Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Laniakea
Canonically, Su never displayed any sort of mind control powers - her specialities were cooking and fixing (and that fixing can be pretty impressive if you take her fight against Saaya's Hinamori Dream as a valid feat, my idea for a stunt on how Amu might try fix the rift solo actually involved using Amulet Clover).
If there is any Chara of hers that has the ability to influence public perception of her, it would most probably be Dia, who represented Amu's desire to be a superstar idol like Utau.
The fact she could lash out at Amu mentally says it's not just "resistance", somewhere along the lines she got the full package of psychic powers. Offensive, defensive and obviously sensory. The fact she's calling out specific incidents also says it isn't just subconscious awareness of Amu being off either, she's fully conscious of certain things that happened.
The crux in difference, I think, between your read and mine was whether this was the first time she'd used her powers to lash out (by accident or otherwise) or not. We both came to the same conclusion that her having powers (in this case, the resistance/sensory aspect that let her notice things others couldn't) resulted in a heavy stress buildup that led her to snap (I still maintain Makoto demanding to know what was wrong with her was the final straw).
My guess was that this was not the first time she used the offensive portion, mainly based on fact that while everybody else was throwing up in nausea, she just covered her mouth and went "oh fuck", which is a pretty mild reaction compared to everyone else, implying she'd experienced something like it before.
If this was not the first time she lashed out, there'd have been a good chance she'd be as scared at herself as she would be at Amu for being able to do freaky things.
But if this WAS the first time she lashed out, that would obviously not be the case.
Before now, there wasn't much way of confirming whether or not she'd done it before, besides asking Saaya herself. Which was one of the things my vote for questioning her would've attempted to achieve.
But with this confirmation on your take from Baughn, I think we've basically been given the answer - this is the first time. That takes a lot of value out of asking Saaya how much she knows.
@Baughn - Just to confirm, can we take your affirmation of @Nero200's read as affirmation that this is the first time Saaya has ever lashed out offensively with her power?
With this new piece of information, I'll be redoing my vote plan. If Saaya knows nothing, there's obviously no point in asking her anything. My new plan for Saaya would be try and boost her ego by getting her to take charge of the classroom and lead people out, to give her some sense of control and distract her from thinking, just in case the rift is feeding off her psychic spillage.
If it really is purely Amu and nothing else that Saaya is scared of, anything Amu might do could set her off. Whether that's using her charisma to take control of the student body, any big display of power, etc. At best, it would just unnerve Saaya more. At worst, if the rift is fed by her panic, it makes Saaya have an even bigger freak out and everyone suddenly gets sucked in.
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Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Su is the Chara that was used to reach into Yuu Nikaidou's mind and 'fix' twenty odd years of mental trauma and decisions. She fixed his broken Dream, and then twisted the rest of his mind out of literal decades of patterns built off that.
Amu has had her aura ability a lot longer than Dia has existed, it's basekit for psionics here.
This might also be me pulling on knowledge from the previous iteration of the quest, and from beta reading Shugo Chara works from Baughn in the past, but trust me on this when I say that Su is the most mental-attack orientated of Amu's Charas.
Indeed. I'm not saying it's just resistance, I'm saying that her resistance is higher/stronger than everyone else, is a key part of it, and is why she has snapped.
The other psionics in the class (which is a third of them) haven't noticed the 'causeless' changes in how they view Amu, but Saaya has.
Saaya is jealous and scared, because she's seemingly the only one who notices just how eldritch Amu is when you aren't getting told to ignore the fact that she hasn't talked to you in six months and love her anyway.
Saaya's last 'canon' use of psionics had her basically equalling season one Amu, able to switch between all her Amulet forms while under Lulu's Mystery Character effect, using only one Egg. Without using the Locket.
From my read, this is the first time Saaya has snapped and cut loose with an attack, because this is her giving up on being able to solve this a 'normal' way, and having the momentum to act on it.
On this, I'm not sure. I will say though, that this whole thing is because she has higher mental resistance / defence that anyone else in the class other than Amu, so that could also explain why she's the least effected.
- Location
- Laniakea
Hey, there's a reason I said "canonically".
I'm fully aware that quest mechanics and QM preferences make things work differently here (I mean, canon Amu doesn't really have any psychic attraction aura either, she's just popular because grade schoolers in Shugo Chara apparently gravitate hard to the Cool-and-Spicy aesthetic).
I vaguely remember from the last quest that Chara abilities apparently counted as Shaping attacks in Exalted mechanics too. Though I'm not going to assume that's all carried over to this one, since Persona is now being leveraged for mechanics, I assume there's going to be changes.
I have no idea whether Schild's Ladder is still a thing here either, meaning I'm not about to immediately assume Planck-scale lifeforms influencing the physics of the universe are still a thing.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
No. That falls under "timeline", which is what I said Nero didn't get quite right.
I was affirming, mostly, his take on Amu. Though Nero and I have long disagreed on how to handle her.
I can go as far as to tell you that yes, Saaya's reaction does seem oddly muted, right? However, I wouldn't assume that means she'd ever attacked anyone else. Or, really, that she was trying to here.
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I guess in part it depends how exactly one reads between the lines. On the surface of course everything seems fine, but it is kind of suspicious that for instance Amu's little sister Ami is also similarly very popular. Could be a coincidence I guess, but it certainly can make one wonder. To be fair, Amu is actually also some what good on acting a bit 'cool and spicy', so I don't really think it's just an aura effect. Possibly it would be more like an extra boost to things instead. In practice it doesn't normally take that much to shift how some one is viewed after all.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Essentially my take on it. Amu's passive aura, when it exists, is weak. She absolutely could blast it out at full strength and more or less brainwash someone -- she does that with Utau, which escapes being brain-washing because it's barely overcoming Utau's native resistance, and hardly counts as a 'passive' once it involves giant pink beams of doom -- but, mostly, it's just putting a thumb on the scale.
The issue is, it's putting a thumb on the scale in the same way, regardless of her actions, for years. Despite her stated preferences, sometimes.
Saaya is reacting similarly to how I think Nero would react. She isn't completely wrong -- Amu is psychic, though so are half the other kids in class -- and there is, actually, a problem here -- but you shouldn't take that as an affirmation of her conclusions. She's still fairly clueless.
Amu isn't brainwashing everyone she goes nearby. She would have noticed that. But while I'm willing to say so, I don't think Nero is. Which doesn't mean we disagree on any of the particulars.
That would explain why nothing of the sort showed up in the wiki.
Maybe there's mind control going on, but it doesn't take mind control for Amu to be seen the way she is.
First off, people easily form parasocial relationships without any direct interaction, and parasocial idolization is a pretty common thing in both Japan in general and Japanese schools in particular. Amu doesn't need mind control to get the reception she got in canon. Just a bit of luck. (On a more meta level, if people's response to Amu was so unusual that the natural assumption was that they were brainwashed, Shugo Chara would have gotten a very different reader reception. That's the kind of conclusion people reach about characters like Lila from Miraculous Ladybug, not characters like Amu.)
Second, people's attitude toward her in this scene is actually pretty negative. It's much worse than she got in canon. She gets reactions like this:
This isn't people being unusually attached, and it's nothing like Saaya's accusations about their behavior. This is people being afraid and discouraged at the thought of her. They see her as distant, unreachable, and impossible to compete with. One character tries to reassure another with the prospect that maybe Amu won't be there. Not a single person in the scene gives any indication that they see Amu as a friend, or as someone to look up to.
The crowd only starts to take Amu's side when Saaya starts acting like an asshole. The positive interpretation there is that the rest of the class doesn't want to be assholes. The less positive interpretation is that they don't want to act against the person they're scared of. Either way, that doesn't take mind control.
I suppose a charitable comparison might be the effects of, say, naturally looking good. (The uncharitable comparison would probably be drugs.)
- Location
- Laniakea
Hoy, those pink beams have never killed anyone before, usually quite the opposite. I'd call it "aggressive healing", except that one fantasy light novel about that time-traveling healer with the revenge boner kinda tarnishes the idea with some awful connotations.
To be honest, I was already mostly working under the assumption that Amu might have had some sort of passive psychic attraction aura anyway, based on what I (mis?)remember Ami having from Questor Quest (that is, I might not personally believe it exists in canon, but I assumed that it might have been the case for this quest). And with you mentioning that Amu doesn't realize that about Ami, it stands that she wouldn't have noticed it about herself either, until Saaya smacked her in the face with it.
....This is about as close as it gets to a confirmation that it was her first time, without outright calling it a confirmation. And also suggests that Nero's guess about her reaction being muted due to unnaturally high resistances (apparently higher than Amu's) is apparently the right one.
The only other interpretation I can see of that (that doesn't involve you trying to mislead by saying "don't assume" when the assumption was right) is that she HAS lashed out with her powers before, but just not at things that could be considered "anyone".... and I somehow don't feel that's likely at this point (though, not quite with enough confidence to dismiss it entirely).
Guess I'm going to be rewriting my vote plan.
I have a suspicion that Amu may have an attraction aura... but not an "everything's fine" aura.
And that people not noticing or not caring when things get crazy may be the result of the collective unconscious/cognitive world trying to cover up anything caused by psychic abilities, similarly to the way people in Persona 5 simply forgot the Phantom Thieves and kept supporting Shido even after his criminal confessions. And that these "reality breaks" might be because it's reaching the limit in how much it can cover up.
I would be more confident in this guess if Persona 5 were part of this crossover, but since it's not, it's just pure speculation for now.
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- Location
- Laniakea
New plan:
[X] Plan: Saaya This Is Your Fault, Now Help Me Fix It
-[X][Saaya] Get Saaya To Help
-- Saaya was always good at bossing people around. Get her to put those skills to work to lead everyone away from the rift and out of the classroom. She's one of the minority in the classroom who can apparently see it, suggest that she organize the others who also can to help lead those who can't safely away.
-- Channel your inner Su and Dia to calm yourself down enough so you can make it a suggestion rather than an angry order, because Saaya is good at bossing and not very good at being bossed around. Even though she just looked at you for help.
-- The other thing Saaya was good at was being part of the Guardians' fanclubs back in elementary school - the ones for the male ones, at least. Hopefully she still knows their schedules by heart. Suggest that she go find her old Guardian idols, or send someone to find them and get them to come by and see if they can help with the rift. And then maybe also try to find Tsukasa afterwards.
-- Meanwhile, you are going to be busy making a phone call to someone who you hope actually knows how to fix this.
-[X][Classmates] Evacuate
-- Two-third of the class can't see the rift. One-third can. Saaya's one of the ones who can. Tell the class to listen to Saaya, who is now going to organize people to get out of the room and look for others who might be able to help.
-[X][Rift] Call Lulu
-- Lulu taught you big words like "telekinesis" and how to do it. Maybe she can teach you another word that means "close a tear in reality" and how to do it. Plus, she did ask us to call her if anything abnormal happened. While Saaya is handling the evacuation, give her a ring.
-- Then (or if she doesn't pick up) try to call Nikaido. It's a long shot, but maybe he knows some big words too.
[X] Plan: Saaya This Is Your Fault, Now Help Me Fix It
-[X][Saaya] Get Saaya To Help
-- Saaya was always good at bossing people around. Get her to put those skills to work to lead everyone away from the rift and out of the classroom. She's one of the minority in the classroom who can apparently see it, suggest that she organize the others who also can to help lead those who can't safely away.
-- Channel your inner Su and Dia to calm yourself down enough so you can make it a suggestion rather than an angry order, because Saaya is good at bossing and not very good at being bossed around. Even though she just looked at you for help.
-- The other thing Saaya was good at was being part of the Guardians' fanclubs back in elementary school - the ones for the male ones, at least. Hopefully she still knows their schedules by heart. Suggest that she go find her old Guardian idols, or send someone to find them and get them to come by and see if they can help with the rift. And then maybe also try to find Tsukasa afterwards.
-- Meanwhile, you are going to be busy making a phone call to someone who you hope actually knows how to fix this.
-[X][Classmates] Evacuate
-- Two-third of the class can't see the rift. One-third can. Saaya's one of the ones who can. Tell the class to listen to Saaya, who is now going to organize people to get out of the room and look for others who might be able to help.
-[X][Rift] Call Lulu
-- Lulu taught you big words like "telekinesis" and how to do it. Maybe she can teach you another word that means "close a tear in reality" and how to do it. Plus, she did ask us to call her if anything abnormal happened. While Saaya is handling the evacuation, give her a ring.
-- Then (or if she doesn't pick up) try to call Nikaido. It's a long shot, but maybe he knows some big words too.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Which is roughly the level it's at, and barely counterbalances the effect of oh good grief Amu you look like a delinquent. But even saying this much could lead you to drawing the wrong conclusions, one way or the other, and there's a fair bit of that going on already. Given that I don't want to spoil things…
In QQ the entire underlying explanation for basically everything was completely different. It isn't evidence for more or less anything.
In the Shugo Chara wiki… it neglects to mention even a great deal of things that are explicit, spoken canon, so I wouldn't rely too much on that either. But the manga is full of subtext that never quite makes it to the surface, and while I've drawn a lot of conclusions from it and think I have a reasonable level of backing if I wanted to argue it… they're still my conclusions. There's no guarantee that the 2024 sequel will agree with me at all. I hope, of course.
In actual fact I want to show my work in the story, not in a discussion, so you'll have to be satisfied with that. Hopefully it'll still be interesting, even if you can't be quite sure what's going on underneath in advance.
It shouldn't be too problematic. Amu has no idea either.
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- Location
- Laniakea
Mm. Twice the votes that everything else got. Man, that's a big margin.
EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean about it not counting very well.
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In the end it's a bit of a guess what is the best way to go about things. More or less attention for Sayaka, what to do with the rift... One can even wonder if of it not Sayaka and the rift are still connected now that the glitch has occurred. I'd presume probably not... though can't say I'm sure.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
There's a Megaten game called Apocalypse? Isn't that a bit like "Pokemon: critters edition"? Or "Sonic the Hedgehog Going Fast"?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It's a sequel to IV in the same timeframe and setting, and it's notable because
The one where the keystone of the entire Law axis gets murked at the end, which enables all the Nahobino stuff in V, as well as Law for once not being a bunch of complete shitters
- Location
- Laniakea
What I think it really comes down to is - do we want to get sucked into the rift or not?
We have actually been told that there IS definitely one thing that will keep us safe for sure, no dice rolls needed: "maximum escape" (and I presume evacuating everybody counts as part of that too), no staying and trying to mess with the rift.
Everything else involves dice rolls and has a chance of failing, presumably leading to the rift blowing up and eating us. And every single proposed plan here (including mine) is really just splitting bets between both trying to close the rift and evacuating, with the only real difference being what we think will heighten the odds. But we don't know how much we actually can heighten them and we do know there's always going to be a chance of failure.
A chance that we know starts at a pretty high 75% and has no guarantee of ever going below 50%.
Now, I'm actually sort of interested in finding out what happens if we get eaten by the rift. I'm curious about what's really on the other side.
But if we really wanted to, we could go for "maximum escape" and the guaranteed safety.
EDIT: I'm also kinda disappointed nobody came up with a vote to try chucking something at the rift, like a chair or table, and seeing what happens to it.
We have actually been told that there IS definitely one thing that will keep us safe for sure, no dice rolls needed: "maximum escape" (and I presume evacuating everybody counts as part of that too), no staying and trying to mess with the rift.
Everything else involves dice rolls and has a chance of failing, presumably leading to the rift blowing up and eating us. And every single proposed plan here (including mine) is really just splitting bets between both trying to close the rift and evacuating, with the only real difference being what we think will heighten the odds. But we don't know how much we actually can heighten them and we do know there's always going to be a chance of failure.
A chance that we know starts at a pretty high 75% and has no guarantee of ever going below 50%.
Now, I'm actually sort of interested in finding out what happens if we get eaten by the rift. I'm curious about what's really on the other side.
But if we really wanted to, we could go for "maximum escape" and the guaranteed safety.
EDIT: I'm also kinda disappointed nobody came up with a vote to try chucking something at the rift, like a chair or table, and seeing what happens to it.
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- Pronouns
- He
Yeah. I thinking three nats 1 in a row would do that.
- Location
- Laniakea
I mean, OK, failure can also just mean a failure to close the rift immediately. But let's be honest - so long as Amu survives to tell anybody else about it, it's likely the rift will get shut eventually anyway by someone else (like JP's).
The only other thing I can think of that could constitute "failure" is if people who aren't Amu get sucked into the rift. And I'm pretty sure Amu in-character would jump in after them to try save them if this happened. Even if that didn't happen (or she doesn't get the opportunity) I'd expect there would likely be an eventual rescue attempt that sees Amu venturing to the other side of the rift anyway.
Technically not "sucked" in, but she'd still end up there.
- Pronouns
- He
Or if's something come out of that rift. I think that a ritf may work like a doorway. If people can entre a rift, than it would make sense something would come out of it.
It's also possible the rift would eventually fix itself after some time I guess, we really don't know much about it in the end.
- Location
- Laniakea
I'd be interested in seeing that too, knowing what crawls out can also tell us a good bit about what's on the other side.
Again though, it's a toss-up between guaranteed safety from whatever might come out by fully running away, versus staying and potentially having to fight a demon.
OK, It's possible that something nice might come out, but who here actually believes that?
Impacts tend to make cracks in ordinary objects bigger. I wouldn't count on the opposite happening for a crack in reality.
Remember Sonic Rush?
