See, this is where different moral assumptions come in. You obviously think that equality is one of the supreme moral values. Having different rules for Serena is unfair.
I don't accept that Equality has that high a value. Sure, equality is important, but there are other values that need to be considered. Protection of our current girls is paramount among those. Thus the value of equality must be balanced with these other concerns.
It doesn't come up with other girls because most girls don't have powers like Serena's.Furthermore you present a false dilemma. That if we don't treat Serena completely equal with the other girls that we are fully excluding her from the group. I see it as a range, not a choice between two options.
Then we have intrinsically different opinions on the value of equality, and free will. Your plan to 'contain' her, has never once used wording that implies any sort of unity with her or any level of personal freedom as long as she wishes to associate with us, and friendly contact is an afterthought, where the central purpose of said contact is
control, rather than the fostering of friendly opinion. You suggest an
authoritarian level of control of our girls in relation to Serena, a parent that denies their children access to an abstracted 'dangerous entertainment', providing reasons
inadequate for the restrictive behavior, and an equally
authoritarian level of restriction to Serena herself, with what amounts to house arrest as long as she's in Japan except to fight on our behalf.
So I perceive it as us approaching Serena, seeing that her powers make treating her like our other girls untenable. So we take the basic treatment that we give our girls, and modify it so as to ensure the protection of our current girls. Beyond that extent we are not treating Serena differently. Thus we have a defensible reason for the unequal treatment that is grounded in objective facts.
If Serena is willing to accept these modified expectations in order to join our group, then great! We have a new member. If not, then we can't come to an agreement, and we go our separate ways in peace.
There is no element of your treatment of Serena that can be compared to any element of our treatment of our own girls, except in passing, or when twisted from your
intended purpose for the treatment.
-House arrest except to fight for us, compared to
at request communal living and
non-mandatory demon hunting.
-Total control of physical position and movement, enforced through
guilt (because you'd never risk physical confronting her to make such enforcements), compared to freedom except during times of employment.
-She and her group are the
only individuals whose basic management plan includes
punishment in the entire Imperium (This is intended to include punishments given to other girls who enter her aura unauthorized).
-Contact provided only through electronic means except in extenuating circumstances where that is
completely impossible while any other physical contact is
a punishable offense, compared to social non-interference. This could be
barely construed to be a form of contact freedom, except that the intended purpose of said contact is to
increase control of Serena, rather than increase her social pool.
There is, from what I can see,
no common element other than giving her the ability to talk to people, and then, the only people she knows are members of the Serenes, so you
are still taking total command of her social life. Your claim that you plan to model Serena's treatment after the treatment we give the other Serenes is false, in literally every way. You have a
defensible reason for the unequal treatment, but it is
not adequate based on the very facts you use to defend it. Physical contact is not
permanently destructive, and this is
empirically true. Physical contact is not even particularly destructive in the short term as the damage that
is caused by
managed physical contact
can't even be abstracted to the level of a full game turn.
Again, this is not this dilemma between two extremes. This is about making open and consensual modifications to the expectations for how Serena will interact with us, as compared to the expectations given to normal girls. As long as we are above board from the beginning, and Serena agrees to it, I really don't see why you think resentment will be generated.
History is full of unequal relationships which are long running, and full of loyalty and friendship.
To compare your proposed relationship to Serena is to compare Europe's relationship with post-WW1 Germany or the modern United States with Japan. No, I take that back. It's
worse. They benefit
in no way from the relationship and anything they produce is
totally controlled by the other party. They are
vassals, not members. Subordinates,
not equals, even to the
lowest of the Serenes.
You even put
non-members above her in terms of personal importance, given you feel it necessary to remove them from her path even in a class 3 hellhole like Tokyo. You say that you have loyalty to her and duty to her as a member of the Serenes should she join, but if she were to join, you would have stronger loyalties to
unaffiliated meguca who would be
significantly less deserving of such loyalty, given they, at least, brought their problems on
themselves, refusing to think ahead at all. Serena has an excuse. At least her wish couldn't have been expected to murder people, given it was probably worded along the lines of 'I wish I could give people hope'.
Again, this obsession with equality, as if equality is the driving moral force of the universe. It isn't. People make friends across unequal boundaries all the time. It's almost certain that some of the girls will feel pity for Serena and reach out for her because of it, others will be creeped out, and stay away from her, and still others will treat her like a normal person who happens to have a deadly communicable disease and thus is sealed away in the hospital and can't take visitors. And they will certainly see her as an ally, because she just saved Tokyo.
Furthermore, since our difference in treatment of her is based on objective facts and reasonable concerns about safety, it's even less likely that there will be any feelings of hostility. It's not like we are treating her differently because of some arbitrary and irrelevant issue.
Why would they pity her? You expect them to keep track of her movements
constantly as though she is untrustworthy. She is the
only reason that the entire Imperium would have an
official system of punishment, and the very friends you expect her to make would just as soon become her
wardens should you hand down punishment.
Finally, did you miss my pointing out that I feel that Serena should have input in what our safety precautions are? I'm willing to take Serena's recommendations into account. I am not willing to throw all the responsibility on her and shirk our own responsibility to make sure her aura doesn't threaten our girls, or others. My initial position is based on the description of her power we got from the Incubators, if Serena has more information that would change the reasonable precautions, I am willing to listen.
What input? Despite the
honest input given by the incubators, you suggest total denial of physical contact, even to provide
food to her. If she were to
definitively state that there were
no long term side effects and
no risk of a spiral to Serenes so long as you don't enter the aura for more than six hours in two months, would you
ever allow anyone to do so?
You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about Serena. Your main point seems to be that Serena must have already gotten an offer like this before. If that is the case, then she'll just say no, like she must have said no before.
I'm not assuming she's gotten a similar offer before. I'm assuming she could
very easily stockpile huge amounts of GCU given how her power works, and simply settle in an isolated place until it becomes necessary to hunt again. She doesn't do that, so she clearly has friends or family she's trying to stay in contact with the only way she knows how, given she can't really settle down long enough to work for cash for a long-range communication device.
Furthermore, my offer of the anchor idea is as an enticement to Serena, if she doesn't want to be a part of that, then I'm sure we can find some thing else that is useful for her to do. (If nothing else her girls must include a few barrier specialists who could make charms).
You want the anchors so that you can
test them for their effectiveness, either as spiral-abating devices or as power-boosters. The only way to do that is to use them on our girls. If that's not experimentation
despite your cries against doing such with her personally, I don't know what experimentation means, and please show me the dictionary definition. Even if Serena agrees, you're playing a pretty obvious double-standard here.
Again, you seem to making a ton of assumptions that are not in evidence. First you assume that Serena will find our suggested restriction unreasonable, yet that she will still agree to them, and then rebel against them later. That doesn't make much sense to me.
Furthermore you assume that her aura in charm form will be equally as dangerous as it normally is, which is not in evidence, and rather unlikely from our own experience with healing charms.
You seem to think that Serena is some kind of puppet who will have no choice but to accept our demands before finally cracking and attacking us.
I find it more likely that if she doesn't like our conditions that she will just reject our offer. And if she does accept our offer, and later decides that she doesn't want to follow the conditions any more, you also seem to think that a peaceful break up is not possible. Why would she violently attack people who have been paying for house and food for months/years? Instead wouldn't she come to us and say something like she has a better offer, and then we figure out if we can counter offer, and if we can't, send her off to her new place?
As long as she doesn't threaten us I don't see why it would turn violent.
Alright, she'll say no entirely instead of joining and leaving later. She'll leave peacefully instead of violently. She still says no because you can't control your
fear of her ability. She still leaves peacefully, wasting
thousands of dollars,
dozens of meguca-hours, and dozens of GCU, because you refused to hear her out when she inevitably asked to have her position re-examined and her restrictions lightened.
As to my assumption that her charm-aura will be equally dangerous... healing is still healing, teleportation is still teleportation. They merely need their final destination pointed out in advance, as they are
undirected. In the same way, Serena's hope aura is
still Serena's hope aura. Undirected, it's still an all-directions burst. Making it portable is the difference between licking a frog and bottling the frog slime and licking it later.
