Better remember this for the million and one questions we need to ask Lulu soon.........
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Laniakea
If anybody, we should be asking Ami herself. But we won't be able to ask anyone, unless Amu actually realizes it is possible for people to absorb shadows at all.
Damn it.
Ami is a ticking timebomb. I suspect she's already absorbed this thing at the minimum and probably others besides. It would explain where the blonde hair, rabbit plushies and her all her knowledge about stuff like Illusion came from, despite having no ranks in Occult. And also why she has a beefier Psionic Skill statsheet than Amu - she's jacked up on Shadows.
She's likely already highly unstable, except nobody has noticed yet except maybe for Micchan who spends the most time with her and can read her mind. With only that single dot in Integrity and habit of eating Shadows, she's highly susceptible to being compromised by coming into contact with the wrong one (more than she already is, at least). In fact, it's probably only a matter of time.
Urgh.
Maybe Amu will finally get a clue once she sees how Ami reacts to the whole cognitive domain upon her arrival.
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Idk what the difference between a Shadow and a Demon, but Amu already knows it is possible to "summon" Demons if desperate enough, and to crib off their notes in the meantime - is the cognitive leap that big between the two concepts (especially given what's going on rn)?
(Also, Pistachio, don't forget to vote?)
- Location
- Laniakea
Even in SMT canon, the difference is somewhat blurry and difficult to pin down. Persona 1 and 2 actually called the regular enemies "demons" too, the term "Shadow" was only used in reference to human Shadow Selves. It was from Persona 3 onwards when they started calling the regular non-human enemies "Shadows" as well.
In mainline SMT games (outside Persona), they're never called "Shadows" - they're always called "demons" and come from a dimension called the Expanse or Makai.
So my personal rule is that I call them "demons" if they come from Makai/Expanse. And I call them "Shadows" if they come from the cognitive world or Sea of Souls.
I still have no idea whether what Amu summoned came from Makai or came from the Sea of Souls. With the context we had, it could have been either.
On one hand, at the time, the "reality break" the Strixes flooded in from probably led to Makai/Expanse and Amu was close to that weakspot and could have gotten something else to step through. Plus, the thing she summoned also thought Suu was a "demon". On the other hand, the "summoning" was done ostensibly by reaching into the Sea of Souls, so it could also have been there that she drew it from (if you assume she didn't also go beyond it during that time).
I'm inclined towards thinking it was a "demon" from Makai, just because it thought Suu was a demon. I'm not sure that a Shadow would have used that term. Not unless Charas actually are partially made out of demons from Makai, in addition to being made from the same stuff as Personas as we've just been told they are.
Although I guess there's also the possibility that they are the exact same thing in this quest and that Makai/Expanse is the exact same place as the Sea of Souls. But what vague recollections I have of the world-building done in the previous version of the quest says they were separate places back then.
I'm still uncertain which way is the best to go.
Eating the Shadow opens up a route for Amu to realize what Ami's been doing. But I am also fairly certain that it's going to be bad for her health.
Meanwhile, not eating the Shadow gives Amu some moral standing to tell Ami to also refrain from doing it. But then it's a gamble as to whether Amu will realize she needs to say that, as she won't know it's a possible thing to do. In that route, Amu finding out will hinge on Ami actually trying to eat some Shadows herself right in front of their faces once she arrives.
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Fair enough, the thing that tipped my scales is the mention that Amu is already not fully holding her mind together - rather not do a risky action on less than full (mental) HP equivalent, as much as I'd like to find out the consequences of such actions in a relatively safe time (compared to the Apocalypse) and have the possibility of said actions cemented in IC.
Well, "no" dovetails narratively pretty nicely with waiting for our Dreamwalking experts to arrive in the meanwhile; after which we can attempt to actually get more context and/or ask Ami more questions?
Technically, we don't know that Amu's idea will end in Amu eating the Shadow/giving the Shadow rent in Amu's head - any other possibilities given the update and what we know OOC of Shadows?
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- Location
- Laniakea
We got told by the QM that Utau is feeling something from Auroral Contemplations:
That means whatever choice Amu makes will have an impact on the narrative. It's an "important point of divergence". There's not going to be an interrupt to back out if Amu decides to go ahead with what she does. Ami and Hikaru won't suddenly arrive to make the Shadow run away before Amu completes her action.
We've also been told that the Overgrowth v Integrity rolls were for Amu learning a new "power stunt".
So all things point towards "Eating Shadows" being the "power stunt". Not exactly a Chara Transform, but.... heck if it won't "transform" her in some manner anyway. Not necessarily in a way that will be reversible, unlike a Chara Transform.
From a strictly gameplay perspective, this looks like a free opportunity to learn a new skill called "Eat Shadows".
But it's not actually free, because Auroral Contemplations says it will have narrative consequences.
And there's just no way of knowing what those consequences are right now or whether we would like them.
That's also what is making it so hard for me to know what to vote for.
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I was more talking about whether "Repair/Pacify Shadow" or variants could be a possibility given the update, but fair enough with what you have said here.
(I wonder what "story that has been written before" is going on rn?)
- Location
- Laniakea
For this particular vote? If it's possible at all, I think it would require a very creative write-in. Since the roll was meant to be for "learning a power stunt", I'm fairly certain the two default choices are intended to basically be "learn" or "not learn". And the skill to learn is almost certainly "Eat Shadows".
"Trust Me" will learn it, "Amu, stop" will decide to not learn it.
I don't get the sense that there are any alternate skills on the table to pick up. If there are, you'd need someone else to point them out, right now nothing else is sticking out to me in that regard.
I tried to think about an option to fix it using Su, but that died pretty fast. Got made clear that any course of action that involves any resource apart from Amu's base (Shadow) self won't fly in this situation.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
You can try calling up Su. Since Amu has a bad feeling about that, she can make an attempt at hiding it. I'll roll Mind Control + Integrity + Wits at difficulty 4; if you succeed, it won't attack.
To be a bit more precise here, she got the Chara shortly after switching to her new 'psychic' school. And it's certainly possible this is just a coincidence, but probably it wasn't really. Either she got invited in that time frame because of her potential, or the school helped accelerate the process in some kind of way.
Considering this kind of overgrowth is probably normally not possible nearly so easily. One could also speculate it's a side effect of coming nearer to the end.
Though one could also from Teddy statement speculate that perhaps Shadows are less separate in young children, who do tend to be more true to themselves after all.
Well there are lots of speculations possible as such, as you also realize. In the end the easiest is probably to conclude that the world nearing some kind of breaking point is perhaps in some part contributing to it all. The story does start with saying that the ever increasing population is driving things to a breaking point, specifically: 'Physics is unraveling like a poorly knitted scarf, yanked apart by the collective psychic weight of eight billion souls.'
So things previously not possible are now possible and likely becoming more common by the month. Speculatively because there are now so many humans that Kagutsuchi is having trouble keeping them all properly in the shape it thinks they should be in.
Wow. Uhh, might want to slow down a bit Mr. Tinfoil. Your posts are amazing, but you tend to get to the point of making guesses based off of other guesses, which isn't great.
I don't know about Ami, you might even be poking Baughn into thinking about the answers now but I also wouldn't be surprised if he's already thought this out.
I don't think (and this is very much something I don't know) Ami is a Shadow-self.
Shadow-selves like Amu are by all appearances very rare. And in order for a shadow-self to form you need the original Persona and Shadow to have torn each other apart, cause that's what happens/how it happens. Teddy formed out of a Shadow wholesale, Amu was originally a person, so something must have happened that tore her apart to the point her shadow, or part of her shadow, was the only thing left.
Ami might very well be meeting Shadows in her dreams, but we already know she Dream-Crafts, almost like Raksha come to think of it, creating things in the Dream and bringing them into reality. She might very well have just made dream companions.
I don't know about Ami, you might even be poking Baughn into thinking about the answers now but I also wouldn't be surprised if he's already thought this out.
I don't think (and this is very much something I don't know) Ami is a Shadow-self.
Shadow-selves like Amu are by all appearances very rare. And in order for a shadow-self to form you need the original Persona and Shadow to have torn each other apart, cause that's what happens/how it happens. Teddy formed out of a Shadow wholesale, Amu was originally a person, so something must have happened that tore her apart to the point her shadow, or part of her shadow, was the only thing left.
Ami might very well be meeting Shadows in her dreams, but we already know she Dream-Crafts, almost like Raksha come to think of it, creating things in the Dream and bringing them into reality. She might very well have just made dream companions.
- Location
- Laniakea
I'd be more inclined to believe that if Ami didn't also have the blazing bright yellow Shadow eyes.
There's only 2 kinds of beings that have those kinds of eyes in Persona.
One are Velvet Room Attendants.
The other are Shadows.
EDIT: And they are actually confirmed to be "Shadow yellow", not just a yellow that could be Shadow-yellow.
EDIT 2:
Now THIS is getting into rampant speculation, but if I had to take a guess as at what else Ami might possibly have eaten... this thing. Would certainly explain the blue dress.
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- Location
- Laniakea
Yeah, about that.
Paranoid old me finds it extremely suspicious that Amu just happened to conveniently have amnesia that one time when she followed Ami into Dreamwalking and couldn't remember what actually happened during that little outing.
About that...
I'm not very familiar with Persona, but the impression I get is that Shadows can't normally be described as "friendly" at all, and you certainly wouldn't expect to meet enough friendly Shadows to start comparing them on friendliness. So I'm going to take this as confirmation that Ami is also "a Shadow" in the same sense that Amu is.
- Location
- Laniakea
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
<Amu> Bwuh?
<Amu> I understood some of those words.
- Location
- Laniakea
She thinks of the Shadow as "fragments". So any sort of container to store fragments, that she can hold them in and take them out of again. Doesn't necessarily have to be a book.
....Other than herself, I mean. As that appears to be the default way she'd try to "store" it.
I mean, I don't expect the odds to be high given what their stat sheets are. But I have to throw the question out there anyway.
....Other than herself, I mean. As that appears to be the default way she'd try to "store" it.
I mean, I don't expect the odds to be high given what their stat sheets are. But I have to throw the question out there anyway.
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While being suspicious can at times be helpful, in this case I think the far larger likelihood is because she failed her overgrowth roll at the time for that. Which had a similar effect on her as what it did to her this time.
In that sense failing those rolls can be pretty painful, so I guess it's just as well we're boosting integrity for Amu.
- Location
- Laniakea
You realize that if you want to use this Overgrowth event as being representative of what happened to Amu when she Dreamwalked last time..... that actually implies Amu might already have absorbed a Shadow while "drunk" the last time she went Dreamwalking and simply doesn't remember doing it.
We've been told that Ami has likewise "failed" her own Overgrowth v Integrity rolls (in that Overgrowth beat Integrity) several times. So if any of those happened while she was Dreamwalking in the vicinity of Shadows - bearing in mind Dreamwalking is the one Psionic activity we know she does regularly - and you take this current event as a "similar" representative of what would happen to Ami.....
Well, yeah. I don't need to finish that sentence.
But I will also point out a tidbit about Ami the QM posted some time ago that was niggling my mind up until now:
This was in context of being compared to Micchan, a mind reader who according to her character sheet has a known penchant for getting into trouble. But between them, it's Ami who is supposedly the boss in the relationship and has done worse things?
I was struggling to think of how that could be the case. Until now.
I kind of just took that as Micchan being less of a troublemaker then Ami. I don't think one needs to assume anything very large to resolve that.
That's kind of taking everything that happened in the event to some how be representative, rather then the rather clear parallel of Amu getting kind of drunk like from missing a roll while learning a skill last time. Which is my point, we already have a clear evidence point of missing a roll leading to that effect now. There is as such not any need for anything more as an explanation, everything already fits with just that rather clear factual bit.
- Location
- Laniakea
This would be more convincing, if we actually knew everything that really happened the last time.
But we don't. We only have Ami's word for it that the only things that happened was her getting drunk and fighting a tree and it is very likely Ami omitted many details, since something about the incident was funny enough to make Ami amused for the whole day and Amu even noted that her sister had an "evil streak", implying they both knew Ami was keeping the most amusing parts to herself.
Just for the record, I don't actually think Amu absorbed anything at that time. But then, she also had Ami to bail her out that time. Ami would not have had anyone else to bail her out during her accidents.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yep, though "potential to have a Persona" and "ability to use one, with/without the evoker" are very much not the same thing. The Evokers in Persona 3 were intimately tied to that plot, and wouldn't be nearly as helpful in other circumstances.
For what it's worth: Persona 3/4 are canon here, because I've played them. 5 I bailed out of relatively early; I dislike it for the same reason I don't like modern crime series, no matter how well made. Doesn't mean I might not steal ideas (mostly if someone brings them up), but it isn't canon; you can't assume any specific event from 5 has happened in this timeline.
Ditto 1/2, though mostly because I have trouble with low-quality graphics and I wasn't into Persona back when they were new. I do have a vague idea of their plot.
Amu's birthday is in September. She was nine years old when she started fourth grade, and she was still nine in chapter one. We know this because it mentioned Ami's age, and she's three years old at the time. They share the same birthday.
The fandom wiki mixes up ages a lot, as unfortunately the western adaptation messed with the characters' ages to make the relationship between Ikuto and Amu look more palatable. The actual resolution there is part "He was messing with her, you dummies" and part "Ikuto genuinely is that immature", though as it stands, the author took the resolution of writing him out of the story.
He's still missing in our timeline.
I'm willing to state for the record that Ami has not eaten anything that would make a god come after her with homicidal intent.
That's also my take on it. There's the collective unconscious, and then there's Makai; they're fundamentally separate locations running on different physics entirely. Which doesn't prevent crossover, conceptual or literal, but it does mean a shadow and a demon of the same name are almost certainly different entities entirely.
That said, not everyone inside the story follows this naming scheme.
Does Alice strike you as someone who'd take mischievous fun in watching her older sister stumble around like a drunken sailor, then plot how to hold it over her outside their dreams?
The write-in option is there for a reason. The earlier idea was too detailed for Amu to know what to do with it (or me, honestly), but a zoomed-out version like Nero200's write-in would have a better chance.
Okay. Where are we at?
Seems like it's going places. I'll close this tomorrow evening. And remember, vote for the story you want to read.
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I know this is a little bit of an old post now, buuuut... Micchan is based on Misaki Shokuhou from A Certain Magical Index, who canonically has yellow, starry eyes. I think Baughn's AI art model just can't properly reproduce the stars in the eyes, but I don't think that it's representative of her being a Shadow self, like Amu and Ami.