Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
Also, on a tangentially related note... Major props and thanks to @Kaizuki for his giant effortposts. I think he's done a fantastic job in helping with levelling things out.
Adhoc vote count started by Firnagzen on Aug 5, 2018 at 1:10 AM, finished with 142952 posts and 35 votes.
  • [X] Reaction: Disappointment. Tone: Very serious.
    -[X] Calm down.
    -[X] Offer cleansing and cleanse yourself.
    [X] Look Riona in the eyes. Override interruptions.
    -[X] Show her Aurora.
    --[X] Ask if she sees anything unusual in the Seed.
    --[X] Briefly explain your dewitchification experiments.
    -[X] When you heard about her from Nadia, you were really happy, because an expert on souls could make a huge difference in making this dream a reality.
    -[X] ...but you can't work with her. Not while she continues to enslave souls. You'll try not to judge, but you're not going to condone it.
    [X] She came here with the intent of killing another false Grief controller. What does she intend to do now?
    -[X] She went out of her way to present herself as a villain who enjoys enslaving others. You don't intend to buy into that provocation, if that's what she was hoping for.
    -[X] She is free to stay in Mitakihara as long as she doesn't cause any trouble.
    -[X] Your offer remains open, if she changes her mind.
    [X] Be on guard for any aggressive moves, and be ready to signal Mami and Homura if it looks like Rionna is going to attack.
    [x] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
    -[x] You already know mine. Yours I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.
    -[x] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as your goal itself isn't hurting people, if you keep just your current number of wraiths, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it.
    [x] Keep Rionna talking.
    -[x] Flat out tell her that you want her help with dewitching, and that you're offering her the cleansing she wants. Why is she so willing to leave?
    [x] ABSOLUTELY DO NOT LET RIONNA NOTICE THIS, KEEP YOUR EMOTIONAL REACTION TO THIS MUTED:
    -[x] Calmly message Mami with grief, requesting that she not react and contact Homura for timestop, please.
    --[x] You need to discuss what Rionna has said with Mami, Homura, and Sayaka to decide what to do. You won't commit to any action without that discussion first.
    ---[x] Keep calm, do not commit to hostile action against Rionna in your mind.
    [x] You flew half way around the world to find a real Grief cleanser, and you're just going to leave? No. You came here looking for something. Well, so am I. Let's deal.
    [x] I'm trying to figure out how to turn a witch back into a person. The Clear Seed is the first step. They have thousands of times the capacity of regular Grief Seeds. One of these can keep a magical girl clean for centuries. And eventually we hope to enchant something that will do the job without needing souls at all. No more witchouts. No more used Seeds going into Kyubey's back for him to do god-knows-what to. No more need for girls to put themselves through this hell of hunting and fighting to survive. We can all just live like real people.
    [x] When we no longer need Seeds to survive, we can start helping them, too. We've already gotten some small results from injecting positive emotions into the Clear Seed. Your soul powers might be the key to making this back into a Soul Gem.
    [x] You came here looking for a charlatan, a dragon to slay, but I'm not your enemy. I want to help people. Ask Nadia Bennouna, she'll confirm that I'm for real.
    [x] You fought the false Grief Cleansers because they were witching girls out. We don't want anyone to witchout either. We can make a world where no one does, ever again.
    [x] Please. Help us.
    [X] Sigh, relax your visible tension, maybe slump a little bit.
    -[X] "You're not very easy to work with."
    [X] Explain and demonstrate your power
    -[X] Pull grief from your soul gem, float it around, make a few shapes. Perhaps a flute that starts softly playing music?
    -[X] Pull a little bit of grief from a grief seed, just to prove its possible
    --[X] Explain that floating grief is easy to manage, especially given use of a 4th dimension of space. If the cloud ever gets to be a bit too much you can just shove it down Kyubey's backhole. We can demonstrate this afterwards if she'd like.
    [X] After power explanation, move on to explaining your goals.
    -[X] Emphasize your desire for magical girls around the world to be able to live normal lives
    --[X] Ultimately, you want to break Kyubey's wretched system of grief and suffering, and replace it with something better
    ---[X] Some enchanted artefact that can absorb grief, or the proliferation of clear seeds or something that'll ensure magical girls can live long and peaceful lives, witches can be slowly but surely removed as a threat, and maybe Kyubey can even still accumulate grief for his anti-entropy efforts.
    [X] Now Riona knows what you can do and what your goals are. What's her place going to be in things?
    -[X] She can choose to help Sabrina with her powers, with her experience and very different perspective
    -[X] She can choose to go home in peace and deal with her own shit for however long it takes for Sabrina to fix things and bring infinite cleansings all the way to Ireland
    -[X] She can, for whatever reason, oppose this. Preferably with logical argument rather than sudden hostilities. Maaaybe don't mention this? Let it go unsaid unless she comments.
    --[X] Whatever her immediate choices, know that enslaved and possibly suffering shades of the dead won't be tolerated forever. That kind of shit belongs in Kyubey's system, not ours.
    [X] If at any point she flinches or otherwise displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.
    [X] Be pensive. Frown, tilt your head… whatever people are supposed to do as preparation for asking a Question.
    [X] Why does she choose to live? (Phrasing, very specifically: not "why is she alive" or the such. The meaning must clearly refer to what she lives for, and not lean towards implying that we are asking why we shouldn't kill her.)
    -[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly selfish magical girl. Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about. And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home.
    [X] Discretely call Mami for an emergency timestop meeting with her, Homura and Sayaka
    -[X] Get them up to date with the meering with Riona.
    -[X] Discuss the next course of action
    [x] Why?
    [X] Gemsplode her.
    [X] If at any point she displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.
    [X] Be pensive. Body language should be asking a capital-Q Question.
    [X] What does she live for?
    -[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic utterly powerful, knowledgeable, and selfish magical girl.
    -[X] Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about.
    -[X] And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home, with the majority of her shades guarding it. Not her city.
    [x] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
    -[x] You already know mine. Yours though I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.
    -[x] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as it isn't super-villainy, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it. You want my power that badly, I'll designate you my insurance policy if you release a few right now. If the research kills me, and you can claim my soul, it's yours.
    [x] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
    -[x] You already know mine. Yours though I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.
    -[x] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as it isn't super-villainy, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it. You want my power that badly, I'll designate you my insurance policy if you cease soultaking for the duration of your status as my beneficiary and release a few. If the research, or some other unforseen threat kills me, and you can claim my soul, it's yours.
Click to expand...
 
THIRD VERSION OF THIS ESSAY


--Previously, there was a section here that consisted of me both honoring @Spectral Waltz and being slightly annoyed at him: he was, eventually, indirectly responsible for much of this essay. But, we really don't need me being even slightly annoyed at him. Not here, not verbally, not after that. So, that section has been redacted, and replaced with the following:--

Spectral Waltz said:
I still disagree on points, largely in that I don't feel Kai has really properly considered the little inconsistencies that suggest Riona may have motives she has not brought up yet or that she might be deliberately baiting us for one reason or another.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...










Gadjo said:
I don't want to kill her, I want to jail her. She needs to go to meguca jail. For gross acts of "holy shit what the fuck"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

All of this stuff is kind of pointless and unhelpful, though. If the attitude Rionna was giving us was "prove that I don't need to have these shades to keep myself and my city safe, and I'll let them go / figure out if they feel bad things and let them go if they do, and also stop murdering people as long as you remove the need for me to murder people" then everyone here would be okay with it.

The question here is this, and stands as this: given the option, will she stop doing horrible things in exchange for freedom from the system that made those things necessary for individual survival?

Given the option, Homura wouldn't go around murdering people. Her objective is to save Madoka -- if we can offer her that without murdering people, sweet.

Rionna has basically stated that she isn't interested.

...

Oh, for fuck's sake.

sighs, rubs face

Am I really doing this? Of course I am, great.

It can't be this simple, can it?

Ugh.

*mutters, types*

*sighs*

This is probably going to fucking explode while I'm gone... Anyway.

First, we need to go back a bit. To #20.

Firnagzen said:
"I want what everyone wants," Rionna says, and fixes an unblinking gaze on you. "I see people's Souls. I know what happens. I want what you have."

"Sure," you say. You can believe that. "You left your city behind and flew halfway across the world on a... rumour of my existence?"

"Not the first time," Rionna says. "Besides, my city is safe."

"Actually," you say. "A... side question, if you don't mind."

Rionna sighs, taking another long pull from her flask. "Yerra, y' can't help me at all, can you? Y' can't exactly give me your magic, I doubt you're willing to give me your Soul, and I wager I'd have a fight on m' hands if I tried to take it."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is an interesting text. It seems quite clear in its purpose: Rionna says she wants cleansing because she sees peoples' souls and knows what happens when they witch.

Then, she goes on to say that we can't help her at all, because we can't give her our magic and we won't give her our soul.

But there's still a hole in this, you see. To elaborate…

Firnagzen said:
And- second chances. You're reminded of Oriko's resignation to her death, and yet she'd still expected to meet you afterwards.

... as a shade, perhaps?

It's nothing but speculation, but it would line up. And it would line up with Oriko's later prediction that she'd be killed by a blonde, green-eyed magical girl, when Rionna is blonde and green-eyed.

Oriko warned you off bringing up Rionna's sister. You can only speculate that her sister died, and Rionna Wished to bring her back.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Firnagzen said:
"I... I'm sorry," you say. "I don't know you."

"Mm," Rionna says. "And you do not have trust in me. Understandable. You want me to not do what I do."

"Well..." you say.

"No," Rionna says. "I cannot."

"Cannot, or will not?" you ask, bristling. "Because I've got some ideas-"

"Cannot and will not," Rionna says. She drains her flask, tipping her head back for the last drops, and sets it aside. "You do not trust me. I don't trust you."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Firnagzen said:
"I hold on to the shades, or they fade away," Rionna says, folding her arms. "I've spent years building my collection. It's what I have to use to secure my city."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


See, the question here isn't one that has been asked yet.

At this point, what Rionna currently wants from us is irrelevant. The question is what we can give her, and what leverage on her that is worth. But obviously we know next to nothing about her, not really – we know what actions she takes relative to others, generally, and that's kind of it.

So why is Oriko telling us not to ask about her sister?

I know, I know, the obvious answer to that would be "sore point in the past" – Brina even hypothesized that a couple posts ago. Just, bear with me on this for a minute.

We know that Rionna has been alive for a long while as a Puella Magi. We know she defends her city rigorously, she travels internationally on a semi-regular basis to murder people, and she also engages fairly regularly in local murder. Apart from that, she makes [Shitty Cider], keeps a legion of shades, and… what?

There's one big, glaring thing missing here: motive.

Why bother with her city so much? She's powerful enough, and ruthless enough, that there shouldn't be a reason for her to leave shades active around her city on the other side of the fucking world. If anybody went rooting around up there she could just outright murder them when she got back, and she'd keep control of the city perfectly well by doing that.

Why the one-day round-trip pre-booked tickets? Sure, they make sense historically – go to city of shitty grief controller, murder shitty grief controller, turn them into a shade, stay the night in a hotel, go home.

But why go about targeting grief controllers in this manner? People have suggested plenty of reasons she might target grief controllers, and she has suggested some, even. But why this way?

I think the devil's advocate case, here, is to say that it's the most convenient way: you only have to book tickets once instead of purchasing a second ticket to go back after you're done with the murdering, and you'll never need more than a single day because shaaaaaaaaaaaaaades.

And that would make sense, if she wasn't maintaining shades on the other side of the world at the same time. It would mesh nicely with not bothering to do that. If she has the strength to both destroy anyone in her path when she travels, and defend her city at the same time, then logically she should only actually need the amount of power required to destroy anyone in her path when she travels – after all, when she travels back home she can murder anybody being too stupid about things like poking into her city.

If she's only interested in staying alive and not becoming a witch, then that would be the way to play the game. She would only need to defend herself, not her city.

Devil's advocate, of course, suggests that she had ought to keep all the shades she can.

But then: why not bring all of them with her???

More safety that way, after all. Basic concentration of force.

A small force left at home, to defend her house or whatever? Sure. But the entire city?

Why?

Logically, the answer – and what we then hypothesize to be the big reason behind the one-day pre-booked round-trip tickets – is that something there matters to her.

And, here's my next question, then…

Why is Rionna Mag Aoidh alive?

What the fuck does she even do all day?

Now, clearly, given her knowledge of witching, maybe she's just fucking terrified of becoming a witch. Anybody in their right mind is, after all. But why is being alive a better option to her than just killing herself?

I think we've been pretty quick to disregard this question, largely because it was never brought up. But, I mean, picture this. You're Rionna Mag Aoidh. You live in Scotland. You make a frequent habit of murdering people by ripping their fucking souls out, but you don't really seem to get your kicks from it. You're a total bitch to people on a regular basis and you don't allow the existence of non-you magical girls in your city, so odds are good you have basically no friends – you have acquaintances abroad, at the least, given that you've "been in Toyo, know a couple o' girls there" – but, what, do you make your life by chatting people up over telepathy? You're not particularly nice, so, are you sociable? Probably not. You… you make [Shitty Cider]. What, is your life goal to make the world's best [Shitty Cider]?

If Rionna's life goal, and the reason why she does everything she does, is to make better [Shitty Cider] in her massive shade-powered [Shitty Cider]-works up in Scotland, I vote we kill her immediately: therefore it's probably not the case that making the best [Shitty Cider] in the world is her life goal, because Firn isn't a shitty QM.

What makes her life worth living? Teaching small children? Reading books? I don't buy it, or at the least, if that's what makes her life worth living and she is up to the kinds of shit she's up to, then again: I say we kill her now. We'll spare her from ever becoming a witch, and the rest of the world from ever being murdered by having their soul ripped out, and if that's all she is doing this for then nothing of value will have been lost.

But the fact stands. Most meguca who live this long have some kind of reason for having done so, even if it's just being happy with their lives. Hell, I'm pretty sure the argument goes that even Kyouko is basically up to what she's up to because she isn't willing to kill herself – I'll leave the whys behind that door to the lore people. Bible, maybe. My Kyouko is pretty rusty.

But this girl, who lives (presumably) alone up in Scotland – why? All of the text seems to me to point towards there being something up in that city, and that something being the answer to that question. Is it connected to her sister? Hell if I know. But it would make a rather disturbing amount of sense if it were, and ignoring that possibility entirely the rest of this argument still stands.

Now, as I said, Rionna has essentially laid out that she isn't interested in giving up her shades in exchange for freedom from the system…

But, she may be interested in giving up her shades in exchange for something other than free cleansing. And whatever the answer to the question of what she cares about is, that's also the answer to what the thing she might make concessions for would be. We could work with that, I'd bet.

And supposing that the answer to the question of what she cares about so much that she does all this soul-ripping and shade-keeping isn't good enough… Then, shouldn't we just gem her and be done with it? Seems to me that'd be the end of the argument.

So, now, I'm not necessarily happy with this vote here, but it's basically what I'm going to suggest: we need to figure out her motives, and if they're shit we need to gem her. If they aren't shit, either we'll have miraculously discovered that she's a good person, or we'll have leverage on her through some means, and we can think about whether we can and/or want to use that leverage to get her to stop being a terrible person.


[X] If at any point she flinches or otherwise displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.

[X] Be pensive. Frown, tilt your head… whatever people are supposed to do as preparation for asking a Question.

[X] Why does she choose to live? (Phrasing, very specifically: not "why is she alive" or the such. The meaning must clearly refer to what she lives for, and not lean towards implying that we are asking why we shouldn't kill her.)

-[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly selfish magical girl. Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about. And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home.


Post-script: ye gods. Please excuse any untidiness in here, this is 3k words long and these things do build up ;_;


Firnagzen said:
Also, on a tangentially related note... Major props and thanks to @Kaizuki for his giant effortposts. I think he's done a fantastic job in helping with levelling things out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

fucking ninja-firn

*tacklehugs firn*
 
Last edited:
Kaizuki said:
[X] If at any point she flinches or otherwise displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.

[X] Be pensive. Frown, tilt your head… whatever people are supposed to do as preparation for asking a Question.

[X] Why does she choose to live? (Phrasing, very specifically: not "why is she alive" or the such. The meaning must clearly refer to what she lives for, and not lean towards implying that we are asking why we shouldn't kill her.)

-[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly selfish magical girl. Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about. And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Also, I want to stress more, this needs to be re-toned or rephrased pretty hard is my guess. I'd been writing for, like, hours when I got to writing this part originally and it hasn't been edited much over the course of the versions so uh yeh. But, the core points -- we need to work out what her motivation is, and we need to be direct about it. No more talking about what we want to do or how great the world could be or etcetera. Going by the hypotheses laid out in this essay, we're looking at someone more akin to Homura than to an average Magical Girl: she's not going to be interested in what we can do for the world, she's going to be interested in what we can do to help solve her personal issue/s, just as Homura is concerned with our helping her help Madoka.

She's going to tend towards being snappy and mad and closeted about things, probably. So, this needs work to handle that. But I kinda need to clock out at this point... And I've never been any good at refining votes ><

Also edited out the first stuff in the essay about Spectral. That belongs in a PM, rather than right after this other stuff.
 
Last edited:
Firnagzen said:
Now, with all that said... On a more personal note.

We haven't had any major blowups in a while, but it doesn't really feel like it. We've had periodic, simmering flareups. The arguments make me actively heartsick to read over, and to be perfectly honest, some days I don't feel like reading the thread because of them. Can you all just... try? Try. For my sake, for Sabrina's sake.

Step back and think before you post. Try and make sure you cool off before you do.

You don't need to respond within five minutes after someone posts something you disagree with. Get a drink, think about it. Slow down. Give yourself a little time to mull it over.

OK?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm sorry. My initial reactions probably did lead to unnecessary polarization. Slavery is about the only thing in politics that sets off my "this is filth" reaction. My disgust was strong, and I reacted from that place rather than calm consideration.

I apologize for whatever part I played in this blow up.
 
Well, that clears things up significantly.
Kaizuki said:
THIRD VERSION OF THIS ESSAY


Okay, if you're not Spectral Waltz, probably you should skip down to the stuff beneath the Gadjo quote, and if you are Spectral Waltz, then… Then… I don't even know, okay?








I originally wrote a reply to this and then it turned out to be invalid because reasons. I don't know whether to thank you or, or, or throw something at you, like, a tomato, for… for doing a poor job of representing the "little inconsistencies" that you mentioned to the rest of the thread. My impression at this point is that what you have said has been incredibly valid, but you did such a poor job of spelling it out to everyone that I ended up saying to Firn that the chief problem in the thread has been people failing to thoroughly convey their arguments to each other. I honestly feel like all you even had to do was quote the sections of the posts that made you feel this way, because when I went through and found those sections I ended up writing this thing, this… three thousand word thing, and I'm practically convinced that you're right.

If somebody has already gone on a tirade about people failing to communicate thoroughly in here by the time I post this, then, uh… would somebody get me to edit this here bit out?

Man, I don't even know if I'm angry at you or not. Because on the other hand, thinking about this stuff was what got me to where I ended up. Just… just keep reading, and ignore the spoiler that I only put here for my own posterity.

I did spend some time thinking about that. If anything like that exists, it will probably be tied to the city she is from. However, I also don't know how we would get her to open up about them.

In the end, I am, again, not saying that we should shoot her: I am saying that we are going to end up shooting her. If we spend the next several updates talking with her, and we cannot get her to provide us some way through which we can get her to act the part of a decent human being and stop murdering people, we are going to end up shooting her. Whatever motives she may or may not have brought up, whatever hidden tendencies she may or may not have -- either those will come out, or they won't, and then either they will provide a way to get her to act the part of a decent human being, or the won't.

But, notice that only the second issue matters when it comes to whether or not we'll have to shoot her. Maybe she has the worst sob story in the entire world, and has been through horrible, terrible things.

What do we do if that is the case, and she refuses to stop murdering people?

If you have a suggestion for how we should find those hidden motives and backstories and etcetera, that doesn't involve us allowing her to go home and keep regularly murdering people -- hell, I'll probably even vote for it. Do you see what I'm saying?


Now, uh, before somebody starts asking why we don't start doing these things the world over or whatnot... we only have so many hands at the moment, and Rionna is here.

Eventually, we will do these things the world over. In the meantime, I think we're best off radiating out from the vicinity of Mitakihara, excluding situations where somebody comes and shoves it in our face like this, so to speak: if for no other reason than that letting people who are actively doing horrible things come to Mitakihara and talk about them to our face and then not do anything would really screw over team cohesion. Once Mitakihara is stable and we know that the world isn't going to end here, we'll start actively expanding our influence worldwide. Until then, we, uh, we're a bit busy working on how to not have the world end, and how to deal with the various potentially world-ending threats involved.

Rionna has put us in a situation where there are two extenuating factors: one, we don't need to leave Mitakihara for any real duration to do something about the problem, and two, whatever we do here will openly reflect on us to Sayaka. Also Mami, but mostly Sayaka (and to a lesser degree Madoka and Hitomi).



All of this stuff is kind of pointless and unhelpful, though. If the attitude Rionna was giving us was "prove that I don't need to have these shades to keep myself and my city safe, and I'll let them go / figure out if they feel bad things and let them go if they do, and also stop murdering people as long as you remove the need for me to murder people" then everyone here would be okay with it.

The question here is this, and stands as this: given the option, will she stop doing horrible things in exchange for freedom from the system that made those things necessary for individual survival?

Given the option, Homura wouldn't go around murdering people. Her objective is to save Madoka -- if we can offer her that without murdering people, sweet.

Rionna has basically stated that she isn't interested.

...

Oh, for fuck's sake.

sighs, rubs face

Am I really doing this? Of course I am, great.

It can't be this simple, can it?

Ugh.

*mutters, types*

*sighs*

This is probably going to fucking explode while I'm gone... Anyway.

First, we need to go back a bit. To #20.



This is an interesting text. It seems quite clear in its purpose: Rionna says she wants cleansing because she sees peoples' souls and knows what happens when they witch.

Then, she goes on to say that we can't help her at all, because we can't give her our magic and we won't give her our soul.

But there's still a hole in this, you see. To elaborate…








See, the question here isn't one that has been asked yet.

At this point, what Rionna currently wants from us is irrelevant. The question is what we can give her, and what leverage on her that is worth. But obviously we know next to nothing about her, not really – we know what actions she takes relative to others, generally, and that's kind of it.

So why is Oriko telling us not to ask about her sister?

I know, I know, the obvious answer to that would be "sore point in the past" – Brina even hypothesized that a couple posts ago. Just, bear with me on this for a minute.

We know that Rionna has been alive for a long while as a Puella Magi. We know she defends her city rigorously, she travels internationally on a semi-regular basis to murder people, and she also engages fairly regularly in local murder. Apart from that, she makes [Shitty Cider], keeps a legion of shades, and… what?

There's one big, glaring thing missing here: motive.

Why bother with her city so much? She's powerful enough, and ruthless enough, that there shouldn't be a reason for her to leave shades active around her city on the other side of the fucking world. If anybody went rooting around up there she could just outright murder them when she got back, and she'd keep control of the city perfectly well by doing that.

Why the one-day round-trip pre-booked tickets? Sure, they make sense historically – go to city of shitty grief controller, murder shitty grief controller, turn them into a shade, stay the night in a hotel, go home.

But why go about targeting grief controllers in this manner? People have suggested plenty of reasons she might target grief controllers, and she has suggested some, even. But why this way?

I think the devil's advocate case, here, is to say that it's the most convenient way: you only have to book tickets once instead of purchasing a second ticket to go back after you're done with the murdering, and you'll never need more than a single day because shaaaaaaaaaaaaaades.

And that would make sense, if she wasn't maintaining shades on the other side of the world at the same time. It would mesh nicely with not bothering to do that. If she has the strength to both destroy anyone in her path when she travels, and defend her city at the same time, then logically she should only actually need the amount of power required to destroy anyone in her path when she travels – after all, when she travels back home she can murder anybody being too stupid about things like poking into her city.

If she's only interested in staying alive and not becoming a witch, then that would be the way to play the game. She would only need to defend herself, not her city.

Devil's advocate, of course, suggests that she had ought to keep all the shades she can.

But then: why not bring all of them with her???

More safety that way, after all. Basic concentration of force.

A small force left at home, to defend her house or whatever? Sure. But the entire city?

Why?

Logically, the answer – and what we then hypothesize to be the big reason behind the one-day pre-booked round-trip tickets – is that something there matters to her.

And, here's my next question, then…

Why is Rionna Mag Aoidh alive?

What the fuck does she even do all day?

Now, clearly, given her knowledge of witching, maybe she's just fucking terrified of becoming a witch. Anybody in their right mind is, after all. But why is being alive a better option to her than just killing herself?

I think we've been pretty quick to disregard this question, largely because it was never brought up. But, I mean, picture this. You're Rionna Mag Aoidh. You live in Scotland. You make a frequent habit of murdering people by ripping their fucking souls out, but you don't really seem to get your kicks from it. You're a total bitch to people on a regular basis and you don't allow the existence of non-you magical girls in your city, so odds are good you have basically no friends – you have acquaintances abroad, at the least, given that you've "been in Toyo, know a couple o' girls there" – but, what, do you make your life by chatting people up over telepathy? You're not particularly nice, so, are you sociable? Probably not. You… you make [Shitty Cider]. What, is your life goal to make the world's best [Shitty Cider]?

If Rionna's life goal, and the reason why she does everything she does, is to make better [Shitty Cider] in her massive shade-powered [Shitty Cider]-works up in Scotland, I vote we kill her immediately: therefore it's probably not the case that making the best [Shitty Cider] in the world is her life goal, because Firn isn't a shitty QM.

What makes her life worth living? Teaching small children? Reading books? I don't buy it, or at the least, if that's what makes her life worth living and she is up to the kinds of shit she's up to, then again: I say we kill her now. We'll spare her from ever becoming a witch, and the rest of the world from ever being murdered by having their soul ripped out, and if that's all she is doing this for then nothing of value will have been lost.

But the fact stands. Most meguca who live this long have some kind of reason for having done so, even if it's just being happy with their lives. Hell, I'm pretty sure the argument goes that even Kyouko is basically up to what she's up to because she isn't willing to kill herself – I'll leave the whys behind that door to the lore people. Bible, maybe. My Kyouko is pretty rusty.

But this girl, who lives (presumably) alone up in Scotland – why? All of the text seems to me to point towards there being something up in that city, and that something being the answer to that question. Is it connected to her sister? Hell if I know. But it would make a rather disturbing amount of sense if it were, and ignoring that possibility entirely the rest of this argument still stands.

Now, as I said, Rionna has essentially laid out that she isn't interested in giving up her shades in exchange for freedom from the system…

But, she may be interested in giving up her shades in exchange for something other than free cleansing. And whatever the answer to the question of what she cares about is, that's also the answer to what the thing she might make concessions for would be. We could work with that, I'd bet.

And supposing that the answer to the question of what she cares about so much that she does all this soul-ripping and shade-keeping isn't good enough… Then, shouldn't we just gem her and be done with it? Seems to me that'd be the end of the argument.

So, now, I'm not necessarily happy with this vote here, but it's basically what I'm going to suggest: we need to figure out her motives, and if they're shit we need to gem her. If they aren't shit, either we'll have miraculously discovered that she's a good person, or we'll have leverage on her through some means, and we can think about whether we can and/or want to use that leverage to get her to stop being a terrible person.


[X] If at any point she flinches or otherwise displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.

[X] Be pensive. Frown, tilt your head… whatever people are supposed to do as preparation for asking a Question.

[X] Why does she choose to live? (Phrasing, very specifically: not "why is she alive" or the such. The meaning must clearly refer to what she lives for, and not lean towards implying that we are asking why we shouldn't kill her.)

-[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic powerful, knowledgeable, and utterly selfish magical girl. Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about. And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home.


Post-script: ye gods. Please excuse any untidiness in here, this is 3k words long and these things do build up ;_;




fucking ninja-firn

*tacklehugs firn*
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is great, but I think there's more to it:

Rionna Mag Aoidh does not strictly need to keep her whole city clear of magical girls and witches to just protect her sister, or even theoretically her sister's shade; if it's just her sister, she can hold several blocks and tolerate the existence of magicals elsewhere.

She's keeping the whole city clear for a reason, which leads me to suspect two possibilities:

  1. She's protecting more than just her sister here; she might be trying to protect her whole extended family in the city.
  2. She feels other magicals in the same city are a threat to whatever she's trying to protect.

[X] If at any point she displays surprise, cut to voting. If she tries to leave, cut to voting.
[X] Be pensive. Body language should be asking a capital-Q Question.
[X] What does she live for?
-[X] It would be easy to make her out as the classic utterly powerful, knowledgeable, and selfish magical girl.
-[X] Except that that requires she have something to be selfish about.
-[X] And whatever that is, it's pretty clearly back home, with the majority of her shades guarding it. Not her city.
 
She wants our power specifically. I still think I was on to something with offering her status as our insurance policy as a potential carrot but Kaizuki's right too. Reiterating some points, adding a couple of new ones I realized about my earlier ideas. Also a potential monologue for Sabrina to use to explain Riona to others.


Challenging Rionna to copy our power with a power copier she has(I don't expect her to actually be able to) while mentioning Sayaka couldn't do it:

1. It protects Sayaka against Riona coming after her to copy her power to acquire ours, in the event Riona is the sort to do that.

2. If other Griefbenders powers could be copied, it helps convince her we're different.

3. It's crazy enough to throw her off balance regardless.

4. If she can actually do it, she becomes another target for the incubators and abundance makes people more prolifigate anyway.


Using Riona as an insurance policy against the utter destruction of our power as a bribe(If an enemy has us on the brink of death or she can claim souls shortly after death, she can do so to ensure our powers don't die with us, assuming she has the ability to do so.):

1. I realized a justification more immediate and palpable then incubator direct action motivation for the insurance policy scheme. It's common knowledge among magical girls that dewitching research doesn't go well. Play up the crazy scientist angle. "I have no idea what will happen if I feed this clear seed hope flavored magic and give it grief to build with, and if you help me find out you can have my powers if it kills me and you can take them. They're too valuable to let fade from the earth like that."

2. Something that batshit insane is likely to throw her off balance

3. In the event Incubators actually do take direct action against us then odds are they'll want to stamp her out too if she gets our power, so she'll have no choice but to go against them in our place.

4. It's a trade proportional in value to her disarming/freeing a large number of souls, making her more likely to go for it if we ask for terms like that.

5. Our death is a bad end anyway so what do we have to lose?

6. It keeps her in Mitakihara instead of roving around as a monstrous vigilante, enabling us to keep an eye on her/work on her/convince her we're real without needing to give her a clear seed immediately.

7. She wants our power. If she's provoking us, it's because she wants our power guilt-free. A guilt-free shot at our power is something she would go for if she was provoking us like that.

8. Her ability to actually do this is an unknown quantity.

9. We don't tell her this but it's also Dedolere insurance.


A monologue explaining Riona to the others:

0. My feelings on her are an utter mess. Knowing what I know, there is a lot I will excuse in the name of staying alive/keeping your gem clean, so long as you stop and enter my sphere of influence when I give you the opportunity to do so. Riona tests that principle sorely.
1. She's a Hanging Judge, a monster that preys on other monsters, someone with a fucked up power that makes you fucked up if you don't die of gem blackening from using it. To use it in combat necessitates taking peoples souls and binding them into your service. So it's slavery. If she's used it on non-monsters who aren't otherwise decent people so horrified by what she does they try to force her to stop she needs to die immediately because she's too far gone. Hopefully that's not the case.
2. Unfortunately for all of us, the other aspects of her power are of almost as much value for infohazard research as mine. Losing them would be a tragedy. I want her power almost as badly as she probably wants mine. She might be as dangerous as I am considering she downed a magical girl team with a false griefbender and a herd of witches at their disposal single-handedly. She either does not want to retire, or does not trust me enough to retire yet. Maybe she thinks I'm a false griefbender who's good at hiding it or something. They're her favorite target, and knowing what I know I find it understandable. As much as I hate to say it, any false griefbender who did not want to retire, I would want killed too. Emphasis on killed. Not what Riona does to them.
3. For you to take her power, Sayaka, would expose you to the infohazard almost inevitably. I don't want to deprive you of choice in the subject. Infohazards are that serious. To lose any of you would risk my death by gem blackening. Especially to her. Violence against someone like her is the kind of thing that needs to be won in a single stroke.
 
Last edited:
Kaizuki said:
Also, I want to stress more, this needs to be re-toned or rephrased pretty hard is my guess. I'd been writing for, like, hours when I got to writing this part originally and it hasn't been edited much over the course of the versions so uh yeh. But, the core points -- we need to work out what her motivation is, and we need to be direct about it. No more talking about what we want to do or how great the world could be or etcetera. Going by the hypotheses laid out in this essay, we're looking at someone more akin to Homura than to an average Magical Girl: she's not going to be interested in what we can do for the world, she's going to be interested in what we can do to help solve her personal issue/s, just as Homura is concerned with our helping her help Madoka.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So... the Camus question? "Why haven't you committed suicide yet? You know about witches, you could spare yourself the infinite suffering and the rest of the world the pain of having their souls torn out. What reason do you have to keep living?"
 
The Thread Situation

Alright. Let's all stay calm. We all want Sabrina to do the most good she can for everyone, and all we disagree on is on the best path to follow for that. So first and foremost - please trust Sabrina, the character we've built up to this point, and that she'll keep trying to help people.
Please trust Firnagzen, the author, and that he'll write a good and satisfying story, whichever choice wins, as long as Sabrina keeps trying.

And please trust your fellow questers - trust that even if the path that's chosen isn't your path, that the one that is picked is still a path intended to do good. And if it is a mistake... then mistakes happen. Sabrina has changed her mind before.

Okay then. Next, I'd like to just dismiss two possible argument sources right off the bat. Firstly: Please, for the love of Madokami, set aside Rionna's usefulness to us entirely for the rest of this discussion. If we do take Rionna out, we can keep her power anyway with only a small amount of extra busywork - as such, it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Please, focus on the moral aspect.

Secondly: We are not attacking Rionna right now. All moral concerns aside, Sabrina's reflexes are garbage by magical girl standards. Rionna, by comparison, is a multi-year veteran. Sabrina can sense magic use slightly before it happens, like with Sayaka's lightning, and I'd bet Rionna can do the same by observing our soul. And what that boils down to is that in a quickdraw contest, I'd bet on Rionna extracting a soul faster then we can smash her gem, even from the grief inside it.

With our "weird soul", we might theoretically manage to draw or even "win" the matchup, but it'd be hubris not to acknowledge that there's a real and significant risk of death or permanent soul damage if we attack. Even if we do decide that Rionna can't be allowed to go free, it makes far more sense to rely on keeping her talking, and to use timestop to take her off guard.

Okay.


The Actual Vote

I find Kaizuki's line of reasoning to be very compelling, honestly. I'd considered that Rionna's sister was a shade before, since it's currently one of our best guesses for what Rionna's wish was, but I hadn't quite considered how that might shape Rionna's behaviour.

Now, fair warning, I've been acting as a bleeding heart for Rionna thoughout the discussion here, and human cognitive errors being what they are, that's primed me to look for sympathy for Rionna where she may not deserve quite so much of it. I hope that the counter arguments from the opposing side can keep that in check.

But the obvious parallel is Homura - Rionna acting as Homura, and her sister acting as her equivalent to Madoka. As such, I think that Kaizuki's current vote is a bit too adverseral. Not in a vacuum, but in context, where Rionna's going to be very twitchy about anything that sounds like we might be threatening her sister.

Remember, the vast majority of grief controllers Rionna met were probably monsters of some stripe, and at least a few of them probably masqueraded as saccharine do-gooders. We need to stay well, welllll away from anything that could potentially be misinterpreted as a threat to what Rionna's protecting.

As such, here's a draft vote. It's probably a bit heavy on the Rionna apologism, but I think the thread can temper it, without losing the core of it.

[ ] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
-[ ] Mine is fixing this whole rotten magical girl system. It's what I wished for, and it's what drives me, always.
--[ ] I don't know what yours is. But you must have one - nobody flies to the opposite side of the world on a whim.

[ ] When I first heard that your power was soul magic, I was extremely excited. There's so much I want that you could help me with.
-[ ] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me, and whatever your goal is... I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it.
 
Last edited:
Kaizuki said:
So, now, I'm not necessarily happy with this vote here, but it's basically what I'm going to suggest: we need to figure out her motives, and if they're shit we need to gem her. If they aren't shit, either we'll have miraculously discovered that she's a good person, or we'll have leverage on her through some means, and we can think about whether we can and/or want to use that leverage to get her to stop being a terrible person.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

From the look of it, she might have turn the entire city into an fragile array to maintain the system, that any witches or magical girl fight would disrupt whatever ongoing process there.
She could be an ruthless one girl version of Pleiades Saints.
We might have to personally come to Scotland to help with that issue and bring Niko along too.
 
Theory I just realized. She wants our power. She uses the lions share of shades to keep magicals out of her city. She wants our power to dewitch a specific witch she is protecting in Edinburgh.
 
Last edited:
[ ] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
-[ ] Mine is fixing this whole rotten magical girl system. It's what I wished for, and it's what drives me, always.
--[ ] I don't know what yours is. But you must have one - nobody flies to the opposite side of the world on a whim.

[ ] When I first heard that your power was soul magic, I was extremely excited. There's so much I want that you could help me with.
-[ ] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me, and whatever your goal is... so long as it isn't super-villainy, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it.

@Redshirt Army

How about this modification?
 
Kaizuki said:
And, here's my next question, then…

Why is Rionna Mag Aoidh alive?

What the fuck does she even do all day?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And why does she need grief spreaders specifically? If she was just protecting her territory she'd also be taking out roving threats like the Iowa Group. If she just needed a ton of cleansing she'd only need one grief spreader and whatever the rest of her system is. But she's going around getting every grief spreader she hears about.
 
Aranfan said:
So... the Camus question? "Why haven't you committed suicide yet? You know about witches, you could spare yourself the infinite suffering and the rest of the world the pain of having their souls torn out. What reason do you have to keep living?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's less that than the simple matter of humans needing some sort of comfort in life, and meguca especially. Magical Girls don't survive being depressed the way some normies can. It's not a question of why she hasn't killed herself, it's a question of how she has avoided needing to kill herself to avoid kind of passively sinking into a witch, the way Mami eventually would have if she were left alone.

Vebyast said:
And why does she need grief spreaders specifically? If she was just protecting her territory she'd also be taking out roving threats like the Iowa Group. If she just needed a ton of cleansing she'd only need one grief spreader and whatever the rest of her system is. But she's going around getting every grief spreader she hears about.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There would've been justifiable reasons to murder most of them, to be fair -- the power as it was really basically was inherently monstrous. Godwinson already raised the idea that they contribute to her grief capacity in some manner; perhaps it's more efficient to use their powers to transfer grief into a seed than to simply use the seed or somesuch? Who knows?

I didn't think I had enough information to write a real conclusion on that issue, or even a hypothesis.
 
Last edited:
Great post, @Kaizuki. It's absolutely on point, though I'm trying to think about how to phrase the vote better, because something about it that I can't quite articulate bugs me.

@Redshirt Army: I think I'd prefer Kaizuki's vote to your current effort, because Rionna tends to shut things down when Sabrina beats about the bush, or goes for long phrases. I will agree that being confrontational is an issue in the current vote, because I suspect that asking too specifically about Rionna's situation will be interpreted as a threat.

I'm also going to suggest that we're probably going to have to give something here in order to get any degree of trust from Rionna. We're not going to get her to open up at all, otherwise. Also, I would argue that we absolutely don't need her to crack open and tell us everything here - we just need her to provide any kind of insight into her motives to inform Sabrina's decisions.
 
Last edited:
Vebyast said:
And why does she need grief spreaders specifically? If she was just protecting her territory she'd also be taking out roving threats like the Iowa Group. If she just needed a ton of cleansing she'd only need one grief spreader and whatever the rest of her system is. But she's going around getting every grief spreader she hears about.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, one thing that comes to mind is that you might want to gather as many soul or grief manipulating powers as possible, and test for possible interactions or synergies between them... if you're trying to crack de-witching.

We don't know what the state of Rionna's sister really is, after all...
 
I want to hug everyone in the thread, but it won't be particulary helpful to do so.
 
I'm alright with questioning Rionna further as long as we do not ignore her actions, and we find some way to get those slaves released before this is over. That she has them is... nauseating, and it cannot be ignored.

No matter what's happened before, it's not acceptable now.
 
[x] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
-[x] You already know mine. Yours though I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.

-[x] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as it isn't super-villainy, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it. You want my power that badly, I'll designate you my insurance policy if you release a few right now. If the research kills me, and you can claim my soul, it's yours.
 
Last edited:
Gadjo said:
I'm alright with questioning Rionna further as long as we do not ignore her actions, and we find some way to get those slaves released before this is over. That she has them is... nauseating, and it cannot be ignored.

No matter what's happened before, it's not acceptable now.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, the entire point here is to determine how to exert sufficient leverage on her to get her to stop doing all this evil shit. If she won't, we are going to have to gem her. Everything from the previous two essays stands, except my belief that gemming her is inevitable -- that's out the window.
 
Last edited:
Do we actually know that Riona has a sister? I thought the sister sore spot was in regards to Bennouna(I can't remember the spelling) who I am pretty sure is a different girl?
 
Not enough information for speculating about why she's angry about grief users.

It could be that she has some use for grief magic shades.

It could be that she just has some kind of trauma. Like, for instance, "my sister was a magical girl, and then a grief bender forced her to witch out, so now I have a consuming hatred of grief benders and hunt them down".
 
[x] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
-[x] You already know mine. Yours though I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.

-[x] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as it isn't super-villainy, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it. You want my power that badly, I'll designate you my insurance policy if you release a few right now. If the research kills me, and you can claim my soul, it's yours.
 
Conjured Blade said:
She wants our power to dewitch a specific witch she is protecting in Edinburgh.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Vebyast said:
she's going around getting every grief spreader she hears about
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ok. That makes sense.

Her sister was forcibly witched out by a grief spreader, now she's on a two-part mission to both hunt down grief-spreaders, and yet desperately wants to find somebody to help her undo the process, to move the grief the other way.

Starring Rionna Mag Aoidh in this season's hot new anime, "My cute little sister can't be a witch!"
 
Here's a slight refinement of the current general vote trend.

The thing to keep in mind is that if the Homura/Madoka parallels do hold true, and Rionna's only current defense for her precious person is her shades? Then there's no way she'll give them up, not until we prove to her that she doesn't need them anymore - which necessitates trust in us that can't happen immediately.

As such, I don't think "release the shades by the end of this conversation" is something we can really aim for at this point.

[ ] Everyone has a goal of some kind, something that keeps them going.
-[ ] You already know mine. Yours though I'm not so sure on. I think there's something specific you want to do with my power. Something beyond survival.

-[ ] We both want what the other one of us can provide. We don't trust each other enough to cooperate... *yet*. So we'll trade. You help me find out what happens with Dewitching research, and whatever your goal is... so long as your goal itself isn't hurting people, I'll help you with it, and I'll prove to you with actions, not words, that you don't need to rely on those shades forever to accomplish it.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top