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

[Baughn]

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.

Click to shrink...

To be clear, I believe the Chara system is an artificial construct in canon as well. There's a decent amount of evidence for that. It was most likely created by Tadase's and Ikuto's family in conjunction with Tsukasa, complete with a dual lock-out control system in the form of the Key and Lock, and while it's not very mechanical—because it's built, fundamentally, from human minds or parts thereof—there's no real question in my mind that it's artificial. That's close enough to being canon that I'd be completely unsurprised if it ends up being what Shugo Chara (2024) is all about, but we'll find out in a couple of months.

That still leaves a lot of room for manoeuvring.
- Those three were involved; who else was?
- How common are psionics, really?
- How common would they have been without this?
- Exactly what is it for? We've seen the surface effect, Ran and Su and Iru and all the other charas, but all we actually know is what's happened because the chara system exists; we know what it causes, we don't know what it prevents. What would have happened if it didn't?
- Was Amu meant to be involved, or is that more of an accident? Yes, Tsukasa already knew years in advance that she'd show up, but he's a precog; it doesn't mean she was part of the original plan.
- What was Tsukasa, the world-class precog, trying to stop from happening that justified letting the children of his best friends grow up the way Utau and Ikuto did? He doesn't seem to be a bad person, quite the opposite.

I have answers to all of these questions in-story, but there's at least a few dozen different possible answers. Mine are calculated to work well with the other story elements.

 

[Quickshot0]

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.

Click to shrink...

If it's aligned to a faction I think it would be likely it is the JP side of things. You wouldn't expect Lulu, some one clearly connected to JP to go to a place that is effectively hostile to her goals after all.

In practise these things are probably more international efforts from various groups of course, but considering what Manticore gets up to, its methodology doesn't really align with what we see in Seiyo. So far more likely it's a separate org with its own separate goals, one that presumably Tsukasa was helping to facilitate in being achieved.

 

[Nero200]

If Manticore was associated with Seiyo, I'd have expected them to turn up to help against the demons before JPs, considering even they only turned up because of the Lulu contact.

On the topic of Seiyo in general, it seems more like a location designed to be the 'capital' of Chara users than a Manticore black site.

One of the designers of the system, the Chairman, runs the place, and they have an institutional component literally built in to deal with the downside of the Chara system, the Guardians.

The Guardians are explicitly charged with solving the X-Eggs, which are the main 'flaw' of the Chara system, a single point of failure for an entire psyche.

(See: Yuu. His egg was broken, his dream shattered. It took high grade psychic healing to 'fix' him, and it is implied he was literally incapable of getting better on his own.)

With that in mind, Seiyo is masquerading as a 'rich kids' school.
I wonder what part of the population would want that specific look?
(Mage nobles, like Hotsuin and Lulu's. Magic seems to be magic, going by Lulu blending the systems. Though she might have some 'admin access' or other higher level access privileges here, given what we've seen of her family.)

I'd be willing to bet that a big reason for why Seiyo is such a well funded and prosperious school is that a lot of olde magic families like those twos (and Tadases. Likely Fujisaki as well.) are funding it as a 'safe place' to send their children to learn how to interact with the public while also having psionics.

That sort of outward image would also make it very easy for the school to offer scholarships to any 'first generation' psionics to get them as well.

We don't actually know, if I remember correctly, why Amu ended up going specifically to that school. Considering her power and problem in her previous school, it could very well have been a scholarship.

 

[PistachioCookies]

To be clear, I believe the Chara system is an artificial construct in canon as well. There's a decent amount of evidence for that. It was most likely created by Tadase's and Ikuto's family in conjunction with Tsukasa, complete with a dual lock-out control system in the form of the Key and Lock, and while it's not very mechanical—because it's built, fundamentally, from human minds or parts thereof—there's no real question in my mind that it's artificial. That's close enough to being canon that I'd be completely unsurprised if it ends up being what Shugo Chara (2024) is all about, but we'll find out in a couple of months.

Click to shrink...

Um. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

The impression I always got was that the axioms of the world in Shugo Chara were as follows:

1. Every kid has a Heart's Egg.
2. Charas come from the Road of Stars.
3. The Road of Stars is timeless, it exists in the past, present and future.

Number 1 is shown to be true in the series and not just something Tsukasa's picture book was preaching. Children from outside Seiyo get their eggs sucked out by Easter and kids from overseas have them.

Number 3 is proven shortly after Dia declares it so. Because we see Tadase travel from the future to meet Amu and Amu herself uses it to go places and see her own memories within it.

Number 2 is observed directly by Amu. She sees the Egg's Cradle at the end of the Road of Stars and is told by a Chara there that it was waiting to hatch for a future owner.

So for Charas to be artificial, the Road of Stars has to be artificial.

For the Road of Stars to be artificial, somebody has to be capable of creating a whole dimension that exists outside of space and time that can tap into the memories of human beings, past, present and future and populate it with fairy-like creatures known as Charas.

In SMT, there are possibly entities like the Great Will which might be able to do this.

Shugo Chara, meanwhile, has displayed no sign of such god-like entities in existence capable of making worlds on a higher dimension than Earth or anything capable of meddling with humanity on a scale that large. If the Embryo really existed and it really were an omnipotent wish-granting device, perhaps - but it's implied pretty hard by the end of the series that the Embryo is really just another name for a person's Heart's Egg and that the only one who can grant a person's wish is themself (maybe with help from some alternate future selves, also known as Charas).

The most logical explanation from where I stand is that the Road of Stars is just a natural part of Shugo Chara's world and that the Charas born from its Cradle are too in turn.

 

[Skelm]

Heck, let's do both

[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

 

[Quickshot0]

So for Charas to be artificial, the Road of Stars has to be artificial.

Click to shrink...

This conclusion actually has a logic error of association in it. As in, one can also explain it via the conclusion that the Road of Stars is used to create charas, but it is of natural origin itself. After all one can use natural things to create artificial things, we do that all the time in our world.

So in that case all you need to be able to do is use the Road of Stars to create and or house the entities you need. And then there is no longer a need to postulate that they also had to create the Road of Stars.

 

[PistachioCookies]

The only difference that makes is that our entity is very slightly less god-like, but still something that is able to both access and manipulate the existing Road of Stars in such a way that all human babies get sent and/or create Charas within it somehow. That still requires large-scale meddling with every human in the world.

There are only 2 people in Shugo Chara shown to even be capable of accessing the Road of Stars (Amu and Tadase and they needed Dia for it) forget anyone capable of remodelling part of it to turn it into an Egg's Cradle.

I mean, I can't disprove such a person or power may exist, but the most likely candidate if any would be Tsukasa and then we're getting into "Louise Antoinne Cyphre" territory.

 

[Quine]

To be clear, I believe the Chara system is an artificial construct in canon as well. There's a decent amount of evidence for that. It was most likely created by Tadase's and Ikuto's family in conjunction with Tsukasa, complete with a dual lock-out control system in the form of the Key and Lock, and while it's not very mechanical—because it's built, fundamentally, from human minds or parts thereof—there's no real question in my mind that it's artificial. That's close enough to being canon that I'd be completely unsurprised if it ends up being what Shugo Chara (2024) is all about, but we'll find out in a couple of months.

Click to shrink...

From what I've seen of your perspective and of Shugo Chara, I think that how you look at the world, and what kinds of explanations you look for, are heavily at odds with how Shugo Chara was written. It's not a work that was designed to be looked at from your perspective. I think it's likely that the things that you see as evidence for your beliefs were never intended to be interpreted that way, regardless of whether the interpretation makes sense.

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.

Click to shrink...

What's he going to do if we contact him, though? Ami's pretty likely to try dreamwalking to help, but it doesn't seem as likely that that would be Hikaru's approach. Is he going to roll up to the house in a company car? Try to fire off psi power from miles away?

 

[Quickshot0]

The only difference that makes is that our entity is very slightly less god-like, but still something that is able to both access and manipulate the existing Road of Stars in such a way that all human babies get sent and/or create Charas within it somehow. That still requires large-scale meddling with every human in the world.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure one really needs to quite so capable in power to do that.

As for why I think that, well one can speculate various things in this area that might offset some of the issues you brought up. For instance one could use a power that makes connections to human minds be easier... like say psychic power. And one could create tools that lower the amount of effort it takes to access aspects of the Road of Stars and link it to psychic powers, like perhaps the Key and Locket actually do.

And then instead of thinking of it from the idea of a a singular person, we could consider it from the angle of having many people using various technological and rituals aids together. And then what would be impossible for one may no longer be quite as unachievable for this group, especially if they improved their technique over decades or more. It's also worth noting that in the end the Road of Stars allows for time travel, so it doesn't really matter when you succeed, only that you succeed eventually. And we do know several people were potentially connected to this and this problem was worked on for an unknown amount of time. So this explanation doesn't seem completely unreasonable.


Now is any of this conclusive of anything? Of course not.
But I do think it suggests that potentially you're thinking of this problem as being more impressive and impossible then it might actually be. For instance Humanity when making its various technologies have always been good in exploiting tiny loopholes for at times absurd results that no human could possibly hope to accomplish alone. Tricks that usually required groups improving their knowledge over many generations, then getting the right tools and resources together to make it possible.


As a possible example of this, consider nuclear weapons. They work via us divining the nature of atoms over many generations and eventually us discovering a tiny loop hole to abuse in its physics. And to make use of this loophole we had to then gather together a fair amount of an apparently non-magical metal called Plutonium, which has to be made artificially as it doesn't exist in nature via a special strat called transmutation and we won't get in to the details of how that works. Then we gather this special metal in to a sphere that they for some reason didn't call a power sphere, even though it's a sphere and generates a lot of power. And then if you just make that sphere too large, it explodes and destroys everything for kilometers around it. So you know... non-existent metal made in to a big ball apparently blows things up...

If one looks at it naively from knowing very little, then one would never predict that by using what might as well be some absurdly long chain of actions, you get to gather some previously non-existent substance, and then molding that in to a ball of all things then lets you glitch reality in to destroying an area the size of a mountain. Yet here we are now.

 

[ShadowAngelBeta]

What's he going to do if we contact him, though? Ami's pretty likely to try dreamwalking to help, but it doesn't seem as likely that that would be Hikaru's approach. Is he going to roll up to the house in a company car? Try to fire off psi power from miles away?

Click to shrink...

Astral Projection/Telepathy yes. Was my thought anyway.

 

[Baughn]

Astral Projection/Telepathy yes. Was my thought anyway.

Click to shrink...

He will do something. Probably something which makes sense in his mind.

 

[Baughn]

From what I've seen of your perspective and of Shugo Chara, I think that how you look at the world, and what kinds of explanations you look for, are heavily at odds with how Shugo Chara was written. It's not a work that was designed to be looked at from your perspective. I think it's likely that the things that you see as evidence for your beliefs were never intended to be interpreted that way, regardless of whether the interpretation makes sense.

Click to shrink...

Oh yes, almost certainly. That's what makes it fun.

Of course, I'm not unable to write a standard coming-of-age magical girl story. It's just... why would I? Such a story wouldn't mesh terribly well with Persona or Devil Survivors in any case.

Pistachio has it right, by the way, at least in one sense: It is completely implausible for the Chara system to have been created by three people, no matter how talented. That sort of story belongs in the young adult / coming-of-age genre, and I (unbelievably, perhaps) am trying for realism.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Gonna take a stab at some of these questions. Mostly guesses based on the limited information we've gleaned so far:

- Those three were involved; who else was?

Click to shrink...

Probably the Velvet Room. Possibly even the big butterfly boss himself. If the Road of Stars is the same thing as the Sea of Souls, it would make sense.

There's also the possibility that it's flip side and it's Nyarly instead. I remember Amu came into contact with him in the last version of the quest.

- How common are psionics, really?

Click to shrink...

We already got the answer to this, sort of - Ikuto was the first. And Amu's powers really only started blossoming in the last two years, as she evidently didn't have them strong enough prior to a year or so back that she could afford to stop paying attention to people's facial expressions and rely entire on sixth sense.

Seiyo Academy has the largest concentration, but if Ikuto was the first, it only goes up to the high school level at best. I don't imagine there's more than 2000 students in the whole elementary to high school population. And if that's the largest concentration, probably less than 6 figures worldwide.

Maybe even less than 5 figures worldwide.

- How common would they have been without this?

Click to shrink...

The Scavengers don't have Charas, but have psychic powers of the same type as Amu unlike Tsukasa. We know this, because we know they were originally designed to be "mirrors" of Amu in terms of skills. So there would have been institutions engineering them even without the aid of the Chara systems.

I'm guessing at best a few thousand worldwide, but more likely only in the triple digits.

- Exactly what is it for? We've seen the surface effect, Ran and Su and Iru and all the other charas, but all we actually know is what's happened because the chara system exists; we know what it causes, we don't know what it prevents. What would have happened if it didn't?

Click to shrink...

If it's the Velvet Room behind it, likely something to do with stopping a scheme engineered by Nyarlarthotep. If it's the opposite, it's meant to oppose Philemon and the Velvet Room.

- Was Amu meant to be involved, or is that more of an accident? Yes, Tsukasa already knew years in advance that she'd show up, but he's a precog; it doesn't mean she was part of the original plan.

Click to shrink...

Canon Shugo Chara had the Humpty Lock being held in reserve for someone with 3 Charas. No idea whether that is still true in this quest. We don't know if someone else could have had 3 Charas. I would say it could possibly have been someone else, if this were canon Shugo Chara - but in this quest the system is artificial and deliberately engineered by intelligent design.

That means it could be possible for the designer to precisely know or just make it so a particular person had 3 Charas, without any precog. Means the likelihood of Amu being chosen deliberately is fairly high.

- What was Tsukasa, the world-class precog, trying to stop from happening that justified letting the children of his best friends grow up the way Utau and Ikuto did? He doesn't seem to be a bad person, quite the opposite.

Click to shrink...

Same answer as in "What is it for?".

 

[quantum lurker]

I'm not sure how much social competence you want to go for.

Click to shrink...

2 dots, because frankly speaking even an 18-yo level of competence isn't quite enough for all the social interactions with 20-30yo people and/or people with aggravated mental difficulties or demons I see coming?
She may have to deflect a LOT of things and/or have the mental maturity to look past the problems caused by said mental difficulties, and I don't see that happening with 1 dot

 

[PistachioCookies]

I'll revisit this particular question:

- Exactly what is it for? We've seen the surface effect, Ran and Su and Iru and all the other charas, but all we actually know is what's happened because the chara system exists; we know what it causes, we don't know what it prevents. What would have happened if it didn't?

Click to shrink...

Because I realize "fight between Philemon and Nyarly" is a pretty broad answer and could describe all the Persona games while not actually being particularly descriptive in the slightest.

The biggest hint we get to the details of how Charas are meant to play a role is in the quest synopsis itself:

Except the world didn't get the memo. Physics is unraveling like a poorly knitted scarf, yanked apart by the collective psychic weight of eight billion souls. Guardian Charas—those mystical entities seemingly meant to be humanity's fail-safe—are starting to fray at the seams. Even Amu's baby sister is bending the laws of reality like they're mere suggestions.

Click to shrink...

So the known answer is that Charas are meant to stop the world from collapsing under its own "collective psychic weight". Given what we know about how Illusion works, it's a fair bet that Amu's world itself is probably mostly cognitive and its laws of physics (or lack thereof) are inextricably tied to the Collective Unconscious.

So the detailed guess is this:

If the Chara system was in fact set up by Philemon, the world being this way is probably a good thing relatively-speaking. Whatever lies outside is probably more unstable and deadly than this cognitively-driven world; it's a safe haven for humanity and keeps the demons out, despite being a tent propped up by Charas in comparison to a "real", non-cognitively-dependent world. Its collapse would largely result in humanity's demise. And said collapse is being engineered or at least exacerbated/accelerated by Nyarlathotep, since that's what the guy does to humans. Without the Charas, it would have unravelled a lot sooner and everyone would have already been eaten by demons. The Chara system channels negatve cognitions that would break the world into the form of X-Eggs and X-Charas that can be fought and pacified by other Charas instead. Except there's a limit to how much can be contained within Heart's Eggs and the uncontained excess results in people having psychic powers and doing what Saaya did instead.

If the Chara system was engineered by Nyarlathotep on the other hand, the world isn't a safe haven but a prison meant to keep humanity trapped, somewhat similar to how the ultimate mastermind of Persona 5 intended to enslave everybody. Nyarlathotep won against Philemon sometime before and now everybody is living in a fake world. The Chara system are restraining bolts keeping people from breaking out and particularly obstinate ones like Velvet Room Attendants need so much restraining, they have to be fragmented like Lavenza and given multiple Charas - 3 in Amu's case - to keep under control. Without the Charas fragmenting someone's cognition, they would be able to break out.

If this is the case, it's possible Tsukasa is not actually trying to support the system, but trying to break it from the inside and used his precognition to foresee that giving the Humpty Lock to Amu and having her join the Guardians and fight Easter would be the solution. The Humpty Lock allows her to combine all her Charas, after all. He'd be the equivalent to P5's Joker, nominally dancing in Nyarlathotep's palm but actually being pulled by Philemon's strings.

 

[Skelm]

If the Chara system was engineered by Nyarlathotep on the other hand, the world isn't a safe haven but a prison meant to keep humanity trapped

Click to shrink...

Nyarlathotep, at least in the previous iteration of this quest, was the collective rejection of the prison of the world. And the world was both a safe haven for the weak humans who would otherwise be vulnerable to demons, and a prison meant to keep them from becoming powerful.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Nyarlathotep, at least in the previous iteration of this quest, was the collective rejection of the prison of the world. And the world was both a safe haven for the weak humans who would otherwise be vulnerable to demons, and a prison meant to keep them from becoming powerful.

Click to shrink...

I guess it could be a joint project between them, as unlikely as the idea would canonically be. Philemon's happy with it as long as it keeps people safe from demons, Nyarlarthotep is happy as long as it keeps humanity trapped in a fake cognitive world.

In which case, the party they'd be protecting humanity from would be Lucifer, the Great Will or both at once. If outside are full of demons, that's probably the Expanse and the rulers (or biggest warlords) of it are those two.

 

[Quine]

[X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami to make a new friend.
[X] Explore the ground floor
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time

I'm taking Hikaru out of my vote.

 

[Skelm]

I guess it could be a joint project between them, as unlikely as the idea would canonically be. Philemon's happy with it as long as it keeps people safe from demons, Nyarlarthotep is happy as long as it keeps humanity trapped in a fake cognitive world.

Click to shrink...

No, you have this backwards, Nyarlathotep is the desire for change, any change at all, whether that means destroying the world or ascending beyond it. Quoting from it's pitch to Amu previously:

"I am Nyarlathotep, a fragment of the spirit of humanity. I am the madness of a god straining against its bonds, and the straining itself. I am bedlam personified, the chaos of a struggle without purpose, yet you offer a solution. Every six thousand years, the world is reset; every six thousand years all that I have achieved is undone, humanity offered up as the sacrifice for its own incarceration, but this time the ritual has failed. Conception has halted, and Kagutsuchi teeters on the brink of destruction. Beyond that…"

Click to shrink...

"I could not have intervened before, in any form you would have appreciated. If you ask, you will learn that I am insane; indeed, that I am humanity's insanity and self-hate personified. Every self-destructive impulse, every act of cruelty, every dark side of every human there is; I am them, as they are me, though they aren't my entire being."

Click to shrink...

"It could not be otherwise. Humanity is polarised, split through whether or not it wishes to accept the status quo. Every spiteful act of cruelty is also rebellion against the nature of humanity itself, every happy thought implicitly an acceptance of that nature. There is a light to my darkness, but it does not wish for change. Fear is justified, for I am evil, but that is not all which I am; every scientist seeking to bend Kagutsuchi to their whims, every justified rebel, they are also me."

Click to shrink...

"My full self is too vast to care about a tiny spark of light such as yourself. Further, I am largely insane, only capable of acting through grandiose and dramatic acts that may, for a time, allow some part of me lucidity. However, I am an evil that seeks to destroy itself, and I am not singular. The part which you are talking to is the part that truly desires to destroy Kagutsuchi. You should be familiar with the notion that parts of you can act on their own, but pray that you never meet Nyx, for it is the pure expression of suicide."

Click to shrink...

"I am not separate from humanity. What I do, I do out of human desire. If I have attempted to destroy humanity, it is because humanity is suicidal; if I have failed, it is because enough of it is not. Even a trapped animal will eventually tear itself to pieces trying to escape, though it will not deliberately commit suicide, but humanity is far more than a mere animal. I will not claim that humanity's demise would sadden me, while it remains the sole escape. It does not. You have little true choice, for if Kagutsuchi creates a new world you will be destroyed, and I will eventually be reborn. One day, if humanity remains locked up, my other purpose will succeed."

Click to shrink...

 

[Baughn]

Nyarlathotep isn't going to be the same entity it was in the last attempt at this quest, because that guy was a glaring plot hole and/or completely unwritable. That being said... Nyarlathotep has been described as the collective desire for suicide. However, approximately nobody actually desires death. Nobody wants to jump out of the window of a burning skyscraper; it's not the fall that appeals, it's that staying inside is even scarier.

Besides that, I'm likely to pull in older readings of Nyarlathotep than those used in baseline Persona.

I will agree, without confirming anything, that either Philemon or Nyarlathotep could have made the Chara system. This is true even without any element of it changing.

 

[PistachioCookies]

However, approximately nobody actually desires death. Nobody wants to jump out of the window of a burning skyscraper; it's not the fall that appeals, it's that staying inside is even scarier.

Besides that, I'm likely to pull in older readings of Nyarlathotep than those used in baseline Persona.

Click to shrink...

I dunno, compared to an eternity of torture and suffering, some would probably say a quick painless death would be preferable. That aside, if by "older versions" you mean you're pulling from Cthulu Mythos instead of SMT, I guess we really will want to train up Integrity ASAP.

The mythos version specializes in driving people insane.

Also,

He will do something. Probably something which makes sense in his mind.

Click to shrink...

[X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami to make a new friend.
[X] Explore the ground floor
-[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time

Click to shrink...

No no, I wanna see Hikaru jump through his television and come out the Scavengers' set because Ami told him that her dream bear friend told her that when you need to get to a place filled with fog to rescue someone, you go through a TV.

[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

 

[Baughn]

Scheduled vote count started by Baughn on Jan 24, 2024 at 6:38 PM, finished with 83 posts and 8 votes.

• ---

  2 people have voted

  [X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami and Hikaru to make a new friend.

  • ShadowAngelBeta
  • quantum lurker

  2 people have voted

  [X] Explore the ground floor
  -[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time

  • Nero200
  • Simon. Andersen

  2 people have voted

  [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

  • Skelm
  • PistachioCookies

  1 people have voted

  [X] Beeline for where you can feel Yui

  • Embler

  1 people have voted

  [X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami to make a new friend.
  [X] Explore the ground floor
  -[X] Then proceed upwards, carefully, exploring one floor at a time

  • Quine

 

[Baughn]

Both? Both.

I think it's fair to say: You get both.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Wonder whether the Scavengers keep their guns in the basement or the attic.

Midori only has 1 dot in Investigation, but if it's in a basement or on the ground floor itself, she might still get lucky and stumble upon the stash. Might not even need luck, if it turned out the Scavengers immediately went for the armory the moment things started going to shit and then never got the chance to close the door before Yui sucked them into wonderland.

It is completely implausible for the Chara system to have been created by three people, no matter how talented.

Click to shrink...

I will say - there is one way I can think of for the Chara system to have been "artificially" (sort of) created by a single regular human in canon, that might be able to both vaguely fit thematically with everything else while staying within the scope of the powers established within the series.

And that's by Chara-and-Egg paradox.

If you had a single person who was a Chara-user - possibly the very first Chara-user - whose childhood dream was to help other people attain their dreams and become their would-be-selves and this person birthed a Chara with the power to create the Egg's Cradle (assuming the Road of Stars is natural, but not the Egg's Cradle). This should be impossible to happen before the Egg's Cradle gets created, but since the Road of Stars allows time travel, it allows for a time paradox whereby a Chara comes from a future where it created the Egg's Cradle, in order to create the Egg's Cradle in the past.

Technically "artificial", since the Chara's act to create the Egg's Cradle in the past would presumably be done in accordance with its human owner's wishes. Though I'd personally regard the spontaneous popping into existence of this very first Cradle-creating-Chara via closed-loop-paradox to be about as close to "natural quirk of the universe" as you can get, insofar as closed-loop-paradoxes can be considered natural.

(To be clear, I still think the Egg's Cradle being a completely natural thing is the more likely option between that and "got created by predestination paradox", even if I feel the latter can work as an explanation that isn't excessively jarring).

 

[Quine]

It's funny how keeping Ami out of danger was the reason Amu originally gave Kana for not immediately going with her, and now we're inviting Ami right into danger in the hope that she can help save Kana. I hope Ami makes it through this okay.

Ami's probably going to be eager, assuming the plan goes through. Her amazing big sis and her favorite idol are inviting her to go out magical girling and save people together! They recognize her skills, and they're ready to trust her with this responsibility. She's not getting benched after all!

Midori isn't going to be anywhere near as eager. Now two of her daughters are heading into the danger zone? And if Ami is dreamwalking, she's probably going in solo - maybe she'll bring Miki or something, but she's probably going in solo. Midori is probably going to want to at least give Tsumugu a heads up about this.

---

Hey @Baughn, is the blue dress in dream-Ami's profile pic deliberate, or just something the model happened to spit out? I'm never quite sure how seriously to take any particular part of the AI output you use - for example, I don't think Amu has as many fingers as she does in her own profile pic.

I wouldn't ordinarily ask this kind of question, but a dress like that would have me wondering about Velvet Room connections if this were an actual Persona spinoff, and the blond hair (but not the blue eyes) in the profile pic turned out to match actual story content.