Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I mean the part where that's not actually the danger she's in.
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
I don't actually like the line about the what "the dangers" are, it sounds like they might try to kill Amu for talking to the JPs, so how about
[X] The most important part of the truth: they don't trust anyone but you and each other. And they're not that sure about you. If you told the details they would definitely consider it a betrayal, and they definitely wouldn't let anyone else check up on them.
-[X] You're also a bit worried they'll think you've been kidnapped or something if you don't contact them soon.
(Look, one of the actual concerns we had when voting for this action!)
[X] The most important part of the truth: they don't trust anyone but you and each other. And they're not that sure about you. If you told the details they would definitely consider it a betrayal, and they definitely wouldn't let anyone else check up on them.
-[X] You're also a bit worried they'll think you've been kidnapped or something if you don't contact them soon.
(Look, one of the actual concerns we had when voting for this action!)
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
That is what I believed when I wrote it, yes.
- Location
- Laniakea
Presence works however a QM wants it to work for in a given quest, there's no point trying to say all that me since I'd just ultimately be asking the QM to clarify what it covers, if there were any disputes over it.
I happen to know it covers intimidation, because I assumed before that Amu would be using it to persuade/bully her father into handling Saaya instead of Socialize. The implication I took from the QM's response was that it could have used that stat if Amu had tried to bully him, but in-character she wouldn't do that and such action hadn't been deliberately specified for that vote.
I do agree, it probably covers other forms of persuasion too, but whether Amu could actually fake confidence and stability when she's having an anxiety attack over Kana is.... highly questionable. Plus, Amu would also be outright lying if she pretended everything was under control or that she was more capable than the police. She would effectively be attempting to con her mother if she tried to do that. You can write up such a stunt if you want, but I already mentioned before how I'm very much not partial to trying social combat.
Between witnessing Amu's mother skin her alive or watching Amu lie through her teeth to (or worse, use psionics on) her mother, I'd prefer the former trainwreck to the latter. Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Ideally I'd prefer neither, but nobody seems interested in trying to have Saeki talk down Midori and her talking directly to the Scavengers.
....I'm actually surprised nobody voted for the "radar" option, TBH.
Still deflection, IMO.
Does not explain why it's dangerous to go there and why the police shouldn't be called. At all. In fact, you'd think if they were worried about Amu getting kidnapped, they themselves would be calling the police to look for her.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Right... let's see where we're at.
Of the two front-runners, telling Midori only the 'most important' part will serve to convince her that she shouldn't let you go, it isn't safe, and also you're still hiding details. The digging won't stop, so you'd better have a plan for that.
Midori's a good mother, honestly. It might be worth asking yourself what your overall goal is.
Of the two front-runners, telling Midori only the 'most important' part will serve to convince her that she shouldn't let you go, it isn't safe, and also you're still hiding details. The digging won't stop, so you'd better have a plan for that.
Midori's a good mother, honestly. It might be worth asking yourself what your overall goal is.
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DarkN0va
The Multiversal Gamer
- Location
- Duel-Topia
[X] Plan - Seeing Is Believing
-[X] Call in help:
--[X] Saeki Nobuko.
---[X] Your own mother apparently isn't willing to unconditionally trust her own daughter (which is a bit sad). But there IS one person you know Midori seemingly holds an irrational level of faith in - that old fortune teller, Saeki Nobuko, who writes a column for the magazine your mother is the editor of. Given they worked together, your mother almost certainly has Nobuko's phone number.
---[X] Saeki Nobuko may sound like a hack on TV, but her powers are very real. Way back from the very beginning, before you ever joined the Guardians, hearing her words was what led you to give birth to Ran, Miki and Su. Later on, when Ikuto disappeared, it was Saeki's powers of foresight which allowed the Guardians to find him again.
---[X] Ask your mother to call Saeki Nobuko and request a reading on what she foresees if police were to be called the Scavengers' property.
---[X] Then ask what she foresees if Midori Hinamori were to go to the property.
---[X] And then ask what she foresees when Amu goes there.
--[X] Midori Hinamori.
---[X] Seeing is believing. If your mother insists in having a reliable adult accompanying Amu, she surely wouldn't object to it being herself. Your mother can draw her own conclusions when she gets there, rather than relying on anything Amu has to say.
---[X] You made a promise not to ask anybody for help or disclose the Scavengers' circumstances without first running it by them. So if your mother is that eager to help, even without your asking - she can go and ask them for the details herself and run herself by them. If the Scavengers want to lie to her face and convince her everything is fine... they are welcome to try.
---[X] When Kana was there at your birthday, there were few adults present. Your mother was one of the few - that freshly-baked cake didn't bake itself, after all. Kana will recognize her, perhaps Naomi too, if she was able to glimpse her before leaving. Whatever may be waiting there, your mother should be safe from the Scavengers at least.
--[X] Miki.
---[X] In the case there's someone at the house who aren't the Scavengers, Miki can invisibly scout the property and help to protect everyone in the event that it should be needed.
---[X] Though, obviously, not by using herself as a bulletproof vest.
-[X] Call in help:
--[X] Saeki Nobuko.
---[X] Your own mother apparently isn't willing to unconditionally trust her own daughter (which is a bit sad). But there IS one person you know Midori seemingly holds an irrational level of faith in - that old fortune teller, Saeki Nobuko, who writes a column for the magazine your mother is the editor of. Given they worked together, your mother almost certainly has Nobuko's phone number.
---[X] Saeki Nobuko may sound like a hack on TV, but her powers are very real. Way back from the very beginning, before you ever joined the Guardians, hearing her words was what led you to give birth to Ran, Miki and Su. Later on, when Ikuto disappeared, it was Saeki's powers of foresight which allowed the Guardians to find him again.
---[X] Ask your mother to call Saeki Nobuko and request a reading on what she foresees if police were to be called the Scavengers' property.
---[X] Then ask what she foresees if Midori Hinamori were to go to the property.
---[X] And then ask what she foresees when Amu goes there.
--[X] Midori Hinamori.
---[X] Seeing is believing. If your mother insists in having a reliable adult accompanying Amu, she surely wouldn't object to it being herself. Your mother can draw her own conclusions when she gets there, rather than relying on anything Amu has to say.
---[X] You made a promise not to ask anybody for help or disclose the Scavengers' circumstances without first running it by them. So if your mother is that eager to help, even without your asking - she can go and ask them for the details herself and run herself by them. If the Scavengers want to lie to her face and convince her everything is fine... they are welcome to try.
---[X] When Kana was there at your birthday, there were few adults present. Your mother was one of the few - that freshly-baked cake didn't bake itself, after all. Kana will recognize her, perhaps Naomi too, if she was able to glimpse her before leaving. Whatever may be waiting there, your mother should be safe from the Scavengers at least.
--[X] Miki.
---[X] In the case there's someone at the house who aren't the Scavengers, Miki can invisibly scout the property and help to protect everyone in the event that it should be needed.
---[X] Though, obviously, not by using herself as a bulletproof vest.
[X] The most important part of the truth: they don't trust anyone but you and each other. And they're not that sure about you.
-[X] The danger is that they especially don't trust people like JPs, and the entire country knows you've been talking to JPs. They don't know for sure that you didn't tell JPs anything about them.
-[X] The danger is that they especially don't trust people like JPs, and the entire country knows you've been talking to JPs. They don't know for sure that you didn't tell JPs anything about them.
1) It's probably not dangerous, for Amu 2) we cover why it should be us from two different angles. These are also the actual reasons we, the players, voted for this. That's not quite the same as being Amu's actual reasoning, but there's a significant overlap there.
If I thought a friend of mine thought I had been kidnapped, I would just talk to them myself rather than waiting for them to maybe contact the police? This is about why we should go to them, not about what they should do.
[X] Full disclosure to mum about the Scavangers circumstances.
- [X] Explain that they are a bit like Utau, though they suffered under a much worse group than Easter.
-- [X] Mention that Manticore are part of the government, unlike Easter, but like JPs, and so they don't trust any officials.
--- [X] And unlike JPs, they are evil. Like Easter.
- [X] If possible, avoid telling her that Kana is a murderer. That doesn't seem like it would go down well.
[X] The most important part of the truth: they don't trust anyone but you and each other. And they're not that sure about you. If you told the details they would definitely consider it a betrayal, and they definitely wouldn't let anyone else check up on them.
-[X] You're also a bit worried they'll think you've been kidnapped or something if you don't contact them soon.
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- Pronouns
- He
The QM did say, that Mom won't stop digging and need to plan for.
Also this has got out of hand. We were surpose to just cheek on Kane&co, but now I fear, we first get to it in 10 updates.
Why couldn't you people and QM just make this simple. But no, you guys try to be all smarty-pants about it, and had drage it out longer than need.
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
Publicity is such a pain. It's possible that Amu will simply have to go into full rebellious teen phase and defy her parents in order to do the right thing.
Still a much better option than breaking a promise in my opinion.
Still a much better option than breaking a promise in my opinion.
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- Pronouns
- He
Don't you mean her.
- Location
- Laniakea
From my perspective, the goal is to maintain Amu's relationship with both her mother and the Scavengers, while being able to check on the latter and make sure they are fine (and that they know we are also fine, relatively speaking).
That was what my voteplan was intending to do, even if pushing the responsibility for arguing with Midori onto Saeki and then Naomi/Kana might seem cowardly and might risk getting Saeki overly curious about events. It was made under the presumption that Midori would not let up until she had the full details of the situation and in that sense could be considered damage control to try ensure the person she ripped apart for the details wasn't Amu (or Miki).
But it seems people either want to believe Midori can be satisfied with a half-assed explanation or else don't mind Amu lowering her standing with the Scavengers to spill all and get this business with her mother over and done quickly.
Or maybe just feel that Amu trying and failing to cover-up to her mother makes for a better story.
Guns = dangerous. This is true from Amu's perspective. This is true from Midori's perspective.
And we already let slip guns might be involved.
Midori already heard that. Now she wants to know exactly why guns might be involved. No wishy-washy talk about "trust" and "betrayal" does anything to explain why guns*.
And adding "kidnapping" just makes it worse.
*Not unless you live in a place where it should be considered normal for guns or kidnapping to get involved at the first sign of teenagers having trust problems and as crazy as the Japan of this quest is, it is apparently not that kind of place.
We are now firmly 3 chapters into Arc 2 as per the numbering - and I suspect the Scavengers plot is central to this arc and the visit won't be simple because either Manticore will be there or the Scavengers will be gone and we need to find them.
And so what Midori does really could have a major impact on how things proceed.
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Democracy was a mistake.
- Location
- Laniakea
Given her current state, would a vote for Amu having a nervous breakdown result in Amu just trying to fake a nervous breakdown or actually genuinely start crying and having a nervous breakdown?
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Uh... 😅
It would produce a genuine nervous breakdown. Don't take that as implying Amu can have those on demand, it's just today has been... a lot. I hope you're not planning to vote for one—it wouldn't be terribly productive.
- Location
- Laniakea
Was genuinely considering it.
It would be a pretty surefire way to get Midori, good mother as she is, to back down and ease off the pressure.
Downside is, she wouldn't get anything done for the rest of the day because she'd be sobbing in her bedroom. Given you're recommending against it I'm going to guess this visit to Kana is, in fact, time-sensitive and we'd lose out on something if we took a day to cry.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
For today. It wouldn't help your goal of actually-checking-on-Kana, I think; you'd still need to convince her, which would be harder after she's seen how badly affected you are. Much more likely she'd insist you get the police to do it.
Each attribute / ability represents a physically distinct subset of Amu's mind. A distinct set of skills, a distinct set of neurons (modulo higher-dimensional factoring), etc. This means there isn't a finite set of applications for each ability, and there's a lot of overlap—almost every action you can take could be accomplished in multiple ways.
Instead, each represents a different approach to the same problem. It would be hard to enumerate them, and I'm not going to try, but let's take two examples...
Manipulation: What it says on the tin. This is not the skill of predicting how someone will act, but it is the skill of using those predictions as levers; pushing someone to take actions that wouldn't be their natural first choice, but which they are still willing to do, given the right conditions. "The right conditions" may involve lying, holding back information, or simply slanting your presentation. Or a number of other possibilities. Importantly, it does not include actually changing your target's mind; their opinions remain the same*.
* The goal of a social attack may be to change their opinion of someone. In which case, the opinion that's remaining the same is that of which people are worthy of a high (or low) opinion, and you're likely slanting their reaction by picking and choosing what to present.
Charisma: This is a skill of changing someone's mind, by way of being so impressive—decisive, charismatic, aggressive, whatever actually works on the person you're talking to—that it hits all the instinctual buttons for "This is a person worth listening to", overriding their regular personality by appealing to built-in 'follow the biggest monkey' rules... or similar. There's a saying, you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into; Charisma is what you use instead. Of course, on the flip side, a charisma-based social attack doesn't typically include reasoning*.
*: If you have solid reasoning, then you don't generally need a social attack. Assuming the target is capable of listening to evidence. Rolling wits or perception / investigation may be an option, when you aren't sure what the reality is but think Amu should be able to figure it out.
= = =
Amu's parents are quite used to her being 'cool and spicy', and aren't as vulnerable to charisma-based attacks as the average person. A charisma-based attack combined with proper reasoning would be a different matter. On which note...
People have mentioned that they don't want to UMI her parents, and that makes sense; in fact Amu wouldn't countenance the option. I think I've also heard that they wouldn't want to use social attacks at all, however, and that... makes some sense, but keep in mind, 'social attacks' are just how this system abstracts out discussion. They aren't inherently aggressive. Whether or not it's a decent action to take—in the sense of decency, not usefulness—depends on what precisely you are doing, not simply the presence of a dice roll.
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Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
Yes, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Sometimes this happens when I think about several things in different languages while writing.
- Location
- Laniakea
If it gets her away and buys a span of time where mother isn't heckling her over it, it also buys the chance for Amu to phone Utau and tell her to go do it in her place.
Her mother would not like the idea of Amu sending Utau to do it knowing there's a danger of guns, but if she's leaving Amu alone in her room to make the call and Amu doesn't tell her she sent Utau (or only tells her after the fact), she can't voice her displeasure at the course of action or out-social Amu to block the action.
Especially since Amu does not actually presently know that her mother wouldn't approve of sending Utau to do it - we the players only know because you stated it outright in the Call In Help option that Midori would not agree. There would be nothing for her to feel guilty about when phoning Utau.
EDIT: To be clear, since you advised against it, I will not be voting for a nervous breakdown.
If you're talking about me, I only meant for this instance with her mother. Trying social combat with her over this discussion comes too close to trying to deliberately con her mother for my liking.
If we were talking about something like social combat with Lulu to get her to spill about Manticore or with Saeki to not ask questions if it turned out the Scavengers were gone and we needed to ask for her to help find them, it would be a completely different story.
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To be clear, the thing I reject about your plan is that it starts with trying to call a fortune teller. I'm not sure you realize quite how insane that sounds? Responsible adults don't let children do dangerous things because a fortune teller said it would be okay. Your plan just fails on its own terms.
You want to 1) not defy Midori 2) keep our promises to the Scavengers 3) not give up on checking on them and 4) not con Midori into going along with this? I think you have chosen an impossible combination of goals. We can tell her everything and hope to convince her with the truth, we can keep their secrets and become a rebellious teen, we can give up and stay home, we can try and talk her into doing this kind of objectively unreasonable thing, I don't see how we can not do any of those things.
- Location
- Laniakea
Saeki is not just a "fortune teller" - she is Midori's colleague, or at least a professional acquaintance that she has worked with in her career as a magazine editor, who has been featured multiple times in her magazine. In the very first episode of Shugo Chara, you see Midori express her regard for the woman when she appears on TV (while Amu thought she was a quack). It's that relationship between them that I am hoping to leverage.
If all I wanted was the best precog that Amu could potentially get hold of, I would have suggested calling Tsukasa like Baughn suggested - Saeki herself seemingly holds greater regard for his clairvoyant abilities than her own. I suspect Tsukasa may have 3-4 points in Precognition while Saeki only has 2-3. Nevertheless, her abilities are real, as she was able to use them to locate Ikuto near the end of the series.
I suspect we may still have to end up calling her at some point, as that safehouse might very well be devoid of Scavengers when we arrive.
There is only 1 other person I can think of who Midori has enough respect for that stands a chance of dissuading her from continuing to pressure Amu for a direct answer and that's her husband. And there is pretty much zero chance that Tsumugu is going to do that - he is almost certainly going to take his wife's side and double the pressure on their daughter.
Nevertheless, that is what my stunt was aimed towards.
Anything worth doing is worth doing right, he who dares win, etc. etc.
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Yeah, and I'm telling you this cannot possibly work. There are lots of ways Midori, or for that matter Saeki, could react to this proposal, but none of them are the thing you seem to be hoping for. I am struggling to explain why in any more detail because this is just so far from any reasonable plan that I can't actually tell where you went wrong in formulating it.
- Location
- Laniakea
There are 2 things that the Saeki part of the plan is aimed at accomplishing.
The first is to stop Midori from pressuring Amu for a direct answer. Saeki may or may not be able to outright convince Midori to do this (I don't expect her to actually succeed), but it would certainly make it easier for Amu herself to do later if she were to get told by someone else she respects that there are good reasons not to pressure her, or that doing so would lead to a bad outcome.
That Saeki herself may lose a lot of respect with Midori for suggesting so is not really our problem. Preserving their relationship is none of our concern.
The second thing is to find out how risky it would be to actually bring Midori along to visit the Scavengers.
If we get told it's low risk, we can just proceed to the second part and bring Midori and get her to argue with the Scavengers for the details herself. That way, we neither break our promise to them nor deny Midori.
If we get told it's high risk, I expect Midori to immediately start grilling Saeki for the details instead of Amu and that there will be an interrupt to reassess the vote at that point.
What happens next depends on what we get told, but some advance warning of incoming problems is better than nothing at all.
Bear in mind that nothing precludes us from deciding to then fully spill everything to Midori at that point either.
If you can't tell that there's anything wrong, did you maybe consider it might be because it's not actually that bad?
So far, the only drawback I have heard expressed about it is reluctance to have yet another person (Saeki) potentially getting involved in the situation.
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She really is.
We've got two whole parents who love us very much. That's more than a lot of people get, especially protagonists. They've done a remarkably good job dealing with the confusing and scary changes life has been throwing at them. Sudden unplanned parenthood alone has destroyed plenty of families, let alone the rest of the shit these two have had thrown at them.
Miki gets her own tiny plate at the dinner table. She gets hugs. She gets lectures. She gets worried for. She's not just that weird fairy who's suddenly there. She's a part of the family. An unexpected part, one mom and dad weren't ready for, but they love her wholeheartedly nonetheless.
Amu's been hiding a huge part of who she is as a person. A very scary part, too - she, or any of the kids in this family, could break these parents a dozen different ways without lifting a finger. It'd be easy. Their powers are so abusable. I've seen signs of Midori recognizing this, and I think Tsumugu recognizes it too. I don't know if Amu herself recognizes it.
Less loving parents might look at Amu and see a stranger. Less loving parents might be afraid of her. I wouldn't blame them. These parents are afraid for her. They see their little girl, more amazing, and in more danger, than they ever knew. They're doing their best to protect and guide Amu through her bizarre life experiences that they barely have any frame of reference for.
Our parents' love is precious and wonderful, and Midori is doing what she's doing here for all the right reasons. Unfortunately, now that the danger of this trip has been played up to hell and back, Midori isn't going to let this go until she learns about the worst-case scenarios, like "Manticore grabs us", where that kind of danger comes up.
After she hears the full story... well, she's not going to be happy about the trip, but I think she'll understand why it's so important to us, and I think she'll let us go. Even if she's not convinced it's worth the risk, I think she will be convinced that we're going whether she okays it or not. At that point, it's best for her to try to get conditions and agreements in place, instead of trying to veto it and having us sneak out in the middle of the night.
(Midori is only one parent, though. I wonder where dad is. Dad and Ami were here earlier...)
- Location
- Laniakea
She'll let Amu go, because those same outstanding maternal qualities allowing her to instantly accept Miki as a part of their own family will very likely also trigger a wave of heartfelt sympathy upon hearing the desperate plight of this group of human experimentation abuse child victims Amu has recently befriended.
But in order to get to that point, she will need to pry the whole story out from someone. And it seems that everybody wants to insist on that someone being Amu herself. Oh well, can't say I didn't try.