From the looks of it, Altair has really painted herself in a corner with the appearance of Souta's contribution to the crossover. These are possible outcomes from this, as I can see them.
1. She kills Setsuna on the basis that she's Souta's creation, however, upon doing so, the audience will all but instantly turn against her, dropping her acceptance levels all the way down to zero for doing something so "Out-of-Character" that they start rooting for the other heroes instead, allowing them to kill her. ("Rejection" route)
2. She prevents Setsuna's suicide, however, upon doing this, she will lose all reason for her cosmic suicidal tantrum and motivations for it in the first place, essentially robbing her of all the reason to destroy the world, which the audience would not accept after seeing her get a closure to her character, allowing her to fade away with the "Closure" route. The audience is satisfied and happy, accepting her end.
3. She Accepts Setsuna, Altair is being literally told that "it's enough" and that her creator's wishes for her had already come true, (Something only Souta would know about,) and offer her a chance to "come with her", and stop her plan at last. Altair can either accept this ("Closure" route), reject this ("Betrayal" route) or simply break down and start crying, begging someone to kill her instead as she can't decide for herself. ("Mercy kill" route)
Regardless of which route this goes, Altair have no way out of "this" guillotine...and the audience will be her judge and jury to pull the crank for it to fall.
(all just theories of course.)
edited 2nd Sep '17 9:18:50 PM by TitanJump
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The plan was to have them all beat her. The original point of the birdcage was to give Altair a canon so she couldn't just pull powers out of her ass. They didn't work because for some reason the in universe audience is okay with some random OC curbstomping beloved established characters with her literal story breaker powers.
The reason the in-universe audience is okay with that is because the structure of the story they've constructed demands that the baddie be strong enough that the combined forces of the good guys feel like underdogs.
In that sense Altair has been pretty clever about how she introduces her powers; for example she didn't just stand there and let them skewer her so she could reflect damage back and them, but goaded Alice into a reckless charge, at which point the story structure will allow her to reveal a new power to explain why that was a tactical error. And this week, the narrative is 'all hope seems lost as the baddie mows down the good guys one by one', which allows her to pull out whatever random nonsense enables her to curb stomp her opponents.
You know, if next episode the audience starts calling out the Setsuna plot twist, just a montage of audience criticising it... That will be meta on so many levels!
Or, even better, the end END credits will be a montage of in universe forums bashing the writing of the crossover. I will die from laughter.
@Villain Sue. Well, altair IS a fanfic level Villain Sue. This show is good even when it's bad.
Can't wait to see how it ends. And want more!
“You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and embarrassment to others.” -Mark Manson.Yea, the entire point of Altair is that she's a Villain Sue of the highest order. So how do you combat bullshit? Why with more bullshit of course.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
Well, this is all running on Magane Magic, so there's no actual acceptance to support it.
Sirius demonstrated this to be patently false. You can't overpower Altair with bullshit. You have to run her into a situation where she cannot escape without losing face and thus acceptance. In hindsight, I'm surprised the actual plan didn't involve this. Altair is a Slave to PR in a sense that without people accepting her she cannot actually do stuff. If she has to limit her powers, only then can she be defeated; and enough repulsion from the public could possibly just straight out erase her.
edited 3rd Sep '17 11:13:34 AM by FergardStratoavis
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Though maybe it's me just being cynical and nitpicky, but I figured that for a series that runs on "audience acceptance" being what powers the characters, eventually the audience would call bullshit on all the Game Breakers.
It's fine if you don't pull them out of your hat every two seconds. Given that Dragon Ball Z set standards for shonens for quite some time, bullshit dick-waving with your powers and inexplicable power increase is probably par on the course.
I have to wonder what is the last episode for now.
I dunno, I expected this to be more bittersweet in the end, but I guess mild Creation-on-Creation Creator yuri in the middle of Idyllic Landscape is fine too.
I can't help but feel mild disappointment. It was going to come down to this eventually, but... I dunno, I guess I'd prefer Altair getting nope'd out of reality via negative acceptance instead.
I forget what she was saying. Please refresh my memory?
edited 9th Sep '17 11:15:09 AM by FergardStratoavis
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I mean when they're lying side by side, hair casually strewn on the ground in a sparkly starry wonderland just for them, voices and faces softer than they've ever been, and Altair leans over toward Setsuna with a camera angle that looks like she's kissing her before standing up, well, yuri's not all that hard to see.
People also will read Yuri into anything when two female characters have a lot of physical contact; that's also noticed with the Anime community. I'm not saying there isn't some subtext there, but given how the series has been explicit on how the relationship between creator and creation works and the general speech.
It is definitely like a creator trying to talk down their creation.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
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I was being facetious, and now I'm just feeling a little stupid because of it. Apologies.
Anyway, I suppose it makes sense for Sota to end the mess he started in the first place, but I just can't help but feel we've missed out on other, more meta-y stuff. The concept of acceptance proved more or less useless and Altair getting a get-out-of-jail-card like this just... doesn't feel satisfactory? It's a matter of opinion, of course, and I can certainly see good things from it, but... eh. Some karma would feel much more cathartic and, after all, "tragedy stirs the soul", as Altair herself put it.
edited 9th Sep '17 12:50:08 PM by FergardStratoavis

Pretty sure Altair's full of shit about becoming the protagonist. She said it herself, what the audience wants isn't her strength, it's everyone else struggling against her strength. But then she inexplicably concluded that what the audience wanted was a Downer Ending.
But in truth, the nature of Altair's strength is that she seems unbeatable until she's inevitably somehow defeated. That's the shape of the story she's written around herself, and surely all of us here in the true audience can see that. I'm curious to find out whether or not Altair knows that, though. Perhaps she's actually delusional enough to think that she could become the kind of protagonist ends up successfully destroying the world.