[X] Consult with Homura and Kyoko who you should tell
I wonder what they think to Ai agree and say kyuubey goal is noble
I wonder what they think to Ai agree and say kyuubey goal is noble
In the Name of Love and Hatred! [PMMM / LoR]
- Thread starter Naron
- Start date
- Crossover
engiSonic
Yesterday's Minder
- Location
- Under Artificial Skies
- Pronouns
- He/They
I mean, it wasn't a distraction. I'm pretty sure the energy production was (at least partially) the means by which the Seed of Light would be produced/grown/germinated. And only the HQ, Facility X-394, was using the Enkephalin for that purpose. All the other branches, including the one featured in Wonderlab (O-5681), were in fact distributing energy to the City like they claimed to.The punchline here is that it's not like Lobotomy Corporation at all since the entire energy extraction thing was just a distraction from Ayin's true purpose.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wishes are limited by someone's potential, and while Madoka has a really hugely inflated one, and just the energy release is enough to pay off earths quota apparently, that doesn't mean she can produce infinite energy.
(The Law of the Concepts seems to be able to do infinite stuff but I don't think the incubators knew that was an option.)
Wow, I love this headcanon, it fits in a way I can actually see it happen multiply time through the history
Which is to build the future, remember, the energy collected throughout the game was used to power the seed of light.The punchline here is that it's not like Lobotomy Corporation at all since the entire energy extraction thing was just a distraction from Ayin's true purpose.
As for my vote, just drop that bomb and get it over with, it might even help sayaka with her tendencies.
[X] Tell everyone, they deserve to know
[X] Start with Kyoko Yuma, then Homura, then Sayaka, and finally Mami
Your looking at the way a human looks at time, Kyubey probably has infinite lifespan or at least a very long one, in that case to it the heat death of the universe might as be slated for next Tuesday, to it, the heath death IS a problem that needs to be dealt with. Plus Kyubey doesn't have emotions, even if they isn't the case, Kyubey doesn't even comprehend that what it's doing is cruel.
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AmusedOracle
Sleepyhearted Hierophant.
- Location
- The Empty Path.
Well, certainly correct in the first half. It seems pretty obvious that Kyuubey, being immortal, would consider issues we would think of as "long-term" as "immediate issues", in particular because as a hive-mind civilisation with apparent immortality, invulnerability and omnipresence, it is not like they have much else to be doing with their "problem-solving" hours (which, seeing as they neither need nor desire sleep, rest, or respite in any fashion, is all of their hours).
However, I would contend the idea that Kyuubey does not recognise that humans would call its actions "cruel". I would consider it likely that the Incubator merely does not care - and after all, why should it?
The actual meat and potatoes of the Seed of Light is the epiphanies that all the Sephirot and (eventually) Ayin got, it's why it only ticks up when you do the meltdowns (the last 5 days of LC being A/X meltdown). L corp did sell energy because it acted like a Wing to obfuscate Ayin's true purpose, but it wasn't Lobotomy Corp true purpose or something that Ayin really cared about. It was just a means to avoid the attention of the Head (and possibly in Facility X-394 to fuel the TT2 protocol).
- Location
- Earth
Kyubey canonically states they can not, or will not suggest wishes. Which implies that they would, if they could. There is a scene where they summarise the entropy concerns for Madoka, which I assume is an attempt nudge her into such a wish. Not that it works.
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It's possible that suggestions on wishing affect someway the potential of the person or the like
Or even the energy extracted because the wish isn't born from raw emotions or something
Yeah, this really speak for itself.
I wonder, would've Ai been able to deduce this, before her realization? Somehow, I doubt it.
Well, seems like she didn't wish to kill us, but to know who killed her father, we can explain by demonstration then, letting her kill us is not dangerous in this case.
She's going to witch out very soon at this rate....
Yep, there it is (Also, surprise Jester in the wall is surprising.)
...Elsa Maria? Ah, yes, shadow theme.
Ah, she doesn't remember, is it because of circumstances or is it normal? I don't remember if we asked Izabel about it.
Praying eternally, not doing anything else, dying of thirst, how tragic.
It really seems like the Jester wants to change and help just like us, but can't help his own nature at the worst times, like our realization.
Kyubey, stress ball extraordinaire!
Yeah, for all his seeming knowledge, Kyubey don't understand anything about magic.
Hmmm, thinking about Distortions? Or something else?
In case someone's asking: Yes, that is a correct interpretation of what he says in canon, his words are that there is an exceptional concentration of humans with emotions, which means that most of the time, there are less members of the species who have them.
Also completely valid, Kyubey use witches, but we have no indication he created them, he might have changed things to make the process easier/more efficient, but it happening already regardless is valid.
Ah, calling them out on it! Finally!
And that's a great retort, too bad that this one's not canon, I accept it as headcanon for this quest though, the canon always made me slightly queasy about the beliefs of the writers....
The most used (because one of the most logical) explanation, the classics are the classics for a reason.
And you made Kyubey intelligent! There are perfectly pragmatic reason to lower the casualties, sustainability, for one.
Agreed, especially since it seems Kyubey is on our side for once, meaning he probably won't do a surprise reveal to destabilize everyone.
Your vote won't count if it isn't at the beginning of the line.
I hadn't even seen it... Thanks, now I can't unsee it.
As explained quite regularly in the PMAS thread: There are billions of years because of the system, who said it wouldn't collapse in decades without it? It is far from impossible that, in the PMMM verse, the heat death would happen way, way sooner if the bunnycats didn't push it away.
That too.
Too dangerous, if it turns out she didn't have enpough potential the wish risk doing things wrong and you're deep in shit without a paddle, her canon wish worked in creating a new universe partially because she wished to do it *with her own hands* and it gave her more potential retroactively, just as it did when the average potential Tart wished to be *the light of France!* in Tart magica and gained enough potential to influence France for generations in the process (because she is Joan of Arc), becoming the most powerful magical girl ever that isn't named Madoka.
I think I remember a discussion in PMAS were they concluded that taking control of human society would destroy all their potential, since they wouldn't be able to influence their future in any meaningful way, what you propose is basically an extension of this, so, yep, totally valid.
[X] Tell Homura about it first, ask for advice
I think *informing* the only person already informed and getting her advice might be our best move.
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- Location
- Germany
Not gonna lie, I kinda called it, but I expected Hana to stick around at least a little bit longer anyway. Like, at least three whole updates. Well, her witch is still around, so she isn't completely eliminated in terms of plot relevancy. Still, dying so the story can get the witch reveal out of the way without killing any of Ai's friends must be kind of a blow to her.
Meanwhile, Ai's more calm response to Kyubey's explanation is fair. Granted, setting aside the rightfully called out internal logic of the show here, a lot of Kyubey's problems in terms of managing magical girls are pretty much self inflicted due to picking targets specifically for being highly emotional and therefore incompatible with his way of thinking. I keep enjoying the way Ai and Kyubey get along oddly well though.
[X] Tell Homura about it first, ask for advice
To keep up the trend of me getting to things slightly after they were relevant in the Quest, I got to my first couple floor realizations.
Meanwhile, Ai's more calm response to Kyubey's explanation is fair. Granted, setting aside the rightfully called out internal logic of the show here, a lot of Kyubey's problems in terms of managing magical girls are pretty much self inflicted due to picking targets specifically for being highly emotional and therefore incompatible with his way of thinking. I keep enjoying the way Ai and Kyubey get along oddly well though.
[X] Tell Homura about it first, ask for advice
To keep up the trend of me getting to things slightly after they were relevant in the Quest, I got to my first couple floor realizations.
I'm sure they've had fun making all of those additional outfits for Angela. Which makes me imagine a version of Ai's realization where instead of synchronizing with the abnormalities, she does it with the other girls soul gems and the fights goes her cosplaying as Sayaka, Yuma, Mami, Homura and Kyoko in turn. We even got exactly five of them to keep with the number of abnormalites. Although, I guess to really fit the pattern we need to cut out Sayaka and instead go with Love!Madoka for the ultimate ranged overkill finale. Fighting time stop Ai would have been a thing though.
Talking about a final ranged overkill stage of the boss fight though, using the Coffin Abnormality page to just completely deny Magic Bullet Angela her turn was kind of hilarious.
Talking about a final ranged overkill stage of the boss fight though, using the Coffin Abnormality page to just completely deny Magic Bullet Angela her turn was kind of hilarious.
- Location
- Earth
She could have. Not easily, but she could have. It was even possible to keep her around permanently. Unfortunately, the winning plan was kind of bad.
What are you talking about? It was pretty good, look! We even got a new friend out of it!
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Man I gotta be real, I have no idea what the fuck you want from a vote. And this fucking stings here, because at no point did you communicate there might be a problem with the vote, so what could've an interesting character arc has had its knees hacked off. I love a protagonist fucking up, then working to change and do something about said fuck up, and then going down the hard road of helping someone who they fucked over with their fuck up and making it up to them some how. Love me that shit. And now that's in the fucking bin.
You and I are on very different wave lengths here, and I don't understand what's the barrier here.
- Location
- Earth
If I remember correctly, someone did quite well point out issues with that particular vote. They were explained as a bid to 'beat the bandwagon' and then not rectified.
Regardless, I never said the vote was awful. It was just not good in these circumstances. I said it was possible to save Hana from witching entirely, but not that this would be easy to accomplish.
As for some things that might have been worth considering but were not:
-How dark is her Soul Gem? Is it actively darkening? (I forgot to include that prior, but would have answered if anyone asked)
-what happens if she is not amenable to listen?
-what kind of headspace could she be in right now?
-how will Ai handle if her Soul Gem grows dark, either through emotional turmoil or magic use?
As it were, Ai got dialog Hana did not want to hear, which immediately cut off the part about helping her. Ai was not told to fight and did not want to, so she let Hana exhaust herself. The winning vote had potential and was aiming in the right direction, but it failed in the short-term objective of keeping Hana from witching out.
Take care when talking to your player base.
I'll even contest that it wasn't good under the circumstances; IDK, feels appropriate to Ai, given recent events. Not my preferred plan, but it is good enough as far as narrative go.
- Location
- Earth
That is a fair point to make. I really need to think thrice next time and just keep my mouth shut.
Although, note that "kind of bad" is not the same as "godawful wtf were you thinking?", which is apparently how my words were taken.
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I was having a hard time trying to think of a long post to convey similar qualms when I saw this post in...more polite terms but had a really hard time putting it to paper, so I appreciate Notthe being direct about it because it gives me an opening to express a bunch of thoughts I had on the matter:
So, firstly, while I don't expect everything to be smooth sailing I rather felt that Hana was relegated to more of a 'witchout' plot device than anything, and it just felt...lacking in substance? Don't get me wrong, the details were still pretty great, but the development itself...not so much. Not terrible, but kind of meh.
Characters that seemingly exist just as a plot device aren't great especially when they looked like particularly strong hooks for future developments, as Notthe conveys it more roughly.
I was fine with that, really- but when you posted that I raised an eyebrow because it told me that Hana wasn't supposed to be a walking plot device, and was doomed by the plan, which was considered "bad".
Thing is, while voters are prone to bad decisions, and we might have made a marginally better plan with hindsight, knowing that the whole 'witch-out in the span of a single update' wasn't a slated plot device makes me feel that none of the voters actually knew what they were getting into, and the whole thing just feels like a blindside by the GM.
While everyone probably expected that there would be a risk of witching, I don't think anyone expected it to come into play this very update. Why? Consider that the default voting options were as simple as:
[] Try to talk her down?
-[] write-in how?
Weight: x1.5
[] Take her down
-[] Lethally
weight: x0.75
-[] Non-lethally
weight: x1
And I had thought that it was simply 'what initial approach should Ai go for at the start of this situation' and not 'your decision here is Ai's initial and final approach to the whole thing and can lead to heavy plot developments if you don't have a fully fleshed plan for everything that might come up this very vote'
Stuff like this after the fact doesn't really help because there was no write-in for the whole "Take her down non-lethally vote" so there were simply no indications that such factors were actually meant to explode in our face this very update. It's not like these factors magically wouldn't have come to play if we had elected to go for that 5-word default vote.
Sorry if I'm not conveying this properly because I'm rather short on time but am undergoing a mild emotional resonance right now so am forcing it out of my brain meats. The quest has been great so far, but I feel that this has to be aired out.
- Location
- Germany
I mean, you do kind of have a habit of segmenting this kind of thing, so the fact that a contigency plan wasn't asked for made me expect there'd be at least a break to course correct. You know, a lot how trying to search for Hitomi ourselves didn't immediately lead to us finding her body in a ditch, but rather still gave us the chance to make a deal with Kyubey after all.
So yeah, I'm not really suprised that the attempt to talk failed, nor overly crestfallen over adding Elsa Maria, aka Kyoko's new prayer buddy, to the witch funhouse, but I did expect the downfall to play out for a couple of chapters. Especially given that my erroneous assumption was that a new magical girl would still have a relatively clean soul gem to give some margin for error.
Seems like we can bank this under poor communication kills.
Not by me, as my joke probably already pointed out, I wasn't really invested in saving an hostile girl who seemed obsessed with killing us anyway, the best scenario I can imagine is her rejecting her wish, and since it almost definitely involve quite a lot of grief over it and we don't have any grief seeds on hand... Witching out was an almost guaranteed outcome if we didn't kill her, this was clear from the start.
And yes, there was someone who pointed out that this vote would probably lead to her not listening to anything we say, the voters reaction was, as Naron said:
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- Location
- Earth
I guess I need to add some clarifications then. First of all, your opinion is noted. I will see to keep it in mind for the future.
Now, to lay it all out as concise as possible:
Hana embodied two important concepts here. First was Ai's karma catching up to her, as female children are drawn into contracts during times of emotional turmoil that she caused. The second was, as presumed, the witchbomb. The way I drew her up, she was highly likely to witch out due to her circumstances.
Lethal combat was as the name implies. Only included for completeness' sake.
Non-lethal takedown would have been a swift fight that leaves Hana beaten, but not on the precipice of witchdom due to a lack of magic use. It would have given Ai a runoff vote because she has more than two seconds to act after realising Hana is about to die.
Talking was another option to not make her witch immediately, but the way this plan handled it was simply not good. And whenever the scene runs into an issue the plan provides nothing for, Ai acts on autopilot; which in this case means she kept trying to talk and being rebuffed. Hana used up all her magic in a futile attempt to kill her, and that was it.
So, in short: Yes, Hana was supposed to witch out quickly. But her fate could have been changed with a good idea; I would have let it happen. The winning one was not good, was pointed out to be so, and won anyway.
Oh, and one last bit:
This is a stupid argument, plain and simple. Write-ins are always allowed unless I say they are not. I specifically put the write-in requirement under talk her down because that was an ascertained failure without.
That is a fair point, though. On the other hand, Hana is nowhere near as important to the narrative (or Ai) as Hitomi. There was not really a good point between Ai being rebuffed and Elsa Maria's birth to cut the chapter, either.
Ah, that's not really what I'm focused upon, it's more the lack of write-in requirement for non-lethal gave the mistaken impression that there would be a window of opportunity to react to stuff regardless of the vote, since in my mind at the time, I was thinking that if we still have time to breath even after escalating to violence, surely we would also have time when we went for a pacifistic approach.
Thus, at the time the write-in requirement for talking her down, to me felt to be more directed to how we try and open dialogue before inevitably facing friction and readjusting our course of action in response, much like a dialogue tree, since while a takedown has one obvious outcome it gets a lot more complicated in regards to dialogue.
Sorry if I didn't express that clearly, as I said earlier I did that write-up while I was short on time to comb through what I wrote and didn't mean to offend with dumb argumentations.
Of course, now that you've clarified that the window of opportunity was more specific to non-lethal takedown due to certain reasons, and various other things such as the intention for Hana, I have a better handle of how you had it planned.
Regardless of all that, I do appreciate that you've given consideration to my opinion and posted a clear explanation in response, especially since it's again, quite roughly drafted and very subjective as far as opinion pieces go- personally, I'd almost say it's better to not give it much regard /jk
Please, do keep up your good work- despite the minor and personal qualms I have with how we got to the recent development, it hardly changes the fact that the technical writing for it is still brilliantly refreshing, and I can hardly wait to see what comes up next now that the witchbomb has been dropped upon Ai in a brutally provocative manner just as she is still struggling to come to terms with her previous history.
- Location
- Who knows?
Oh uh I wanted to say I thought they were only allowed as general strategies under "broader strokes" options when specifically called for. I remember an earlier vote where you didn't like a write-in that was a little fence-sitty/trying to have your cake and eat it too, and an announcement afterwards saying write-ins where no longer permitted.