Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

CornyBones said:

it would also fit with the ironic nature of wishes, to get the wording and not the spirit of the request.

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No, they usually get the spirit. But they don't get what they didn't even realize they actually needed. The problem isn't naive wording, it's short-sighted intention.

Sayaka wished that Kyousuke's arm were healed so that he could do what made her fall in hove with him: play the violin. And she got that. She hadn't realized that she really wanted him to reciprocate her feelings.

Kyouko wished that people would believe her father's teachings and he would be popular. And she got that. She hadn't realized that her father would find out his following was hypnotized and reject it.

Lord Chungus said:

Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm not entirely sure that having the timestop conversation after Rionna leaves is a good idea; it relies on her not escalating, taking any and everything in stride without it coming to blows. And seeing as how the most likely result of the talk will be "anti-magic cuffs, put her in Meguca jail," which we can do right now, I don't really see why we should take that risk.

Mami is right there, if Rionna's ever going to strike, now would probably be the best time. And from her perspective, we just resisted her mind-whammy. She may go for Mami before we can go for her. I'll probably make a vote for having the talk now, once I get home.

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I don't think Riona's about to attack:

Firnagzen said:

Rionna glares at you, expression tight and... annoyed. Not angry. Not scared. Annoyance.

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And if we keep our cool and are the bigger meguca, I think we can make our brief demands and leave.

Dismissing the Privacy Field quickly, before getting into what we want from Riona, should help keep Riona from snapping, and also allows Mami to be fully aware of what's going on, so she can react if Riona tries to pull something. It also adds Mami to our side in the Social.

It also allows Homura to watch on us.

Mura's vote dismisses the Field ASAP. I've stolen this, too. I think that basically takes care of any threat Riona poses.

theauthor said:

Horray! She gives us a casus belli! Now our action will be clear!


i hope​​

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Wait I think I have a good video for this.

[X]Kaizuki

Kaizuki said:

(1) -- gemming, while not killing, is thematically identical.

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Agree with everything you said, just wanted to add- it's almost practically identical too, because really- we'll never be able to release her, or trust her, or let her have anything resembling a life ever again, if we gem her. Unless we can get reversal-of-meguca-fication and anti-Kyubey measures running, she's never going free if we gem her- at minimum, the rest of her eternal life would probably be under antimagic. And I don't think we'd want to let her kill herself to end that eternal life if she decided she found that intolerable.

Well, unless we also got True Resurrection running. That would be the one bargaining chip that might salvage things, if we gem her now to deal with later.

The backstory may be far more complicated than many people assume. We don't know who her sister's killer is or *when* Riona first discovered it.

E.g. hypothetical situation: Imagine e.g. that their mother, or alternately Riona's girlfriend is the one who murdered Rionna's sister, and then either suicided, or otherwise died as a side-effect of her murder (e.g Riona's sister fought back) -- but Riona didn't know that at the time, only that she lost *two* beloved people at the same time.

Kyubey tells her that she may have only enough potential for her wish to bring back one person -- and she chooses the wrong one. And when that person is resurrected, she eventually learns the truth, and Rionna ends up killing her again, herself, and raising the shade.

Random832 said:

The fact that she's not successful in making it suffer (which suggests to me she already had the power, and her wish was for another purpose, perhaps before her sister was even dead) is the point here.

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A theory:

- Killer killed Sister
- Riona made contract wishing to revive Sister
- As sister is recovering (or so Riona thinks) Riona goes for Killer; Killer, being a normal human, is effortlessly killed by Riona
- But a problem presents itself: wish was beyond Riona's potential so Sister couldn't be brought back fully but only as a Shade
- Disgusted and frustrated Riona lets go of sister's soul
- Frustration becomes anger, specially since for all her power, she can't leash again against Killer
- Or can she?
- Riona brings back Killer's soul as a Shade to torture him. Sure, Killer isn't conscious enough to suffer as much as a normal human but she sure makes the effort to torture him.

I'm sure it can be tweaked to account for other things* in the conversation but that's the base.

* like, 'how conscious are shades?' and 'how much pain can shades feel?' (I expect those two being related to each other)

Kaizuki said:

Firstly, that we have been repeatedly told that success in Puella Magi Adfligo Systema generally lies in the direction of being the classic magical girl. It is to be kind, to be honest, to reject evil and to reject that others cannot be saved from evil.

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I kinda get that this is apparent with Oriko (and to some extent, Homura), but would it be all right if we can ask for some quotes on this? If just for visibility's sake at least.

Kaizuki said:

the decision on whether to allow this girl to continue or to stop her is upon us at this very moment.

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I believe we have a day until Riona leaves.

I don't intend to let her leave Mitakihara unless by some miracle we get her to agree to work with us for real. I disagree that we're this pressed to act. We can talk and take definite action any time from now and until Riona's scheduled to leave.

Kaizuki said:

[X] Cleanse Rionna. Don't ask whether she's okay with it, just do it.

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I really think Riona would see this as enemy action, and would rather not do this.

As for arguing, I think Riona is about to snap, and we need to let some time pass before making arguments. I would rather talk again with Riona in the morning.

Spectral Waltz said:

-[x] "If your sister saw you now, she'd be horrified at the monster you turned yourself into."

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Um, we don't know anything about her sister? For all we know her sister was a vicious serial-killing psychopath that wanted to raise an army of the undead and conquer the world, and Rionna is honoring her memory by atleast conquering Edinburgh.

Not *all* dead-via-backstory sisters need be perfectly angelic people.

[X] Call Mami for an emergency timestop meeting.
[X] On timestop, make sure the whole group (Homura, Mami and Sayaka) is in the meeting
[X] Discuss the situation in timestop with Homura, Mami, and Sayaka.

Aris Katsaris said:

Um, we don't know anything about her sister? For all we know her sister was a vicious serial-killing psychopath that wanted to raise an army of the undead and conquer the world, and Rionna is honoring her memory by atleast conquering Edinburgh.

Not *all* dead-via-backstory sisters need be perfectly angelic people.

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I saw an excellent Tumblr post about this idea, am I allowed to link Tumblr here?

Random aside is mostly irrelevant to contributing to further conversation here, sorry. But yeah, agreed. Her sister could think "no yeah that's a pretty legit thing to be doing, I'd do the same for you sis!" Or something.

My read visavis Scotsgucas Sister.

Sister was a Meguca, decently powerful one, idolized by Scotsguca. They're Irish, in a Scottish town? Lets say they moved there.
Ruling coalition has a grief controller, who makes friends with Sister. Then things start to go bad as it turns out grief controller is abusing unsuspecting young meguca as grief reservoirs to keep herself and the in group cleansed. Scotsgucas sister probably dies, possibly in full view of Scotsguca, possibly witched by Witch controller while Scotsguca watches.
Scotsguca wants to wish her sister back, QB denies it - would require a potential beyond what she's got. Scotsguca wishes for the next best thing in her mind at the moment which is revengeance - the power to kill grief controller and friends, but keep them around and make them suffer.
Alternatively, grief controller is dead by the time she makes her wish, and she thinks death is too good a fate so makes her wish with that in mind.

defenestrator said:

I kinda get that this is apparent with Oriko (and to some extent, Homura), but would it be all right if we can ask for some quotes on this? If just for visibility's sake at least.

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Here:

Vebyast said:

Except we know that Firnagzen is trying to tell a lighter, happier story. This is not up for debate.

• Adfligo Systema. Our entire purpose is to break the system. PMAS is obviously intended to be a reconstruction of the deconstruction, the Gurren Lagann to PMMM's Evangelion.
• Heroes should act, from the opening post. We're intended to be going out and proactively fixing things.
• "Bad things don't happen for no reason."
• "You can tell your own story with the same pieces, right?", in the context of Madoka not liking how grim 40k was. The implication is obviously that Firnagzen is doing the same thing, using the pieces of PMMM to tell a story that he prefers, one that's less sad.
• Everything we do, from science to social, we're repeatedly rewarded for inclusion, teamwork, and idealism.
• I get insightfuls from Firn on posts where I note how our powers appear to be designed to reward teamwork and cooperation.
• Our powerset is a straightforward solution to the malthusian catastrophe that makes PMMM such a shithole in many cases.
• Madoka literally wished to make the world better. Ultimately speaking, the root cause of PMMM's horrible grimness is that it's a philosophical statement. that philosophical statement is that "Hope is balanced by despair". Everything in PMMM revolves around that concept. In PMAS, that's been explicitly broken by a Madokami-tier Wish, with us as its instrument. The entire point of the quest is to have hope without despair.
• Whatever nasty thing is talking to us in the invisitext, being WAFFy with our friend hampers its efforts.
• Kirika's change to having antimagic in PMAS. The universe is literally telling Oriko to not die. That's as far from dark as you can possibly get.

Also, your payoff matrix is wrong. The top-right corner, where we act like it's dark when it's really fluffy, doesn't end in making some of our friends unhappy. It ends with our friends witching out and the quest bad-ending.

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Firnagzen said:

Vebyast's points are broadly correct here. PMAS is supposed to be a reconstruction, if you prefer the terms.

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Firnagzen said:

That aside, it's not, and it's never been, about the universe (or me) making life easy or giving rewards if the genre conventions are adhered to. As a general rule, the answers are hidden in the general direction of being kind, emphatic, and so forth. So continuing to be nice tends to have you stumble over the answers, as has happened before. Quite simply: the answers are in the direction of being excellent to people. They're not in the direction of being Hard Girls Making Hard Choices.

Oh, and one more quote for you guys:

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Firnagzen said:

It's always been about people. Mami and Homura and Sayaka and Madoka. Kirika and Oriko. Masami and Hiroko.

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Nextly, (because wow the thread is running fast, ain't got no time for segmented longposts here and this is a franken post for the last like hour...), none of this is answering what the everloving hell Riona is even doing with her life, and what the hell she's holding in... Edin... burgh....

Ah shit.

If Riona's doing anything, she's looking into True Resurrection for her sister, right? That's literally the only thing that lines up with what she could possibly be wanting to get out of all this bullshit, if she's running on grief and hate and justice and revenge.

(I'm curious about why she hasn't decided to go around and find some bleedin' heart Hero Of Justice non-meguca to try and get her to wish Riona's sister back to life, as a sort of "you want to be a hero? you can be a hero but you'd really help me out if..." thing.)

(I'm also curious what kinda dead Riona's sister is- gem shards? Witch? Non-meguca-murderlyzed? What did Asunaro have to work with, when they were trying to rez Kazumi? More than Riona prolly has, but... if we want to try and negotiate with Riona more, oblique mentions of this might help. Maybe. I dunno.)

(Edit: I know Asunaro isn't a clusterfuck this time around. But the fact we know it's in their tech tree is useful in and of itself.)

And she's- she's confirmedly securing something in Edinburgh.

Firnagzen said:

"I can't tell you how to act," you say, and meet her eyes squarely. "But whatever it is you're dealing with back home in Edinburgh, I can help you with it."

Rionna blinks, something flickering across her face. That's a hit, and that's more information than you had before. Something new you didn't know before.

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We can't forget that- just 'cause it's increasingly unlikely Riona is holding her sister's shade and we'll be causing her to drop it if we gem her, doesn't mean she's not holding up something back home.

Filraen said:

What else Riona'd bring back the killer of your sister for if not for making it suffer?

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Now that's something she coulda made gone pear-shaped. I was wondering about the same thing. And my aw shit a second ago was- she used the phrase that she raised her sister's killer. That's- powers are often side effects of the wish, Sabrina appears to be something of an outlier for having straight-up wished for her powers. Riona's got the power to shade people, fine. But if she wasn't a meguca before her sister died- wishing to shade people woulda been awfully specific. And- raising her sister's killer implies said killer was already dead, at some point in this process.

Did she make some wish, after finding out about meguca after her sister's death, and indeed after her sister's killer's death, for to be able to make her sister's killer pay? Make some wish- not well thought out, because, well, Kyubey doesn't tend to offer wishes to people when they're likely to have the presence of mind to well-think things out- that inadvertently wasted Riona's wish on resurrecting her sister's killer?

Because, hey. People are precious, and if you're knowing mostly of stories about how resurrection can go really wrong (Deathly Hallows, Monkey Paw, etc), you wouldn't want to risk your important people on it. But if you think it'll go wrong, if you're grieving and you're mad and Kyubey presents things poorly to you-

And then suddenly there's proof-positive that she could have Wished good, and gotten a True Resurrection out of the deal. And she didn't.

Chasing the idea of replicating True Resurrection, possibly by studying the legitimately resurrected not a shade of her sister's killer might be a thing that could be happening.

Not the only possibility- I see I've been ninja'd by other people speculating on what the fuck Riona's backstory is to have led her here- but another one among them.

----

Anyway, to proceed otherwise-

Also, did we ever determine how she brainmailed us without an intro?

Also, what the fuck did she want outta us? She said

Firnagzen said:

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."

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Implying she didn't know we couldn't help her until she came and talked awhile with us. Why?

Modded Kaizukis plan. I guess the threadban request was a lost cause when it came to keeping myself away darnit. The request is revoked.

[X] Cleansing offer.
[X] If that's so, then when and why did she go from seeking justice to judging people without knowing their crimes, unjustly taking other people's sisters? When did she give up, and start spending her time inflicting pain instead of trying to get her sister back?
[X] Don't allow her to leave. Don't allow her to harm you. Don't allow her to harm herself. Use all means necessary.
[X] Talk to her:
-[X] There are/were options. Just as an example, she could have cut a deal with a potential, that she would fulfill their wish and some in exchange for them using their wish to bring back her sister. Somebody somewhere would go for it. Healing is a common enough wish, and not difficult to provide.
-[X] Argue that the only thing she's accomplished with her current track has been to inflict pain on others and deny herself any hope of getting what she actually wants.
-[X] Argue that the incubator tries to provoke isolation and infighting for a reason: less cooperation means less chance of people getting what they want, and thus better rates of witching. She could always punish the architect if she's not satisfied yet. A shot at that, you can provide.

Onmur said:

As for arguing, I think Riona is about to snap, and we need to let some time pass before making arguments. I would rather talk again with Riona in the morning.

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If she snaps, she snaps.

It would be thematic for her to do so, as it would be thematic for us to have to deal with that as a part of getting through to her. We fight most people we try to social, and that's absolutely on theme with the magical girl classic. I don't see an issue with it, except the potential for it to endanger our friends.

I would rather have that happen on our terms, in this privacy sphere. I do not see even a possibility of us not having to say some very provocative things at this point, and I don't see her not snapping over them.

You're certainly right about one thing though:


[X] Ask Rionna if you may cleanse her.
[X] If that's so, then when and why did she go from securing justice for her sister to taking away the sisters of others? When did she give up, and start spending her time inflicting pain instead of trying to get her sister back?
[X] Don't allow her to leave. Don't allow her to harm you. Don't allow her to harm herself. Use all means necessary.
[X] Talk to her:
-[X] There are/were options. Just as an example, she could have cut a deal with a potential, that she would fulfill their wish and some in exchange for them using their wish to bring back her sister. Somebody somewhere would go for it. Healing is a common enough wish, and not difficult to provide.
-[X] Argue that the only thing she's accomplished with her current track has been to inflict pain on others and deny herself any hope of getting what she actually wants.
-[X] Argue that the incubator tries to provoke isolation and infighting for a reason: less cooperation means less chance of people getting what they want, and thus better rates of witching.

[X] null

Thinking

Yep, no sane set of goals behind this behavior, she's an idealist. Even worse, a very emotionally compromised idealist focused towards revenge on a dead girl.

The "stay calm, composed, and never abandon diplomacy before your hand is utterly forced" voice inside of me is saying to let her go after parlaying a non-aggression pact and acquiring a permanent method of remote contact. Rionna is really feeling our current position of power, and getting incredibly worried like any semi-sane person that cares about living would be. So let her go to her position of safety, where we can remotely diplomance her at leisure. Over time we will grow stronger and make larger scale changes, her idealism cannot last forever, a lack of moral scruples doesn't change that.

So, make a slight de-escalation to indicate our willingness to end the conversation, establish an overwhelming threat of force if she does anything magical to anyone until she gets the fuck out of Mitakihara, acquire a permanent method of contact so we can continue talking without her getting ansty and defensive, and then we might be able to chart a path to the future that doesn't include us two powerful magi fighting to the death. We are rather distracted by Walpurgisnacht, but our future is going to involve making changes to the system she has gotten so comfortable sitting in. The underlying pragmatic reasons behind her actions aren't going to remain valid forever, at some point stubbornness will be the only thing driving you towards lethal combat with a very powerful meguca, to the benefit of no one.

[X]Kaizuki

I'm convinced.

Kaizuki said:

-[ ] There are/were options. Just as an example, she could have cut a deal with a potential, that she would fulfill their wish and some in exchange for them using their wish to bring back her sister. Somebody somewhere would go for it. Healing is a common enough wish, and not difficult to provide.
-[ ] Argue that the only thing she's accomplished with her current track has been to inflict pain on others and deny herself any hope of getting what she actually wants.
-[ ] Argue that the incubator tries to provoke isolation and infighting for a reason: less cooperation means less chance of people getting what they want, and thus better rates of witching.

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The main issue I have is that Riona's sister is dead. I want to say this is impossible but this is the PMMM setting so I'll ask:

How possible is to revive someone with a wish in PMMM? Please also mention how much potential they'd need to cause such a wish (because if "only" needs Madokami levels of potential then it's effectively impossible)

Kaizuki said:

Imagine that Rionna was keeping Mami, Sayaka, and Kyouko as shades.

If you're not okay with that, it's not really okay for you to argue that her keeping others as shades is acceptable. You could say that you're not really in a position to do anything about it... except that Sabrina is.

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Emotional appeals like that are exactly why society has laws and courts rather than lynch mobs. It's especially ironic in the case of Sayaka and Kyouko because I could easily see either of them condemning Sabrina and attacking her with little provocation had we handled things differently at the start, at which point our choices in defending ourselves would be limited. At which point, how would we feel if Mami or Homura were victim of their self-righteousness or pragmatism?

We know very, very little about Rionna's victims but we do know that she is hardly some kind of rampaging warlord and that we're not getting the full story.

The argument that we have a responsibility to save other people by murdering someone here and now is a very dangerous one... It has it's place, but it's also the kind of reasoning would-be messiahs and religious fanatics follow: the guilty, the innocent, and them as the one who is an agent of righteousness. There's a reason police and social workers and rescue workers focus on saving the innocent first as opposed to punishing the guilty right away.

[X] Kaizuki

Tentatively. I'm not sure about this line:

Kaizuki said:

[X] Don't allow her to leave. Don't allow her to harm you. Don't allow her to harm herself. Use all means necessary.

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This could aggravate her. It has worked before because we could completely incapacitate the enemy, but Rionna has unknown possibly very powerful abilities. It might go bad for us if we don't call in Homura and Kirika in time.

But I still think it's roughly on the right path.

Conjured Blade said:

Modded Kaizukis plan. I guess the threadban request was a lost cause when it came to keeping myself away darnit. The request is revoked.

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The trick to this is to stop worrying about "bad" votes winning and instead to focus on creating a vote that plays the game as it's meant to be played.

It's too much of a waste of time to let yourself engage in the former, and if you succeed at the latter, either you'll win eventually (which is sufficient most of the time -- we generally have to fail several votes in a row for anything really bad to happen) or you'll win immediately.

Fantasies about threats and violence and let's just be done with this bitch and she's not that bad are to be ignored. They're pointless, they make crummy votes that nobody even enjoys reading, and they incite salt, rancor, and sarlacc. Focus on playing the game as well as possible.

On a side note, if you want a threadban between 10 and 5:30 CST, ask a mod instead of Firn. He's asleep.

LendvaV said:

Here:

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Many thanks