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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Kaizuki said:
As always: no, it was not, and it did not become that in PMKM until after she witnessed the Freezer.



1) Firn frankly wouldn't do it.

2) There... really isn't.

3) Firn wouldn't go for it.
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Frankly, if we are at the point where we can plot the betrayel and body killing of a Meguca who very well could be holding back crucal details about her power, just for that possibility based on the blase assumption that @Firnagzen wouldn't end the quest, then we're taking @Firnagzen for granted.

I wouldn't assume to tell him what he should do about that, but I wouldn't feel cheated if Sabrina loses that battle.
AuraTwilight said:
Except she's done it to at least some people who were on some level not fuckasses, so I still want explanations.
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That is not what she said. She said that none of them were 'good people' and that most of them were murderers before she met them. It is Godwinson's and your assumption that she is untrustworthy based on disgust of soul imprisonment on principle that has you ignoring her explanation out of disdain.
Firnagzen said:
It's not good people I do it to.
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You've depersonalized her. She is not a human or meguca to you, she is a symbol of an morally unacceptable under any circumstances practice.
 
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I would say the main difference is Onmur's vote feels a bit more judging. Mainly in that Cleansing/Clear Seed seems dependent on meeting all the demands, and specifying Riona as well with that last part- Seems like something that'd annoy a person. I find Conjured Blade's vote better in that Riona still gets a Clear Seed for simply agreeing to no more souls- Since she's clearly strong enough without a Clear Seed that with one gathering more souls is unnecessary. Plus, having a Clear Seed means Riona can afford to release some of the souls.

Somewhat digressive, but I think it would be worth it for Sabrina to ask in a future update about the lesser Grief manipulators Riona encountered. Specifically, if there's any special information they gathered regarding the nature of Grief and so on. Knowing if Grief by itself can induce Evil Nut-like effects is important for example, or if those Grief manipulators did weird things to Familiars or caused aberrations like Wraiths. I don't expect anything too significant or mind-blowing, though.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
I'm not sure I really see the difference between it and Onmur's vote, apart from being a little wordier....
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So far? Differences I can think of are

1. Explaining the ethical downsides of clear seeds as a means of attempting to commiserate with her. Sell it as an opportunity to do something unambiguously good with her power, that in the right light we're still distributing Soylent Green, based on the assumption she's like Yuuko Kozuki from Luv and Hate on Spacebattles.

(Yuuko Kozuki is a scientific force of nature who knows she's fucked up. Before Michael Steele showed up, she did some farked up experiments with human subjects for the sake of the war effort/buying humanity more time against the BETA. Then the power of ACUs rendered such things unnecessary. But when Michael gave her the opportunity to get involved in setting up UEF refugee camps, she was very much on board with it. Michael was able to relate to her because he had used the Black Sun Superweapon to end the infinite war, causing uncountable deaths. )

(Luv and Hate: The story of people who have done farked up shit trying to do something decent with themselves afterwards.)

2. Accounting for the possibility of her throwing their crimes in our faces as people who deserve to be able to do better because some of them may be pretty dang farked up by moving to evaluations and acknowledging that perhaps some should just be released unto the afterlife.
3. Acknowledging her actions as a brand of justice, showing that while disgusted, we are at least somewhat willing to acknowledge her as a peer in power/desire to do something good with herself.
4. Reversing the steel and the question
But you can't accept what she's claimed. Enslaving people's Souls is wrong, even if they're bad. Ask her to stop. Ask if she can restore or release the Souls she's forcibly taken.
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This order may lead to a fight starting before we ask her to stop.

Ask if she can restore or release the Souls she's forcibly taken, or if this is something for the research docket because slavery and eternal punishment have no place in the new order.
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Putting the red line "Slavery and Eternal Punishment have no place in the new order" after the question seems like we'd have better odds of being able to finish getting our point across.


5. Acknowledging she came here for something. We don't know what.
 
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..... What if she is born from the accumulation of everyone wishes(magical girls) ? Like, I don't know, wishing for someone to help them? We all feel that way sometime, right? Like, I wish someone would do that for me, I wish I could talk to someone and so on. That would explain her knowledge of the magica system since she's born from the girls wishes . Annnd! She's doing and acting as WE wish isn't she?

Or maybe she a defence mechanism of the world? Or maybe she's there to replace the empty spot madoka and homura left behind when they become gods but somehow it end up creating a paradox.

Sorry for the rumbling.
 
Kkutlord said:
I would say the main difference is Onmur's vote feels a bit more judging. Mainly in that Cleansing/Clear Seed seems dependent on meeting all the demands, and specifying Riona as well with that last part- Seems like something that'd annoy a person. I find Conjured Blade's vote better in that Riona still gets a Clear Seed for simply agreeing to no more souls- Since she's clearly strong enough without a Clear Seed that with one gathering more souls is unnecessary. Plus, having a Clear Seed means Riona can afford to release some of the souls.
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We shouldn't preemptively make concessions she hasn't demanded yet. If we start from the strongest set of demands, we can always drop some, but it's hard to do the reverse if it turns out we could have asked for more.
 
Madou Sutegobana said:
Frankly, if we are at the point where we can plot the betrayel and body killing of a Meguca who very well could be holding back crucal details about her power, just for that possibility based on the blase assumption that @Firnagzen wouldn't end the quest, then we're taking @Firnagzen for granted.

I wouldn't assume to tell him what he should do about that, but I wouldn't feel cheated if Sabrina loses that battle.

That is not what she said. She said that none of them were 'good people' and that most of them were murderers before she met them. It is Godwinson's and your assumption that she is untrustworthy based on disgust of soul imprisonment on principle that has you ignoring her explanation out of disdain.


You've depersonalized her. She is not a human or meguca to you, she is a symbol of an morally unacceptable under any circumstances practice.
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I did not depersonalize her, thank you very much, or I wouldn't be voting to give her a chance to prove she's a good person. I don't trust Riona's judgment of the souls she's enslaved because she's displayed a flippant attitude towards even verifying the nature of her power. I'm not saying she's outright lying, but she's clearly negligent.
 
Skelm said:
We shouldn't preemptively make concessions she hasn't demanded yet. If we start from the strongest set of demands, we can always drop some, but it's hard to do the reverse if it turns out we could have asked for more.
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Given her griefbending powers acquired from false griefbenders, if she was genuinely determined to get a clear seed, throwing out all morality in the process, I would not be surprised if she could make one herself.
 
Conjured Blade said:
Given her griefbending powers acquired from false griefbenders, if she was genuinely determined to get a clear seed, throwing out all morality in the process, I would not be surprised if she could make one herself.
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Firstly, she'd have to put the grief somewhere, which is vastly more grief then any soul gem can hold. Secondly, why does that mean we should preemptively make concessions? If there's a reason for us to give her a clear seed more cheaply, that's on her to bring up.
 
I do agree that the last vote segment explicitly drawing a moral parallel between the trapped souls and Rionna is likely to be taken poorly. It does come off as judgemental, and even if that's justified, won't make talking Rionna around easier.

Which is unfortunate, since I'm the one that originally wrote it. :V

@Onmur , ditch it maybe?

Skelm said:
Firstly, she'd have to put the grief somewhere, which is vastly more grief then any soul gem can hold.
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Couldn't she just dump it into a second witch? It might end up being twice as powerful or duplicate itself or whatever, but it should be able to take a full seeds worth of grief.
 
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We also don't know if Riona can safely subdue people with her base magic. It would be incredibly easy to accidentally break a person, mind rape them, or cause a fate worse than death just by trying to figure it out. So unless Sabrina helps arrange a way for her to safely experiment, Riona would likely need to keep a few for non-lethal defense. Thus, demanding all the souls be free wouldn't work for an immediate or near-future deadline.
 
Skelm said:
Firstly, she'd have to put the grief somewhere, which is vastly more grief then any soul gem can hold. Secondly, why does that mean we should preemptively make concessions? If there's a reason for us to give her a clear seed more cheaply, that's on her to bring up.
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Because we wouldn't give her anything else, because we can't follow her back to Ireland anyway without inconveniencing ourselves. If she knows she can make clear seeds and is monstrous enough to do it with false griefbender powers, the offer is basically scraps. If she's a semi-decent person/a person who can be reasoned with(someone who's gem would blacken if they actually made a clear seed with false griefbender powers), it's a legitimate gift considering we can't conveniently enforce the offer and will make her inclined to repay us, or preferably, to actually sign on with our group where we can keep an eye on her/talk her into releasing souls.
 
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OK...

First, @Redshirt Army, what do you think about dropping :
[X] How many people has she done this to? What were the circumstances? You're willing to hear her out, but her actions sound horrifying, morally and practically.
-[X] Hear her out if she explains.
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My first vote was all about making our pitch, if possible without interruptions (actually something like [] no interruptions was in there), so as to stop stopping midway through, and share everything we need to already.

Say, these votes right now are in a big way the same as [] continue vote in abeyance, just adding some questions and demands about Riona's claims, that could very well go the next round after the vote in abeyance.

This all got resumed to:
[X] You understand some of her actions might have been necessary before, but you're making progress towards creating a better world than that.
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"Maybe your actions were justified, I doubt it, I don't know, but they won't be necessary anymore."

Explain, explain, explain.

Difference between:
-[X] Explain your work and hopes to improve things.
--[X] Standards, justice, society.
--[X] Free cleansing, Clear Seeds.
--[X] De-Witching.
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... And:
-[X] Explain your work and hopes to improve things.
--[X] This is a clear seed. A frugal magical girl could make one last for at least a century. We both know there's something, or someone, in there though.
-[x] Even with the reprieve of clearing, that's confinement in a tank that gets drained instead of a continuous drown. If I told somebody I knew about witches, I would ask them if they'd prefer obliteration if it happened to them because I have tasted what they experience.
[X] You want to work with her. To go beyond this. Do something unambiguously good instead of this half-measure. Dewitchifcation. Replicating your power. Nationbuilding. Benign justice systems. If you cooperate, you believe you can do amazing things.
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Does come down to wordiness. I would feel happy enough to go with the single line and let Firn go from there. maybe specify what our goal is, what we need to get across, but without three paragraphs worth of wording.

Conjured's vote offers a Clear Seed for Riona not taking anymore Souls. I'm less than enthused with this, first because we don't know Riona will abide by the deal, I'd like to keep her around for a bit before trusting her that much; second because her releasing the Souls she's (forcibly, at least) taken is kind of also really important?

If we offer cleansing for life if she cooperates, we can hold off on giving her a Clear Seed by making her stay in Mitakihara, and we can keep her cleansed, personally.

Again, I'd really like to get to know Riona before giving her a Clear Seed.

She could be good and be just baiting us, she could be a Big Bad that we might be able to Social.
 
Onmur said:
Conjured's vote offers a Clear Seed for Riona not taking anymore Souls. I'm less than enthused with this, first because we don't know Riona will abide by the deal, I'd like to keep her around for a bit before trusting her that much; second because her releasing the Souls she's (forcibly, at least) taken is kind of also really important?
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Not fully sure of where my logic was with that offer but I posted a starting point in trying to explain it around the time you made that post.
 
I do agree that it's way too early to offer a Clear Seed.

I'm fine with dropping that initial section.

I'd rather not explicitly follow along a script like Conjured's vote does, since that's problematic if Rionna goes off script or doesn't want to sit and listen to us monologue for several minutes. At most, maybe add some guidance for tone and how to respond to Rionna to that section, but keep it intent based.

Oh, but add "grief seed alternatives" to the condensed spiel. It's a pretty important future project, and making it clear we won't rely on souls to hold grief forever makes our criticism of Rionna more reasonable.

----

I will say that going too hard on demanding Rionna dismiss all ghosts immediately might not be wise. Imagine Sayaka demanding we recall all the Clear Seeds right away after being witchbombed. Aren't we using souls as a stopgap ourselves?
 
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Edit: also another difference was about not coming across as too confrontational. That should be good?

Conjured Blade said:
Not fully sure of where my logic was with that offer but I posted a starting point in trying to explain it around the time you made that post.
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I doubt she can make a Clear Seed without stealing our Soul first, simply due to the sheer amount of Grief that goes into a Seed. If she can offload that somewhere else... it really makes no difference, making a Clear Seed would just mean pumping other people full of Grief beforehand, rather than whenever she needs cleansing.

The problem if Riona turns out to have too few scruples and we don't offer cleansing, would be more that she gets herself a Clear Seed by just stealing it. There's a few around, already.
 
Conjured Blade said:
Because we wouldn't give her anything else, because we can't follow her back to Ireland anyway without inconveniencing ourselves. If she knows she can make clear seeds and is monstrous enough to do it with false griefbender powers, the offer is basically scraps. If she's a semi-decent person/a person who can be reasoned with(someone who's gem would blacken if they actually made a clear seed with false griefbender powers), it's a legitimate gift considering we can't conveniently enforce the offer and will make her inclined to repay us, or preferably, to actually sign on with our group where we can keep an eye on her/talk her into releasing souls.
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That's for her to bring up, not for us to preemptively concede over, especially since we don't know it's true.
 
I will say that by the numbers, a Clear Seed can cover around a million full cleanses - which is to say, removing a seeds worth of grief with direct grief transferral would be enough to witch out a million magical girls.

It's highly dubious that that amount of magical girls actually, uh, exist. Unless a grief power can transfer grief to witches (at which point making a clear seed becomes relatively trivial, since it's only an extra witches worth of grief), making clear seeds wasn't really in the cards.
 
Skelm said:
That's for her to bring up, not for us to preemptively concede over, especially since we don't know it's true.
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I'm gambling the first offer will make her take the second instead, knowing how much of a half-measure it would be to just go home. Maybe sunken cost fallacy will kick in too. As I said. My vote is under the assumption we're basically talking to Yuuko Kozuki. It's also an affirmation of principle, I just realized. That as disgusted as we are, that we still actually believe what we're saying about not belonging in Kyubey's back.
 
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For the purposes of levity, I debate the assertion that we can't follow Riona to Ireland without inconveniencing ourselves. Ribbon magic + space travel go.

Long new protovote is long (and there's more that could go in, but I have to trust Brinapilot to avoid writing a constitution, here):

[X] Take a moment to calm down.
-[X] Tell Riona you appreciate her being frank and upfront. You'll try to do the same.

[X] Explain you're creating a better world.
-[X] Admit Riona's actions as claimed might have been necessary in the past.
-[X] Explain your work and hopes regarding implementing justice, protection, equity and accountability for Magical Girls. (etc.)
--[X] Riona's brand of 'justice' should cease to be necessary (and become immoral).
-[X] Explain free cleansing distribution.
--[X] Clear Seeds, upsides and downsides. Need for a better, moral solution.
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] You're creating a network to work on it. You hope Riona can help.

[X] You want to work together.
-[X] You are afraid to trust her with a Clear Seed yet. Invite Riona to stick around, free cleansing as long as she stays, get to know each other.
--[X] Ask again that she considers working together.
-[X] Regarding her claims:
--[X] You can't abide her taking any more Souls, for reasons stated; moral, ethical and practical concerns.
--[X] Ask whether she can restore, and if not, release the Souls she's taken, at least those taken by force.
---[X] Part of the standards we want to set are humane treatment.
---[X] Offer alternatives and solutions. Jail, therapy, magically created bodies for those souls, magical research, whatever is necessary.
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Wow, I go into lurking for a while, and now we come onto this.

Something that I should bring up, tomorrow in-universe is the roughly the approximate date that Sayaka mysteriously dies, followed by the rest of the Mitakihara group, and I had a thought: does that event occur because our talk with Riona breaks down, or is it because Sayaka finds out about Riona's Soul-stealing (likely through QB) and tries to dispense justice?

Most of the morality issues that this recent update brought up have already been discussed, mainly regarding the lack of enforceable justice systems in the world of Meguca, possible reasonings for Riona's creation of shades, and etc.

Keep in mind that bad powers do not necessarily make for bad people. Maybe not good ones, but not necessarily bad.

I am of the mind to at least hear Riona out first regarding her motives. And, of course, do not ask about her sister.

However, I would like to suggest rewording the part where we ask about releasing/returning the souls.

[x] Take a moment to calm down.
-[X] Tell Riona you appreciate her being frank and upfront. You'll try to do the same.
[X] How many people has she done this to? What were the circumstances? You're willing to hear her out, but her actions sound horrifying, morally and practically.
-[X] Hear her out if she explains.
-[X] You understand some of her actions might have been necessary before, but you're making progress towards creating a better world than that.
-[X] Explain your work and hopes to improve things.
--[X] Standards, justice, society.
--[X] Free cleansing, Clear Seeds.
--[X] De-Witching.
[X] You want to work with her. If you cooperate, you believe you can do amazing things.
-[X] But you can't accept what she's claimed. Enslaving people's Souls is wrong, even if they're bad. Ask her to stop. Can the Souls be restored or otherwise released to wherever they go after death?
--[X] Offer alternatives and solutions. Jail, therapy, magically created bodies for those souls, magical research, whatever is necessary.
--[X] Offer free cleansing for life, if she can agree with that.
[X] Ask her to give us a chance, to work with us, and do better.
-[X] Everyone should have the opportunity to become better then they were. That includes the souls she's trapped, and that includes her.
--[X] Perhaps we seem too idealistic and naive, and we know that sometimes a horrible criminal just can't be redeemed. Still, we want to try.
 
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