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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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The Narrator said:
Not really. People on these forums tend to underrate the impact of it when viewing from a safe and detached distance, but loss of one's soul is considered a huge deal and grounds for an existential crisis in Western society as well... assuming one believes in the existence of souls. In fact, given how big Western religions are on the "don't sell your soul" thing, it pretty much equates to damnation if you believe in that sort of thing.
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I mean, baseless speculation inbound, but I don't think it's that "everyone agrees losing your soul is bad". I think it's just that Kyubey is contracting a particular demographic (young-ish girls) and filtering for emotional instability; Kyubey selects for people who are liable to think along the lines of "I've lost my soul" when they hear the lichbomb.

If you can casually eat the lichbomb -- "well, this doesn't seem much different from keeping my soul wherever it was before" or "wait, this doesn't make sense, if souls exist then how does brain damage work, is my soul gem a cortical stack? some kind of metaphysical appendix?" or "SWEET, GUILT-FREE HORCRUX!" -- that means that you're either naive Kyubey-bait and making light of your real feelings (which gets you killed anyways), or you're exactly the kind of emotionally well-adjusted and flexible person that doesn't normally get contracted to begin with.
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
If you can casually eat the lichbomb -- "well, this doesn't seem much different from keeping my soul wherever it was before" or "wait, this doesn't make sense, if souls exist then how does brain damage work, is my soul gem a cortical stack? some kind of metaphysical appendix?" or "SWEET, GUILT-FREE HORCRUX!" -- that means that you're either naive Kyubey-bait and making light of your real feelings (which gets you killed anyways), or you're exactly the kind of emotionally well-adjusted and flexible person that doesn't normally get contracted to begin with.
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Or you're someone who's well-adjusted cool about the lichbomb, and about approximately nothing else.

Really, all it takes is someone who's significantly likely enough to self-destruct (or get externally destructed) for non-lichbomb-reasons that their stability with regards to the lich-thing is outweighed.

But yeah, in a general sense, your assessment seems broadly more applicable than not.
 
Not going to wordgame it, only mention Mami out of the loop once we get a Bracelet going.

Rionna is under stress from performance anxiety? As a recluse, bad tolerance for crowds? Afraid of attack, blustering through? We should pay attention more.
We didn't even measure her Grief.
If we see any hints as to her stressors, we can negotiate wisely.
Our best goals are hold an equal position, get Private ASAP, and demo our powers in the smallest way possible. Cleanse Mami, offer to Rionna, or materialize solid Grief. As soon as we can use Grief around Rionna, let's detect for Kyuubey, he's sure to be somewhere for this meeting? Can Rionna do that? Does she have a secrecy enchantment?
Hospitality and lodging stuff might not fit in this update either?


[X] Calm, direct persona. Serious. Be Equals.
-[X] Forbear. Infohazard wary, protect Mami.
-[X] Rionna possibly stressed, and exhausted. Observe stress tells.
[X] Answer her immediately. We are a good person.
-[X] Must move conversation. Roof, or restaurant. Talk while walking.
-[X] Continue - Ask our friends. Amnesia. Strange soul per Kyuubey. Few other facts, happy to debate later.
-[X] View her Grief if possible. Abandon if abnormalities.
[X] Dangerous speaking about everything openly, tell Rionna she knows better.
-[X] We need all our friends alive and well
-[X] Cooperation absolutely requires promising to protect everyone from infohazards
-[X] (conditional ) Explain infohazards abstractly - does she care?

[X] Intend Privacy now
[X] Offer Privacy enchantment.
-[X] does she have another technique?
[X] Without Mami - use Bracelets (or equivalent)
-[X] probe for witchbomb
-[X] interview re:Kyuubey

[X] Offer cleansing. Declines? Small demo- hand her solid Grief

[X] While walking notify Niko

150 words

[X] Other distraction responses :
-[X] Ask her to tell you about her wait, and flight. How bad was it?
-[X] Offer to carry her luggage.
-[X] Ask if she has a hotel to go to. We can talk there.
-[X] Ask if there is a reason she is almost insulting us.
--[X] We would be pleased to work with her, unless she hates us.
-[X] Is she prepared to navigate Mitakihara, or can we provide translation / assistance?
 
mCooperative said:
It's not impossible that not everyone gets that part of the explanation; that comes with the Witchbomb, not the lichbomb initially, which seems to be the basis of what you're talking about at the moment.
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True, but even if they don't know that it's going to be used as a battery, girls will probably that it's not going to the usual place, especially since religions tend to frown quite strongly on this specific thing.


AuraTwilight said:
That's not the case, either. Souls disappear from Kyubey's observation but other materials confirm the soul persists for Gemsmashed girls, going to whatever afterlife exists for non-megucas.
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But do the girls know that?


Subrosian_Smithy said:
I mean, baseless speculation inbound, but I don't think it's that "everyone agrees losing your soul is bad".
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I've never heard it suggested by anyone that losing your soul isn't a bad thing. It's pretty synonymous with badness in common parlance.

Look, I'm an atheist. I don't believe that souls exist except metaphorically. But if I find out that it's possible to lose/sell/relocate your soul, that would imply that they did exist, in which case I have to assume that they're pretty goddamn important. And losing one is generally equated with losing your sense of self, free will and/or morality. So most people aren't going to react to the idea that they could lose it by being like, "This is fine. It's cool."
 
The Narrator said:
But if I find out that it's possible to lose/sell/relocate your soul, that would imply that they did exist, in which case I have to assume that they're pretty goddamn important. And losing one is generally equated with losing your sense of self, free will and/or morality.
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Yeah, no, that's jumping to conclusions like pole-vaulting. You can't get from "souls exist" and "Kyubey claims he put my soul in a gem or gave my soul the form of a gem" directly to "I've lost my soul, and that means I've lost my sense of self, free will, and/or morality, even though my subjective experiences on that front are indistinguishable and I didn't know anything was wrong until I was lichbombed."

I could buy that meguca are falling over themselves to jump to conclusions and tie themselves in knots over metaphysics, but I'd still think that has less to do with cultural trends of any kind ("western meguca take the lichbomb just as badly as eastern meguca, because they both have harmful untrue beliefs about the soul") and everything to do with selection bias ("western meguca take the lichbomb just as badly as eastern meguca, because they're both young girls").
The Narrator said:
Your body wasn't your soul. Your soul gem is.
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Annihilationism is rather mutually exclusive with Hell theology, so... I guess at the very least anyone who is actually carrying this religious baggage won't be worried about damnation and soul destruction at the same time?

Very reassuring.
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
Annihilationism is rather mutually exclusive with Hell theology, so... I guess at the very least anyone who is actually carrying this religious baggage won't be worried about damnation and soul destruction at the same time?
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Well, if you believe in Hell theology then the fact that you made a contract for your soul is an automatic Go To Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. There's a reason that the series has random Faust quotes scrawled on the walls and has a Mephistopheles mask in the end credits.
 
The Narrator said:
Your body wasn't your soul. Your soul gem is.
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No, your soul gem just contains your soul. If it actually was your soul it would have to be indestructible, since we're assuming that souls are indestructible.
The Narrator said:
Well, if you believe in Hell theology then the fact that you made a contract for your soul is an automatic Go To Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. There's a reason that the series has random Faust quotes scrawled on the walls and has a Mephistopheles mask in the end credits.
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Kyubey is only metaphorically the Devil, magical girls do not actually agree to sell their souls. They literally still have their souls, now in convenient ring form.
 
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Skelm said:
No, your soul gem just contains your soul. If it actually was your soul it would have to be indestructible, since we're assuming that souls are indestructible.

Kyubey is only metaphorically the Devil, magical girls do not actually agree to sell their souls. They literally still have their souls, now in convenient ring form.
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"We don't unmake your soul; we make it better.

Incubators - The Meguca company."
 
[x] Vebyast

I do think a brief confirmation that we wished to control grief is in order, though.

Riona just asked us "what's the story" about us getting true grief powers, and while our anomalous potential (and thus soul) are obviously critical to that, the wish guiding them is important too.

I'd keep it the line in.
 
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[X] Vebyast

Good consolidation, addresses all of the issues I feel competent to have an opinion about. Looks good.
 
The Narrator said:
Well, if you believe in Hell theology then the fact that you made a contract for your soul is an automatic Go To Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. There's a reason that the series has random Faust quotes scrawled on the walls and has a Mephistopheles mask in the end credits.
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I'm probably being pedantic here, but in at least one version, Faust was redeemed in the end. (Granted, he did go through a lot of shit first.)

There's also a couple of people being redeemed from that sort of devil-consorting in the Bible, I think.

But, Kyubey's Nyarlothotep, not Satan, and I doubt religious philosophers are the sort of people who get contracted anyway.
 
One thing I'll note is that both sides of the discussion re: the witchbomb are doing their math poorly. Meguca are neither guaranteed to be reducing the number of witches once they kill two, nor on the wrong end of an exponential decay curve fed solely by meguca, because witches also form from familiars. As a result, the potential resource pool is vastly larger, and it ends up looking more like two tiers of predation - witches on humans and meguca on witches - with the witches also taking up a scavenger role on meguca.
 
Girl: I wish I understood witch - magical girl ecology!
>is witch bombed<
Girl: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
 
Skelm said:
If it actually was your soul it would have to be indestructible, since we're assuming that souls are indestructible.
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The assumption that souls are indestructible goes out the window when the assumption that they're something intangible and transcendent and inviolate to any power but that of Yahweh/Allah/whoever does and they become something aliens can pull out of you and let you wear as jewelry.


Skelm said:
Kyubey is only metaphorically the Devil, magical girls do not actually agree to sell their souls. They literally still have their souls, now in convenient ring form.
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Until they witch out and Kyubey gets to take their souls to his home realm where they will suffer eternally. Much like how the Devil doesn't take people's souls as soon as they make a bargain, because then there wouldn't be much point to making one; he lets them enjoy it first and collects when their time is up.

In the PMMMverse, Kyubey was probably the inspiration for the Faust-style devil.


Shadowhisker said:
But, Kyubey's Nyarlothotep, not Satan, and I doubt religious philosophers are the sort of people who get contracted anyway.
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Well, apparently we're supposed to believe that Joan of Arc was. And somehow thought that the strange creature trying to tempt her into a bargain for power was an angel instead of, y'know, the literal opposite of that. :p

But yeah, one of the conceits of eldritch horror is that humans and their morality is insignificant to these alien powers, as opposed to Faust's standard Christian narrative of repentance and redemption. You can repent all you want, there's no way out of a contract with the Incubators. The only redemption available is to do what Kyouko did and try to die before you can be turned.
 
The Narrator said:
You can repent all you want, there's no way out of a contract with the Incubators. The only redemption available is to do what Kyouko did and try to die before you can be turned.
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Aren't we kinda going against that right now though? We're able to put off witching pretty much permanently, and damn near being able to reverse it. There's a good chance that there is a God (IE Madokami) on our side.

Yeah, it's probably mostly down to luck and the work of others that we're even in this situation. But that doesn't matter. We're still spitting in the face of the whole Cosmic Horror Narrative, and we might just be able to get away with it.
 
Shadowhisker said:
Aren't we kinda going against that right now though? We're able to put off witching pretty much permanently, and damn near being able to reverse it. There's a good chance that there is a God (IE Madokami) on our side.

Yeah, it's probably mostly down to luck and the work of others that we're even in this situation. But that doesn't matter. We're still spitting in the face of the whole Cosmic Horror Narrative, and we might just be able to get away with it.
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Well, yeah. I'm mostly talking about the normal PMMM situation, not PMAS. We're breaking that system.
 
eternaleye said:
One thing I'll note is that both sides of the discussion re: the witchbomb are doing their math poorly. Meguca are neither guaranteed to be reducing the number of witches once they kill two, nor on the wrong end of an exponential decay curve fed solely by meguca, because witches also form from familiars. As a result, the potential resource pool is vastly larger, and it ends up looking more like two tiers of predation - witches on humans and meguca on witches - with the witches also taking up a scavenger role on meguca.
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Killing normal humans to survive is not really any less horrifying, though it might extend your expected lifespan.

[X] Vebyast
 
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