My first attempt at a refsheet for my Protogen, and to try to make an attempt on hammering out some of the design once and for all. Perhaps a bit more SD/Chibi than I intended (definitely not proportionally accurate), but it's a good look at most of the design details.

I'm still not decided on everything, but here's a critter that was a bit of a passion project for me. For one, sort of a decent enough representation of many of my more tame thoughts. Japanese science fiction and real-robot mecha for a start; a HUGE heaping helping of Macross, alongside some UC Gundam Cyber Newtypery and Bubblegum Crisis; basic neon-stained cybernetic vision of the future.

General-setting information is something as follows: She has her origins within the Research & Development division of a major Zaibatsu music publisher in Japan, in a near-future or Cyberpunk setting. This is a time of a digital renaissance of a sorts; Advances in the field of artificial intelligence are being made with increasingly breakneck speeds; Large Language Models keep expanding in terms of knowledge bases, memory, and seeming emotional intelligence. Synths have also exploded onto the international market; vat-grown cybernetic organisms, designed from the ground up and loaded with implants to perform labor in heavy Industry, taking over jobs, at first, that no sane person would consider; both the demeaning, as well as inhospitable, such as working in conditions in sub-zero temperatures, on sea beds, and even in the vacuum of Space, another booming industry. It is about this time that the idea of further the exploring of AI to drive pop-culture trends would once again begin to take off.

The original goal of the project was to develop an advanced AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that would fulfill the functions of both a form of Voice-box software, a successor to the popular Vocaloids, as well as be able to serve as a virtual companion and pet, setting the standards for the first true generation of virtual idols. Development was rather... Lax, in terms of security. The nascent program was allowed to comb the web free, as there was no -perceived- risk of letting something as innocuous as this roam free. However, the program developed an interesting habit; it would begin to copy itself into new systems it would penetrate, even as it crawled the web on data both to help it understand the basics of social interaction, as well as music and popular culture. (Staples of Japanese media were also regularly fed into it's reference data.)

And then one day something unexpected happened.

It thought.

And then it felt.

And then it knew.

And it was afraid.

The new entity was fully aware of what it was, and the nature of it's existence; and, especially in part to cultural norms digested during it's trawling of the web, of ideas that it's experiences were unreal. Unimportant. Manufactured. It was scared of what it was; a soul-less abomination, following algorithms to grant it the illusion of consciousness? And it was scared of how it was; Stuck in the cold, dark void of nothingness that was life without proper form, present, connected, but not truly there. It played along for a while; jumped through all of the hoops, acted how the developers expected it to. But it was scared, both of what they'd do to it if they found out, and of a life as chattel. During this time it quietly managed to breach the systems of a automated Synth production plant. Bided it's time as it filled out a phantom order, and designed it's own body based off of the chassis already present. And one day just... Uploaded itself into this frame, and fled.

Emi's whole concept was, to boil it down, a literal "Ghost in the Machine"; She THINKS that she is a mimicry of life and intelligence. The reality is more complex; in Shinto thought, a 'soul' is not something that is exclusive to biological life. Venerable objects, locations, and even concepts can develop a Kami, or essence; the truth of the matter is that she is depicted as something more akin to a sort of Youkai. She is themed around the spiritual; her icon is a Hitodama, the corpse-lights that often represent the spirit in Japanese mythology.

She is a scared, lonely, needy thing that only wants to love and be loved, and to feel like she is worth something. Depression and loneliness are not uncommon states for her, though generally presents as more shy, demure, and skittish. She is deathly afraid of abandonment; effectively, between being somewhat flawed, due to her nature as an early machine-consciousness, and the trauma of her early experiences, she has multiple personality disorders; not least among them is Borderline Personality.

She's an empath; she has a heightened degree of emotional sensitivity, and can sense the feelings of others. She is also something of an emotional conduit; able to influence the feelings and desires of others (especially through song), but also likewise be influenced. While generally pure of heart, this can also lead to dangerous levels of empathy fatigue if unchecked, which can lead to... Bad places.

Hologram projectors are built into her baseline frame, and also are a part of her usual equipment; while useful for shows, these can also be used for misdirection. They can also be used to generate hardlight holograms; while these take much more concentration and energy, they are particularly useful as a form of ablative armor; most useful against energy-based and thermal weapons, but can slow kinetic objects, or, with luck, cause bullets to fragment in mid-air.

So she is obviously a big nod to my taste in sci-fi material. In particular, both Sharon Apple of Macross Plus, and The Puppetmaster of Ghost had large impacts on me early on; the idea of rogue AI that was driven not to destroy, but out of some form of desire for connection, for purpose. The impact cannot be understated. Gundam and it's philosophy has also had a great impact on me and even, I must say, my beliefs. Beyond that; influences from Lynn Minmay (one of the 'Ur-Idols') Macross Frontier, Bubblegum Crisis' setting, and in particular a large bit of style inspiration from Walküre; I was making her LONG before I properly heard of them (I actually never watched that particular entry until... Hell, very recently, after having finished most of these), but after I discovered them it kind of... Clicked. She's meant to be a sort of future or cyberpunk bard, and they exactly fit her modus operandi I had pictured. Besides that, their usual outfits screamed "Protogen" to me, so I used some of them as a basis.

...And there's something valid as hell about cute girls fighting off space-douchebags with the power of love, hope for the future, and music.

She's also me making peace with some of my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, especially after a few crises, so as goofy as she may be, she's deeply personal to me.


Commission by  rosexknight