Er, what? I mean reading and seeing that scene, I kinda want to propose Plan "Un-Gattai Walpurgisnacht so we can de-witch all those girls" because no one deserves being witched out, much less brainwashed into it-
...What the actual fuck?
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
-
- 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 Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
...Is this the right time to point out that, (admittedly with a fair bit of conspiracy theorist mental twisting), this section:
Can also be read as:
Sabrina: Sayaka, you'll be an angel.
Sayaka: It's not what it's cracked up to be.
(I am partially joking here, but it being there in the paranoid reading is what made me want to subtly reference back at her.)
As far as the railway gun goes, it's a Rebellion reference... Annnnnnd. Bleh. That explains why nobody was getting it. Looked things up again: it seems like I misremembered anyways. Apparently, Mami's nuclear finale/railway gun used Mitakihara's existing tracks rather than receiving Sayaka's assistance.
Well, that that embarrassment besides the point...
It's implied by the conversations happening around it in the thread, but I like having such things in the text itself given wordcount is available. Call it coming down to me just being the sort of person who likes to lay things out very explicitly.
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mistfist
Protector of Moe
- Location
- United States, EST
I'm generally referring to the ones in power (Corbeau, Lapin, Mineau, and Isabeau) when I'm saying 'the English Girls', not the dozens of brainwashed girls.
They're all innocent in this, but these four are real pieces of work.
Doesn't she just look cheerful?
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Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Sayaka is just fine at combat in absolute terms, but as part of the team she is the weakest combatant by far. Like, say we have a basketball team. Sayaka makes 75% of normal shots, including 60% from behind the three-point line. On any normal team she'd be the best player in history, by at least an order of magnitude. The problem is that she's on a team that typically scores from behind the half-court line and Sayaka never gets the ball. In terms of being useful to the team, Sayaka's combat potential is not useful.
Which is why we aren't telling her that? We're saying that Kyouko needs help, but that Sabrina isn't the right person and doesn't have time anyway, so we're delegating to Sayaka. Sayaka, who not only spends every other day palling around with Kyouko but is perfect for the job in the first place!
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
OK, seeing as there's more people who want to breach the Kyouko subject now... and hoping we've got enough time, I'll try to join, but after rearranging/rewriting ideas.
[X] Hug Sayaka. You believe in her.
[X] Ask for her help in a couple of things.
-[X] One, tell her about Kyouko's situation: Between scarce hunting, pride and... personal problems, she's been having Grief Seed problems. We probably won't be accompanying Sayaka on these sessions anymore, so ask her to keep an eye on Kyouko, make sure she keeps her gem clean?
-[X] Two, ask Sayaka to practise her Cloning power: It synergizes well with her melee training, it's useful for scouting ahead in Barriers, specially if she's ever forced to hunt alone, and... when the inmigrating megucas start arriving? You're gonna need all the help you can get.
-[X] It's not truancy if she's in and outside the school at the same time!
[X] Transform stress into happiness through mumihugs.
[X] Karaoke!
-[X] Have a duet with Mami.
[X] Hug Sayaka. You believe in her.
[X] Ask for her help in a couple of things.
-[X] One, tell her about Kyouko's situation: Between scarce hunting, pride and... personal problems, she's been having Grief Seed problems. We probably won't be accompanying Sayaka on these sessions anymore, so ask her to keep an eye on Kyouko, make sure she keeps her gem clean?
-[X] Two, ask Sayaka to practise her Cloning power: It synergizes well with her melee training, it's useful for scouting ahead in Barriers, specially if she's ever forced to hunt alone, and... when the inmigrating megucas start arriving? You're gonna need all the help you can get.
-[X] It's not truancy if she's in and outside the school at the same time!
[X] Transform stress into happiness through mumihugs.
[X] Karaoke!
-[X] Have a duet with Mami.
Don't call them ancient! That's rude!
Ah. Plan DGWaDWATG is reasonable then? (Once the translation comes out and/or Firn declares Tart as PMAS Canon anyway)
DB_Explorer
Purveyor of alternate realities.
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I do not like any solution to the current social event with Sayaka that focused and is built around giving her a task. I think it is the wrong way to do things. The issue is she thinks she is a burden, that's the key ,she thinks and she believes she is a burden. A simple statement of facts can not stop someone from believing something at times, especially something self esteem related like this.
Giving her a task, explaining what she can do is useful, likely even necessary, for this vote but I think it must be placed inside of a larger context. Without placing the 'tasking' inside a context we're basically going to come off as viewing Sayaka as useful for the listed and tasked items - it just seems shallow. Just telling we believe in Sayaka is not enough, we need to explain why or she will blow it off as platitudes. We can't just say 'her time will come' for the same reason.
The actual answer to Sayaka's question is really simple though - Sabrina trusts that Sayaka will be able to accomplish things, and will in the end come through when called to perform. Sabrina knows this, believes this, the rest of the social for this is structuring this reply in such a way that Sayaka will accept it. You have to use tasking and feats she can do now and in the future, her willingness to contract knowing that it means putting her soul into a rock, and using the wish from that to explicitly help her friends, to back Sabrina's belief.
Sabrina, and us the voters, believe that Sayaka will be useful in the future because she has a versatile skill set that she will have no hesitation to employ to help Mami, Homura, Sabrina etc because it would be against the grain of her character. Character we know she has because she willingly turned her soul into a rock to make a wish and gain powers specifically to help her friends. That friendship like that is hard to find for a puella magi, or that she's doing better then most scrubs is icing on the cake.
The goal is to have Sayaka understand that the people she worries about being a burden too don't believe that she is a burden and to the contrary are willing to support her and assist in her training and advancement. That she should not doubt herself for we do not doubt her. As well as the fact that we believe this out of reasoning rather then blind faith and idealism.
Basically in RL if I had a friend like this I would explain why *I* think they are wrong... and then maybe depending on the friend be 'go ahead fight me on this'.
Giving her a task, explaining what she can do is useful, likely even necessary, for this vote but I think it must be placed inside of a larger context. Without placing the 'tasking' inside a context we're basically going to come off as viewing Sayaka as useful for the listed and tasked items - it just seems shallow. Just telling we believe in Sayaka is not enough, we need to explain why or she will blow it off as platitudes. We can't just say 'her time will come' for the same reason.
The actual answer to Sayaka's question is really simple though - Sabrina trusts that Sayaka will be able to accomplish things, and will in the end come through when called to perform. Sabrina knows this, believes this, the rest of the social for this is structuring this reply in such a way that Sayaka will accept it. You have to use tasking and feats she can do now and in the future, her willingness to contract knowing that it means putting her soul into a rock, and using the wish from that to explicitly help her friends, to back Sabrina's belief.
Sabrina, and us the voters, believe that Sayaka will be useful in the future because she has a versatile skill set that she will have no hesitation to employ to help Mami, Homura, Sabrina etc because it would be against the grain of her character. Character we know she has because she willingly turned her soul into a rock to make a wish and gain powers specifically to help her friends. That friendship like that is hard to find for a puella magi, or that she's doing better then most scrubs is icing on the cake.
The goal is to have Sayaka understand that the people she worries about being a burden too don't believe that she is a burden and to the contrary are willing to support her and assist in her training and advancement. That she should not doubt herself for we do not doubt her. As well as the fact that we believe this out of reasoning rather then blind faith and idealism.
Basically in RL if I had a friend like this I would explain why *I* think they are wrong... and then maybe depending on the friend be 'go ahead fight me on this'.
- Location
- Illinois
Yeah that's the "penultimate strike" so to speak.
This... I thought about this, and I think this is a slippery slope we do not want to go down.
Mami: ... Sayaka is outside school doing things with Sabrina.
Sabrina: expression of horror
If we go down this route I think we would need to have Mami consider cloning also. Prior to doing this.
All of this. This is accurate. I have no idea if it's something we're physically capable of addressing within quest scale, though. Sayaka... she's stubborn. She's stubborn, and she still considers herself to owe Hitomi.
Let me just reiterate that. Her (friend since forever) hasn't been able to convince Sayaka that she doesn't owe her.
*grimaces*
Yeah.
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Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
I also refuse to accept the lack of hugs in this update.
But more seriously, hugs are soothing when you're down, if they're from the right source. And with hugs being Sabrina's "thing", I doubt it really could backfire seriously, not without Sayaka having a bit of a freakout which would be weird.
As far as flow goes, I don't think it's that weird. Sayaka kinda cut the line of conversation with her "I guess." which is incredibly non-committal and means that we either restart the conversation, or just drop the issue. The latters not an option, so...
I'll go with too flippant, although it's not meant to be a word-for-word construction of 'Brina's argument. Basically what I was saying is that Sayaka's perfectly poised, personality wise, to get through the prickles of Kyouko's personality and actually help her be a better person.
Take this from a paladin-type myself: there is No better way, period, to motivate a Paladin than to tell them they have the opportunity to redeem somebody. It's what we do. If we hint to Sayaka that Kyouko has a dark past and she has the opportunity to drag her out of it, and she turns that down, I'll delete my account and become a denizen of /pol/. It ain't gonna happen.
This is direction. More-over, it's trust, explicitly, and without any room for lying. We're directly telling her that we trust her enough to let her do her own thing, and let her handle a mission on her own.
Micromanaging her is going to have the opposite effect. Micromanaging means you don't trust your generals, governors, or other subordinates to properly do their job. You don't trust them to do the very thing you asked them to do. I'm fine with letting Sayaka ask us questions if she needs to, but let's not be helicoptering around shouting "HEY, LISTEN!" because that'll send the wrong message.
I'll modify it to make that more clear.
NEWER: 100% MOAR PALADIN
[X] Hug Sayaka. We believe in her, whether she does or not.
-[X] If she wants to be useful, how about she handles something for us? It's not really our secret to specify, but suffice to say Kyouko's done some bad things in the past, and recent famine in Kasaimono might push her back to doing said bad things. We'd prefer she didn't, and we think she would too - but she's got problems doing otherwise.
--[X] Because of some trauma that's unrelated but we also can't get into, Kyouko and Mami had a falling out. That means that now that all the witches are gathering in Mitakihara, Kyouko's not willing to move into our territory and trust us. As a hint, we'd rather her not ask Mami right now - it's fresh in her mind because of some of our own fuck-ups.
--[X] We'd like Sayaka to get closer to Kyouko and see if she can't coax her into being a bit more trusting - it's a prickly, fiddly situation, and one she'll have to make absolutely sure Kyouko never finds out we put her up to, but if she wants to be useful, she's in a better position to do so, because we have reason to believe her just being herself might be enough to do it.
--[X] Emphasize both that Kyouko cannot find out she's doing this on purpose, and that both Kyouko and Mami have issues regarding the topic - we'll help as much as we can, but in the end it's up to her to discover and navigate all the obstacles in her way before Kyouko turns into a tragic villainess.
-[X] Also, if she's looking for something to work while sore from training, you'd suggest clones. Manpower... er, Megucapower? is valuable.
[X] Transform stress into happiness through mumihugs.
[X] Karaoke!
-[X] Have a duet with Mami.
So the plan, from Sayaka's perspective, should be something similar to this:
1: Gather intel from Koko
1a) Figure out why they had a falling out
1b) Identify closet skeletons without getting stabbed
2: Prevent resurgence of Skeletons through application of charm
2a) Kyouko note: Charm in this case might mean fighting
3: Fix Kyouko's trust issues and bring her to Mitakihara for friendshipping.
4: Absolutely don't get caught.
4a) Note to self: Buy cyanide pills in case I'm captured by OpFor.
This should motivate Sayaka to spend more time with Kyouko and maybe Mami, which would be nice. It shows that we have trust in her to make the right choices to proceed the mission without handholding. Honestly, it's probably a better briefing than the AF would have given me had I been sent on a similar mission, so I doubt she'll have many questions. It also explains why we're being vague: we can't tell other people's secrets, but we can tell her who can.
I dunno. Just my thoughts.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
And what's worse? Having a player that only makes 75% of shots or having only four players on the court when you could have five?
Sayaka still contributes to combat. She still accounts for some share of the enemy forces and has her teammates' backs. To be useless, she would have to be so bad that she contributed nothing and consumed her teammates' attention babysitting her, and that's not the case.
But Sayaka just told us that's not what she wants. She wished to be able to "stand with" us, to fight at our side.
That's what she wants reassurance about, not that we have some sort of plan for her life, but that she'll get to be the kind of hero that she wanted to be.
Lone Courier 6
Devilish Fool
- Location
- United States of Quests
Nope! Cause what Sayaka wants doesn't fit with Sabrina's Keikaku, she's gotta change everything she wants to fit the master Keikaku that the infallible all powerful Sabrina has cooking!
- Location
- Illinois
You're ignoring reality. Mami would crush her. Homura would crush her. We would crush her.
She'll get there. Not right now.
I also refuse to accept the lack of hugs in this update.
But more seriously, hugs are soothing when you're down, if they're from the right source. And with hugs being Sabrina's "thing", I doubt it really could backfire seriously, not without Sayaka having a bit of a freakout which would be weird.
As far as flow goes, I don't think it's that weird. Sayaka kinda cut the line of conversation with her "I guess." which is incredibly non-committal and means that we either restart the conversation, or just drop the issue. The latters not an option, so...
I'll go with too flippant, although it's not meant to be a word-for-word construction of 'Brina's argument. Basically what I was saying is that Sayaka's perfectly poised, personality wise, to get through the prickles of Kyouko's personality and actually help her be a better person.
Take this from a paladin-type myself: there is No better way, period, to motivate a Paladin than to tell them they have the opportunity to redeem somebody. It's what we do. If we hint to Sayaka that Kyouko has a dark past and she has the opportunity to drag her out of it, and she turns that down, I'll delete my account and become a denizen of /pol/. It ain't gonna happen.
This is direction. More-over, it's trust, explicitly, and without any room for lying. We're directly telling her that we trust her enough to let her do her own thing, and let her handle a mission on her own.
Micromanaging her is going to have the opposite effect. Micromanaging means you don't trust your generals, governors, or other subordinates to properly do their job. You don't trust them to do the very thing you asked them to do. I'm fine with letting Sayaka ask us questions if she needs to, but let's not be helicoptering around shouting "HEY, LISTEN!" because that'll send the wrong message.
I'll modify it to make that more clear.
NEWER: 100% MOAR PALADIN
[X] Hug Sayaka. We believe in her, whether she does or not.
-[X] If she wants to be useful, how about she handles something for us? It's not really our secret to specify, but suffice to say Kyouko's done some bad things in the past, and recent famine in Kasaimono might push her back to doing said bad things. We'd prefer she didn't, and we think she would too - but she's got problems doing otherwise.
--[X] Because of some trauma that's unrelated but we also can't get into, Kyouko and Mami had a falling out. That means that now that all the witches are gathering in Mitakihara, Kyouko's not willing to move into our territory and trust us. As a hint, we'd rather her not ask Mami right now - it's fresh in her mind because of some of our own fuck-ups.
--[X] We'd like Sayaka to get closer to Kyouko and see if she can't coax her into being a bit more trusting - it's a prickly, fiddly situation, and one she'll have to make absolutely sure Kyouko never finds out we put her up to, but if she wants to be useful, she's in a better position to do so, because we have reason to believe her just being herself might be enough to do it.
--[X] Emphasize both that Kyouko cannot find out she's doing this on purpose, and that both Kyouko and Mami have issues regarding the topic - we'll help as much as we can, but in the end it's up to her to discover and navigate all the obstacles in her way before Kyouko turns into a tragic villainess.
-[X] Also, if she's looking for something to work while sore from training, you'd suggest clones. Manpower... er, Megucapower? is valuable.
[X] Transform stress into happiness through mumihugs.
[X] Karaoke!
-[X] Have a duet with Mami.
So the plan, from Sayaka's perspective, should be something similar to this:
1: Gather intel from Koko
1a) Figure out why they had a falling out
1b) Identify closet skeletons without getting stabbed
2: Prevent resurgence of Skeletons through application of charm
2a) Kyouko note: Charm in this case might mean fighting
3: Fix Kyouko's trust issues and bring her to Mitakihara for friendshipping.
4: Absolutely don't get caught.
4a) Note to self: Buy cyanide pills in case I'm captured by OpFor.
This should motivate Sayaka to spend more time with Kyouko and maybe Mami, which would be nice. It shows that we have trust in her to make the right choices to proceed the mission without handholding. Honestly, it's probably a better briefing than the AF would have given me had I been sent on a similar mission, so I doubt she'll have many questions. It also explains why we're being vague: we can't tell other people's secrets, but we can tell her who can.
I dunno. Just my thoughts.
1230AM here, I'll try to get back to you tomorrow?
FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
She isn't fighting Mami, Homura, or us, though.
DB_Explorer
Purveyor of alternate realities.
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well if Hitomi has only be saying 'Sayaka... its nothing really' then yeah thats not going to work on Sayaka. I know that a vote based around what I wrote might not solve the issue *right now* but I think that the other votes will do less or maybe even cause harm if we have misread how Sayaka will take being given tasks/more examples etc.
I'm not trying to solve Sayaka's self esteem issues RIGHT NOW - I'm trying to set her up to solve her issues. Even if her response to Sabrina explaining why she believes in Sayaka is Sayaka being assured only briefly its a success. Why? Because in that time we can do more things to provide more 'facts' next time Sayaka has doubt, we can fill that time with things like Karaoke, shopping, practice matches, witch hunts and hanging out with friends.
I just want Sayaka, in the end, to fight her own self doubt. Rather then go 'am I a burden' and wonder it alone I want her part of her to give all the reasons why she's not a burden. Even if she still doubts that part of her.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
That's what she needs to do, by building experiences which will let her know she has worth, rather than having to go on what other people say of her.
DB_Explorer
Purveyor of alternate realities.
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah but she can't really get those experiences if she has the self doubt now. But what are friends for, if not emotional support? Sure the buff will fade off but as I said, in that time she can get the experiences that just reinforce her friends assertions.
This, like most social issues, is not a near term project. Think about how long and insistent we had to be with getting Homura into the group. But now look at them Mami is as bad as us when it comes to watching out for Homura now. Mami! Mami now helps ensure Homura gets enough to eat!
These things just take time and everyone is trying to figure out a golden bullet to fix it now I feel like.
anyway I need to go to bed.
So... I tried to do a frankenvote, terrible idea, I know, I doubt anyone is gonna vote for this since I left out both mamihugs/karaoke and asking Sayaka to help with the magical girl refugees; and I doubt anyone would be ok with saving that for the next update, but anyways, here it is, 200 words exactly:
[X] Sit next to Sayaka and comfort her.
[X] She has less experience but is alerady way better at meele than us. Kyouko has years, she's almost as good as Mami at her best; and Sayaka still managed to scare her during their first fight.
[X] Give perspective on how most new Magical Girls would be doing in her stead. Like Ono. Ugh.
-[X] That's why we worry so much... like we worry about Mami, and Homura, everyone. Because this life is dangerous. We don't want to lose our friends.
[X] Frown. You were slow to decide on this, but...
-[X] Explain you're terrible at socialing and most of your problems come from not knowing how to help people become stable human beings who aren't assholes.
--[X] Brief Sayaka on the broad strokes of the Kyouko issue. Scarce hunting, mental/emotional problems left unspecified because privacy, desire to reconcile Kyouko + Mami conflicting with those.
---[X] Kyouko tolerates us when we're not pushing things too much. But somebody has to, or she'll never change...
----[X] Sayaka is the right choice for this, best way to do it is probably to loudly be Sayaka. This is the second motive for the training with Kyouko. It would mean the world to Mami.
I'm not really good at this frankenvote stuff. Also I'm a plagiarizer.
[X] Sit next to Sayaka and comfort her.
[X] She has less experience but is alerady way better at meele than us. Kyouko has years, she's almost as good as Mami at her best; and Sayaka still managed to scare her during their first fight.
[X] Give perspective on how most new Magical Girls would be doing in her stead. Like Ono. Ugh.
-[X] That's why we worry so much... like we worry about Mami, and Homura, everyone. Because this life is dangerous. We don't want to lose our friends.
[X] Frown. You were slow to decide on this, but...
-[X] Explain you're terrible at socialing and most of your problems come from not knowing how to help people become stable human beings who aren't assholes.
--[X] Brief Sayaka on the broad strokes of the Kyouko issue. Scarce hunting, mental/emotional problems left unspecified because privacy, desire to reconcile Kyouko + Mami conflicting with those.
---[X] Kyouko tolerates us when we're not pushing things too much. But somebody has to, or she'll never change...
----[X] Sayaka is the right choice for this, best way to do it is probably to loudly be Sayaka. This is the second motive for the training with Kyouko. It would mean the world to Mami.
I'm not really good at this frankenvote stuff. Also I'm a plagiarizer.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
I think the reason we're insisting is because she's still looking troubled, and we don't want to let the conversation end with her like that, despite the good bits that came out of the previous vote.
Maybe we could just
[] Hug Sayaka
[] Karaoke
-[] Mami
Without saying anything, and that might be better.
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Then maybe we can give it one more shot? Just leave her something to think on. Because as much as we hyped up her powers, that's not the sole reason why we think she'll be great.
I mean she is definitely not a burden. Even putting aside her copying ability . As unnecessary as I think this little "debt" that she thinks she owes us is, there's really not much doubt that she'll figure out a way to pay it back tenfold. Not just because of the pretty good, if somewhat overhyped, power but because she is kind of a great person. One of the best that Sabrina knows. She's brave, almost stupidly determined, pretty smart, and a good person. As utterly infuriated and salty I am about the way she contracted, I'm kind of glad that she'll be there to help in whatever huge messes that are to come. Homura and Mami are great, but they're just two people and have some pretty unfortunate hangups.
The thing is to convince her of this. Because looking back at the last vote, we probably didn't talk as much about her actual character as we should have maybe.
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SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not sure I understand why shortening the vote would avoid shooting ourselves in the foot.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
She doesn't need to be able to beat us to be useful to us in combat. She just needs to be good enough that the help she provides is greater than the help she needs.
In combat, the most important thing is teamwork, not individual ability.
BlackoutSampler
So Easily Forgotten
How about we confess/explain our bad habit of Gilgameshing to Sayaka and ask her to keep us in check so we don't walk all over everyone?
That would give her a (sorta) weakness to keep us seeming a bit more human, and gives her something to help us with.
That would give her a (sorta) weakness to keep us seeming a bit more human, and gives her something to help us with.
That's an idea. Should we only tell her that or should we take it to the extreme and metabomb her as you all were planning to do before?
...thought, you know, if we tell her that we cannot tell her to help us with Kyouko, I mean, wouln't that be counterproductive?
...thought, you know, if we tell her that we cannot tell her to help us with Kyouko, I mean, wouln't that be counterproductive?
Zeroth Jupi
Sporadic Writer and Haver of Ideas
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
[X] Onmur