 4 though, so this is kinda expected. it’s haseo’s lament at the end that poses an interesting discussion---he couldn’t do it by himself again ( in this case he is referring to everyone as a whole as well before finding ovan, too ). for all of the power that he holds via skeith, kusabira, etc, he still needed ovan there to push to victory. i’ve always felt that was an interesting distinction the staff has made throughout the gu timeline ( in any retelling of it, actually ). even ovan has to let him know that it’s the fact he had a warband of support that got him that far in the first place despite the trauma ovan had pushed him through.

the series has been consistent about ovan’s ability to push things the extra mile, even for things that he may not personally want, even if there’s few people he’d undoubtedly be alongside. his involvement makes all of the difference, and that’s powerful in it’s own way ( he is the antihero after all ). we see the power ovan has by guiding the events of gu throughout all three volumes, but we really see just how strong he is when he’s actually on-screen the few times he’s there for more than 10 seconds. it’s kind of fucking insane such a laidback personality has that much influence on the outcome of incredibly dangerous/dire/important situations.

when he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what makes people tick, and what makes the world around him change. ovan’s will is a terrifying weapon and it’s one of my favorite details about him. 

and last thing that just came to mind from playing around last night..

in one of the demo trailers, haseo’s monologue expresses the emotions he’s experienced throughout playing to that point---specific people embody specific emotions, and in ovan’s case, he’s associated with despair. despair drives ovan--haseo’s correct about that honestly even if the context of what he knows boils down to the fact ovan’s burdened with aida and saving his sister ( things we see in the archives explicitly point out that the indou parents are straight up dead ). this man has lost so much, is losing too much, and is on the brink of losing even more during the events of gu and it shows. despair is a powerful force, a reaction to the things one has experienced and an outlet for all of the things it can cause. a man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous and the most powerful of them all even in silence---and somehow, somehow ovan has managed to keep his edge despite being on the brink of death himself in the real world. that’s fucking scary.

[kumagawa]

[rozziebot]

Old art post: Corbenik from .hack//G.U., 2008.

A real life friend requested this. Corbenik is a pretty neat looking guy, though I don't know a lot about what he's from. I do know that there was a .hack series on TV way back when that had awesome music, but that's about it.

The same friend also requested a few other .hack related drawings, but I never finished them...

[amberenigma]

@devoursinfinity ♥’d for a starter!

Eyes shut, shielding away the crisp, blank canvas around him. He welcomed the blanket of nothingness behind his eyes, for it was a moment’s reprieve from a timeless space. The Creator’s Room--possibly, the least decorated room of them all, of all the secrets that lay hidden in [The World].

Yet, despite how little there was, save for the wretched scar, the elevated earth, the currently empty chair, and the piles and piles of tomes that lay scattered about his feet, there was no silence. Even white noise had been corrupted, twisted into sweet nothings, dripped with venom--a venom Ovan could do nothing but bathe in for months on end. Within it all, he had deteriorated both physically and mentally as AIDA had taken liberties at eating away at his epitaph as a buffer ( he couldn’t thank his partner enough, as much as they shared this pain, corbenik was enduring the worst of the physical ailment ). 

To think he had a visitor was strange, but as he opened his eyes once more, it was not the blankness of the Creator’s Room that awaited him--no, it was the expanse that was avatar space, the abode that felt akin to being near a galaxy. Ovan had.. been here often, speaking to the Rebirth as if he were in a dream ( and in some cases, he had--is was difficult to tell where time was, when he had slept, if he had slept ). Alas, he could sense his awakened epitaph like a node in the back of his head, yet his body was nowhere to be found--the gunner was quick to make a deduction: “..Which one of you is it, then?” And to follow up, why? He was a walking disaster. Even he didn’t know what he was capable of anymore.

[selflit-doodles]

look, i’d take head scritches from corbenik, too.