Amu is a child, remember? I was impressed by how well you folks understand her character. Yes I was.
I can't imagine why.
I disagree, we simply don't have enough of the Chara's mechanics in-setting hashed out in order to know one way or another. A major feature of the Chara is their ability to have knowledge and skills that their User don't actually possess. While we know that ordinarily, this is the result of downloading information from the CU, "Sera" was formed under extremely unusual circumstances. Even if we were to obtain a baseline understanding of Chara mechanics for this setting, chances are that Sera wouldn't match up regardless.
The issue with "the exoself is a chara" is not that the exoself does not have certain properties that a chara would. The issue is that the exoself
does have properties that no chance-formed entity would: its fundamentally computational nature, and more tellingly its acceptance of a specific certificate in the Exaltation's certification chain as valid and trusted, mean that it has to be a purposefully-created artifact.
It's possible, I suppose, that
all chara are really purposefully-created artifacts; but Nyarlathotep stated otherwise to the exoself (that a chara was "extension of the self that Kagutsuchi is forced to allow"), and I see no reason he would either be mistaken or lying about that. (I would understand not trusting his more specific claim that the exoself was specifically not any sort of demonoid extension of the psyche, but I'm not relying on his word there.)
And besides, Occlam's Razor. The Fungus was not present until after that larger Amu-Chara fused with Amu's main body after warding off Conception. Well, technically, it wasn't present at any point prior to Exa-kun going into a resting state as a result of said warding, so there is an opening on that front. But that would assume that the Amu-Chara fusing with Amu would have an entirely different and separate result, one which has not yet been detected by Exa-kun
The exoself could very easily have been (and, by my reading, likely was) inside Amu's body while the "Amu-Chara" was out and about. (In which case, the Amu-Chara was simply a very hurt Amu, manifesting a body after the fashion of a Chara since her usual Kagutsuchi-maintained one... wasn't.)
That may be what you mean with your second sentence, but your third is incoherent, so I can't tell. (You probably mean something like "imply" rather than "assume", but in that case I can't tell what result you think it would have.)
In essence, in order to explain the Fungus as a separate entity unrelated to that Amu-Chara, we'd have to essentially invent a number of potential aftereffects which there simply is no evidence to suggest happened. So we go for the most plausible explanation, which is that the Amu-Chara and the Fungus/Sera are related. While a correlation between the two is by no means confirmed, it's probable enough to assume to be the case, barring evidence indicating otherwise.
Your first sentence makes no sense, but it makes no sense in a way strongly resembling its predecessor, so I'll wait for clarification.
And if they're related to one another, then we can infer that the latter is the remains of the former, given it's ability to interact and meld with Amu's soul, as well as repair it, even if it was only accomplished via Nyarly's influence.
Not even a little bit. As an alternate third hypothesis consider that the exoself may have been a preexisting unanalyzed passenger in Amu's soul, which was pushed out in a fashion mimicking a chara while Amu recovered. In this case the "Amu-Chara" would have been the exoself, but the fungus would not in any sense have been the
remains of the Amu-Chara.
(The first part is more reasonable than it may sound. Recall that Amu possesses the Humpty Lock, an artifact of unknown provenance, which may as part of its function have injected an "exoself": a loosely Exaltation-like symbiote intended to induce Chara formation. More simply, it may even
be the exoself. I don't actually support this hypothesis, but I can't yet rule it out.
Really, what
is the Humpty Lock? I think if we knew that, we'd know a lot more about Charas in general.)
EDIT: Oh, and [X] plan Alectai.
