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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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linkhyrule5 said:
Oi. Way to strawman.

And while I'm at it, I'm sorry but you're playing a Madoka quest, dude. I'm really not sure what you're expecting, given the core material was... let's just sum it up with "written by Urobuchi", and leave it at that. Hell, Madoka itself was written in part as a reaction to its own author getting tired of thinking like Kiritsugu but not seeing any way around it.

Madoka is a subversion, but it's a subversion that acknowledges that the "hard man making hard decisions" has a real point that's not easy to avoid.
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Adfligo. Systema.
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Oi. Way to strawman.

And while I'm at it, I'm sorry but you're playing a Madoka quest, dude. I'm really not sure what you're expecting, given the core material was... let's just sum it up with "written by Urobuchi", and leave it at that. Hell, Madoka itself was written in part as a reaction to its own author getting tired of thinking like Kiritsugu but not seeing any way around it.

Madoka is a subversion, but it's a subversion that acknowledges that the "hard man making hard decisions" has a real point that's not easy to avoid.
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Hi this is Adfligo Systema, the quest about a Magical Girl Classic who's devoting her life to telling everything you just said to fuck off.
 
Frankly, I think what happened in that particular vote was that we tunnel-visioned on "what to ask Nadia about" and literally forgot Madoka was here - something that "Sabrina" would not have done on account of literally sitting next to her the whole time.
 
So first of all, I made a big edit before I noticed you replied, so you might want to read that.

And second - see, the thing is, the tension in this quest has always been between our power and how to use it. Yes, we can break the system, and our Grief control is bullshit as hell - but the real problems are harder to solve.

As Oriko said: if it was just a Witch, we could defeat it. But the real problems are ... are societal, are universal, are conceptual, they're not something you can grasp, they're not something you can just "break" with magic except the way Madoka did it, with an outright miracle paid for in a hundred years of Homura's grief. We can wreck this system, sure. But that's only going to hurt people.

How do we save the world? Firn isn't going to give us that for free. And if all you want to do is save the people around you, you're wasting a wish that could've saved the entire universe.
 
...Yea, and the way you fix those social problems is by being the person that normal Meguca can't afford to be: An idealist.
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Hell, Madoka itself was written in part as a reaction to its own author getting tired of thinking like Kiritsugu but not seeing any way around it.
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Okay.

This? This I did not know. Wow....

And Agreed. We...we're not here to conform to despair and nihlism.

Sabrina's here to make it better. Better for all the people around her, all the people that she can.

System Breaker for a reason.
 
[X] Onmur

Because I remembered Character Agency is a thing, and I recalled last night when Madoka was disappointed with Sabrina, because she didn't need to be told to be a good friend to Homura.

If Madoka feels like we're being overprotective with her, she'll say it straight to us. And I think Nadia would actually like it better if we did openly show concern, because it'll show that Madoka's not a groupie that just tagged along with her meguca friends, and we're also concerned on other girls whose emotional well-being won't turn them into eldritch monsters. That we're here to take the grief away, both the kind that comes from a soul gem/seed, and the mundane.

And I also realize that my other concern, giving the others a chance to ask their own questions, is irrelevant. Again: character agency. The girls don't need our permission to ask something.


...If it wasn't clear (and it probably isn't), I'm just arguing against my own previous reasoning.
 
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AuraTwilight said:
...Yea, and the way you fix those social problems is by being the person that normal Meguca can't afford to be: An idealist.
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....yes and no.

Yes, you have your ideals.

Yes, you stick to them, and you don't ever let the universe make your compromise. (Other people, evidence to the contrary, maybe. But never physics. Never entropy.)

Yes, you save everyone, all people, the whole world, save the whole world and every world without limit without exception without fail. Yes, you acknowledge no limits, let not one thing stand in your way.


... But you can't - being Sayaka doesn't work. You can't just throw your ideals at the world and expect the world to change.

Yes, we have power. How do we turn "power over Grief" into "solving myriad systemic problems?" We can remove scarcity - all scarcity, eventually - but we can't stop people being dicks. Not without outright mind control or something equally horrible. How do we actually save the world, given the power we have? How do we get people not to hold grudges when we take away their power? How do we keep people sane as the truth spreads about the witches? (Which it well, whether we like it or not, eventually.) How do we build a society out of hidden magical girls, create a safety net for magical girls who can't or won't hunt? How do we take this power to the mundane world, the world where someone dies every one point eight seconds of almost-always completely preventable causes?

"Be an idealist" is only the first step. It doesn't tell you how to reach victory. Not if we want to save everyone.
 
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Vebyast said:
None of this is going to work. You're all trying to treat symptoms instead of the disease. This isn't about civil discourse. This isn't about where discussion happens. This isn't about how the votes are interpreted. This all boils down to fundamental differences in the philosophy of half of the thread from the story's themes and genres. Sabrina has been consistently operating under a particular genre and tone and philosophy of social interaction. The problem is that there's a presence in the thread that thinks we should be ESTABLISHING DOMINANCE, and they just keep fucking arguing for it, and despite the fact that they're continuously argued down and continuously presented with evidence that they're operating contrary to genre and narrative and tone and basic understanding of the characters they come back next vote to bring it up all over again. If you try to play a giant mech quest like you're a wuxia swordsman you get stomped into paste. If you try to play a shounen anime like a shadowrun you're going to die friendless and alone. If you try to play a magical girl classic like a mafia kingpin you're going to make all your friends witch out. This mindset shows up in every single fucking quest on SV, they're everywhere, they shit up everything. "Hard men making hard decisions while hard", "SV social", "witchbomb everybody lol", "a little trauma makes people more resilient", "get it all over with all at once", all of that shit. This'd be fine if we just had to argue it down once and we never had to deal with it again. But we don't. We have to shout them down every single fucking update. Every. Fucking. Time. I just want it to stop. I want to be able to read waffy idealistic magical girl without having to constantly argue down the same people arguing for the same stupid wrong-genre grim derp shit. I want to be able to read traumatized girls learning to believe in themselves again without having to constantly defend her from people that want to traumatize her because they think it'll be good for her. I want to be able to read the kid sorcerer tamping down his dark side and snarking with trolltastic wizards without having to argue with people that think that we should be throwing temper tantrums when people fail to kowtow to the unusually adept sorcerer. I'm just tired of it, and so is every other person that wants Sabrina to be unconditionally kind to people and friendly and hug everybody and be a genuinely nice person instead of Making Hard Decisions to Safe Face In Front of Business Partners. There's not a single quest on SV that's safe from it even when the QM goes out of their fucking way with banners and colored text to tell people that it's not that kind of quest. Time slots aren't going to do shit to stop people from arguing that Madoka - MADOKA - is a hardened businesswoman that treats every meeting like she's talking to the fucking CEO of Bigcorp Corp.
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You're strawmanning again. I don't know what you've encountered in other quests, but nobody here thinks or acts the way that you're suggesting. Everyone here wants Sabrina to be a good person and help people.

This is not just a WAFF quest. It's certainly got lots of WAFF and we all enjoy it, but there are also goals that we're trying to accomplish so that we can help people.

"Adfligo Systema" means "system break", yes. But the system is not going to break itself if we spend all our time WAFFing. It requires effort on our part.
 
@Firnagzen

Suggestion: Take a harder stance! Get mad! If people are flinging shit, fling it right back at them!

What's that? Your flame war has been clogging up the thread for quite a few pages now? Oh, what a shame. *PENALTY INCURED THANKS TO X USER* It could be anything, dice penalties, handicaps, advancement towards a ship no one likes, you name it! Hell, even make a goddamn list of shitstirrers on the OP if you really want to rub it in. Take a page from the military, collective shaming oughta work. Perhaps you could instead, take a page from Valve's approach: Every page consisting mostly/entirely of sniping/flamewar is one week the next update is delayed. Increase/decrease as necessary.

Look, firn, if you're serious about this and want this to stop NOW, you gotta take out some heavy fire power. Just look at Moid and how he handled it. Sure some shit went down still regardless but it was lessened as a result and players became VERY cautious of their words.

Heed my advice, take the lemons, and burn life's house down. You're tired of taking shit? Well make the people that give you shit regret doing so. To stop a fire, you're gonna need a big explosion, Firn.
 
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Teiwaz said:
Ehh I don't know about this.
Feels too uh baity? like you are trying to call someone out or something? Would just cause more problems and probably bans or suspensions.
It's also not really fair to us lurkers~
I just wanna read about braindamage-chan and muuuumei cuddling and getting aHEAD in life.
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Dude I don't even read this damn thing, I'm just saying this thread moves too fucking fast for us to do anything. By the time we finally get around to it, the thread has already moved a couple hundred pages. All I'm saying if Firn marks out the cattle rustlers ahead of time, not only do they know to watch themselves, but also give us a heads up to observe them more closely.

And trust me, this is a net gain. Lest you want Firn to end this story out of sheer frustration caused by his audience. It happens, boy it sure does happens. Drill La Drill was a great quest, but it got shut down due to a similar problem here. Sure, it may slow down the quest a bit, but better that than to have it shut down forever.

That's actually a good thing to note: Negativity does not push an author to write more, it in fact, saps away the will to do so. So all your arguing over X party going to kill the quest with Y action might be the killing blow itself. Think about it.
 
Private Lee O'Malley said:
What's that? Your flame war has been clogging up the thread for quite a few pages now? Oh, what a shame. *PENALTY INCURED THANKS TO X USER* It could be anything, dice penalties, handicaps, advancement towards a ship no one likes, you name it! Hell, even make a goddamn list of shitstirrers on the OP if you really want to rub it in. Take a page from the military, collective shaming oughta work. Perhaps you could instead, take a page from Valve's approach: Every page consisting mostly/entirely of sniping/flamewar is one week the next update is delayed. Increase/decrease as necessary.
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Flame wars are against the rules, specifically rules 3 and possibly 4. In-quest responses should be unnecessary, as long as they're punished appropriately. Delaying updates only gives more time for existing flame wars to continue, and I, for one, have not seen the original post since I started reading this thread. nevermind watching this thread.
Edit: Okay, the speed of the thread is actually a fair point. I can't much argue against the watch list, at least.
 
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Teiwaz said:
Ehh I don't know about this.
Feels too uh baity? like you are trying to call someone out or something? Would just cause more problems and probably bans or suspensions.
It's also not really fair to us lurkers~
I just wanna read about braindamage-chan and muuuumei cuddling and getting aHEAD in life.
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AnonymousRabbit does it all the time in Re:incarnation

Usually in response to someone getting cocky or starting to gloat

Tends to be the same person too

Doesn't put it in the update though, just replies to the person with a note about "helping"

Probably wouldn't work as a punishment for bad behavior

That and Rabbit's GMing style is vastly different from Firnagzen's

Though I will say that adopting at least a little bit of Rabbit's low tolerance for bullshit would probaby not be a bad idea
 
Dantalion said:
Flame wars are against the rules, specifically rules 3 and possibly 4. In-quest responses should be unnecessary, as long as they're punished appropriately. Delaying updates only gives more time for existing flame wars to continue, and I, for one, have not seen the original post since I started reading this thread. nevermind watching this thread.
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Delaying updates punish the ones who caused them to begin with. Collective punishment, if you will. Everyone gets upset at the ones who started it while also having everyone be extra careful about causing yet another delay.

That said the OP thing might not work, maybe sorta like a weird bizarro version of Patreon updates: "Thanks to all these guys who delayed/made these updates worst! *lists perpetrators at end of each update* There that oughta do it.
 
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Private Lee O'Malley said:
Delaying updates punish the ones who caused them to begin with. Collective punishment, if you will. Everyone gets upset at the ones who started it while also having everyone be extra careful about causing yet another delay.

That said the OP thing might not work, maybe sorta like weird bizarro version of Patreon updates: "Thanks to all these guys who delayed/made these updates worst! *lists perpetrators at end of each update* There that oughta do it.
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Yeah, I'm not going to do that. That is as bad as if not worse than the current thread atmosphere in terms of scaring off people.
 
Firnagzen said:
Yeah, I'm not going to do that. That is as bad as if not worse than the current thread atmosphere in terms of scaring off people.
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Oh thank goodness, I actually thought it was that bad to where this was feasible.

Still, my point still stands: You need to get harder on these guys. Rule with an iron fist, not a silk glove. Or maybe not, do as you please but that's just my two cents.

Good luck!
 
Rather than that, I think people should be more willing to hit the "Report" button every time they think someone is behaving inappropriately so that the mods could know to respond as soon as possible and enforce the rules if necessary. I know that we're all reluctant to take that step (I've never done it myself) and want to hope that if we wait it out things will just calm down, but all that results in is everybody who doesn't want to be drawn into the fighting staying quiet and keeping their head down while the loud and angry people control the thread.
 
Vebyast said:
I want to be able to read traumatized girls learning to believe in themselves again without having to constantly defend her from people that want to traumatize her because they think it'll be good for her.
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This is probably the main reason why I usually don't read anything other than the update and a few comments after it.
Private Lee O'Malley said:
advancement towards a ship no one likes
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Sabrina/NotMami...
Firnagzen said:
Yeah, I'm not going to do that. That is as bad as if not worse than the current thread atmosphere in terms of scaring off people.
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Glad to hear it personally.

I've been reading this like a story instead of a quest, so I want to ask something. All the little bits where Sabrina gets an idea of Witching someone or crushing their soul gems, is that a small response to the posters? A little reminder that we aren't doing that here or is it actually a fair character point?

Also, should I try catching up in the non story posts? It sounds like things got fairly toxic for a bit here.
 
Nictis said:
I've been reading this like a story instead of a quest, so I want to ask something. All the little bits where Sabrina gets an idea of Witching someone or crushing their soul gems, is that a small response to the posters? A little reminder that we aren't doing that here or is it actually a fair character point?
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Both, really. It's what tends to happen in the thread: someone brings it up, and it gets violently rejected. It's also a fairly good reflection of Sabrina's character. She might think it, but she's also going to squash those ideas violently, because while she might have that kind of capability and temptation - she'd also reject it.
 
Nictis said:
Also, should I try catching up in the non story posts? It sounds like things got fairly toxic for a bit here.
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Given the current discussion, that's an understatement. You should be mostly fine without them. It's mostly a tale of science versus social, eternally retold... with a fairly constant lukewarm war. Also, Mami images. Many Mami images.
 
Nictis said:
How can you be so confusing?!?
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While Mami images are undeniably fine, the fact that they exist here implies their existence elsewhere, unless they were made specifically for this thread. Which a vast majority of them weren't. So you can endure the wars in the thread to claim the gems, or you can seek them yourself in less hostile waters.
The choice is yours.
 
Dantalion said:
While Mami images are undeniably fine, the fact that they exist here implies their existence elsewhere, unless they were made specifically for this thread. Which a vast majority of them weren't. So you can endure the wars in the thread to claim the gems, or you can seek them yourself in less hostile waters.
The choice is yours.
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I'd love to take the safer waters, but I have yet to find TheFanficAddicts image elsewhere, so wish me luck in the plunge.
 
Well, let's hope I don't light the thread on fire, here.

But let me make a possible compromise solution on hugging Madoka vs not hugging Madoka.

Now, as I understand it, the best argument against is that she may feel singled out, as Sabrina hugs her in what is more formal atmosphere where she haven't been hugging everyone just over hearing some bad news. I don't know how likely this is, but to be fair, Madoka did have some self-esteem issues in canon.

But you know, Sabrina's been handholding with Mami pretty consistently the whole meeting. If reassuring Madoka is needed, wouldn't placing Sabrina's hand on hers supply physical contact without her feeling she's getting special treatment out of perceived weakness?

I don't know, this tread moves far too fast for me to follow all the arguments so I may have missed some vital element to either side of things.
 
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