I'd guess at some point an alliance of groups actually was powerful enough to fix the territories, presumably after a period of warfare when they defeated their opponents. Now lots of new magical girls have trickled in to replace the fallen and they'd like to change things, but they can never get enough groups to agree on exactly how the new layout should look, so the old arrangement stays.
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
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- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ok I think we need to plan for no less than 3 more trips to Tokyo.
Trip one: The witchbomb tour. Bring Homura, leave Sayaka and Mami at home. Go to the disruptive groups in particular, address their concerns.
Trip Two: Day trip to Toyko. Bring whole crew, including Madoka and Hitomi. Take in the sights. Talk to the non-disruptive groups unofficially. *IF* we are confident in our anti-memory manipulation meet leader girl, otherwise also make a trip 2.5 with a more limited secure cast.
Trip Three: Official visit. Maximum paranoia about memory manipulation. Madoka and Hitomi only attend via skype video link. Homura stays home just in case we get memoryfucked.
Trip one: The witchbomb tour. Bring Homura, leave Sayaka and Mami at home. Go to the disruptive groups in particular, address their concerns.
Trip Two: Day trip to Toyko. Bring whole crew, including Madoka and Hitomi. Take in the sights. Talk to the non-disruptive groups unofficially. *IF* we are confident in our anti-memory manipulation meet leader girl, otherwise also make a trip 2.5 with a more limited secure cast.
Trip Three: Official visit. Maximum paranoia about memory manipulation. Madoka and Hitomi only attend via skype video link. Homura stays home just in case we get memoryfucked.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
I agree that we'll probably need to make multiple trips, but I'm not particularly sold on your order.
If Sabrina first and foremost meets with the belligerent and disruptive (aka Witchbombed) groups, as opposed to the actual leaders... that looks a lot like she's planning a coup against the Council.
I think that we need to meet with Chiyoda first - as the nominal rulers of Tokyo, respecting their authority will be a strong showing of Sabrina's willingness to cooperate with the Council.
On a more practical level, Chiyoda is almost certainly the best-informed group when it comes to the politics of the rest of Tokyo, which would let us better tailor future approaches.
That said, we'll definitely need some memory protection enchantments before we meet with them. Those shouldn't be particularly difficult to obtain, though - even if Mami ends up not quite being able to replicate a Grief-boosted enchantment we make, we can just ask the Pleiades to help us.
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Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We should probably ask them anyway.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Hmm. Something to discuss for this vote is how involved we should let Madoka and Hitomi be when it comes to Tokyo politics planning. Personally, I'd like to push for "as much as possible", since it'll help Madoka feel like she's contributing (and she actually will be contributing). But, of course, we'll need to convince Homura of that.
That said, the memory fuckery does prove the point that meguca politics is dangerous. While I'm all for using Madoka and Hitomi as sounding boards and political strategists, I definitely wouldn't support actually sending them on any kind of "on-site" trips.
That said, the memory fuckery does prove the point that meguca politics is dangerous. While I'm all for using Madoka and Hitomi as sounding boards and political strategists, I definitely wouldn't support actually sending them on any kind of "on-site" trips.
blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmm, could we also maybe talk to Hitomi's mom about the negotiations? Business and meguca politics are far from identical but there will be some commonalities. And she might help us develop a good, nonmagical teleconferencing system to allow them to participate without being in danger.
owwn -> own
Minor typo.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
Science idea: See if Hitomi could use Sayaka's clone spell -without becoming a Magical Girl. Also see if Multiple girls could use the same spell without the previous users clones being dispelled first.
If this is feasible, then Hitomi and Madoka could come with us on the official visit -without missing School!
If this is feasible, then Hitomi and Madoka could come with us on the official visit -without missing School!
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Guys, we can 100% ask Umika for help with anti-memory magic Enchanting, if we need to. She'll do it for free and it's literally her exact specialty.
We already can make memory resistance enchantments.
What we do is we get a bracelet and ask Kirika to enchant it with antimagic, and make exceptions for our friends' magic.
Then we wear the bracelet at all times and it makes us invulnerable to magic.
We really should get these for everyone.
- Location
- Illinois
Everyone here is approaching this wrongly. Start by asking who the anomaly benefits, and start asking that by looking at what the anomaly does.
The fixed borders have one major, major effect: they cut down on the potential for warfare. Fixed borders largely preclude border incidents. They largely preclude expansionism. They largely preclude all sorts of things that would otherwise be constant issues -- which are constant issues elsewhere -- by locking them away behind the barrier of collective violence, and in exchange they produce other problems, i.e. seed shortage, in manners that may well leave the victims with no recourse.
Who would have wanted this?
Firstly, probably whoever might have founded the entire thing in the first place. If you're going to come together in a council like this, it's going to be about preventing war.
Secondly, perhaps more importantly, perhaps less importantly... Kyubey. This is unmistakably a setup that favors Kyubey. Kyubey doesn't stand to gain from war in Tokyo, and he absolutely stands to gain from consigning magical girls to witching from overpopulation rather than dying from fights.
So, the immediate hypothesis? Kyubey (directly, indirectly, who knows?) and a lot of people with good intentions were responsible for the fixed borders.
More or less. You do indeed need a critical mass of people willing to actually talk with one another to achieve something like the council in the first place, but how that was achieved is an open question. At some point there must have been someone(s) who went, "let's stop killing each other," but how much of that was natural and how much of it was selective manipulation and contracting by Kyubey to prevent mass civilian casualties in an area with as many potential future contractees as Tokyo, much less what particular scenario it eventuated through -- I would hesitate to guess at any given one, considering the amount of intelligent interference going on, and considering how many potential scenarios I can think of off the top of my head. Really, we may never know, although the incubator almost certainly does -- it's easier to say why it remains, for which there are all kinds of factors, from nobody wanting to set the precedent of allowing the loss of territory, to balance-of-power politics, to Incubator manipulation to preserve a system favorable to it, to outright inertia, to the likelihood of a change of borders producing war, to nobody wanting to be seen screwing over another group of teenage girls (social influence, people), to natural selection going against girls dumb enough to make enough enemies that a majority of the council would want to screw them over, to... Yeah.
Anyway, I'm still leaving a lot out here. Things like, say, arguing that having borders at all is basically inevitable. But, well, yeah.
...
Anyway, continuing on. Actions for now...
First off, I want to see our friends kept a bit further in the loop of our thinking here, partly because it constitutes part of informed decision making, partly because we should be doing this.
[X] Sayaka
-[X] You're fairly sure you understand at least some of what happened with the Meiji group, but the details are up in the air, and everything to do with it is, well, cloak-and-dagger. As for why they're opposing engaging you, though...
Secondly, this?
This is inefficient and involves several kinds of resource misuse.
First, as Aura mentions, Umika. But secondly, it rests on a longrunning premise of having us deal with the entire "mental magic" issue.
... A dumb longrunning premise.
[X] Mami, by telepathy
-[X] Say hi, make sure she's not too busy
--[X] Ask about defending/defeating mental magics in general. Between Rionna and now Tokyo, you'd been thinking about some kind of defense for that sort of thing, and if it were possible through enchantment...
Mami is literally our girlfriend, but we are circling this topic with:
- No specific knowledge
- No first-hand information (1)
- No second-hand information
- Assumption that mental effects mean our friends are higher risk than we are
- 6,000 pages of speculation.
First, we ask Mami about this matter in general. Second, if it turns out that our actual situation isn't "Yeah, Mami can just magic these kinds of effects away because she's a badass like that," which, I mean, based on observed events Mami has previously encountered and defeated mental magics, so, uh, yeah, then we inquire into permanent, non-grief-based defenses which we can then summarily provide to everyone we care about so that they have access to this stuff 24/7 without our presence and we don't have to have conversations with Sayaka about whether or not an opponent could modify her memory through her clones, and we don't have Mami worrying quite as much about our willingness to put ourselves in lines of fire we wouldn't want others in.
Not to mention they won't smell like grief.
(1) -- we have no idea what happened with Rionna.
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blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eh, I don't think he can do the same to megucas. Otherwise he would have used in to manipulate the girls in one of the works set in the PMMM universe we've seen but he never has.
- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It could be that it can, but doesn't due to whatever alien code of ethics it has. Then again, it was stated by Nadia that there are plenty of girls who've geared up with mental defenses, one way or another. If they know the truth about Kyubey (or at least part of it), I bet that said mental defenses can block memory modification no matter the source.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Yea, it's honestly best to assume it only works on muggles and that his memory editing is like the MIB Flash; it erases memories of 'meguca' and lets the subject fill in the blanks, maybe with a suggestion, but doesn't let Kyubey actually see them.
- Location
- USA, Midworld world line
It is time for Homura to unclench - the world is full of Magical trouble, this is the sort where a mortal girl can weigh in on her own terms. We just need to keep our team safe using wit and SCIENCE. Integration is the path I like.
...and it is about the respect dynamic we want our moms to build.
The "territories in Tokyo are fixed" concept would be a required debate - if there wasn't a different future to aim for? Let's look at the groups more from a personal dynamics bias. It is our interest to increase their resources, and against our interest to incentive fighting.
These are shorter term behaviors, not geopolitical principles. Fighting here is mostly decided by individuals, not organizations or boundaries. We need to get the social right. Further, it seems that girls in Tokyo are in a state of proto-government without us. As long as that can lead to acceptable lives for them, it is easier to go with it.
Accepting their existing structures, as one broad strategy, doesn't tell us much about our goals for the individuals we are now meeting. We have options either supportive, or revolutionary. And there is a simultaneous third choice, where some girls decide that leaving Tokyo is better. This might buy them a huge stability boost. I think we need to get an immigration team to have interview panels done for us, so we will know better how to handle the circumstances of the newbies. Or not-so-newbies. In the same circumstance, or at a much older age, I would easily move to another city for the kind of incentive Sabrina is waving around. The only choice would be when to go, now or immediately.
As a shortest path, first iteration way to end starvation in Tokyo we could imagine two required steps.
Fist, we need visibility, a way to know for certain if victimization, exploitation or other misuse less that military assault is present.
Second step, is to make Chiyoda group do all the hard work. Which they will, because it is easier than the work they were already doing wrong.
We send only one Clear Seed to Tokyo, and it is their common property. They figure out how to rotate and distribute access, and as a supplement to normal hunting everyone will be out of starvation. It will buy us time to work on restoring a social order more suited to the level of wealth we aim to distribute. If they fall off the path, our power will then be brought in for regime change. This is already the unspoken position in their minds, after Sendai.
Finding the irrational Akkiko-types is a required action/
As for the aims of such a government, I think trying to get them to develop way more oversight of potential girls is job one. The other concept for them is to "do the things that make sense at scale." One such project that could happen sooner in Tokyo is a training organization for Magical Girls. Not the fighting side, the "living and feeling in a magical existence" topic needs to be developed. A Selfish existence is the street-common sort of Magical Girl life, due to the low investment required to form a closed system of thought. The closed system measurement provides one a stability well to hold away spirals. With more effort, lifestyles centered around the love of others becomes effective, see under Pleiades. Finding out for oneself the way to preserve Hope would be fine, except the first time a Magical Girl looses heart is normally the last. Training can close that loophole. The point is to raise a girl up with a degree of self-knowledge as well as relevant life experience.
A great family and friends will do this, by definition. Our challenge is to add "learning sophisticated emotional intelligence" as an option for girls selected by Kyuubey who never had that chance. As we have a large pool of survivors in Tokyo, I want their energy to research the way to execute this approach to the greater good. The memory magic won't last forever, and we have dozens of girls on a countdown to realizing the Witchbomb already. That number will grow, and we can save them using the time to prepare them first.
Next priorities - Secure Comms - because, diplomacy! And hand in hand, get our mind protected. It seems the bottom line of the pro-league is now defined in Japan. Those who are easily Ghost Hacked are "so pathetic", if I may paraphrase.
I could not agree more. Do this, please. We went the Mami route, progressing through Masters teaching is right. We can certainly armor ourselves and our friends with magic from Umika, Niko, Sayaka and Kirika. Mami figured out some technique different from those, and it has a track record. Gotta try for it.
We need to charge up more enchanted Grief - wait, why aren't we doing this while deadheading back to Mitakihara?
Meiji Group might require our immediate attention - problems are currently dealt with by forgetting all about them in Tokyo. Deaths or starvation may go unreported, in any manner that is convenient for public order? We have been warned this time - unreliable perception is here.
Proffering a point of logical test. Thoroughly manipulating our knowledge of Kyuubey to extract understanding is important. Kyuubey (should, or should not) have already, long ago, decided to re-locate human colonies to many other planets, as the best way to run the farming operation. Investing in second rate livestock is not 'optimum.' Running out of humans for no reason is not 'optimum.' Is Kyuubey not an optimizing intelligence?
In analogy, our IRL dominant livestock isn't the animal that tastes best, it is the breed that is most profitable. More farmers want to grow that type. And they want to do it next season as well.
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AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
We have absolutely no reason to think humans are optimal compared to any other aliens he's harvesting. Even if we were, he doesn't seem to be able to interfere on such a large scale, and deliberately avoids fucking with human affairs; and there's a damn good reason for that.
Karmic Destiny is directly proportional to how much influence a human's destiny has on the destiny of other humans, and how much agency they have over it. As soon as Kyubey starts actually fucking about with human farming and guiding our destiny, even if it's just to seed us on other planets, he might slash the karmic potential low enough that it falls under the threshold of being profitable.
- Location
- Somewhere up the tree
we might do well to try to 'prime' other magical girls for the witch bomb by talking to them about other topics or asking them questions tangentialy related so that when the bomb drops it isn't such a mind shattering revelation to deal with. give them a framework to put it within so they can cope better with it.
this sort of priming mighty might talking and discussing the that kyubey doesnt hide the fact that witches are "born from despair" and thinking about what kind of tragedies or whatever might have spawned certain witches, although a that might be bit to close, or maybe just bringing up things like the heartless.
that as well as trying to make sure that people find out about the witch witch bomb in less severe circumstances. something s tells me that having a friend witch out is a lot more traumatizing and heartbreaking than slowly figuring it out on your own.
to be kyubey said the reason humanity was chosen was because the aamount of emotional energy produced by a human is more than the energy spent on said human, he didnt say anything about efficiency
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
And yet Kyubey limits his contracts to an extremely specific demographic. Not just teenage girls, but teenage girls of a specific threshold of karmic potential and emotional extremes.
There's a point where investing in a Magical Girl becomes profitable, which means it's possible for Kyubey to work at a loss. Otherwise he'd literally just contract every human who would say yes.
- Location
- Somewhere up the tree
but theres another reason why he doesnt every human who might say yes. again population dynamics
its in the Lotka Volterra equation
there always needs to be a much larger porportion of prey animals in order for a predator population to survive. otherwise the predators will consume all the prey, and then die off themselves
similarly there needs to be a much larger number of witches than magical girls, and a much larger number of humans than witches. if this is not true then there would be a mass die off of all of humanity and kyubey would lose his "farm" in its entirety
- Location
- Illinois
Please use capitalization.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
If it really was "population dynamics", Kyuubey would pick young males or he would pick the elderly if karmic potential being the impact you will make isn't a factor, as the reproduction bottleneck is strongly located on the population of young women.
We also know that if the payoff is big enough, Kyuubey absolutely will contract in a way that destroys humanity, because he did it in the series.