Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
-
- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
Happy to be aboard. Mwargh, though, guidelines instead of actual rules, the bane of social anxiety. Is there any more general way to tell when breaking wordcount is acceptable, besides "in case of an emergency, break glass for firehose"?
This. This is what I hadn't pinned down and why I was paranoid a few days back about wanting overclarification. Thanks for this, it's good to be able to put to words what had been bugging me beyond the whole "whoops I literally can't see all the text, brain, why" thing.
@Godwinson : Pursuant to @zxzx24 's point, can we have a note to explain what Sabrina is feeling in response to all of this? Like, you say "Sabrina's tone should be calm, thoughtful, conciliatory", which is definitely good, but I think an explicit note to also be honest about our emotions would also be good, because if we're laying everything out, that's important to the "establishing our motives/position" part.
And... possibly a specific apology, even by telepathy, to Homura. Possibly even just about, well, a "private concern we realize we've mishandled". Depends on how we think she'd take that, at this precise moment? But I think I'm for that- particularly, because you do have a Sayaka-specific apology, so a Homura-specific one wouldn't stick out quite as much as it might normally.
Do we want to be mentioning our dilated perception of time, or rather, are there times in this projected conversation you feel it would be appropriate to bring it up? I feel like it is something that would help communicate our position, and why we might feel a different kind of urgency than the others, but I'm not sure this is a good time if we go with your projected vote.
Last edited:
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
I meant before we entered privacy, in that first line, same as the Sayaka-specific apology.
- Location
- Illinois
Nyan nyan nyan~?
I wrote a whole thing, then paged through the thread to see what was going on and found Firn saying the same thing I wrote, nya...
Anyway:
Now, I'm going to hazard a guess and see what pops up in response.
I don't think we ever talked with Sayaka about Oriko's backstory.
So, in that context, what we get is that Sabrina is saying we should go easy on the people who burnt down Sayaka's house for nebulous reasons and don't have any humanizing characteristics.
This is a hilariously large problem!
It's also important to note that Homura and Sayaka see Oriko's release as problematic for different reasons. Homura views it as a threat; Sayaka views it as an injustice. These need to be addressed separately, but I don't actually agree with the whole "get them in private" business entirely. I think we can and should proceed, for the moment, as-is, but we will need to speak with Homura in private after. I support this course of action because I feel that everything we can and should say to Sayaka will be relevant to Homura.
We also really haven't thought about alternate punishments, despite the truth of the matter being that we really should have. The general consensus is that house arrest is not acceptable, but the only real alternatives people have suggested are exile or fines, which aren't really punishments for Oriko. In this proposal I will outline a new suggestion for this which I think is both healthier and harsher than the house arrest.
Finally, I want to point out that the immediate purpose of this proposal is not to convince anyone that we should lift the house arrest, but rather to convey the real reasons why we believe that we should, to humanize Oriko to Sayaka, and to give Homura some background information. These are all at minimum semi-necessary steps which we have not carried out previously.
Proposal.
Step One: slap self in head.
Step Two: ask if you're saying things while leaving out literally all the background information *again.* You want to get the house arrest exchanged for some other form of punishment because it conflicts with the nature of Oriko Mikuni's wish and the results are, predictably, negative.
2.5: if Sayaka inquires, go into some detail on the nature of wishes and what denying them does.
Step Three: exposit the basics of Oriko's wish and background.
3.5: respond to "but wishes private" with "she forfeited that right when she burned down Sayaka's house."
Step Four: you have reason to believe that Oriko's wish is not incompatible with lawful society. If you didn't have information backing that you wouldn't be nearly as okay with her as you are.
4.25: if asked, standard metaknowledge nondisclosure. Can't talk about it because it would violate privacy of innocent parties (i.e., Homura)
4.5: PM homu with "full details after and I wont ask for any agreements here."
Step Five: while confinement is a highly traditional punishment, that does not make it ideal, necessary, or even harsh. One could, for example, allow Oriko to discover whatever the meaning of her life turns out to be, and then force her to spend eight to twelve hours a day away from it for a long period of time. You would speculate that that would be both healthier and much, much meaner. It would of course rely on Oriko not committing suicide first, but as of a few nights ago you are almost certain that will not be an issues.
5.5: This wouldn't even be dependent on Oriko's honesty. Fulfilment of her wish -- and, you would assume, the subsequent acceptance of it -- should result in her soul un-pretzeling, which is observable.
After this we would need to speak with Homura about Oriko. I frankly don't see a way to convince Homura to agree to us lifting the house arrest that doesn't involve outright spending credibility on it. Convincing Sayaka is much easier. I think convincing Homura to agree to it is doable but complicated. I've been sketching a possible outline for it but it's still a work in progress and I don't know how much of it I agree with beyond the general blueprint of "Madoka will be safer post-WPN with Oriko alive, and Madoka dying is game over for these reasons, and yes parties are still going to want to screw her over after WPN. I get one chance at this and at this point I don't believe there is any chance that Oriko Mikuni is a threat to Madoka -- I'm willing to stake everything on that, and the reasons why are metaknowledge rather than really anything Oriko has said to me."
[spoiler="sketch]On spending Homu Cred to purchase an Oriko, if necessary:
> Express belief that, post-WPN, Madoka will be safer with Oriko alive than without.
-> Unknown nature of future, lack of precognition, Kyubey's continued desire to screw everyone over, Madoka being the obvious weak point for any attempt to screw us over on Kyubey's part
-> Establish that based on meta-knowledge rather than anything from Oriko -- print Oriko Magica if we have to.
> Express genuine belief that Madoka Kaname's death results in the end of the world
-> Homura would either loop or witch out. You know many things, but you have absolutely no idea what the result of Homura witching out would be, and considering her powerset and proximity to Madoka, you really, really aren't interested in finding out.
-> Looping...
> If you believed in the slightest that Oriko could be a threat to Madoka, you wouldn't be pushing for this. You'd been on and off considering gemming the kures the whole time up until the conversation a few (cite) nights ago, and honestly it was getting more and more likely that you would have had to. There was a... A shatterpoint, and you hit it, and you're pretty sure they'd be dead right now if you hadn't.
-> You have exactly one chance at getting things right. For this one chance, your bet is that the kures are more benefical to Madoka's safety alive than dead. [/spoiler]
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
My reasoning for not trying to split the conversation up is that it looks really shady right after trying to "trick" Sayaka into agreeing with us and then bringing up the Kures, like we're specifically trying to isolate opposition.
Which is part of the reasoning that's been stated, that it'd be easier to convince them individually. The way it'd look to suddenly want to talk to them individually is... bad.
Which is part of the reasoning that's been stated, that it'd be easier to convince them individually. The way it'd look to suddenly want to talk to them individually is... bad.
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
We've brought up multiple times that Oriko was trying to save Sayaka's life when she burnt her house down. Did we ever mention that she did save her life by raising the alarm when she was abducted by a Witch?
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
[x] Godwinson
It's perfect.
It's perfect.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
I think @Kaizuki 's points to talk to Homura about the issue are extremely good ones, and should definitely take place in a private conversation later. Though, the point about "absolutely no idea what the result of Homura witching out would be" and the "You have exactly one chance at getting things right" are a bit contestable and may need some adjustment; for the former, oh, we do have some ideas and none of them are good (or alternatively, we technicality-truthing because we don't know about the result of Homura witching out but we do have ideas about the witching out itself, even though we're implying we don't); for the latter- @Firnagzen is there word of god that we have only this one loop, and failure is quest end? Or is that an unanswerable question? Either way, without an answer I wouldn't want to be stating it like this as a solid point. But otherwise, the whole thing as you presented it... It passes most of my inner-Homura check, as well as my convince-someone-who's-very-paranoid check, at least for me.
Also agree with @Godwinson's point and reasoning about not splitting the conversation now; that was something I was sticking on when I was still trying to put together my frankenvote, how to extricate ourself from the main conversation for a word with Homura without seeming sketch as fuck. We do still need a private talk with Homura, I think, because some of her concerns that need addressing are sensitive ones (edit: both in a security sense and a personal sense), but I think with Godwinson's vote we can avoid having to have that talk in the middle of this one.
Edits for spacing
Also agree with @Godwinson's point and reasoning about not splitting the conversation now; that was something I was sticking on when I was still trying to put together my frankenvote, how to extricate ourself from the main conversation for a word with Homura without seeming sketch as fuck. We do still need a private talk with Homura, I think, because some of her concerns that need addressing are sensitive ones (edit: both in a security sense and a personal sense), but I think with Godwinson's vote we can avoid having to have that talk in the middle of this one.
Edits for spacing
Last edited:
- Location
- USA, Midworld world line
@Godwinson is moving us forward on the rational argument front. Thank You. Now, restating how my view differs.
Goal state: Move Oriko and Kirika into "General Population" confinement.
Rationally, does our interest not boil down to two items, only?
- Save Oriko, now is a good time, and benefit from her help more.
- Build the relations between our partners, right here. We must learn to disagree, yet be effective.
---Other items have become secondary, due to mishandling.
Emotions are more important than pure logic, the way this interaction is going.
I think Magic can help.
We should do a group enchant, as a way to communicate feelings directly. We have the option to get around mis-communication.
Explaining while under the influence will let us reach a better accord.
Goal state: Move Oriko and Kirika into "General Population" confinement.
Rationally, does our interest not boil down to two items, only?
- Save Oriko, now is a good time, and benefit from her help more.
- Build the relations between our partners, right here. We must learn to disagree, yet be effective.
---Other items have become secondary, due to mishandling.
Emotions are more important than pure logic, the way this interaction is going.
I think Magic can help.
We should do a group enchant, as a way to communicate feelings directly. We have the option to get around mis-communication.
Explaining while under the influence will let us reach a better accord.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
I respectfully disagree, and feel like suggesting this may be taken as a) invasive, and b) a way to try and take a 'shortcut' out of actually explaining ourselves. Even though it is liable to be more full communication, it's also asking for a lot of trust and intimacy in order to, in essence, get a lot of very personal information about everyone here in order to 'attack' weak points, and also take the burden of explaining our intentions off ourself and instead pass around to everyone else the burden of how they need to put in the effort to understand where we (and by extent O&K) are coming from. Which is super confrontational and blame-shift-y. Or that is how it is not unlikely to come across, I think particularly to Homura, given how she guards her emotions. Actually, this is, in its way, similar to the argument I see in Steven Universe fanfic about using fusion as a tool to get around communication issues, and it misses some of the same points: namely, as much as communication is good, people also have a right to not share literally all of their heart, or anything else highly personal, if they're not comfortable doing so.
... also, I will also confess it sounds a lot like the argument of "everyone is more honest while drunk or high", which, while probably not what you're going for, is a rather unfortunate implication.
Edit: added a few things for clarity
Agreed.
Last edited:
Sovereign Hunt
A Concentric Circle
- Location
- Bereft of Name
In this case, like I was saying before, any demonstration of empathy or favorable emotion towards the Kures would come across to Sayaka and especially Homura as our being biased (even if it's only an irritation in the back of their minds, it would still harm our position, no matter how slightly)
But while I'm here:
[X] Godwinson
Doing Madokami's work, truly.
Edit: BTW do H&S know that Oriko believes she is going to die?
Last edited:
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
It's extremely unlikely Sabrina would survive Homura resetting the loop because she's a temporal anomaly, but there are a couple ways to potentially cheat that because we're a temporal anomaly and not likely to trigger any sort of time paradox.
-Can Homura hammerspace living things? The answer is Probably No, but if she can, she could hypothetically stick our Soul Gem in her shield before bouncing, and, if we've achieved Gem Awareness, we can easily construct a grief body and function as a demilich.
-If not, we can lend her a hand-- literally, stick some manner of DNA sample in there so that our body can be reconstructed/regenerated on the other side and brought back to life with magic/a Wish.
-If biological matter at all is off limits, we could hypothetically (given our unique set of skills and abilities) pull a Chihiro and construct a compact quantum supercomputer, program/install/imbue a copy of our personality to it/braintape ourselves to it, install it in a robot body, and then stick that in the shield. Kazumi's existence implies that a strong AI could be Close Enough to a human to make a contract with Kyuubey and be reborn as a Puella Magi.
- Location
- Illinois
We're unlikely to survive going with her -- see PMPS. Losing it all would be... We'd witch, probably. The scenario that needs consideration is post-WPN madoka death... In that scenario, it is plausible that Homura could loop and we could stay. Convincing Homura that that scenario would be fatal for us would patch a logic hole in the sketch. But I don't think it's terribly... I wouldn't prioritize that sort of thing and as nice as the logic is, it's logic, not emotion.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
So what you're saying is that the offhand idea of trying to train a neural network or some variation of AI to be Sabrina based off the actions of this thread is actually a viable way to do the thing, and given Sabrina's ability to griefhax + speckled enchantments + book with information she doesn't know holy shit GUYS WE NEED TO TRY ASKING HER POWERS TO SPIT OUT ALGORITHMS AND PROOFS FOR SHIT- THAT'S HOW WE GET FUCKING FUNDING- PROFESSORS JOKE ABOUT HOW YOU CAN FUCKING RETIRE IF YOU SOLVE ANY OF THESE PROBLEMS BUT- Ah, ahem, that is, we could probably haxx together a decent learning algorithm for an AI that we just feed Sabrina's thoughts/the thread into, so that Homura can truly have a loop-preservable pocket-Brina reference?
Edit: Though that raises the question of if AI!Brina would retain quite the breadth of information we can pull out of the sky, short of Sabrina just manually uploading all her knowledge and Firn handwaving it to avoid having the thread actually database everything we know to limit what intel we can act on. Then again, AI!Brina would also have a new wish to work with, and could probably ask for something like to be the continuation of original!Sabrina; since we know wishes reach forward through loops, it would stand to reason that this would work for reaching backward too, at least, until we have more data on the metaphysical structure of Firn's rendition of the timelines/universes. Which... is probably not under our current purview, anyway, uh, heh.
edited for spelling and also a long rambling extra thought
... that is a fair point, and one I keep forgetting, that "be honest about our emotions" includes our feelings about the Kures just as it does about our dilated time perception and the many things we have to panic about on our plate and how much we're worried about damaging our relationship with Homura and Sayaka and Mami and co. Hm.
Last edited:
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
Whomst? Unfortunately, this is the only PMMM quest (or quest generally) I've been following. Also, in two out of those three scenarios, we can't witch until we re-contract, and we aren't going to witch out unless the whole thread falls into despair... which, y'know, if we can find a way to persist across loops, that's a second chance to correct all of our fuckups.
Pretty much, but honestly, braintaping would be faster. Even if it's the destructive version, we don't need to not fry our brain so much because we have access to Clear Seeds and healing magic.
Spectral Waltz
Scatterbrained Writer
- Location
- Walking the Endless Corridors
...Are we allowed to write omake in this thread? Because I kinda have a little plot bunny of a bad future Homura with her Sabrina-AI
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
But... but... learning algorithm! Wider implications for the advancement of human knowledge!
... okay yeah possibly producing the knowledge to allow people to literally brainclone people out of messageboard posts is too powerful to be put into human hands, particularly when we just know how poorly treatment of fully-sentient-sapient AIs is still likely to go if it shows up out of nowhere.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
I'd like to point out that Homura's Revenge is in play as far as Homura's time travel mechanics go, which means that Homura can bring along any number of additional travelers to other timelines just by touching them while she loops.
(It runs off the same sharing principles as her timestop.)
Ergo, all this talk of personality upload AIs is pretty pointless.
(It runs off the same sharing principles as her timestop.)
Ergo, all this talk of personality upload AIs is pretty pointless.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
We'd need word of god to confirm that mechanic here, though, since not all fics use every branch of canon such as that.
edited for clarity