Would this be a feeling to feed to Aurora? :V
That, our talk with Mami last night, training Sayaka, meeting the Shiogama and IRC girls, and our shopping trip with Homura.

I mean it when I say "tell her about our day."

The tea thing was... Back when we first captured Oriko, we asked if she knew why we had amnesia. later on, we came to think we don't have amnesia, but we didn't tell Oriko that. Usually when we drop by, Oriko serves us green tea she says is good for the memory.

O&K know enough about the Metabomb, so we don't need to go into detail, and I thought maybe we should have cleared this up by now.
But what if it isn't?

Then it would be funny and we shouldn't mention it because

*Remains uncertain on how to deal with this.*

-----------------

In other news, I'm considering revamping the Day Planner "Science! Planner" section a little bit. Right now proposed research is listed by priority. Which... really isn't intuitive and says little.

Instead I'd like to move that topics be grouped by categories: "Pure research" (the ins and outs of how souls and our grief works, non-practical tests like simulating the atom, etc), "applied science" (engineering our tools, like making Luce Prima safe for combat use or developing sonar and radio sending and reception capability with our grief-fog), "goal oriented" (Things that directly fulfill a goal, like the Telepathy router project or a cleansing enchantments) and designations for whether an idea follows from unfinished research, etc.

Any commentary on this?

-----------------

In other other news:



Reading this, I have to comment on it here, because I cannot help but imagine someone playing basketball against a road. Which lead to the PMAS-y image of Tsuruya Yuki challenging someone in a game of basketball, and her teammates being a pair of roads.

(One might say that Yuki always wins when the ball's in her court. :V)
 
I'm like 99% sure that serving us "tea good for memory" started out as a passive-aggressive taunt at us and then became an in-joke. It's not something that needs to be 'cleared up'.
I see that, but we straight up in complete seriouness told Oriko we have amnesia.

What reason have we given her to doubt that, afterwards? We've given her looks when she gave us tea, and we're generally unconcerned about being 'amnesiac'. I think that's about it, unless I'm forgetting something.

We could take a few seconds to tell Oriko we're not actually an amnesiac.

EDIT: I guess it's not a big point one way or the other; I'd like to clarify this just in case.
 
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Man, it would be a pain in the butt if reviving Aurora results in a sister quest appearing on Spacebattles.
But think about it this way: If a sister quest appear in SB, while that quest would get some new players probably, it's very likely that all the PMAS players would go to PMASister quest and post there too.

Which would mean PMASister protag would, by definition of what a PMAS protag is*, become a Sabrina.

Which would then mean Mami would have double Sabrina. All the time. And it would be OK because Sabrina would be Sabrina, so it's not like Sabrina would be sharing her girlfriend. She would just getting more hugs, which I think we can all agree would be a plus.


* :V

EDIT: But imagine if the update rate were halved... :/
 
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Had random thought.

Considering Oriko's at the point where she sees everyone disliking her as a problem, so basically, she's kind of accepted her own existence and at this point I believe she wants forgivance, friendship, etc.

So, the thought was, how difficult would it be to have Mami want to give Oriko a chance at friendship...

If we in some way, shape or form tell Mami that Oriko pulled the shit she did because she was lonely, had no friends, and everyone she had ever trusted betrayed her. And everyone else hated her, too. So she wanted to die for it.

Because wouldn't Mami sympathize with some of that...

Mami, of course, managed to stay Good all the way through despite her loneliness, and should be commended. This we will explain to Kirika in detail as a way to show how our Ojou is better.

Of course, Mami doesn't dislike Oriko as much as she used to, but... it's still something?
 
I am opposed to using our girlfriend's trauma as emotional leverage.
That's... such a negative view of things? I didn't expect that. Maybe I'm expressing myself wrong. Let me clarify.

I'm not saying we should coerce (?) Mami into being Oriko's friend in any way.

I think Mami understands how bad loneliness can be, and could sympathize with Oriko through that. This would help Mami understand Oriko.

Understanding is... important. A step forward.

After that, I think Mami might want to become friends, on her own, because O&K are doing better and are good people. Not trying to... I don't know, blackmail (?) Mami emotionally or anything like that.

EDIT: By (?) I mean that I don't know what words to use, I don't understand what you read in my previous message.

If you want Mami to be more sympathetic to Oriko, loop- and witchbomb her.

Oriko aside, could you explain what you mean about Witchbombing Mami before saying something like this?

I'm not doubting you got good ideas about how to successfully Witchbomb Mami in a way that helps her rather than kills her, but... you haven't explained them yet, so I can't understand where you're coming from.

I know you are one with the cause of helping Mami (almost what you're in this quest for? :V ), no casting doubt on that, but anyone saying 'Witchbomb Mami'... is kind of panic inducing, at least as fictional stuff can be. Gives me both Mami-Lichbomb and Homu-Loopbomb-attempt flashbacks.
 
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No, I think you're asking the wrong question. I don't have the answer to this question written down yet, and it's going to be a long-ass answer, and that's why I haven't provided it yet, and also why I was holding off on saying a damn thing about it because I knew full well that the response would be "well tell us" and I don't have three thousand words of essay written for this yet. But the question that what I said provokes is "how would a loop- and witchbombed Mami react differently to what Oriko did and why she did it?"

And the answer to that should be fairly obvious, I mean, would we be so sympathetic to Oriko if we didn't have knowledge of witchbomb and loops? Knowing that things always, always bad end makes "I did bad things to push your group together so that we can have a good end" an awful lot more acceptable.
I wish I knew how to be concise.
I want to hear what you have to say about Witchbombing Mami, and I'll wait as long as you want.

This is because I know you, Kaizuku are very invested and in helping Mami and usually have thoughtful things to say.

If it was anyone else? Lichbomb and Loopbomb-attempt flashbacks. We've been horribly wrong about this before. Not once, nor twice, if we count the Lichbomb and the KBomb as separate instances, three times. It's scary.

So I'm not demanding an answer now. I ask, please, if you (and everyone) could refrain from just saying we should Witchbomb Mami until after the good explanation worthy of such a claim is ready.

How can I say this? In the context of PMAS, reading "Witchbomb Mami" kind of... overpowers the rest of the points a sentence might have, and puts (my) focus on 'panic: no no no no no no no'.

I may very well be overreacting, please feel free to tell me I'm being a worrywart and a fool if you want, but without that explanation, 'Witchbomb Mami' reads too much like 'Lichbomb Mami' and 'Loopbomb Homura' have in the past: Us being overconfident and fucking up really, really bad. Again.



About the other thing. I'm unsure whether Mami knowing about the loops/Witchbomb would help her understand Oriko better than knowing about Oriko's loneliness. The first does help logically justify the extreme means (I think we have done some work in this regard already); while the seconds is more emotional, I think Mami could sympathize about the loneliness, and I feel (without any proof or justification other than my own feelings) that might help more.
 
I've already stated my opinion on this sort of thing: I can't support any plan without knowing what that plan actually is.

I'm willing to wait, since @Kaizuki is definitely one of the people most invested in Mami's wellbeing here, but I still need to actually be able to observe what we're going to do before I agree to anything.
 
Right, after yesterday's conversation I'm going to rehash the amnesia into a parting joke. Sole change.

[X] The Kures
-[X] Ask if they have any plans for the mansion after they leave.
-[X] End the visit on a gyokuro tea and amnesia joke.

[X] Telepathy Yuma.
-[X] Set up a breakfast meeting with Kyouko; she wanted to talk with you about something important, and you have some stuff to talk about with her too.

[X] Enchanted enough grief for a privacy field.

[X] Feed Aurora magic.
-[X] Infuse the magic with your feelings about the time you spent with your friends yesterday and today. (Tell her about your day since you last fed her.)
-[X] Experiment a bit, try to feed Aurora sensation: How it looks and feels to uproot a rosebush with grief, and the sights and feelings of flying over Mitakihara towards Kasamino.

921 words


Sabrina: Oh! and thanks for the tea Oriko, it really must be helping my memory because I almost forgot.
Oriko: ...Forgot what?
Sabrina: "Everything" *Give her dumbest grin*
Oriko: *Slow facepalm*

-------------------

Also I'm gonna reiterate that we are prepping for the Kyouko-Metabomb here, so if anyone has thoughts, plans, or concerns, voicing them would be greatly appreciated.
 
Experiment a bit, try to feed Aurora sensation: How it looks and feels to uproot a rosebush with grief
What's the point of this? If you're doing research, what hypothesis are you testing or how do you expect the resulting observations to be useful? If you're doing engineering, what is your goal and why do you think this will accomplish it?
 
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Frankly, any long term social dynamic discussion should probably be put on hold until we can see how Sayaka stabilizes with the Witchbomb. We have a lot of reasons to think that she'll probably take it relatively well, but it's still not something to take lightly.

Sayaka being Witchbombed is probably going to change a lot of the social dynamics anyway, so plans made prior to it have a high chance of being made irrelevant.
 
[X] The Kures
-[X] Ask if they have any plans for the mansion after they leave.
-[X] End the visit on a gyokuro tea and amnesia joke.

[X] Telepathy Yuma.
-[X] Set up a breakfast meeting with Kyouko; she wanted to talk with you about something important, and you have some stuff to talk about with her too.

[X] Enchanted enough grief for a privacy field.

[X] Feed Aurora magic.
-[X] Infuse the magic with your feelings about the time you spent with your friends yesterday and today. (Tell her about your day since you last fed her.)
-[X] Experiment a bit, try to feed Aurora sensation: How it looks and feels to uproot a rosebush with grief, and the sights and feelings of flying over Mitakihara towards Kasamino.

921 words
The highlighted part is highly suspect.
 
Even if I accept that Mami can't truly help Homura without knowing the witchbomb, it's still pretty questionable if she can actually handle hearing it.

Like, if we frame it as "if you learn this awful secret you can help a friend" then Mami probably would agree that learning it is worth it, but that doesn't actually convince me that Mami won't commit suicide after hearing about it.

At best, if we already had fully established de-witching, my read on Mami is that we'd still be looking at a level of dependancy on Sabrina that would make the lichbomb/KB trauma look like a joke, and which would persist for the rest of the quest.
 
So let me lay out the basics here, because I happen to agree with this and circumventing it is basically half of my job, and because the way I'm planning on resolving it is really very simple.

"Mami... If I told you that you had a chance to help someone who was your friend and student, even though you hadn't known that they were... If they needed your help, but didn't think to ask for it... What would you do in that situation, if helping them necessitated that you hurt for it?"
> Go on to specify things re: what degree of hurt, mainly "A lot -- it's horrible, honestly. But it's something we can resolve in time, and I will always be with you... and you'll probably regain a friend through it."

Kaname Madoka called Akemi Homura the best friend she'd ever had for her actions across the timelines. As for Mami, Homura was -- is -- Mami's student, estranged by pain, hurt so terribly that she is who she is today, possessing no ability to look towards the future, no concept of what might matter in her life beyond saving Madoka and fulfilling the promise she made once upon a never, no real idea of what she'll do after Walpurgis Night passes.

The witchbomb in isolation isn't something Mami should ever be touched with. But at the end of the day, if Mami is to play a significant part in helping Homura heal, she'll need to know about it. Let's be clear: she could absolutely never learn of the witchbomb and still be able to help Homura in some small manner, that's true. But in my opinion every member of the Holy Quintet who learns all of the information involved in Mitakihara's troubles and remains stable will be a massive aid to Homura -- not so much regarding her quest as her sanity.

The very first thing Homura did was to tell all her friends what was going on and ask for help. That that didn't work (at all, gods above) has long been a permanent scar on her psyche.

... In my opinion, given our belief that we can probably reverse and surely at minimum put a stop to girls witching, I think Mami would find that being able to help Homura heal would outweigh having to bear the witchbomb, because of the nature of the matter -- because Mami wants to help her friends -- because through the process everyone involved is going to be brought closer together -- and Mami Tomoe wants close friends -- and because if she knew what her student and friend has been through -- what Homura has been through -- I cannot imagine her choosing to not take on the burden of the witchbomb in order to help.

As a stand-alone, the witchbomb is not something Mami needs or wants to know. If she were the only one who could help stop witchings, she'd choose to accept carrying it -- but she's not.

But if it's necessary to help a friend... If by accepting its burden, she would become closer to people she cares about... If by shouldering it, she would recover a student she'd not even known she'd had...

*nods slowly*

And... let's be clear about this. The witchbomb is necessary if one is to understand and truly help Homura. I... I don't think I really need to go through that argument, right? It should be obvious.



In summary: vastly increased closeness with Homura (and probably the others in the medium to long term) and the ability to really help someone close to her who is hurting beyond her wildest nightmares -- these things are worth having to deal with the witchbomb in Mami's view, and we can walk through establishing that in hypotheticals without dropping things on her entirely without her input. The knowledge necessary to understand Homura's story will be painful, yes, but knowing Homura's story -- looking backwards from after having learned of Homura's past, I can't imagine Mami thinking "I wish I'd never learned all of this," because holy shit her friend Homura really needs help and it's basically impossible to provide that help without learning of her past.

Sorry if this is too rambly.
I'm sorry. But this approach comes off as manipulation. And I can't approve of it. Secondly every time we bomb Mami, and she's clearly not ready for it, she is shattered every time. The last time we bombed her she barely survived it.

Sabrina was literally in ribbons with hints of imminent Tetris about to occur, if we failed the following vote.

Sabrina then highlights just how close we were to losing her. It was a very close thing.

I'm sick of bombing her in this manner. Mami deserves better than this.

If she doesn't want to know, I'm inclined to honor that. We'll find another way. If, that changes then discussions on how to best approach are certainly in order.
 
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Even if I accept that Mami can't truly help Homura without knowing the witchbomb, it's still pretty questionable if she can actually handle hearing it.

Like, if we frame it as "if you learn this awful secret you can help a friend" then Mami probably would agree that learning it is worth it, but that doesn't actually convince me that Mami won't commit suicide after hearing about it.

At best, if we already had fully established de-witching, my read on Mami is that we'd still be looking at a level of dependancy on Sabrina that would make the lichbomb/KB trauma look like a joke.

... What?

At best, if we already had fully established de-witching, my read on Mami is that we'd still be looking at a level of dependancy on Sabrina that would make the lichbomb/KB trauma look like a joke, and which would persist for the rest of the quest.

What?

Redshirt? If you think that Mami's dependency on Sabrina has been reduced at any point in this entire quest... I honestly don't know what to say. It's such an obviously and totally false idea that I'm surprised to see you mentioning anything resembling it. The exact opposite is what has occurred. In fact, Mami is perhaps more dependent on Sabrina at this point in time than she has ever been.

What has changed is that she is no longer freaking out over Sabrina potentially not wanting her / leaving her / not being her friend / not being real / not liking her / pulling away from her because she's romantically interested in her / being just a dream / not having her interests at heart / "being an excellent actress" / etcetera. That is it. She's less freaked out at school because she's more convinced that Sabrina will be there when school ends.

You use the words "Lichbomb/KB trauma." In all honesty, much of the impact of that passed quite quickly, barring its resurgence when she's confronted with QB. The problem was that she was left thinking that her only remaining "friend" (Sabrina) was only sticking around because Mami was a wreck who needed Sabrina's help.

I'm sorry. But this approach comes off as manipulation. And I can't approve of it.

Yeah, I can understand that. I've thought this through and I don't agree, but unlike certain other objections its an understandable one.

Secondly every time we bomb Mami, and she's clearly not ready for it, she is shattered every time. The last time we bombed her she barely survived it.

Sabrina was literally in ribbons with hints of imminent Tetris, if we failed the following vote.

I'm sick of bombing her in this manner. Mami deserves better than this.

...

...

...

This must be why I have to write essays every time.

Fact: there is a correlation between dropping bombs on Mami and Mami shattering. Fact: if you cause Mami to think that someone she feels extremely close to isn't actually her friend, Mami will shatter. Fact: we are two for two for doing that at the same time as "dropping bombs." Fact: the moment we told Mami that we weren't leaving when she shattered during the metabomb she recovered almost instantly from shattered to hurt.

You take another deep, shuddering breath. "I didn't expect you to make me so happy." A faint noise indicates that Mami's listening, at least. "And you do. I enjoy doing things with you, talking with you... you make every day brighter." Just the simple joy of getting to hug her is something you look forward to, all the time. "I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose you."

You raise your head to look her in the eye, finding golden eyes reddened with tears - but wide and startled as she looks back at you.

The metabomb did not particularly hurt Mami. In all honesty, she gave roughly zero fucks about it: notice how she has never actually reacted badly to the knowledge contained therein outside a foreboding environment that was full of tension and stress and badness. Now, us making her think that we were going to leave her...

"Y-you don't have to," Mami whispers, shaking her head. "S-sabrina, I, I- a-as l-long as you're h-here, I, I don't care."

"I want to," you respond, quiet and firm. "I, I want to be honest and open with you, Mami. You mean too much to me for me not to."

Mami shakes her head in mute disagreement.

That hurt her.

The lichbomb... Kyubey's betrayal was the worst part of it by far. Realizing that she'd been responsible for "deaths" in the past hurt her, but... not really that much, in all honesty. The guilt from helping to contract people was the worst part of that, but even that was pale by comparison to the utter heartbreak of losing Kyubey.

The witchbomb does not have this element of personal loss to it: on the contrary, paired with the loops it is an interpersonal gain.

Redshirt... not a word you said makes any sense. Keep in mind that Tetris was about the future, about her not wanting herself or her friends to become witches. Keep in mind that with or without dewitching, we can help souls by defeating their witches and clearing their seeds. Almost the entirety of the witchbomb's trauma is going to be the guilt of her past actions. And that... that can be worked around, made to fade. At the end of the day we're going to work towards saving everyone who has and/or will become a witch, we're going to prevent future witchouts, and the chance of anyone close to us or Mami ever becoming a witch is going to approach zero as knowledge is carefully disseminated and our capabilities increase.

This isn't some unbearable sword of damocles. It's not some cataclysm of which speaking is to be taboo. It's not going to kill Mami; it's not even going to come close to killing Mami...

Unless, of course, it doesn't come from us.

...

Without disclosing the loops, of course, it remains largely pointless to discuss it with her. It would be largely meaningless pain rather than largely meaningful pain.
 
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