- Location
- Blocksberg
And that's terrible.
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?
The only way any of this could work is if the Incubators have been manipulating those fundamental physical constants of the universe for some significant fraction of the current age of the universe, certainly at least as long as the 3.8 billion years that life has existed at all on Earth. There's just no way that carbon-based life could survive the fluctuation between differing physical constants; the processes of life are too finely-tuned and finicky to ever handle the weirdness that would result from a significant fundamental change in how entropy works.
Most of this is baseless speculation, really; we just don't know how different the physics of @Firnagzen's PMAS universe is from the physics of our own, and I doubt we ever will unless we spend several weeks IC tracking down the PMAS versions of physics and astrophysics books, something I'm sure @Firnagzen is just dying to do.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
When I said "at minimum", I meant it. Regardless of what the Incubators are or aren't doing, our sun has billions of years of hydrogen fuel left in it, so we've got at least that long before we need a new energy source (and a new planet). The estimates of the time until the heat-death of the universe are actually many orders of magnitude longer than that.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
For the purposes of this quest, we have Word of God from Firnagzen that they have been manipulating fundamental physical constants for billions of years - k_b in particular.
Which means the Incubators have been a Kardashev Type III civilization for over 3.8 billion years.
I'm suddenly feeling very small right now.
Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
And people in this thread want to fight them.
Like, openly.
Like, openly.
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
Which means the Incubators have been a Kardashev Type III civilization for over 3.8 billion years.
I'm suddenly feeling very small right now.
No they would have to have been manipulating the physical constants from microseconds after the big bang occured for it to fool astrophysicists.
When we look out on the universe, we do not see what is, but what was! The further we look, the further back into the past we see!
The physicists calculating how long before the stars die are looking to the very limits of what we can see before the soupy nature of the early universe clouds any further peering into the past from us.
If the incubators were already established as a type IV civilization microseconds after the big bang occurred, the implications are... ...well a major derail for this thread for one.
- Location
- Maybe?
Both Madoka and Homura defeated them in canon. They have disadvantages too.
In fact, if you consider the timespans it seems very plausible that they're stuck in some kind of developmental local optimum.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Griefhax is conceptual and we have the backing of a Madokami-tier wish. That is, we have precisely the power levels demonstrated to have beaten the incubators in the past. Everything can be fixed. Whether we can beat the incubators, if we decide that we need to, is not the question. The bigger question is whether we need to beat them.
We'll only know that for sure by reading a bunch of IC physics books. For all we know the physics community in PMAS is constantly freaking out over what their microwave and radio telescopes are telling them about the early Big Bang period, and we just aren't hearing about it.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
But if they change the rate at which the sun performs hydrogen fusion, then they also change the luminosity, and Earth becomes uninhabitable. So the sun's lifespan as a main sequence star remains a known quantity. We're good for the next four billion years, at least.
We have one crucial advantage that you may not have considered:
Incubators are, in some ways, complete fucking idiots.
These are the same guys who gave a wish of unlimited power to someone who's best friend they'd just killed. They're lucky that she merely retroactively crippled their energy-gathering operation across all of time and space instead of just wishing them extinct.
It would basically imply that they were survivors of some previous universe, since it would be impossible for anything complex to exist that early in the lifespan of the universe: there would not yet be any stars to make elements heavier than hydrogen.
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FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or they're time travelers, which seems just about as possible as surviving the destruction and rebirth of the universe.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
You'd think that time travelers wouldn't need to concern themselves with the heat-death of the universe. They could just go back in time a few trillion years and start over in a different galaxy.
- Location
- Your Native Universe
They're not stupid. They just don't get humans. Honestly, they didn't even kill Sayaka. She kinda just self-destructed by herself, and past timelines show that she has a habit of doing that a lot. Hell, she even does that in the Wraith Arc, when Kyubey doesn't even benefit from her dying.We have one crucial advantage that you may not have considered:
Incubators are, in some ways, complete fucking idiots.
These are the same guys who gave a wish of unlimited power to someone who's best friend they'd just killed. They're lucky that she merely retroactively crippled their energy-gathering operation across all of time and space instead of just wishing them extinct.
As for the going extinct part, Kyubey tells Madoka how they're saving the universe, and trusts her to understand that them being gone would not help it in the long run. This trust is less of trusting her as a person, and more of them trusting her as a potential business partner.
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rkyeun
Cabbitus Maximus
- Location
- ◕ ‿‿ ◕
"The incubators feed off grief. They really like it when we witch out. That releases so much grief. But the way they collect it, through soul gems... taking souls out of our bodies. That's silly, right? You can think of a better way. I'm sure of it. I mean, he's fully capable of feeding off the grief I take from soul gems. So witching out doesn't have to be part of the process at all."
"Kyubey? I- I think I'm ready."
"Oh my. Thank you, Madoka. What wish will make your soul gem shine?"
"You haven't been fair with us, Kyubey. You didn't tell us things you knew we wanted to know, things we would want to change but that you were counting on us to never ask or even imagine. But now we know. And I'm changing it. Now the deal will be more fair. I'm going to change how you make us magical girls - how the soul gems work. Instead of us having separate soul gems as objects that fill with grief, the souls of magical girls will fill their bodies and protect them from harm and transmit any grief they would accumulate back to the incubators directly so you don't have to collect it in person and it can't fill someone up and poison them. And if that somehow ends up in a way that's still unfair to us or causes problems later, I want to tweak it more. Kyubey! I wish to have power over how the incubators make contracts and create magical girls!"
"Kyubey? I- I think I'm ready."
"Oh my. Thank you, Madoka. What wish will make your soul gem shine?"
"You haven't been fair with us, Kyubey. You didn't tell us things you knew we wanted to know, things we would want to change but that you were counting on us to never ask or even imagine. But now we know. And I'm changing it. Now the deal will be more fair. I'm going to change how you make us magical girls - how the soul gems work. Instead of us having separate soul gems as objects that fill with grief, the souls of magical girls will fill their bodies and protect them from harm and transmit any grief they would accumulate back to the incubators directly so you don't have to collect it in person and it can't fill someone up and poison them. And if that somehow ends up in a way that's still unfair to us or causes problems later, I want to tweak it more. Kyubey! I wish to have power over how the incubators make contracts and create magical girls!"
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Okay, sure. Assume Madoka made the exact same wish and then didn't want to be a part of it.
...except all that grief has to go somewhere, even with the Madokami wish, which is how the Witch of Despair almost quantum-sorta-happens.
Except there's no Madokami to put her down. Sure, the Law of Cycles can try and just delete it too, but where does it go? Even Madoka is locked into fighting it forever, and Sayaka and Nagisa (as well as the Inu Curry Rebellion notes) imply that the collected Magical Girls play an important role in suppressing UKG.
So um. Lol, that's a possible issue. But without Madoka-as-interpreter, even if it's working on intent, and assuming no UKG shenanigans? Magical Girls wouldn't be lead to a heaven, they'd just be killed at the moment of despair. And if someone like Kyubey tried to rip the Law of Cycles apart, it doesn't have the sentience to tactically outmaneuver them and protect itself.
...Loloops?
But yea, Madoka's wish phrasing and intent was that she herself would abolish anything that got in her way. By making herself the core component of the Law of Cycles, she made it so that the effects of her wish can change later, evolve and adapt in accordance to her living mind to new situations and handle everything that could go wrong. Such as how the Law of Cycles took a form that Homura would invite into her barrier, and divided and sequestered its power to avoid detection.
By making herself into the part of her wish that interprets itself, she allows herself to change the way her wish is interpreted later, after the fact, as much as she needs to.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Unless it doesn't. Tweak the wish a bit.
Or how about avoid the whole grief thing entirely? Go the Monsters Inc route and wish to flip the hope-> despair process around. I don't know if that would produce a desirable result but now that I've thought of it I'm interested in finding out.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Oh. Yea. Great. So Kyubey will work by traumatizing girls horribly with the pay-off of them maybe Hoping out later, and then he yoinks their Soul Gems for batteries.
No.
GiftOfLove
From the Heart
Oooor, he finds girls in despair and fills them with hope, with the payoff being they go all White Witch if they pass a peak of hopefulness, syphoning their excess power to fuel the universe.
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Also, I very much doubt Madoka thought out her wish so well as to purposely make it self driving. She got lucky. And that luck was built on Homura's broken back. :/
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Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
So Ugo kicked some PMAS discussion in Discord.
As far as I can summarize:
- Talk with Madoka. I was thinking we'd do this after the conversation was over, but the idea seems to be to pull Madoka aside right now, or after we wrap up our questions, if we had any.
- There was some talk about asking Nadia about Asunaro, but I didn't see any consensus either way.
- We need to recover Homu points.
- Definitely don't mention that we want to replace Grief/Clear Seeds with something else, because implications.
- I personally still want to talk with Nadia about helping meguca who need transport in order to make it here, but nobody seems to care.
- Mami rocks.
- I don't know if anything else.
So I'll try to put some things into vote form.
[X] Helping Magical Girls, so they wouldn't have to fight for a living anymore? That's why you made your Wish. Ask Nadia to please send those Magical Girls over.
[X] Excuse yourself, and ask Madoka to talk for a moment in private.
-[X] Talk about what she felt when she heard a Magical Girl died. Her reaction was the most normal out of anybody at the table, and that's a good thing. Try to reassure her; explain how this is part of what we're going to change.
[X] If Madoka seems fine, go back; ask Nadia if she knows anything about Asunaro.
[X] If the conversation wraps up, try and get a moment to talk with Homura, in private.
I'm not sure if there's anything else to cover?
As far as I can summarize:
- Talk with Madoka. I was thinking we'd do this after the conversation was over, but the idea seems to be to pull Madoka aside right now, or after we wrap up our questions, if we had any.
- There was some talk about asking Nadia about Asunaro, but I didn't see any consensus either way.
- We need to recover Homu points.
- Definitely don't mention that we want to replace Grief/Clear Seeds with something else, because implications.
- I personally still want to talk with Nadia about helping meguca who need transport in order to make it here, but nobody seems to care.
- Mami rocks.
- I don't know if anything else.
So I'll try to put some things into vote form.
[X] Helping Magical Girls, so they wouldn't have to fight for a living anymore? That's why you made your Wish. Ask Nadia to please send those Magical Girls over.
[X] Excuse yourself, and ask Madoka to talk for a moment in private.
-[X] Talk about what she felt when she heard a Magical Girl died. Her reaction was the most normal out of anybody at the table, and that's a good thing. Try to reassure her; explain how this is part of what we're going to change.
[X] If Madoka seems fine, go back; ask Nadia if she knows anything about Asunaro.
[X] If the conversation wraps up, try and get a moment to talk with Homura, in private.
I'm not sure if there's anything else to cover?
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What even is the "Witch of Despair"? And what do you mean "almost quantum-sorta-happens"?
That makes no sense. Gretchen is Madoka's Witch. If the Law of Cycles gets rid of Witches just before they're born, KG can never be born in the first place. As for "all that grief has to go somewhere"--no it doesn't. Madoka's canon wish wouldn't have worked if it did. Otherwise, her own Witch couldn't have been removed from existence, because the only place for all of that grief to go would be her soul gem--causing her to Witch out again, ad-nauseum. Likewise, destroying a soul gem doesn't cause that grief to manifest in any kind of harmful manner, even if it's 99% full of grief.
Yes, magical girls would just die. Like everyone else. That's better than what we could get otherwise, which is that girls who still reach the critical grief threshold Witch out, even if the rate at which that happens drops tremendously. And it does nothing for all of the Grief Seeds previously used and collected by Kyubey.
As for Kyubey pulling the Law of Cycles apart? How the fuck would that even work? You're talking about a law of the universe. If the Incubators could pull that apart, they could "pull apart" entropy itself. The only reason Homura managed to bring down Madokami is because Madoka was part of it.
Which she wouldn't need to do if she just words her wish carefully the first time around. The only time Madokami needed to adapt in any way at all was because of Homura's shenanigans...which came about because Madoka turned herself into part of the cycle.
This is where my whole "Grief-construct space plane" idea would be really handy. Granted, we would probably need to wait until Walpurgisnacht is dealt with before making lots of trips around the world.
Alternatively, we could ask Nadia to pass the word on to teleporters for hire that we'd compensate teleporters transporting refugee MGs to Mitakihara by making their Grief Seeds into Clear Seeds. Dunno what the max range on most teleporters is, or how readily refugee MGs could afford to travel to Mitakihara by plane.
We need to make Nadia a Clear Seed or two (which should be done by converting a couple of the Grief Seeds she should have on her).
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- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
[x] Onmur
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
I think we can cover this afterwards, when Nadia is supposed to tell us about meguca chats, or it should came naturally.
Though, maybe it should be included anyway...
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Is there anything else to say here? I think we want to keep reassuring her that things are all under control, though referring back to our wish is a good way to do that.
I think we might want to expand here...
-[] Tell her that we have the saving-people end of things under control, but this kind of thing is why we need her help. Those girls... will need normalcy even more than you and Homura do.
If Madoka doesn't seem fine, vote breaks for more discussion and we start poking in Homura's direction, start setting that conversation up?
[x] Onmur