- Location
- United States
[X] Relaxed. Focus more on getting to know these girls than on the Witch hunting.
Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You
Olivebirdy
mook.
[X] Relaxed. Focus more on getting to know these girls than on the Witch hunting.
- Location
- Here
Wow, things happened last night!
So, look, the dynamic of witch hunting is different for newbie and senior meguca. Senior meguca know how to stay alive, so as long as you're not facing an unusually strong witch it can be the magical girl analogue of taking a business partner golfing or "doing lunch". The newbies are bright-eyed babes with heads full of combat instincts that don't actually do anything for their judgement.
We don't want to randomly lose a newbie or two. We want to show the newbies we care about them living to old age (ideally as part of the team, but priorities in order).
Now, in my mind, a large part of that is actually a statement of doctrine; we're an organized group, we're allowed to have doctrine. Basically, meguca shouldn't hunt alone. Actually searching for witches separately is fine, but once you go into the barrier, pairs always. And if you encounter a strong witch, stop and get a third meguca or a heavy. To be honest, this even goes for veterans; think of Himari and Haruka, even though Haruka isn't actually meguca. Because even veterans can have an off day or a moment of distraction, and a buddy can give you a second chance.
Now, this general focus on their survival, and especially long-term survival, literally from day one? That sets a tone for our relationship with the newbies. They're young and impressionable, and teaching them "this is dangerous, take it seriously, but you can perfectly well make the long run with the power of friendship" is a very good message, in my mind. Especially teaching them to survive by working together. We ought to be the change we want to see in the world, you know?
Anyway, now to implement the above:
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
So, look, the dynamic of witch hunting is different for newbie and senior meguca. Senior meguca know how to stay alive, so as long as you're not facing an unusually strong witch it can be the magical girl analogue of taking a business partner golfing or "doing lunch". The newbies are bright-eyed babes with heads full of combat instincts that don't actually do anything for their judgement.
We don't want to randomly lose a newbie or two. We want to show the newbies we care about them living to old age (ideally as part of the team, but priorities in order).
Now, in my mind, a large part of that is actually a statement of doctrine; we're an organized group, we're allowed to have doctrine. Basically, meguca shouldn't hunt alone. Actually searching for witches separately is fine, but once you go into the barrier, pairs always. And if you encounter a strong witch, stop and get a third meguca or a heavy. To be honest, this even goes for veterans; think of Himari and Haruka, even though Haruka isn't actually meguca. Because even veterans can have an off day or a moment of distraction, and a buddy can give you a second chance.
Now, this general focus on their survival, and especially long-term survival, literally from day one? That sets a tone for our relationship with the newbies. They're young and impressionable, and teaching them "this is dangerous, take it seriously, but you can perfectly well make the long run with the power of friendship" is a very good message, in my mind. Especially teaching them to survive by working together. We ought to be the change we want to see in the world, you know?
Anyway, now to implement the above:
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Sounds good.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Sounds good.
- Location
- Head in the clouds
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
I like this - especially as Maiko does know what she's doing, we're just here to help the veteran herd cats and to fine tune emotional impacts.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
I like this - especially as Maiko does know what she's doing, we're just here to help the veteran herd cats and to fine tune emotional impacts.
- Location
- United States
I'm fairly certain this is already what everyone's going for and just aren't explicitly laying it out, but I think the ideal scenario would be Maiko handling the serious business and information, while Yui is the "good cop" who's providing all of these presumably lonely and uncertain girls a new friendship and camaraderie, the two faces of Magical Girl life, essentially. With interruptions to demonstrate how powerful Yui is by one-shotting witches, to subtly understate why she's the leader.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Genial Precis
This is pretty much exactly how I want to present.
This is pretty much exactly how I want to present.
- Location
- Can't read map
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Though originally meant to add Fast too, see multiple witches to show this one training us not enough due variety of witches.
But normal people don't die of this?
If not too much grief is pushed into person, I guess it might dissipate over time.
Then question of how much can be pushed on soul that girl benefits yet not cause receiver suicidal or just too depressed, along magical side effects if any... Maybe beacon for witches to eat?
Then question on what ever Kyubey does with grief in filled up seed once it's given to him. Does he need this or what?
Probably not project for Yui to start experimenting with, but if we do in far future...
Start on animals... *looks at albino hybrid of rabbit cat inside cage*
If medical it can be healed. Question is how suspicious everyone will be if healed.
Was damage meant to be permanent or need long healing.
There is also Yui hitting own hand into palm, spitting on ground and providing beat down on cute girl like some bully...
Instead of... you know... protecting and hugging.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Though originally meant to add Fast too, see multiple witches to show this one training us not enough due variety of witches.
Also find witch more appropriate for newbies instead of taking first we find which turns out to be heavyweight.
"Sister... I though it fashion for club in my school, so how did you get it? Also... Tutor you are setting me up..."
This would probably go against Yui's wish of protection, be hero, also morally questionable...
But normal people don't die of this?
If not too much grief is pushed into person, I guess it might dissipate over time.
Then question of how much can be pushed on soul that girl benefits yet not cause receiver suicidal or just too depressed, along magical side effects if any... Maybe beacon for witches to eat?
Then question on what ever Kyubey does with grief in filled up seed once it's given to him. Does he need this or what?
Probably not project for Yui to start experimenting with, but if we do in far future...
Start on animals... *looks at albino hybrid of rabbit cat inside cage*
Homura heals her heart condition one she starts being serious.
If medical it can be healed. Question is how suspicious everyone will be if healed.
Was damage meant to be permanent or need long healing.
I thought it's just cost of healing, but everyone mentioning Capacity being lowered...
There is also Yui hitting own hand into palm, spitting on ground and providing beat down on cute girl like some bully...
Instead of... you know... protecting and hugging.
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Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, she's already beaten up a bunch of meguca for threatening innocents, so I doubt that's it. There's no real functional difference between us stopping the Nerima girls from taking over and fighting "No talk me I'm angy" Girl to defend "Don't hug me I'm scared" Girl, as far as affecting our ability to use our wish goes.
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
- Location
- Here
Nah, that was just some friendly pugilism between friends. The magic of friendship transcends the medium of exchange. Muhou clearly took it in the spirit it was intended.
I'd like to expand a bit on my considerations in teaching the newbies:
- Yui is a... what was that great metaphor, busy like a queen bee rebuilding the kicked-over hive... busy bee, yes. Any strategy that revolves around her personally giving lots of attention to every newbie will just flood her and she'll have to start dropping things.
- Maiko has probably seen a lot of ways newbies get killed super early, and knows what to do to head that off.
- In addition, there are actually quite a few experienced meguca, and while they may have other problematic tendencies that we want to redirect, the talent pool for teaching newbies is actually rather deep, provided we connect newbies with vets.
- The meguca package has good firmware for fighting out of the box; as long as they use good judgement and don't back themselves into a corner against a strong witch, they'll usually do OK (and this outing is a good chance to identify anyone who doesn't fit that pattern).
- What's the plan for their next witch hunt?
The part that isn't written into my vote is that I would like the newbies to mix with the veterans in this "never hunt alone" scheme. On one end, to get the veterans used to a more collaborative existence, and on the other end to get the newbies more up to speed and also used to being part of a team. I think that part of it might be handled better later, though I might be persuaded to move in that direction.
"Start as you mean to continue," Yui is already clearly leadership material, from the perspective of these girls, I think. After all, she just had a bunch of meguca comb the city looking for these girls, and arrange a meeting in which she shows them the ropes. Everyone clearly respects her, and looks to her to set the direction. And the direction she sets is to safeguard their future and give them a support network. That her words are backed by Love and Justice will become clear enough without any particular need of showboating.
If they encounter a super-dangerous witch due to random encounter though, yeah, apply Tiniest Big Stick as needed, for sure.
Regarding the spooky emotion fragment/dolls and mysterious eyes in the sky and randomly misplacing slivers of Yui's soul, thanks everyone for the theorycrafting on the subject. For myself, I feel sort of out of depth on the subject, and it's great to see that it worked out so well on the last update.
- Location
- Plato's Cave
[X] Educational. Let Maiko take the lead, and help her coach the newbies through combat.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
-[X] Emphasize that they work together, either fighting together or tag-teaming and watching each other's back
[X] Particular guidance:
-[X] Never fight alone. One person is much more vulnerable to things suddenly going wrong.
-[X] Help the newbies schedule paired witch hunting
-[X] Call for backup if the witch is unusually strong. There's nothing to prove.
Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
Eventually. Yui's maybe a bit impatient, y'know?
Honestly, as entertaining as that manga is its biggest strength is that it milks its jokes, moves on, and then wraps up to a reasonably satisfying conclusion once it's mostly exhausted the comedic potential of the whole "Akina is in denial about her feelings and tsundere toward her hobbies" premise.
Injecting even a fraction of a typical Soul Gem's capacity worth of corruption into a living being basically inflicts them with a permanent and severe case of clinical depression. Maiko has actually tested this, but the long-term effects are unknown because she obviously wasn't about to leave someone in that state and removed the corruption a short while later.
Well, innate magical healing is guided by the meguca's self-image, which is why e.g. piercings don't heal over. Hana has been mute for essentially her entire life and so, as much as she wants to be able to communicate, her perception of herself doesn't really include that as a possibility.
It is possible for her to learn how to heal her voice and thus be able to speak, but it would require a fair amount of time and effort to figure out and, yes, would complicate her life immensely on account of needing to explain to her family. Also, she'd actually need to, y'know, learn how to speak. Telepathy works by imagining a sound and sharing that sensation, which works fine for Hana because she's not deaf, but she has zero experience on making vocal sounds the mundane way.
Yeah, pretty much. Defending someone from an aggressor is more than enough to justify, y'know, giving said aggressor the fight they clearly want, plus the fact that it was more a very enthusiastic and hot-tempered sparring session than an actual fight.
Olivebirdy
mook.
Educational with a focus on survival is probably the most responsible way to go about things, but it's not as fun as getting to know the new and interesting characters.
I'd like to stick with Relaxed, since this is the first time we're meeting them, it's not very friendly to play this like an orientation. We can focus on serious educational Witch-hunting next time.
I'd like to stick with Relaxed, since this is the first time we're meeting them, it's not very friendly to play this like an orientation. We can focus on serious educational Witch-hunting next time.
- Location
- Can't read map
Well that's highly unfortunate. Was hopping for more tolerance similar to girl able to stand it before corruption starts affecting her. With spreading corruption on multiple people's for least damage to them and faster degradation of it.
And evaporating on its own due normals souls not being changed by incubators. Or iirc mentions on one thread, apparently Sayaka in psp game can have her gem slowly cleanse on its own when in path when all goes her way.
It would still leave Yui unwilling to use it, mostly for darker or villain mg depending how much they care on not hurting others.
But no, it's full nuclear waste in strength and concentration. Madoka is only hope to find way out of death by violence or witchood.
... The best Maiko found is being able to overcharge seed with more corruption before it hatches?
Then it goes to incubator or she found a way for them to cleanse very slowly?
Possible by using up corruption to power up something?
As incubators must be doing something with seeds and possibly corruption inside to push back entropy.
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DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
You're right that it's not very friendly, but I don't know if friendship is the priority we need right now. What we need is to lock them in as signing on with us, so that we build our numbers, don't have rogue elements, and set the groundwork for them spending a lot of time with other members of our group in circumstances likely to create and strengthen future friendships.
From the perspective of these girls, with the education-heavy approach we want something like this to happen:
- They got magical powers!
- Within a couple days, other more experienced girls with magical powers showed up and told them they needed training and guidance.
- An orientation/training session was held with a bunch of more experienced girls and also some of their new peers, where they met a bunch of people and learned things
- They were told that they should be officially joining a city-wide organization of magical girls, which located them and gave them their orientation, and they really had no reason to say no
An educational approach makes our recruitment strategy present us as basically one of those organizations that they should join because of course they should, why would they want to be anti-social rebels against The Way Things Are Done when we're friendly, professional, and nice? Even if they aren't really into our pitch about citywide protection and defense from inexplicably hostile outside powers, they should be signing up and giving us their names, contact information, home addresses, and attending our mandatory monthly meetings because you can't escape from The Man (note: Yui is The Man). We exist to help and coordinate people just like them, and they need to maintain their good standing to keep their Nagamioka Magical Girl-ing license.
After they're in, they build friendships with their assigned patrol partners, during meetings called by the higher-ups (note: Yui is the highest up), and because they are now in a social situation where their only pool of peers who can actually understand them properly are the other girls in our organization so they're alienated from everyone else.
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- Location
- Plato's Cave
Your phrasing sounds remarkably like we're starting a cult.
Just saying.
-goes to look it up-
Oh I remember finding this a while ago. I didn't look at more than the first couple of chapters, but maybe I'll take another go at it. It looked pretty fun.
Living beings in general, and not humans specifically? What happens to the Grief after they die?
Would it be possible to, for example, transfer grief to lab mice and then mercy-kill them? If yes, how far can you push that? What if you got an ant farm or several? A bunch of yoghurt cultures?
I'm wondering why Maiko had to experiment grief transfer on humans as live ocotopi can be bought online, they have clear intelligence on the level of 5 year olds, and if it does or doesn't work out you can always have a takoyaki party.
Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
It's an intentional aspect of how Soul Gems are created. More stored corruption means a bigger payout when they become a witch, after all.
There are secondary effects as well; meguca tend to be both easier to influence emotionally but also more able to manage their emotions, because that makes their magic more effective. Of particular relevance is that a mundane person wouldn't feel Kyoufu's aura as strongly as Yui did, but would be completely helpless against what they do experience and unable to distinguish its influence from their own thoughts.
Maiko has a device in her apartment that has two major functions: It generates a very potent stasis field that suppresses awareness inside a disembodied soul, which makes it theoretically possible to "overfill" a Grief Seed by a considerable amount before it rehatches while also ensuring that the Witches aren't consciously suffering even in a dreamlike state, and it allows a very efficient, albeit slow, form of corruption transfer between souls that lets her get maximum use out of the capacity available and balances the corruption out among all the Grief Seeds so stored.
Maiko hasn't given up on the possibility of finding a way to reverse witching out, so she's hoarded every Grief Seed she can and keeps them safely in her corruption balancer to avoid ever filling a seed to the point that she has to hand it over to bunnycat. There are currently several hundred seeds stored in this manner, including several former teammates.
There are only two things she knows of that appear to permanently reduce total corruption: a Witch expending it to construct her barrier, or the death and dissipation of a soul that contains it.
🎶 Look in my eyes, what do you see? /
The cult of personality /
I know your anger, I know your dreams /
I've been everything you want to be /
I'm the cult of personality 🎶
If you're talking about the current scene rather than in general, uh, keep in mind that there is literally only one meguca here with significant prior experience. Even Yui, despite learning quickly and doing lots of stuff, has been meguca at most a few days longer than the other girls here.
Yui: It's true!
Maiko and Tomo: *exaggerated head tilt to look down at Yui*
Yui: Th-that's not the same thing!
Okay, but just so you know Reiko is gonna need this in writing, notarized, in triplicate.
I've mentioned it before so that might be why? It's very silly and not super sophisticated or anything but it's very much the kind of thing Yui would enjoy reading.
See above re: dying, and yes that would be theoretically possible but in practice it just doesn't scale well enough. A living being's capacity for storing corruption is proportional to their ability to experience suffering so anything too simple won't help, and even something like mice have a tiny fraction of the capacity of a normal human which is already a fraction of the capacity of a Soul Gem. You'd be looking at practically an industrial-scale farming operation to support even a single girl that way. For better or worse, embodied souls are just not practical for storing corruption compared to Soul Gems and Grief Seeds.
She did animal experiments as well--among other things, to prove that the process would be reversible--but it's harder to understand their experiences from observation.
- Location
- Here
I agree with most of the points you're making and it makes me giggle that Yui is using that "absorb all the ambient authority" power without actually using it by the magic of the Bavarian Fire Drill.
However, I disagree strongly that the vote is "not very friendly". The girls are put into a situation of needing to fight to live. Showing them how to survive those fights is very friendly, in the most blatant way. None of your valid points about the benefit to our organization mitigate that this sort of outing is most directly good for the newbies themselves.
Arranging this outing in the first place is already a friendly thing to do. Otherwise, they would not so quickly be in touch with peers in a similar situation before any of them have a chance to be traumatized; their morale is still quite good presumably, on average, and now they can support each other and probably make friends.
I think DarkLight could sound sinister while describing their plans to rescue people from a burning building.
If she'd be willing to draft such a thing from our much more informal description, maybe it would actually be helpful?Okay, but just so you know Reiko is gonna need this in writing, notarized, in triplicate.
Regarding general corruption thermodynamics, my plan for solving that problem is to keep on building a bigger ball of scienceguca until it reaches critical mass and either fixes everything or ends the world. Ideally with enough adult supervision that the former is predictably more likely.
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DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
Yes. It's really easy to sound that way when we're attempting to create an organization of people which are held together by close emotional bonds and personal loyalty to a powerful and charismatic central figure that keep closely to moral beliefs at odds with their peers and are ready and willing to use violence to defend their beliefs. The fact that we're drawing on a subsection of the populace predisposed to be emotionally isolated from the world at large (Kyubey did the isolating, not us, but it's still there) and focus heavily on providing them with positive emotional reinforcement in order to build group loyalty only makes the parallel closer. Oh, and we tell them that the world outside our control is full of dangerous and very likely hostile people who won't hesitate to hurt or kill them if they don't stick with us, that too.
But we're not a cult, I swear.
You know that, and we know that, but do the recruits know that? And are Yui and those already aligned with her presenting themselves as fellow newbies in need of guidance and learning, or as seniors ready and able to teach the new girls The Way Things Are? Because I got the impression that it was the latter.
Even if we mentioned that we're new to magical girling the demeanor and attitude is very much about inducting them into our plans and ways of doing things, and Yui's short-but-colorful track record of running around singlehandedly engaging incusions with violence or diplomacy as necessary certainly doesn't give the impression that she's a peer.
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- Location
- Can't read map
Maiko: I'm made to be mad scientist, and when I'm in position of leadership without anyone above tell me stop... like today... things become... fun and exciting! Ha ha ha ha! Glados! Bring me test subjects! Forget limits and safety!
Glados: What test are we performing today? Will cakes be involved?
Yui: Stop! Abort! Turn back! I command you to stop!
Maiko: But it's too much fun!
- Location
- Can't read map
Or Yui going mad as only viable option seem to be familiar farming.
And leader of begining meguca nation had wish to be hero. Farming going against it.
Something long term is needed for which Yui won't compromise too much, or nation will collapse or be dark.
Of course there is also other situation they might have seen without Yui bringing order.
"Here are veteran girls who saw Tokio and other places outside empire I plan to build.
Situation outside? You fight and die without ever meeting other girl, or are happy just contracted... When older girls kick you out from you home or their territory for poaching, even though you lived there all life! Or forcibly recruited and used.
There are bad places."