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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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theauthor said:
Honestly? Despite our broken power and achievement i don't felt overpowered at all from Sabrina. Her progress seems too slow and takes more effort than what actually required.

I'm quite alienated by fixing everything because i don't think we are strong enough.
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You... do realize that we can explicitly have the power to achieve something and still fail to do so because we're failing to properly apply that power, right...? This is, like, PMAS 101.
 
I just had a thought. Our theories for our origin are pretty much all along the lines of "we exist as Sabrina Vee because of Madoka's Wish that everything could be fixed". We also generally attribute our fuckhueg potential on this very origin – a common idea is that that is what was needed.

However, I'd like to throw out something a little different. My idea is that, even if we showed up with only our metaknowledge, and no special power to affect the world, we could still fulfill Madoka's Wish, even if it would be more difficult.

So, then, why did we get handed Unlimited Cosmic Power™? Well, aren't meguca with extremely large potential the people who would have been able to change the world regardless of their magic?
 
Redshirt Army said:
I... feel like this vote goes a bit "all-in" on Feathers being at all tied to Rionna. I mean, it's not like mysterious spooky black feathers haven't ever appeared in PMMM canon, and they certainly didn't have anything to do with Rionna in that case.
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I have to agree, @Wirikidor, that's really far-fetched.

If we wanted to see whether there's a Riona-Feathers connection, we shouldn't dive in like that. We could show Riona the feather and see how she reacts, but... If you read this:

[X] Do you recognize this feather? Is the attacker from Edinburgh?
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Can't you see how it might be seen as something crazy? No offense, but I'd expect this from Frank Debrin, or:

xkcd: Good Cop, Dadaist Cop

It's literally showing Riona a black Feather and accusing her of being connected to a mysterious attacker we just claimed exist?

EDIT: We could just, show the feather and ask if she sees anything weird with it. Without any implied accusations, just ask.
 
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Onmur said:
We could just, show the feather and ask if she sees anything weird with it. Without any implied accusations, just ask.
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Hmm. Might as well have something available to that effect.

[x] Internally, mentally:
-[x] Calm down. Channel some of that "excellent actress" Kyuubey accused you of being to not show Rionna your internal strife.
-[x] It's possible that Rionna is being difficult because she doesn't want to give up her sisters shade, but doesn't want you to know about it.
-[x] Note that, if she is holding her sister's shade, she's likely denying the ethical implications of her actions out of self-defense.

[x] Externally, to Rionna.
-[x] Address her "giving up what I have" line. You don't want to take things away. What you want is to provide her - and everyone - with what they need so that more humane approaches can spread.
--[x] Would she really keep those souls trapped if, in her own opinion, it became unnecessary? Try to find out what Rionna actually needs.
-[x] You want Rionna to stop killing people. There's other ways to stop those that abuse magic. And you'd like to examine her shades, and see if they're suffering.
-[x] Without mentioning her sister, try and get across that if she has shades she's maintaining for personal reasons, or hopes to revive, you'd be happy to help.

[X] Potential secondary topics, at brinapilots discretion:
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] Let Riona examine Aurora.
--[X] Explain your experiments so far.
-[X] Ask after her powers.
--[X] What does your Soul look like?
-[X] Wish rejection: describe Oriko's symptoms.
-[X] Show Rionna the Feather, ask if there's anything unusual about it.
 
Script Mak3r said:
I just had a thought. Our theories for our origin are pretty much all along the lines of "we exist as Sabrina Vee because of Madoka's Wish that everything could be fixed". We also generally attribute our fuckhueg potential on this very origin – a common idea is that that is what was needed.

However, I'd like to throw out something a little different. My idea is that, even if we showed up with only our metaknowledge, and no special power to affect the world, we could still fulfill Madoka's Wish, even if it would be more difficult.

So, then, why did we get handed Unlimited Cosmic Power™? Well, aren't meguca with extremely large potential the people who would have been able to change the world regardless of their magic?
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Firn does spin the plot web well together.

But really, I think he did say that we'd need that power? ... Has he? :thonk: I don't know, actually. I was gonna say, if he did, then considering his OOC reasons are usually also IC reasons... that could mean something! But I'm not sure he has specifically said we need all the Potential we got in order to win.
 
Onmur said:
I don't have time right now, but I'd like to find a way to find the why of Riona's actions, and I don't want to get caught in having and following one hypothesis before we can find more.

Have we asked Riona why she won't tell us, and then why to that?
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I'm actually thinking that learning the why is that provokes an attack from Rionna. There aren't many reasons that Oriko would need us to know something and Rionna to not know that we know. Which is why we need to approach this obliquely and in a way that gives Rionna deniability. That's why I'm saying "research network" instead of offering to help personally - she'll see that offer as a threat to her privacy and reject it. It's also why I'm not asking any questions, and instead offering a wide open guess that she can take without giving away whatever it is.

I find it almost certain that the answers to our questions involve Rionna's sister. If we approach this with a mindset of asking questions to figure out what's going on, we are guaranteed to run out of questions and hypotheses with exactly one question left to ask: the one about Rionna's sister. So we can't approach this intending to figure out exactly what's going on, because there is no outcome where we know exactly what's going on and Rionna doesn't try to kill us. All we have to do is keep Rionna from killing people and find a way to ensure her problems are solved. Not that we solve them. That they are solved.

Thinking about it from a different direction, I think that it is safe to assume that Firn is choosing obstacles to challenge particular flaws in Sabrina's character or decisionmaking. Presenting Sabrina with combat challenges is boring, after all. So which of our flaws does Rionna force us to confront? Seeing as our only guidance going into this scenario was Oriko telling us to not ask an important question, I suspect that this is a test of our ability to resist nosiness. It isn't hard to build a trap for nosiness, after all - present a situation in which the best outcome not only can be reached without digging but can only be reached by focusing on solving the problem instead of needing to know everything.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Hmm. Might as well have something available to that effect.

[x] Internally, mentally:
-[x] Calm down. Channel some of that "excellent actress" Kyuubey accused you of being to not show Rionna your internal strife.
-[x] It's possible that Rionna is being difficult because she doesn't want to give up her sisters shade, but doesn't want you to know about it.
-[x] Note that, if she is holding her sister's shade, she's likely denying the ethical implications of her actions out of self-defense.

[x] Externally, to Rionna.
-[x] Address her "giving up what I have" line. You don't want to take things away. What you want is to provide her - and everyone - with what they need so that more humane approaches can spread.
--[x] Would she really keep those souls trapped if, in her own opinion, it became unnecessary? Try to find out what Rionna actually needs.
-[x] You want Rionna to stop killing people. There's other ways to stop those that abuse magic. And you'd like to examine her shades, and see if they're suffering.
-[x] Without mentioning her sister, try and get across that if she has shades she's maintaining for personal reasons, or hopes to revive, you'd be happy to help.

[X] Potential secondary topics, at brinapilots discretion:
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] Let Riona examine Aurora.
--[X] Explain your experiments so far.
-[X] Ask after her powers.
--[X] What does your Soul look like?
-[X] Wish rejection: describe Oriko's symptoms.
-[X] Show Rionna the Feather, ask if there's anything unusual about it.
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I'm gonna keep feeling uncertain about this voting round, and I don't think that's gonna change.

And I've been trying to think how to consolidate and I don't know how. :V

So I'll leave this to you, I guess.

[X] Redshirt Army
 
Vebyast said:
I'm actually thinking that learning the why is that provokes an attack from Rionna. There aren't many reasons that Oriko would need us to know something and Rionna to not know that we know. Which is why we need to approach this obliquely and in a way that gives Rionna deniability. That's why I'm saying "research network" instead of offering to help personally - she'll see that offer as a threat to her privacy and reject it. It's also why I'm not asking any questions, and instead offering a wide open guess that she can take without giving away whatever it is.

I find it almost certain that the answers to our questions involve Rionna's sister. If we approach this with a mindset of asking questions to figure out what's going on, we are guaranteed to run out of questions and hypotheses with exactly one question left to ask: the one about Rionna's sister. So we can't approach this intending to figure out exactly what's going on, because there is no outcome where we know exactly what's going on and Rionna doesn't try to kill us. All we have to do is keep Rionna from killing people and find a way to ensure her problems are solved. Not that we solve them. That they are solved.

Thinking about it from a different direction, I think that it is safe to assume that Firn is choosing obstacles to challenge particular flaws in Sabrina's character or decisionmaking. Presenting Sabrina with combat challenges is boring, after all. So which of our flaws does Rionna force us to confront? Seeing as our only guidance going into this scenario was Oriko telling us to not ask an important question, I suspect that this is a test of our ability to resist nosiness. It isn't hard to build a trap for nosiness, after all - present a situation in which the best outcome not only can be reached without digging but can only be reached by focusing on solving the problem instead of needing to know everything.
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Hmm. I can certainly see some logic in that. After all, Rionna was clearly pretty important to the future Oriko saw - there's a reason that the absolute first thing Oriko did when she noticed her powers were fading was tell us about Rionna.

Yet... all she told us is to not ask about Rionna's sister.

That said, I don't want to read too much into that. Oriko isn't omniscient, and that goes double for stuff she divined while her powers were on the fritz. Stuff further away is harder for Oriko to see, and Edinburgh is about as far from Mitakihara as it gets. It's entirely possible that even Oriko doesn't know why Rionna's sister is a sore spot, just that the timelines where she comes up don't end well.

That said, I can definitely appreciate the logic that poking further into Rionna's personal affairs might unnecessarily trigger her at this stage. It should be possible to convince her of the sincerity of our intent without too much prying.
 
Vebyast said:
I'm actually thinking that learning the why is that provokes an attack from Rionna. There aren't many reasons that Oriko would need us to know something and Rionna to not know that we know. Which is why we need to approach this obliquely and in a way that gives Rionna deniability. That's why I'm saying "research network" instead of offering to help personally - she'll see that offer as a threat to her privacy and reject it. It's also why I'm not asking any questions, and instead offering a wide open guess that she can take without giving away whatever it is.

I find it almost certain that the answers to our questions involve Rionna's sister. If we approach this with a mindset of asking questions to figure out what's going on, we are guaranteed to run out of questions and hypotheses with exactly one question left to ask: the one about Rionna's sister. So we can't approach this intending to figure out exactly what's going on, because there is no outcome where we know exactly what's going on and Rionna doesn't try to kill us. All we have to do is keep Rionna from killing people and find a way to ensure her problems are solved. Not that we solve them. That they are solved.

Thinking about it from a different direction, I think that it is safe to assume that Firn is choosing obstacles to challenge particular flaws in Sabrina's character or decisionmaking. Presenting Sabrina with combat challenges is boring, after all. So which of our flaws does Rionna force us to confront? Seeing as our only guidance going into this scenario was Oriko telling us to not ask an important question, I suspect that this is a test of our ability to resist nosiness. It isn't hard to build a trap for nosiness, after all - present a situation in which the best outcome not only can be reached without digging but can only be reached by focusing on solving the problem instead of needing to know everything.
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Even if you took that perspective, I'm pretty sure the challenge is dealing with someone morally grey.

That's what tripping us, that unlike literally everyone else sans maybe Akiko, this character is not Good. She's not an irredeemable monster, but there's no excuses for her. Making everything better here is more difficullt because we would need to make concessions that could end up badly. There's no silver bullet and there's no little part of Riona that really wants to work with us, somewhere deep within.

There's someone who does not want our help, that doesn't want the system broken, that is fine with all of it, so how do we help her?

(That's before getting into how do we learn enough about Riona -without blowing our chances at helping her- to know whether we should be helping her, rather than restraining her for the good of everyone else?)
 
Oh boy, I have the bandwagon. Now I need to be responsible with it. :(

As such, please provide critique. And not just the usual vote writers, either - writing a vote here is a collaborative effort. If anyone has any issues with this vote, please bring it up! If I agree with your point I'll try to address it, and even if I don't, if others agree with you, a new vote can emerge.

[x] Internally, mentally:
-[x] Calm down. Channel some of that "excellent actress" Kyuubey accused you of being to avoid showing Rionna your internal strife.
-[x] Rionna might be refusing to "give up" her sisters shade. You need to work around that.
-[x] If her sister is a shade, she might be denying the ethical implications of her actions to protect her own psyche.

[x] Externally, to Rionna.
-[x] Address her "giving up what I have" line. You don't want to take things away. What you want is to provide her - everyone - with what they need for more humane approaches to flourish.
--[x] Would she really keep souls trapped if, by her own judgement, it became unnecessary?
-[x] You want Rionna to stop killing people. There's other ways to stop those that abuse magic. And you'd like to examine her shades, and see if they're suffering.
-[x] Carefully, to avoid the potential sister trigger, try and get across that if she has shades she's maintaining for personal reasons, or hopes to revive, you'd be happy to help.

[X] Potential secondary topics, at brinapilots discretion:
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] Let Riona examine Aurora.
--[X] Explain your experiments so far.
-[X] Ask after her powers.
--[X] What does your Soul look like?
-[X] Wish rejection: describe Oriko's symptoms.
-[X] Show Rionna the Feather, ask if there's anything unusual about it.
 
Wild-ass guessing: Is there a chance that Rionna's sister was a grief-spreader? If so, how would that inform our approach?
 
Kaizuki said:
You... do realize that we can explicitly have the power to achieve something and still fail to do so because we're failing to properly apply that power, right...? This is, like, PMAS 101.
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Well i'm constantly frustrated about our slow progress and any sign of progress just doesn't give me the empowering inpression. So... i guess yes i do?
 
Vebyast said:
Wild-ass guessing: Is there a chance that Rionna's sister was a grief-spreader? If so, how would that inform our approach?
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Given her apparent vendetta against grief controllers, it would paint a pretty Urobucher level traumatic backstory. Still, I'm fairly confident Rionna wished to bring someone back to life, even if it wasn't her sister.
 
For the research network angle. Idea to make it work, how to obfuscate things further. Start setting up a research journal with Niko in the form of a google doc. Give Riona viewing and/or editing rights. She would need to ask fewer questions that way. Offer Riona access to a google doc where we start keeping research notes if they help her with whatever it is she's dealing with.

Edit: Dewitching research may need a means of reconnecting soul and body. If Rionna is involved in resurrection research, that may be relevant to her interests, assuming we get that far. Having it in the form of a googledoc means she does not need to share information by asking us questions.
 
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Onmur said:
I think we can agree we would rather work together with Riona if that'd keep her from commiting any more crimes.
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Let me doubly approve of this strategy! Rather than her "trusting us" in combat right away, we should arrange the final deal so we are the point girl, and she holds the watch. Very little risk to her, or her goals that way. As long as we can attempt to apply our own formula for Justice in these cases PRIOR to her Shading them, we have a compromise I would take.

Wirikidor said:
[X] Do you recognize this feather?
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Just this much appeals to me. We should do it after the other filler ploys, by my prediction.

Vebyast said:
So which of our flaws does Rionna force us to confront? Seeing as our only guidance going into this scenario was Oriko telling us to not ask an important question, I suspect that this is a test of our ability to resist nosiness.
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I would like to branch off, this is our "define morality" conflict. I see Rionna as a dark reflection of what we are attempting. Classic hero themes. Will we overcome her philosophy, or be stained by it? Earlier:
HeroCycle said:
Rionna is simply the anti-Sabrina "savior." This is pretty much point-by-point in the following ways?
# Considers herself a Victim of Circumstance.
# No higher power.
# No internal debate.
# Does everything herself.
# Justice by inflexible thinking, enforced by murder.
# Painful memories.
# ...And she lives without hugs.
# No allies.
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Conjured Blade said:
so we can reach the holy grail that is replicating our power,
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We should tempt Rionna in this manner. Of course we keep our soul! This isn't the end of the parley, given the circumstances. Honest effort shouldn't scare her. She has some form of Grief power in her collection. If she will agree to study with us, and let us develop notes about that, we should try to teach her how to either properly cleanse, or to fabricate the synthetic Grief cube substitute. She could try to learn our other skills, if those are her end goal. First step is kinesis, no matter what she wanted our power for. It literally gives her what she asks for, and helps us with a milestone goal.


Conjured Blade said:
For the research network angle. Idea to make it work, how to obfuscate things further. Start setting up a research journal with Niko in the form of a google doc. Give Riona viewing and/or editing rights. She would need to ask fewer questions that way. Offer Riona access to a google doc where we start keeping research notes if they help her with whatever it is she's dealing with.

Edit: Dewitching research may need a means of reconnecting soul and body. If Rionna is involved in resurrection research, that may be relevant to her interests, assuming we get that far. Having it in the form of a googledoc means she does not need to share information by asking us questions.
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Too easy for this to get Kyuubulated. Find a way with fewer negative consequences?

Redshirt Army said:
Oh boy, I have the bandwagon. Now I need to be responsible with it. :(

As such, please provide critique. And not just the usual vote writers, either - writing a vote here is a collaborative effort. If anyone has any issues with this vote, please bring it up! If I agree with your point I'll try to address it, and even if I don't, if others agree with you, a new vote can emerge.

[x] Internally, mentally:
-[x] Calm down. Channel some of that "excellent actress" Kyuubey accused you of being to avoid showing Rionna your internal strife.
-[x] Rionna might be refusing to "give up" her sisters shade. You need to work around that.
-[x] If her sister is a shade, she might be denying the ethical implications of her actions to protect her own psyche.

[x] Externally, to Rionna.
-[x] Address her "giving up what I have" line. You don't want to take things away. What you want is to provide her - everyone - with what they need for more humane approaches to flourish.
--[x] Would she really keep souls trapped if, by her own judgement, it became unnecessary?
-[x] You want Rionna to stop killing people. There's other ways to stop those that abuse magic. And you'd like to examine her shades, and see if they're suffering.
-[x] Carefully, to avoid the potential sister trigger, try and get across that if she has shades she's maintaining for personal reasons, or hopes to revive, you'd be happy to help.

[X] Potential secondary topics, at brinapilots discretion:
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] Let Riona examine Aurora.
--[X] Explain your experiments so far.
-[X] Ask after her powers.
--[X] What does your Soul look like?
-[X] Wish rejection: describe Oriko's symptoms.
-[X] Show Rionna the Feather, ask if there's anything unusual about it.
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I'm seeing it better if we never mention shades in the next couple of minutes. We know her answers to that, let's find if she has other interesting things to talk about. We can (and will) come back to them. Expanding the agenda since there will be more topics possible this way.

Very Rough, ATM:
[x] Address her "giving up what I have" line. You don't want to take things away. What you want is to provide her - everyone - with what they need for more humane approaches to flourish.
[X] Practice using her Grief powers and learn from us. Try to obtain a copy of our powers with her effort, not her magic.
[X] Secondary topics:
-[X] De-Witching.
--[X] Let Riona examine Aurora.
--[X] Explain your experiments so far.
-[X] Ask after her powers.
--[X] What does your Soul look like?
-[X] Wish rejection: describe Oriko's symptoms.


[X] There is an Iowa Group out there. When is Rionna going to make an example out of them, too? Does she have any coherent policy outside her city?
[X] We want to share her patrol against Grief Spreaders.
[X] What is Rionna's bad opinion of us based on, anyway? Who told her we were bad?
[X] Show Rionna the Feather,
 
Inb4 Riona does a spittake -despite not having anything to drink left- watching Sabrina's Soul this instant in between updates.
Redshirt Army said:
Given her apparent vendetta against grief controllers, it would paint a pretty Urobucher level traumatic backstory. Still, I'm fairly confident Rionna wished to bring someone back to life, even if it wasn't her sister.
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She does seem to take the Souls after killing somebody, right?

Maybe she wished to bring someone back, while kneeling over their dead body?

First thought: Riona wished to bring back somebody who just died, wished bad, got an ability to bring back Souls/shades under her control. Much despair.


But then I thought, what if everything went horribly right, instead?

What if Riona wanted to bring someone, probably a meguca, back to life under her control, for control/power?

Pretty sure Riona said she can use her shades' powers.

What if she's a case like Kirika's, in that she doesn't actually regret her Wish? Maybe her Wish simply exacerbates a bad part of Riona, and does it by enabling her and confirming her feelings.


I could see it.

Eg., Riona's sister 'abandons' her (because she needs to go out and be meguca), Riona watches her die, and out of revenge/feeling out of control, Wishes her sister back under her control. Regrets optional.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
Given her apparent vendetta against grief controllers, it would paint a pretty Urobucher level traumatic backstory. Still, I'm fairly confident Rionna wished to bring someone back to life, even if it wasn't her sister.
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Yeah, that's all but guaranteed. Her magic is *shades.* The question is why it didn't work out in the end -- or if it did.
 
Kaizuki said:
Yeah, that's all but guaranteed. Her magic is *shades.* The question is why it didn't work out in the end -- or if it did.
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The worst laid plans are those made by teens in KB's sights.

It could be that everything is going according to Riona's keikaku*... which means everything is going wrong because she doesn't know better. :V

*keikaku means plan.

EDIT:

Random thought inspired by Kai's presence:

I could totally see a meguca finding out KB's real deal and looking at it and going...

"It's treason, then."

:V :V
 
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