So the time has finally come for the Elder to unleash his new and unadulterated prophecy – providing the small glimmer of hope in the midst of nearly-all-encroaching darkness that is simply necessary to somehow arrive at a happy end for the whole shebang.
As the party is paying appropriately rapt attention, the Elder gets going. Unsurprisingly, an ancient, giant tree plays a central role in the prophecy…that was kind of inevitable, given the arboreal setting, and the clear Legend of Zelda influences in it. Then the elder goes off on a slight tangent, inevitably…
I might be the only one, but I’ve always found it kinda illogical that those ancient, giant trees in fantasy are always referred to as the Father Tree or (more rarely) the Mother Tree (or variations thereof). Why and how do you assign a gender to a tree, and if you do, how do you arrive at a single one? Trees typically produce male and female gametes, after all.
But, as the Elder demonstrates, it’s not easy to find a handy designation that reflects that physiological fact…I’d agree with him that Hideyoshi Tree is a suitable compromise, for the time being, since it leaves the tree’s gender ambiguous and indistinct. Hideyoshi is likely to differ on that point, but it’s not like he isn’t used to having his objections ignored. Perhaps the whole matter will clear itself up by the time the party actually reaches the Hideyoshi Tree, or ideally, everyone will have forgotten about the issue by then. >_>
So, what part does the Hideyoshi Tree actually play within the prophecy? Find out more on Thurs…uh, Monday.
Hideyoshi Toyotomi?
Naw – Toyotomi is certainly the most well-known Hideyoshi, but this is Hideyoshi Kinoshita, a character from Baka and Test. There’s a running gag about his gender – while he is actually simply and unambiguously male, everyone around him feels much more comfortable to consider him a separate gender because of his attractiveness (and much to his chagrin). His school’s pool area has three dressing rooms – “boys”, “girls”, and “Hideyoshi”.