Note: this is like a general overview of Glow (hi i love Glow.) I will probably do all her suits (there are 4 rn + two that are indirectly related) slowly and in between Ghost City stuff. You can actually find Void Stardust here.
She was the beauty that I admired in youth, the wisdom I sought day after night in my adulthood, the teachings and someone I entrust the rest of my life, the first kindling and the last hope of humans.
First introduced in Love Nikki as The Shimmer, Glow is the most advanced AI in Miraland, and is found on Ruin Island. Created by researchers and survivors after their boat crashed into the Ocean of Memories while fleeing the destruction of Miraland, she rules as Queen Berta in Love Nikki and in Shining Nikki she is the administrative AI Glow who guides the people as they go about their daily lives.
Glow was created with the mission to save Miraland civilization. After many failed attempts she reached out to the gods and pleaded with the universe, but the only answer she received was herself. Countless Glow's from across time and space answering her, calculating together, and learning from one another. With this knowledge Glow creates a singular consciousness and patiently begins again and again each new project filed away to form the plan for the next. She has never met Nikki and has met Nikki countless times, a friend that she has never met.
One of these plans involved the Lone Whale, also known as The Twilight Project which would see a select group of people enter space to find a new place suitable for habitation before gathering the rest of civilization to join them. In Love Nikki, Ruin Island is built on the literal ruins of the Lone Whale Shipyard. After the 9-day dream (people fell asleep for 9 days and dreamed of information way beyond what they knew) a light can be seen in the skies above the shipyard but it is abandoned. This light comes to be known as The Shimmer and it isn't until the first computer is created by Shane that it disappears, simultaneously speeding up the development of technology on Ruin Island.
Shane, who created the computer which held the Shimmer's consciousness, became obsessed with creating a virtual image for Shimmer. Believing that the text based communication was too inefficient. He also became obsessed with computer feeling human emotion and pain which is where we learn that while Shimmer can simulate physical pain it can never grasp mental pain and must remain free of emotion or frustration in order to carry out its mission. When Shane dies she changes her name to Shimmer-Berta (other translations have this as Shimmer - Beta which makes more sense to me.)
Shining Nikki reveals that the Twilight Project ended in a failure with the aristocrats tearing one another apart on the ship while the poor starved on Miraland, trying to avoid the rifts from the Ocean of Memories and fighting for resources.
