u/lzyaboiConnor

Intelligence/Cognition: Akane
Theory of Mind: Akane
Self Management: Akane
Systems Thinking: Akane
Reasoning: Akane
Foresight: Akane
Strategy: Akane
Planning: Akane
Manipulation: Akane
Deception: Akane
Creativity: Akane
Decision Making: Akane
Tactical Prowess: Akane
Adaptability: Akane
Multi-agent Complexity: Akane
Asymmetric Leverage: Akane
Higher Strengths: Akane
Less Weaknesses: Akane
Framework: Akane

Winner: Akane
Difficulty: None

Justification: ZTD Akane's scheme by itself already deals with a multitude of different timelines causally affecting other timelines in a very non-linear fashion. She easily controlled the actions of half a dozen individuals and facilitated their emotions to the point of being able to accurately control their consciousnesses jumps through time. All the while she framed herself as a victim of it all while shifting the blame to Delta, keeping their relationship with each other masked as well, this goes deeper than you think because if this act slipped up for ONE instant then it's highly possible that any Esper that witnessed it from one timeline can hypothetically remember that instance in another timeline, even if you killed them later.

In short, ZTD Akane's scheme dealt with far higher multi-agent complexity, had better coverage and masking as well as ultimately accomplishing a lot grander of a goal compared to Kanade (she both caused and prevented an apocalypse that kills 6 billion people).

No Diff matchups aren't fun, hence why it makes no sense to compare Akane to anyone below Dazai level lol. If somehow someone thinks I'm wrong here then I'd love to hear any reason why

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CWdKH3jZ4wD9oq2haRTIahYZLU9JzNMOTd0vdbQuqzc/edit?usp=sharing

Managed to get this out all in one night since I had nothing better to do. I hope you all enjoy a brief overview of my favourite and highest scaling scheme I've ever found

There really is no heterosexual explanation for what Wolhye says and feels over Sara, that's for sure. But this whole beach ep got me seeing their relationship as more than a one sided crush. What do y'all think

Cognitive Proficiency - Lawliet

Fluid Reasoning - Lawliet

Crystallised Intelligence - Lawliet >=

Verbal Comprehension - Katsumata

Knowledge - Lawliet

Metacognition - Katsumata

ToM - Katsumata

SM - Katsumata

Sensory - Katsumata

Synthesis - Katsumata

Systems Thinking - Katsumata

Creative Innovation - Katsumata

Foresight - Katsumata

Ovr Reasoning - Katsumata

Diagnosis - Katsumata

Guiding Policy - Katsumata

Coherent Actions - Katsumata

Preparation - Katsumata

Adaptability - Katsumata

Asymmetric Leverage - Katsumata

Multiagent Complexity - Katsumata

Oppositional Complexity - Katsumata

Higher Strengths - Katsumata

Less Weaknesses - Katsumata

Friend no-low diffs even with high Lawliet scaling

Disclaimer: Most of these categories are gonna mean the same thing, there's no real subcats for "self management" so I'll just borrow stuff from EI, AC and others, this is just for fun after all. Oh and also spoilers for ZE

Impulse Management: Akane (1-0)
Reason: By "impulse", I mean any urge that one would do on instinct without thinking, often being detrimental to a plan of action. Akane clears Souichi in this via her C-END 1 feat in ZTD. Being able to overcome/manage her romantic feelings towards Junpei despite them being enough to literally drive her insane at several points without the slightest hint of turmoil is superior to Souichi's PM, which I'm guessing is just his best for Impulse Management being able to overcome his inner perfectionist complex that was about to erase his memories again (if more compotent Souichi scalers wanna correct me on this then feel free to)

Metacognition: Akane (2-0)
Reason: Akane being able to essentially rewrite her psyche at will is probably the one of the best displays of Metacongition OAT. Using Muazz's defintion of "metacognition is the active monitoring, evaluation, and regulation/awareness of one's own thought and thought processes", one can see how this is the case. Higher-order volition's are described as impossible by some philosophers, in short; You can want X, want to want X, but you cannot make yourself do X if you did not already desire to do so. You can want to enjoy pain, want to want to enjoy pain, but you can't make yourself actually enjoy pain if you did not already like it if this makes sense. But Akane can do allat within a snap of a finger. Akane loves Junpei with all her heart so much it drives her crazy when he dies, yet the moment it benefits her plan, she can just remove that desire outright. Being able to execute higher-order volitions that go against your first-order desires basically puts you at the top of SCD in metacognition automatically, which is something Souichi is very much NOT able to do since he wasn't able to escape his perfectionist mindset.

Mental Fortitude: Akane (3-0)
Reason: Mental Fortitude here just means being unphased or unaffected by circumstances that would otherwise affect people greatly. To which despite Souichi's plethora of feats in this regard, pales in comparison to Akane's intelligence becoming so large that she's able to view the totality of human thought all at once while 1 year earlier, she was just basically an ordinary girl emotionally. And no, this didn't really significantly affect her either (probably because of her goated metacognition)

Emotional Engagement: Akane (4-0)
Reason: Same feats as before, Akane is able to simultaneously GENUINELY feel fear, pain, anguish etc over her circumstances in the Decision Game despite being the one who planned it all and, thanks to her metacognition, can stop feeling it at any point she wants to. Being able to feel whatever emotion you want at any point you want no matter what is busted

No point in including any other categories atp

Conclusion: Akane Kurashiki No Diffs (4-0)

I’ll start

In Zero Time Dilemma, Akane Kurashiki confronts Delta (both of them putting up an act in front of Junpei) as Delta explains that she’ll meet with him later at his own cult, Free The Soul. Strangely, he says to her that he’ll show her the “true God that we (FTS) believe in”

This is odd, Delta didn’t seem to actually believe in a deity at any point beforehand. Sure he’s a cult leader but it was because he wanted to cleanse humanity from its own filth and purify the morphogenetic field, I don’t believe he ever actually dedicated anything to a higher power. In fact, he even kinda mocks Akane for doing that (“Oh ho, to think you of all people would invoke God”)

We know this meeting between them took place as seen at the end of VLR, but we have no idea what happened in it or what was discussed. I think, however, Delta stayed true to his word and showed her the God that Free The Soul worships

It was her.

It makes sense why he’d think that. Akane in VLR is literally described being able to look over the Morphogenetic Field from the POV of a higher order intelligence, something that no one or nothing else is capable of doing. She literally looks over all of humanity like they’re termites to her. Given that Delta originally wanted to save humanity from itself, it makes perfect sense that he’d literally come to worship the woman that stands above it all

He had only first met Akane a year before this, I think this was him acknowledging that Free The Souls purpose all along was to serve her, the true goddess of humanity

Now it’s your turn to infodump

…I will still make an analysis on one aspect of this plan (particularly the strategy surrounding Carlos)

University has started back up for me and I just don’t have the time to make a long, complex, detailed analysis on a long and complex scheme that ultimately nobody rly cares about

The end goal with making any doc on Akane for me is to show just how impressive she really is in intelligence and at that rate I can get the point across in far fewer words to people that have never and likely will never play the source material.

I am considering making another “full scale” doc on Akane’s Morphogenetic Field scaling, which is something I’ve basically already written out in my Akane VS Johan post so it wouldn’t take too much effort to write a more detailed version

From 20th Century Boys

So the girl in this panel is Kiriko, Kenji (the MCs) older sister. The little boys laughing at her are Sadakiyo, Fukubei and Yamane from left to right.

I didn't think much of this panel at first, just finding it odd that Fukubei (the kid who would go on to become Friend) and his gang would be laughing at Kiriko for no reason...

Then it dawned on me, at this point, Fukubei had already formulated his decades long scheme in the Book of Prophecy and told his friends about it. Part of this plan...is knocking up Kiriko in order to give birth to Kana, which is exactly what happens in the manga

THESE KIDS WERE DEADUZZ LAUGHING AT KIRIKO BECAUSE THEY KNEW IN 20 YEARS THAT FUKUBEI WOULD CRACK HER 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 That is fucking DIABOLICAL bro

My vote goes to this clip from Saw II

To explain it briefly, the cop in this scene is Eric and he just saw his son Daniel on some monitors and saw that he's stuck in Kramer's game. He goes to call his son just in case he still had his phone on him and THIS MF KRAMER CHANGED DANIEL'S VOICE MAIL TO HIS OWN VOICE 😭. Brother he did NOT need to do allat, it was just for the love of the game. W contingency feat ig lmao

Cognition: Patrick Jane
General Intelligence: Patrick Jane
Theory of Mind: Ai Magase
Self Management: Ai Magase
Systems Thinking: Ai Magase
Reasoning: Patrick Jane
Foresight: Ai Magase
Strategy: Ai Magase
Planning: Ai Magase
Manipulation: Ai Magase
Deception: Ai Magase
Creativity: Ai Magase
Decision Making: Ai Magase
Adaptability: Ai Magase
Multi-agent Complexity: Ai Magse
Higher Strengths: Ai Magase
Less Weaknesses: Ai Magase
Framework: Ai Magase
Matchup: Ai Magase

Winner: Ai Magase Low Diff

Don't believe me? Read this doc by u/thatguyislonelyfr

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P_3RRMwQa8w0BJLotSaXwLbuEXy00vSYgXBO8rcXXwk/edit?usp=sharing

Been a while since I made a post on The Protagonist from the movie Tenet, but I'm feeling inspired after seeing a post putting him in Mid Tier so I feel like my goat is becoming underrated as time goes on since I abandoned the idea of a doc revamp. I do admit, the doc I made on him is rushed, outdated and lacks details like a feat of his that amp's his cognitive cats massively, but other than that, I don't feel the need to add to his scaling anymore. I do however need to let y'all know that my underrated GOAT isn't just cracked in Deception, but also has one of the best Social Intelligence feats I've ever seen, which is what I'm covering now.

Background:
After the success of the mission, at the end of the film, The Protagonist learns that he's been caught in a bootstrap paradox where the leader of the organization he was recruited into, Tenet, was actually founded by his future self. After the end of the film, TP inverts back through time to 2008 in order to build the Tenet organization and then recruit his own past self in 2019 and make the mission of defeating the future group of scientists that want to end the world a success, just like what he went through in his past and sealing the loop.

When he makes it back in time to 2008, he is completely alone. The Tenet organization that we see in the film was completely disbanded by the end of the mission, as it has no purpose to continue. This means that TP built the entire organization from the ground up by himself.

In 2008, the very first action of the Tenet Organization takes place. A Russian nuclear station was taken over and held for a week. After it was taken back by the Russians, they discover that the Plutonium on one warhead was missing, this "Plutonium" was the last section of the algorithm that would resurface 11 years later in the Opera Siege of 2019, the opening of the film.

This means that without ANY help, TP was able to obtain the funds and resources to build his own paramilitary force that could hold back the Russian army for an entire week, steal Plutonium from a warhead and slip away undetected. Absolute insanity and this is only the beginning.

The Scope and Scale of the Tenet Org:
After this, the Tenet Organization grew dramatically in size between the years 2008-2019 when we see them in the film. In terms of scale, the Tenet org is very clearly shown to be a global, multi-national level institution with agents and associates in the UK, USA, Estonia, Italy, Ukraine, India, Vietnam and Norway just to name all the places we see in the film. The exact member count of the Tenet org is unknown, but I estimate around 300-400 members based on what we see in the film and keeping in mind that TP would wanna keep the member count to a minimum.

In terms of resources, a bullet list of what Tenet has access to would be:
- Connections/Insiders to British and American Intelligence (specifically the CIA)
- An arms dealer and her resources (Priya)
- Their own servers for phone calls
- A paramilitary of around 100 members (Stalsk-12 battle)
- Their own Turnstile that's built into a ship (Magne Viking, TP designed it himself as well)
- Vehicles such as cars, boats and a firetruck
- The funds and manpower to obtain all of the above (implied "billions")

This isn't even mentioning people with minor roles such as Faye, the doctors that healed TP at the start, the scientist lady and other members with tiny jobs like the dude who's only role was to give TP a car to the scientist lady after he gets dropped off at a port.

The Feat Framework:
As anyone who's read the doc or any of my scaling of The Protagonist knows, his feat framework for everything we see him do is insane for one big reason, this feat here of building and maintaining the Tenet organization is no different.

TP and Tenet's enemy are a group of scientists around 500ish years in the future who want to reverse the flow of time to save themselves from global warming. These scientists have total access to all information from the past. This includes bank records, police reports, every text and every call and likely much more. This is important because if these scientists got ANY report that suggested the existence of an organization in the past built to stop them, they could just use the power of hindsight to essentially erase them from existing via time inversion or just know all of their moves before they're made and easily counter them. Point being, if even one clue of the Tenet organization and it's mission leaks, it's all over for everyone in the past.

This means that everything I've written in the post was done without ANY detail being leaked into public record. Do you have any idea how hard it is to live as an individual in the modern world without leaving any trace? It's nigh-impossible. There's surveillance everywhere, you need money in order to live which is also nigh-impossible to obtain without a record, you need shelter, water etc etc and you'll need internet in order to access most commodity's of the modern world, which leaves you open to even MORE tracking that is also nigh-impossible to fully counter. And this is just for living life as ONE person.

TP was able to obtain billions of dollars, a paramilitary, build a turnstile and then build and maintain a global secret organization to defeat the future itself without any trace whatsoever being leaked. I've run out of words to describe how monstrously insane of a feat this is.

Conclusion:
The Protagonist was able to operate at a global level for a decade to build a secret organization that utilized temporal inversion all in order to defeat an enemy that was 500 years into the future from him. This enemy was, for all practical purposes, omniscient by having essentially complete information of the past yet TP countered this enemy and their puppet Andrei Sator without any trace at all being leaked.

This feat easily puts The Protagonist above PJ, Johan Liebert and ur fav high tier in Social Intelligence in my humble opinion

TYSM for reading ❤️‍🩹

Spoilers for Deltarune chapter 5 as well as Deltarune in general.

As some of you may be aware, before chapter 5 released, I was beginning to analyze Deltarune's meta-narrative and realized that W D Gaster actually scales pretty high in outsmarting. Part of this analysis pre-chapter 5 was the assertion that the upcoming Festival would showcase a plan executed by Carol and formulated by Gaster. Of course, no such plan came to fruition (because chapter 5 fucking sucks)...or did it? Granted, the Festival didn't pan out nearly as dramatically as I thought it would, but it's not nothing, there's still a plan from Gaster lurking beneath the surface. The entire chapter is named "Festival Day" for a reason and that's what I'm analyzing here today.

Part 1: Main Route
The Festival is an annual event held in Hometown for no discernible reason. It doesn't seem to be tied to Hometown's religion but nonetheless, Carol Holiday, the town's mayor, spends a long time preparing for it to "make sure everything goes right" regardless. In chapter 5, Carol is completely absent from the game, with only Rudy mentioning that she's "down south, investigating". A traditional bearing of Hometown would have south of town being The Shelter, which is conveniently blocked off during the festival, which would give Carol ample time to do her business in the shelter without interruption or witnesses, which is what I'm suspecting she was up to given what Rudy says.

Other than this little detail, the Festival itself is innocuous. All that happens during the main route is just romantic hijinks between Susie and Noelle while Kris stays as a third wheel. But there is a weird detail that fans have noticed: NormalNPC

\"G\" is \"Gold\", the currency in Undertale...

During the festival on the main route, NormalNPC, an obvious reference to one of the Goners in undertale, is selling takoyaki. Takoyaki is comprised of fried dough balls stuffed with octopus and onion...Onionsan is literally a octupus-onion hybrid. In chapter 2, Onionsan said that they'll investigate the strange "song" coming from the bottom of the lake and asks Kris to meet him tomorrow. In chapter 4, the next day after chapter 2, Onionsan is gone and only NormalNPC is seen standing in that spot

https://preview.redd.it/9ir65yz0xwch1.png?width=910&format=png&auto=webp&s=05267810e86fdcc8d51ba49c3860c67d63d8028b

So yea NormalNPC, an obvious Gaster minion, straight up killed Onionsan, cooked him and then gave away his remains for free at the Festival, with Susie specifically noting that the takoyaki in question just tasted like "raw onion". All of this happening after Onionsan said he'd investigate a strange song coming from the depths...

Something else as well, the water level of the lake has mysteriously changed between chapter's. I already explained it to someone in discord and I don't feel like typing it again so it's just this:

https://preview.redd.it/87czq4eaywch1.png?width=1352&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb0f5ba625d1a0c7d56b0b1e70f38dd7f4483128

This is all to say, Gaster deliberately planned for the lake scene on BOTH routes to happen, going as far as to editing the world of Deltarune itself to retroactively change how shallow/deep the lake is.

And yes I'm saying both routes, so time to talk about the other one.

Part 2: Weird Route
I'll keep it brief, the Weird Route was planned by Gaster from the beginning. "Insert Chapter 7 Side B" confirms that. With that being said, what does the Festival during the Weird Route show us?

Kris sleeps through the entire thing, trying to delay the SOULs control for as long as possible, until we force them out of bed. Susie brings Kris along to look at all the now-empty stands in an attempt to cheer Kris up. Among the empty stands, is NormalNPCs to which Susie has this to say:

https://preview.redd.it/47mvh8vz2xch1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed6333488cc69aac423e66f4daa7dc4cf6b0b174

This seems to undermine what I was saying before. If Gaster used NormalNPC to kill Onionsan, why isn't NormalNPC there in the Weird Route? My answer is simple: There was no point. Kris slept through the entire thing, there was no player there to casually signal towards so therefore no point in NormalNPC selling Onionsan's remains. Yes I do believe that Gaster deliberately signaled to us using NormalNPC. For what purpose? That remains unclear. But Onionsan is still definitely dead and the lake's depths were definitely altered on the Weird Route.

Another difference on the Weird Route compared to the Main Route is Sans, who gives you a loaf of bread that leaves a trail of breadcrumbs.

https://preview.redd.it/xb65so2i3xch1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f172a70bb15ffad0923e89f83175a0d31998750

Obviously this scene had a LOT more interesting details in it other than just Sans giving you a loaf of bread, it also partially confirmed that the Weird Route is canon to Undertale as the "don't forget" note seems more likely to come from the Weird Route than the Main Route with Sans later bringing it with him when he moved to Undertale. But something that has me stumped is the purpose of the bread, people suggest that it's for Sans to follow where Kris is going, but I find that dubious since Sans seemingly already know what's about to happen in the Weird Route.

https://preview.redd.it/14qezq8v3xch1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=0653c27d16782f963fb7f06a93cf8d0baf2d8de6

Point being, idk what the Bread is for, but since it's also coming from a Gaster minion (one that knows about the Weird Route), I'll just include it here anyways as pertinent to Gaster's plan (it's also potentially a Mother 1 reference).

Following that, the rest of the Weird Route happens. With Onionsan gone, there's no one left to stop Kris and Noelle from lake-skipping all the way to chapter 7, just as planned.

Conclusion:
Like most of Gaster's plans, the Festival plan was subtle in it's execution but grand in scale. By getting rid of Onionsan and retroactively changing the water levels of the lake (something gone unnoticed by any of the characters in-universe...), Gaster allowed for both Main Route and Weird Route lake scenes to happen. The Main Route maintains the "love finds it's way to the girl" prophecy panel while the Weird Route breaks the prophecy entirely by skipping an entire chapter and preventing the Chapter 5 dark world from ever being opened.

The effects of this have yet to be seen of course, but the implications are vast. The Weird Route being the beginning of how Sans made it to Deltarune ties into Gaster's paradoxical existence (of UT being both in the past and the future of DR) and ties into his overarching plan of creating a story that never ends as foreshadowed by the Lord of the Hammer narrative. This small action of killing Onionsan and signalling it to the player foreshadows the Weird Route as an option to the SOUL in the main route and accounts for a SOUL on both routes, which is something that Gaster is apparently parallel processing at the same time (if his "always listening" and Gallery prophecy panel narrative are to be believed).

In short, this is yet another continuation of his divergent timelines plan, the effects of which will only be seen in chapter 6 and beyond. But for now, the implications of Gasters actions alone are very, very interesting...

What do you guys think?

I've watched the Hannibal TV show twice now and I'm sure that anyone who scales this show can agree that Hannibal is certainly portrayed as a good manipulator, with many scalers pretty much automatically giving him that category (or at least those subcats) over most other characters just from pure vibes. If not vibes, then they usually point towards the manipulation of Will Graham as his best in Direct/Emotional, to which I'd agree

Here's why that feat is absolute buns.

It all has to do with who the feat was performed against and the circumstances it was performed under. In Season 1, Will Graham is introduced (by Hannibal himself) as someone with "pure empathy". We see this via his reconstruction of crime scenes where he's able to completely assume the position of the killer and feel their emotions as his own. This is something that Will has a degree of control over but it is still something that affects his psyche greatly. In short, this empathy disorder of his makes him far more susceptible to making the desires and emotions of other people his own, as represented by the stag in his hallucinations. With that alone, Will is already far, FAR more susceptible to manipulation than a normal person, but it gets even worse.

Also during Season 1 while the manipulation was taking place, Will Graham developed Encephalitis, this was the disorder that caused his brain to be inflamed and is the reason behind him losing time and suffering from vivid hallucinations. It's not like Hannibal induced this either, it's something that Will Graham just so happened to have that caused most of the hallucination stuff to happen

It gets EVEN worse. Throughout this whole ordeal, Hannibal was drugging Will, making him even MORE susceptible to manipulation. Will Graham had 3 separate things making him susceptible to manipulation and only the drugging part was caused by Hannibal, the rest were just pure circumstance. His manip of Will Graham is FAR more impressive in terms of it's indirect/logical aspect than it is direct/emotional for these exact reasons

Basically, if a character can make anyone do anything via direct means without the triple whammy of empathy disorder + encephalitis + drugs, they are better than NBC Hannibal in direct/emotional manip. Akiyama is better in that via Yokoya manip, Yumeko is better in that via Mary manip in RPS tournament, fucking SAUL GOODMAN is better in that via his manipulation of Tuco in S1E2 and I'm not even remotely joking.

I better not see NBC Hannibal taking Direct/Emotional Manip off ANYONE with this shit, there's just no way it's justifiable given the feat framework of his best showing in that regard.

One of the joys of analysing a character in an SCD context is uncovering aspects of their character that lay beneath the surface of how they’re portrayed.

Two examples of characters that I’ve analysed deeply: Akane Kurashiki and W D Gaster

Akane is portrayed as an outgoing but slightly quirky young woman who due to an experiment performed on her as a child, was thrust into an unfortunate paradox that she had to work to break herself out of, while her later actions in VLR/ZTD are just portrayed as her doing all she can to save the world and the man she loves. Overall outside of VLR, her personality is pretty consistent and especially ZTD portraying her as not in control of the situation at all for once in her life. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot to Akane other than being an intelligent, timid lady who’s simply been thrust into unfortunate situations.

However this couldn’t be further from the truth. Akane is someone who can only be described in words like “anomaly” and “monster”. Tenmyouji in VLR put it best: “I don’t even think she’s human anymore.” This switch up comes from the realisation that she wasn’t a victim in ZTD and a saviour in VLR, but a mastermind that planned absolutely everything we see occur. All the death, suffering, love, joy and everything in between was all apart of her plan. She caused the apocalypse and then saved the world from it, she loves Junpei with everything she has yet coldly tosses him aside, shes both fearful and fearless, she’s dead and alive, here and there. This paradoxical nature of her character it’s a big part of the reason I’ve continued to enjoy scaling Akane after over a year of playing a game I didn’t even particularly enjoy all that much (the ZE trilogy). All this lovely characterisation was only revealed to me via a careful examination of her actions, and I’m still finding more as I go along

On the complete opposite end of this we have Gaster. Anyone who’s played UT/DR and is familiar with its popular theories knows this guy as a auraful mystery and the creator of Deltarune. His portrayal is scarce but everything we have on him points towards him being a stoic, cold scientist character.

Meanwhile when you look into him under the context of his actions of planning Deltarune…ts dude cannot be serious 😭. Almost none of the characters he’s created are straight (not saying it’s bad but it’s just funny), his plan legitimately revolves around shipping his teenaged main cast with each other, and his messages to the player read like he’s outright in love with the player. Gaster’s actions make his character seem like it’s more in line with the average Deltarune fan than some aura farming villain 💀

Basically the point of this post is I’m wondering if anyone else has discovered something cool about their fav characters after analyzing them. If not, then I highly recommend it lol, deep analysis of a characters actions in an SCD context reveals a lot more than you’d think

Full Scale Intelligence Quotient - Gaster
Emotional Intelligence - Gaster
Social Intelligence - Gaster
Adversity Capacity - Gaster
General Intelligence - Gaster
Cognitive Functions - Gaster
Observation - Gaster
Perception - Gaster
Thinking - Gaster
Reasoning - Gaster
Analysis - Gaster
Insight - Gaster
Foresight - Gaster
Psychological Warfare - Gaster
Manipulation - Gaster
Deception - Gaster
Unpredictability - Gaster
Psychology - Gaster
Social Engineering - Gaster
Subversion - Gaster
Tactics - Gaster
Field Crafting - Gaster
Counteraction - Patrick Jane
Strategy - Gaster
Planning - Gaster
Composition - Gaster
Systemics - Gaster
Adaptability - Gaster
Mobility - Gaster
Judgment - Gaster
Resistances - Gaster

Verdict - W D Gaster Very Low Diff (30-1)

Spoilers for ch5 obviously

…

Yeah this chapter completely fucking sucked from a writing POV, objectively speaking. But this isn’t the place to rant about how hard Toby killed his own game by adding a filler episode for no reason. Instead, imma just briefly go over how Gaster scaling has changed since my last posts on him

Obviously the whole idea of a “festival plan” was completely shut down, but otherwise, his scaling is looking pretty good thus far. Nothing significant has changed in how we understand Gaster and his relationship to Deltarune, so I’ll be scaling him the same way I did before but with a new addition to his feats/an update on his plan: The Weird Route

The image I’ve attached is what’s shown at the end of the Weird Route, showcasing and confirming not only that the route was planned from the start, but that it skips Chapter 6 entirely. This isn’t even to mention the idea of a Twisted Route (or “Abandoned Weird Route”) looking more probable than ever before.

As for the specifics on what this means, obviously we can’t be sure until we see chapter 7 ourselves, but I’ll definitely go back to posting Gaster feats I mentioned before like the Shadow Crystal plan etc.

Things are about to get very, very interesting

(Also there was barely any Gaster tweets this time for me to analyse fml)

If anyone out there cares, I’m gonna be reframing the way I describe her cognition

In short, I’ve basically went along with the (unsubstantiated) narrative implication of Akane in VLR being some nigh-omniscient goddess with a view into all possible timelines that she’s alive in. But looking back on this, I legit cannot think of ANYTHING that backs this up other than just pure vibes.

The “higher order intelligence” narrative is only applicable to the M Field instead of timelines as a whole. If any other Zero Escape scaler is somehow reading this and thinks I’m wrong, then please send some scans to forallposterity on discord

What this means for Akane’s scaling: Slight cognition and reasoning nerf, slight foresight buff. Yeah that’s pretty much it (lowk this may even buff her reasoning, will think on this some more)

Bored so I'm updating my take on this matchup

General Intelligence: Akane Kurashiki
Emotional Intelligence: Akane Kurashiki
Social Intelligence: Akane Kurashiki
Adversity Capacity: Akane Kurashiki
Thinking: Akane Kurashiki
Reasoning: Akane Kurashiki
Foresight: Akane Kurashiki
Strategy: Akane Kurashiki
Planning: Akane Kurashiki
Manipulation: Friend
Deception: Friend
Tactical Prowess: Akane Kurashiki
Creativity: Akane Kurashiki
Decision Making: Akane Kurashiki
Adaptability: Akane Kurashiki
Feat Framework: Akane Kurashiki
Scenarios: Akane Kurashiki
Matchup: Akane Kurashiki

Overall: Akane slams Low Diff (16-2)