Without a means to remove the grief themselves I don't think that would work. While we could it's a massive time investment, not suitable outside of downtime or for multitudes of clients.
On one hand, I'd like to point out that when using Alkahest on Homura there was no mention of the Grief actually
going anywhere once X ripped it out of her (Chapter 2.13, Lobotomy). I think it
might be possible for us to modify her light tree thing to do self-surgery and excise Grief on its own rather than merely repressing and hyperfocusing until it 'stops' being an issue.
Only real issues I see with it at the moment is that something about the Actualization Tech Tree
might force its users to rely on external forces to purge Grief even if X does the self-surgery modification. That, and, as you said, time constraints and the effort that would go into the operation. As every Puella Magi is unique, and has a unique personality, what works to allow Homu's mind tree thing to cut away Grief probably wouldn't work with Mami's tree thing, especially because they have two very different reasons for their persistence and drive, so how they'd do self-surgery is probably different as well.
Alternatively... It did always rub me the wrong way that only
negative emotion interacts with a Soul Gem. It almost feels like the Actualization Tech Tree was left unfinished, in a way. Maybe if we studied the differences between magical girls and non-magical girls on a mind tree thing level, we could try adding onto the system by making positive emotion interact with Soul Gems by purging Grief?? IDK. Just spitballing at this point.
On a semi-related note we may be able to "program" witches since they do have a neural network, just an ugly one.
This... I don't like this, but you're very much not wrong. An emptied Grief Seed isn't far from being a blank slate to build onto. Having automated 'Grief Drones' would be an interesting project. Not sure what we'd use them for, but it would certainly be a learning experience to try it considering what all that Grief does to the mind tree of the girl it comes from.
Maybe we can even figure out a way to make sure our kids can actually be
brought back should they end up in the worst-case scenario of Witch. Make sure enough of them persists that we can just patch job them back together after excising all the Grief. Granted, ideally we never have to De-Witch one of the kids, but it's good to prepare.
Now that I mention it, how many people can we operate on at a time? While it wouldn't save time actually editing anything we do see the contents of anyone involved.
As X The Manager, probably only one or two because of how involved the process is, and the fact that she only has two hands and needs both just to work on one person. As X The Abnormality... Probably as many as many as she can focus on at any one moment. Which considering Lob Corp... Is a lot. I suspect she'd sooner run out of 'valid' targets than get bogged down trying to work on too much at once.
Don't know anything about alchemy so, from what I searched in google the alchemists thought that Alkahest dissolved everything into it's most basic form, their astral form. So a person becomes a soul (isn't that the same as dying?).
My question is: what did the alchemists gain from getting Alkahest? Did they become omnipotent? Is it just a nice way if dying?
From my google fu, there seems to be a generalized 4 step process to creating a Philosopher's Stone.
Step 1: Nigredo, the process of decomposition. Breaking down matter (Ideally using Alkahest) into the most basic states possible.
Step 2: Albedo, the process of separation and purification. Effectively extracting those basic materials from your Nigredo Slurry.
Step 3: Citrinitas, the process of improvement and awakening. Using some method or another to amplify the purified materials you extracted via Albedo, making them
more than they used to be.
And finally, Step 4: Rubedo,
making the philosopher's stone. Combining all your extracted and refined materials into a coherent whole, and completing The Great Work.
So that's pretty major on its own, but then I dug a bit deeper via Wikipedia and
apparently those same terms can be used in relation to spirituality and psychology, particularly for the process of, (pulled from Wikipedia's page on Rubedo),
"Attaining Individuation, or the process that allows an individual to attain the integration of opposites, their transcendence, and finally emergence out of an undifferentiated unconsciousness. In an archetypal schema, rubedo represents the Self Archetype, and is the culmination of the four stages,
the merging of ego and Self."
The merging of ego and Self
EGO and Self
Doesn't that sound like the end result of Carmen's dream, merely achieved using a different method than the Seed of Light?? Well, that or Distortion if done wrong but preferably not. IDK. I woke up at like 4am and found this set of replies so now... yeah. If I sound like a crazy crackpot theorist that's why.
Also, the whole Alkahest thing gives me a Probably Bad Idea. Abnormalities
can synchronize and fuse together if their ideas mesh well enough, as we've seen with the bird trio. X is doing that to herself via the EGO equipment she's gathering. And we know the process is reversible via the bird trio. All I'm saying is that Pinks and Sword Sharpened With tears kind of feel like two sides of the same coin... and
I wanna do fusion science with them.
