- Location
- Laniakea
Oh, well then we've done plenty of that on the way here.
Like with the fox. And Utau using that exact song that extracts X-Eggs to extract Kana's Shadow.
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
Like with the fox. And Utau using that exact song that extracts X-Eggs to extract Kana's Shadow.
In canon, yeah. Here, it's apparently a mind control ray. (This is one of the things I dislike about the psionics system.)
Don't fix what ain't broken and all? I would've been pleasantly surprised if talking fully worked, but if it didn't we have options that will work that aren't called UMI, so why not?
I do not believe that we have other options than Heart Beams in this context though? (Mind Control against the Mind Control specialist seems like something unlikely to work, even assuming Kana (real) would allow us to meld with her mind at this point in time?)
I'd have to double check with Baughn, see how he's handling it exactly, but you're probably not wrong. Its... imposing outside will on someone in a way they can't resist, at least not without their own mystical/psionic defenses.
In standard Exalted this is like... two things come to mind, mental mind-whammies that make people who see a painting or something think a certain thought or plant a command and when a Raksha or something uses their abilities to rewrite a person into a caricature to fit into their story.
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- Location
- Laniakea
I actually had an idea for a moment when we got told Shadow Kana couldn't read Normal Kana's mind that maybe it would help if Amu and Utau tried using Empathy to try and broadcast Shadow Kana's fear and self-loathing at Normal Kana....
....And then I realized that wouldn't really help, it would just make her want to get rid of the Shadow even more so she stops feeling it.
....And then I realized that wouldn't really help, it would just make her want to get rid of the Shadow even more so she stops feeling it.
I think you are conflating two very different things here. Baughn said
with the implication that the only way to stop Kana from fighting her Shadow is heavy application of Mind Control. But that's because fighting your Shadow is normal! What we're trying to avoid is Kana killing her Shadow.
We were told earlier that our party was "overleveled" for this dungeon, back when the party was just Amu, Utau, and Midori, and I don't think that was because of Midori.
Kana can still reject her Shadow even after its defeated however, Baughn's already pointed out that boy in P4 that does this.
Then I'm getting contradictory answers from Baughn on things. *shrug*
We have two Empathy users on our side. Idk, seemed pretty obvious to me we could at least force her to listen.
- Location
- Laniakea
I expect she's going to listen for all of ten seconds, before her Shadow opens her big fat mouth and starts complaining about not wanting to take care of Small Yui or live with the Scavengers and how much she really wants to go back to her child-experimenting mother.
Immediately causing Normal Kana to flip her shit and start insisting to Amu that it's not true, she's a good person, she wouldn't desert Yui or go back to her mad scientist mom or ever help her do stuff like Utau had to suffer through ever again. And then desperately proclaim she can fix the problem, all she has to do is perform some light brain surgery on her own Shadow.
And no amount of Empathy is going to cut through her determination to prove she is a good girl.
At least, not until she runs out of energy trying to fight her way past Naoto to get to her Shadow, who for some reason refuses to have her brain crushed like every other gun-wielding stranger she usually has no trouble ploughing through.
Ideally, the talk would have dealt with that possibility, but in practice I believe we would have crossed that bridge when we got there?
That just degenerates into a fight extra quickly? We can substantiate our words with more weight than usual or tailor them more carefully with Empathy, true, but I doubt that's what you are suggesting here.
*Shrug*
If there were only the two of us here, it's still a 2v1 with us having WP left to spend on clashes and Utau being notably resistant to Psionic nonsense? (Or a 3v1 if we tried to persuade Kana's Shadow to defend herself)
Though I might have kept Heart Beams in the back pocket of a fight strategy then, so...
In other words: This situation is abounding in conflicting Intimacies and the associated WP boost if this were rolled as Social Combat, and Kana's Shadow has nonexistent Socialise die due to the nature of Shadows 🤷
Off topic from present discussion, but I do wonder why exactly it is normal: The setup technically doesn't always need to end in fighting especially if prewarned, but why does it always end that way?
Personally suspecting it's related to how defeating your Shadow and accepting it afterwards somehow grants you Persona powers (from the extra CU stuff that coalesced around the Shadow?), and in a way that doesn't get you blasted by Kagutsuchi for supernatural abilities.
There's clearly something in this whole scheme that's aimed at giving people magic powers, since just accepting your Shadow normally doesn't give you any. I could hardly guess at who set that up though.
- Location
- Laniakea
It doesn't always. In Persona 5, there was a situation with a suicidal girl (who eventually becomes your party's navigator, Oracle) whose Shadow didn't turn aggressive. The girl thought she'd caused her mother's death and deserved all of her guilt.
In that scenario, the boss the party fought at the end was actually a "cognition" representing the thing that made her feel guilty - an angry, resentful version of her mother that turns into a giant sphinx monster that tries to kill everyone there.
Oracle ends up accepting her Shadow without fighting it (gaining her Persona) and joins the party to take down the cognition of her mother.
Strictly speaking, if Persona 5 were a major influence in this quest, we'd probably be facing a cognition of Naomi instead insisting that Kana should feel guilty for everything. But it's not and/or I guess Naomi isn't as major an influence here as Oracle's mother was in that case. So instead, we're getting Kana herself wielding the knife.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
You can use a knife for either cooking or murder. That doesn't make those the same thing.
Just because the underlying mechanism is the same, doesn't mean anything else about it is. Personally I consider Amu's heart beam to be perfectly fine, in almost every circumstance. That may be because we've never seen her try to use it for anything that isn't inherently good...
I think @Nero200 would disagree with me there, but no matter.
It's not that she can't. It's that she accidentally reads her own mind instead, providing little actionable information. Probably that could be solved with more experience, but... ah, that doesn't seem like a thing that ought to be trained, really?
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Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Realistically, this could be part of a working plan.
Let her reject, trigger boss fight.
Shadow Kana goes monster mode as the fetters break (Even Mitsuo had this happen. I don't think Shadow Kana can't, she's just avoiding it.)
Going by the normal mechanics, Shadow Kana will be too strong for Kana to deal with, and will drain a massive amount of her energy while becoming whatever her boss form is, rendering Kana unable to go murderhobo on us/S-Kana.
Get Naoto to sandbag versus the resulting boss fight (She is laughably beyond the level where she has to worry about taking S-Kana's boss mode seriously) while Amu and Utau try to talk Kana around.
That buys us time for an actual conversation with Kana to talk her around or convince her not to kill S-Kana.
I'm not sure what direction to take with that conversation, admittedly, but it creates an opening.
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It could also just be the obvious thing of being an actual date. Certain people becoming a couple would of course have major plot impact as well I imagine. Well admittedly I have some doubts that would really constitute an 'extreme' impact though. But still, probably best to not entirely write things off either.
Though I do have to say Hibiki and Io going somewhere together like that is at least a little surprising. I don't think they particularly knew each other well before the game plot... so I guess something changed here?
I don't know how much of the conflict here is different value systems and how much of this is different interpretations of the psi system. It could easily be either.
Let's try to clear up any interpretation differences a little. Suppose Amu tried to use Open Heart against Kana here, in whatever way makes the most sense to you. And suppose she succeeded. What effect would that have on Kana's mind in the short and long term, and how would it produce that effect?
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
My immediate thought is "She wouldn't succeed, because it's a type mismatch". Open Heart does one specific thing, which isn't applicable to Kana; and the way it works means it'll fail cleanly instead of doing something Amu wouldn't want.
(She also needs the Lock to pull off an Open Heart proper, but Amu could do a decent approximation; it won't change the outcome.)
Let's say she succeeded. This would imply that Kana fits the criteria the Lock is looking for, which at the present moment isn't completely implausible. Much less so than it would normally be, at least. In the process of succeeding she would temporarily strengthen the bond between all of Kana's constituent parts, which would in this scenario (by definition; she succeeded) avert the shadow fight by way of keeping both parts of her too sane to want to do that.
It has few long-term effects per se. The initial effect of the heart beam wears off in a matter of minutes, and 90%+ of the lingering effects are due to the impact of the memories of that state. The remaining 10% is due to the enforced state of lucidity, not the beam as such. Seeing your idealised future as a chara, capable of talking to you, tends to be hugely impactful on the children she does it to; but it's about as natural an influence as that can get.
(There is no chara here. Like I said, this is a type mismatch. If it worked at all it'd work by enforcing a state of lucidity, postponing the shadow fight, but possibly only for those few minutes until it wears off unless Kana manages to come to terms with herself in that time.)
The underlying mechanism for all of this is, of course, mind control. Reaching into the targeted child's mind to hold it together, reduce stresses, potentially add detail to an incomplete chara, what have you; it's a very specific sort of mind control that's probably the best the Lock's designer could think of, but you're still reaching into someone else's mind and turning knobs to do it. Even if 95+% of the time the Open Heart 'attack' was being used to heal psychotic breaks, even if it was the best option available and any other choice would be dramatically worse, it's still mind control.
...
And it was impossible for Amu to do it as many times as she did, without picking up a trick or two.
Okay, we're getting somewhere now.
In previous posts, you have said the following:
Is this "giant mind-altering beam of psionic nonsense" supposed to be something different from Open Heart? It sounds much more general than what your most recent post describes. What would firing this at Kana do?
- Location
- Laniakea
I think Open Heart is supposed to fall under the "Undo Mind Control" half of the usage for Mind Control, if you take a "psychotic break" of the kind usually afflicting a Chara user to be a type of mind control or unnatural mental damage caused by an "incomplete Chara".
.....Which therefore only usually works on Chara users.
Perhaps. But Baughn has used "heart beam" to refer to a "giant mind-altering beam of psionic nonsense" applicable in combat to mind control all sorts of targets, regardless of whether they have a chara or whether they have any existing mind control to undo, and also said "Personally I consider Amu's heart beam to be perfectly fine, in almost every circumstance."
I'm trying to figure out how Baughn reconciles these statements.
- Location
- Laniakea
For my part, the impression I'm getting is, that's the case for the "usual" Open Heart, which is apparently made to fix a specific type of problem for a specific sort of person.
However, it can be "modified" to do different things, the effect of which would depend on what we were trying to modify it for and our own dice luck.
Checking back in the first version of the quest, it looks like a modified version of it was used to take chunks out of Samael. So it seems a heavily-modified enough version of it can be used to let Amu throw down with demons.
.....Though the again, those modifications might also have only been possible due to the Exaltation Shard's help then and who knows whether any of that's still applicable to this version of the quest.
However, it can be "modified" to do different things, the effect of which would depend on what we were trying to modify it for and our own dice luck.
Checking back in the first version of the quest, it looks like a modified version of it was used to take chunks out of Samael. So it seems a heavily-modified enough version of it can be used to let Amu throw down with demons.
.....Though the again, those modifications might also have only been possible due to the Exaltation Shard's help then and who knows whether any of that's still applicable to this version of the quest.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
You also shouldn't assume I had as complete a model of the whole 'psionics' thing back then.
But yes, "Open Heart" is a subtype of "Giant mind-altering beam of psionic nonsense". It's more of a proper magical girl attack--Amu can't really use it without the Lock, she didn't need to learn it, and she doesn't really get to control what it does very much. It's what you specified, I took the capitalisation to mean That Specific Thing... but I can see where the confusion would come from.
Especially given she's not a magical girl.
The generalised thing is less restricted, but it's still modelled off Open Heart -- being Amu's explicit attempt at imitating it, in most such situations -- so it would still do something similar, and she might even call it the same thing, whether or not it isn't; that's up to player and/or Amu choice. Though I'd prefer to avoid the confusion, unfortunately Amu has no such compunctions. Though anything that doesn't end up generally localised under 'mind-healing' wouldn't be worthy of the name.
= = =
Thing is... I wasn't expecting the Lock to ever be out of your hands, and probably made some simplifying assumptions in early statements based on that.
Imagine someone helps you repair televisions. For years, starting out by doing virtually everything, but gradually ramping down the assistance as it becomes clear that you don't need it. They're good at their job; so good that it might not be obvious there's any help there at all, unless you start thinking about how complex the actions you're taking should be, in a saner world.
That's the Lock. That said, unless you really aren't trying -- and Amu was trying quite hard actually -- you'll end up learning to do it yourself, just by following the same hand movements if nothing else. Even if left to your own devices three years later, you're not going to... start throwing your tools through the TV, let's say. You basically know how to do it by then. You aren't as good as you would be with help, and the guardrails are gone, but you know where to stop and how not to break anything. You might not even realise why it's harder now, or even that it's harder.
Amu has a large toolkit. She is very, very capable of using those tools to massively fuck someone up. Doing so is, fundamentally, far easier than helping. Plus: The "TV" here is someone's mind, trusting someone else's hands in that is near impossible even if you aren't imagining the possibility of damage. Kana has used those same tools to kill people.
It wouldn't ever naturally occur to Amu to even imagine the possibility.
But yes, "Open Heart" is a subtype of "Giant mind-altering beam of psionic nonsense". It's more of a proper magical girl attack--Amu can't really use it without the Lock, she didn't need to learn it, and she doesn't really get to control what it does very much. It's what you specified, I took the capitalisation to mean That Specific Thing... but I can see where the confusion would come from.
Especially given she's not a magical girl.
The generalised thing is less restricted, but it's still modelled off Open Heart -- being Amu's explicit attempt at imitating it, in most such situations -- so it would still do something similar, and she might even call it the same thing, whether or not it isn't; that's up to player and/or Amu choice. Though I'd prefer to avoid the confusion, unfortunately Amu has no such compunctions. Though anything that doesn't end up generally localised under 'mind-healing' wouldn't be worthy of the name.
= = =
Thing is... I wasn't expecting the Lock to ever be out of your hands, and probably made some simplifying assumptions in early statements based on that.
Imagine someone helps you repair televisions. For years, starting out by doing virtually everything, but gradually ramping down the assistance as it becomes clear that you don't need it. They're good at their job; so good that it might not be obvious there's any help there at all, unless you start thinking about how complex the actions you're taking should be, in a saner world.
That's the Lock. That said, unless you really aren't trying -- and Amu was trying quite hard actually -- you'll end up learning to do it yourself, just by following the same hand movements if nothing else. Even if left to your own devices three years later, you're not going to... start throwing your tools through the TV, let's say. You basically know how to do it by then. You aren't as good as you would be with help, and the guardrails are gone, but you know where to stop and how not to break anything. You might not even realise why it's harder now, or even that it's harder.
Amu has a large toolkit. She is very, very capable of using those tools to massively fuck someone up. Doing so is, fundamentally, far easier than helping. Plus: The "TV" here is someone's mind, trusting someone else's hands in that is near impossible even if you aren't imagining the possibility of damage. Kana has used those same tools to kill people.
It wouldn't ever naturally occur to Amu to even imagine the possibility.
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- Location
- Laniakea
Not naturally, no. But.
She has now met Kana. And seen her using it like that in her memories.
And what's more, I suspect, is also about to get a highly-intimate, first-hand experience of her using it in that way in positively excruciating detail in the upcoming chapter.
.....At least Open Heart would probably work on Ami if she starts having problems with her alter ego who likely counts as an incomplete Chara?
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Getting back to Kana for a second: Amu using an attack like Open Heart on her would, regardless of intention, be seen as… an attack. It would start a fight that Amu cannot win, where only one side is trying to hurt the other.
If Amu through some accident of fate regardless won, then my description above kicks in. It might delay the shadow fight, but Kana's underlying problems aren't caused by any form of insanity and cannot be fixed by someone looking to fix it.
The closest Amu has gotten to the sort of healing that would be required is Utau, who wasn't really fighting back at that point and was literally transformed with Amu's Chara. While Amu was reciprocating, no less. …and lost the fight by having every part of herself simultaneously defect to Amu.
There also were some giant pink beams of doom in there, but I feel the apparent mental link they ended up with might indicate that things went a little wobbly. I don't use that fight to define how Amu's abilities normally function—replicating the event would be both difficult and unsafe.
Ami's "alter ego" is part chara, part shadow, and a significant part other stuff because Ami gets Ideas, the social conditions in her class make it hard for her to form a regular shadow, and they've been advised to try not to reject each other because "that would make bad things happen".
By another seven-year-old.
But as it stands, they kinda get along. In much the same way as Eru and Iru.
If Amu through some accident of fate regardless won, then my description above kicks in. It might delay the shadow fight, but Kana's underlying problems aren't caused by any form of insanity and cannot be fixed by someone looking to fix it.
The closest Amu has gotten to the sort of healing that would be required is Utau, who wasn't really fighting back at that point and was literally transformed with Amu's Chara. While Amu was reciprocating, no less. …and lost the fight by having every part of herself simultaneously defect to Amu.
There also were some giant pink beams of doom in there, but I feel the apparent mental link they ended up with might indicate that things went a little wobbly. I don't use that fight to define how Amu's abilities normally function—replicating the event would be both difficult and unsafe.
It's got a decent chance, yes.
Ami's "alter ego" is part chara, part shadow, and a significant part other stuff because Ami gets Ideas, the social conditions in her class make it hard for her to form a regular shadow, and they've been advised to try not to reject each other because "that would make bad things happen".
By another seven-year-old.
But as it stands, they kinda get along. In much the same way as Eru and Iru.
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If we're going to have Athletics (Music) be a thing instead of putting that under Performance, can we train Athletics by practicing an instrument? Or by playing video games? Esports fall under Athletics. The idea of training Athletics that way seems weird, but not really more weird than Athletics (Music).
How fleshed out and/or significant are Utau's non-Amu friends? We saw a brief glimpse of what looked like a friend group in 1.11. If we voted to meet Utau's friends, would that be something you're ready for, or would you be making up a bunch of new characters? I imagine something like "Midori's office has a Take Your Kid to Work Day" would be beyond the scope of what you've prepared for, but I dunno about Utau's social circle.
How fleshed out and/or significant are Utau's non-Amu friends? We saw a brief glimpse of what looked like a friend group in 1.11. If we voted to meet Utau's friends, would that be something you're ready for, or would you be making up a bunch of new characters? I imagine something like "Midori's office has a Take Your Kid to Work Day" would be beyond the scope of what you've prepared for, but I dunno about Utau's social circle.
IMO that sounds like a Super Fine Control thing more than "become professional footbal player in terms of mobility after enough time", so I don't think so?