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Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

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[X] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less person, it would also mean a potential intelligence goldmine. And if you fail, you haven't given up that much. (Choose one below).
[X] Appeal to Emotion: Yinzheng is confused and hesitant. Push her the right way and she might fall in the right direction.

Yinzheng has been used by Control, trapped in her orders, in her conditioning, since Mexico City. Heck, I'd argue even before she got MAXIMUM OVERRIDE, LOVE CONTROL HATE REALITY DEVIANTS shoved into her skull she still wasn't making her own decisions - the information she was given was filtered and processed by Ms. Clock, enough so that she couldn't make the right choices. Some part of her knows this is wrong, but it's trapped within her, and she doesn't think she can change that.

But she's wrong. She's not an EDE, bound forever into one nature, for all that Blanc would prefer that. She's human, and while she might be pretty solidly brainfucked, she still has agency. Control might think it can make us into perfect gears in a perfect system, but it couldn't even make Siddharth - fucking Siddharth! - into the unquestioning murder-machine they wanted. We don't need to kill her, or brainwipe her. We just need to give her the freedom to choose, and have faith that she will choose rightly.

Is it possible to use a counter-effect against her conditioning? Something like Mind+Primal Utility to understand and quantify the influences on her mind, and counter them, letting Yinzheng make a decision without Conditioning, brainwashing, various mind rotes and so on hanging over her head? Possibly enhanced by Charisma + [Whatever's used for psychology, I guess either Academics or Medicine]? I'd probably stunt it as Rose knowing exactly what it's like to be trapped, forced to WANT to obey, by conditioning - and then applying a gentler form of what broke her conditioning to Yinzheng (since Yinzheng's conditioning at the moment seems a lot weaker than Rose's was).
 
[ ] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less person, it would also mean a potential intelligence goldmine. And if you fail, you haven't given up that much. (Choose one below).
[ ] Appeal to Emotion: Yinzheng is confused and hesitant. Push her the right way and she might fall in the right direction.

I very much think the route here is emotion, not pragmatism. This is very much a culmination of the battle for humanity's ideals (and, as it turns out, it is a battle with honor and humanity).

Purely OOC, Yinzheng Li is still operating on two conflicting Control-level directives. In-character, Rose is extraordinarily empathic and very well aware of what being under crassly conflicting threads of conditioning and its demands feels like (as she suffered through the same) and that is not a state of mind you speak to with cold logical pragmatism.
 
For those planning to mind-hork Yinzheng, there are various things worth remembering.

- The Man in White is in the room, and will try to interfere. Working with that, rather than against that might be useful. Rose has gotten pretty good at psychological jiu-jitsu.
- Yinzheng, once upon a time, really wanted to grow up to be Jamelia. She thought she had that in Clock.
- The Abjad have managed to get hooks in her to a degree, and Donald knows it (though not by how much).
- Something something Spy's Demise? Basically, Rose has been *way* closer to the line on situations like this than Yinzheng has.
- There's the bit about conflicting Control codes.
- Rose can make a pretty convincing claim that she has the entire technocracy behind her. Assets like Piero don't deploy on a whim. Yinzheng was originally NWOblet, and has to know about memetic threats and so forth. Ideas like "An EDE is manipulating you" aren't entirely alien to her.

Really the thing is that Rose is psychologically solid right now. She knows she's right, she has plenty of willpower, and most of her resource tanks are, if not full up, at least doing fine. Yinzheng is... not. She's hanging grimly on to what certainty she pretends to have because the alternative is letting her wordlview break entirely, but she's had conflicting directives, and has been busily repressing all the times she saw the cracks in the world and pretending that they're not there. Some part of her knows that something is very wrong, but she's pretending that it isn't just so she can keep going.

there's that line...

MJ12 Commando said:
"This is Control," Yinzheng retorts, polite and correct despite her tattered state. "Stand down, Constable." She takes a breath. "I know you're here because of a misunderstanding." Her voice is hesitant, almost as if she's trying to convince herself. "Please. I understand that this is all a misunderstanding. You're not traitors. You're just... not aware of new developments. You're just confused and we know that things have escalated out of control, but we don't have to kill each other for it. Just... do the right thing, please."
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She's speaking more of herself than of Rose, I think. She's begging Rose to make it right.

The big question here is whether or not the Man in White gets away. The lesser question is what shape Yinzheng is in when we're done here. Also... I kind of think that appeal to emotion might be the wrong answer here. Emotionally, she's already done. The thing that's holding her together is something else - and it's a something else that's *designed* to let NWO agents persist in doing horrible things in spite of all manner of emotional influence.
 
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Just a fleeting thought, but what if Rose pretends that Reina has taken over, and then pretends to throw in with Control?

Not sure if it would be viable or helpful, but just throwing that out there.
 
Arcus said:
Just a fleeting thought, but what if Rose pretends that Reina has taken over, and then pretends to throw in with Control?

Not sure if it would be viable or helpful, but just throwing that out there.
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Not viable. Because only Control knows how many ways to confirm that kind of thing that Control can use.
 
[X] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less person, it would also mean a potential intelligence goldmine. And if you fail, you haven't given up that much. (Choose one below).
[X] Appeal to Emotion: Yinzheng is confused and hesitant. Push her the right way and she might fall in the right direction.
 
[x] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less [ [x] Appeal to Pragmatism: Donald Sykes has run into Yinzheng before. He might know something Rose doesn't-and he might be able to help her here.

I can't help but think EDE Blanc's messianic style can be used against him. Yinzheng is an NWO true believer which means she thinks that she's a secular pragmatist. The Man in White is giving off enemy dog whistles.
 
I... don't really care that much about Yinzheng to be honest. She's been an adversary throughout a lot of this quest, and she's never shown any particular inclination to help us. Sure she has conflicting Control level commands on her, but all the choices she's made lately have been against us. Why trust that she'll choose correctly after all this time? Poor Shinji got splattered and he had infinitely less choice in his actions.

And at the end of the day I care about Rose a lot more.
[x] With Violence: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You know what that means? She's in bad enough shape that you can ruin her day. She might react a little too slowly if you attack all-out from the start.
 
kellanved said:
I... don't really care that much about Yinzheng to be honest. She's been an adversary throughout a lot of this quest, and she's never shown any particular inclination to help us. Sure she has conflicting Control level commands on her, but all the choices she's made lately have been against us. Why trust that she'll choose correctly after all this time? Poor Shinji got splattered and he had infinitely less choice in his actions.

And at the end of the day I care about Rose a lot more.
[x] With Violence: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You know what that means? She's in bad enough shape that you can ruin her day. She might react a little too slowly if you attack all-out from the start.
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We have been given vote after vote of "Does Yinzheng turn now? How about now?" and every time we've said "Nope. Not yet." The choices she's made have been against us because we chose to make them that way.
 
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kellanved said:
I... don't really care that much about Yinzheng to be honest. She's been an adversary throughout a lot of this quest, and she's never shown any particular inclination to help us. Sure she has conflicting Control level commands on her, but all the choices she's made lately have been against us. Why trust that she'll choose correctly after all this time? Poor Shinji got splattered and he had infinitely less choice in his actions.

And at the end of the day I care about Rose a lot more.
[x] With Violence: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You know what that means? She's in bad enough shape that you can ruin her day. She might react a little too slowly if you attack all-out from the start.
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I think people are avoiding the violence option because if it were particularly feasible Piero would have murdered Yinzheng in the face. Frankly even with a sword of Mars and a weakened opponent Rose is not the same level as either Piero or Yinzheng. Therefore she is far from guaranteed victory and is likely to be severely injured and exhausted by the battle even if she does win.

Second thematically the story has tended toward mercy to the opposition where possible, as such summary execution of a wavering opponent is not particularly appealing. :V
 
king208 said:
I think people are avoiding the violence option because if it were particularly feasible Piero would have murdered Yinzheng in the face. Frankly even with a sword of Mars and a weakened opponent Rose is not the same level as either Piero or Yinzheng. Therefore she is far from guaranteed victory and is likely to be severely injured and exhausted by the battle even if she does win.

Second thematically the story has tended toward mercy to the opposition where possible, as such summary execution of a wavering opponent is not particularly appealing. :V
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...on top of the fact that the wavering opponent is honestly trying to be a loyal servant of the Technocratic Union (as she has all along) and the fact that being able to go two on one against the Man in White would be *awfully* handy, given the sort of shenanigans he can pull out.

Incidentally, for that fight... well, Piero's onboard combat computers are still capable of running the body, and if he's got appropriate activate codes, I'd bet that Rose has them.
 
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Sirrocco said:
...on top of the fact that the wavering opponent is honestly trying to be a loyal servant of the Technocratic Union (as she has all along) and the fact that being able to go two on one against the Man in White would be *awfully* handy, given the sort of shenanigans he can pull out.

Incidentally, for that fight... well, Piero's onboard combat computers are still capable of running the body, and if he's got appropriate activate codes, I'd bet that Rose has them.
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If Rose had reactivation codes, that would be a potential subversion risk (since Rose isn't a tech expert so anyone with the codes would be able to reboot Piero).
 
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Given how Yinzheng's training has put significant chunks of Jamelia into her makeup, I kind of want to do an interrupt that uses that as an exploit somehow.
 
Arcus said:
If Rose had reactivation codes, that would be a potential subversion risk (since Rose isn't a tech expert so anyone with the codes would be able to reboot Piero).
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I was mostly basing it on the fact that his deadriding computer recognized her as a friendly enough to power down its self-destruct attempts. Still, it's true that most of her influence on him is in the stuff that's dead right now.

Ridiculously Average Guy said:
Given how Yinzheng's training has put significant chunks of Jamelia into her makeup, I kind of want to do an interrupt that uses that as an exploit somehow.
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Rose *does* know Jamelia pretty well, and is pretty good at pretending to be someone she's not. Emulating Jamelia would probably be a lot healthier for her than emulating Gregor Leon was. If nothing else, it might give her some useful insights into exactly where Yinzheng was cracking and thus better find the break points to help her come to the right conclusions rather than the wrong ones. Definite possibilities for Mind focii.
 
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[X] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less person, it would also mean a potential intelligence goldmine. And if you fail, you haven't given up that much. (Choose one below).
[X] Appeal to Emotion: Yinzheng is confused and hesitant. Push her the right way and she might fall in the right direction.
 
[X] With Dialogue: Yinzheng Li looks confused, somewhat unsteady on her feet, and hesitant. You might be able to talk her down. And doing so wouldn't just mean killing one less person, it would also mean a potential intelligence goldmine. And if you fail, you haven't given up that much. (Choose one below).
[ ] Appeal to Emotion: Yinzheng is confused and hesitant. Push her the right way and she might fall in the right direction.
[X] Appeal to Pragmatism: Donald Sykes has run into Yinzheng before. He might know something Rose doesn't-and he might be able to help her here.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Because if Winston is Big Boss, then that sort of puts Jamelia as Snake and then that sort of leaves Yinzheng as Raiden. So, you know. If we have her show up later with a full replacement cyborg body, we'll have called it.
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Of course.

Anyway, I think an appeal to emotion might work. It's Rose's strength and Yinzheng has always been an emotional person, even after her latest round of upgrades and conditioning.

[X] With Dialogue:
- [X] Appeal to Emotion
 
Okay, let's look at what we can use:

- Yinzheng idolizes her Jamelia-sama-senpai-sensei. We can exploit that, by playing the "Jamelia wouldn't want you to do this" card, because we know damn well this isn't what Jamelia wants.
- Yinzheng is an idealist who believes in what the Union stands for and hasn't really experienced its uglier side--sounds familiar, Rose?
- Yinzheng is of course, running under two conflicting Control-level directives. Her Conditioning is erratic and not going to be fully effective to begin with. Rose knows what it's like to be under the effects of Conditioning 10 making you do something you don't want to do.
- Yinzheng loves the Union for what it's done for humanity. Convince her that Control and Threat Null no longer have humanity's best interests at heart, and I think we can flip her. We may want to bait Control into gloating here about its plans for Earth here.

This is most of what I have for now. I'll see what else I can come up with.
 
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Ah... and she's been *following* her Jamelia-sensei... sort of. I mean, same root, but vastly different path. I imagine that some of the "things not fitting quite right" thing applies here. If we could convince her that her boss is a lie, *that* might do it. I'm not convinced we have the time for something that in-depth, though, and Rose doesn't have the kind of detailed info she'd need to run that discussion quickly.

Ironically, Jamelia herself would be perfect for this, but we don't have her - we only have Donald and Serafina, and their ability to act in the space is pretty limited even for support casters.
 
[X] With Dialogue:
- [X] Appeal to Emotion

Whatever we do pick should be tied into emotion I think, since that's the bit of humanity EDEs don't quite understand anymore, right? Logic they could work with.
Sirrocco said:
Ironically, Jamelia herself would be perfect for this, but we don't have her - we only have Donald and Serafina, and their ability to act in the space is pretty limited even for support casters.
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We do sort of have Jamelia though. In mental construct of her that Yin will have in her head...I think?
 
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