#thanks for the ask !! love talking about the semantics of SEGAU

[tekatonic]

Hiii i got a bit of a question about karma im the emerald guardians au-

You mention that in universe karma has little to no effect on the story, and only really changes a character's look.

But out of universe, when you design a character, how do you choose what karma they have? What's the process?

Also if karma is ever changing, is there a character that had a notable change in karma?

Sorry if this has been asked before and i love your stuff ^^

Gah... I am so flattered !!! Wow ! People like stuff I make !!! It's not been asked before, no worries, this is only my third ask about SEGAU and I thrive on talking about it :] ---

When I design the characters, i try to get a rough estimate in my head of their range on the karma scale ( though i forget sometimes ). I usually think about their parents or ancestors, significant traumatic events, their attitude towards life... stuff like that. That influences their colors and features in transformations.

Karma does change, but I think you shouldn't really be expecting it to be drastic changes. Because it's a value passed down... well, pretty much since sentience happened, it's accumulated a lot of information, and the latest person in a family tree is only a small portion of that.

Now that being said, each and every person's karma value is still uniquely theirs, so it can sometimes be majorly impacted by very big events and changes in circumstances ! ---

A good example of a character whose karma has a significant shift is Blaze the cat ! Until she was 8, she was living a comfortable princess lifestyle, and even with her royal ancestry ( those tend to have pretty questionable history... ) she had a decently positive karma value, but then she was zapped 200 years into the future and spent 10 whole years cut off from everything she knew, everyone she loved, and her easy lifestyle. As you can imagine, that's pretty traumatic... A big change in life can be a big change in karma, so hers understandably dipped into the negative.

Silver on the other hand, went from "everything is bad, how did we even get here" to "there is so much more beauty to life than i ever knew", so his karma is actively going up. A good time after 06, it'd be pretty neutral !