Mmmmm. My head's kinda fuzzy for some reason, but this seems to have passed muster, so...
I was fuckin' wrong about this, on
so many levels.
Erm. Acknowledgements:
@Laurelin been asking (almost) all the right questions for
days. I did actually arrive at these independently this time, but you deserve all the insightfuls I can give you for this.
Also,
@Onmur for apparently saying all of this stuff and I just didn't notice it...?
Anyway, essay time.
Almost this entire essay can be summarized as this:
Rionna doesn't appear to have ever even
considered working
together with us. We've been approaching this as if we only need to convince her that we can help her and are willing to help her.
That...
may not be a viable position. We could very well be the answer to all her problems and come off as someone who would do exactly what she needs done free of charge and she might not accept our help.
What parts
can't be summarized that way can be summarized as
this, instead:
Rionna is, or at least
was --
much more likely
is -- actively trying to
manufacture the core effect of our powers up in Edinburgh. This doesn't exclude the possibility of her sister being a witch/shade/etc, and it doesn't
really answer the question of
why she's trying to do it, although it could certainly be the case that it's intended to be a means to an end of freeing her sister, much as it could certainly be that that
isn't the case: but it
is the case that she is or was engaged in that activity.
I realize this sounds somewhat unbelievable. Bear with me.
The first important question that both Laurelin and I asked is this:
why the hell does Rionna need our soul? It's
nonsensical, see:
This statement appears irrational. Rionna is able to utilize the powers her shades held in life. There's no mention of her being able to use, say, powers her shades
did not have in life, and suggesting that she could do such a thing seems
extremely far-fetched. Now, at this point, we've told her that we
want to help, we've said that we're capable of significantly more than we've shown her, and yet her response hasn't changed at all. "You can't help me," says Rionna Mag Aoidh, "
unless you want to give me your soul."
But... what
difference is there between our active help and her using a shade with our powers? What problem would be beyond the reach of the two of us working together, that would be within the reach of her commanding a shade with our powers? Many come to mind, all incredibly selfish -- problems that she couldn't solve with our cooperation because we would never agree to work with her on them -- and then virtually all of them are struck from possibility by the knowledge that the problem involves something in Edinburgh which she is protecting. Things like "I want to resurrect Hitler, so you can't help me because you would never help with that"
mostly don't fit with the puzzle piece in Edinburgh.
After you start questioning Rionna's motives in this conversation, however, one big category of possibilities filters through
really quickly. See...
To answer this, you need to go back. Waaaaaaay back:
The point I want you to take from these quotes is this: this starts from the moment we met this girl.
At what point was she interested in our help?
Every last question she asked, right up to when she decided we "[couldn't] help her," was about
how. She didn't ask if we'd help her, she didn't ask what we'd do. She didn't beg for assistance, or offer alliance. She didn't even care about
who the hell we were.
Look at
literally every other magical girl and/or magical girl group that we've made contact with in this entire quest. This behavior is
utterly unfamiliar to us -- once girls understand our powers, the next thing they ask themselves is how they'll interact with us. The Shiogama girls asked what they'd have to give us. The University Group, among others, responded by asking whether a clear seed was worth the trouble. Kyouko responded by asking why the fuck we were so happy to give her free cleansing.
But Rionna Mag Aiodh didn't come here looking to see if she could get us to help her. No, from the
very start, Rionna Mag Aoidh was only interested in how she could
replicate by
herself what we have. It's splattered
all over the text, once you know to look for it:
Apparently Onmur had already noticed this, but I hadn't rewound past the start of our conversation in the hotel even once up until I got well into the first draft of this essay, I hadn't seen the "I've tried" quote until I started quoting all this stuff to put it in the essay. But my god, she has
literally been trying to achieve proper cleansing on her own. She
told us she's been trying to work out grief cleansing on her own. Madokami above, that's what all the "I murder grief transferers" stuff is about. And more than that, read it:
I have tried, she says. Singular, personal,
alone. "We can't help her at all," she says, "we can't exactly give her our magic," she says, "what's the story," she asks...
Respectively... [You can't help me replicate this on my own]. [You can't give me what you received as an inherent power]. [How did you receive this, when nobody else ever has].
Madokami in
heaven. Every question, about how to "do" what we simply received from a wish. And the moment she recognizes that we don't know how to replicate it, in her eyes it follows that we can't help her at all.
She never even considered the
idea of us simply... providing it for her. Why not?
... Why not, indeed. I'd be
very interested to find out.
I'm leaning towards figuring Rionna's Character Point as Working Alone, in a similar way as Mami's is Loneliness. I'm asking for help analyzing this because the implications are starting to explode past what I can just hold in my head.
Key points:
1. Rionna is or was -- probably is -- working on Real Cleansing up in Edinburgh. What she said in the first couple of posts she featured in
literally tells us that, essentially word-for-word. She declared we couldn't help her the instant she figured that we couldn't tell her how to replicate our powers. I feel that this is as good as confirmed and we should probably drop it in the vote, although I haven't had a ton of time to mull it over.
2. Rionna never even so much as considered us directly helping her, I don't think. What the hell is up with that? Shouldn't us providing infinite cleansing be as good as her developing it? Is it her personality that runs counter to that, or some as-of-yet unknown end goal?
So...
Based on this, almost whatever we might do is pointless if it doesn't involve... okay.
Given... *waves hands* all of
this, it's pretty clear we're scratching the surface right now. I think it's time to dig
hard and see what we can make stick without bringing up the sister. After all, Oriko didn't warn us about asking about what the hell was up in Edinburgh, she warned us about asking about the sister -- and given that Rionna is working on "renewable" cleansing up there, it seems that those questions aren't identical.
I think the trick here is to drop everything we nail down as we nail it down. The more we display knowledge of the deeper we'll get into her, IMO. I think we should pointedly drop something along the lines of "How can she be so sure you
wouldn't help", as well as noting that we know she's working on "renewable" cleansing up there.
I do not believe that the vote below would bring us to a battle. If I did, I wouldn't be voting for it.
[X]
Dig.
-[X] Postconditions, not preconditions, and yes, you'd try to prevent unnecessary deaths in the interim.
-[X] What
is she doing, anyway, that she can be so sure you
wouldn't help with it?
--[X] She's trying to work out "renewable" cleansing with all the dead grief controllers' powers, obviously. She
said as much.
--[X] You figure she's working on dewitching in some capacity. If not, she's at least dabbled in it.
---[X] Both of those are fairly high on your priority list. Her methods are both evil and severely hampered by working alone, but you're rather hoping to resolve both of those issues peacefully.
[X] Offer a cleanse.
