Holy fucking hell this is something to wake up to. Um. Jesus. How do you even
process that?
You know, it really brings home the level of time dilation that Sabrina experiences- I woke up and read the update like, over an hour ago, and I'm
still processing it, and Sabrina will have gone through all *
waves hands*
this in the eternal moment between moments.
Fuckin' hell.
Uhhhhhhhh fuck, um, uh-
[x] Onmur
Right, you know, I had a big long thinger in here trying to process what was going on with this and the thread and everything, and I started it literally like four, five hours ago. And I'm taking a breath and cutting it down because productive.
1, just wanna point out, and I don't want to offend anyone, but if I do offend anyone, I'm really sorry, but the Discord was really reading like a secret Discord cabal for a bit there, and it's sorta vacillating back and forth, and definitely not all of the relevant bits seem to be making it into the thread, so, uh,
@Firnagzen , is that... How is that, right now?
And now, back to the topic at hand-
So, on one hand, floating in a suspension of
how the hell do you even process this, part of me is screeching
nope, nope, nope, big guns, gem grab, now, immediately, you don't, you don't do
that, Imperio, brainjack is a-
And then, ugh, but really though, what the hell do you even do with that? Honestly, if she were just going around yoinking murderguca souls and holding them for lack of better place to
put them, I'd be a lot less disturbed- well, still disturbed, but as we've all said, meguca don't
got prisons. This, this,
peoplejacking, it's-
It could, in it's way, in my view, be worse. If she were- if she were warping
them, their minds and idents and selves and
souls, not just commanding them, but
changing them. And, of course, Witching is worse. But those are... not exactly high bars to damn clear.
On the other hand, two things.
if we don't give her just one single chance to answer to our question of "Will you stop, now that you
can?" then
she won't ever get that chance.
Do we really think, that
if we are ever certain enough of our power that we ever think we can contain her awake and aware, after a hostile opening where we do not even give her a chance to
answer, or even
hear our question, do you
really think that she'll be willing to say "yes I was toast wrong and you were right for canning me all those years ago and taking me away from my home and my people without giving me a chance to answer to your questions, and I'll work with you under heavy guard for the rest of my possibly-eternal life until I feel like dying because you'll never be able to trust my powers, not after how I've done with them before I met you, and not now that you've opened 'negotiations' like this, but that's fine, won't give you a lick of trouble"?
Whatever answer we get out of her after that point won't be an
answer, it will be her conceding under duress, and we will
never,
never be able to trust it. Any work she does for us after that, any releasing of the ghosts, any research and development on soul magic? That won't be her deciding 'okay fine that was shitty of me but now I have a chance to do better', that will be her concession under threat of force, under threat of being rendered dead or in an eternal stasis, with no life after. That's us enslaving
her, or choosing to kill her, or choosing to give her the choice between eternal sleep, or death, or an eternal imprisonment that, let's face it, wouldn't just be us letting her chill in confinement, that would be trying to hand her projects. (Even in the
best case of this, there will be
years, maybe decades, maybe longer, where we
cannot trust her, cannot trust any apologies or promises she gives us-
years where we are keeping her by force under our power.)
We do this now, without giving her a chance to even hear and answer the question, and-
That's dropping a chance for saving meguca, her and maybe the souls she has on hand, when we could at least damn
ask.
Also. We're in a public place. In the sense that outside the sphere, there's probably plenty of civilians within easy damage reach, if this comes to a fight.
Also also. Thought with regard to telling Riona essentially "drop all offensive magic that you have and become defenseless and dependent on me". There's a solution to this, you know? If we get past dealing with
Riona the fuck am I supposed to think about what the hell you just told us. If Riona can release souls into death, or reverse what's she's done to take them- In the future, there will likely be prisoners who would take the option of this over permadeath in immediacy. (Some of the question of how viable that is also depends on what, if anything, Riona's ghost army experiences while in use.) There are people who, if they're near-dead, who still want to be able to
help, who would probably volunteer to be part of Riona's ghost army, because that way they can still be here, from beyond the grave, helping their friends. There are
options for Riona using her powers in the future in the way that she's accustomed to, without her being an absolute- Without her being as
problematic as she's been thusfar.
(I will also not discount the idea that at least one of the ghosts in her ghost army is a
friend or family member that she's saved the only way that she has ever been able- or maybe screwed up saving the only way she has ever been able- or the idea that at least one of the ghosts in her ghost army
volunteered on their deathbed in order to stick around at least a little. It doesn't make what she's done with the rest of them any better-
of course it doesn't. But it is something we're going to want to keep in mind if and/or when we start going through the souls she has on hand and try to figure out what the hell to do/convince her to do with them.)
Ugh.
And the
practicalities of starting a fight right now seem suboptimal. They could definitely,
definitely be worse, but they seem suboptimal at the moment.
Mmmmngffffffff, and again we come back to having no the fuck idea where Riona is coming from, unlike the canon cast, so we can't judge how to defuse the
what the fuck have you been the fuck doing jesus christ.
And we've got everyone else to-
You know, as soon as we're done here, we need a timestop meeting, with everyone, somewhere secure as fuck.
Mrrrgh. That's all I really have right now. Mostly still just stuck on
no seriously what the hell and variations thereupon. I'm busy today, let's see how on-fire everything is when I get back! }=o\
Actually, no, one last thing- regarding Riona's apparent satisfaction with her actions- she can be displaying satisfaction at the fact she managed to stop some murdergucas and/or get revenge on people who did some real bad shit, and still be capable of recognizing that overall, this is kindafuckshit, but she's not thinking about it because if she did then grief crisis would be kind of a
problem. Denial is absolutely the name of the game for meguca, and people can box the
shit out of dealing with things. Alternatively, she could also have a shitty poker face, be satisfied with what she's done, but recognize that it's not a good reason to keep doing it if she has alternatives, and even
want those alternatives. People are fuckin' complex as hell, even
without the subscriptions that meguca are liable to come boxed with.
... now, let's see how much of this post I'll regret in some manner when I get back to it in a few hours!
