Post
by piro » Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:09 am
If you want WoG on this, sorry if it got a little mangled in the background info, but Great Grandma Sawatari is currently an 8 tail, the vagueness about it sometimes comes from the fact that, well, have you ever tried to count the tails on someone like her? the assumption for a powerful old kitsune would be she'd be a 9 tail, but she's not. As for how many tails she was born with... well, if you ask her, she'd say 8 is what she was born with and 8 is what she has (if she felt like giving you a straight answer, probably only after a lot of sake and you failing to drink her under the table, but i digress).
Here's the thing about Kitsune in real life (as in, Megatokyo). The legends and myths about them are kind of askew of the reality, but thats not an unusual thing for any mythology. Kitsune are born with the number of tails they will have, they dont grow new ones as they get older and wiser. That said, they CAN *supposedly* get more tails, but they don't grow them. That is a more gruesome fable, one of course any old kitsune will deny ever happened or is even possible.
The thing about tails, if you have more than one, the spines sorta have to occupy the same space, right? If you are a one tail kitsune, you are pretty ordinary. If you have two tails, you have a bit more of a dimensional aura to you because you have two spines occupying the same space so to speak, but you cant really do anything with it. Now, once you have three or more tails, things get a little weird. For one thing, a kitsune with three or more tails can actually hide her tails and her ears (to varying degrees of success). One and two tailed kitsune cannot. (FTR, Komugiko's mother is a three tail). the more tails a kitsune has, the more... odd and powerful the spatial and dimensional bending of the world around them is, and as such the more interesting things they can do.
That said, one confusing thing for more people about Great Grandma is that she usually hides her tails. 9 tails is a LOT of awkward pain in the ass to deal with. SO, most of the kids havent really seen them much, and those times when they do see them its often fleeting and not exactly easy to count. Its also only rare for an observant kit to notice that one of her tails id definitely a different color - which could happen naturally, who knows?
So... Yakugashi's cousin was trying to scare her with the family yarn about how old great grandma would kill the trouble child Komugiko and steal her tail so she could get that final 9th tail and become all powerful, since one tailed kitsune are pretty much useless.
I tried to sorta get all that across in that omake, its in there mostly. Sorry if it came off as a little confusing.
Fredrin