Random question about Psych - Sorry if this is a little outdated as I'm basing it on his old reference sheet. Also sorry it's so long haha.
As I understand it: He has reversion magic - and by touching somebody he can revert them back to a state before they experienced some sort of trauma. If multiple traumas occurred, Psych can exert a lot more energy to go back several stages. However, direct contact with his soul is a lot more potent/unstable and can result in a lot more extreme outcomes.
As for my question, let's use a typical fanon Passive Nightmare story as an example (sorry, I'm not really all caught up on Atrophy's whole deal and I think regular UTMV Nm may fit the scenario better LOL), where usually it'll be something like:
Passive chilling -> Passive gets attacked -> Passive eats the apples -> "HELP ME PLZ IS COR---Corrupted.exe: I here HAHAHA"
Let's assume eating the apples here was the main, "big" trauma, and getting attacked, although still traumatic, gets lumped into the general bullying thing and was bog-standard by this point (i.e. that specific instance of bullying didn't lead him to eat the apples, but it was rather the culmination of all the bullying lead up to that incident, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back.)
If Psych were to use his powers on that Nightmare, at what "stage" would he be reverted back to? Would it be right before the Apple incident, (the beginning of Substance Corruption) and then ergo that means Nightmare would still be pretty banged up? Or would he just be 6 years old again with none of the injuries? And if the latter, when in time would his code be? A day before the trauma? A week? Or would it place him in some random time before, with some variability? (E.g. performing two separate reversions on Nm could pull his code an hour before the incident and then 3 weeks before the incident).
OR, if the former, let's assume that one Negative apple is okay for you, but 999 isn't. Would this, again, revert him right before Nm supposedly takes a bite? Or somewhere in the midpoint of Apple eatery? Again comparing this to Substance Corruption, it is noted that:
"A potent substance that shouldn’t be within a monster gets in a monster and overwhelms their code permanently."
This implies that there are possibly instances where a substance does get in a monster's body, but the body is able to fight it off/expunge somehow, if I'm getting that right? So in this example, Maybe Nightmare gets reverted to only having 3 apples, because maybe 3 apples is okay for his body to deal with. But 4? Crossing the line there, bub. SUBSTANCE CORRUPTION INCOMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again though this is all sort of based around UTMV Nightmare and I know how Atrophy came about is extremely different from the standard Dreamtale story, so I can understand if maybe the semantics here of UTMV Nightmare can't really be applied in Nightwatch as a whole. I also understand the concept of Psych's abilities reversing trauma might've been changed for the concept of reversing corruption, so forgive me if this entire thing is asking questions about no longer relevant information haha.
Also sorry if this was a bit ramble-y and didn't make sense. I tried my best to make it as understandable as possible but I completely get it if there may be some confusion, haha.
Good question, I’ll explain how the cannon reversion works now.
So essentially I dropped the trauma states thing because it brought up many issues, mostly what is defined as trauma or traumatic enough. Didn’t really wanna work through that.
So instead reversion works as a code destroyer. It atomizes parts of a code in some way reverting things to their original basic states. That’s why it’s useful for corruption. Corruption is complex but it’s essentially code with changes or additional features to it.
In nightwatch monsters have an organic code which is code that happens naturally. This code is more set in place and hard to get rid of. Corruption is when inorganic code is applied onto that organic code.
This isn’t always extreme, most commonly flus and sickness are corruption as it’s a foreign code that interrupts the normal organic process. Most monsters can survive this, but reversion shots and pills are made so you can get almost instant reversion of those loose weak inorganic codes.
But Chronic Corruption is different
Think Geno Sans or Atrophy, this is when that loose inorganic code is so strong it becomes attached permanently to the organic codes.
This is when Psych needs to come into play because he is trained to do procedures to manually remove those parts. Which again because the inorganic codes are so potent and viral, it makes it much more difficult to remove as you don’t want to accidentally destroy original organic codes.
Think of how a problem with chemo therapy for cancer, the whole body is affected with the treatment and in the process of removing the cancer it also removes normal healthy cells. Psych is supposed to negate that issue and he guides his magic to only remove the corruption.
Typically resulting in reconstructive surgery as the body might need to be repaired after this very invasive procedure. It’s not always perfect, but psychs reversion procedures and surgeries are very affective to reverting amalgamations. Memory being one of his successes
Now to answer your nightmare question
Atrophy eats one apple and he instantly corrupts btw, his slime just melts and consumes the rest of the tree after. But if I’ll work with typical nightmare, maybe a few apples is corruption that would make one very ill and in need of a injection. But after an overwhelming amount of inorganic code, the corruption would be chronic.
And If psych where to revert atrophy, the code would be set back to somewhat match the bone density of a monster instead of slime, and form something soul like. Atrophy’s soul is dispersed in peices around the slime so it’d be very difficult to selectively protect those parts. Psych would have to take that now purified slop and surgically rebuild atrophy to look like a person again. It’s what he did to memory already.
Mentally he’d still be an adult because psych would avoid reverting that organic code. Just would be free of corruption and with a newer body.
What if psych didn’t selectively revert and instead just,, did it? Without thinking?
You’d die, even immortals could die since their code would be fully atomized. That’s what happens if you jump into the atomization void at the end of the multiverse (where the core leads you) as it indiscriminately disperses your codes across time and space. If you somehow survive it leaves a damaged husk of what you used to be. In nightwatch it’s called atomization syndrome which core frisk and some gasters have!
But most the time you just straight up die. Psych really could kill people if he was smart but he’s not
I know this doesn’t answer everything since the questions framework was on the outdated magical system, but I’m glad I can answer some parts and I just like talking about my dumb dumb world building. I really liked this ask thank you
Other post related to the vial of anti corrupt, there’s a better drawing then what I drew in a few seconds here haha
💬 0 🔁 12 ❤️ 108 · Nightwatch soon? yes. · Happy to say I’m done my collage semester and am on break to solely focus on this damn story! M
