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SayakaQuest Thread 10: Glory To The Death

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Unnatural Mental Influence. it's an Exalted thing. TLDR version, something is messing with your head on purpose beyond just having really high Charisma scores.

edit: ninja'd.
 
Mechanis said:
Unnatural Mental Influence. it's an Exalted thing. TLDR version, something is messing with your head on purpose beyond just having really high Charisma scores.

edit: ninja'd.
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It's not a thing. If it was a thing, this wouldn't even be a quest. It'd be a story where you get to see Sayaka's efforts all amount to absolutely nothing. It wouldn't be fun or interesting and would make for a terrible quest.

Maybe not a terrible story, but a terrible quest.

You don't need to worry about that.
 
TheOneMoiderah said:
It's not a thing. If it was a thing, this wouldn't even be a quest. It'd be a story where you get to see Sayaka's efforts all amount to absolutely nothing. It wouldn't be fun or interesting and would make for a terrible quest.

Maybe not a terrible story, but a terrible quest.

You don't need to worry about that.
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it's less of a "I USE THE MIND CONTROL" (though that is also UMI, a very blatent example,) thing and more 'roll willpower to avoid the depression-aura the larval Witch in your Soul Gem is chenneling directly into your brainy-meats'- or someone using the magics to be more convincing, or whatever. in general, UMI is using some sort of Supernatural Bullshit™ to influence how you think or feel, beyond being just that good.

like, if someone has fucktons of CHA and speachifies 90% of a group into being his/her minions, you might then use a UMI spell to sway another 5-6% over to your way of thinking.

or the general Witchy Depression Aura, which is most definitely UMI. generally though, the hallmark of UMI is that it's subtle because any fool can throw it off if they notice and aren't completely out of willpower.

so yeah, I could totally see the Marshmallow using sneaky-subtle UMI to set off witchification-spirals, since Puellas aren't exactly bastions of willpower by design. Homu-chan's an outlier, because of the unique circumstances of her Time Bullshit letting her keep trying so she never really reaches the point where she witches out. this gives her the safety net she needed to get over her fragileness issues and become the adorkable obsessive Determinator we all know and love.

or what Greybitch was doing. see also: more than mind control, Glamor and Jedi Mind Trick for more examples.
Edit: for that matter, how you're described the effects of soul gem corruption thus far positively reeks of UMI. as it gets darker, it has a definite effect on their personalities and thought processes, which is pretty clearly a result of Magic Bullshit™ because said effect pretty much vanishes when they use Grief Seeds to hoover up the corruption.
 
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The GM has literally stated that is not the case. He also has a tendency to getting angry when people repeatedly go against what he has stated. Are you trying to piss him off?

UMI is an exalted term. Does this look like it's fucking exalted to you?

Also RE grey- she was like that because her own wish lobotomized her. "Be careful what you wish for and all that" And soul gem corruption is literally PURE DESPAIR filling your literal soul, and nobody sane would think that such a situation would have no negative effects, and in fact, the situation it causes is seen in PMMM itself. Funnily enough, also in Sayaka.

And finally. Moid is a hard mode GM. But he is also fair. If he says that we are not being affected my mind affecting abilities by kyuubey or otherwise, then we are not.
 
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Mechanis said:
it's less of a "I USE THE MIND CONTROL" (though that is also UMI, a very blatent example,) thing and more 'roll willpower to avoid the depression-aura the larval Witch in your Soul Gem is chenneling directly into your brainy-meats'- or someone using the magics to be more convincing, or whatever. in general, UMI is using some sort of Supernatural Bullshit™ to influence how you think or feel, beyond being just that good.

like, if someone has fucktons of CHA and speachifies 90% of a group into being his/her minions, you might then use a UMI spell to sway another 5-6% over to your way of thinking.

or the general Witchy Depression Aura, which is most definitely UMI. generally though, the hallmark of UMI is that it's subtle because any fool can throw it off if they notice and aren't completely out of willpower.

so yeah, I could totally see the Marshmallow using sneaky-subtle UMI to set off witchification-spirals, since Puellas aren't exactly bastions of willpower by design. Homu-chan's an outlier, because of the unique circumstances of her Time Bullshit letting her keep trying so she never really reaches the point where she witches out. this gives her the safety net she needed to get over her fragileness issues and become the adorkable obsessive Determinator we all know and love.

or what Greybitch was doing. see also: more than mind control, Glamor and Jedi Mind Trick for more examples.
Edit: for that matter, how you're described the effects of soul gem corruption thus far positively reeks of UMI. as it gets darker, it has a definite effect on their personalities and thought processes, which is pretty clearly a result of Magic Bullshit™ because said effect pretty much vanishes when they use Grief Seeds to hoover up the corruption.
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wat am i readin

stahp
 
er... not saying Exalted is this thread. I was borrowing a term, because 'UMI' is easier to type (and fit into a sentence) than "Subtle magic mind-affecting shit that you can throw off if you have sufficient willpower."

basically, the reason I point to Soul Gem corruption as a UMI is the spiral effect- as the corruption grows, it induces mental states that make it more likely to continue to grow, and faster at that. characters with enough GRIT and RAR like Homu can shrug it off, and characters like Kyouko and Sayaka can help each-other out of the spiral with will saves, that kind of thing. the thing is that UMI does not work (barring really obvious stuff like outright mind-control, and even then,) on people who have sufficient reason for it to not work. EG, if QB projected a subtle 'trust me' field, it wouldn't do shit to any of the characters we've had perspective from thus far, because they have no reason to trust him at all and hate his guts.

also, I was more referring to what Greybitch was doing to the other girls- emotion deadening via I assume an aura or something is UMI territory flat-out.

which is why puella magi are picked to be, well, emotionally unstable and easily provoked into that death-spiral. or, to put it another way: the Incubators find girls unlikely to develop the willpower to throw off the death-spiral. their age also factors into this- Mikimom's probably a lot better at handling the crap Puella Magi go though than Sayaka is, and someone who, say, is a fighter pilot or marine or surgion would be even better.

to better explain, I'll belt out some bullet points:
  1. Puellas are cognitonormative in a non corrupted state. in the absence of active Soul Gem corruption, the overwhelming majority of Puella Magi have normal, expected thought patterns and emotional reactions. they usually have more issues than National Geographic and need therapy like Kejak needs a bullet in the brain, but otherwise they act as someone would expect traumatized PTSD-ing magical girls to act.
  2. emotional state has a (dramatic) effect on corruption. TLDR, being depressed, selfhating, or other related emotions adds to and speeds up your corruption rate. this is demonstrated in canon and this thread sufficiently that I do not see the need to list specific examples.
  3. Corruption has an effect on mental state. having high corruption has made self-doubt, self-hate, depression, and suicidal tendencies very pronounced every time it comes up, with in-character narrative making it pretty clear that the aforementioned radically effects your ability to 'snap out of it' on your own.
  4. Removal of corruption returns the Puella to a cognitonormative state. when characters cleanse their soul gem, their thought processes and emotional reactions immediately return to a more normalized, less extreme state. to the point where there's been several post-cleansing 'the fuck was I just thinking?!' moments.
the above four points make it clear to me at least that the Soul Gem corruption effect exerts a UMI that pushes the Puella towards the extremes of depression and/or self-hate required to birth a Witch. the exact mechanics of the effect are up in the air (other than being obviously magical in origin) but are undeniably there.

I hope I've made my thoughts a bit more clear.
 
yes, sorry. my inner pendant had to clarify what I was talking about.
now, on to other, sillier things!

well.

semi-silly.

anyway, it's looking like we're going to have a freaking platoon of Puella come Walpurgisnacht, which is quite a bit more firepower than Homu-chan's ever had at her disposal. with that in mind, I predict that, much like the fight with Skadi, teamwork and numbers will succeed where random elements and a single manipulator have (repeatedly) failed. provided we can get organized and trained up sufficiently, Walpurgis should be less of an issue than Homura predicts.

that said, can we ask in advance if Homura's ever tried just nuking the fucking thing? we need to introduce her to the idea of getting bigger guns when the ones she has aren't shooty enough, and Walpurgisnacht definitely clears the godzilla threshold.
 
:rolleyes:

in all seriousness, we need to get Homura in on our training sessions. we've been minmaxing our team's skills like a boss, but she hasn't been getting much out of it because of a lot of things but mostly that we try things out in training. some of it works, some of it fails, and some of it is awesome, but Homura's only getting peripheral benefits from that. and frankly, Homura with the kind of crazy-awesome boosts we've been getting Sayaka and co. to come up with can likely solo Walpurgis, because Time Shenanigans are just that bullshit.
 
Mechanis said:
anyway, it's looking like we're going to have a freaking platoon of Puella come Walpurgisnacht, which is quite a bit more firepower than Homu-chan's ever had at her disposal. with that in mind, I predict that, much like the fight with Skadi, teamwork and numbers will succeed where random elements and a single manipulator have (repeatedly) failed. provided we can get organized and trained up sufficiently, Walpurgis should be less of an issue than Homura predicts.

that said, can we ask in advance if Homura's ever tried just nuking the fucking thing? we need to introduce her to the idea of getting bigger guns when the ones she has aren't shooty enough, and Walpurgisnacht definitely clears the godzilla threshold.
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Clearly you've only read the story only threads and not the majority of the discussion. I'll grant that that's fine because hey, 13 threads worth of content to sift through and all that. But still, you're working under some assumptions that have been already discussed and scratched out earlier in said discussion.

No matter how many Meguca we field, Waplurgis will be a hard as fuck fight. At no point will the FINAL FUCKING BOSS of this quest be a not-hard fight. Period end of story. It doesn't matter how many meguca we field or how strong they are, at no point will the fight be a cakewalk.

As for the Homu Nuke thing, that's also been previously addressed. The points were long and varied but it basically came down to "How the fuck would Homu get a nuke in japan?" "How the fuck would Homu, a teenager, figure out how to use a nuke?" And "What about the collateral damage to Mitakihara even IF Homu somehow figured out how to nuke it?" If your answer was "Nuke it before it hit the city, duh." then you haven't watched the show because Walpurgis basically spawns in the city itself, or at least close enough that there would be collateral.

On the topic of getting bigger guns, that runs headlong into the Damage Resistance to mundane weapons I talked about earlier here. Bigger guns for Homu isn't the issue, it's more magic based attacks. But her Time Stop consumes so much magic that she can't augment all her weapons normally. Not to mention the issues of getting the weapons in the first place.
 
[x] Talk to mom
[x] Talk to Kyouko
[x] Go to sleep
-[x] Sleepcuddle the Kyouko. you need it.

Did anyone noticed that the Bandwagon vote for "Go To Sleep" has [X[ Instead of [X]?
 
[x] Talk to mom.
[x] Talk to Kyouko.

"I..." You sniff into Kyouko's arms. "I-I love you."

"Yeah." Kyouko murmurs. "Same."

You turn to your mom, still sniffling. "M-mom..."

"I just want you to feel better." She says. "...okay?"

[x] Go to sleep.

You hold onto Kyouko as you both walk over to your room. You don't know if it's too early, but you don't care. You just want to sleep. You just want to lay down and sleep.

Kyouko holds onto you right back before you both slump against the foot of your bed and sit on the floor. She pulls off the blanket and covers you both, before she rests her head on your shoulder.

"...You aren't a fuckup."

"Then why do I still feel that way?" You murmur. "...I...fuck." You wipe your eyes again.

"Look, let's just sleep, okay?" She kisses your cheek. "...I still love you, Sayaka."

"I know." You mutter as you rest your head on hers. "I-I still know."

You eventually both go to sleep.

​

Eventually you wake up. Your sleep was dreamless. Your rest was uneasy. You feel better, but not any good. Kyouko herself, though? She's clinging to you, as though you're going to disappear at any moment. She's been crying throughout the night...and honestly, you don't know why you weren't.
She wasn't the one who ruined other peoples' lives.
[OPTION SELECT]​

[] Talk to her.

[] Give her a hug.

[] Sleep.

[] Wake her up.
 
[x] Give her a hug.
-[x] Talk to her while she sleeps. Whisper reassuring things. Let Kyouko know we love her.
 
[x] Give her a hug.
-[x] Talk to her while she sleeps. Whisper reassuring things. Let Kyouko know we love her.
 
[x] Give her a hug.
-[x] Talk to her while she sleeps. Whisper reassuring things. Let Kyouko know we love her.
 
Posting the REAL numbering for Thread 13. Fuck if I want to count up from 77 when all the past threads have reset. Unrelated, 5 days left till Walpurgis. Two families to talk to. 8 Seeds left.
​
Marshmallow Justice [1] [2]
Their First Fight [3] [4] [5]
Hashing it out Over Shitty Fast Food [6] [7] [8] [9][10] [11]
Home Sweet Home [12] [13] [14] [15]
A Burden Shared is a Burden Halved [16] [17] [18]
There are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio... [19] [20] [21] [22]
...Than are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy [23] [24] [25]
Behind Blue Eyes [26] [27] [28] [29]
Mikimom is Bestmom [30] [31] [32] [33]​
 
[x] Give her a hug.
-[x] Talk to her while she sleeps. Whisper reassuring things. Let Kyouko know we love her
 
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