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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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[x] One of the first things you said was that I can't exactly give you my magic.
- [x] What did you want it for? What would you expect to be able to do with it that you assume I can't or won't do for you?
[x] Mention something about dewitching. Maybe it's what she wants from us, maybe it's not, but it's certainly what we want from her.
 
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Random832 said:
[x] One of the first things you said was that I can't exactly give you my magic.
- [x] What did you want it for? What would you expect to be able to do with it that you assume I can't or won't do for you?
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I think she thinks that would be fightworthy.

If the vote goes down that road, you might need a preface like:

[]She's talking to somebody who thinks any Magical Girl who knows about Witches may have knowingly condemned somebody to Eternal Damnation. There is a lot you can excuse so long as they stop when you give them the opportunity to do so.
 
[x] Think out loud.
[x] Why do you think that Rionna is so sure you can't help? You have two guesses.

[x] First guess: Rionna has some problem that's even more exotic and difficult than cleansing.
-[x] She seems to already have cleansing solved for herself, judging by her power's ongoing cost. She knows you can cleanse and isn't interested.
-[x] You hope it's this because you're currently working on dewitching and were anticipating Rionna's arrival. You're not sure there's much that's harder than that.

[x] Second guess: Rionna is doing something that puts her on Sabrina's List of Things To Fix.
-[x] Is the problem with the means to an end or the end itself?
-[x] You hope it's the means, because your entire purpose in life is to fix everything, and you're damn good at offering people better means.
-[x] If it's the ends, well, you're always up for therapy. How does she feel about her mother?
 
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Kaizuki said:
WOOHOO!

CHALK ONE UP FOR CATGIRL LOGIC, NYAN!
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You get a gold star fish! Good move, nyan. What is your answer to her lack of trust?
memoryofglory said:
We know she has OR had one, important distinction. She might be flat out dead rather than a witch or shade.
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Could have killed her sister? That event we can only therapy, and not from here if ever. The other possibilities lie closer to the realm of our choices, so are those not worth more attention?
NexysDhyArchen said:
... Is her Sister a Witch she's been feeding?
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That would perhaps be "a witch she can't fully restrain?" It doesn't seem that a witch requires mortals, it's just a taxis they have. Then again, I'm still convinced Rionna is getting by on guts and experience rather than intellect. So she might have prospectively been allowing her sister to hunt in error? Getting kinda murky, can't project that.
Random832 said:
[x] One of the first things you said was that I can't exactly give you my magic.
- [x] What did you want it for? What would you expect to be able to do with it that you assume I can't or won't do for you?
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Click to shrink...
Umm. It's more that I could almost get to the point of saying "Out With It!" to her. But I want us to be direct about de-witching.

By letting her prove our unique world view, we can get back on track. Only a few other girls try to save witches and treat them as humans again. Nadia seems to think most of them died. OTOH, Nadia isn't the font of all wisdom. I kinda want to complain to customer service after meeting Rionna in person, a big element of her external reputation was not in the news.

[X] Tell Rionna that we want to make a soul gem. We need her soul vision.
[X] Tell her we will get to fabricate a body. Grief doesn't form a normal Magical Girl. Others tried it.
[X] State that saving everybody is our goal.
[X] Turning witches back into girls is important to us.
[X] Explain we understand perfectly what Magical Girl life leads her to do, even though we are new.
[X] If any of that would help with her issue, it's time that she gave us the answers we want.
[X] We can almost communicate with witches.
[X] Feed Happiness to a Clear Seed right now, in front of her.

@Vebyast - not bad, however I want to dumb it down. Negotiate with a hammer. Everything is in terms she can apply to her problem, either way. We don't ask directly about her problem, she doesn't do trust. She still thinks she has to keep a secret, so we can just give away the stuff we were going to share anyway, but do it with great force. If she won't say yes right now, she will come back when reality sinks in. We just have to cut through her "self sufficient fantasy." It might not happen today. Making a dent is a good goal?
 
Let's slow down a bit. This part's important.

[x] I want to help fix things. Does it have to be a fight?
[x] Whatever it is you're dealing with, it was worth coming out all this way here. At the very least I can hear you out. Rionna, why did you come out here? What's troubling you?
[x] (If she's still reluctant) Try to encourage her to talk about her problems. You won't be able to help at all if you don't know what the problem is.
 
Basically I think what we need to do here is reveal dewitching *without* poking her sister spot by revealing we suspect she has a poor witch friend.

We should frame it that we're willing to help her with her problems even if it requires a lot of effort because we have a problem of our own that we're trying to solve, dewitching (and this is the progress we've made so far), and that we think her powers might help.
 
If we can't help her, why did she want the clear seed? Not a ton, no, but she did want it.

So: what does she mean by this?

Options:

1. "You can't help me because you won't help me." No trust, disdain for her powers, etc. This is pretty likely IMO, because we should be able to help her.

2. "You can't help me with whatever my problem is because you're not capable of it." Obvious meaning. Always possible.

But, either way, I think it's pretty clear that her problem is pretty high-end... Otherwise she'd be more invested in the clear seed; she'd feel she was capable of solving whatever her problem is with sufficient application of magic via shades and/or herself.

Yah, okay, I'm starting to see the dewitching angle here.

@Vebyast is, perhaps, right with his vote, in trying to both bring up dewitching and be generic about things, although I think he needs to be more direct because @#()@!()% Rionna doesn't appreciate our discourse. grumbles

Unfortunately, the other chief concern is this:

Firnagzen said:
"You can't help me," Rionna says, shaking her head. "Go back to your girl, go back to your friends. Y' don't want this fight, neither do I."
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This quite seems to insinuate that the closer we get to on-target the more hostile she'll become. That's potentially an issue, especially given her already-vocalized concerns about trust.

It would be good to figure out some way to handle that. I went through considering a kind of compact, "Witnessed" by Nadia, but it's... difficult. I dunno.

We could also consider not asking about her sister, but asserting. Uh, but that should really probably come after the trust thing. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think the ideal course of action here is going to involve establishing trust and getting her to tell us what's up rather than figuring it out for ourselves and telling her that we've figured it out -- asking about her sister and displaying knowledge of her sister had really ought to fall under the same warning...

Hm.

If we're basically certain dewitching is a want, then we can always put it out by saying it's something we want from her, as Blast says.
 
Thoughts on asking her to help us with our current research angle and seeing if she volunteers more herself?

Edit: Think you may have mentioned that nvm.
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on Aug 6, 2018 at 1:47 PM, finished with 35 posts and 6 votes.
  • [X] Kaizuki
    [X]She's right. Who says it needs to be a fight though? Perhaps she could help you still, even if she thinks you can't help her?
    -[x]No issue with her helping you find out what happens when you feed a clear seed hope flavored magic, give it a grief edifice to build with to see if it rebuilds the soul gem, even if your standard terms for giving a clear seed would be a fight.
    [x] One of the first things you said was that I can't exactly give you my magic.
    - [x] What did you want it for? What would you expect to be able to do with it that you assume I can't or won't do for you?
    [x] Mention something about dewitching. Maybe it's what she wants from us, maybe it's not, but it's certainly what we want from her.
    [x] Think out loud.
    [x] Why do you think that Rionna is so sure you can't help? You have two guesses.
    [x] First guess: Rionna has some problem that's even more exotic and difficult than cleansing.
    -[x] She seems to already have cleansing solved for herself, judging by her power's ongoing cost. She knows you can cleanse and isn't interested.
    -[x] You hope it's this because you're currently working on dewitching and were anticipating Rionna's arrival. You're not sure there's much that's harder than that.
    [x] Second guess: Rionna is doing something that puts her on Sabrina's List of Things To Fix.
    -[x] Is the problem with the means to an end or the end itself?
    -[x] You hope it's the means, because your entire purpose in life is to fix everything, and you're damn good at offering people better means.
    -[x] If it's the ends, well, you're always up for therapy. How does she feel about her mother?
    [X] Tell Rionna that we want to make a soul gem. We need her soul vision.
    [X] Tell her we will get to fabricate a body. Grief doesn't form a normal Magical Girl. Others tried it.
    [X] State that saving everybody is our goal.
    [X] Turning witches back into girls is important to us.
    [X] Explain we understand perfectly what Magical Girl life leads her to do, even though we are new.
    [X] If any of that would help with her issue, it's time that she gave us the answers we want.
    [X] We can almost communicate with witches.
    [X] Feed Happiness to a Clear Seed right now, in front of her.
    [x] I want to help fix things. Does it have to be a fight?
    [x] Whatever it is you're dealing with, it was worth coming out all this way here. At the very least I can hear you out. Rionna, why did you come out here? What's troubling you?
    [x] (If she's still reluctant) Try to encourage her to talk about her problems. You won't be able to help at all if you don't know what the problem is.
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Gonna guess the cough was a subtle way to regain composure. What're the odds that she has a magic sickness and hope grief control can fix it? Incurable Cough of Death is no joke.
 
@Kaizuki

Even if Rionna doesn't want to do dewitching herself, it's still very useful to bring it up, because it implies a mechanism for future trust.

Rionna might not trust us to cooperate with her out of the goodness of our heart, especially since she's done some awful things while working toward her goals. But if we imply a "selfish" motive for cooperation (insofar as our personal drive towards dewitching is "selfish"), then suddenly she can trust that even if we don't want to help her for the sake of helping, she can at least trust that we won't get rid of someone helping with our own project.

Please note that this is a lie. If Rionna's truly gone beyond the pale, we're still going to eliminate her. Perhaps there might have been a chance of us doing otherwise if we truly needed her powers, but since we have Sayaka, that's not the case. But it's a way of convincing her that she can tell us what she did, and once we know that, we can at least make the judgement with full knowledge of the facts.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Please note that this is a lie. If Rionna's truly gone beyond the pale, we're still going to eliminate her. Perhaps there might have been a chance of us doing otherwise if we truly needed her powers, but since we have Sayaka, that's not the case. But it's a way of convincing her that she can tell us what she did, and once we know that, we can at least make the judgement with full knowledge of the facts.
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I generally don't even consider having Brina tell lies, but here, now... I've thought about it.

It's... it would be helpful as fuck.

Sorry, I probably won't be as active today as I have been. I'm in the middle of another session of working on head ATM, and it's going well but I'm also already woozy from it lol. I'll probably end up drowning myself in vidyagames for the day.
 
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So I'm seeing three plans/approaches here.

A: Ask her about helping you with dewitching research. Hope that's what she's dealing with in Edinburgh or that she volunteers what she's dealing with over the collaboration.

B: Use the possibility every Magical Girl who knows the witchbomb may have personally condemned someone to Eternal Damnation as an argument there's a lot you can excuse if they stop when you enable it. Prod for more information.

C: Just prod.
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on Aug 6, 2018 at 2:11 PM, finished with 38 posts and 6 votes.
  • [X] Kaizuki
    [X]She's right. Who says it needs to be a fight though? Perhaps she could help you still, even if she thinks you can't help her?
    -[x]No issue with her helping you find out what happens when you feed a clear seed hope flavored magic, give it a grief edifice to build with to see if it rebuilds the soul gem, even if your standard terms for giving a clear seed would be a fight.
    [x] One of the first things you said was that I can't exactly give you my magic.
    - [x] What did you want it for? What would you expect to be able to do with it that you assume I can't or won't do for you?
    [x] Mention something about dewitching. Maybe it's what she wants from us, maybe it's not, but it's certainly what we want from her.
    [x] Think out loud.
    [x] Why do you think that Rionna is so sure you can't help? You have two guesses.
    [x] First guess: Rionna has some problem that's even more exotic and difficult than cleansing.
    -[x] She seems to already have cleansing solved for herself, judging by her power's ongoing cost. She knows you can cleanse and isn't interested.
    -[x] You hope it's this because you're currently working on dewitching and were anticipating Rionna's arrival. You're not sure there's much that's harder than that.
    [x] Second guess: Rionna is doing something that puts her on Sabrina's List of Things To Fix.
    -[x] Is the problem with the means to an end or the end itself?
    -[x] You hope it's the means, because your entire purpose in life is to fix everything, and you're damn good at offering people better means.
    -[x] If it's the ends, well, you're always up for therapy. How does she feel about her mother?
    [X] Tell Rionna that we want to make a soul gem. We need her soul vision.
    [X] Tell her we will get to fabricate a body. Grief doesn't form a normal Magical Girl. Others tried it.
    [X] State that saving everybody is our goal.
    [X] Turning witches back into girls is important to us.
    [X] Explain we understand perfectly what Magical Girl life leads her to do, even though we are new.
    [X] If any of that would help with her issue, it's time that she gave us the answers we want.
    [X] We can almost communicate with witches.
    [X] Feed Happiness to a Clear Seed right now, in front of her.
    [x] I want to help fix things. Does it have to be a fight?
    [x] Whatever it is you're dealing with, it was worth coming out all this way here. At the very least I can hear you out. Rionna, why did you come out here? What's troubling you?
    [x] (If she's still reluctant) Try to encourage her to talk about her problems. You won't be able to help at all if you don't know what the problem is.
Click to expand...
 
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The implicit lie is that we need her help with dewitching. It's a lie because we're capable of taking her power by force, so her cooperation isn't actually necessary.

Just mentioning that we're working on dewitching isn't a lie, since, well, we are.
 
[] There doesn't have to be a fight. I'll promise you now that so long as you're a peaceful guest in this city, you will not be harmed.
-[] Since you seem reluctant to initiate hostilities yourself, we should be fine to talk or argue or whatever without risk.

[] I won't judge you over your previous actions. What matters are the choices we both make going forward in a world where grief is no longer an issue and where witches can be turned back into magical girls.
-[] Bring up your dewitching project. Our experiments with 'hope' magic and the like. We'd like her help, and would be willing to grant our services to her for whatever projects she's got going on at home in return
--[] With conditions, of course. There are things we won't do. More importantly, we're sure our participation would make those things unnecessary.



Rough thoughts. Assimilate these ideas into your own plans.

I feel like outright promising not to attack would relieve some tension both in the room and in the thread. With Homura's timestop, it's not like we can't afford to uphold the promise either. If we decide she needs to be dealt with, we can do so after she leaves at our leisure.

As for not judging her previous actions, I feel like that's pretty important. Fixing things means acknowledging that something's messed up first. Punishment or vengeance doesn't fix things either. We need to focus on making things better, not reacting stupidly to the inevitability that things are less than perfect.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
The implicit lie is that we need her help with dewitching. It's a lie because we're capable of taking her power by force, so her cooperation isn't actually necessary.
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Well. Doing so requires several factors, not all of which are under our control:

- Telling Sayaka about the witchbomb
- Being morally okay with taking someone's power by force
- Sayaka being morally okay with taking someone's power by force
- Being able to contain Rionna as a gem without kiling her (uncertain), or:
- Sayaka being able to continue using powers copied from someone who has been killed (untested)
- Us + Sayaka being morally okay with using powers copied by force from someone who we then killed
- Being able to deal with the optics of using powers copied by force from someone who we gemmed and/or killed
 
[] I don't want a fight, I want help with dewitching research. What do you want? Nobody travels half way around the world on a lark when they have something to protect back home.
 
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