Let's talk about situational awareness. Point one: Haruka is a human being. We make some explanation. She will ask questions. What questions will she ask? How do we answer her questions? And where does the conversation end up overall?
[X] As nice as having actual magic is, becoming a magical girl requires sacrifices, few of which are explained upfront.
- [X] A proper support network is very important to magical girls. Especially emotional support.
[X] Explain our goals, especially as pertains to aiding magical girls.
[X] Explain further as requested.
Explanation: "There are sacrifices. A proper emotional support network is necessary. We plan to save the world. Any questions?"
Following questions:
What sacrifices? Why is emotional support so much more necessary for magical girls? Why are magical girls hunting witches so hard that they have to drop out of school? What happens when you run out of Grief Seeds? Why does nobody share? Why does Kyubey keep contracting girls when there aren't enough Grief Seeds? How often to people actually run out of Grief Seeds and die?
If you're going to vote for a Q&A session, be ready to answer these questions.
I don't think it's either myself or Onmur is deliberately trying to keep Mrs. Shizuki in the dark here.
My proposal is absolutely a lecture or seminar; active, structured communication is far more efficient and far less error-prone for coherent lumps of information like this than reactive question-and-answer setups are. Especially on topics where the questioner will be liable to jump to emotionally charged conclusions, a questioner will often receive information out of order and without any structure that they could use to build a deeper understanding of the material. And that's assuming there aren't any out-of-left-field things they they couldn't even know to ask about, which are going to be
everywhere here. So, yes, the cursory explanations with question-and-answer sessions that you're proposing are so likely to misinform her that they basically
are votes to keep her in the dark.
Furthermore,
particularly if we're operating this as a question-and-answer session, we cannot allow her to jump to conclusions. You just
said that you think she's going to treat us like a stupid teenager; if she gets into the authority figure mood we're fucked. Doubly so if she hears something she doesn't like and changes from the mindset of asking for clarifications to the mindset of investigating a problematic situation. And that's not even
counting an outcome where she decides that she's heard enough and calls the Kanames and the Mikis so they can all get to the bottom of things together. Oh, and then we're dealing with a
rightfully enraged and emotionally crushed Homura.
So what do we do to avert this? We anticipate her questions and give extra explanation. When she asks leading questions we take the time to explain the context
around the question instead of giving her an answer that'll lead her in the wrong direction. We give her answers that lead into useful questions. And we control the message so that she doesn't decide that it's time to switch to interrogation mode. In other words, we infodump, but with a massive handicap because we're trying to do it as an on-the-fly socratic dialogue rather than a well-composed talk.
Oh, and we're going to have to vote for all that shit. While she's interrogating us, while half the thread is advocating for ESTABLISHING DOMINANCE, and while Mami is freaking the fuck out because we can't tread delicately around the more hurtful topics without Haruka smelling a rat and going digging. No.
Please no. I do not want to deal with those votes. I beg you.
Skip the summaries and just get straight to the infodumps. It's what we'll have to do anyway, it doesn't have the giant unguided Q&A minefield in the middle, and it will take two nice, active votes instead of four or six votes of pure vitriol and suffering.
Asking Mami to leave in this circumstance is basically the equivalent of shoeing the kids out of the room. Completely disregarding how it looks to Mami, It can be taken as rude, condescending, or disrespectful.
We're going to have to explain Kyubey. Mami has homework. I do not want her to have to bail on school again because she had a breakdown. You will also note that I asked Mami if she
wanted to leave the room; that's a
very different thing than asking her to leave the room.
We could explain the refugees without needing to go into all the gory details if we want to. Magical girling makes it hard to have a regular schedule, as evidenced by only two of like thirty girls we know going to school. That and the lack of school itself should combine pretty well to explain why there are so many homeless meguca we want to take in, if we want to explain it that way.
We're asking the parents to help us deal with stressed-out meguca and you want to
specifically keep them in the dark about why being meguca is so psychologically stressful? Good luck.
Okay. I guess your vote isn't too bad... I-it's not like I like it or anything, baka!
