The correct way to fry an egg

  • Sunny side up

    Votes: 16 64.0%
  • Sunny side down

    Votes: 9 36.0%

  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .
[X] Fight the paradox witch
-[X] wake Ryouko through your link to her
-[X] wake Nanami with handholding
-[X] wake Kyouko with handholding
-[X] attempt to use the star staff to fix the feathers in Simona's seed, extract if needed.
-[X] Contact Homura for help since she's immune to time stop (and fail)

[x]Let the paradox happen
-[x]Foil Abraxas's plans

I think unwitching Abraxas while we have 0 feathers is a terrible idea that will either kill us from exhaustion or at least put us in a coma until Walpurgis gives us a rude awakening, but Tomoyo seems to like the idea so maybe it's just crazy enough to work.

So I guess I'll vote for it, albeit with enormous reservations.
 
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I'm still kind of lost on how Simona could have been a witch all along.

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion? There are multiple Simonas, some of them are clearly not Abraxas (yet). The one in America hasn't even contracted. (yet)

The one at the airport appeared to be a magical girl. (at that point in her timeline)

The one we met in the Star Empire and save AI!Asami from was clearly not a witch (yet) or Godoka would have killed them.

Obviously there are some time and multiverse shenanigans going on with Simona, I don't understand the specifics either though.
Adhoc vote count started by AceJade on May 8, 2019 at 4:08 PM, finished with 4775 posts and 3 votes.

  • [X] Fight the paradox witch
    -[X] wake Nanami with handholding
    -[X] wake Kyouko with handholding
    -[X] use the star staff to fix the feathers in Simona's seed, extract if needed.
    [x]Let the paradox happen
    -[x]Foil Abraxas's plans
    [X] Fight the paradox witch
    -[X] wake Ryouko through your link to her
    -[X] wake Kyouko with handholding
    -[X] use the star staff to fix the feathers in Simona's seed, extract if needed.
    [X] Remind Ryouko that we are trying to save everyone, so she does need to protect her world from annihilation and the incubators are trying to get all of humanities energy though her.
    [X] Fight the paradox witch
    -[X] wake Ryouko through your link to her
    -[X] wake Nanami with handholding
    -[X] wake Kyouko with handholding
    -[X] attempt to use the star staff to fix the feathers in Simona's seed, extract if needed.
    -[X] Contact Homura for help since she's immune to time stop (and fail)
    [x]Let the paradox happen
    -[x]Foil Abraxas's plans
 
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[X] Attempt to reason out the current situation with the witch
-[X] Try and see if she is a witch, or maybe witch kissed, or possessed by the grief seed you can see

[X] Ask why we're being asked to help with the paradox issue, specifically. Paradox-avoidance isn't our typical duties, as far as we're aware.
-[X] Confirm what actions caused the issue. From your understanding, the Star Empire was changed into this current world after it, in some way, blew up. A Ryouko intending to destroy it in the past seems entirely in line with what has already happened. If this is incorrect, could she explain what we have wrong? Our Ryouko is also likely to refuse being the star empire's chosen one and will, at this point, respond about the same as the Ryouko here. Why is one better then the other for paradox-avoidance?
-[X] request information on other potential paradoxes and how to avoid them
--[X] You understand that giving us information about some paradoxes may in fact cause them, she can leave that sort of information out
-[X] ask more about America. There is a Simona there that seems to be living a normal life, was she and Ryouko supposed to live a happy life there, in contrast with the other Simona's and Ryouko's who have so much to do?

[X] Neither confirm or deny paradox actions
-[X] do ask about stealing a bit of Homura. Would she lose some of her magic powers or sense of self, or would it only be using some of her magic?
-[X] Would it be possible to use our powers to send a message in the past to ourselves? Hypothetically.

[X] If attacked, defend yourself with the ribbon, and try and wake up Nanami and Kyouko, and try and get Kirika to help. Try to avoid bringing Ryouko in, if she's not in danger.

I don't like how we basically hit SE! Ryouko's manufactured manipulation buttons and affected her brainchemistry that lead her to brainwashing herself, but I distrust either fighting this simona or doing much paradox reversal.

But! Whatever we do, we need more information. If we can turn back time without things getting worse, we can summon her later when we have more firepower by reinitiate a paradox. We should also find if there are any other landmines we can learn of before stepping on them for once. Obviously we don't want to paradox ourselves by asking, so if we can't know, oh well.

I want to ask why she's talking to us specifically, instead of someone like QB or Homura (who has the power to change all this!) or whatever. Along with general questions we try and ask every version of Simona, since she's the one at the heart of most of our issues. She's already dropped some breadcrumbs we can follow up on, so lets see if we can get more.

Given the nature of this quest, I admit that 'ask for more information' is basically rolling the dice on what will happen, so I put my back up plan of 'defend ourselves'. Since the most dangerous thing we have is the ribbon, we'll use that, while waking up the non-paradoxed magical girls if possible.

After consideration, I am starting to suspect this Simona isn't actually a witch, or at least not the witch. She may be possessed or witch kissed by the actual witch, and acting out the witches desires. In that case, attacking her would only be attacking a decoy. In the same way attacking Hitomi in PMMM wouldn't save anyone from the witch that Sayaka kills.

Also, the idea of making a boss enemy go away until your better prepared later is too good an idea not to try, if we are being locked into fighting them.
 
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[X] Attempt to reason out the current situation with the witch
-[X] Try and see if she is a witch, or maybe witch kissed, or possessed by the grief seed you can see

[X] Ask why we're being asked to help with the paradox issue, specifically. Paradox-avoidance isn't our typical duties, as far as we're aware. Does fixing paradoxes
-[X] Confirm what actions caused the issue. From your understanding, the Star Empire was changed into this current world after it, in some way, blew up. A Ryouko intending to destroy it in the past seems entirely in line with what has already happened. If this is incorrect, could she explain what we have wrong? Our Ryouko is also likely to refuse being the star empire's chosen one and will, at this point, respond about the same as the Ryouko here. Why is one better then the other for paradox-avoidance?
-[X] request information on other potential paradoxes and how to avoid them
--[X] You understand that giving us information about some paradoxes may in fact cause them, she can leave that sort of information out
-[X] ask more about America. There is a Simona there that seems to be living a normal life, was she and Ryouko supposed to live a happy life there, in contrast with the other Simona's and Ryouko's who have so much to do?

[X] Neither confirm or deny paradox actions
-[X] do ask about stealing a bit of Homura. Would she lose some of her magic powers or sense of self, or would it only be using some of her magic?
-[X] Would it be possible to use our powers to send a message in the past to ourselves? Hypothetically.

[X] If attacked, defend yourself with the ribbon, and try and wake up Nanami and Kyouko, and try and get Kirika to help. Try to avoid bringing Ryouko in, if she's not in danger.

I don't like how we basically hit SE! Ryouko's manufactured manipulation buttons and affected her brainchemistry that lead her to brainwashing herself, but I distrust either fighting this simona or doing much paradox reversal.

But! Whatever we do, we need more information. If we can turn back time without things getting worse, we can summon her later when we have more firepower by reinitiate a paradox. We should also find if there are any other landmines we can learn of before stepping on them for once. Obviously we don't want to paradox ourselves by asking, so if we can't know, oh well.

I want to ask why she's talking to us specifically, instead of someone like QB or Homura (who has the power to change all this!) or whatever. Along with general questions we try and ask every version of Simona, since she's the one at the heart of most of our issues. She's already dropped some breadcrumbs we can follow up on, so lets see if we can get more.

Given the nature of this quest, I admit that 'ask for more information' is basically rolling the dice on what will happen, so I put my back up plan of 'defend ourselves'. Since the most dangerous thing we have is the ribbon, we'll use that, while waking up the non-paradoxed magical girls if possible.

After consideration, I am starting to suspect this Simona isn't actually a witch, or at least not the witch. She may be possessed or witch kissed by the actual witch, and acting out the witches desires. In that case, attacking her would only be attacking a decoy. In the same way attacking Hitomi in PMMM wouldn't save anyone from the witch that Sayaka kills.

Also, the idea of making a boss enemy go away until your better prepared later is too good an idea not to try, if we are being locked into fighting them.

We don't have a magical girl's superhuman reflexes, and as a witch Abraxas can presumably move at speeds and with strength similar to a magical girl (in other words, too fast for a non-MG to even perceive the movement before the attack hits). Abraxas is already at close range, if she chooses to kill us while all the MGs are still time stopped, she can easily snap our neck before we can react. If we want to defend ourselves, we need to act preemptively while she hasn't yet decided to kill us.

Also it'll be much easier to ask her questions after we dewitch her so she's not an insane and murderous being of pure despair.

Also why do you think waking SE!Ryouko is a bad idea? Tomoyo has already heavily implied she won't side with Abraxas if we wake her.
 
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I do not understand what's happening but I'm voting anyway
I do not understand what is happening anywhere close to enough to venture a vote.

Could someone who understands what is happening give a summary of what the current situation is and what the options mean? Was Simona actually a witch this whole time?
 
I do not understand what is happening anywhere close to enough to venture a vote.

Could someone who understands what is happening give a summary of what the current situation is and what the options mean? Was Simona actually a witch this whole time?

I replied to someone else asking that last question earlier today, quoting my post for convenience:

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion? There are multiple Simonas, some of them are clearly not Abraxas (yet). The one in America hasn't even contracted. (yet)

The one at the airport appeared to be a magical girl. (at that point in her timeline)

The one we met in the Star Empire and save AI!Asami from was clearly not a witch (yet) or Godoka would have killed them.

Obviously there are some time and multiverse shenanigans going on with Simona, I don't understand the specifics either though.
 
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We don't have a magical girl's superhuman reflexes, and as a witch Abraxas can presumably move at speeds and with strength similar to a magical girl (in other words, too fast for a non-MG to even perceive the movement before the attack hits). Abraxas is already at close range, if she chooses to kill us while all the MGs are still time stopped, she can easily snap our neck before we can react. If we want to defend ourselves, we need to act preemptively while she hasn't yet decided to kill us.

Also it'll be much easier to ask her questions after we dewitch her so she's not an insane and murderous being of pure despair.

Also why do you think waking SE!Ryouko is a bad idea? Tomoyo has already heavily implied she won't side with Abraxas if we wake her.

Assuming it has to be a fight is an assertation I don't want to assume. If something does happen, our goal is to defend ourselves and wake up others, not attack. And since anytime we put a Ryouko and a Simona in a room together, bonkers shit happens. My vote does leave open the option of waking Ryouko if things look bad, because we're trying to avoid it, but not ruling it out. I also think that the ribbon that we have ought to allow, well, unpredictable effects if we try and do something with it, which should be at the speed of thought.

And all of this simona's options are non-lethal, and is trying to prevent more death (somehow). Since she's asking for our input, I think it serves us very badly to go 'this is a category of creature that is evil, lets just attack them when they try and work with us.' We went through special effort to save Oriko from herself, and are trying to do some version of that with Star empire.

All of a sudden going 'we can only talk after we beat you' when they opened with "There is a problem, lets try and work together to fix the problem before you kill yourself" is very rude.
 
...how does the nomenclator know these things.

No, seriously, this is bothering me. Where is this information coming from? Why is it in witch-runes? The nomenclator has, to the best of my knowledge, never acted like this.

How does it know Abraxas? Why is it displaying in runes instead of Standard?

Is this a ribbon shenanigan?

...is someone sending us misinformation?
 
Good questions.

In TTS, Ryouko reads clarrise von rhom's book in witch runs, and then wonders how she knows it's meaning. This seems to mean it's a sort of magical sense that imparts meaning (either the runes on the book insert the information to your brain, or magical girls read the runes and the magical sense translates for them whatever the ordinary runes mean), but neither explanations really work with what just happened.

It could be something the barrier is doing, or the ribbon being 'helpful', or some unknown alternation to our body/implants allow this to happen. But none are obvious, and implications scare me.
 
Assuming it has to be a fight is an assertation I don't want to assume. If something does happen, our goal is to defend ourselves and wake up others, not attack. And since anytime we put a Ryouko and a Simona in a room together, bonkers shit happens. My vote does leave open the option of waking Ryouko if things look bad, because we're trying to avoid it, but not ruling it out. I also think that the ribbon that we have ought to allow, well, unpredictable effects if we try and do something with it, which should be at the speed of thought.

And all of this simona's options are non-lethal, and is trying to prevent more death (somehow). Since she's asking for our input, I think it serves us very badly to go 'this is a category of creature that is evil, lets just attack them when they try and work with us.' We went through special effort to save Oriko from herself, and are trying to do some version of that with Star empire.

All of a sudden going 'we can only talk after we beat you' when they opened with "There is a problem, lets try and work together to fix the problem before you kill yourself" is very rude.

She's trying to kidnap G!Ryouko to America and undo our efforts to redeem SE!Ryouko, that alone is clearly hostile. And as far as I can tell she wasn't asking for our input, she was yelling at us and demanding we help her rewind the timeline and kidnap G!Ryouko to America, and force SE!Ryouko to become a Living Goddess (I still don't know what exactly that means but the narrative is clearly telling us it's horrible).

And if you recall we kidnapped Oriko by confiscating her soul gem at spearpoint after using customs to trap her. I don't see how beating Abraxas, who is clearly far more evil, dangerous, and untrustworthy than Oriko due to literally being an evil being of pure despair, is any more morally objectionable. Beating overtly hostile enemies into the ground is an important piece of Befriending them magical girl style.

But more importantly: Negotiating with a being of pure elemental evil (or in this case, technically pure insane despair) is almost always a terrible idea because they never negotiate in good faith; at the very least if you want them not to murder you the moment they randomly feel like it (because beings of pure insane despair tend to be a tad trigger happy to put it lightly), you need to negotiate from a position of superiority where you can force them not to murder you. If you need proof, look at how well Madoka and Kyoko's attempts to negotiate with Oktavia went; Oktavia just spent the whole time trying to kill them unprovoked.

That's not Simona anymore, that's Abraxas. All that's left is a cartoonishly evil caricature of her, a mockery of everything she once hoped and fought for. The fact that she has somehow retained the ability to speak and plan just makes her even more dangerous.

If you want to redeem/Befriend Abraxas, I'm confident the only way of doing that is if we can undo her witchdom.

...how does the nomenclator know these things.

No, seriously, this is bothering me. Where is this information coming from? Why is it in witch-runes? The nomenclator has, to the best of my knowledge, never acted like this.

How does it know Abraxas? Why is it displaying in runes instead of Standard?

Is this a ribbon shenanigan?

...is someone sending us misinformation?


Good questions.

In TTS, Ryouko reads clarrise von rhom's book in witch runs, and then wonders how she knows it's meaning. This seems to mean it's a sort of magical sense that imparts meaning (either the runes on the book insert the information to your brain, or magical girls read the runes and the magical sense translates for them whatever the ordinary runes mean), but neither explanations really work with what just happened.

It could be something the barrier is doing, or the ribbon being 'helpful', or some unknown alternation to our body/implants allow this to happen. But none are obvious, and implications scare me.

Why is this so odd/surprising? It is literally part of the original anime canon. It happens in the anime when a witch appears, I just checked episode 2 on Crunchyroll, here's a screencap:



I assume witches just introduce themselves using magically conjured witch runes.
 
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Literally none of the witches previously encountered in this quest (here, here, here, here, or here should be all of them?) have done title cards.

I was operating under the assumption that the rune cut-ins were extradiegetic; which is to say, only experienced by the audience and not a direct part of the fiction as such. I would, again, offer the complete lack of prior runic subtitles as evidence for this position.

This makes me worry that we are being deceived.

It is also possible that Tomoyo simply has not drawn attention to them before, and they are, in fact, an established thing that witches do; in which case you may consider my worries qua nomenclation to be unfounded.
 
Literally none of the witches previously encountered in this quest (here, here, here, here, or here should be all of them?) have done title cards.

I was operating under the assumption that the rune cut-ins were extradiegetic; which is to say, only experienced by the audience and not a direct part of the fiction as such. I would, again, offer the complete lack of prior runic subtitles as evidence for this position.

This makes me worry that we are being deceived.

It is also possible that Tomoyo simply has not drawn attention to them before, and they are, in fact, an established thing that witches do; in which case you may consider my worries qua nomenclation to be unfounded.

Huh. Rereading the passage, it does explicitly say it's coming from the nomenclature, which is a bit odd, though I don't think it would be in anyway impossible for a witch with a reality warping labyrinth to add her name to our nomenclature without our consent while we are inside the labyrinth.

I guess I'm just not worried, we also have the grief seed as proof she's a witch, so I see no reason to doubt the nomenclature.

Edit: Though if we want to indulge in paranoia the grief seed could be an elaborate illusion to deceive us too. I guess I'm just not as worried about being deceived as you are, if we go down that path anything could be illusion magic and we can't trust anything, which isn't a sane way to live.
 
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How does it know Abraxas? Why is it displaying in runes instead of Standard?

Is this a ribbon shenanigan?

Let's see, some candidate explanations to finding strange data in your nomenclator system:

- It's an illusion of some sort
- Someone hacked you to put it there
-- Nanami? Simona?? Machina???
-- (why????)
- Someone used magic to put it there
- A wish placed it there

If someone is deliberately placing it there to manipulate you, I'm not sure they'd want to use runes. The runes have activated your suspicion, after all. On the other hand, if magic is involved, especially automagic forms of magic, runes may be a natural representation for this. Are there notable recent magical phenomenon that involved you, and Simona (or her witch), but not other witches?

if we want to indulge in paranoia the grief seed could be an elaborate illusion to deceive us too. I guess I'm just not as worried about being deceived as you are, if we go down that path anything could be illusion magic and we can't trust anything, which isn't a sane way to live.

I think this would try the patience of the readers. Honestly, I do that enough already without actually intending; to do so deliberately would be highest folly :p



After (quite legitimate) complaints earlier, I have been working hard to move material questions out of the Discord and onto this thread. Besides being inclusive to those who are on SV, it makes things easier on me to be able to say "ask it on the thread" so that I may have more time to arrive at a good answer (or just to finish my commute).

With that in mind, I am going to aggressively drag this speculah from yesterday evening by @13th Madman onto the thread and address it here.

14th Madman @ TTS Discord said:
Guys, if I put forwards a point for future consideration, can you all promise not to propose any reckless experiments until we have more answers?
The soul gem is an egg cage, with, presumably, an egg in it. How do we go about ritually hatching the thing?

The term "hatching" is interesting here. While it destroys the egg, it is clear that it preserves something important in a way that, say, frying the egg does not, sunny-side-up or otherwise.

But let's talk rituals. Clarisse will have some of this theory available in her databanks. She knows that magic is ultimately a force of the soul, but, as the soul is attached to a mind and body in practice, things that affect the mind and body can affect magic. We see that magic gladly participates in patterns of showy symbolism (e.g. the decorative look of enchanted objects, minus Oriko's crystal ball). We can also see elements of ritual used in some of the more exotic forms of magic, like when the clairvoyants run a seance with Mami to view future-Homura. But even with battle magic and the like where it's not necessary, and might be a distraction to many magical girls, you can expect that Tomoe Mami gets just a tiny little bit extra from her attacks by throwing herself all the way into it with a cry of "Tiro Finale!" — while Misa Virani invokes an ancient incantation before her own moment of glory:
Misa Virani said:
Lord Jupiter! Father of lightning! Grant my wish! Call down the thunder!

(I learned of this catchphrase long after TTS.)

So rituals are a thing, and if you're planning something like "make the magic egg hatch", then they may be of help to you. If you want to hatch an egg, what you're looking for is something that will strongly engage both mind and body, and do so in a manner which is relevant to the concept-space where "hatching eggs" lives: new life, Easter, rebirth, spring. You could probably design a ritual from scratch if you wanted, and this approach would have advantages: you are doing a new thing with a new rite. But you do gain something from a rite with a legacy too, as the ideas of new life and fertility have been celebrated for ages, and the tradition is powerful. A hybrid approach is also available, a new adaptation of some existing rite.

Please direct further questions about this matter to a knowledgable in-universe source.
 
Let's see, some candidate explanations to finding strange data in your nomenclator system:

- It's an illusion of some sort
- Someone hacked you to put it there
-- Nanami? Simona?? Machina???
-- (why????)
- Someone used magic to put it there
- A wish placed it there
Hmm... Well, Clarisse's current technology (as well as her body) is a direct result of Nanami's wish. Is there a reason why that wish would give witch names?
 
Hmm... Well, Clarisse's current technology (as well as her body) is a direct result of Nanami's wish. Is there a reason why that wish would give witch names?

That wish has also been messed with by Window-Clarrise and Window-Simona, who claimed a paradox blew something up and they were trying to avoid that. Of course we can't verify that they did or didn't, since they didn't seem to trust each other, but considering the parallels I'm wondering if we could do a time-window. If we can, that implies some very interesting things about the one we saw from the other end, even if we don't actually do it.
 
After (quite legitimate) complaints earlier, I have been working hard to move material questions out of the Discord and onto this thread. Besides being inclusive to those who are on SV, it makes things easier on me to be able to say "ask it on the thread" so that I may have more time to arrive at a good answer (or just to finish my commute).

With that in mind, I am going to aggressively drag this speculah from yesterday evening by @13th Madman onto the thread and address it here.



The term "hatching" is interesting here. While it destroys the egg, it is clear that it preserves something important in a way that, say, frying the egg does not, sunny-side-up or otherwise.

But let's talk rituals. Clarisse will have some of this theory available in her databanks. She knows that magic is ultimately a force of the soul, but, as the soul is attached to a mind and body in practice, things that affect the mind and body can affect magic. We see that magic gladly participates in patterns of showy symbolism (e.g. the decorative look of enchanted objects, minus Oriko's crystal ball). We can also see elements of ritual used in some of the more exotic forms of magic, like when the clairvoyants run a seance with Mami to view future-Homura. But even with battle magic and the like where it's not necessary, and might be a distraction to many magical girls, you can expect that Tomoe Mami gets just a tiny little bit extra from her attacks by throwing herself all the way into it with a cry of "Tiro Finale!" — while Misa Virani invokes an ancient incantation before her own moment of glory:


(I learned of this catchphrase long after TTS.)

So rituals are a thing, and if you're planning something like "make the magic egg hatch", then they may be of help to you. If you want to hatch an egg, what you're looking for is something that will strongly engage both mind and body, and do so in a manner which is relevant to the concept-space where "hatching eggs" lives: new life, Easter, rebirth, spring. You could probably design a ritual from scratch if you wanted, and this approach would have advantages: you are doing a new thing with a new rite. But you do gain something from a rite with a legacy too, as the ideas of new life and fertility have been celebrated for ages, and the tradition is powerful. A hybrid approach is also available, a new adaptation of some existing rite.

Please direct further questions about this matter to a knowledgable in-universe source.

I like the new method of hiding easter eggs.

Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt to take an interest in Mama's work. Maybe ask Simona about the production her father is working on?

Perhaps later, assuming later is a thing that we get to have.

EDIT: Also we have to convince the Slipper Princess that ballet isn't evil. That may be a problem.
 
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I think that the people talking about hatching the egg are forgetting something crucial: the thing that hatches from the egg is the witch. That's why they're called Incubators.
 
I was going to, and may still do, a full effortpost about this; but Tomoyo and AceJade both beat me to the punch and I also just got back from dragging two very resistant cats to the vet and need a shower and a nap.

Short version: Tomoyo's post two posts up; with an added Princess Tutu joke about ducks and ravens.

As for the ballet thing - there's an easter egg in Tomoyo's post above which raised the subject of hatching, which raises the subject and made me remember that ballet has been previously demonstrated in this quest to be evil potentially of interest to us.
 
As for the ballet thing - there's an easter egg in Tomoyo's post above which raised the subject of hatching, which raises the subject and made me remember that ballet has been previously demonstrated in this quest to be evil potentially of interest to us.

For a more detailed explanation of this: Tomoyo's post has certain letters enlarged. When put together it spells 'stravnsky' who wrote some ballets. One of them is the 'Rite Of Spring', which is the ballet that tomoyo is work on the sci-fi adaptation of we heard about when we were roped into wearing cute costumes. And given the importance of spring that seems to be stressed...

The only problem is that ballet is about someone ritually dancing themselves to death, so we might want a different ballet.
 
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