- Location
- Laniakea
......So is Amu fine enough for us to do an SOS boost on Dreamwalking, or would it require the metaverse fog to be mushing her brain into soup before there's enough pressure for that to work?
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
She needs to be, essentially, panicked. That isn't a hard requirement, but it is the current requirement until she fully understands what she's doing.
Right now she's fairly calm, really. This is weird, but Utau is confident that Kana and Yui are okay.
- Location
- Laniakea
Oh well, then again I guess sudden Persona awakenings also usually need to happen in the middle of life-or-death situations anyway. No biggie, we can always wait for Yui's shadow self to try and eat us first.
So if this is like Persona 4 pseudo-Palaces, the ground floor's probably the pre-dungeon safe zone.
Scavenger House probably has at least 4 floors based on the number of landings Amu can see, might be more she can't see due to warped geometry. Mist animals are
Only halfway, because Amu can sense Yui but not Kana. So Kana is further up than Yui.
Maybe we should pillage the fridge for some energy drinks before we start our trek to the top.
- Location
- Laniakea
According to Utau, Kana is asleep.
If the fog is the same as in Persona 4, it not only obscures vision but drains your energy unless you happen to have a Persona and be wearing a pair of Teddie's super-special-glasses. Which might be why Kana is asleep.
Amu herself doesn't apparently have the mental range to even feel Kana, only Yui. And considering she thinks Yui feels funny, my guess is that it's not actually Yui but the girl's Shadow Self instead.
So Amu would have to move further up to even try and mentally talk to Kana. Which might or might not work not work if Kana is sleeping, my takeaway was that Utau already tried to contact her mentally and that's how she knew Kana was asleep.
If the fog is the same as in Persona 4, it not only obscures vision but drains your energy unless you happen to have a Persona and be wearing a pair of Teddie's super-special-glasses. Which might be why Kana is asleep.
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- Pronouns
- He
[X] Explore the ground floor
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Let's see…
I'd thought maybe the suggested options weren't distinct enough. I still think that—it's basically a carefulness dial—but this isn't any of them.
I'll give it until tomorrow morning.
It's a tie with the "bottom" vote. But they're compatible, so you'll get both at once.
I'd thought maybe the suggested options weren't distinct enough. I still think that—it's basically a carefulness dial—but this isn't any of them.
I'll give it until tomorrow morning.
It's a tie with the "bottom" vote. But they're compatible, so you'll get both at once.
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[X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami and Hikaru to make a new friend.
Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
[X] Explore the ground floor
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
On the topic of skills, I'm in favour of getting socialise dots as well.
Not for dice pool reasons, but because it means Amu will be actually putting effort and time into learning how to not be cripplingly reliant on her Psi powers for social awareness even with her parents.
And also because with all these psionic events and demons being related to them, do people really think we aren't going to run into something that can fake empathic reads, or just Mind Blank?
Amu having a functional baseline to fact check her Psi readings against seem good, and her being a functional human being without having to invade the privacy of everyone within range is a good thing for her IC to be wanting.
EDIT:
Also, on the topic of Utau's reading / Key Scry.
Very noticeable lack of Ikuto there. When everyone else important to her with psionic power is listed, the ex-brocon doesn't even see a mention of her only living blood relative.
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
On the topic of skills, I'm in favour of getting socialise dots as well.
Not for dice pool reasons, but because it means Amu will be actually putting effort and time into learning how to not be cripplingly reliant on her Psi powers for social awareness even with her parents.
And also because with all these psionic events and demons being related to them, do people really think we aren't going to run into something that can fake empathic reads, or just Mind Blank?
Amu having a functional baseline to fact check her Psi readings against seem good, and her being a functional human being without having to invade the privacy of everyone within range is a good thing for her IC to be wanting.
EDIT:
Also, on the topic of Utau's reading / Key Scry.
Very noticeable lack of Ikuto there. When everyone else important to her with psionic power is listed, the ex-brocon doesn't even see a mention of her only living blood relative.
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- Pronouns
- He
[x] Explore the ground floor
-[x] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
-[x] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
[X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami and Hikaru to make a new friend.
[X] Explore the ground floor
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
Not sure about Hikaru, but calling in our dreamwalking expert for the dream-related problem seems sensible.
It's also a little weird that she managed to specifically connect with Dia, separately from Amu. Both because it was a separate connection, which didn't happen for Ran or Su, and because she seemed to access Dia's powers, which Amu herself has a hard time doing.
[X] Explore the ground floor
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time
Not sure about Hikaru, but calling in our dreamwalking expert for the dream-related problem seems sensible.
Hopefully that's just distance. We've got no idea where Ikuto is.
It's also a little weird that she managed to specifically connect with Dia, separately from Amu. Both because it was a separate connection, which didn't happen for Ran or Su, and because she seemed to access Dia's powers, which Amu herself has a hard time doing.
While I'm glad to have more support on Socialize, I will point out that baseline 13-year-old social competence can be achieved before the 1-dot threshold:
I'm not sure how much social competence you want to go for.
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Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
I feel like it should still have pinged that the bond has there, even if it just trailed off into the distance.
Dia is at least as much Utau's as Amu's, so the connection makes sense. Utau was the first one to Chara-change with her, and has probably spent more time Chara changed with her than Amu has, considering the month long cool-down Amu has.
I want enough social competence to tell when a being with 4-dots in whatever lets it fake empathic readings lies to us.
So probably 2-dot.
As an extra question... do we actually want Amu's mother to be coming along exploring these floors? She seems like she might be a bit more vulnerable to the potential dangers one could encounter in such a place.
My gut says no, but I wouldn't have wanted her to come on the trip in the first place.
I'd be up for suggesting she leave, but I get the feeling she'll want to stay, especially if we're bringing in Ami.
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As far as I'm aware of it, which is mostly just canon knowledge, Hikaru is "Psi Powers: Yes."
Also they're all the same age and psychics having other psychic friends they can't mindwhammy generally seems to help them all around.
See Ami and her entire kindergarten class wanting to date her.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Hikaru has a lot of power, but not very much skill; like you'd expect from someone his age. If you could see his character sheet, you'd notice it on the surface looks weaker than Ami's. If you could see his entire character sheet, you'd realise why. Regardless, he'd be fairly safe... but Ami makes a good foil to keep him under control.
As for Ami and her kindergarten class, uhh...
...Mom still hasn't connected those dots.
- Location
- Laniakea
A full dungeoneering party in Persona is 4 people.
In terms of psionics currently confirmed reachable by Utau, it's either him or Miki and right now Miki is a bit of a crapshoot, as her capabilities as Big Miki are somewhat unknown.
Midori does not count as a party member. I fully expect her to collapse from the fog within 5 minutes, giving us incentive to bring her back down to the ground floor and leave her sleeping there while the rest of us explore the upper floors, free from needing to worry about bodyguarding the dead weight.
I don't think it was so much her trying to reach everyone she was close to, as her just reaching for whoever was nearest (Amu and Midori first, and she's definitely not close to Midori) and then following threads to whoever else she could. Which is probably why she got to Hikaru, who she is also not close to. And then accidentally stepped on Dia.
Because it's not just Ikuto missing in terms of psionics shes close to, there's also no Tadase or Kukai. She was childhood friends with Tadase and used to live at his house whenever Aruto was away prior to his disappearance. She also used to be (at least in the quest, she probably still IS in canon) close with Kukai in a more intimate way, but neither of the two were explicitly mentioned when she went sea-of-soul-surfing.
The person who kissed her might be Kukai, since he did kiss her at the end of the manga - but if that scene ever happened in this quest's backstory, it was mentioned they somehow drifted apart afterwards. It's possible he could be the "boy with spiky hair" too but since Utau mistook the blonde for Ami, I don't think the blonde girl was herself, she'd probably know if it was.
I also have no idea what the reference to the flight of angels and the exploding attacking one on is meant to be. Since it's angels, I'm pretty sure it's a Megaten reference, but if it comes from any of the ones I've played, I can't make the connection.
If we can get half a dot for free, I'm not going to argue about it. Canon Amu might never have been great at speaking, but I will admit the notion her facial expression-reading skills were being stunted by her quest-given psionic powers made me raise my eyebrows a little. There's actually an argument to be made that being able to psionically confirm a visual read (given that Amu doesn't exactly shut her eyes at people's faces) should actually make her BETTER at discerning expressions, rather than worse at it.
We already have.
Hotsuin and his men had mental blockers that fogged their mind, making it hard for Amu to get a clear read on them. Of course, Hotsuin's social skills and his own ability to read emotions are equally as stunted as Amu's apparently are here, so it's not like that encounter was a particularly uneven social battleground (not that Amu stayed awake long enough to social answers to half the questions we planned on asking - like whether any other supernatural agencies existed, namely the Shadow Operatives which I was hoping to get a namedrop of from him).
Quest Amu is bad at face reading for the same reason people who can hear don't usually have great lip-reading skills. Instead of using the more reliable data source to confirm the results of the less reliable data source, she just doesn't pay much attention to the less reliable data source.
- Location
- Laniakea
Because people don't bother looking at lip movements. But Amu does look at people's faces.
For her psionics to cripple her in that way would mean she doesn't look at people's faces at all in the way most people don't look at lip movements at all.
And if this was the case, Amu should also be terrible at remembering people's faces in general, on account of never bothering to look at them. She'd be using "mind-feel" to recognize everyone she met.
..... @Baughn - Tell me quest-Amu doesn't actually do that too.
Being fair, in canon Shugo Chara, most of Seiyo does not actually have psychic powers or read minds, if you did have that kind of power you'd probably be a Guardian and there's only so many of them at the school. Well, unless you're Tsukasa.
Incorrect. Human memory is based on associations, however one needs to first make those associations, repeatedly at that, in order to learn things like facial expressions.
And Amu has learned facial expressions, she knows what tears mean, what a smile means, what a glare means.
However, human expression and body language is not a puddle, it is an ocean, and Amu's method of navigating the waters is not physical expressions but rather psychic ones.
As was aptly put, she's covering her ears and trying to figure out what someone is saying by reading their lips with nearly no prior experience.
Also furthermore, you say that people don't bother looking at lip movements, but still look at their faces, which includes their lips. If Amu primarily uses psionics to read people and should know facial expressions by association of just looking at them then you should be able to lip read by watching people's faces enough.
- Location
- Laniakea
People look at lips, but not the movement which is what is necessary to actually lip-read.
Amu doesn't just "look at faces and not the expression", she actually pays attention to expressions - and I'm not just saying so out of nowhere, you can go and count how many times the description of a person's expression has been provided in these chapters yourself.
You'd have to argue that she both pays attention to expressions, but simply never chose or thought to associate them with whatever psionic read she gets off them.
And my point is, there is an argument to be made that such association should have a decent chance of happening naturally. After all, there would be a recognizable pattern between expressions and psionically-read emotions and human brains tend to be good at picking up patterns.
Well, I guess Amu's not confirmed to be fully human and her brain might not be either, but that's a whole other can of worms.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Uhhh... Hey, look at those nifty mist-animals! They sure look interesting. Do you think the carpet is nutritious?
But seriously though, Amu knows what a smile means. She knows how tears work. She'd recognise anger, or sadness, or a lot of other emotions. She just hasn't learnt to recognise fake smiles, because-- how would she? How often do those happen, that she'd realise it by sheer exposure? That sort of thing typically does require some more deliberate training if you want to be good at it, and none of Amu's friends really do it in the first place.
Utau might have, but Utau is a projective empath. It would be really, really hard to detach herself from the psionic picture, if she even tried.
Utau's emotions are visible to... everyone. You don't even need to be psychic.
There are only four guardian positions, barring exceptional cases like Amu, but "every kid has an egg in their soul".
Which, while true, does not mean that everyone's a mind-controller, a powerful empath, or anything of the sort. In this case however I need to point you at future chapters. I will admit that Seiyo here has a higher concentration of actually functional psionics than it would have had in any other Shugo Chara-centric story; there's a reason for that.
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Another way of looking at it is, is that she uses expressions for broad strokes and then uses her psychics to fill in the details. Thus why she can recognize the broad strokes with out it, but not if say it is a fake or a stained expression. In which case, she never learnt to look for the smaller details and associated that via psionics instead.
It's kind of the same thing with lip reading, it isn't that people don't look at the movement of the mouth at all. It would look unnatural if the movements didn't some what match what was being said. An issue dubbers encounter when translating a movie between languages. Instead as such, it's that people don't pay attention to the fine mouth movements so they can try and identify exactly what is being said.
- Location
- Laniakea
Unless you're suggesting that all the facial expressions on other people ever described in all of Amu's PoV chapters (which are most of them) were actually imagined up by her and she was not actually looking those characters' faces, just thinking she was...... she pays attention.
But OK, let's just say Amu simply failed her association rolls when her psychic powers came in and never made connection between them and any of her psionic reads. Why not.
I was considering the idea that Seiyo had links to Manticore, as an institution that also engineered psychics - but the only thing I could conclude was that if there was a connection, it couldn't be direct. Tsukasa could maybe be part of both groups, but we know that Manticore involves "training sessions", drugs and armed men. Seiyo, meanwhile, takes a far more organic approach if Amu's experience is any indication.
If it's the case that any of the people in charge of Seiyo are also involved in Manticore, they're keeping a distinct degree of separation between both projects.
But OK, let's just say Amu simply failed her association rolls when her psychic powers came in and never made connection between them and any of her psionic reads. Why not.
Yeah, I gathered, that's why I specified "canon Shugo Chara". Since the Chara system is an artificial construct here, things obviously don't work the same way.
I was considering the idea that Seiyo had links to Manticore, as an institution that also engineered psychics - but the only thing I could conclude was that if there was a connection, it couldn't be direct. Tsukasa could maybe be part of both groups, but we know that Manticore involves "training sessions", drugs and armed men. Seiyo, meanwhile, takes a far more organic approach if Amu's experience is any indication.
If it's the case that any of the people in charge of Seiyo are also involved in Manticore, they're keeping a distinct degree of separation between both projects.
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