Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
Cannongerbil said:
I don't disagree with trying to comfort Madoka somewhat, I just disagree with going full therapist on her and making long speeches designed to fix all her character flaws, because, once again, it's not our fucking job.

Just drop her a line of reassurance that she isn't a coward, like, you are braver than you give yourself credit for. Maybe a line about how she approached us when most people would just leave us be. Something like that is enough.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
...That's a good chunk of the current approach.

We have no reason NOT to go full therapist, because she needs it and if we don't do it, no one is. We've done it so far and there is no good reason not to keep trying to build these girls up.
 
Ugolino said:
...That's a good chunk of the current approach.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
*looks at Kinematic's wall of text convincing Madoka not to contract*
*looks at SWB "being a meguca is bad, mmkay?" approach*
*looks at Ugo's you don't have to contract to help spiel*

OH RLY?

[x] Hug Mami. Console Mami.
[x] Madoka, you are braver than you give yourself credit for. Most people would've left me be, but you approached me even without knowing what I was suffering from. That's not an act of a coward. Just because you didn't make a contract doesn't make you one.
[x] I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. And for making it look glamorous before.
[x] Defuse tension, get a fresh pot of tea for everyone.
 
Screw it, let's get another bandwagon going. Never mind that it's neutered and missing the actually helpful parts that we ARE going to have to cover in the near, near future: it's not the SWB vote. There's no way that winning would be a good thing.

[x] Hug Mami. Console Mami.
[x] Madoka, you are braver than you give yourself credit for. Most people would've left me be, but you approached me even without knowing what I was suffering from. That's not an act of a coward. Just because you didn't make a contract doesn't make you one.
[x] I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. And for making it look glamorous before.
[x] Defuse tension, get a fresh pot of tea for everyone.
 
Last edited:
I can understand Ugo's concerns on SWB's, but I really think Ugo's doesn't work well either. My own attempts will inherently be far more logic-based, which is a weak approach in this kind of situation.

However, for designing it (rather than writing it), I think I can get a little more structure.

Who are we responding to?
Who do we want to address? Why?
What impression do we want to carry?

Madoka has given her resolve not to contract, though still shows emotional weakness.
Sayaka has shown resolve not to be tricked, and has changed her attitude towards Homura.
Mami has mostly just limpeted.
Homura has been comforting Madoka, which is a pretty big step.

We've done the lichbomb. What is the motivation and goal to be completed in this next address to the group? What are we trying to 'fix'? What guidance do we want to give? What do we need to actually say on any particular issue?


Of current vote items:

[] Hug Mami. Console Mami.
— I actually dislike this as a directive. We may (and probably will) do so anyway, as we've already been doing without any special considerations, but it feels like we're weakening her, here, to make a vote line specifically for it. Yes, it's a traumatic issue, but I think we may be getting to the point of giving too much support, to the point where Mami isn't even trying to rely on herself anymore because we're doing everything for her.

Now, it's only been three days; can hardly expect to be over things so soon. However we do still want to reduce the dependency issue. We can (and will) support her, but I dislike the idea of the continued active push in that direction via the vote.

[] I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. And for making it look glamorous before.
— I assume this is directed to both Madoka and Sayaka. It just feels... incongruous. Particularly the second half, and also particularly in relation to the long speech to Madoka in the line afterwards. I understand (and agree with) the intent, but the wording at this point seems incomplete.

[] But in exchange, we sacrificed more than just our souls. You heard us talking after school. Dropping out of school clubs. Growing distant from friends. We have to isolate ourselves from everyone who doesn't know the secret. Not one magical girl in Mitakihara lives with their families. I... I couldn't even think of smalltalk that wasn't about magic.
— This is a great line, but like so many others that have been put forward, feels slightly wedged in where it doesn't quite fit.


Sayaka

At the end of the update, what do we want to say to Sayaka? She just apologized to Homura, and she's feeling irritated. She sees one of the people she admires most (Mami) completely breaking down. What is the most important thing for her to hear?

Glamor? Not really. She can catch the drift that the glamor is mostly surface glitter. Didn't tell them sooner? Ehh. I don't see that as a critical point. Clearly this was only recently discovered, and has already gone through Mami. Obviously you tell the magical girls first, before you tell the girls who are only considering making a wish.

Does she want something to strike out at? Is that anger a cover for her own uncertainty and fear? Does she want to be assured that the girl she admired is going to be OK? Does she want to be sure that she herself is going to be safe? What about the mindwipes of her parents? Is she concerned about the things Kyuubey might do to the people around her? What does this mean for the hope she had for helping Kyousuke?

Madoka

At the end of the update, Madoka has said she doesn't plan to contract; a promise to Homura. She's holding onto Homura, but is mostly upset about what this means to Homura herself. I don't think she feels as upset about being tricked herself, due to her usual self-esteem issues. It's hardly surprising that someone would be able to trick her, right?

I don't think she saw being a magical girl as glamorous so much as a means for her to do something that mattered. She knows that's a lie, now. Kyuubey has been with her for a while, now, telling her she'd make an amazing magical girl. She wanted to believe that, because that meant that she had some sort of worth. However that's been taken away.

So she's feeling lost. She wants to help Homura, but doesn't know how. She wants to feel like she can do something, but the only thing she's ever been told she might really be good at, was just a lie. She wants to support Mami, but is just a kohai; and besides, Mami has Sabrina now. She wants to feel like she'd have the strength to make a difference, but ultimately feels like she'd just wimp out anyway.

Mami

Mami is reliving the betrayal of her trust, the loss of friendship, and the remembrance of all that she's lost. She's afraid of losing the only thing she has left (Sabrina), even though it really isn't. She wants comfort and assurance. She needs to understand that her strength means something, and is valued.

Until now, she's played the strong senpai and constantly been abandoned. She finally broke, and by playing the limpet finally has someone promise to always stay with her. That's not reinforcing the right bits of her self.

------

Does anyone want to refine the above assessments? Is there anything I missed?

And, based on that, what actually needs to be said at this point?

This post is long enough; I'll put my re-compilation in a separate post.
 
It may have taken four days but I've done it. I've caught up with all 699 pages I've missed!


Thoughts along the way:

Grief Dissipation:
The explanation for what's going on here seems pretty obvious to me but I haven't seen anyone actually mention this. Hopefully it's because no one else has connected the dots rather then it been so obvious it wasn't worth mentioning...

Uncontrolled grief seems to try and revert to it's natural state. In the case of low density grief that is accomplished by dispersing in the atmosphere. For higher densities while the result is unknown I suspect it would be coalescing into a Demon.

We only know of three situations where this doesn't happen:
1) Inside soul gems/grief seeds
2) Witches and Familiars
3) Sabrina

How the first works we just don't know, yet, but I have an idea for the latter two.

Sabrina has noted that all the grief we control is actually threaded with magic and we know from Kirika's anti-magic melting Witches that Witches are held together by magic. Given that Witches are made out of grief and held together by magic it seems reasonable to conclude that our grief is been held together by the magic permeating it.

So now the question is; why does our magic stop holding the grief together after 100m? Well Firn said:
Firnagzen said:
Since it was pointed out to me - the range limitation on Sabrina's powers exist for a reason, and that's because it's tied to the Soul Gem range.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We know that a Soul Gem disconnects from it's body when more then 100 meters away so there must be something there. I suspect that both our grief and our body require an active connection with our Soul Gem.

When a Puella's body is separated from her gem it dies as seen by Episode 6 (Kyoko says Sayaka's dead) and the PMMM game (where Sayaka's body decayed). My guess is that Puella bodies require a constant supply of magic to continue functioning (Sayaka was right! They are literally zombies!). Since our grief functions similarly I imagine it also requires a constant supply of magic to keep it from reverting to it's natural state.

So while we likely can't create permanent constructs we can probably create ones that do last outside of our range by creating a magical reservoir inside them that the binding magic can draw upon. Depending upon exactly how this functions we could theoretically create effectively permanent objects by exploiting our unlimited magic to fill them with centuries worth of magic.

However there is another factor to consider. I'm almost certain that the active connection is for more then just supplying magic. If it was just that it would make more sense for there to be magical reserves by default. Instead I think that an active connection is required to actually control grief. So we could likely create blades that extend past our range limit by filling them with extra magic but we would be unable to change/command them once they leave our range.


Grief Healing
It stops working once we leave the area but that is still useful. Sabrina never leaves her own range so healing ourselves with grief is fine. As long as we can heal something that has been healed with grief with magic it is still useful for other people. Healing serious injuries that would kill the victim before we could heal them with magic for example. Also for combat healing.

Witch Bodies
This was brought up before but I'd like to mention it again. The two biggest issues here were that if it's successful the Human!Witches would be unable to leave our range and that the grief could be absorbed by the seed, resulting in a Witchout.

The first is easily countered by a combination of testing and prevention. Testing would consist of pressing a cleansed seed against a grief construct and seeing what happens. Prevention would be done by limiting the amount of grief inside the body to less then that required for a Witchout.

The second however is more interesting. We know that Witches can control grief. It's possible that the revived people might be able to still control grief in which case they would be able to control their body and keep it from dispersing. However even if that is not the case we might be able to teach them to sustained their grief bodies by continuously pumping magic into them, assuming my theory about how grief functions is accurate. In fact that might not even be necessary since a Soul Gem seems to naturally do that for their original body.


Grief Manufacturing
Items made directly from grief all collapse after we leave the area. Healing done with grief is likewise undone, likely because the healed flesh is made up of grief shaped into flesh. But what about using grief to process one thing into another thing?

For example if we build a smelter out of grief and use that to melt down a bunch of soda cans then pour the molten aluminum into a mold made from grief would the resulting product remain if placed outside our range or would it breakdown or something?

It would make sense for anything we produce this way to avoid breakdown since unlike our other experiments all the matter is real rather then grief-stuff. The only sticking point is that the energy responsible for the changes may be made of grief and that might causes complications.

However if this is successful then besides been able to produce anything we have the raw materials for and know the manufacturing procedure of if this works we might actually have a way of striking outside our 100m range limit.

Our grief blaster failed because it was shooting bolts of grief. A charged particle cannon* that worked by drawing in the surrounding air, ionizing it then propelling the ionized air forwards at high speed (like this one)* would likely work. Although it might still lose effectiveness at 100m since the energy for the beam comes from grief.

*Actually why don't we just make the Death Saurer? It's 32.4m long and 24m high so it should fit within our range and it's based upon Godzilla so it's the perfect thing to deploy in Japan! If only we were in Tokyo...

An alternative would be some kind of magical grief device that can drain energy from the surrounding environment and focus that into a beam/blast. All the energy of the attack is 'natural' so it definitely shouldn't have issues past 100m since the only thing grief did was collect and focus the energy.

An interesting test I just though of. If we create a microwave out of grief and then use it to reheat a cup of tea does the tea remain hot after it leaves our 100m range?

Multiple Sabrinas
Can a soulgem control more then one body? I am tempted to say yes since we have magical girls who can create clones but I don't know enough about how their abilities function to say for sure.

If we can create bodies out of grief for Sabrina to control it could aid in combat. The deciding factor would be if additional bodies adds or subtracts from her ability to focus.

As we saw in the fight against the Ishinomaki girls Sabrina's biggest issues in combat mass combat is focusing on everything at once. Theoretically additional bodies would make this easier since we would have additional brains to split the processing load over. However if the limitation is in Sabrina's soul rather then her brain then additional bodies would only lower her overall focus by requiring that she split it between them.

Of course going by the Soul Gem 100m limit we'd almost certainly have to keep the bodies within 100m of the gem but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Grief Equipment
We created something out of grief that could boost our magical healing. Sure it wasn't perfect since some of the healing was still done with grief but it's a brilliant idea.

The first thing we should try is some kind of Magical Amplifier designed to increase the range at which our Soul Gem can connect to things. I am imagining some kind of device that clips onto our Soul Gem and probably has little antennas coming off it.

Stuff that can boost our teammates, I bet Homura would love a laser gun, would be another worthwhile investment. While the utility of this stuff would be boosted if we can figure out how to make it last, even a day, outside of our range it's still useful even if limited to use within our range.

Grief Math
Ishinomaki has a population of 147,143 and is capable of supporting 7 magical girls. Assuming this is a relatively common human:MG ratio then over 7 billion people we're looking at a stable population of 333,009 Puella.

We know from Mami that you can last about two weeks on a grief seed with minimal* expenditure so I figure a week per seed would be about average.

So with 333,009 Puella consuming 52 seeds each per week we get a total yearly supply of 17,316,468 seeds.

That is a lot of seeds. It's actually pretty depressing since according to Wikipedia globally only 800,000 to 1,000,000 die of suicide every year. So either a lot of Puella rapidly Witchout or the suicide levels on PMAS!Earth are a lot higher and I know which one makes more sense....

For more data let's look at the University Group. They were located near Sendai University if I understand correctly. Well Sendai has a total population of 1,063,103. We know the UG managed to gather 3 seeds per week for the Sendai Group as well as the 6 (later 4) seeds they needed to support themselves.

So Sendai produced at least 9 seeds per week. Distributed over the population is 1 seed per 118,123 people. This doesn't fit the IGs numbers which have 1 seed per 21,020 people however we know for a fact that the UG isn't the only group in Sendai. There is of course the Sendai group as well.

Now we don't know if the Sendai group hunt seeds rather then just extorting/trading for them but given how seed crazy Akiko is I'm going to bet they do. So that is 5 more seeds per week been produced bringing the total up to 14.

14 seeds per week gives 1 seed per 75,936 people. This discrepancy suggests the IG group is hunting a larger area then just Ishinomaki, Sendai is been under hunted, the SG is hunting more then the minimum requirement, or the Sendai area is simply less productive then Ishinomaki.

Now at 17,316,468 seeds per year and assuming each seed is worth 803,340 marbles then to match the current system's grief production we must produce more then* 13,911,011,403,120 marbles of grief per year.

*Because this is only the lump sum of grief the Incubator's receive. We have to produce this plus the passive grief production of each seed.

13.9 trillion marbles per year is a lot. That is 38 billion marbles per day. To even reach that number we would need to convert every single person on Earth into a Puella and have them produce around 5 or 6 marbles of grief per day.

Based upon what I recall of grief production rates 5 marbles per day is easily doable however it does require regular magic use. Of course if we've converted the entire population to Puella I imagine magic use would become a part of daily living anyway.

So it is at least theoretically possible. The numbers actually get better if Puella can live forever like in TtS since that would result in a rapidly growing population.

*Lots of people seem to think this is normal while Mami specifically states:
Firnagzen said:
"Using my powers is the majority of it, really. Maybe... one every two weeks, if I don't use my powers at all?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So every two weeks is the bare minimum.


Now a growing population could be a problem but wishes would help mitigate that not to mention the widespread availability of magic would make colonizing other worlds a lot easier. Especially since Puella bodies are a lot tougher so thinks like long term exposure to low gravity and higher then normal levels of background radiation should be pretty easily dealt with.

tl;dr - Reworking the system is mathematically possible but dependent upon:
1) A new method of storing grief
2) Additional methods of extracting grief


Grief Volume
Mostly this is in response to:
'Lement said:
Ultimately, yes, but right now girls are a pittance to witches. Assuming we need about 10 seeds for 1 m^3 grief, we only need ....ah shit, bit under 42 million grief seeds to pull off most dense and large Ramiel impersonation possible with our current range.

....

Lets never get rid of grief again.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

1 seed = 200+ Basketballs of grief.
1 Basketball = ~7,103.36cm^3
200 Basketballs = ~1,421,911cm^3 = ~1.42m^3

So actually we'd only need about 3 million grief seeds at minimum. The more Basketballs per seed the lower that number goes!

Comment to @Cannongerbil
Cannongerbil said:
I too find heated debate enjoyable, which is why Is stuck with this for so long, but even I am starting to find the recent debates tiresome. Something's changed in the last three hundred or so pages that made the discussions less enjoyable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Heh. Think about how it feels to read through it all as a solid block! I have been having to take breaks every 25 or 50 pages to keep my spirits up.


Metamaterials
Surround ourselves in a grief matter bubble that has a negative refractive index for visible light. Basically all light bends around us. As long as we are in the air not been about to see doesn't matter much and while Puella will know we are somewhere they won't be able to tell exactly where we are. Meanwhile we can snag their soul gems and hold them up at the top of our range.

Repsonse to @AuraTwilight
AuraTwilight said:
Kyubey is a fucking lying asshole and he lied about his inability to lie and if you need any more evidence he literally roleplayed a pokemon in Rebellion.

Seriously, "this guy isn't a liar because he said he never lies" is fallacious and the entire fandom fucking fell for it. #staywoke #anteup #preachpeace #justice4setsuko
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not true! I've been saying he was lying since the very beginning! I even did so in this very quest:
UberJJK said:
It's funny how everyone seems to assume that QB can't lie. We don't actually know that. All we know is that QB tells people he can't lie and that Homura hasn't caught him in a lie yet.

Neither of which even comes close to proof considering we're talking about a master manipulator who has been feeding off humanity for literally millions of years and Homura is still mentally an 11 year old girl, because reliving the same month for a hundred years isn't at all the same as living for a hundred years, with zero social skills.

QB is, from what I remember, careful to only tell people truths that are easy to verify (such as PM needing to keep their SGs close) or impractical to verify (such as him fighting entropy). The former combined with his claims of been unable to lie make it much easier for people to buy the latter.

In reality we have no real proof that the Incubators are fighting entropy and not eating the girls souls, waiting for them to turn into grief filled witches because they taste better.

Now the Post Madokami world does suggest they aren't actually eating souls, since the Inucbators are fine with Grief Seeds, but that still doesn't tell us anything other then them having some use for large quantities of grief.

My point however is that we shouldn't trust that QB is telling the truth just because he tells us his is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And as countless people have mentioned that is not even bringing in his tendency to lie through the careful framing of factual statements. After all the best lies are the ones that are true.

And yes stating a series of factual statements in a way that is carefully designed to mislead your audience into doing what you want them to is very much a lie. Fundamentally lying isn't more about deliberately misleading your victim rather then whether the statement is technically correct.

That been said Firn did say:
Firnagzen said:
Also, Kyuubey doesn't lie. It's a matter of perspective.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Microwaved Tea
Yes. This is seriously a topic I was thinking about. We all know from the various crazies tea drinkers in this tread that microwaving tea is evil and unforgivable because it does indescribable things to the tea.

Well. What if we create a grief microwave that can reheat tea without changing it's flavor?

Ranged Casting
We noticed issues with using magic at distances from our Soul Gem and/or body. We also know that we control our grief by threading it with magic. So how about creating our hammer, or casting any other type of magic we learn in the future, through our grief?

It makes sense that using magic from our soul gem is easy since it only has to leave the gem and similarly using our body as the reference point might be easy because our body has the magic connecting it to our soul gem running though it.

So if it's easy to use magic through mediums already filled with our magic it would make sense for it to be easier to cast magic through our grief rather then random points in the air.

Right now this idea, if successful, isn't very useful since the only thing we can magically do is create hammers, but in the future if when we learn some kind of magical attack, preferably ranged, been able to project it from our grief would be very useful.


Theft
Ugolino said:
We are not getting ourselves shot by the US Army thanks to lack of timestop. :p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Remember. We can turn invisible. Or rather we can create invisible constructs so it should be possible to just surround ourselves with light bending grief that would make Sabrina invisible.

Of course an easier solution would be to just stand within 100m of the desired loot and have invisible grief put the loot into invisible bags which they fly to us.

After all; Invisibility might glow to a Puella Magi's sensors but your still invisible to mundanes.
 
Last edited:
Vote tally:
##### 3.21
[x] Ugolino
No. of votes: 6
Muramasa, Gadjo, Guilop, TheSlayers, Dirtnap, moonstne

[x] So, yeah, it's not exactly a glamorous life, regardless of what it looks like we can do.
[x] You have to work hard to hold onto the truly important things in life, and if you're not aware of what you're losing, it may be gone before you realize it.
[x] It doesn't take a wish to make things better for the people around you. For the people that care for you, you simply being you means a lot more than you realize.
[x] It's too easy to get caught up in what you think other people want from you. Be confident in the person you are.
[x] Help get things settled down. Tea, cake, ice cream, whatever's available and appropriate.
No. of votes: 1
Kinematics

[x] Hug the Mami. Console the Mami.
[x] You're wrong, Madoka. That's why I wanted to tell you and Sayaka. You don't think you're brave, but I believe that you'd drop everything to save me or Mami in a second. I believe that if we weren't here, to tell the two of you not to contract, that one day we'd meet a particularly powerful witch, and that we would see you appear to try and shoulder the burden and help us fight.
[x] It's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. Even if all the terrible things Kyubey does to us were somehow negligible, if somehow none of it mattered because it was just that important of a wish, it's not worth it. No wish is that important. It's because magic isn't that important.
[x] Magic is a pretty thing. It's like a diamond ring you see in the jewelry store. It sparkles this way and that way, and maybe it's so expensive and beautiful that you can use it to pull off some amazing bluffs. It makes you look pretty and rich and important, and you feel pretty and rich and important, but did you really change anything about yourself? You didn't. In fact you lost a lot just to get that ring, a lot that you can't get back.
[x] No, you see, magic is the easy way out that's not actually a way out. It's an exit sign that leads back into the fire. You think that once you have it you can do anything you ever wanted, but it's not true. It's not true at all.
[x] Defuse tension, obtain cake.
No. of votes: 1
Crasian01

[X] Hug Mami. Console Mami.
[X] You know, all our wishes were made when we had no other choice. I was dying. Mami was dying. Homura...
-[X] Look to her for permission / as a prompt.
--[X] Homura had lost everything she cared about.
[X] But in exchange, we sacrificed more than just our souls. You heard us talking after school. Dropping out of school clubs. Growing distant from friends. We have to isolate ourselves from everyone who doesn't know the secret. Not one magical girl in Mitakihara lives with their families. I... I couldn't even think of smalltalk that wasn't about magic.
[X] Subtly direct this at Madoka:
-[X] It would be wonderful if we had more normal in our lives. To help us remember that we're still human.
No. of votes: 5
SynchronizedWritersBlock, landcollector, Aranfan, Krecart, AnonymousRabbit

[x] SWB
No. of votes: 1
AuraTwilight

[x] Hug Mami. Console Mami.
[x] Madoka, you are braver than you give yourself credit for. Most people would've left me be, but you approached me even without knowing what I was suffering from. That's not an act of a coward. Just because you didn't make a contract doesn't make you one.
[x] I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. And for making it look glamorous before.
[x] Defuse tension, get a fresh pot of tea for everyone.
No. of votes: 3
Cannongerbil, aeqnai, Ugolino
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
(preview edit: mostly what Kinematics said in different words)

Ok. Let's say we try to deal with immediate issues alone.

Homura - pretty much everything is longer term, but some emotional support would be nice
Sayaka - had something she had pinned her hopes on taken from her
Mami - was just reminded that she built her life around Kyubey's idealized magical girl and that it all came falling down.
Madoka - helplessness, basically. Contracting is long-term. Self-worth is long-term. In the immediate term, she's feeling helpless because the revelation makes contracting to help her friends unattractive, but they obviously need her support.

So basically,
Sayaka - the offer to heal Kyouske
Mami - needs something other than Sabrina to build her life around. Needs time to get over Kyubey's 'betrayal'.
Madoka - needs a way to make a difference to her friends' lives that doesn't involve a wish.

I really don't see either vote helping much here, actually. We can work to build up Madoka, but that would be better done when we aren't knee-deep in trauma. And as I've repeatedly pointed out, courage isn't actually an issue to her, at least not in the form they're presented/addressed. We can work to help Mami rebuild her life, but we need to get her other friends on board and to very gently see if she can't find something she wants to work/fight for that isn't just Sabrina Says.


[x] You know, all our wishes were made when we had no other choice. Courage didn't have anything to do with it. I was dying. Mami was dying. Homura...
-[x] Look to her for permission / as a prompt.
--[x] Homura had lost everything she cared about.
[x] A magical girl gives up so much for a wish. Not just the location of their soul. No time for school clubs. Growing distant from friends who don't know the secret. Did you know that not one magical girl in Mitakihara lives with their families? Magic can be amazing, but the normal in our lives slips away so quickly. And as humans, we need that normal just as much as anyone else.
-[x] Let everyone react, and encourage those reactions if they're positive or have helpful suggestions. If everyone is just pensive, move on to...
[x] Sayaka, were you thinking of using a wish to help your friend in the hospital?
-[x] We can probably help him using magic. It should be possible.


I dunno. Bed time.
 
UberJJK said:
It may have taken four days but I've done it. I've caught up with all 699 pages I've missed!


Thoughts along the way:

Grief Dissipation:
The explanation for what's going on here seems pretty obvious to me but I haven't seen anyone actually mention this. Hopefully it's because no one else has connected the dots rather then it been so obvious it wasn't worth mentioning...

Uncontrolled grief seems to try and revert to it's natural state. In the case of low density grief that is accomplished by dispersing in the atmosphere. For higher densities while the result is unknown I suspect it would be coalescing into a Demon.

We only know of three situations where this doesn't happen:
1) Inside soul gems/grief seeds
2) Witches and Familiars
3) Sabrina

How the first works we just don't know, yet, but I have an idea for the latter two.

Sabrina has noted that all the grief we control is actually threaded with magic and we know from Kirika's anti-magic melting Witches that Witches are held together by magic. Given that Witches are made out of grief and held together by magic it seems reasonable to conclude that our grief is been held together by the magic permeating it.

So now the question is; why does our magic stop holding the grief together after 100m? Well Firn said:


We know that a Soul Gem disconnects from it's body when more then 100 meters away so there must be something there. I suspect that both our grief and our body require an active connection with our Soul Gem.

When a Puella's body is separated from her gem it dies as seen by Episode 6 (Kyoko says Sayaka's dead) and the PMMM game (where Sayaka's body decayed). My guess is that Puella bodies require a constant supply of magic to continue functioning (Sayaka was right! They are literally zombies!). Since our grief functions similarly I imagine it also requires a constant supply of magic to keep it from reverting to it's natural state.

So while we likely can't create permanent constructs we can probably create ones that do last outside of our range by creating a magical reservoir inside them that the binding magic can draw upon. Depending upon exactly how this functions we could theoretically create effectively permanent objects by exploiting our unlimited magic to fill them with centuries worth of magic.

However there is another factor to consider. I'm almost certain that the active connection is for more then just supplying magic. If it was just that it would make more sense for there to be magical reserves by default. Instead I think that an active connection is required to actually control grief. So we could likely create blades that extend past our range limit by filling them with extra magic but we would be unable to change/command them once they leave our range.

Grief Healing
It stops working once we leave the area but that is still useful. Sabrina never leaves her own range so healing ourselves with grief is fine. As long as we can heal something that has been healed with grief with magic it is still useful for other people. Healing serious injuries that would kill the victim before we could heal them with magic for example. Also for combat healing.

Witch Bodies
This was brought up before but I'd like to mention it again. The two biggest issues here were that if it's successful the Human!Witches would be unable to leave our range and that the grief could be absorbed by the seed, resulting in a Witchout.

The first is easily countered by a combination of testing and prevention. Testing would consist of pressing a cleansed seed against a grief construct and seeing what happens. Prevention would be done by limiting the amount of grief inside the body to less then that required for a Witchout.

The second however is more interesting. We know that Witches can control grief. It's possible that the revived people might be able to still control grief in which case they would be able to control their body and keep it from dispersing. However even if that is not the case we might be able to teach them to sustained their grief bodies by continuously pumping magic into them, assuming my theory about how grief functions is accurate. In fact that might not even be necessary since a Soul Gem seems to naturally do that for their original body.


Grief Manufacturing
Items made directly from grief all collapse after we leave the area. Healing done with grief is likewise undone, likely because the healed flesh is made up of grief shaped into flesh. But what about using grief to process one thing into another thing?

For example if we build a smelter out of grief and use that to melt down a bunch of soda cans then pour the molten aluminum into a mold made from grief would the resulting product remain if placed outside our range or would it breakdown or something?

It would make sense for anything we produce this way to avoid breakdown since unlike our other experiments all the matter is real rather then grief-stuff. The only sticking point is that the energy responsible for the changes may be made of grief and that might causes complications.

However if this is successful then besides been able to produce anything we have the raw materials for and know the manufacturing procedure of if this works we might actually have a way of striking outside our 100m range limit.

Our grief blaster failed because it was shooting bolts of grief. A charged particle cannon* that worked by drawing in the surrounding air, ionizing it then propelling the ionized air forwards at high speed (like this one)* would likely work. Although it might still lose effectiveness at 100m since the energy for the beam comes from grief.

*Actually why don't we just make the Death Saurer? It's 32.4m long and 24m high so it should fit within our range and it's based upon Godzilla so it's the perfect thing to deploy in Japan! If only we were in Tokyo...

An alternative would be some kind of magical grief device that can drain energy from the surrounding environment and focus that into a beam/blast. All the energy of the attack is 'natural' so it definitely shouldn't have issues past 100m since the only thing grief did was collect and focus the energy.

An interesting test I just though of. If we create a microwave out of grief and then use it to reheat a cup of tea does the tea remain hot after it leaves our 100m range?

Multiple Sabrinas
Can a soulgem control more then one body? I am tempted to say yes since we have magical girls who can create clones but I don't know enough about how their abilities function to say for sure.

If we can create bodies out of grief for Sabrina to control it could aid in combat. The deciding factor would be if additional bodies adds or subtracts from her ability to focus.

As we saw in the fight against the Ishinomaki girls Sabrina's biggest issues in combat mass combat is focusing on everything at once. Theoretically additional bodies would make this easier since we would have additional brains to split the processing load over. However if the limitation is in Sabrina's soul rather then her brain then additional bodies would only lower her overall focus by requiring that she split it between them.

Of course going by the Soul Gem 100m limit we'd almost certainly have to keep the bodies within 100m of the gem but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Grief Equipment
We created something out of grief that could boost our magical healing. Sure it wasn't perfect since some of the healing was still done with grief but it's a brilliant idea.

The first thing we should try is some kind of Magical Amplifier designed to increase the range at which our Soul Gem can connect to things. I am imagining some kind of device that clips onto our Soul Gem and probably has little antennas coming off it.

Stuff that can boost our teammates, I bet Homura would love a laser gun, would be another worthwhile investment. While the utility of this stuff would be boosted if we can figure out how to make it last, even a day, outside of our range it's still useful even if limited to use within our range.

Grief Math
Ishinomaki has a population of 147,143 and is capable of supporting 7 magical girls. Assuming this is a relatively common human:MG ratio then over 7 billion people we're looking at a stable population of 333,009 Puella.

We know from Mami that you can last about two weeks on a grief seed with minimal* expenditure so I figure a week per seed would be about average.

So with 333,009 Puella consuming 52 seeds each per week we get a total yearly supply of 17,316,468 seeds.

That is a lot of seeds. It's actually pretty depressing since according to Wikipedia globally only 800,000 to 1,000,000 die of suicide every year. So either a lot of Puella rapidly Witchout or the suicide levels on PMAS!Earth are a lot higher and I know which one makes more sense....

For more data let's look at the University Group. They were located near Sendai University if I understand correctly. Well Sendai has a total population of 1,063,103. We know the UG managed to gather 3 seeds per week for the Sendai Group as well as the 6 (later 4) seeds they needed to support themselves.

So Sendai produced at least 9 seeds per week. Distributed over the population is 1 seed per 118,123 people. This doesn't fit the IGs numbers which have 1 seed per 21,020 people however we know for a fact that the UG isn't the only group in Sendai. There is of course the Sendai group as well.

Now we don't know if the Sendai group hunt seeds rather then just extorting/trading for them but given how seed crazy Akiko is I'm going to bet they do. So that is 5 more seeds per week been produced bringing the total up to 14.

14 seeds per week gives 1 seed per 75,936 people. This discrepancy suggests the IG group is hunting a larger area then just Ishinomaki, Sendai is been under hunted, the SG is hunting more then the minimum requirement, or the Sendai area is simply less productive then Ishinomaki.

Now at 17,316,468 seeds per year and assuming each seed is worth 803,340 marbles then to match the current system's grief production we must produce more then* 13,911,011,403,120 marbles of grief per year.

*Because this is only the lump sum of grief the Incubator's receive. We have to produce this plus the passive grief production of each seed.

13.9 trillion marbles per year is a lot. That is 38 billion marbles per day. To even reach that number we would need to convert every single person on Earth into a Puella and have them produce around 5 or 6 marbles of grief per day.

Based upon what I recall of grief production rates 5 marbles per day is easily doable however it does require regular magic use. Of course if we've converted the entire population to Puella I imagine magic use would become a part of daily living anyway.

So it is at least theoretically possible. The numbers actually get better if Puella can live forever like in TtS since that would result in a rapidly growing population.

*Lots of people seem to think this is normal while Mami specifically states:

So every two weeks is the bare minimum.


Now a growing population could be a problem but wishes would help mitigate that not to mention the widespread availability of magic would make colonizing other worlds a lot easier. Especially since Puella bodies are a lot tougher so thinks like long term exposure to low gravity and higher then normal levels of background radiation should be pretty easily dealt with.

tl;dr - Reworking the system is mathematically possible but dependent upon:
1) A new method of storing grief
2) Additional methods of extracting grief


Grief Volume
Mostly this is in response to:


1 seed = 200+ Basketballs of grief.
1 Basketball = ~7,103.36cm^3
200 Basketballs = ~1,421,911cm^3 = ~1.42m^3

So actually we'd only need about 3 million grief seeds at minimum. The more Basketballs per seed the lower that number goes!

Comment to @Cannongerbil
Heh. Think about how it feels to read through it all as a solid block! I have been having to take breaks every 25 or 50 pages to keep my spirits up.


Metamaterials
Surround ourselves in a grief matter bubble that has a negative refractive index for visible light. Basically all light bends around us. As long as we are in the air not been about to see doesn't matter much and while Puella will know we are somewhere they won't be able to tell exactly where we are. Meanwhile we can snag their soul gems and hold them up at the top of our range.

Repsonse to @AuraTwilight
Not true! I've been saying he was lying since the very beginning! I even did so in this very quest:


And as countless people have mentioned that is not even bringing in his tendency to lie through the careful framing of factual statements. After all the best lies are the ones that are true.

And yes stating a series of factual statements in a way that is carefully designed to mislead your audience into doing what you want them to is very much a lie. Fundamentally lying isn't more about deliberately misleading your victim rather then whether the statement is technically correct.

That been said Firn did say:


Microwaved Tea
Yes. This is seriously a topic I was thinking about. We all know from the various crazies tea drinkers in this tread that microwaving tea is evil and unforgivable because it does indescribable things to the tea.

Well. What if we create a grief microwave that can reheat tea without changing it's flavor?

Ranged Casting
We noticed issues with using magic at distances from our Soul Gem and/or body. We also know that we control our grief by threading it with magic. So how about creating our hammer, or casting any other type of magic we learn in the future, through our grief?

It makes sense that using magic from our soul gem is easy since it only has to leave the gem and similarly using our body as the reference point might be easy because our body has the magic connecting it to our soul gem running though it.

So if it's easy to use magic through mediums already filled with our magic it would make sense for it to be easier to cast magic through our grief rather then random points in the air.

Right now this idea, if successful, isn't very useful since the only thing we can magically do is create hammers, but in the future if when we learn some kind of magical attack, preferably ranged, been able to project it from our grief would be very useful.


Theft
Remember. We can turn invisible. Or rather we can create invisible constructs so it should be possible to just surround ourselves with light bending grief that would make Sabrina invisible.

Of course an easier solution would be to just stand within 100m of the desired loot and have invisible grief put the loot into invisible bags which they fly to us.

After all; Invisibility might glow to a Puella Magi's sensors but your still invisible to mundanes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Grief dissipation: pretty sure most of this had been mentioned but the magical reserve idea is very interesting. The problem though is that magic itself isn't controllable beyond 100m, so we'd have to be able to preprogram it, and that would require considerably more skill with magic than we have at present. Better get Mami to tutor us and practice a lot more.

Grief manufacturing: plenty of ideas along these lines in addition to yours. My personal favorite is grief lenses and mirrors to form light beams. If you can come up with a nonlethal ranged weapon that both is more effective because of our grief and can hit past our range, I'm interested.

Clones were definitely operable beyond 100m. We need to have a good look at that girl's magic, I think.

Invisibility is pretty cool but in any real combat we would have to combine it with grief decoys, because every dangerous opponent can sense grief even invisible. Grief decoys are fortunately, easy.
 
Trying for a different approach. Stripping it down to the bare bones of things relevant to the current situation.

[x] Tone: Encouraging
-[x] Telepathy Mami: Come on. They need you to be strong. You're the sempai they look up to, right? Sayaka is scared, and Madoka is lost. I can tell them, but you can show them.
[x] Tone: Fondly teasing
-[x] Madoka, you're not wimpy. But I know Homura appreciates your promise, anyway.
[x] Tone: Comforting
-[x] And Sayaka... We're always here to help you out if you need it. Even things like, say, trying to heal Kyousuke.
[x] Allow discussion and wind-down
 
[x] Tone: Encouraging
-[x] Telepathy Mami: Come on. They need you to be strong. You're the sempai they look up to, right? Sayaka is scared, and Madoka is lost. I can tell them, but you can show them.
[x] Tone: Fondly teasing
-[x] Madoka, you're not wimpy. But I know Homura appreciates your promise, anyway.
[x] Tone: Comforting
-[x] And Sayaka... We're always here to help you out if you need it. Even things like, say, trying to heal Kyousuke.
[x] Allow discussion and wind-down
 
@UberJJK:

@grief dissipation:
Few other thoughts:

Grief may be aligned to source and try to imitiate it's initial one.
Nature spirits.

@range/magic:
I think we're going to need better enchanting skills for that. Can we boostrap our way to enchanting?

My primary thoughts have been to cover the entire world in Sabrina portal/barrier network tbh. Thank you, Sakura.

@range/combat: Ion cannon messes with atmosphere and may light fires, I think?
Otherwise not that bad of an idea to test out.

For magic, perhaps if we manage magic links to grief?

Oh, an idea: Turn grief into grief electricity, link with magic and use/feed magic continuously to prevent dissipation out of range. Give it the property of leeching grief. Advertise. Cover entire world through pre-existing network, booting yourself to godhood like Homumom.

@witch bodies: Eh, I abandoned it lest Homura thought we'd be weird with Hildegirl tagging along. Still want to try, just not now now. Though that would perhaps be one way to avert tetris.

@grief Sabrinas: That's somewhat a version of the witch bodies above. Make grief give you sense output.

@equipment: I want conceptual stuff myself.

Maybe info-based conceptual stuff. Satori's eye would have helped with Akiko, for example.

@Familiar math: Haven't yet considered global impact. But all of humanity being MGs is something I've considered and wanted; it makes for a nice endgoal, even if it isn't a must-have.

I disagree with that counting of marbles, we had around two thousand or so after emptying Hildegirl.

@Grief Volume: I went in Sabrina's (sport's) bag being half-full of 1800 marbles and Hildegirl being around 1500, since at the time didn't know how big a marble or basketball is, yet bag size was easy to get.

Come to think of it, when you look at your global 17 mil seeds...
And assume 2-year lifespan.

"All of grief" springs to mind.

Might be just a coincidence, especially with transforming grief now. But "All of grief" would just fit in our range by these figures, assuming Kyubey doesn't recycle grief to significant extent.

@Metamaterials: Invisiblity is probably best way to go here, but for manufacturing non-witchdar stuff, there are couple materials with negative refractive index and even two pairs of common lenses can manage a facsmile of it.

@Microwaved Tea:

That...seems possible?

Tea might be witchy, though.

Still a worthwhile experiment.

Anyway, heating tea in any way really easily messes with it. You can heat tea without ruining taste - by few degrees. Getting it past body temperature makes it taste more awful than black tea left to sit for a hour.
 
Last edited:
...That really takes Madoka's breakdown much too casually, disregards the current problem, and...fondly teasing? With her near-breakdown?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
 
This actually works, really, except for the removal of the hug Mami bit. If you add it in, I'll gladly vote for you.

Of course, now's probably not the best time to be submitting new votes. There's maybe only four of the regulars who are still online right now.

Ugolino said:
...That really takes Madoka's breakdown much too casually, disregards the current problem, and...fondly teasing? With her near-breakdown?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What breakdown?
 
Last edited:
Ugolino said:
...That really takes Madoka's breakdown much too casually, disregards the current problem, and...fondly teasing? With her near-breakdown?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
1) Trying to lighten the mood a little. We need to back off from the morbid depression stage, get people's heads back on straight so that they can more reasonably consider their options.
2) Madoka didn't have a near-breakdown. She was upset for Homura's sake.
 
[X] ugolino
Ps : we need to degrief mami as soon as this sorted out.
kyubey please don't come please don't come please don't come please don't come
 
@theauthor: I estimate over 100% chance (that is, multiple incubators) that Kyubey is watching.

Two anomalies, and god-contract in a tea party, y'know.

This makes me think how easily it could destroy this group to large extent with just few telepathied words.
 
[] Madoka, you are braver than you give yourself credit for. Most people would've left me be, but you approached me even without knowing what I was suffering from. That's not an act of a coward. Just because you didn't make a contract doesn't make you one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't see this working on Madoka.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top