View source for Speculation and Foresight

{{FutureSight}}

This is a page so that we have an archive of all the Stuff We've Talked About.  This means that both things that are canon and things that are not canon will be included here, and that a lot of it is currently ideas that may not make it into the final project.  Regardless:

==FPs==
* It is kind of like Madoka Magica how the [[FP|soul tokens]] work: during tournaments, the fighters are kinda possessing their own bodies.  The benefits of this are that this allows them to take a lot more harm that would be really dangerous if you weren't doing that, because their Them is in the soul token instead of in their body.
** The disadvantages of this, obviously, are that it makes it easier to get your soul stolen without noticing.
* Low-key, is [[Planos]] sort of (temporarily) killing people in order to get them into figure form and do all the funky soul stuff?
* It possible that there is lots of Subspace Emissary type stuff going on here, but it is also possible that there isn't and that things work entirely differently.
* What would happen if a soul, rather than being lost, modified, or corrupted, was damaged?  What would that even mean?
** This may be part of what happened to [[Hash]].  His deal with [[the Abyss]] is more corruption than damage, but the Abyss is also likely a very hostile environment for souls anyway and he may have suffered some damage in the few seconds before making that deal.
*** The Abyss may harm a soul's ability to change, having irreversible and permanent effects.
** From [[Aegis]]'s perspective, damage to a soul is basically a more forceful version of change to a soul already; your soul reflects how you change, whereas damage to it would happen more quickly and would generally have a more negative outcome.
* [[Aegis]] is going to have shown [[Ark]] a little bit of how FPs work with regards to the Madoka Magica congrats you have a high resistance to dying if your body is damaged thing, by doing some Green Knight stuff (/threat).
* If Aegis were to attempt to enter a tournament with someone else's soul to get around its lack of a soul of its own, whoever's soul that is would possess Aegis's body.  Whether they would be compatible with Aegis's body and able to do anything with that is another question entirely.
** Aegis could technically fabricate a soul if it really wanted to participate in a tournament, but it wouldn't, because of its nature as an Abyssal being.

==Boxes==
===What do they do?===
* The known effects of the boxes are that [[Katt]] is spacier than usual and [[Catmint]] feels vaguely itchy.  Mechanically, Katt is unmodified, while Catmint has a new powerful spirit ability (a level 3 spirit for enhanced speed and weapon attack) that we have not successfully seen in action yet.
* There are a variety of possible effects, since the box is just an indicator of clumsy or visible tampering.
* Since the boxes indicate an edit to the soul, the effects may not be particularly visible to the person affected directly, as they experience a self-retcon of a sort.
* Catmint, and possibly other fighters edited by [[Binspector]], may be in a situation where they'd be thinking of [[Weatherman]] as Stratus if they knew who Stratus was.
** Stratus's memory will begin to haunt the narrative, hanging over everyone like, well, a cloud.
* It has been implied that having your soul edited while it is still on your person would be very painful, but it's unclear if that is also true if your [[FP]] token gets stolen and then edited.  Catmint was Struggling due to having just been freshly three-stocked when the editing was happening, so it's still possible it's painful and she just misidentified the source of the pain she felt.

===Implications===
* Out of universe, the boxes are a mark put there by most Amiibo editors to indicate that these are amiibos that have been edited manually.  They can be removed fairly easily, but in-universe removing them is not always as easy.
* One way or another, a box just indicates that a fighter has been tampered with beyond the initial transfer to [[FP]] form.
* It has been theorized that the boxes could indicate (or cause) a breakdown between the fighter that is actually there (such as [[Katt]]) and the fighter that the universe expects to be there (such as Link Legendofzelda).  Functional bin editing would in this case be like immunosuppressants and successfully stave off whatever Negative Impacts The Universe Is Having On This.
** Whether it is this specifically or not, the idea that the FP soul shenaniganery is a problem by default and it is due to [[Planos]]'s skills that it is only a problem when things get messed with is certainly an interesting possibility.
** Super Smash Bros Ultimate and the canonical fighters that everyone uses are currently non-diegetic, although this is not guaranteed to remain that way.  One possibility is that FP bodies are sort of like clones, or funko pop clay, of the canonical fighters.  There is no "original Lucina" for [[Catmint]] to worry about but she is in a Lucina shaped hole.
*** Potential implications: a fighter who stopped being "compatible" with their FP form might be unable to compete until they identified another fighter type they could fit with, or might sustain damage to their soul which could have a variety of effects ranging all the way up to catastrophic shattering.
** On a related topic: Katt's bin ''is'' a retooled version of [[Cinnabar]]'s bin, and Cinnabar is the figurehead of dimensions and thus kind of a god, so that might have some form of impacts on Katt.
* Could be kind of like the stickers some computers put over screw holes so that they can tell if you've opened up the computer and voided your warranty.  Or simply a watermark.
* Would a forcible change to a fighter's fighting style also impact their personality?  Did Ben messing with Catmint's fighting also change Catmint themself?  Katt is a little bit jumbled and Off due to being recreated from their fighting style and broad strokes of personality; still herself, just a bit jostled in the transfer.

===Katt's boxing===
* Planos is normally much better at doing editing cleanly, but was giving Katt a brain transplant due to their token being lost.
* Katt's backup also did not work.  Wuh oh!
* Planos presumably rushed this transfer, possibly because of being worried that if she didn't hurry Katt could die or worse.

==Ben's Plans==
* [[Binspector]] is entirely willing to edit, and thus box-ify, himself, if he loses badly or just needs to throw off [[Planos]]'s suspicion.  If this does happen, it would successfully throw off Planos's suspicion because they are assuming that anyone boxed can be ruled out as a suspect.
* His history as Amiibrawl staff means that Ben already knows that [[Weatherman|"Stratus"]] is here, but it's still gonna suck badly when he has to talk to Weatherman.
* Ben wants to get Stratus back and also wants to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.
* Ben's going to justify his ''time in the commentator's booth'' by pointing out that Planos did lie a bunch and steal and edit people's souls.  He doesn't want to change stuff like Planos might already have, he just wants his brother back.  Of course, uh, this is kinda hypocritical of him, and also doomed to not work since it doesn't address [[the Abyss]].
** The deal that some Abyssal entity made with Stratus can't be reversed easily without upsetting whichever entity made that deal.  It may be possible to make an argument that they've gained more than a soul's worth interest on this soul of theseus, but that would be a tough sell and doing anything with that would require taking the soul out of Weatherman if it is possible at all.
* Ben has a singular goal and no regard for consequences.
* The Spector siblings are orphans; Stratus was Ben's only family.  By the way.
* When Planos eventually gets their playerhood back at the end of the arc they're gonna throw a temper tantrum at Ben.  Cartoonishly angry.

==Brooke==
* [[Brooke]] probably knows a lot of important info such as that you Can just remove boxes by changing the Amiibo name.
* If Brooke is participating in Amiibrawl 11, which she totally is, that implies she successfully modified herself into an FP.  Wow.
* Has a giant pet dolphin.  "sure."
* Brooke is thinking of the FPs she messes with as Toys, It's Fine, but also is evidently thinking of the Amiibrawl fighters as people.  These boxes have yet to clash, but with Catmint experiencing plot this may change eventually.
* It is still in development what Brooke did to [[Ash|Ashe]].  "Did to" vs "made" vs "broke"?
** It is possible that Ashe has a separate soul as a Player versus as an FP, or doesn't have a soul at all.
* Brooke may be fucking around due to the benefits of "make little guys that are functionally immortal".  Starting with herself, but then inventing a new guy whole-cloth so she doesn't have to worry about someone else having control of her soul.
** Brooke successfully did the thing [[Ark]] was trying to do nbd.  Also successfully has the info to fully understand the CPU-FP-Player distinction.  She is simply built different.
** She is held back from breaking everything by the fact that she does not want to make Planos mad.
* Brooke is the fall guy among us.  A former employee when a lot of the previous foreshadowing for what could be a problem mentioned a former employee, and extremely flippant and sus, she will soak up so much of the attention and suspicion completely on accident.

==Ark and Spark==
* [[Ark]]'s interest in players is similar to [[Binspector]]'s in that it is similarly bad news for the player's they're interested in ([[Spark]] in Ark's case rather than Planos).
* Spark may do some FP stuff, in which case kie may work with [[Amiibologist]] to make tournament participation work; kie is down for science as long as the science doesn't involve Ark or getting disassembled.  This FP-ification would basically be a sort of temporary disconnection of kir player soul link that puts kir in a weird in-between state between kir original CPU form and everything kie's learned as a player.
* Ark wants to figure out how Spark's whole everything happened and whether it can be reproduced, and how to take advantage of it, which is bad for Spark's continued survival.
* Spark is distressed and skeeved out by all the token situations because kier soul is poorly understood and a physical thing that kie really does not want to lose.  Spark and [[Planos]] are on opposite sides of the core issue of this arc.
* Spark is not programmed to be existential but weird stuff happening to souls is still a touchy subject for kir.
* Spark is gonna have a pretty rough time when Ben possesses Planos.  Up until that point, kie'd likely think favourably of Ben or at least be sympathetic to his interests, but that is a step too far.
* Spark's general vibe towards most of the other commentators (Brooke and [[Helia]] in particular) is Concerned.
* Spark has been skittish around and dodging questions about Ark; Weatherman and Planos are the only ones who likely know kir history.
** Spark also dodges the question of the Hash stanning edits kie posts on Twitter.  Kie really hopes that Helia didn't actually find kir posts (Helia did).
* [[Aegis]] has the information to put together Spark's backstory; void has the ability to detect that Spark has a soul, and also has interacted with Ark, who wanted to experiment on it and has presumably asked void whether her missing robot could be the result of Abyss stuff (to which voids internal assumption is "probably, but good for them, so why bother telling Ark that").  However, it 1) doesn't really care and 2) likes Spark and dislikes Ark, so void hasn't acted on this information or bothered to put the pieces together.
* Anatomy of Ark:
** bones
** soul
** hubris
* Unlike Binspector, Ark has no qualms about working with [[the Abyss]], and could potentially make a deal with the Abyss to understand Player power in the long term.
** This would be perhaps a bigger wish than she understands and definitely a bigger wish than Ben understood, because it goes full meta bullshit seeing beyond the veil wowzers type beat.
* The Ark plot will kick off as a direct consequence of the Binspector plot because seeing Ben possess a player gives Ark more information and fun new leads.
** This will, unfortunately for Planos, interrupt Planos's no more secrets character development vacation.

==Administrative Ideas==
* If we can't come up with a better tagline for Amiibrawl 11 we can call it Fall Guys Among Us.
** If we ''can'' come up with a better tagline, we might put that in the description.  "After the box mystery, we assemble some of the most suspicious fighters for the next tournament.  Did one of them do it, or are there just fall guys among us?"
* Veev may be added to the list of commentators.  Hi Veev!