Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

ShadowAngelBeta said:

I mean, its not that fucked up. Abuse and neglect sure, and exploitation, but its barely what it could be, should be on some levels.

As Baughn mentioned, Oshi No Ko. Utau seems to have never gotten dragged into the real idol life. I do wonder how Dia and Tsukasa pulled that off though tbh.

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We saw some scenes prior to Amu's little stunt with the helicopter that implied Utau was, in fact, going through a lot of that. It might be dampened by Easter wanting her to focus on creating x-eggs; she didn't need to really be an idol, she just needed to have the appearance of one.

Silver linings? Once she lost Easter's patronage, she was basically thrown out on the street. Utau, in canon, failed horribly at retaining her 'idol' status post-Amu. Yes, she did some singing, but less in the 'idol' sense and more in the 'independent singer' sense.

Which is a far nicer place to be, and she's still doing some of that here. You'll see some of that later. It isn't a career.

...

Point is, I don't think Dia and Tsukasa pulled anything off. I think Utau failed to stay in the industry. In Shards, she failed hard enough that she bounced off entirely. The majority of people who try to become idols don't end up chewed up by the industry -- they simply don't get the chance to try. Utau's special skill is empathic projection, without that she's just a pretty decent teenage singer, and without Easter's machinery, said projections have no impact except in person.

When Arcana Academy was first mentioned, I had actually been wondering whether that might've been the school Utau and Ikuto attended. Ikuto did have that rosary and Arcana has the "holy" kanji prepended in front of its name.

But the communication restrictions and boarding system lower that possibility by quite a bit, as we know for a fact that Ikuto was walking around outside school often and Utau was, well, communicating with the outside very often too, on large scale. It's still possible Utau could have had an exception made for her and that Ikuto just ran away from school a lot (which wouldn't be outside his personality to do) but that seems unlikely given what we know.

.....As an aside, something interesting that I noticed in that latest chapter?

Amu's class name. No Sun/Moon/Star classes for Arcana Academy. Not only do they segregate the student body by aptitude (assumingly within the same year), her class is apparently named Delta 1.

Yeesh.

Baughn said:

Which is a far nicer place to be, and she's still doing some of that here. You'll see some of that later. It isn't a career.

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I guess with the internet these days, it could be a career if you're good enough at it. Though that too requires some level opportunity and chance... And of course she'd need the world to be around for a fair few more years still for a reputation to build up there then. Which in the current world could be a bit of an ask.

PistachioCookies said:

Yeesh.

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I've only now read chapter two. I know, I'm late. But 'yeeesh' is right.

This might as well be Manticore. I'm, hah, taking notes. Different approach, probably smarter approach, similar end results.

Potato12345 said:

Sure, but I don't think just asking if she's okay will be enough to get the answers we really want - do you have any better ideas as to how to float the question while leaving her space to decide what to do?

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Sure

[JPs][X] Seek aid
-[X] So, Manticore. And child experiments. And how you know one who was also one of the science directors children. And a bunch of very public psychic children just got scattered to the four winds and there might be a chance some got "lost in the shuffle". There are some things that keep you up at night since you got your powers, Manticore is almost of them in a nightmare colored giftbox.
--[X] Call Naoto, check in with Kana. Having a first hand account is really important, but just how much is she willing to reveal to help others and/or take out Manticore.

[Saaya][X] Check if she's awake
- [X] And ask if she's okay
--[X] Would you mind clarifying where we now (would like to?) stand with each other, given the everything that has happened recently?

Baughn said:

but effectively they're competing for the same brain resources and if they're both awake then they'll both be punch-drunk and half asleep.

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Hopefully there will be a scene this chapter when this actually happens. Like in the morning, both halves of Ami want to go up to her big sister(s) and give her a proper hug both physically and mentally, and both want to be stubborn and want to go first, so they ultimately try to do it at the same time.

Baughn said:

And so long as they're in daylight, Amu's eyes are just yellow; not glowy.

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So what you're saying is, the next time they turn off the lights in the classroom so they can use the projector and/or put on the latest ghibli movie Amu will get asked to put her eyes cellphone away.

"Please stop glowing and distracting everyone from the Tutorial Pixie's lesson in Demon Negotiation Psychic Powers and You" - the teacher, possibly

So, no one else has mentioned it, so it falls to me to do so?

Amu is, er. Heavily using her UMI aura here, on the trio of girls.

Baughn said:

She felt a growing sense of determination not to run.

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Baughn said:

Rin couldn't say precisely why she'd had that final thought, except that it was obvious, wasn't it? Just from looking at her. Although she also wasn't sure why it was obvious, exactly. She felt Hana grab onto her arm and squeeze it tightly, the smaller girl evidently feeling lonely as well. Normally Rin might protest, but right now she didn't mind.

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Amu is leaking her emotions, and these three seem to lack any psionics of their own to resist the bleed through.

She should probably not be passively influencing people around her. The peaking is bad enough as is, without this on top.

Vote wise:

[JPs][X] Seek aid
-[X] So, Manticore. And child experiments. And how you know one who was also one of the science directors children. And a bunch of very public psychic children just got scattered to the four winds and there might be a chance some got "lost in the shuffle". There are some things that keep you up at night since you got your powers, Manticore is almost of them in a nightmare colored giftbox.
--[X] Call Naoto, check in with Kana. Having a first hand account is really important, but just how much is she willing to reveal to help others and/or take out Manticore.

[Saaya][X] Check if she's awake
- [X] And ask if she's okay
- [X] And ask her about JPs, given that she's had the inside view for awhile

Manticore need to be dealt with, especially considering the current events.
And if we are asking JPs to help with that, lets get the opinion of someone who's seen a lot of them recently, while being...
Well. Saaya. It's not like she of all people is going to sugar coat anything.

To be fair to Amu, she's been pretty stressed lately. It's probably not as easy to keep herself contained as usual with that. Especially as her psionic powers lately have been growing rather quickly as well.

Just wait until the solar UMI kicks in.

Nero200 said:

She should probably not be passively influencing people around her. The peaking is bad enough as is, without this on top.

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....She would need to know she's doing it at all first.

Sure you don't wanna take this opportunity with Saaya to try and ask her if she really meant what she ranted about in the classroom about Amu having a brainwashing aura making people ignore her weirdness?

Though, about that....

Nero200 said:

Amu is, er. Heavily using her UMI aura here, on the trio of girls.

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IMO, just my two cents nobody asked for but- that's not heavy.

Because we've actually seen what it looks like in series canon when Amu uses "heavy UMI" (one of the reasons why I don't believe Canon!Amu has any aura of the sort, unless she actively tries).

It was when she was fused with El as Amulet Angel, using Angel Wink to seduce a whole crowd of men into buying tickets for Utau's concert after she absconded from Easter. Granted, it was El who forced the transformation and made her do it, but you get my point.

.....Yeah, turns out we don't need Mitsuru Kirijo (or Ami) to pull off Marin Karin at the drop of a hat.

That is heavy unnatural mental influence.

This aura thing, whatever this is.

This is not that.

PistachioCookies said:

This is not that.

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Take anything Nero say about psychics with a grain of salt.

He unironically thinks genocide is the only true answer to them.

He has a simplified model of the situation compared to what's really going on. And yes, that includes this 'aura', which I constantly need to tell him doesn't constantly override the thoughts and free will of everyone around Amu. It is what it is.

PistachioCookies said:

We're kinda in luck there - Miki's canon Chara form has blue eyes (Ran's are red and Su's are green) and we've got some confirmation Big Miki's eyes are not the same color as Amu's, so they're probably still blue.

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She looks like this:



Yes, this one is accurate enough that I'm happy to sign off on it. That's Miki. Not what she's wearing right now, of course.

I think it's time to put a pin in this...



...and also in my ability to remember the voting syntax, because this stuff will need to be manually tallied. It's not in the correct format to be parsed as tasks. Oh well. Hmm, I think the current leading vote is:
- Talk to JPs about Manticore, but discuss it with Naoto/Kana first. Note that you'll be doing this in the car with your father, who's likely to put you on speaker.
- The Saaya vote is not precisely tied, but conflicted three ways. Amu will be her indecisive self. The main push seems to be "ask if she's okay, but in a friendly way".

Baughn said:

Note that you'll be doing this in the car with your father, who's likely to put you on speaker.

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Fine by me, the cost is worth it (and the implications are there regardless of whether Amu's father notices so)

Baughn said:

The main push seems to be "ask if she's okay, but in a friendly way".

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On further thought, Amu being indecisive here is pretty ok and indirectly ends up giving space to Saaya, so why not?

I still remain skeptical about much influence Amu could realistically exert on Saaya here, no matter what Baughn said about this being a chance to influence her. Especially since any further chances there might be will get increasingly slim if/when Saaya ends up getting an Exaltation Shard.

But if there's any hope at all of curbing those trigger-happiness inclinations she displayed in her interlude, it probably needs to be done early.

I know the Persona series is no stranger to the idea of mentally-unstable cognitive teenage hitmen and Saaya probably took more brain damage than all of Strega and Black Mask combined, but that is not a healthy line of work to be in and historically-speaking, none of them met a particularly happy end.

I don't even expect to be able to convince her to start regularly attending school again, even though that would be the ideal outcome.

A promise against killing people with her powers, made to someone she tried to kill with them is about the extent of what I think is manageable here and I'm not even going to call it a true Intimacy, as I'm not convinced that whatever feelings of debt Saaya may feel she owes Amu is even worth that much (which is why I had that "unless it's necessary" escape clause in my write-in, as I don't even believe she'd consider it without that being there).

Potato12345 said:

On further thought, Amu being indecisive here is pretty ok and indirectly ends up giving space to Saaya, so why not?

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Eh, would certainly be in-character for her anyway - since "in-character" for Amu unironically means "no idea what her own character is".

I love how the original text of the vote lost "almost" from description of Manticore and no one wanted to change it at all.

I assume that sentence was meant to say "almost all", though I'm not sure I agree with that part of it much myself.

Amu's main experience with evil organizations before she ever heard about Manticore was Easter - if there was anything that would've kept her up at night it would've been them. But given her cozy relationship with their ex-agents and Hikaru nowadays, I dare say she's unlikely to be too disturbed by the whole thing at this point, even though what they did to Ikuto is arguably the stuff of those nightmares being mentioned.

Given the non-existence and utter lack of presence of any other psionic organizations for the whole thing with them, Amu probably (and probably not unreasonably) wouldn't have believed there existed any other organizations anywhere nearby involved in the stuff. I personally doubt she would've given much thought to the possibility of there being "more Easters" after the first one got dealt with.

And as of this point in the quest?

I'd be willing to bet the demons are still occupying more mindshare than Manticore.

One of them she's only heard of and seen in memories secondhand. The other personally put her into hospital for a week and is the reason she now needs a new school.

PistachioCookies said:

Sure you don't wanna take this opportunity with Saaya to try and ask her if she really meant what she ranted about in the classroom about Amu having a brainwashing aura making people ignore her weirdness?

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I am abstaining from any detailed votes on Saaya interaction on the grounds that I have guest written/designed too much of her for it to be fair for me to give a vote one way or the other on the matter.

I ran my vote past Baughn before posting to ensure I wasn't using privileged information or such.

ShadowAngelBeta said:

Take anything Nero say about psychics with a grain of salt.

He unironically thinks genocide is the only true answer to them.

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This is inaccurate, I have proposed other solutions.
Mostly actually training them and not letting them near vulnerable non-psionics until they have control over their aura effect to stop influencing people around them.

Rather than, er. Shoving them all in a school where the only oversight we see are the strongest psionics, who haven't been properly informed about nearly anything.

With little enough monitoring that a bloody Easter operative was able to hands-on corrupt heart eggs, while being hired as a teacher.

(Yes, it was probably a precog plot, and was possibly the best result. I still think the in-the-know staff are far from Good, given the damage caused to multiple children.)

Baughn said:

He has a simplified model of the situation compared to what's really going on. And yes, that includes this 'aura', which I constantly need to tell him doesn't constantly override the thoughts and free will of everyone around Amu. It is what it is.

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You have also said that it has a slow constant effect on people around her
It doesn't instantly override, but you are on record in thread as saying:

Baughn said:

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.

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Ie: She is having an effect, you just have a higher tolerant for mind control than I do

Nero200 said:

I still think the in-the-know staff are far from Good, given the damage caused to multiple children.

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Eh, as far as canon goes there doesn't seem to have been much lasting damage to speak of. Gotta point out again, brain-damaged-Saaya is strictly a quest thing. Series-wise, the whole deal with being ?-Egged by Lulu didn't appear to slow her down much, if her attempt several episodes later to get herself promoted as a model by photo-bombing Yua Sakurai in the middle of her professional shoot was any indication.

And though a whole bunch of kids did get their Heart's Eggs X-ed by Easter's activities, nobody exactly died from it and it's arguable how lasting the damage even was, since we know those Eggs can come back even when smashed, or they can develop a new one from having a new dream.

I'd like to point out something that is likely often and easily overlooked, but it was implied that prior to Amu's arrival, the Seiyo Guardians' usual method of dealing with hostile X-Eggs was smashing them outright. Kukai mentioned very early on to Amu that their duties entailed doing exactly that in the worst case - only for Amu to emphatically refuse to follow that directive. For everything she might be wishy-washy on, that was one thing she expressed immediate discomfort with. And from Kukai's reaction, that kind of refusal probably wasn't common or expected. Since the Guardians have seemingly been around since Tsukasa's generation and they didn't have Amu until then and Seiyo almost certainly doesn't have a reputation of churning out mentally-unfit graduates, it doesn't seem likely the effects of doing so were ever too significant.

Jury's still out on the sister school, though my current suspicion is that nobody who graduates from that place ends up walking out still owning a Chara, even if they successfully cultivated one during their time there (by which I mean, Nikaidou might have cut short his own attempts at pressing full-grown Charas into a fake Embryo, but... well).

From what I can tell the greatest victim of the whole thing with Easter was Ikuto, who suffered both physical and mental trauma throughout the whole thing. And the whole latter half of the series was about Amu and co. trying their best to bail him out of that situation. If those efforts were engineered by the Seiyo staff, I'd say that's something they did right.

PistachioCookies said:

Eh, as far as canon goes there doesn't seem to have been much lasting damage to speak of. Gotta point out again, brain-damaged-Saaya is strictly a quest thing. Series-wise, the whole deal with being ?-Egged by Lulu didn't appear to slow her down much, if her attempt several episodes later to get herself promoted as a model by photo-bombing Yua Sakurai in the middle of her professional shoot was any indication.

And though a whole bunch of kids did get their Heart's Eggs X-ed by Easter's activities, nobody exactly died from it and it's arguable how lasting the damage even was, since we know those Eggs can come back even when smashed, or they can develop a new one from having a new dream.

I'd like to point out something that is likely often and easily overlooked, but it was implied that prior to Amu's arrival, the Seiyo Guardians' usual method of dealing with hostile X-Eggs was smashing them outright. Kukai mentioned very early on to Amu that their duties entailed doing exactly that in the worst case - only for Amu to emphatically refuse to follow that directive. For everything she might be wishy-washy on, that was one thing she expressed immediate discomfort with. And from Kukai's reaction, that kind of refusal probably wasn't common or expected. Since the Guardians have seemingly been around since Tsukasa's generation and they didn't have Amu until then and Seiyo almost certainly doesn't have a reputation of churning out mentally-unfit graduates, it doesn't seem likely the effects of doing so were ever too significant.

Jury's still out on the sister school, though my current suspicion is that nobody who graduates from that place ends up walking out still owning a Chara, even if they successfully cultivated one during their time there (by which I mean, Nikaidou might have cut short his own attempts at pressing full-grown Charas into a fake Embryo, but... well).

From what I can tell the greatest victim of the whole thing with Easter was Ikuto, who suffered both physical and mental trauma throughout the whole thing. And the whole latter half of the series was about Amu and co. trying their best to bail him out of that situation. If those efforts were engineered by the Seiyo staff, I'd say that's something they did right.

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For in thread messages, I'm mostly talking about Shards canon and outcomes unless stated otherwise, since that's what we are dealing with here. (And because my SC knowledge is very very Baughn-biased in general)

A non-Baughn interpreted Shugo Chara could potentially be a very different place, since most of the low level psionics are extrapolated and then crossed over with SMT/Persona/DeSu/Exalted by our dear QM.

Nero200 said:

For in thread messages, I'm mostly talking about Shards canon and outcomes unless stated otherwise, since that's what we are dealing with here. (And because my SC knowledge is very very Baughn-biased in general)

A non-Baughn interpreted Shugo Chara could potentially be a very different place, since most of the low level psionics are extrapolated and then crossed over with SMT/Persona/DeSu/Exalted by our dear QM.

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I was going to write a long post demonstrating how Jewel Joker agrees with most of my inferences and clearly they're more or less canon now… but that's playing right into your hands, isn't it?

Rather, I'll say that a non-Shards story would be a rather different place. I've got three or four in mind, and none of the others include the dynamics you're seeing here.

Saaya isn't brain-damaged, by the way. Not per se. Though that's probably not a useful statement.

Baughn said:

Saaya isn't brain-damaged, by the way. Not per se.

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Maybe not right now, not after having been given the Humpty Lock, but "high-grade mental abrasion" says she sure used to be. Just a scant week or so ago in in-story time.

Nero200 said:

A non-Baughn interpreted Shugo Chara could potentially be a very different place, since most of the low level psionics are extrapolated and then crossed over with SMT/Persona/DeSu/Exalted by our dear QM.

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In terms of quest canon, I'm currently willing to bet many, if not most, of the low-level psionics from Amu's generation and prior are related in some way to existing occult families. Mostly because we know that Lulu and Tsukasa (and by extension Tadase) are knee-deep in it and Fujisaki apparently is too, but also because one of the potential boons for Amu was herself potentially having an occult family backstory. Ikuto being the first Chara user, along with the whole system being artificial here, carries strong indication that his status as a Chara user was engineered. And if that was the case, that might well extend to many others among the "first wave".

Which makes the whole setup Seiyo has going on stink something strong - but when compared to how Kana's family trained THEIR children and how we know Hotsuin was trained by his own family, suddenly seems pretty damned milquetoast in comparison.

This situation of Seiyo's Chara users coming from storied magical families is most likely the result of the crossover with SMT and I feel os far less likely to actually be the case in series canon. It's possible this may be the case for Arcana Academy in Jewel Joker -- but not so much Seiyo. Since not only do we know what Kukai, Yaya and Rima's families were like (no sign of magic anywhere there), Seiyo is unlikely to have gone out of their way to deliberately seek enrolments from Chara users, as otherwise their Guardians wouldn't have been left with empty seats so often in the past the way Tadase describes.

.....Saaya's basically been given Rima's backstory in this quest. And suspiciously, I haven't seen much comment made about Rima's background despite my pointing out the parallels.

I would not be surprised if Rima here has now been made to come from a magical background as well, both to compliment her existing relationship with Nagihiko and his family and also to explain her existing experience with using Kusukusu when she arrived at Seiyo. And that in this quest, Seiyo DID go out of their way to arrange her transfer on purpose, intending her to serve as reinforcements for the Guardians.