There is, as far as I recall, no continuity in which Mami learns the truth of witches and does not commit suicide. This is understandable, since the truth actively undermines the only value that Mami placed on her life - it means that she condemned all of the students she took on into literally eternal suffering, and means that all of the witches she killed and then gave to Kyubey are actually just other magical girls who are still eternally suffering.
I am giving you enormous benefit of the doubt, @Kaizuki , when I say that we might be able to get away with Mami merely being a shattered wreck for the rest of the quest if we do this, because I know you have a better read on Mami then I do. If I had to write a Witchbombing plan right now, I'd give majority odds to Mami being actively suicidal afterwards.
Please put aside whether Mami could survive the Witchbomb.
A Witchbombed Mami is someone who had to live believeing:
- That she's a murderer (or worse). If not directly, then by assisting KB. Unwittingly, yes, but she will still live filled with guilt.
- That her life's purpose was a dupe. She dedicated her life for years to the Magical Girl cause, and it's not only worth nothing, it has negative value (which, put in those words, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, I'm reminded that negative identity is a thing in psychoanalysis. We probably could save Mami from that, but I don't want her anywhere near close to skirting that line.)
- That there is a monster, a Witch, inside her Soul waiting for her worst moment so it can kill her and be born, and hurt/kill her friends/other people.
None of this is a small problem, at all. It's huge. It would hurt Mami, she would suffer, and even if she lives through it, that pain will mark her for the rest of her life.
We misjudged the Lichbomb, the Kyuubey reveal, the Potentialbomb. We thought we could bomb these girls in controlled circumstances, help contain their pain, and that they would be better off for it afterwards. We were wrong, 3/3.
I'll take Firn basically cheating and telling us to not Potentialbomb Homura, and Oriko insisting that the idea is bad, that no amount of controlled circumstances or being there and holding Homura and explaining how everything will still work out will be enough to help.
And I'll apply this to Mami. No amount of controlled circumstances, hugs, and reassurances will be enough that we can justify Witchbombing Mami, at least not within the timespan of this quest. Not because it would kill her, us being there would keep a Witchbombed Mami alive just as we could keep a Potentialbombed Homura alive, but alive is not good enough.
These bombs would shatter these girls, and giving the bombs 'meaning' won't stop that either.
Just... don't hurt Mami. Nor Homura, of course. Oriko warned us that we needed to stop KB from Potentialbombing Homura. Not try to help Homura through the bomb, stop it from hitting her. I believe the same goes for Mami and the Witchbomb.
Not entirely sure we can pull off keeping the Potentialbomb away from Homura, but that's another matter.
My opinion is that it's going to happen anyway, but it should happen as late as possible and playing Chicken with Kyuubey is a bad idea.
I think that we can Witchbomb Mami within the scope of this quest, but I doubt we can do so within the next few days. My primary objection to not Witchbombing Mami has been that not doing so removes Mami's agency as a magical girl. I think many of the important decisions going forward will concern what to do about witches and problems related to them. And I fear that she's going to be marginalized if we can't be candid with her. However, removing Mami's agency as a magical girl is probably good for her mental health, as it will force her to build an identity around mundane life. In the long term, Mami is going to be Witchbombed, though we can probably delay it for months if we really want to. But if she can build an identity based around truths (our love for her, earnest friendships, and honestly trained mundane skills), rather than a fragile web of lies, then the Witchbomb won't break her. And we may be able to do that before Walpurgisnacht by showing her how good life can be for long enough that she can take it for granted, talk therapy to help establish that things are okay and to give her a release for her fears, and enough time to come to terms with a lot of stuff. And when Mami's ready, I think she'll tell us.
I think Kaizuki's idea is kind of manipulative, though I think there's a nugget of a good idea in there. Explaining the importance of the Witchbomb to Mami will motivate her to ask us for it. But we are already signalling its importance to Mami through the use of privacy fields and the warning signs we put around holes in conversations. We can explain most of Homura's motivations while leaving out witches, with the disclaimer that we have skipped over the bad stuff. That will add to the existing signals without being overly manipulative. It will also build sympathy for Homura, which is good for friendship, which Mami could use more of.
Having determined that my recent posting was pointless, all of it has been deleted. Future thoughts will not be discussed or aired until it is tine to vote on them.
Not entirely sure we can pull off keeping the Potentialbomb away from Homura, but that's another matter.
My opinion is that it's going to happen anyway, but it should happen as late as possible and playing Chicken with Kyuubey is a bad idea.
I think that we can Witchbomb Mami within the scope of this quest, but I doubt we can do so within the next few days. My primary objection to not Witchbombing Mami has been that not doing so removes Mami's agency as a magical girl. I think many of the important decisions going forward will concern what to do about witches and problems related to them. And I fear that she's going to be marginalized if we can't be candid with her. However, removing Mami's agency as a magical girl is probably good for her mental health, as it will force her to build an identity around mundane life. In the long term, Mami is going to be Witchbombed, though we can probably delay it for months if we really want to. But if she can build an identity based around truths (our love for her, earnest friendships, and honestly trained mundane skills), rather than a fragile web of lies, then the Witchbomb won't break her. And we may be able to do that before Walpurgisnacht by showing her how good life can be for long enough that she can take it for granted, talk therapy to help establish that things are okay and to give her a release for her fears, and enough time to come to terms with a lot of stuff. And when Mami's ready, I think she'll tell us.
I think Kaizuki's idea is kind of manipulative, though I think there's a nugget of a good idea in there. Explaining the importance of the Witchbomb to Mami will motivate her to ask us for it. But we are already signalling its importance to Mami through the use of privacy fields and the warning signs we put around holes in conversations. We can explain most of Homura's motivations while leaving out witches, with the disclaimer that we have skipped over the bad stuff. That will add to the existing signals without being overly manipulative. It will also build sympathy for Homura, which is good for friendship, which Mami could use more of.
How to keep KB from Potentialbombing Homura and Witchbombing Mami is one of those horribly difficult problems we're gonna have to solve somehow.
Right now, the best idea I got is to bargain with KB and get it to agree to not bomb them, which led me to have a half-thought-half-dream of Sabrina on the verge of tears laughing about about our odds.
"It's great, we got the best team for it! I can be blunt and fuck up by being overconfident; Sayaka, you can forget everything important and rage at the rat; Oriko can probably convince KB to screw her over somehow; and Kirika can probably punt him really far once we're done screwing ourselves up!"
... Which means I don't have a good plan. But yet this is the task that's been shoved into our hands.
I think that we can Witchbomb Mami within the scope of this quest
This is the thing (long answer ahead, sorry IDK how to be concise).
When we decided to Lichbomb Mami, we thought she could take it, that it would be best for her in the end. When we decided to Potentialbomb Homura, Firn literally stopped us, what were we doing?! Both times we thought and came up with rationalizations why Mami and Homura could take it and why it would be best for them.
Both times we failed to actually empathize and to comprehend the magnitude of what we were doing, and Mami paid for it, and we almost pulped Homura's psyche.
So... at this point, I think we should have learned something. We understimate how much learning someting can hurt someone. We need to adjust our expectations:
We need to give ourselves two safety margins when dealing with 'bombs':
- One because we are way too happy to skirt the line. These 'bombs' are called bombs because they have a bomb-like effect on someone's psyche. We should not be so quick to consider dropping bombs simply because of how dangerous they are.
- One because we have clearly and repeatedly misjudged these situations. So next time we feel confident that character X can take learning information Y? Adjust. Be uncertain, lower our confidence, because our experience shows we can easily be overconfident about these matters.
So... "I think character X can take information Y" should become:
"I think character X can take information Y, but if they don't, they will suffer horribly" should become:
"Maybe, I think, character X can take information Y, but if they don't, they will suffer horribly, and I may be wrong, for I have been wrong about this exact kind of issue in the past".
As an aside, it's worrying, that we keep doing the same thing over and over. These are thoughts I had about why we keep doing so. This is conjecture:
- We would be afraid if we knew there was a word out there that could crush us at the worst moment. We would want to impose control and defuse the situation. We think we can take it. We value knowing the truth, no matter what the truth might be, higher than many other people may.
Isn't this how we approach the bombs? Are we projecting our fears, beliefs, and values onto others, then rationalizting away the discrepancies? Are we so bomb-happy because we would rather be bombed ASAP rather than have a sword of damocles hanging over our heads?
- We justify this 'rip the bandaid off' approach based on the danger these threats pose. Mind, nobody wants to know their friends could die if some asshole walked up and said the wrong words.
I feel we're doing what we told Oriko to not do. Yes, there are horrible threats afoot, but that doesn't justify the most extreme methods.
- We think of terms of 'surviving', and ignore/diminish the importance of pain.
Imagine we're a patient at a hospital saying "yeah doctor just cut my arm off right now, I don't need anesthesics, this can't wait and I can take it". Maybe we think we can take it, but everybody has a right to demand to be put into forced sleep, and the hospital should do it, because pain matters.
Maybe an analogy that could be done is that dropping a bomb is like doing surgery, but we think it's stomach/liver/etc. surgery, while it's more like brain surgery and entirely too likely to have permanent effects.
TJSomething said:
My primary objection to not Witchbombing Mami has been that not doing so removes Mami's agency as a magical girl. I think many of the important decisions going forward will concern what to do about witches and problems related to them. And I fear that she's going to be marginalized if we can't be candid with her. However, removing Mami's agency as a magical girl is probably good for her mental health, as it will force her to build an identity around mundane life.
I think we might have had similar thoughts in the past. I think we might not value this high enough.
When we Lichbombed Mami... we kind of played the victim. It was so terrible that we had to keep a secret from our friend, how could we do this! So terrible!
People keep secrets from friends and family. Sometimes it's wrong, but sometimes it's right. I think most of us don't like that. Maybe? If so, this might influence our decisions towards... well, what we've done time and again.
(Also, now I'm having new doubts about Witchbombing Sayaka. >_>)
Maybe Mami can't handle holding all her agency on her own hands right now. Maybe she can use someone else taking the burden for a while. I think you are saying something like this? If so, I agree, though I'll disagree that the timespan of the quest is long enough that Mami could be safely Witchbombed.
I've been imagining that we'll start handing out the Witchbomb after we get a working and stable solution to de-Witching.
Seems like the secret should be able to keep until then.
If there's something we could say now to Mami, to soften the potential impact of the Witchbomb if someone else drops it later, that might be worth it.
"Hey, Mami, about those secrets? The details are pretty awful, but I want you to know that none of it changes anything. Not about us. I know the secrets, and I'm still your friend, and I'm going to stay your friend. And if you learn something suddenly and it seems super horrifying, I want you to remember that."
I've been imagining that we'll start handing out the Witchbomb after we get a working and stable solution to de-Witching.
Seems like the secret should be able to keep until then.
If there's something we could say now to Mami, to soften the potential impact of the Witchbomb if someone else drops it later, that might be worth it.
"Hey, Mami, about those secrets? The details are pretty awful, but I want you to know that none of it changes anything. Not about us. I know the secrets, and I'm still your friend, and I'm going to stay your friend. And if you learn something suddenly and it seems super horrifying, I want you to remember that."
And I had a thought. Mami always tells us she doesn't need to learn these secrets. We tell her we'll tell her the secrets if she asks.
What if we told Mami we're just not gonna tell her the secret, because we care about her and don't want her to be hurt.
Would Mami prefer this? Because... while leaving the option open seems like a good thing, that's us. Mami always insists that she doesn't need to know (she doesn't want to go through that pain again). Maybe Mami would feel better if we closed the possibility of her learning the Witchbomb (from us).
Maybe Mami would prefer if we promised to not tell her the secret*, even if she asked. (And maybe this isn't just hubris or taking contro ofl/agency away from from others, but actually a sensible decision.)
*Maybe in the future after, as you say, de-Witching is a thing... and after Mami's reaffirmed her reasons to live and her life's dedication well enough. The future is scary.
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?
Socially, feeding Aurora sensation, particularly of sensations of nice or fun things, just strikes me as a kind thing to do. As long as we're trying to see how a clear seed reacts to infusions of magic in the long term giving her things to see and experience seems to be a nice part of it.
Practically, showing her us uprooting rosebushes, while probably just baffling to watch, is a reason to figuring out how to perform the action taken while our feet are firmly planted on the ground rather than while we're distracted in flight.
Scientifically, I feel this would have applications to connecting to an artificial body; If sensation can be relayed through magic, then it can likely be enchanted to be relayed. This could be useful for both any work we need to do in dewitching as well as in our own tools; Right now our grief-devices provide only a sense of touch but something like this could show us how to relay the senses for things like grief sensors and fog-sonar.
How to keep KB from Potentialbombing Homura and Witchbombing Mami is one of those horribly difficult problems we're gonna have to solve somehow.
Right now, the best idea I got is to bargain with KB and get it to agree to not bomb them, which led me to have a half-thought-half-dream of Sabrina on the verge of tears laughing about about our odds.
"It's great, we got the best team for it! I can be blunt and fuck up by being overconfident; Sayaka, you can forget everything important and rage at the rat; Oriko can probably convince KB to screw her over somehow; and Kirika can probably punt him really far once we're done screwing ourselves up!"
... Which means I don't have a good plan. But yet this is the task that's been shoved into our hands.
This is the thing (long answer ahead, sorry IDK how to be concise).
When we decided to Lichbomb Mami, we thought she could take it, that it would be best for her in the end. When we decided to Potentialbomb Homura, Firn literally stopped us, what were we doing?! Both times we thought and came up with rationalizations why Mami and Homura could take it and why it would be best for them.
Both times we failed to actually empathize and to comprehend the magnitude of what we were doing, and Mami paid for it, and we almost pulped Homura's psyche.
So... at this point, I think we should have learned something. We understimate how much learning someting can hurt someone. We need to adjust our expectations:
We need to give ourselves two safety margins when dealing with 'bombs':
- One because we are way too happy to skirt the line. These 'bombs' are called bombs because they have a bomb-like effect on someone's psyche. We should not be so quick to consider dropping bombs simply because of how dangerous they are.
- One because we have clearly and repeatedly misjudged these situations. So next time we feel confident that character X can take learning information Y? Adjust. Be uncertain, lower our confidence, because our experience shows we can easily be overconfident about these matters.
So... "I think character X can take information Y" should become:
"I think character X can take information Y, but if they don't, they will suffer horribly" should become:
"Maybe, I think, character X can take information Y, but if they don't, they will suffer horribly, and I may be wrong, for I have been wrong about this exact kind of issue in the past".
As an aside, it's worrying, that we keep doing the same thing over and over. These are thoughts I had about why we keep doing so. This is conjecture:
- We would be afraid if we knew there was a word out there that could crush us at the worst moment. We would want to impose control and defuse the situation. We think we can take it. We value knowing the truth, no matter what the truth might be, higher than many other people may.
Isn't this how we approach the bombs? Are we projecting our fears, beliefs, and values onto others, then rationalizting away the discrepancies? Are we so bomb-happy because we would rather be bombed ASAP rather than have a sword of damocles hanging over our heads?
- We justify this 'rip the bandaid off' approach based on the danger these threats pose. Mind, nobody wants to know their friends could die if some asshole walked up and said the wrong words.
I feel we're doing what we told Oriko to not do. Yes, there are horrible threats afoot, but that doesn't justify the most extreme methods.
- We think of terms of 'surviving', and ignore/diminish the importance of pain.
Imagine we're a patient at a hospital saying "yeah doctor just cut my arm off right now, I don't need anesthesics, this can't wait and I can take it". Maybe we think we can take it, but everybody has a right to demand to be put into forced sleep, and the hospital should do it, because pain matters.
Maybe an analogy that could be done is that dropping a bomb is like doing surgery, but we think it's stomach/liver/etc. surgery, while it's more like brain surgery and entirely too likely to have permanent effects.
I think we might have had similar thoughts in the past. I think we might not value this high enough.
When we Lichbombed Mami... we kind of played the victim. It was so terrible that we had to keep a secret from our friend, how could we do this! So terrible!
People keep secrets from friends and family. Sometimes it's wrong, but sometimes it's right. I think most of us don't like that. Maybe? If so, this might influence our decisions towards... well, what we've done time and again.
(Also, now I'm having new doubts about Witchbombing Sayaka. >_>)
Maybe Mami can't handle holding all her agency on her own hands right now. Maybe she can use someone else taking the burden for a while. I think you are saying something like this? If so, I agree, though I'll disagree that the timespan of the quest is long enough that Mami could be safely Witchbombed.
The problem with arguing "Not witchbombing Mami" is akin to "Not potentialbombing Homura" is that the potentialbomb can only come from a few sources. It fundamentally requires knowledge of how potential works, which is essentially limited to Kyuubey and who he tells, and then further putting two and two together with Madoka's high potential and Homura's time travel.
All of these points of knowledge are pretty limited and only a handful of people are in a position to put two and two together and the only one who could do it remotely accidentally is Madoka herself. In addition, actions like limiting who knows about time travel can greatly limit Homura's exposure to the risk and keep it unlikely.
The witchbomb on the other hand can happen in a rather large number of ways, both intentionally or accidental. Someone could blab by accident or intent, an accident could occur, the wrong epiphany could easily lead to it, etc.
Most notably, our own attempts at dewitching could very easily expose Mami to risk. I don't think that it's that far out there to envision a scenario where she learns a little of what we're working on with clears seeds and her hatred of witches forces a confrontation. Particularly if we make just enough progress for a clear seed to become aware, autonomous, and capable of bean-spilling.
Personally, I would wait until a lot of groundwork is laid, including dewitching progress, but I'll also note that I didn't see Kaizuki state that the witchbomb should come before or after dewitching progress one way or another, or what time to do it at all. Regardless, planning for how to defuse the witchbomb's effects on Mami is necessary because it has multiple vectors in a way that the potentialbomb simply doesn't.
No, defusing the witchbomb might not need to involve premptive witchbombing. There's plenty of factors that contribute to how badly she usually takes it after all. Her guild, her sense of justice, her feelings about witches, etc. Perhaps helping her through some of those might help. Perhaps it will be a matter of ensuring she has something to focus on solving or someone to focus on helping.[1] But having a plan to limit the damage is necessary.
[1]Both Rin and canon-Kyouko dealt with the lichbomb in large part by turning to someone else, and I would imagine the deciding factor in whether most girls get through the witchbomb or not is whether the focus of their efforts is doomed to fail or not. Like canon!Kyouko or canon!Asunaro trying their attempts at dewtiching, or Hamisaki Akkiko focusing on her team instead of Kato.
On a sidenote to the last paragraph, I honestly wonder if a necessary part of dewitching won't be that the recovering magical girl fundamentally needs help, and needs it long enough for the people aiding her to work their way through their own trauma.
Having dewitching is not actually particularly morally different from being able to clear a seed. Either saves against eternal torment... Being able to clear a seed basically reduces to "they're dead," which is the currently understood state of affairs anyway. Your arguments have been extremely shallow, Onmur, but unfortunately I'm in the middle of having a bloody fucking jackhammer in the middle of my head. It's hard for me to argue against you with due politeness as-is because of that. Its why I've been acting in frankly unstable ways.
If you'd like, I'll get back to you when I am less... that. Otherwise... I dunno.
@The Phoenixian
Uh, with the previous updates, I've been thinking it's the other way around...
Way back said:
Oriko takes a shuddering breath, closing her eyes before looking at you again. "She's making things worse," she says in a low voice. "Kyuubey already knows, and if he tells her that, she will despair. You have to stop that from happening."
"In the days before Walpurgisnacht," Oriko says finally. "As you assemble the magical girls to fight. That's when the Incubator strikes, to tear it all down. Kaname Madoka... she's a lot smarter than she looks. I suspect she figures it out soon after she finds about the loops."
I've been thinking that KB will Potentialbomb Homura, if we don't stop it, 100%. That's the mission Oriko's given us, yes? I know she doesn't speak entirely in absolutes here, though.
Meanwhile, the Witchbomb... I would prefer to discard the possibility of it happening accidentally, because I don't think Firn would pull that one, he would give us a chance to act first.
Working on de-Witching does increase the odds that Mami will learn about it, by proximity, true. But I guess we're sticking to our long-standing plan, and I think you're affirming this, yes? Work on de-Witching, and if we can't finish the project before Mami becomes aware of the Witchbomb, hope that what we have is enough to help her through it.
[1]Both Rin and canon-Kyouko dealt with the lichbomb in large part by turning to someone else, and I would imagine the deciding factor in whether most girls get through the witchbomb or not is whether the focus of their efforts is doomed to fail or not. Like canon!Kyouko or canon!Asunaro trying their attempts at dewtiching, or Hamisaki Akkiko focusing on her team instead of Kato.
I... think you can read all those as how the meguca did not deal with the Witchbomb. Kyouko suicided; Akiko is Akiko; the Pleaides repressed, which was horribly unhealthy and they had to admit in the end, as they were all dying off, that they simply couldn't deal with it (you can, in fact, read all of PMKM as an allegory about it being healthier to accept death (Kazumi, who is fine with dying) rather than fighting against it (other 6 Pleiades, who suffer Kazumi's death over and over again)).
BTW,
Oriko said:
Kaname Madoka... she's a lot smarter than she looks. I suspect she figures it out soon after she finds about the loops."
"You still think Madoka should be told about the loops," Homura says, voice and expression flat.
"I do," you say. "I think it will help, and I think Madoka would respect your sacrifices enough to not make a Wish. And I think she deserves to know."
A frown creases Homura's forehead, and she hunches her shoulders, obviously thinking. "I... disagree," she says, picking her words slowly and carefully. "Maybe... if we destroy Walpurgisnacht... I will consider it."
Not promising with previously utilized arguments at any rate, no duh. If we frame it as a security measure and guarantee that Madoka wont learn of it, that will change, I think.
I was going to see what the vote options where but.... we have one
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by DB_Explorer on Nov 28, 2018 at 1:32 PM, finished with 148411 posts and 7 votes.
[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.
Maybe Mami can't handle holding all her agency on her own hands right now. Maybe she can use someone else taking the burden for a while. I think you are saying something like this? If so, I agree, though I'll disagree that the timespan of the quest is long enough that Mami could be safely Witchbombed.
More or less, yeah, that's what I mean. I also admit that I may be overly optimistic with that timespan. But I think that Mami has a realistic handle on her own mental health and is capable of judging when she's ready to take on new burdens. As such, I think the safest thing to do is to focus our energy on her healing and try to keep the Witchbomb away. If she feels ready by Walpurgisnacht, then she's probably ready. If she doesn't, then she isn't. If she gets Witchbombed by accident or malice, then we handle that and hopefully she's in as good of a place as she can be.
[Q] Ditch everything else.
-[Q] Go prepare a date with Mami tonight. In Italy.
--[Q] Recruit Oriko and Kirika.
---[Q] Make sure Best Buddy's taking note of everything, and give Oriko that phone number from that restaurant Nadia gave you, and lot of yen.
----[Q] Get ready for an unforgettable dinner.
if different emotional or memory flavors of positive magic prove to have different effects, should we then try to test different flavors of grief magic? what are the chances it's more nuanced than we assume, as in, for example, atlab fire bending?
[Q] Ditch everything else.
-[Q] Go pdrepare a date with Mami tonight. In Italy.
--[Q] Recruit Oriko and Kirika.
---[Q] Make sure Best Buddy's taking note of everything, and give Oriko that phone number from that restaurant Nadia gave you, and lot of yen.
----[Q] Get ready for an unforgettable dinner.
[Q] Casually mention your upcoming date to Madoka (emphasizing how great it will be) so she'll want to go eat at the super nice place too.
-[Q] She'll want to go, but you just so happened to book at a restaurant that only has tables for two, so she'll have to go with someone.
--[Q] Fully book an all-you-can-eat-buffet in Mitakihara and give two (reservations? Tickets? Whatever they would be) to Kyoko and Yuma.
---[Q] Suggest to Sayaka that she make sure they don't hurt themselves, and give her a whatever-it-is as well.
----[Q] Go back to Madoka and say that everyone else has things to do, so unless she can think of someone who would want to fly halfway around the world so that Madoka could have a fun night (or, say, would want to go on a date with her) she'll have to stay here.
-----[Q] Madoka will be unable to think of anyone who would want to. This will make her sad. That will make Homura step in, and she will do the only thing that could make Madoka Not Sad; volunteer to go with her.
------[Q] Fly everyone to Italy, and proceed to put Madoka and Homura in a separate (but equally amazing) restaurant while you and Mami have your date. Calm Homura down as necessary.
[Q] Casually mention your upcoming date to Madoka (emphasizing how great it will be) so she'll want to go eat at the super nice place too.
-[Q] She'll want to go, but you just so happened to book at a restaurant that only has tables for two, so she'll have to go with someone.
--[Q] Fully book an all-you-can-eat-buffet in Mitakihara and give two (reservations? Tickets? Whatever they would be) to Kyoko and Yuma.
---[Q] Suggest to Sayaka that she make sure they don't hurt themselves, and give her a whatever-it-is as well.
----[Q] Go back to Madoka and say that everyone else has things to do, so unless she can think of someone who would want to fly halfway around the world so that Madoka could have a fun night (or, say, would want to go on a date with her) she'll have to stay here.
-----[Q] Madoka will be unable to think of anyone who would want to. This will make her sad. That will make Homura step in, and she will do the only thing that could make Madoka Not Sad; volunteer to go with her.
------[Q] Fly everyone to Italy, and proceed to put Madoka and Homura in a separate (but equally amazing) restaurant while you and Mami have your date. Calm Homura down as necessary.
-------[Q] And sneak out O&K too, just give them a ton of money and let them do their own thing in Italy for a week. If Homura finds out, she can't complain, as they pose no threat to Madoka all the way from Europe.
Meanwhile, at Fukushima:
"That Anri girl's broke the chair against the wall again."
*Sigh* "I'll make her another one. Didn't Miss Vee say she wanted to talk with the prisoner?"
"Beats me."
"Can you reinforce the place again? I swear I can hear her yelling, even through the soundproofed walls."
Doesn't the whole thing about 4D means you can almost fit an absurd amount of 3D objects within in? If I'm trying to think about the analogy of stacking vast quantities of perfectly flat 2D objects inside a box. I think 100m should be enough to cover a house, though I'm not exactly clear on how big Oriko's mansion is, exactly. 200m diameter does sound a bit unreasonably large though, even for Mitakahara, so we shouldn't have to worry about half of the house collapsing when we only vacuumed up half of it.
On the other hand, its a perfectly usable house, we can always use it for other things besides sticking it in our infinity pocket for the lols. Emergency housing, storage, liquid assets, etc.
I've been thinking that KB will Potentialbomb Homura, if we don't stop it, 100%. That's the mission Oriko's given us, yes? I know she doesn't speak entirely in absolutes here, though.
What if we just tell Homura the truth?
"Homura, you know how badly Mami and the others tend to take the Witchbomb? Well, there's another piece of information, that even you don't know about, and it's even worse. If you learn it, you'll react... badly.
"I'm afraid that Kyubey will tell it to you, with us being so close to victory. So, if Kyubey shows up, could you just not listen to anything he says? I don't mean ignore it, I mean timestop, shoot any of his bodies you can see, and then take yourself and anyone with you to somewhere else."
And it might be good to work on the memory field thing that Asunaro had? If we could find a way to just set it so that Homura couldn't remember things that Kyubey says, she could still shoot him when he pops up near Madoka, without having to worry about being potentialbombed.
What if we just tell Homura the truth?
"Homura, you know how badly Mami and the others tend to take the Witchbomb? Well, there's another piece of information, that even you don't know about, and it's even worse. If you learn it, you'll react... badly.
"I'm afraid that Kyubey will tell it to you, with us being so close to victory. So, if Kyubey shows up, could you just not listen to anything he says? I don't mean ignore it, I mean timestop, shoot any of his bodies you can see, and then take yourself and anyone with you to somewhere else."
And it might be good to work on the memory field thing that Asunaro had? If we could find a way to just set it so that Homura couldn't remember things that Kyubey says, she could still shoot him when he pops up near Madoka, without having to worry about being potentialbombed.
I've had the unnecessarily dramatic version of this in my head for a few days:
"How do you deal with all the secrets? Just... keeping things from your friends?"
"You're worried about Mami?"
*Looks at Homura* "Always."
"... And... Sayaka?"
*Keeps looking at Homura* *Nods*
"... Me?"
*Sniffs* *Nods*
That aside, I'd be scared that knowing the secret exists might lead Homura to try to find it, even knowing it would hurt her.
(... Isn't that kind of a point in Rebellion? I guess it might be different now, if we can be there as someone Homura trusts enough...)
Some people raised concerns that using the memory device is too close to mind control, but if, as you say, we could talk, and Homura would agree to it, then perhaps that could work.
My only other idea to deal with the Potentialbomb is to bargain with KB, so...
Doesn't the whole thing about 4D means you can almost fit an absurd amount of 3D objects within in? If I'm trying to think about the analogy of stacking vast quantities of perfectly flat 2D objects inside a box. I think 100m should be enough to cover a house, though I'm not exactly clear on how big Oriko's mansion is, exactly. 200m diameter does sound a bit unreasonably large though, even for Mitakahara, so we shouldn't have to worry about half of the house collapsing when we only vacuumed up half of it.
On the other hand, its a perfectly usable house, we can always use it for other things besides sticking it in our infinity pocket for the lols. Emergency housing, storage, liquid assets, etc.
It's a sound enough idea, at least if our 4D space actually IS 4D.
But you have to wonder what people are gonna think when the mansion belonging to that infamous dude up and disappears overnight, no? Mitakihara has some weird happenings but that stretches conventional ignorance just a bit
It's a sound enough idea, at least if our 4D space actually IS 4D.
But you have to wonder what people are gonna think when the mansion belonging to that infamous dude up and disappears overnight, no? Mitakihara has some weird happenings but that stretches conventional ignorance just a bit
I'd argue that anyone who doesn't would have to have some serious psychological problems (which, to be fair, both Mami and Homura do have).
Person A: "Hey, something absolutely horrible has happened but you don't need to worry, I won't tell you what."
Person B: "Oh, so everything's alright then."
But yet this is the task that's been shoved into our hands.
