[ Hell yes he will try those finger sandwiches. He looks over the plate. ]
Ah, well... [ He picks up a sandwich and examines it. ] Shinjiro-san died a few months ago, and I was there. But he was saved from the Hunger just before he died from his wounds. So... How are we both here?
[ He tries a small part of the sandwich. Yum, eggplant! He pops the rest in his mouth. ]
[She's thrilled that her conjuring of food magic seems to be palatable for the young Reclaimer. A little less thrilled by the complexity of the question that he asks. Even for someone as studied as the Director, it's a gray area that she doesn't have the strongest grasp of over, herself.
Instead, she takes to a metaphor, as she picks up an eggplant sandwich and takes a bite. Swallowing it down, she leaves it on a napkin at her desk. Hot diggity shit, that is a pretty good finger snack.]
What do you see? This is a sandwich that I've taken a bite out of, correct? Now, just a few moments ago, that sandwich was completely whole.
[She presses her elbows on the table and studies Minato, hoping she's getting her point across.]
Imagine if I had flipped a coin that decided whether or not I took a bite out of this sandwich. And at every junction of a decision that was made, every moment in time where there were solutions between a best alternative to a negotiated outcome and the alternatives that could possibly exist, the outcomes of two realities presented itself as equal likelihoods of that event occurring. It's simpler when... you think about it as presenting two states of being. The sandwich was eaten. The sandwich was not eaten.
And between those two states of the world, you're connected to every outcome and every decision that you could've made. In that origin point, faced with an infinite number of solutions to ideas, values, thoughts that you've had... there exists a singular concept of "you" that has the capacity to experience those alterations.
[Has she lost him yet?]
When you look at it like that, time is rather meaningless. There are probably an equal number of realities that exist where Shinjiro didn't die. There are probably an equal number of realities where everyone in your world has purple hair and green eyes. The importance behind all of this is that it's connected through a plane we've come to understand as the Prime Material plane.
[Taking her wand out again, she controls a darkness spell that begins to envelop the napkin that she's laid out on the table, sandwich becoming increasingly obscured from vision.]
The Hunger, the very nature of its entity, is to consume everything. Not just a reality, but all realities. If you were to put your hand into the darkness and pull it out, do you know for sure that the sandwich is bitten? Try it, as an experiment.
[And should Minato actually go through with the experiment and pull the sandwich out, it will appear completely whole.]
[Shinjiro doesn't take a sandwich, but he does listen to the Director's explanation carefully. It's really complicated, and he almost zones out a couple of times, but he thinks he gets the basic idea.]
So there's--infinite, uh, parallel universes of our universe, and when you reached into the Hunger in this Prime Material thing to pull out the...concept...of me? You didn't know if I was dead or not, and you got one that ain't dead yet?
[He still wonders why she went through the trouble. He wasn't worth it, he thinks.]
And it's...what, a coincidence that the--Arisato you picked up was a different one than the one with me when I was dyin'.
[ Of course the sandwich is bitten! While Shinji is talking he reaches his hand into the darkness. It clasps around the soft bread and pulls out the whole finger sandwich. He frowns at it. She had bitten it, but it now sits in his hand fully formed. Is it the same sandwich?
No. It can't be.
Is Shinji the same person?
...
The idea of a singular concept of someone, it's similar to the concepts he's been learning the past year about persona and the masks people wear in front of others. Someone can be scared and foolhardy, anxious and kind, pushy and demure. None of these traits, even in opposition, invalidates the others. So the director is saying that, much like a person is the same person through their different masks, a life is the same through its different choices. A Shinjiro that lost control of his Persona is the same as a Shinjiro that didn't. A Minato that chose to kill Ryoji and spare his friends is the same as him. She made a grab for those lives and came away with the versions she has now. ]
So. We don't know each other. And that's how we're both here.
[Almost like she can sense the discouragement in both her Reclaimer's voices, she leans back in her chair, dispelling away the darkness charm that she had cast over the sandwich. While she won't divulge her motives of who she picked, she retains the faith in who she was able to save from the Hunger's clutches. These are the smartest, most resourceful, talented people she's ever met- and she doesn't mean in terms of comparative power levels or the ability to summon sandwiches out of thin air. Every single one of her Reclaimers are unique and brings strengths to the table that, well, balances the inevitable shortcomings of each other.
She hesitates for a moment, trying to pick her words carefully.]
Whether or not the sandwich was bitten, it's still two pieces of bread, an aioli spread and sauteed eggplant. The ingredients are the same, regardless of the actions that led up to the moment where it was... ah. Consumed.
Perhaps the problem we should be solving is not looking back and discerning on the regrets of our actions, but understanding who we were when we had made those choices. This is quite the rare opportunity.
[ He's curious about how he was different in Shinji's timeline. Maybe it was different reasoning that lead to the same actions. Or maybe the only difference was the brand of MP3 player he purchased.
Practically speaking though, the differences don't really matter. Nothing has come up yet, but if there was something wildly different about their relationship he's confident he can deal with it when it comes up. At least he has an answer now. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Ah, well... [ He picks up a sandwich and examines it. ] Shinjiro-san died a few months ago, and I was there. But he was saved from the Hunger just before he died from his wounds. So... How are we both here?
[ He tries a small part of the sandwich. Yum, eggplant! He pops the rest in his mouth. ]
no subject
Instead, she takes to a metaphor, as she picks up an eggplant sandwich and takes a bite. Swallowing it down, she leaves it on a napkin at her desk. Hot diggity shit, that is a pretty good finger snack.]
What do you see? This is a sandwich that I've taken a bite out of, correct? Now, just a few moments ago, that sandwich was completely whole.
[She presses her elbows on the table and studies Minato, hoping she's getting her point across.]
Imagine if I had flipped a coin that decided whether or not I took a bite out of this sandwich. And at every junction of a decision that was made, every moment in time where there were solutions between a best alternative to a negotiated outcome and the alternatives that could possibly exist, the outcomes of two realities presented itself as equal likelihoods of that event occurring. It's simpler when... you think about it as presenting two states of being. The sandwich was eaten. The sandwich was not eaten.
And between those two states of the world, you're connected to every outcome and every decision that you could've made. In that origin point, faced with an infinite number of solutions to ideas, values, thoughts that you've had... there exists a singular concept of "you" that has the capacity to experience those alterations.
[Has she lost him yet?]
When you look at it like that, time is rather meaningless. There are probably an equal number of realities that exist where Shinjiro didn't die. There are probably an equal number of realities where everyone in your world has purple hair and green eyes. The importance behind all of this is that it's connected through a plane we've come to understand as the Prime Material plane.
[Taking her wand out again, she controls a darkness spell that begins to envelop the napkin that she's laid out on the table, sandwich becoming increasingly obscured from vision.]
The Hunger, the very nature of its entity, is to consume everything. Not just a reality, but all realities. If you were to put your hand into the darkness and pull it out, do you know for sure that the sandwich is bitten? Try it, as an experiment.
[And should Minato actually go through with the experiment and pull the sandwich out, it will appear completely whole.]
Does it... make more sense to you now?
no subject
So there's--infinite, uh, parallel universes of our universe, and when you reached into the Hunger in this Prime Material thing to pull out the...concept...of me? You didn't know if I was dead or not, and you got one that ain't dead yet?
[He still wonders why she went through the trouble. He wasn't worth it, he thinks.]
And it's...what, a coincidence that the--Arisato you picked up was a different one than the one with me when I was dyin'.
no subject
No. It can't be.
Is Shinji the same person?
...
The idea of a singular concept of someone, it's similar to the concepts he's been learning the past year about persona and the masks people wear in front of others. Someone can be scared and foolhardy, anxious and kind, pushy and demure. None of these traits, even in opposition, invalidates the others. So the director is saying that, much like a person is the same person through their different masks, a life is the same through its different choices. A Shinjiro that lost control of his Persona is the same as a Shinjiro that didn't. A Minato that chose to kill Ryoji and spare his friends is the same as him. She made a grab for those lives and came away with the versions she has now. ]
So. We don't know each other. And that's how we're both here.
no subject
She hesitates for a moment, trying to pick her words carefully.]
Whether or not the sandwich was bitten, it's still two pieces of bread, an aioli spread and sauteed eggplant. The ingredients are the same, regardless of the actions that led up to the moment where it was... ah. Consumed.
Perhaps the problem we should be solving is not looking back and discerning on the regrets of our actions, but understanding who we were when we had made those choices. This is quite the rare opportunity.
no subject
Practically speaking though, the differences don't really matter. Nothing has come up yet, but if there was something wildly different about their relationship he's confident he can deal with it when it comes up. At least he has an answer now. ]
That makes sense.
[ ... He eats the sandwich. ]