Vote closed
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
Looks like we're eating the fox. Depending on how this goes, and what's been going on with Ami, I might be dropping off.
I think the usual expectation for situations like this is that I'd just quietly ghost the thread, but there are a few reasons I'm not doing that. The first is that I'm a big fan of open and honest communication, and I'd prefer to communicate. The second is that there's some general information about future story direction that could help me decide whether I should stick around to see how things go, or just leave now. The third is that I've been one of the most active participants up to this point - second-most active after Pistachio, by reply count - and it just doesn't quite feel right to end that without a word.
So, here's a post about how I'm feeling about the quest.
Overall, the psi system hasn't really grabbed me. It's extrapolated so far from anything in the source material that I feel it's barely grounded in Shugo Chara at all at this point. The latest development, with eating shadows, especially doesn't feel like something I could see anyone in Shugo Chara doing. (I can see reasons other people might feel otherwise, and you can try to change my mind if you want, but it probably won't get anywhere.) Really, the biggest thing that drew me to the first version of the quest was the charas, and their role in this version has been a lot more marginalized than I would have liked. Miki's still here, but if we'd picked any other boon...
There are, of course, things I like, or I wouldn't be here. Miki's still around, and she's getting her own subplot. I want to see what's going on with Makoto. I want to see how Kana's situation develops. I want to see how Amu's family adapts now that it's all of them dealing with the weirdness together. I won't see any of that if I leave.
The reason things are coming to a head for me now is that I'm worried, not just about what eating this fox will do to Amu right now, but where the overall story direction is going with this. It seems likely at this point that Ami has absorbed, and picked up a significant number of traits from, an insane entity whose signature move is called "Die for Me!". This hasn't stopped her from loving her family, but we only see this world from the perspective of people Ami loves, and even Amu has started to pick up an "evil streak" in Ami's behavior toward her. I don't know how serious the situation is, or how much of this is actually just natural Ami instead of magic BS, or how much familial love and guidance can do about things, but I don't like it.
Between insta-boost dangers and this new shadow eating thing, I'm starting to get the feeling that sacrificing pieces of your identity for power may be more of a core theme for this quest than I like. This is of course very speculative, but the issue is important enough to my enjoyment of the quest that I'm bringing up my speculations early. If anything is going to be a dealbreaker for me, it'll probably be this. (I know chara changes already involve personality changes, and I walked into this quest expecting that an exaltation would try to shove itself into Amu's soul without consent, but things are going beyond that.)
If it turns out that, like, Amu has to turn her personality into 50% "weird monsters I found" to "bulk up" enough for Overgrowth 4 in a relevant timeframe, or if we should expect to eventually find ourselves in situations like "accept a personality-altering insta-boost or Tsumugu dies", then I'd rather know now.
So, @Baughn, I don't know how much you're willing to talk about this kind of stuff in advance, but anything would be appreciated.
I think the usual expectation for situations like this is that I'd just quietly ghost the thread, but there are a few reasons I'm not doing that. The first is that I'm a big fan of open and honest communication, and I'd prefer to communicate. The second is that there's some general information about future story direction that could help me decide whether I should stick around to see how things go, or just leave now. The third is that I've been one of the most active participants up to this point - second-most active after Pistachio, by reply count - and it just doesn't quite feel right to end that without a word.
So, here's a post about how I'm feeling about the quest.
Overall, the psi system hasn't really grabbed me. It's extrapolated so far from anything in the source material that I feel it's barely grounded in Shugo Chara at all at this point. The latest development, with eating shadows, especially doesn't feel like something I could see anyone in Shugo Chara doing. (I can see reasons other people might feel otherwise, and you can try to change my mind if you want, but it probably won't get anywhere.) Really, the biggest thing that drew me to the first version of the quest was the charas, and their role in this version has been a lot more marginalized than I would have liked. Miki's still here, but if we'd picked any other boon...
There are, of course, things I like, or I wouldn't be here. Miki's still around, and she's getting her own subplot. I want to see what's going on with Makoto. I want to see how Kana's situation develops. I want to see how Amu's family adapts now that it's all of them dealing with the weirdness together. I won't see any of that if I leave.
The reason things are coming to a head for me now is that I'm worried, not just about what eating this fox will do to Amu right now, but where the overall story direction is going with this. It seems likely at this point that Ami has absorbed, and picked up a significant number of traits from, an insane entity whose signature move is called "Die for Me!". This hasn't stopped her from loving her family, but we only see this world from the perspective of people Ami loves, and even Amu has started to pick up an "evil streak" in Ami's behavior toward her. I don't know how serious the situation is, or how much of this is actually just natural Ami instead of magic BS, or how much familial love and guidance can do about things, but I don't like it.
Between insta-boost dangers and this new shadow eating thing, I'm starting to get the feeling that sacrificing pieces of your identity for power may be more of a core theme for this quest than I like. This is of course very speculative, but the issue is important enough to my enjoyment of the quest that I'm bringing up my speculations early. If anything is going to be a dealbreaker for me, it'll probably be this. (I know chara changes already involve personality changes, and I walked into this quest expecting that an exaltation would try to shove itself into Amu's soul without consent, but things are going beyond that.)
If it turns out that, like, Amu has to turn her personality into 50% "weird monsters I found" to "bulk up" enough for Overgrowth 4 in a relevant timeframe, or if we should expect to eventually find ourselves in situations like "accept a personality-altering insta-boost or Tsumugu dies", then I'd rather know now.
So, @Baughn, I don't know how much you're willing to talk about this kind of stuff in advance, but anything would be appreciated.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Some of this I simply can't say, even in a spoiler box, because it's information that would change how you interact with the quest. But some of those questions would become clear enough from the next update, and if you're that worried then I might as well fix that. I'd still strongly recommend that people who are not Quine do not read.
That being said...
First of all, Ami did not eat Alice. That is not a thing. If Ami had eaten Alice, then- no, first of all, it'd be the other way around. Ami would not exist. They haven't even met.
Ami's dream-hair is blonde because Ami was blonde until recently, her hair's just darkening with age, as it often does. That was called out earlier, but I guess people forgot. The dress is blue because—um, because it looked good. I don't like to deny Pistachio's speculations when they happen, because it's hard to avoid spoilers—and he's clearly having fun—but they're usually wrong.
Ami has not, in fact, eaten any shadows at all. Nor will she.
She has the evil streak of a seven year old girl who's starting to realise that poking fun at her big sister is fun, actually, and who would like more excuses to do that.
— — —
So, the biggie. I'm okay with telling you this because I've already made it explicit in V1, but that hasn't happened yet in this story. People-who-are-not-Quine: I'm serious, stop reading, you'll regret it later.
Sacrificing pieces of your sanity for power is normal. It's what happens, almost by default, because Makai / (or the Expanse, or Amala, or many other names) is a nasty as hell place where your choice is usually only whether you want to sacrifice yourself piecemeal for power, or sacrifice yourself all at once for someone else's power.
Kagutsuchi's bubbles — the worlds where humanity lives — are the exception. They're gentle places, protected gardens where you can get away with not doing that, and a lot of the mess you're about to run into is caused by Kagutsuchi hitting his limits. But sacrificing sanity for power is a failure state, the end state of which means you become something like the demons from the school attack. I'm not planning to have any currently named characters do that, and if through some series of severely ill-chosen events someone does, then they will cease to be a controllable character.
You can't sacrifice personality elements for power, yet remain someone who'll use that power the way you wanted to. The tragedy of Amala is that, for most of its denizens, mere survival is all that is left. If you can even call that 'survival'.
The Scavengers exist as a demonstration of this.
Without going too much into detail: Amu is going to take the fox apart. She is not going to absorb it; she demonstrated the ability, back with Saaya, to pick out and eliminate fragments of thought that aren't her own. You've been training Integrity, so she's better at it now than she was then.
She'll keep that up for a while, pick apart a couple of other shadows-
And then, when they find Yui, she's going to... "repair her" is what I'd like to say, but healing that girl will take a long time. She'll lose her powers, which is the best outcome that child could ask for.
Amu is not dependent on stealing fragments of other people's minds to gain more power. She has better options—growth, or social links. Some of your hardship, eventually, will be to convince the other eight billion humans to do it this way.
— — —
As for the charas... there's a specific insight Amu needs in order to bring them out without overly stressing herself. Pistachio got fairly close, but Miki will figure it out if you guys don't.
Don't think I can say much about the psionics system. It's not very Shugo Chara-y, I admit, but it was necessary if I wanted any of the characters to be relevant for reasons other than their exaltation; back in quest V1 people just didn't interact with the shugo chara-derived powers at all, as they were way underpowered for the situation.
If you have ideas of how to fix that, then I'm interested in hearing them. There's a discord link in my signature if you have the time.
There's a Nagihiko-centric arc coming up, though; perhaps you'll enjoy that more. Still got nearly a year left on the clock before things go bork.
Ami's dream-hair is blonde because Ami was blonde until recently, her hair's just darkening with age, as it often does. That was called out earlier, but I guess people forgot. The dress is blue because—um, because it looked good. I don't like to deny Pistachio's speculations when they happen, because it's hard to avoid spoilers—and he's clearly having fun—but they're usually wrong.
Ami has not, in fact, eaten any shadows at all. Nor will she.
She has the evil streak of a seven year old girl who's starting to realise that poking fun at her big sister is fun, actually, and who would like more excuses to do that.
— — —
So, the biggie. I'm okay with telling you this because I've already made it explicit in V1, but that hasn't happened yet in this story. People-who-are-not-Quine: I'm serious, stop reading, you'll regret it later.
Sacrificing pieces of your sanity for power is normal. It's what happens, almost by default, because Makai / (or the Expanse, or Amala, or many other names) is a nasty as hell place where your choice is usually only whether you want to sacrifice yourself piecemeal for power, or sacrifice yourself all at once for someone else's power.
Kagutsuchi's bubbles — the worlds where humanity lives — are the exception. They're gentle places, protected gardens where you can get away with not doing that, and a lot of the mess you're about to run into is caused by Kagutsuchi hitting his limits. But sacrificing sanity for power is a failure state, the end state of which means you become something like the demons from the school attack. I'm not planning to have any currently named characters do that, and if through some series of severely ill-chosen events someone does, then they will cease to be a controllable character.
You can't sacrifice personality elements for power, yet remain someone who'll use that power the way you wanted to. The tragedy of Amala is that, for most of its denizens, mere survival is all that is left. If you can even call that 'survival'.
The Scavengers exist as a demonstration of this.
Without going too much into detail: Amu is going to take the fox apart. She is not going to absorb it; she demonstrated the ability, back with Saaya, to pick out and eliminate fragments of thought that aren't her own. You've been training Integrity, so she's better at it now than she was then.
She'll keep that up for a while, pick apart a couple of other shadows-
And then, when they find Yui, she's going to... "repair her" is what I'd like to say, but healing that girl will take a long time. She'll lose her powers, which is the best outcome that child could ask for.
Amu is not dependent on stealing fragments of other people's minds to gain more power. She has better options—growth, or social links. Some of your hardship, eventually, will be to convince the other eight billion humans to do it this way.
— — —
As for the charas... there's a specific insight Amu needs in order to bring them out without overly stressing herself. Pistachio got fairly close, but Miki will figure it out if you guys don't.
Don't think I can say much about the psionics system. It's not very Shugo Chara-y, I admit, but it was necessary if I wanted any of the characters to be relevant for reasons other than their exaltation; back in quest V1 people just didn't interact with the shugo chara-derived powers at all, as they were way underpowered for the situation.
If you have ideas of how to fix that, then I'm interested in hearing them. There's a discord link in my signature if you have the time.
There's a Nagihiko-centric arc coming up, though; perhaps you'll enjoy that more. Still got nearly a year left on the clock before things go bork.
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- Location
- Laniakea
.....If it helps any, I can fully say that I would not be willing to make any vote for sacrificing pieces of self for power, not if I could help it. I'd personally consider having to go down that route as having to swallow defeat of another kind.
In fact, I got the impression that ego-damage is meant to be the equivalent penalty to dying for Amu messing up, given that Amu apparently gets plot protection from physically dying (in contrast to the first version of the quest, where I seem to recall some talk about Ikuto picking up the slack if she died).
Which, in my mind, makes picking an option that results in it equivalent to picking a losing option.
Not something I would do on purpose. At least, when it comes to how I vote.
Exactly what those negotiations might involve, I only have vague thoughts about, but exchanging bits of self or sanity seems unlikely given that such a thing would seem to be precisely what Dia is working so hard to prevent.
In fact, I got the impression that ego-damage is meant to be the equivalent penalty to dying for Amu messing up, given that Amu apparently gets plot protection from physically dying (in contrast to the first version of the quest, where I seem to recall some talk about Ikuto picking up the slack if she died).
Which, in my mind, makes picking an option that results in it equivalent to picking a losing option.
Not something I would do on purpose. At least, when it comes to how I vote.
Since I'm currently of the belief that Dia is working overtime to suppressing Amu's Overgrowth level, I actually suspect the Level 4 event is going to involve negotiating with Dia to relax some of the restrictions and that is what will enable us to bump up our Overgrowth.
Exactly what those negotiations might involve, I only have vague thoughts about, but exchanging bits of self or sanity seems unlikely given that such a thing would seem to be precisely what Dia is working so hard to prevent.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's not. Okay, I'll address this publicly: I'm not interested in writing a story where the main character is Amu-in-name-only. I like her just the way she is.
She about the usual degree of character shield for a quest run by a non-murderous QM, I feel.
Thank you, Baughn. Here are some replies.
If this is just natural development, then I am once again very confused why you gave dream-Ami any of the traits she has. Okay, maybe Ami used to be blonde until recently in this quest... but she also used to be shorter, not taller, and the dress just seems like a bizarre red herring. I don't know why any of this is part of the story.
Also, full disclosure: I didn't know hair did that. Except old people's hair going gray. That I knew about.
I did a thread search for "blonde", and I didn't find anything. Are you sure this actually came up?
If this is just natural development, then I am once again very confused why you gave dream-Ami any of the traits she has. Okay, maybe Ami used to be blonde until recently in this quest... but she also used to be shorter, not taller, and the dress just seems like a bizarre red herring. I don't know why any of this is part of the story.
Also, full disclosure: I didn't know hair did that. Except old people's hair going gray. That I knew about.
I remember that. There was that whole conversation with Maya. I'm glad to hear that the narrative isn't intended to force Amu to do the same.
Which is the biggest part of why it would have been a deal-breaker for me.
You're actually willing to allow that? Huh. I figured Ran and Su were just getting put on the metaphorical bus.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
...not completely. Um.
Ami's dream-self has blonde hair because Ami, until recently, had blonde hair. Her hair darkened as she grow older, growing more similar to her mother's hair instead of her father's. The same happened to me—I was blond as a child, went brown around seven years old, and by ten it was completely black. I guess I was assuming that phenomenon was better known than it is.
She had to wear something, I prodded the AI until it produced something I was willing to call Ami's idealised self. Which is a phrase you should keep in mind.
Later on people pointed out I had accidentally made her look either velvet room-y or alice-y, neither of which was intended. It wasn't intended to be a big deal.
Not happening. That would be as much a deal-breaker for me as you.
It's a Shugo Chara quest. I placed them temporarily off to the side so I didn't need to introduce two dozen characters all at once, but that's as far as it goes. They'll only grow more present, not less.
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I had the same kind of thing, though in my case my hair went to brown rather then black.
As for why this happens, well I don't know/recall all the details. But blond hair is pretty much the absence of color pigments in your hair, so it can only really happen if no or minimal amounts of pigment is being made. And pigment creation isn't actually just a single gene thing, there's more to it, so there are I believe some pigment gene variations where for instance the amount of pigment creation is changed over time. Thus allowing one to be born blonde and then change color after awhile.
In some populations in some places in the world you might only see it in babies or something like that, where they're born with lighter hair that soon after is replaced with darker hair. In places with natural blond hair even at older ages this kind of phenomenon is not that rare, as the lack of some of the hair pigmentation genes is more common there.
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This, so that we can attempt to complete the speculation about Personas, Shadows and Charas and how they fit together
The sun encourages vitamin d production that is important for calcium fixation, and yet the sun is veeeery damaging to caucasian skin and any eyes, so it's probably a adaptation to make children grow into marginally healthier teenagers by getting a small boost of vitamin d at the begining, but put on the breaks later before, say, you get your eyes damaged from highly reflective sea horizon gazing, or during a sunrise\nightfall looking at the sun like a child.
The hair changing probably came for free from those far more important organs.
The hair changing probably came for free from those far more important organs.
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- Location
- Laniakea
To clarify, I haven't read any of the spoiler posts. So I acknowledge I may be missing context on this.
But I do know that Ami's hair was brown in-series and she was meant to be 3 or 4 at the time. She's seven at this point, so unless "recent" means 4+ years, either her backstory look in-quest must have always been different from the series or else there was something crazy in those spoilers that I can only imagine.
There's nothing crazy about hair in the spoilers. My guess is that Baughn just draws the "brunette/blonde" dividing line at a different place from either of us. People often have major disagreements about what to call a color.
Her idealized self. And your previous posts suggested that Ami developing a chara was "only a matter of time".
Well. That suggests some things about why you might want dream-Ami to have a set character design distinct from regular Ami, even if the specifics of the design turned out more problematic than expected.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
My impression from the vote was that Amu is trying to assimilate the Shadow in the manner a Wild Card does, not like Shadows can do to each other.
- Location
- Laniakea
Though given that she isn't a Persona-user, the exact effects of trying to do that are up in the air. "Trust me bro" does not exactly inspire confidence, when the person saying it is also drunk on cognitive fog and tried to "fight a tree" the last known time it happened.
The saving grace is that, even if it does end up being absorption of the Kuni-no-Sagiri kind that mutates the Shadow Self, this particular one is likely too minor to do much. My two main concerns are about Amu making a habit of it once she learns she can do it and Ami trying to follow suit by copying her....
.....or at least, it was, until that exact train of thought led me to the realization that chances were higher than not Ami had already done it at least once, in light of the revelation that she'd failed multiple Overgrowth v Integrity checks before. That was actually what led to that "oh shit" moment I had 3 pages ago.
Let me just say, I'd be happy if I were wrong.
The saving grace is that, even if it does end up being absorption of the Kuni-no-Sagiri kind that mutates the Shadow Self, this particular one is likely too minor to do much. My two main concerns are about Amu making a habit of it once she learns she can do it and Ami trying to follow suit by copying her....
.....or at least, it was, until that exact train of thought led me to the realization that chances were higher than not Ami had already done it at least once, in light of the revelation that she'd failed multiple Overgrowth v Integrity checks before. That was actually what led to that "oh shit" moment I had 3 pages ago.
Let me just say, I'd be happy if I were wrong.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Being entirely fair to her, the 'tree' was a tree-shaped shadow. More of an ent than a tree, and dangerous-looking!
Ami had to pull her away, because the poor tree was almost crying. Or at least that's how Ami interpreted it.
On Charas and X-Eggs
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Let's talk about x-eggs, then. This will be from Amu's perspective. She's likely the leading expert on the subject, as far as practical considerations go; and while Easter is gone, X-eggs still appear on occasion. They're far rarer in middle than grade school, but not so rare that it never happens, so Amu has had the opportunity to look more closely at the eggs with her newer skillset.
That being said, this is still going to be incomplete.
Before we can talk about X-eggs, we need to talk a little bit about Charas. Your main exposure to them has been Miki and Iru, neither of which is are at all normal; the way it normally goes is something like this:
- A child, five to ten years old, forms some sort of dream. The dream can be anything, so long as it's a genuine desire they're unable to achieve themselves. This is easy, as the requirement is only that they can't currently do it, and chances are they're a second or third-grader; it does not matter if they plausibly could learn.
There are requirements.
- The dream must be understandable to the child; a seven-year-old may dream of becoming a professor, but a chara formed from this would be superficial at best. The chara system isn't willing to grant a wish for something the child doesn't understand, and perhaps this is for the best.
- The dream must be for something real. A child can dream of gaining wings, and form a chara thereby, but a dream of learning how... uhm... how to perform magical interpretive dance of a sort that works specifically only on the south pole? Would not work. Honestly, this clause is hard to trigger; you would need to think up a dream for something genuinely novel, at the age of six, when the modern world has already done basically everything one possibly can do without taking twenty years to learn. Point is the knowledge must already exist somewhere.
- Some types of dream appear to be out of bounds. Amu has observed charas that have mind-control abilities, weapons, or are otherwise potentially dangerous; but she has never observed a chara that is these things. This might be simple coincidence; the set of children who would dream of causing harm in any form is fairly small, thank god, but she's run into enough bullies that you'd think one would have formed a chara. None have.
- Some types of dream can only be partially granted, or only under special circumstances. Ikuto dreamt of being a child again, and being free like a cat; he got a chara that lets him chara-transform into an illusionary catboy, but it doesn't physically change him. Nadeshiko is a more blatant demonstration. Basically, physical changes are out—it's mental only—though with the presence of psionics this can be hard to tell.
- The dream will 'bud', becoming an (illusionary) egg stored in the child's soul. These are not precisely sapient, and under most circumstances the 'egg' does not actually exist, but the mental bud certainly does. Someone carrying either the Lock or the Key can pull it out at this stage as a functional chara, as Amu did several times, though ordinarily it'll go right back inside.
At least one year will pass during this phase. If the child loses their dream then the bud will crack and fade away, leaving a scar behind; they will never again find the same passion for that specific dream. If they find the work ethic to achieve the dream, or even strongly work towards it, then this short-circuits the process and weird things can happen. It's not a regular occurrence, as most dreams are too hefty to be achieved in a single year with typical young-child work ethics.
Buds have the weakest defence at this stage, so it's also possible for a powerful psionic, such as Utau or Ikuto (to... name two random people...) to make the egg go berserk, coming out as an x-egg.
Most children never go past phase two.
- In phase three the egg buds off, becoming a chara and taking some of the child's psionic overgrowth with them.
Charas are not people. This is important: They know, instinctively, that they aren't a real person and that their originator is their true self. They also have a basic understanding of their own situation, and what is required for their continued survival, which is to ensure said originator keeps wanting to achieve their dream. They normally accomplish this by demonstrating the value of that dream; providing a 'cheat sheet' that vastly accelerates learning, assuming the originator actually attempts to learn.
There are three plausible outcomes from here.
a) Their originator achieves their dream. At this stage the chara will fuse with them. For a powerful psionic this becomes somewhat of a permanent chara change, but while chara changes normally involve personality changes, by definition if this happens then there can't be any nontrivial personality change.
b) Their originator gives up on their dream. The chara will wither and die, same as if this happened in phase two. Ethically this seems dubious; practically, it's just what happens. It would have been difficult-to-impossible to create a chara system that doesn't do this.
c) Their originator never gives up on the dream, but doesn't achieve it either, perhaps because it is impossible. In this case the chara will remain intact, though it may go dormant for long periods of time. (See Nadeshiko, who lacks the raw power to run two charas at once.)
There's no specific time limit on this, but it would require an abnormal mentality to stay in this state for more than perhaps one or two years, especially if you're making no progress.
This describes most charas... but, as luck would have it, both Amu and Utau break from this mold in some ways. While Ran and Su achieved (a), Amu held back from a full merger so she wouldn't lose the friends-slash-siblings she'd started to think of them as. Miki should have hit (b), but was kept on life support for long enough that she stabilised and became a person in her own right. And Utau isn't completely sure what's going on with Eru and Iru, but suspects the problem is twofold—they're diametric opposites, so she can't achieve both dreams at once. In any case she prefers them as friends-slash-familiars instead of charas.
There's one alternate outcome. Instead of simply fading away, a chara in this phase can become an x-chara if the originator gives up on them, assuming the originator / chara are powerful enough or if they have an alternate source of power they can latch on to. Dia hit both criteria, and thus was able to remain as an X-chara for an unknown but relatively long period of time, but this is a special case. You shouldn't draw any conclusions from her.
However, for the most part x-eggs only happen in phase two.
What are X-eggs?
At the simplest, they are negativity. A child rejects their dream, often in a fit of frustration—what happened at Utau's concerts is not normal—which, if their dream has already budded, can cause it to lash out. Emphasis on 'can'; Amu has seen many cases where they just fade away, though from the same children who now show no psionic activity at all.
Lashing out in this way does not inherently harm the child, apart from the trauma inherent in severing that part of their mind, but it can. Apathy is fairly common; comas have been seen, especially if the x-egg is empowered in some manner. She has never seen it become permanent—but she has also never let an x-egg stay an x-egg for very long, though in a few cases she was pointed towards one by the principal. Typically days before it happened.
X-eggs are often destructive. They never seem to attack their originator, however; the destruction takes the form of telekinetic lashing-out, usually aimed at inanimate objects. In rare cases it may be aimed at the object of their frustration, or at people who caused or were otherwise involved with the situation.
There are three basic ways to deal with an x-egg.
- Restoration
If the child remains conscious and sensible, and someone convinces them to stop rejecting their dream—by any means—then there's a very good chance it will return on its own.
- Destruction
If the above fails—and it's rare that it's tried—then destroying the x-egg will cauterize the wound in the child's mind, restoring them to balance. As previously mentioned, it is virtually impossible to regain the same dream afterwards; primarily because the child will exhibit no interest whatsoever, and any skill they've gained is also likely to be lost. It's possible, but requires external intervention from a friendly mind-controller... or a highly, highly motivated child, who is for some reason motivated to regain a dream that they now find uninteresting in itself.
As only psionics / psychics / persona wielders / etc. can see x-eggs, and (almost) only chara wielders can effectively handle them, this is most often what happens—as most chara wielders lack the ability to do anything else.
- Mind-control
Well, that's a bit of a harsh way to put it. ;-)
Amu, through a combination of heavyweight psionic assault ("heart beams") and pep talks, is reliably capable of restoring x-eggs to a normal form. The injection of power will usually cause it to hatch into a chara, although only for a matter of seconds; she's overdriving the normal process that would make it hatch, and the added control links—while temporary—helps the system of child and chara regain their sanity. While somewhat traumatic, this virtually guarantees the egg will hatch into a chara at a later date... so long as the dream isn't once again rejected.
Going further in this direction, there's Lulu's overcharged and unbalanced ?-charas. These aren't x-charas in any meaningful way, but share the 'warped dream' aspect of the x-charas. ?-charas are better stabilized however, and aren't the result of rejection, so typically end up fusing with—and taking over—the child who created them, leading to an insane-but-powerful psionic rampaging for a while until someone stops them.
It is theoretically possible for someone with high enough willpower and mental integrity to survive fusing with a ?-chara with their sanity intact, if they are well enough prepared. This would be a significant power boost, on par with the Humpty Lock / Dumpty Key, but far riskier to use.
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Ryumancer
Dragons Are Romance
What kind of weird things can happen? I assume the 'short circuit' comes from skipping straight to 3a merger despite being unhatched, but... not much can be extrapolated from that.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Not enough information for full definition. There were, approximately, two cases in the entire manga; and I'm not sure how well I remember them.
I'd rather leave it at 'weird things' for now, because it's going to depend very much on the specific scenario it happens in. You could imagine anything from 'As if a chara had existed (even though it didn't)' to 'a chara buds off without following the system's expectations', to... Hikaru, I suppose, although that boy is more the other way around.
Ryumancer
Dragons Are Romance
Ah, fair enough. Probably a good thing this inspired me to read the manga then, lol. Though it's kinda impressive just how utterly sidetracked Amu gets whenever even a hint of 'hey, you should probably go track down Dia and Utau' gets brought up...
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Amu is not good at confronting... at confronting... well, I think more or less anything that isn't a rampaging monster. By the end of the manga she's quite the seasoned action-girl, but she's only about as good as a typical fourteen-year-old at actually confronting anything that could possibly lead to social distress.
Which is still pretty good, because she's twelve at the time.
It also takes her the entire runtime of the manga before—multiple mad scientists in—she realises that maybe adults shouldn't all be trusted, and she really, really needs to think for herself. And also they can't actually stop her breaking into their skyscraper. XD
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- Location
- Laniakea
I'd like to point out that, at least in Shugo Chara canon, this is probably more due to the fact that Charas, as "want-to-be-selves"/"would-be-selves", are still at the end of the day meant to be human "selves".
That is to say, for someone to spawn a Chara that is an anthropomorphic weapon, I imagine they would literally have to envision themselves as an actual object and not a living being at all. This is likely very difficult for most people to do, whether they are children or otherwise (before you even get to the question of wanting to view yourself in that way strongly enough to form a Chara). Since even if you saw yourself causing harm in the future, you would probably be more likely to imagine oneself as a human using a weapon, rather than the weapon itself.
We do have, in fact, an example of that kind of thing - Kairi Sanjou's Chara, Musashi. A samurai. Someone whose main job is to wield weapons and whose role in society arguably is to be used as a weapon (or a shield for other people, if one were to take a more optimistic viewpoint of it, which seems to be how Kairi himself views it).
And we do also arguably have a more direct example of someone with Chara who is a "living being that causes harm" - Utau's Iru. Iru is a devil. Her name literally comes from the last two letters of the word (and I think some translations do actually use "Il" as her name instead of "Iru"). I don't think I need to point out that devils are nominally malicious entities meant to bring grief and harm to other people, especially when contrasted with angels, which Utau clearly does as her other Chara is an angel.
So I'd argue that, not only has Amu run into enough bullies that probabilistically-speaking one would have formed a Chara - at least one did (if you give Kairi a pass for technically not being a bully, just a Easter spy).
Utau.
Who was kinda messed up at the start when they met and physically bullied Amu during the first half the story, at least if you consider them going at each other under Chara-Transformation to be physical rather than "Illusory-cognitive" (which, well, "cognitive" doesn't really exist in Shugo Chara, that's a Persona thing). Iru may not be anthropomorphic "harm", but she is basically the next closest thing.
Also, Lulu.
If you think about it, her Chara is basically an expression of her heartfelt desire to be an extreme narcissist. Someone who does whatever they like, without regard for anyone around them. Lulu was not a nice person to start with either, bullied a heck of a lot of characters-of-the-week and her Chara certainly wasn't a dream to become a better person. Nana isn't directly an anthropomorphic representation of sociopathic narcissism, but IS a representation of a human who is a narcissistic sociopath.
In a manner of speaking. There are definitely nicer and more positive ways to describe her, that would focus on the "freedom" aspect of her dream and view the lack-of-caring aspect as being "unshackled" from expectations of others.
Amu became friends with all three of these examples eventually, but that doesn't mean they didn't do their share of bullying and that their Charas can't be viewed in a highly questionable light.
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Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Kairi had a very idealised view of what a samurai is. Similar to Nadeshiko's ability with a polearm, it's more part of the package than dream of harm.
Utau's Chara powers are capable of harm, but it's similar to Amu's own ones in that it's a side capability of the normal use.
Iru is freedom/music, and that was side graded or developed into empathic harm by Easter. (Mostly by traumatising her enough that she could then force that mindset on others.)
Though, it is noticeable that both Utau and Lulu are from families that have a lot to do with the esoteric side of things.
Utau's dad, and at least in this quest, Lulu's family, are both clearly involved in the deeper mechanics of things, which might explain why they are able to bypass some of the rules.
Speaking purely on the restrictions, it should probably be pointed out that Saaya was restricted from developing a Chara by the limits Baughn mentioned.
- Location
- Laniakea
I mean sure, in this quest, all those things are probably true.
In terms of Shugo Chara canon, well, I've already espoused my doubts that the Chara System is artificial in canon, which also means doubting that Aruto Tsukiyomi was involved in any deeper mechanics. Especially since when Amu viewed his memory in the Road of Stars, Aruto had no idea what the Dumpty Key was when Yui Hotori tried to give it to him and by Yui's admission, the man found them both in some random antique shop in France.
And while it may be true that all the Charas we see - even ones like Iru who explicitly represents a devil and Musashi who is a swordsman - are idealized in some regard, the canon explanation for that would likely hinge on the fact that "thoughts of harming others" would count as "negative" emotions.
And so, someone who wanted to see themselves wielding weapons in the future (and spawned a weapon-wielding Chara), but whose intent was to harm using those weapons rather than protect (as in Kairi's idealized version of a samurai) would probably end up having that Chara turn into an X-Chara.
Basically, the rule wouldn't be that "Charas that harm others are out of bounds". The rule would be "Charas that harm others are X-Charas".
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
That could have been the case here as well. It would still prevent them from actually becoming charas, and I need to point out that -- Amu's speculation aside -- all she knows is that she's never seen a chara like that, not that they don't exist. People with violence-adjacent charas, such as Kairi or Nadeshiko -- or Amu herself to a degree, via Su -- tend to be paragons of virtue. Yes, I'm including Kairi in that; he struggled, then actually went against the wishes of his older sister, whom he loves a great deal. That's not easy at all.
(He's now Utau's uncle. Oh my.)
But yeah, my post was about this quest. Not Shugo Chara canon, and your point is valid; it'll be interesting to see what Peach-Pit actually go with, assuming we get an explanation of any sort at all.
To give you some of my reasoning...
I don't believe in magic. Objects can behave in complicated ways, and rulesets can be complex, but they can't be fundamentally complex; the complexity is always emergent. This is true even for something as seemingly fundamental as the proton, which has been described as 'the most complicated thing imaginable' -- I disagree on that, by the way, human brains and biology is worse.
Then, what's the explanation for the magic in this story? It's not faked; Amu absolutely has telekinesis, Miki exists. There just has to be an explanation.
I've already hinted that it was deliberately created, and this is -- true, although the jury's out on by who. But in addition to being created, the behaviour of the Chara system is itself complicated enough to demand intelligence. That's not a major problem, as there's a gigantic sea of indistinctly attributed intelligence floating around in the form of the collective unconscious, but it has implications for how it works -- in this case that most of the rules for the 'Chara system' (and wow, they'd like it to be controllable enough to deserve that name) are best described in terms of English, not fundamental physics.
That being the case, and considering how it was made, many of the rules have to do with safety. Safety for who? Well, that's an interesting question, but if you ask about the purpose of the system you'll get a different answer depending on who you ask. Lulu would describe it as "Letting kids achieve their dreams, and keeping them alive so they can do so."
She'd then go on to drive them insane while blindly overcharging their chara, so they can achieve said dream immediately instead of-
<Lulu> I wouldn't do that!
<Amu> You did do that.
<Lulu> I'm not ten years old anymore, Amu.
Hotsuin, who spent nearly an entire evening interrogating her last week, has a far more cynical viewpoint. And wants to know when precisely she was going to tell him she's soul-bonded to a dubiously benign fairy-like creature.
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