Okay, I fully intend to go through everything but, in the interest of moving forwards and because I've already spent 10-20-something hours on this revision, I'm going to start with the first section of responses and just edit and as we do still have work to do, the responses and edits promised.
I will be keeping to the summaries provided me by other posts. Its unfortunate that I cannot review this part of the post in question directly, but I do have my limits in what I can bear.
I hope that these summaries and my responses and attendant rewrites are sufficient to address the concerns raised.
Stripping out the insults, Veb points out that this isn't the time for experimenting with new capabilities, but using the capabilities we already have in our limited time window to achieve mental defenses. The overarching goal right now is achieving mental defenses, and bringing in enchanted grief is just distracting and diluting our attempts. They just want to save time and have Sayaka use mind reading. They also feel that it's an attempt to bypass previously won votes by voting to change what we're focusing on (and where their anger is likely stemming from).
As far as the issue of previously decided votes, my own understanding, and I've been looking over the tally history to confirm, the last winning science vote in full was
this one here:
[X] Enchantment topics:
[x] Ask Mami for advice on how to progress everyone's training. She's the most experienced.
[x] As a whole group, focus on potential defensive options.
[x] Potentially:
-[x] Suggest Sayaka try copying enchantments.
-[X] Offer to share your enchantment booster.
-[X] Check if emotionally charged magic affects enchantments made with it.
--[X] Try making emotion-enchanted grief.
-[X] Try recycling enchanted grief.
Given that the original vote references attempts to work with greifhax as well as enchantment, I feel this is a good time and manner to achieve that end, that is efficient with the effort involved.
While it's true that this is stuff I had been hankering to get to, I would not have gone through with it if I had not thought it fit within those boundaries, were it not due to Hitomi and Homura suggesting the idea in the story itself, and were it not for the ideas in question bridging a possible problem (Mind reading being potentially akin to soul gem analysis and reaching too far), and if I did not think now was the time for further testing the prototypes we had already attained. (A note of reasoning which I will explain in greater detail in the vote itself: Short version: The big criticisms of enchantments we've seen is people's ability to test them.)
I will consider how to rephrase my vote to better capture those intention and how to revise it to remove the "plebbing" side issue here in favor of focus, but I do believe this path is true to the intentions we agreed on a month ago.
Veb thinks this will overwhelm Homura, who is already trying to process something pretty far from her normal experiences.
Noted and considered. I'd been deferring to Kaizuki here, but that's no longer an option. Will examine in detail.
Veb doesn't want to drop the politics discussion.
I'm going to consider this at length, and was able to read through the original post here. This section is a large part of why I'm cutting the revision.
They don't want to interrupt during dinner, because they feel we're not close enough yet to them to do so.
Noted and considered. I don't think it will be overly rude but I'll deliberate on it at length as I continue revisions.
Regardless...
[X] Dinner!
-[X] Have fun coming up with potential enchantments
and potential tests for those enchantments, you can hax in anything you can think of after all, even if it takes time. Allow sillyness.
Bemoan that you don't have a devil here so you can't ask for her help in this. A Mara type would great for testing defenses against illusions.
[X] Look for opportunities to give Homura and Madoka time to themselves.
Culled: Mami and Homura talk: Saving for a later vote. I think this is a thing needs thorough and proper attention. The core idea I'm reading here basically seems to be another repeat of the Sayakatalk we had during the trip to Russia, except regarding and including Mami. And I think that's a whole segment in its own right.
[X] Addendum to science vote: expansion of intention and specifics:
-[x] Prepare emotion enchanted grief to try Homura's mind reading suggestion as you have time and aren't occupied by other concerns.
--[x] Focus on emotions and desires akin to mind-reading: Your desire to understand yourself and others, to communicate, and to help them understand each other, and the times where you have succeeded in getting through across those divides. Finally getting your feelings through to Mami. Giving Homura insight into Sayaka. Watching Sayaka's understanding of and relationship with Homura develop over the weeks.
-[x] Try to recycle the enchanted grief after your done with it, using the edge of your range to reset it. Save some for later if you can.
--[x] If recycling worked, run through the best of the proposed tests.
Revisions:
Yes, the emotion enchanted bit is "new" here, having been added. (I'll try to listen to Veb, since he's one who originally proposed the idea, even if we're on the outs, and even if I intend to argue for rest of the section as a whole.) Regardless, I think it has potential to help here so in light of that I think I'm obligated to err on the side of the original vote, especially after going back and reviewing everything.
One of the reasons I'm even now going through with this is that, reading back through the enchantment section, all commentary makes it pretty clear that we need a
range of tests for effectiveness just as much as a range of solutions. One of the
criticisms during the updates of Umika's ofuda is that the enchantments are called into question by the limited number of ways the Saints had to test them out.
To quote the section:
"We might want to try enchanting our own protections," Mami says, after a moment. "I'm sure that Miss Misaki's magic protects well against her own magic, but I'm concerned that it might not be sufficiently broad spectrum."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that," you agree. "The issue is that we don't have anything to test against, either, other than Sayaka's copy of Umika's powers, and she doesn't have Umika's experience with them."
"That's the problem," Mami agrees with a faint sigh. "To that end, we might be better served each trying to do something - our individual approaches might let us better cover a wider range of potential effects. It's not guaranteed, but unless we find someone who is a mind-mage, we don't have much choice."
Yes, a range of devices is proposed, but its still suggested precisely because we can't be thorough in our testing. Perhaps we could get around that with a time-tested broad spectrum defense like WPN's
Helplessness, (which...
may be possible for us? ) but failing that I think the focus should be on thoroughly testing things above implementing more solutions.
This is also the reason for brainstorming
tests and, not just
enchantments.
I'm aiming to word this so that the enchantment of grief itself can happen amidst other activity, if possible, since it historically hasn't cost us too much in terms of attention, even if it is time consuming.
Culled: Plebbing issue (saving for a later vote)
[X] Internet vote in abeyance.
All I'm gonna say here is that I like this further forwards: Allows us to keep the tabs open for a while after dinner so we don't leave in 15 minutes again.
[X] Talk scheduling: How would everyone feel about spending Saturdays hanging out and/or doing administrative stuff as needed and Sundays taking trips outside the city for cleansing, recruitment, etc?
-[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] Refine the "be kind to each other" statement - you do recognize that a functioning justice system is ultimately a threat of force; you have been completely explicit about your intent to drop the hammer on people that abuse Clear Seeds.
--[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] You'd just prefer less "20 angry magical girls at your front door" and more "modern policing organization".
To be considered at length. (I need to go back, check the Tokyo updates and see how this interacts with what they said there.
On the face of it, I'm not sure the vote here actually addresses the political point at play, given that the last update talked about the issue being
recruitment, not
justice, but that's an argument I need to get rolling.)
[X] Shiogama girls: Check in, ask how they've been. Ask if they're interested in private discussion tomorrow afternoon or being introduced to other groups around town sometime afternoon.
I'm not unfavorable to this: I don't think but I'll consider how and whether to revise this, especially if the number of other points everything else ends up growing.
[x] After Madoka and Sayaka leave:
-[x] Observe that tonight might be the happiest you've ever seen Madoka.
--[x] Madoka has self-worth issues, right? She needs to feel like she's contributing, and she doubts herself and needs friends to support her and convince her that she's doing okay... And, it seems like Homura being around has been helping with it too. It's good to see.
---[X] Let/cue Mami to comment on that, too. (Establish that this isn't just something you're coming up with)
----[X] Even Sayaka seems to think so -- she spent most of tonight giving Homura opportunities to be around Madoka.
Unchanged, so far. TBD.
Right now I feel that I just really need to get the argument about the testing and science section out and running.
] psychoanalyze everyone, including ourself
