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Magical Girl Quest - The Fire That Burns

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Okibruez said:
Welp. Everyone's up in arms, and only, I think it's 3? people have been reading it right.

AFAIK, to dumb this way down, Gaia asked Omega Engine 'Hey, since she's going to be hanging out with this dying girl, can you help by muffling what your mom's feeling from this?' and Omega Engine said 'Hey, sure, that sounds swell. But then she'll still be hurting. And that's not right. So I'm just gonna turn it almost all the way off."
Gaia realized that what was a fairly reasonable request has suddenly gone from 'weed the garden' to 'BURN THE FIELDS!' with 0 warning because her chosen intermediary apparently has very loose interpretations and no idea what limits or morals are. Which we never got around to teaching it.

Amusingly, the thread's response to Gaia is roughly the same as Gaia's has been in regards to Omega Engine. IE: WHAT DID YOU DO YOU STUPID SHIT OH GOD EVERYTHING IS AWFUL NOW WHY DID I TRUST YOU?

That about right, @Rukia?

Edit: As a brief point, everyone's largely in character. Gaia is not unloving or unkind... she's very inhuman though, and has shown several times to have only a loose grasp of morality. She doesn't want her chosen 'daughter' to suffer... and the way she chose to do it used an intermediary who could and did deliberately misinterpret and escalate to an illogical extreme.

It's amazing how badly everything can go wahoonie shaped with a simple misunderstanding.
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No see, I get that? I just think Gaia still deserves the blame for trying it in the first place, especially since going by her dialogue she asked A&E to escalate.

She should have known better.
 
[X] Tohru POV
let's get the outside view of this clusterfuck :)

also time to look into something that prevents others from screwing with us.
 
[X] Tohru POV

At this point I think we should just move on, write this planet off as a loss and go around the Local Dimensional Cluster in search of something better. I just don't care anymore.
 
my personal perspective is this: it happened. Now, can we fix it?
First off, we need to comprehend WHAT is happening.

I'm not sure if this is a case of 'Omega is maintaining the 'calm' spell' or if it's 'Omega is actively eating Cerys's negative emotions'. I'll assume the former if only because the latter...Feels like the sort of thing that if Gaia feels the need to take offensive action to correct might just end up needing to do things like murder Cerys/ potentially deal with fallout of basically having to go full villainous Goddess...It's a deep enough pit I'd rather not dive into because I don't ahve the 'big picture' knowledge I need to figure that out I think.

So I'm assuming maintained spell. Which can be solved via some sort of 'dispelling' effect. If Omega decides no this is a good idea and restarts the spell then Gaia or even Cerys could solve it via honest lecture on why negative emotions are a good thing. Everyone is sore at each other for a little while, before Una does something cute to get everyone to go d'aww and make up.

I DO think Gaia's basically gonna get the equivalent of a verbal spanking from this due to failures to communicate, which...I can frankly, understand quite well-she wants humanity to be as great as it can be, and the fact that she can just keep throwing crap at them and they get better as a result...Kind of leads to into almost abusive patterns of behavior if taken too far, which can all too easily happen given the way Gaia seems to be good with people but not with individual persons-and this has just blown up in her face massively.

I find it hard to believe that this is a permanent issue, and I figure the BIGGEST loss, will be simple oppertunity costs. The only reason THAT will become a problem is if the margin for error for humanity to not bad-end or something like that turns out to be smaller then expected...
...
Yanno, here's a weird thought-Could Gaia empower humans in an emergency or something? I mean, I can see why she'd not want to-that sort of thing promotes too many stagnant behaviors I think? But the notion that Gaia CAN'T actually do something like that would probably help explain why she does so much to try and strengthen humanity through antagonistic means instead-work with what you have, don't gripe about what you don't, basically?
Though it seems to me unless she's locked-into working the way she works now she might reconsider her stance on that.
 
Zaealix said:
Yanno, here's a weird thought-Could Gaia empower humans in an emergency or something? I mean, I can see why she'd not want to-that sort of thing promotes too many stagnant behaviors I think? But the notion that Gaia CAN'T actually do something like that would probably help explain why she does so much to try and strengthen humanity through antagonistic means instead-work with what you have, don't gripe about what you don't, basically?
Though it seems to me unless she's locked-into working the way she works now she might reconsider her stance on that.
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She can, they die shortly afterwards.
 
Rukia said:
She can, they die shortly afterwards.
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Ahh...So it's really important that she builds their strength honestly rather then doing a 'pray to me and I'll save you!' deal.
Yeaaah...
It occurs to me that it IS possible depending on how this resolves that we basically made one too many 'piss Gaia off' choices...But...I don't think we actually DID that? Like this feels a bit too out of the blue for it to be the case. Protagonist swapover perhaps, but not full-on 'you screwed it up!' because of the way the factors came together to do this.
 
Sinarblood said:
The frustrating thing about this is that Gaia is so focused on Willow having the role of a pawn to Shiva Sil, that she is not realizing this kind of thing is exactly the reaction that Shiva Sil would have wanted.

If She killed Willow when we first retrieved her, Cerys' mental trauma at letting a child die would have been heavy, and she might have blamed herself for the result, and definitely blamed Gaia.

Gaia's planned for leader gets a heavy mental hit, and a divide between them could form.

Next she tries to bring Cerys on a vacation, and goads her into something that would take the entire vacation's time to get anything worthwhile out of, Shrine Maiden training, distracting her and distancing her from Willow, and only told Cerys of Willow's condition when Cerys made it clear she had no intention at all of doing the Shrine Maiden thing. That Cerys doesn't seem to realize what Gaia's motive was there besides Shrine maiden stuff is a minor miracle, or else the fall out would have hit even harder.

Now again she tries to separate Cerys from Willow in her final days and…

Well if Cerys takes option A, Gaia won't like it and the divide between them grows.

If Cerys takes option B, Cerys won't like it and the divide between them grows.

Gaia's heavy stance of hatred toward anyone related to Shiva Sil is poison here. Probably intentionally so.

Out of all the possible "people with the knowledge to defeat you" from the summoning ritual Shiva Sil picked an innocent child with no intent of really being a bringer of destruction, or destroying Gaia, and who they didn't really give huge incentives to be their follower or turn her to their point of view.

Gaia despite being able to read Willow's thoughts can't come up with a reason outside of her being a pawn of Shiva Sil for Cerys not to spend her time with Willow. Else she would have tried to explain it, to show Cerys that Willow truly is bad news.

Instead she brings Cerys an ultimatum of "fight alone or with an ally in the thickest parts of the war" when the last two times she went out (fort and ambush) would have resulted in her death had she been alone.

Because lets be honest here, she wouldn't force this "lesson" on us if anyone else in our group was about to die. She might have wanted to enforce the idea of us making a hard choice at some point, but she is only doing it now because she dislikes Willow.

After all, could you really say that Gaia would have given the equivalent choice here if Cerys was doing Shrine Maiden training now instead?

Willow hits Cerys buttons to care about because of who she is. Willow hits Gaia's buttons of disdain because of who sent her. Gaia's dislike of Shiva Sil transferring unfairly to Willow is forming a divide between us.

Just like Shiva Sil would want.

At the cost of one innocent little girl that they care about not one whit.
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We probably should hope someone gives this opinion to Gaia - or we get the chance to Write-In our complaints on this, sooner rather than after Willow's demise.
Especially in light of Gaia's fuck up.

[X] Daiyu POV

@Rukia, if Daiyu wins, can we please start this POV with at least a bit of overlap with the most recent chapter (Lesson One - The Heart) so that we can see Daiyu's own take on Cerys' state before she begins acting on her emotions?
Adhoc vote count started by Faraway-R on Jul 3, 2018 at 11:13 AM, finished with 9634 posts and 20 votes.
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Spectral Waltz said:
Except we the players didnot make a mistake. Unless I've badly misread the decsisions leading up to this, literally nothing we could have done besides compromising our morals could have possibly prevented this.
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Correct.

Okibruez said:
Welp. Everyone's up in arms, and only, I think it's 3? people have been reading it right.

AFAIK, to dumb this way down, Gaia asked Omega Engine 'Hey, since she's going to be hanging out with this dying girl, can you help by muffling what your mom's feeling from this?' and Omega Engine said 'Hey, sure, that sounds swell. But then she'll still be hurting. And that's not right. So I'm just gonna turn it almost all the way off."
Gaia realized that what was a fairly reasonable request has suddenly gone from 'weed the garden' to 'BURN THE FIELDS!' with 0 warning because her chosen intermediary apparently has very loose interpretations and no idea what limits or morals are. Which we never got around to teaching it.

Amusingly, the thread's response to Gaia is roughly the same as Gaia's has been in regards to Omega Engine. IE: WHAT DID YOU DO YOU STUPID SHIT OH GOD EVERYTHING IS AWFUL NOW WHY DID I TRUST YOU?

That about right, @Rukia?

Edit: As a brief point, everyone's largely in character. Gaia is not unloving or unkind... she's very inhuman though, and has shown several times to have only a loose grasp of morality. She doesn't want her chosen 'daughter' to suffer... and the way she chose to do it used an intermediary who could and did deliberately misinterpret and escalate to an illogical extreme.

It's amazing how badly everything can go wahoonie shaped with a simple misunderstanding.
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You are not wrong there, except for one thing.

Gaia knows humans, any and all. Even if she is terrible at interacting with them, she should know exactly what the choice she just pushed on Cerys would do to her mental state. So, in order to prevent this whole situation, she could have simply not pulled that stunt at all.

Zaealix said:
Yanno, here's a weird thought-Could Gaia empower humans in an emergency or something? I mean, I can see why she'd not want to-that sort of thing promotes too many stagnant behaviors I think? But the notion that Gaia CAN'T actually do something like that would probably help explain why she does so much to try and strengthen humanity through antagonistic means instead-work with what you have, don't gripe about what you don't, basically?
Though it seems to me unless she's locked-into working the way she works now she might reconsider her stance on that.
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There is. It is called Instant Evolution, immediately evolves one of Gaia's creatures into an incredibly powerful monstrosity... and makes it die within two minutes time.
 
Naron said:
There is. It is called Instant Evolution, immediately evolves one of Gaia's creatures into an incredibly powerful monstrosity... and makes it die within two minutes time.
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That would be useful for situations like demons in process of taking a city and any grief stricken survivors would by happy to take the suicidal power up to avenge their loved ones and joining them shortly.
Would slow down any demon invasion.
 
Jrin said:
That would be useful for situations like demons in process of taking a city and any grief stricken survivors would by happy to take the suicidal power up to avenge their loved ones and joining them shortly.
Would slow down any demon invasion.
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I have the feeling this is how Gaia would react to an actual invasion, though not to a small-scale attack. Her main weapon (humanity) will do its job just fine for those.
 
Naron said:
You are not wrong there, except for one thing.

Gaia knows humans, any and all. Even if she is terrible at interacting with them, she should know exactly what the choice she just pushed on Cerys would do to her mental state. So, in order to prevent this whole situation, she could have simply not pulled that stunt at all.
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Like had been pointed out, she's basically playing right into Shiva's hands doing this whole thing.
Wouldn't be too surprised if the timing of the kill switch was designed to trigger all the compassionate instincts in the girls and ensure that Gaia's reaction looks the more unreasonable.
 
For everyone saying we should burn all bridges with Gaia and even saying we should do the same to Gaia herself:
We are very rapidly running out of unburnt bridges. If we jump ship here, too, where to next? Back to Karen, on hands and knees? Back to us against the whole world?

Gaia might not be, you know, the best boss? But sometimes even the best boss has to ask their best employee to do something unpleasant.
Given how far out on a limb she's gone for us in return, and how much she does actually care? I'm not saying I'm not leery about all this, but I'm okay with seeing where Gaia meant to take this.
 
Okibruez said:
For everyone saying we should burn all bridges with Gaia and even saying we should do the same to Gaia herself:
We are very rapidly running out of unburnt bridges. If we jump ship here, too, where to next? Back to Karen, on hands and knees? Back to us against the whole world?

Gaia might not be, you know, the best boss? But sometimes even the best boss has to ask their best employee to do something unpleasant.
Given how far out on a limb she's gone for us in return, and how much she does actually care? I'm not saying I'm not leery about all this, but I'm okay with seeing where Gaia meant to take this.
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The problem I see here is that there is a difference between ordering something unpleasant and this.
Besides, Gaia messed up quite a few times before, each one the players let slide to give her a chance. There is a point where it is enough. (Not saying it is now, but quite a few people appear to be of that opinion)


That aside, there is always Starburn hanging around in Scotland; he probably would not mind a handful of girls building a hut in-between two of his toes or something. :V
 
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Okibruez said:
For everyone saying we should burn all bridges with Gaia and even saying we should do the same to Gaia herself:
We are very rapidly running out of unburnt bridges. If we jump ship here, too, where to next? Back to Karen, on hands and knees? Back to us against the whole world?

Gaia might not be, you know, the best boss? But sometimes even the best boss has to ask their best employee to do something unpleasant.
Given how far out on a limb she's gone for us in return, and how much she does actually care? I'm not saying I'm not leery about all this, but I'm okay with seeing where Gaia meant to take this.
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If Gaia keeps messing up like this, we might want to look into the Unified Light.
if it is anything like mainquest that'd be more than acceptable.

another option is a hut somewhere in the nowhere, though Sabina might not follow there.

also the fact alone that we are looking around for other options will force Gaia to think about how she has fucked up.
 
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We're at the very least having a serious talk with Gaia after this, because this shit was not acceptable. Even if she didn't actually mean for things to turn out this crazy, she still made a major stupid.

Depending on how that talk goes, I might push for leaving her as well, but we'll see.
 
I thought Gaia was supposed to be able to see into the future somewhat? How did she not see something like this happening?
 
Zako said:
I thought Gaia was supposed to be able to see into the future somewhat? How did she not see something like this happening?
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She can not see the future, but it is generally implied (in mainline) that her vast conciousness and total knowledge about every event on her surface allow for accurate predictions far ahead.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
[X] Tohru POV

*Ahem*

GAIA WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU NARCISSISTIC LACKWITTED MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A BEING WORTH HUMAN CARE!

FUCK YOU YOU HORRID WORTHLESS BITCH.
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I think we are cursed, our bosses fated to make bad decisions. Gaia is being worse then Karen.

Maybe.. maybe we aren't supposed to have a boss. Like that twists our fates? Makes us get fucked over more often then we should?
 
Admittedly i am worried that what ever we do, we will keep getting screwed by powerful people who seemed reasonable.
 
Nolrai said:
I think we are cursed, our bosses fated to make bad decisions. Gaia is being worse then Karen.

Maybe.. maybe we aren't supposed to have a boss. Like that twists our fates? Makes us get fucked over more often then we should?
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NO GODS, NO MASTERS! EVERY MAGICAL GIRL A QUEEN! EVERY MAGICAL GIRL A QUEEN! EVERY MAGICAL GIRL A QUEEN!
 
Nolrai said:
Admittedly i am worried that what ever we do, we will keep getting screwed by powerful people who seemed reasonable.
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It really does seem like leaders suddenly get the idiot ball whenever it comes to Cerys. Karen? The top tier mage of humanity, over 200 years old (something like that), and has been subtly gaining more and more power in Europe to the point where they go into open warfare for her and the clocktower. Gaia? The freaking planet. Countless ages old, created humanity and watched us all this time.

Neither of them can't help but to screw up any basic form of a trusting relationship with a teenaged girl.
 
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