Senses in The World

FireDraconian · Post by **FireDraconian** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 9:08 pm

Yeah, as was said before, Tsukasa's "soul" is inside the game. I doubt there is programming to allow players feel cold and heat, yet he gets chilled when he is searching for the... White? White berry.

Xebexz · Post by **Xebexz** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 10:05 pm

XD, yes. And I happen to be the one to use the term 'soul' XD.

White berry?

Cobweb · Post by **Cobweb** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 10:20 pm

Purple cherry.
Something odd ... while going through my video logs in search of the correct term, I noticed that the first time Tsukasa goes to the winter field (when he's lured there by BT so the Knights can trap him) he doesn't seem to notice the cold. Perhaps it's a gradual process; Tsukasa is slowly falling into the World and having his/her senses readjusted one by one. No, wait a sec ... in the very first episode, when Tsukasa wakes up and gets off the ground of the dungeon, he notices some kind of pink gum on his hands. He tests this by touching two fingers together and the gum stretches between them. It's unclear if he did this to see the reaction, or because he could already feel the difference.
Later in the same episode, Ginkan throws Tsukasa into a wall and he screams in *pain.* This raises another point: wouldn't Tsukasa have noticed immediately that something was very, very wrong upon awakening?
... Not if he *already* had those senses. We know very little about his activities in the World prior to episode 1; Ginkan mentions that he was seen with Maha by another player. This would perhaps imply that Morgana was slowly "preparing" Tsukasa for his protracted stay in virtual reality.

CRtwenty · Post by **CRtwenty** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 10:32 pm

Or it could be that those senses are in The World, just to a limited degree, I mean all the characters seem to scream in pain when they get hit, and Shugo certaintly seems to feel at least some kind of pain. It could just be that Tsukasa's senses were greatly heightened by Morganna...

Xebexz · Post by **Xebexz** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 11:46 pm

He may not have reacted to the cool air, being a native to Japan. Also, there was frost coming off his breath if I remember correctly. (o.o)

Diamond Berry

FireDraconian · Post by **FireDraconian** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 4:49 am

Or it could be the fact that when Tsukasa woke up, he was incredibly disoriented and confused from the Data Drain. He remembered almost nothing of the real world. He obviously knew enough to know something was wrong, but not exactly what that something was. By the time Ginkan attacks him, he has realized he can't log out and is different, and has come to terms with it.

(Sidenote: 500 posts! w00t.)

Sora · Post by **Sora** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 5:31 am

You have to remember, too, that many of the 'actions' you see other characters doing are likely just implied, or Tsukasa simply imagines them as doing that. When Mimiru slaps him in the first episode, that could have been, perhaps, a text message of

*slaps*

or perhaps it's even a macro (I am more than sure that there are action macros in The World, and my reasonings for this will be explained some other time), but even though it isn't exactly supposed to hurt the player, it gets the message across.

Of course, for Tsukasa, who sees The World as absolutely real, a slap like that -would- hurt, as he can very well see himself being slapped. Everything that -was- implied and imagined when playing The World is now real, to him.

This is why we think that //SIGN and //Udeden are animated the way they are, as they are seen through the eyes of the main character. Tsukasa, who finds it as a replacement for the real world, and Shugo, who considers it a game, and therefor 'fun'.

What is and isn't really possible in the game, well, we don't know. But for those who get involved in MMORPGs and such, you know what I'm talking about when you can 'see' the characters doing this or that from speech or minimal action alone.

Andy00 · Post by **Andy00** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 9:55 am

Heh. Playing devil's advocate as usual, remember that Subaru is VERY surprised that Tsukasa can smell her perfume, or have other senses when she talks to him while he's captured by the Crimson Knights.

But I do believe the data is there, somewhere. Maybe Players are feeling things in The World, but they don't have immediate access to this? Some "unused" part of the brain? (Emma was a cerebral biologist, if I recall)

As people continue to play the game, though, perhaps these parts of the brain are waking up.........

Cobweb · Post by **Cobweb** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 12:08 pm

That's a good idea. The VR headsets users wear would put rather a lot of electrical energy directly into the brain, I'd think. Under the circumstances it's hardly a surprise that people are going into comas - one would expect lots of epilectic siezures.
If the players who experience the World more ... *realistically* than others have increased cerebral activity, then what does that imply after they wake up again? Would Tsukasa have heightened awareness or even psi abilities in real life now?

Elk · Post by **Elk** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 9:20 pm

Cobweb wrote:Would Tsukasa have heightened awareness or even psi abilities in real life now?

I really doubt it, the most I'd bet she'd have if atht were the acse, would be an increase in headaches from thinking too hard.

CRtwenty · Post by **CRtwenty** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 9:28 pm

Though Tsukasa does seem to have a type of split personality thing going on... with the player Tsukasa still being in her head.

Andy00 · Post by **Andy00** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 7:31 pm

Well, Subaru and Tsukasa do have a latent psychic connection, which is hinted at several times. Subaru crying when Tsukasa is datadrained, them knowing where each other are immediately after "Anti-Subaru" attacked Subaru, etc.

It's possible that this connection helped them recognize each other in the ending.

Then of course, there's the biggest "leap" of them all. How Tsukasa and other data-drained players are connected to The World without being hooked up in head-sets. If they ever give a reason for this, it will be supernataral or technobabble thus invoking Clarke's Law.

This being "psychic" works fine for me.

CRtwenty · Post by **CRtwenty** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 7:49 pm

I always assumed that the connection between the body and the mind for the coma victims was supplied by the life support they were hooked up to... remember EVERYTHING in the .hack universe is hooked up to the Internet, there's probably some kind of connection between the life support, and some kind of central server in the hospital, so the Doctors and Nurses can see the condition of all their patients from their computers...

And since the computers are connected to the internet... they are therefore connected to The World.

Cobweb · Post by **Cobweb** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 10:09 pm

Well ... I *really* like that idea, but there's a problem. If the real-world flashes that we see periodically take place in the continuity as they're shown, then Tsukasa was up and about in the World before s/he was hooked up to life support. Most of episode 1 occurs before the very first black-and-white scene, where RL Tsukasa is shown unconscious on the floor. The paramedics have *just then* arrived, so she's been there some time. (Where on earth was his/her father? did he ignore the prone body for a couple of hours, or was he away at work?) Also, when she is disconnected from the life support in episode 12 he doesn't just flicker out like a candle in the World.
Did *any* of that make sense? Transsexual pronouns really *are* difficult!

CRtwenty · Post by **CRtwenty** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 10:20 pm

Tsukasa was still hooked up to the VR system in the first episode, and as soon as she was found she was probably hooked up to life support of some kind... And Tsukasa WAS affected by the loss of life support, it's just that power to the machine was restored almost immediatly, so he wasn't completely shut down.

Anyway, it's Tsukasa's mind that's trapped in The World, it only receives a small amount of information from the comatose body, so a brief loss of contact wouldn't mean instant death... in fact Tsukasa probably could have survived without a physical body, stuck as an AI for the rest of his life.