[X] null
I find the current course of action to be unacceptable. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I am able to adequately say
why I dislike it, with firn's mandates regarding this update in place. Instead, I'll just do the best I can, to hopefully convince some fence sitters that this isn't the right way to do things.
***
Yes, Rionnnnna is a bad person, we're not allowed to talk about that much, though I've made several arguments about that in the past that I still believe are relevant. Instead, let's just put it out there that she is in fact a rather terrible human being.
Now, here's why I think that her being a terrible person is
not grounds for the course of action we're currently advocating:
1) She is a symptom, not a cause.
Riona exists because the incubator system made her this way. That is apparent not only from the fact that their wish granting apparatus gave her the soul stealing powers, but also the fact that another magical girl (by all likelihood) killed her sister for some reason. That, coupled with the general shitty-ness of the world is in large part why Riona has ended up being the person she is today. In essence, Riona is no more or less responsible for her actions than any other magical girl living under the yoke of the incubators (I'm not saying she has no responsibility, sit down. I'm saying that there is a
reason she's a shit person, and that reason is infinitely more guilty than she is). Thus, this response is inordinate, because Riona may be a bad person, but attacking her here does little to nothing to address the root cause of all the problems in PMMM, the incubators. It actually will impede our efforts in the long run, which leads me to my next point.
2) Our Word is our Bond
This is pretty simple. We have extended some level of hospitality rights to Riona. And beyond that we have been working our ass off, in the face of entirely reasonable skepticism, to show that we are a legitimately good person, and we are here to help. Gemming Riona here flies in the face of that, and threatens to undo much of the work we've put into our reputation, thus making it harder for us to bring on allies in the long run.
2) We haven't (really) given her a chance.
Up until this point, Sabrina has preached and practiced compassion and forgiveness, of offering viable alternatives. People here say that we have done that for Riona, but we have not. We have given her words,
air, while keeping her confined (from her point of view) and isolated from her shades. In this situation, we hold literally all the power. That she is refusing to give ground is only natural given her character, because from her point of view it no doubt looks like we're trying to browbeat her. If we
actually want to have dialogue with her, we need to let her have some ground to stand on, if only to show that we
are serious about working for her good. Thus far, it seems that she's rejected all of her advances on the grounds that they are impossible, and that we aren't going to fix her problems even if we could. We have done nothing to prove her wrong beyond talk. Talk is cheap.
3) Just because she does bad things, doesn't me we get to.
Sabrina has, consistently throughout the entire near 6
thousand pages of PMAS (and various spin off works as well) shown a deep and abiding moral core. Key to this, in my eyes, is an utter refusal to sink to the level of her opposition. It's telling that the closest we've come is threatening to witch out Kirika, when faced with Oriko, and that was a threat the thread knew, at the outset,
we could not have followed through on. Physical force in response to physical force is one thing (and no, her trying to force us to let her go is no more physical force than our own isolation sphere is). I refuse to believe that Sabrina is the person who, from that, jumps immediately to quasi-lethal force (inasmuch as depriving someone of their body is rather similar to death) and indefinite sensory deprivation and confinement. That is
not an acceptable escalation of force.
4) We are not Riona
Degemming Riona is not only figuratively sinking to her level, but doing so literally as well. Before I get a warning, I do not mean to say that this course of action makes Sabrina as bad as Riona is
currently, but rather that this action the thread is supporting is
literally the first evil action taken by Riona as we currently understand it, and if not that then equivalent to any individual evil action of Riona, which we, as a whole, have deemed unacceptable.
Riona used her powers on someone she saw as evil (the killer of her sister) whom probably had a power that made her dangerous (grief controller, given her vendetta against them) in a way that deprived her of her body (shade), and granted her access to her powers (also shade), as we understand it.
(This is also how she deals with all other threats)
We are planing on using our powers on someone we see as evil (Riona) whom probably has a power that makes her dangerous (soul guca), in a way that deprives her of her body (degemming), and grants us access to her power (potential Sayacopy), as is now being put forward.
The similarity between these sets of actions is undeniable. Yes, one may argue that since we are planning to take out Riona to eventually rehabilitate her instead of torture, that our actions are 'better,' but the
end does not justify the means. And these means, for all intents and purposes, are identical to Riona's own. Basically, if we take these actions proposed by the thread, what separates us from Riona no longer becomes what we are willing to do to people who stand in our way, but rather, the scale upon which we apply those actions. And if we are judging Riona based on taking these actions, then we should look critically at taking them ourselves.
