Mayu Spirit Headcanon Book

Introduction

(Copying and pasting this intro in all my headcanon books so no one is left confused lololol)
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HOOOOO BOY I'M REWRITING THIS YET AGAIN. HOPEFULLY THIS'LL BE THE LAST TIME BUT I'M NOT PROMISING ANYTHING.

Okay sooooo, to try and explain this as clearly as humanly possible, let's use Project Diva as an example. As you probably know, these games have costumes that can be used in the MVs for most of the in-game songs called "modules." Now, these modules are simply meant to be all the same Vocaloids in different outfits (ex. Spiritual, Princess Blanche and Liar are all just Miku.) But like... what if it WASN'T that way? Like what if they WEREN'T just Vocaloids in different outfits? What if they all were completely separate people with their own identities?? Yeah that's kinda what I thought around 3 and a half years ago, and now we're here.

Basically, what I've been doing is taking Vocaloid designs from songs, albums and whatnot, and turning them into their own characters (note that other synthesizer programs like Utau and Cevio are also included in this because why not.) I've been giving them their own names, ages, personalities, etc. I refer to them as Spirits, which is a weird name, but that's just the way it is and you all have to deal with it >:)

This whole AU takes place in sort of a country that I've named Regnum (which is literally just Latin for "realm," according to Google Translate.) I'd say it's rather moderately sized for a country and is populated mostly by Spirits, though there's still plenty of regular humans that live there too (though they don't really matter all that much and only ever act as anonymous background characters.) Regnum is divided into five areas, each based off of the five auras from Project Diva X (Classic/Classa, Cute/Curren, Cool/Corla, Elegant/Elei and Quirky/Qiro.)

One pretty neat thing about Spirits is this thing they have called Soul Energy. A Spirit's type of Soul Energy depends on what Vocaloid is being used to represent them in their original media. For example, the girl from Fragile (whom I call Reina) by Nuyuri would have Gumi's Soul Energy, since Gumi is the one singing the song. There are also some Spirits with multiple kinds of Soul Energy. This happens when there's multiple Synths used in a song, but only one character design is present. For instance, Drop Pop Candy uses both Rin and Luka, so the girl in the MV (whom I call Vera) would have both Rin and Luka's Soul Energy. For a while, Soul Energy didn't have much of an active role in my AU, and only really existed to help me organize Spirits. But recently, I found a way to implement it into the actual story, therefore making it far more significant.

I also have another type of character in this AU called "Wanderers," which are basically the same as Spirits, except they come from non-synthesizer songs instead. I was hesitant to add them at first, since my AU was solely about vocal synth stuff before, but once Gambling by Syudou came out July of 2021, I gave in and did it anyway. There aren't nearly as many Wanderers as there are Spirits, but I think the ones I've got so far are pretty cool.

One final thing I should mention is the vocal synths themselves, as they play a HUGE role in my AU. I'll do my best to clearly explain this, but this story begins in a completely different timeline, in present day. An unnamed god was curious as to how powerful they were, and wanted to push the limits of their abilities. They wanted to find a bunch of test subjects (aka the synths,) take their souls, split them up into hundreds upon thousands of little pieces and take those soul pieces into another timeline (one that was hundreds of years in the past) so that they could place those soul pieces into unsuspecting people.

Eventually, as generations passed, what began to happen is that some people were born with traits similar to the synth whose soul piece was placed into one/both of their parents. This didn't happen to everyone, but it was common enough for people to notice. This phenomenon was eventually given the name Soul Energy, and that those who had it were known as Spirits. So, think of Soul Energy as an odd kind of recessive gene.

Thing is however, almost nobody in the current timeline is aware of how Spirits and Soul Energy came to be. Of course, there's a few exceptions, but for the most part, everyone believes it's a completely natural occurrence. I plan to keep it this way, as I don't want to cause anyone to go through a crisis over that knowledge. Some people have been through enough already. Also the synths in this timeline are still alive, and won't be experimented on unlike their alternate selves. Also ALSO the god who started everything in the first place will be given an actual identity eventually. They'll most likely end up being a Wanderer.

Anyway, now that I've gotten through the bulk of this confusing explanation, I'll quickly go through some smaller points.

1. These are MY headcanons, and of course, you don't have to agree with all of them. But please for the love of Wario, don't come yelling to me about how "my headcanons are wrong" just because you don't like them. If you hate them so much, then you can go off and make your own.

2. Not every single Spirit is gonna have a super detailed personality and/or backstory. Plenty of them will be just... kinda regular people with only a couple small headcanons about them. So there'll definitely be a good amount of not-so-interesting characters here.

3. Not every single Spirit will have a nice and happy life, either. Plenty of sensitive topics will be present in my AU, and I'll do my best to portray them as respectfully as I can. But of course, I'm bound to mess up at one point or another, so if you see me accidentally portraying something incorrectly, then be sure to tell me about it so I can fix it. All I ask is that you remain calm and civil about it, so don't come to me screaming about how much of a terrible person I am for making a mistake.

4. A lot of Spirits will have their designs altered in one way or another, whether it be their outfit, hair color, or anything else along those lines. I do this to create a stronger sense of individuality for the Spirits so they seem less like just a Vocaloid in a different outfit (and I also do it just for fun too lol.)

5. There are a fair amount of songs used in my AU that don't have any kind of character design (like Teo by Omoi for instance.) In this situation, I simply make up my own design for the Spirit! There's a lot of really great songs I'd have to leave out if I didn't do this (like seriously I could never exclude something like Airhead by Picon. It's just not possible.)

6. Spirits don't age in my AU for the sole reason of plot convenience. And also because you could not pay me to keep track of everyone's birthdays and ages. There's just waaaaaaay too many characters for me to do that. They all permanently stay as the age I assign them until the end of time.

7. All of the Project Sekai characters are technically part of my AU as well, but they can only be seen in their designated Sekais. It's like how the Vocaloids can only physically exist in the Sekais in the game, except the reverse of that, if that makes any sense. Another thing to note is that the only Spirits that have access to a Sekai are those who have had their song included in the game. This isn't super relevant or anything (at least not now,) but it does play a part in this hell. I may end up doing something similar for the Bandori characters (since Kasumi and Yukina have received official Cevio voicebanks.) However, if I do go with that idea, then keep in mind that Kasumi and Yukina are completely separate from Popy and Rose. Although in my AU, they're technically the same people from different timelines, they are separate entities.

Aaaaand that's pretty much it! A totally very brief summary of my AU! Definitely not almost 1.5k words long!!! But anyway uhhhh yeah hope you guys maybe enjoy this! And here's a funny video as a prize for making it to the end or something lol