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Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

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DestinyPlayer said:
Now that I think about it... It's possible that the issue is that the two are seeing the problem from two entirely different sides.

Vista doesn't want to burn off her aggression, she wants to make a difference. And training, sparring options do absolutely zilch for that. And Chevalier just doesn't see it.
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I agree with you, except he sees it. He just cannot do anything with it.
 
Lab_Accident said:
I agree with you, except he sees it. He just cannot do anything with it.
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If he did, he would recognize that training/sparring options simply aren't an option that Vista would consider to be a compromise in the first place. But he proposed them anyway, hoping that she'd be willing to approach him halfway despite the proposal not having anything to do with what she actually wants.

I mean, the core of compromise is "Let's try and meet each other halfway to get at least slightly closer to our goals". And if one side can't offer that slight step towards what the other side wants, then there can be no compromise. He'd have recognized that and at least didn't try to placate her with the equivalent of a piece of candy that she doesn't want anyway, to prevent aggravating her further.

So basically, in my opinion, the correct thing there would have been to do nothing instead of trying to give her "options" that don't actually do anything to address what she wants just for the sake of being able to say "Well, I did give her options, she just rejected them!". He could have just said "I'm sorry, but there is literally nothing I or anybody else can do, since the rules forbid it entirely". Would have at least made him seem reasonable to her, and someone who also suffers from it, instead of becoming the "big prohibitive authority figure treating her like a child".
 
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Spectral Waltz said:
From how it sounds, taking both their testimonies into account, It sounds to me like Chevalier has been making declarations without any explanation and with no attempt to find any sort of compromise. He's just going 'my way or the highway' and putting everyone else before Vista on the sole basis that she's a problem, which is frankly the exact opposite of what you want to do.
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Spectral Waltz said:
I'll believe that once I've actually seen it. For all we know his attempts at 'compromise' were functionally empty promises that made no actual effort to meet halfway.
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Well, let's see...
Silently Watches said:
He had tried everything he could to engage her in other ways, including arranging extra training exercises with the teams from Boston and New York and encouraging her to take a leadership role and help educate Flambé and Cherry Bomb in the ins and outs of being a professional hero
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He is offering her ways to be productive and to let her have some of the authority even he recognizes she deserves. He just won't let her go out for live combat against criminals and villains, which he again can't offer her in the first place.
Spectral Waltz said:
he could pair Vista up with older Wards
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Until Starmetal showed up - just this week, mind you - Vista was his oldest Ward.
Spectral Waltz said:
Or hell, put her patrolling with actual Protectorate members so that they can keep an eye on her but she still gets to actually do stuff. Follow the letter of the law while skirting the spirit.
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...And again...
Silently Watches said:
In a perfect world, he could send an adult hero with them, but Philadelphia was the smallest main branch in the Protectorate with three heroes, and even sparing one of their members to show Starmetal the ropes was putting a strain on them.
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If they can barely tolerate a week with one hero going out on more or less pointless patrols, how well do you think they could handle four years of it?
DestinyPlayer said:
I mean, the core of compromise is "Let's try and meet each other halfway to get at least slightly closer to our goals". And if one side can't offer that slight step towards what the other side wants, then there can be no compromise. He'd have recognized that and at least didn't try to placate her with the equivalent of a piece of candy that she doesn't want anyway, to prevent aggravating her further.
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Chevalier: "I can't let you go out and fight, but I can try to find something that lets you put your experience to use. Interdepartmental exercises, training the other Wards as a sort of junior Protectorate member..."
Vista: "Training exercises are pointless. It's fighting villains or nothing."
Chevalier: "...Then you get nothing."
DestinyPlayer said:
So basically, in my opinion, the correct thing there would have been to do nothing instead of trying to give her "options" that don't actually do anything to address what she wants. He could have just said "I'm sorry, but there is literally nothing I or anybody else can do, since the rules forbid it". Would have at least made him seem reasonable to her instead of becoming the "big prohibitive authority figure treating her like a kid".
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Vista's response: "The rules forbid it in Brockton Bay, too, but we still went out and did it. Everything was just fine."

I'm not saying that Chevalier is handling this situation great; he isn't. However, as I at least implied in the chapter, Vista is the direct cause of a significant portion of her own frustration by refusing to budge from her position. Mostly because she's thirteen years old and nobody is rational at that age.
 
Silently Watches said:
He had more than a year before he could even begin to loosen the restrictions on her, no matter how much she whined and complained.
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I wonder if he's actually explained all this to Vista herself. I feel for the guy; he's just a single link in the chain of command. He can't change policy there even if he wanted to.

Completely aside from the fact that I agree with the policy of not creating Child Soldiers or sending prepubescent kids into combat.

But Vista is a Brockton Bay vet, where Armsmaster and Piggot apparently did disregard policy and break the rules.

So, does she actually know they just got away with that due to the shit situation in the city, rather than actually being allowed?
 
DestinyPlayer said:
As a somewhat weird analogy, it feels like Missy, instead of being given proper rehab, has been forced to go cold-turkey and everybody refuses to even consider that this might be hurting her more than helping her, even though it's obvious that the drug of being a child soldier is a bad thing.
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I was so very tempted to make that analogy in my post a few pages back, but I resisted.


Silently Watches said:
it isn't up to him. He's obligated to color inside the lines.
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And nobody in the protectorate has bent a few regulations? Looked the other way when itchy Wards went on solo patrol? Unofficially left out information on relatively safe locations that they couldn't send Wards but couldn't justify full Protectorate members?
Granted, it's my (second hand) understanding of his character that he wouldn't think of those things, but they're options that other Protectorate leaders might have thought of.


Spectral Waltz said:
I mean, at the core of it he's in the right on several levels. He has a moral obligation, he has rules and regulations tying his hands, but the thing is it seems pretty clear that he's not actually tried to communicate with Vista on these things. If he has at some point got down, sat down full seriousness with Vista, explained to her exactly what the problems are and discussed how to meet in the middle, I'd respect that at least, but...

From how it sounds, taking both their testimonies into account, It sounds to me like Chevalier has been making declarations without any explanation and with no attempt to find any sort of compromise. He's just going 'my way or the highway' and putting everyone else before Vista on the sole basis that she's a problem, which is frankly the exact opposite of what you want to do.

Work more closely with problems to try and help them stop being problems. Don't push them away, it only makes everything worse.
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Vista seems to be equally intent on being knowledgable of the regulations in order to know when to break them. Sitting her down and going over line by line WHY he can't let her do the things she wants would at least redirect her anger from him to the system.
("You want to go on a solo patrol? Here's Rule X, Paragraph Y, Line Z that says I can't let you do that.")
It also opens the possibility of her finding loopholes he didn't.
("Yes, but Rule A, Paragraph B, Line C says in such and such circumstances* you can ignore rule XYZ")
*Such circumstances might be such an occasion as not having enough Protectorate members to escort the local wards. (Which is really something they should work on, either transferring in more Protectorate members, or incentivizing Wards to transfer out.)

It's probably too late for him to do that, but if he'd done that a few weeks / months ago when it became obvious she was chafing at not being allowed to fight he could have redirected her anger to better act as a mediator instead of a target.
 
DestinyPlayer said:
If he did, he would recognize that training/sparring options simply aren't an option that Vista would consider to be a compromise in the first place. But he proposed them anyway, hoping that she'd be willing to approach him halfway despite the proposal not having anything to do with what she actually wants.

I mean, the core of compromise is "Let's try and meet each other halfway to get at least slightly closer to our goals". And if one side can't offer that slight step towards what the other side wants, then there can be no compromise. He'd have recognized that and at least didn't try to placate her with the equivalent of a piece of candy that she doesn't want anyway, to prevent aggravating her further.

So basically, in my opinion, the correct thing there would have been to do nothing instead of trying to give her "options" that don't actually do anything to address what she wants just for the sake of being able to say "Well, I did give her options, she just rejected them!". He could have just said "I'm sorry, but there is literally nothing I or anybody else can do, since the rules forbid it entirely". Would have at least made him seem reasonable to her, and someone who also suffers from it, instead of becoming the "big prohibitive authority figure treating her like a child".
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We are reading the same sequence of events in vastly different ways. We can both agree that he cannot give her what she wants, and that he is trying his best. We just seem to disagree about who is being unreasonable in their expectations, Vista or Chevalier, and I think everyone will mantain their own opinion on this matter despite any arguments that are made. So I'll leave this topic for now, as I can see no way of us actually convincing each other without more evidence.
 
Silently Watches said:
Chevalier: "I can't let you go out and fight, but I can try to find something that lets you put your experience to use. Interdepartmental exercises, training the other Wards as a sort of junior Protectorate member..."
Vista: "Training exercises are pointless. It's fighting villains or nothing."
Chevalier: "...Then you get nothing."
Vista's response: "The rules forbid it in Brockton Bay, too, but we still went out and did it. Everything was just fine."

I'm not saying that Chevalier is handling this situation great; he isn't. However, as I at least implied in the chapter, Vista is the direct cause of a significant portion of her own frustration by refusing to budge from her position. Mostly because she's thirteen years old and nobody is rational at that age.
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And that's why I say it would've been a better option to do nothing. He would've known the BB situation (or, well, should've known), and would've understood that these wouldn't be options that Vista would be willing to accept. This way, he would've been able to remain at least somewhat reasonable in her eyes without ending up as a direct scapegoat for her frustrations. While this way, he just ended up pushing all of her buttons due to his proposal feeling to her like it's infantilizing her, trying to placate her just to make her stop whining instead of addressing what she sees as an issue. He disregarded her personality traits, her past, her personal issues and other such things, in favor of trying to "bulldoze" through the issue since "she's a kid".

Basically, in my opinion a very large part of the whole "nobody is rational at that age" issue comes from adults always assuming that as default, and refusing to consider that just talking to them like adults, explaining the why's and how's instead of just assuming that they won't budge regardless either way would work on kids. Debate instead of trying to placate. From what we know of Vista, or at least from what I'd gotten of her from her character, explaining the full reasons would've at least prevented the antagonziation process.

Also
"Sadly, this isn't Brockton Bay. Our superiors are far less accepting of breaches in regulations."
 
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Man, I don't envy Chev here.

Experienced as she maybe, Vista is barely a teen so her capacity to understand "No, this isn't about you, there's a bigger problem here" is kinda limited.

Probably the best way to solve her feeling of underappreciation without walking is for her to get the training job. Lets her put her knowledge into practice and probably earns her a good amount of respect.

On another line, what would be the capacities of the IE serums? As in, what is the limit? Could Tim make one that allows a mage to, I dunno, access ONE cross-class skill? Or a shot that allowed Taylor to temporarily use spells of another affinity?
 
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Silently Watches said:
Far from compromising, Vista had instead dug her heels in deeper and deeper, disdaining anything that was not related to live combat. And instead of helping her find some peace, Chevalier was increasingly tempted to restrict her to base permanently or even transfer her anywhere else where she could be some other branch's problem child.

Maybe Anchorage. She could both metaphorically and literally cool her heels until she learned how to play nice with others.
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*sighs*
Chevalier. A permanent restriction to base alone would be enough to make her walk away from the Wards at this point with both middle fingers raised in your specific direction, but transferring her to the branch well-known to be the Shit Detail? I don't think you'd like what would happen next. At all.
 
Lab_Accident said:
We are reading the same sequence of events in vastly different ways. We can both agree that he cannot give her what she wants, and that he is trying his best. We just seem to disagree about who is being unreasonable in their expectations, Vista or Chevalier, and I think everyone will mantain their own opinion on this matter despite any arguments that are made. So I'll leave this topic for now, as I can see no way of us actually convincing each other without more evidence.
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As a last note, I wasn't trying to reason who's in the wrong here. They're both equally frustrated and at a certain amount of blame here.

What I was trying to argue is for a way this situation could have been prevented, or at least mediated. Something that wouldn't needlessly antagonize the two, and instead at least leave them in a gruff state of mutual "This sucks!" while keeping them at least neutral to each other. A way to deescalate the situation instead of trying to solve it, I guess. Something that would make Vista understand the situation at hand in a way that would work along with her personality and character issues instead of pressing every damn button she had ever since she became a Ward in the first place.

Read up on her, find out about her issues, her worldview and her personality, instead of trying to treat her like an interchangeable "kid". Because there's no such thing, and based on what I know is the primary reason behind many of such "kids are unreasonable" situations.
 
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LancerisDead said:
On another line, what would be the capacities of the IE serums? As in, what is the limit? Could Tim make one that allows a mage to, I dunno, access ONE cross-class skill? Or a shot that allowed Taylor to temporarily use spells of another affinity?
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OH! That reminds me of something I forgot to mention something that the (Tech) Infinite Enhancement almost definitely lets us make:

HEALTH POTIONS

Bottle the Physical Heal spell, maybe put a few drops of red food coloring in it, and you've got an instant Health Potion!

Also likely things we can make: 'Haste' and 'Greater Magic Weapon' (Strike Boost).
Maclibuin's Boost spell does something similar but more general (affecting all forms of Parahuman powers, not just strike powers) and combine it with (T)IE he might be able to make either a stronger boost, or a longer boost.
 
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I see it as a major failure of the system that the rules get in the way of de-programming a child soldier.
You would think this situation had come up enough that there would be proper guides in place, rather than the whole cold turkey thing.
 
Vista is a little idiot. It pains me to wish horrible things to happen to her. She hasn't realized that without the protection of the PRT and even with it, there are psychos out there who would do horrible things to her and she's eager to meet every one of them.

In her future I foresee either a burn out case before she's 18 or dead or disabled before she's 18.
Her wanting to be a grown up and that creepy Lolita obsession she has on Dean makes her creepily dislikable.
 
LancerisDead said:
On another line, what would be the capacities of the IE serums? As in, what is the limit? Could Tim make one that allows a mage to, I dunno, access ONE cross-class skill? Or a shot that allowed Taylor to temporarily use spells of another affinity?
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No, the serums are essentially a portable version of the specific Boost spell they are based on.
Valdimarian said:
OH! That reminds me of something I forgot to mention something that the (Tech) Infinite Enhancement almost definitely lets us make:

HEALTH POTIONS

Bottle the Physical Heal spell, maybe put a few drops of red food coloring in it, and you've got an instant Health Potion!

Also likely things we can make: 'Haste' and 'Greater Magic Weapon' (Strike Boost).
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Like this.
 
Solusandra said:
Hmm............alchemy is cool and all, I guess...but can he make things like Healing Beds, Civilian Teleportation Grids, Everspring Farms and Space habitats/ships? Or is that totally unrelated?
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Considering the various support spells and the limits @Silently Watchers has previous told us about, I doubt he can make most of these. The template seems optimized for warfare and the construction of military equipment. The healing beds maybe and possibly starships eventually, but probably not the civilian infrastructure.
 
Silently Watches said:
(Tech) Infinite Enhancement – Serums with various enhancing properties.
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Is this limited to just Serums? Or does it also offer enhancements to the sorts of stuff we can already build too?

Could we build a machine to make linker core mutation serums automagically with enough training/build inverstment if we went down this path?

Given we've been told this has good synergy with Mutations, and mutations can grant muggles non-mages a Linker core in over 90% of cases. Well if we want to start mutating/enhancing people this is the way to go.

Silently Watches said:
Tech) Extinction Knight – Improved close-combat technology.
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I'm having trouble working out what this gives access to, beyond improved armour. Something like power weapons that ignore armour maybe?

Close combat devices(Swords, spears) Somethibg else?

Silently Watches said:
(Tech) Calamity Witch – Alternate modes to energy weapons, and a few underhanded tricks.
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Like switching from pinpoint targeting to wide area bombardment? Or from fire damage to ice damage? Something else?
 
Silently Watches said:
If they can barely tolerate a week with one hero going out on more or less pointless patrols, how well do you think they could handle four years of it?
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Why would they need to be pointless, Vista is a veteran and can give anyone else a mover rating, a Protectorate patrol with her in it would be MORE efficient.
And you don't have to CALL it a combat patrol, if there is an actual problem in philly then everyone involved benefits from playing along.
 
Hoyden said:
Is this limited to just Serums? Or does it also offer enhancements to the sorts of stuff we can already build too?
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4 of the 6 skills are serums.
Hoyden said:
Could we build a machine to make linker core mutation serums automagically with enough training/build inverstment if we went down this path?

Given we've been told this has good synergy with Mutations, and mutations can grant muggles non-mages a Linker core in over 90% of cases. Well if we want to start mutating/enhancing people this is the way to go.
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You could honestly do this now if anyone was willing to experiment with Mutagenics.
Hoyden said:
I'm having trouble working out what this gives access to, beyond improved armour. Something like power weapons that ignore armour maybe?

Close combat devices(Swords, spears) Somethibg else?
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Tim can already make close combat Devices. Those are the Armed Devices in the main skill tree. I don't want to give away everything, but as an example the Tech Knight tree contains automated cartridges and an alternate method of powering manatech.
Hoyden said:
Like switching from pinpoint targeting to wide area bombardment? Or from fire damage to ice damage? Something else?
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Imagine some of the Shooter modifications Taylor knows suddenly being applicable to laser weapons.
 
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