Morning☆Glory (Harukawa Maki) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rollplayinghouse) wrote2020-08-02 10:50 pm
rollplayinghouse) wrote2020-08-02 10:50 pm
Ideal World Writeup
Going over the thoughts behind Glory's Ideal World!
There were two things core to Glory's "ideal" that formed the foundation of the game: 1) having a nice place where all her important people can live and work together happily, and 2) having a real past with real connections to people. The first one is closer to a vision for the future in that it's something she plans to make happen, but the second obviously isn't something that's ever going to change and therefore will always be something she's unhappy about in the real world, so that was the main factor making her not want to leave the ideal world!
It's not necessarily a desire to have a past connection to specific people, though; there are certainly specific people she thinks would be nice to be connected to, but nothing is necessarily ideal. Over her time in Imeeji there have been three worlds with groups of people she's gotten close enough to to wish that she actually had a shared history with them - Persona 5, Yugioh and Devil May Cry. So, her ideal world actually represented versions of all of these with Glory essentially AU'd into them.
However, these different worlds not only contained different backstories, but also a variety of other things she desires independent of the specific world that aren't really all compatible with each other. This split was the hugest indicator the world wasn't "real"; obviously not all of these can exist simultaneously, for a number of reasons.
The mechanism to swap between the worlds was easy; there was just a lever. It was meant to be something like this:
P = Persona
D = Devil May Cry
1 = Yugioh (they're competitive so they all want to be #1? i needed it to match the theme okay)
R = "Reality" or her actual backstory.
This also coincidentally somewhat matches her escalation through these; her real past is Reverse, Park is where she started, which was a more static "I just want to be normal" state, 1 is first gear where she started revving up, and Drive is going forward.
The other core idea I wanted to keep in mind for the worlds is that they shouldn't have details or structure beyond what Glory knows and is able to generate herself. That meant a lot of the aspects of the worlds didn't stand up well to close inspection.
The AFFIRM/DENY shooting mechanic was taken directly from Danganronpa Harmonious Heart ("Kokoronpa") events, where you get to hear a character's internal monologue and use the same evidence bullet mechanic you do in trials to shoot at things they're thinking. I had planned this as a heart game mechanic but I think it actually works better in ideal world since there's a lot more incentive to actually deny things...!
There were a decent mix of things that were true and false throughout, and I tried to make them at least a little ambiguous or tricky to guess, and they weren't necessarily based on objective truth. The "true" things were things that she felt were actually the case in reality, and "false" ones were things she hoped were true or wanted to be true but didn't actually believe were.
In terms of effects, I kept a per-world score as well as an overall score. "Affirming" something true or "Denying" something false both added a point; "Affirming" something false or "Denying" something true subtracted a point. In terms of effects, I tried to follow general guidelines: Affirming something true would cause a "nonideal" effect, perhaps distracting but not terrible (this is most of what people got); Affirming something false would cause a positive effect, to try to urge you to stay in the illusion (the only time this happened was the boost of energy a few people got from wrong intercom choices); Denying something true would have a very negative effect (no one did this), and Denying something false would have no effect (since this is most directly breaking down the illusion as you're meant to).
Here's where the scores ended up:
At +5 per world things started to break down and the sky ripped; at +8 in any world the whole thing started breaking down.
However, even once the illusion worlds broke down, there was one more step before they could really leave: confronting reality.
Persona 5 world. In this world, Glory grew up as a normal girl in Japan and goes to high school with Joker and his friends. In her spare time, she bakes sweets for the coffee shop in their apartment building. This world largely represents her desire for having had a normal childhood and having a normal life; the sort of thing where she can just sit doing her homework in a coffee shop, which is something she felt Joker/etc took for granted. She cannot envision ever doing it as she is in reality.
Despite this being Persona world she does not actually have a Persona here or engage at all with the Persona mechanics, since... she doesn't actually like the phantom thieves' mind-modification vigilante justice very much. And clearly they wouldn't need to do that in an ideal world anyway, so... that part doesn't exist.
The main weakness of this world is that it is therefore actually kind of boring. Especially when she was with Intensity, she moved away from wanting "normal" things as much, since he's pretty dismissive of them. And she doesn't necessarily disagree with him that she wants something more exciting.
Yugioh world. In this world she grew up playing Duel Monsters and became a professional duelist. The main things represented here are her desire for "rivalry," and more importantly, her broader hopes for improving things in the world.
Specifically, her job in this world is a "duelist for hire" who works in "duel mediation" - essentially doing the work she'd normally do as an assassin to resolve conflicts, but people have apparently decided that all differences can be resolved via card games instead of murder. This is based on seeing Intensity's memory of his speech in DSOD. This was one of the earliest things that drew her to Intensity; she doesn't actually... believe this is possible, necessarily, but it would be really nice if it was, and she admires that ridiculous disconnect from practical reality.
The main weakness of this world is that Glory only kind of knows how to play Duel Monsters and isn't actually super into games in general; she would like to be a competitive type who has fun with games, and she does enjoy it sometimes, but she doesn't actually know how to fit herself into that.
Devil May Cry world. In this world, Glory grew up in the same orphanage as Nero and is actually part demon and biologically part of the Sparda family. It's convenient that no one really pushed hard on what her actual family relationship is here since there isn't really an Ideal one. Logically being Nero's twin and Vergil being her father would make most sense with this setup, but that's a lot of incest and also doesn't really represent her relationships with Vergil or Raven well. Don't worry about it too hard.
Either way, now they all live and work as devil hunters together! This is closest to something that could occur in the actual future since Nero actually has invited her to do this, and Raven has talked to her about being a devil hunter too. It also takes advantage of her actual skills (assassin skills) in a way that isn't quite just working solo killing people for money. At least they're killing demons together! And they have cool bikes and things.
The main weakness of this world is that in order for devil hunting to be a workable profession you have to assume that devils are constantly a threat, which seems less than ideal. Glory is also very aware that she's not actually a demon and has no demon powers and therefore may be out of her depth here.
Some of the areas were nearly identical between the worlds, just replicated, because they're part of common desires she has.
This was the way to talk to Glory's Important People who are all living together in this fantasy. Full disclosure, I originally had a much longer list of people and was also planning them to be physically present and have their own rooms, but then I looked at the amount of writing I'd need to do just for that and despaired, so I cut it down, but that's why the intercom did still suggest there were more people living there than specifically on the list and it just showed people "currently home."
The "currently home" list was the set of people who Glory feels especially close to, many of whom she's specifically talked to about living in her house/living together after hell, and who she feels are "present," both in the sense of physically present in imeeji and who she could conceive of being invested in living there with her. That was still nine people and I had to write intro lines and AFFIRM/DENY lines for all of them, some of which were different across worlds. That's so many voice lines. Please understand.
Anyway, this was mostly checking on key aspects of her relationships; some were important things to her, and some were things she's wanted out of the relationship but doesn't feel she has. This was definitely more subjective.
All intercom lines!
Obviously there had to be a sex room. This was pretty straightforward. In her ideal world she is definitely having kinky sex with a lot of her important people, and ideally sometimes more than one of them at a time.
The key items were the large bed (representing poly/threesomes), bondage gear (representing... bondage) and knives (representing... knifeplay). These were key for a couple of reasons, First, because these are actually things that make her substantially happy to do in the real world, and therefore they are things that can be Affirmed to bring her back. Second, they are sort of weak points in the sense that she's... not sure they should be there in an ideal world. Maybe in an ideal world she'd just not be super horny and be monogamous and not have weird kinks?? Maybe?? (No one thought this.)
After the world broke down, the lever could be moved to R. At this point the ideal world illusion was broken, but before Glory could really return to the real world, they had to address her real past and the insecurities she has about it that make her so eager to rewrite it into something else. There was also an option to change your mind and go back to a fake world here, but everyone pretty much focused immediately on one thing - cardboard cutout Maki.
The cutout of course represented the "Harukawa Maki" she was in the past! She has known for a while now that everything she remembered about being an orphan, the Ultimate Assassin, and so on were implanted memories. The only "real" memories she has are the ones from the few weeks of the killing game, but even her actions then were manipulated by strategically giving her fake memories to motivate her into killing. Therefore she has pretty much put aside who she was then as not worth taking anything from. This is also why the death portraits of C, X and Medusa were there; those are the people she would theoretically have a "real" bond from the past with, but she can't count on those relationships either. (Her falling in love with X was supposedly scripted, etc.) She's more or less come to terms with this fact, and has accepted that she doesn't have anything really real to pull from before Imeeji, and she's making herself into the person she wants to be now.
However, there's one more level of her past that Glory hasn't entirely addressed or come to terms with, and that's the person she was before her memories were rewritten. Obviously she doesn't have any memories of that time! But presumably that's still "her" as much as anyone is "themself" when they show up in Imeeji with no memories—which people generally seem to agree that they are. And she does remember being told some things about who she was before—they were all supposedly fans of the killing game who auditioned to participate, knowing their memories would be rewritten. She even saw audition videos of two of her classmates showing wildly different personalities (e.g. X being extremely excited for murder). So, logically, her past self would be something similar to that.
That means that she has some amount of subconscious insecurity that she's still that person: just some high school girl who wants to be a cool character so much that she'll have her whole personality re-written for it. This is particularly relevant to being a duelist or a devil hunter—she doubts on some level that's those are things are things she's actually capable of. So, confronting past-Maki here was confronting that.
And people did confront her! The actions taken here (e.g. Denying past-Maki) don't metaphysically affect Glory in the way a heart game or something would, but she did... witness it happen... which has plenty of effect on its own. Glory had a lot of feelings about how strongly people were willing to advocate for who she is now, not only against her "fake" past self, but against her "real" past self. This is something she has barely mentioned to people because she was fairly reluctant to even think about it very hard, but Nero and Raven in particular didn't even seem to hesitate.
So! Even if she's never going to stop wishing on some level that she had a real history and real past relationships with people, there is no longer this thing lurking unaddressed at the back of her mind, which means she's capable enough to step back into reality.
Premise / Structure
There were two things core to Glory's "ideal" that formed the foundation of the game: 1) having a nice place where all her important people can live and work together happily, and 2) having a real past with real connections to people. The first one is closer to a vision for the future in that it's something she plans to make happen, but the second obviously isn't something that's ever going to change and therefore will always be something she's unhappy about in the real world, so that was the main factor making her not want to leave the ideal world!
It's not necessarily a desire to have a past connection to specific people, though; there are certainly specific people she thinks would be nice to be connected to, but nothing is necessarily ideal. Over her time in Imeeji there have been three worlds with groups of people she's gotten close enough to to wish that she actually had a shared history with them - Persona 5, Yugioh and Devil May Cry. So, her ideal world actually represented versions of all of these with Glory essentially AU'd into them.
However, these different worlds not only contained different backstories, but also a variety of other things she desires independent of the specific world that aren't really all compatible with each other. This split was the hugest indicator the world wasn't "real"; obviously not all of these can exist simultaneously, for a number of reasons.
The mechanism to swap between the worlds was easy; there was just a lever. It was meant to be something like this:
P = Persona
D = Devil May Cry
1 = Yugioh (they're competitive so they all want to be #1? i needed it to match the theme okay)
R = "Reality" or her actual backstory.
This also coincidentally somewhat matches her escalation through these; her real past is Reverse, Park is where she started, which was a more static "I just want to be normal" state, 1 is first gear where she started revving up, and Drive is going forward.
The other core idea I wanted to keep in mind for the worlds is that they shouldn't have details or structure beyond what Glory knows and is able to generate herself. That meant a lot of the aspects of the worlds didn't stand up well to close inspection.
Mechanics
The AFFIRM/DENY shooting mechanic was taken directly from Danganronpa Harmonious Heart ("Kokoronpa") events, where you get to hear a character's internal monologue and use the same evidence bullet mechanic you do in trials to shoot at things they're thinking. I had planned this as a heart game mechanic but I think it actually works better in ideal world since there's a lot more incentive to actually deny things...!
There were a decent mix of things that were true and false throughout, and I tried to make them at least a little ambiguous or tricky to guess, and they weren't necessarily based on objective truth. The "true" things were things that she felt were actually the case in reality, and "false" ones were things she hoped were true or wanted to be true but didn't actually believe were.
In terms of effects, I kept a per-world score as well as an overall score. "Affirming" something true or "Denying" something false both added a point; "Affirming" something false or "Denying" something true subtracted a point. In terms of effects, I tried to follow general guidelines: Affirming something true would cause a "nonideal" effect, perhaps distracting but not terrible (this is most of what people got); Affirming something false would cause a positive effect, to try to urge you to stay in the illusion (the only time this happened was the boost of energy a few people got from wrong intercom choices); Denying something true would have a very negative effect (no one did this), and Denying something false would have no effect (since this is most directly breaking down the illusion as you're meant to).
Here's where the scores ended up:
At +5 per world things started to break down and the sky ripped; at +8 in any world the whole thing started breaking down.
However, even once the illusion worlds broke down, there was one more step before they could really leave: confronting reality.
The Worlds
World P
Persona 5 world. In this world, Glory grew up as a normal girl in Japan and goes to high school with Joker and his friends. In her spare time, she bakes sweets for the coffee shop in their apartment building. This world largely represents her desire for having had a normal childhood and having a normal life; the sort of thing where she can just sit doing her homework in a coffee shop, which is something she felt Joker/etc took for granted. She cannot envision ever doing it as she is in reality.
Despite this being Persona world she does not actually have a Persona here or engage at all with the Persona mechanics, since... she doesn't actually like the phantom thieves' mind-modification vigilante justice very much. And clearly they wouldn't need to do that in an ideal world anyway, so... that part doesn't exist.
The main weakness of this world is that it is therefore actually kind of boring. Especially when she was with Intensity, she moved away from wanting "normal" things as much, since he's pretty dismissive of them. And she doesn't necessarily disagree with him that she wants something more exciting.
World 1
Yugioh world. In this world she grew up playing Duel Monsters and became a professional duelist. The main things represented here are her desire for "rivalry," and more importantly, her broader hopes for improving things in the world.
Specifically, her job in this world is a "duelist for hire" who works in "duel mediation" - essentially doing the work she'd normally do as an assassin to resolve conflicts, but people have apparently decided that all differences can be resolved via card games instead of murder. This is based on seeing Intensity's memory of his speech in DSOD. This was one of the earliest things that drew her to Intensity; she doesn't actually... believe this is possible, necessarily, but it would be really nice if it was, and she admires that ridiculous disconnect from practical reality.
The main weakness of this world is that Glory only kind of knows how to play Duel Monsters and isn't actually super into games in general; she would like to be a competitive type who has fun with games, and she does enjoy it sometimes, but she doesn't actually know how to fit herself into that.
World D
Devil May Cry world. In this world, Glory grew up in the same orphanage as Nero and is actually part demon and biologically part of the Sparda family. It's convenient that no one really pushed hard on what her actual family relationship is here since there isn't really an Ideal one. Logically being Nero's twin and Vergil being her father would make most sense with this setup, but that's a lot of incest and also doesn't really represent her relationships with Vergil or Raven well. Don't worry about it too hard.
Either way, now they all live and work as devil hunters together! This is closest to something that could occur in the actual future since Nero actually has invited her to do this, and Raven has talked to her about being a devil hunter too. It also takes advantage of her actual skills (assassin skills) in a way that isn't quite just working solo killing people for money. At least they're killing demons together! And they have cool bikes and things.
The main weakness of this world is that in order for devil hunting to be a workable profession you have to assume that devils are constantly a threat, which seems less than ideal. Glory is also very aware that she's not actually a demon and has no demon powers and therefore may be out of her depth here.
Common Areas
Some of the areas were nearly identical between the worlds, just replicated, because they're part of common desires she has.
Intercom
This was the way to talk to Glory's Important People who are all living together in this fantasy. Full disclosure, I originally had a much longer list of people and was also planning them to be physically present and have their own rooms, but then I looked at the amount of writing I'd need to do just for that and despaired, so I cut it down, but that's why the intercom did still suggest there were more people living there than specifically on the list and it just showed people "currently home."
The "currently home" list was the set of people who Glory feels especially close to, many of whom she's specifically talked to about living in her house/living together after hell, and who she feels are "present," both in the sense of physically present in imeeji and who she could conceive of being invested in living there with her. That was still nine people and I had to write intro lines and AFFIRM/DENY lines for all of them, some of which were different across worlds. That's so many voice lines. Please understand.
Anyway, this was mostly checking on key aspects of her relationships; some were important things to her, and some were things she's wanted out of the relationship but doesn't feel she has. This was definitely more subjective.
All intercom lines!
Bedroom
Obviously there had to be a sex room. This was pretty straightforward. In her ideal world she is definitely having kinky sex with a lot of her important people, and ideally sometimes more than one of them at a time.
The key items were the large bed (representing poly/threesomes), bondage gear (representing... bondage) and knives (representing... knifeplay). These were key for a couple of reasons, First, because these are actually things that make her substantially happy to do in the real world, and therefore they are things that can be Affirmed to bring her back. Second, they are sort of weak points in the sense that she's... not sure they should be there in an ideal world. Maybe in an ideal world she'd just not be super horny and be monogamous and not have weird kinks?? Maybe?? (No one thought this.)
Reality
After the world broke down, the lever could be moved to R. At this point the ideal world illusion was broken, but before Glory could really return to the real world, they had to address her real past and the insecurities she has about it that make her so eager to rewrite it into something else. There was also an option to change your mind and go back to a fake world here, but everyone pretty much focused immediately on one thing - cardboard cutout Maki.
The cutout of course represented the "Harukawa Maki" she was in the past! She has known for a while now that everything she remembered about being an orphan, the Ultimate Assassin, and so on were implanted memories. The only "real" memories she has are the ones from the few weeks of the killing game, but even her actions then were manipulated by strategically giving her fake memories to motivate her into killing. Therefore she has pretty much put aside who she was then as not worth taking anything from. This is also why the death portraits of C, X and Medusa were there; those are the people she would theoretically have a "real" bond from the past with, but she can't count on those relationships either. (Her falling in love with X was supposedly scripted, etc.) She's more or less come to terms with this fact, and has accepted that she doesn't have anything really real to pull from before Imeeji, and she's making herself into the person she wants to be now.
However, there's one more level of her past that Glory hasn't entirely addressed or come to terms with, and that's the person she was before her memories were rewritten. Obviously she doesn't have any memories of that time! But presumably that's still "her" as much as anyone is "themself" when they show up in Imeeji with no memories—which people generally seem to agree that they are. And she does remember being told some things about who she was before—they were all supposedly fans of the killing game who auditioned to participate, knowing their memories would be rewritten. She even saw audition videos of two of her classmates showing wildly different personalities (e.g. X being extremely excited for murder). So, logically, her past self would be something similar to that.
That means that she has some amount of subconscious insecurity that she's still that person: just some high school girl who wants to be a cool character so much that she'll have her whole personality re-written for it. This is particularly relevant to being a duelist or a devil hunter—she doubts on some level that's those are things are things she's actually capable of. So, confronting past-Maki here was confronting that.
And people did confront her! The actions taken here (e.g. Denying past-Maki) don't metaphysically affect Glory in the way a heart game or something would, but she did... witness it happen... which has plenty of effect on its own. Glory had a lot of feelings about how strongly people were willing to advocate for who she is now, not only against her "fake" past self, but against her "real" past self. This is something she has barely mentioned to people because she was fairly reluctant to even think about it very hard, but Nero and Raven in particular didn't even seem to hesitate.
So! Even if she's never going to stop wishing on some level that she had a real history and real past relationships with people, there is no longer this thing lurking unaddressed at the back of her mind, which means she's capable enough to step back into reality.