Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
-
- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
That is a good point. You've made me question my assumptions and I realized that my argument for preferring grief seed trade over grief seed charity hinges primarily upon the assumption that we will be able to reverse witching in the near future. But how reasonable is that assumption?With respect, I don't think you're thinking this through.
If we cleanse seeds in the wild, wherever possible - ideally fully cleanse them, with appropriate warnings - they're not being given to QB in the near future, and if we stay alive, possibly ever. They remain in circulation; their marginal value drops; megucas are less likely to be assholes to each other or the general public; and, not least, we're prolonging lots of lives, quite possibly by centuries. The knock-on effects are good, and if we later stumble across a mechanism for unwitching, our options are all still open.
Building a stockpile without either providing an alternative means for other megucas to manage their grief (the other prerequisite for mass unwitching) or any means to unwitch in the first place may not necessarily be bad practice in the fair-play sense, but economically and ecologically, we're hurting people for no reason.
EDIT: Hell, if nothing else, after a decade of grief seed post-scarcity, it'll be a lot easier to get people to part with the things.
1. We know from observation that each clean grief seed contains a quiescent soul. Based on Rebellion, this soul is almost certainly that of the original meguca.
2. We also know that it is possible for a witch to be changed back into a meguca (based on Rebellion or based on Homura's time loops).
3. If all we have to do is to create a new body out of grief or magic (or simply to repurpose a corpse) and then use our grief bending (or a specialized tool created out of grief) to link the two, then we should be able to solve the problem within a week (with Homura and Oriko's help) unless we procrastinate.
4. If there are other requirements (such as needing to rebuild the soul gem or the body needing to be exactly like the meguca's original body), then it could take longer; for instance, we might need to create a device which can image a grief seed and project the body desired by the soul within, after which Yuma and/or Rin might be able to copy it. Obviously, we would need to witchbomb them to get them to work with us; this should still be doable within two weeks unless we cannot consider witchbombing.
5. If there are metaphysical limitations that make it impossible for us to solve the problem with our own skills, then we'll have to find a meguca with the appropriate skills or a contractee who is willing to help. Sayaka would be the obvious first choice, but even if she's not able to then Madoka should certainly be able to. It's not something to be asked lightly, so we'd need to try everything else we can think of first. This probably wouldn't be until after Walpurgisnacht, but the only way this wouldn't be able to solve the problem is if Madoka has already made a different wish at this point or if we can't convince her (or Homura) that this is something worth making a wish over.
If are serious about reversing witching, then it should be possible to do so in the near future. But we have to really be serious about it. One of the simplest steps would involve a time-stop trip to the morgue (worth trying even if it's unlikely to work); unless an easier solution happens to work, reversing witching will require us to witchbomb Yuma (which probably involves witchbombing Kyouko and Mami as well). This is something that we have (historically) had an extremely strong aversion to. We have avoided witchbombing anyone and Mami's behavior has made us even less inclined to do so. It might even require asking Madoka to make a wish, which is such an extreme measure that no one even wants to think about. But those are the lengths that we have to be willing to go to if we really are serious about breaking the system.
So my vote is to start a grief seed trade and also to start trying to study reversing witches as soon as possible.
Last edited:
Gadjo
Doka
I don't think it's a problem. I'd keep it, and it establishes the whole "Kyubey is an asshole" bit.
Krecart
Not for throwing.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Maybe? I dunno, depends on how she deals with "Mami's... not doing so well."
This is a good point though. I'd leave it in.
[x]No, she didn't. Explain how Mami's...not doing well right now. I told her I'd be here, but sticking my nose in other people's business is completely my idea.
-[x]She gets morose and withdrawn if I so much as mention you, and she didn't take the news about Kyubey well. The little rat was using her.
[x]Cleansing's still a standing, unconditional offer, by the way. We'd like to do it for filled grief seeds as well, since otherwise they'd be wasted. If she asks why, just say that it doesn't cost us anything to help.
[x]Lunch. Don't spoil their appetite. Ask how they're doing.
[x]We stopped Oriko. She and Kirika are fine, but they're under house arrest for now.
[x] Inform her about the end of the Sendai conflict.
[x]Just in case you didn't know already...a Walpurgisnacht's going to hit Mitakihara in about three weeks. I'm not here to try and recruit you for it-especially because you have Yuma to look after-but since it might still cause a lot of damage, I thought you should know.
Edit: yeah, conditional removed again.
-[x]She gets morose and withdrawn if I so much as mention you, and she didn't take the news about Kyubey well. The little rat was using her.
[x]Cleansing's still a standing, unconditional offer, by the way. We'd like to do it for filled grief seeds as well, since otherwise they'd be wasted. If she asks why, just say that it doesn't cost us anything to help.
[x]Lunch. Don't spoil their appetite. Ask how they're doing.
[x]We stopped Oriko. She and Kirika are fine, but they're under house arrest for now.
[x] Inform her about the end of the Sendai conflict.
[x]Just in case you didn't know already...a Walpurgisnacht's going to hit Mitakihara in about three weeks. I'm not here to try and recruit you for it-especially because you have Yuma to look after-but since it might still cause a lot of damage, I thought you should know.
Edit: yeah, conditional removed again.
Last edited:
Muramasa
Best Girl
How is that conditional going to work? We can only find out after the fact.
FlatlineAskari
*feline scrutiny*
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Pronouns
- Any
This isn't a safe assumption at all. Rebellion cannot be considered representative.
Under highly unusual circumstances which we are unlikely to replicate, yes.
Reversing witching treats a symptom, not the cause; it should be the last step in a system break, not the first.
Regarding dewitching as a trivial problem is unwarranted, and - on the offchance that it is - amassing seeds beforehand has no real benefits over waiting.
theauthor
Birdie
- Location
- Soerabaja
Your comment hinted ugomura?
I know better than to do that.Your comment hinted ugomura?
Gadjo
Doka
Why, exactly? I understand when people say that people's abilities aren't representative (even if I don't agree), but we're already pretty sure the soul in question is the original magical girl's soul. Now what condition that soul would be in is an entirely unknown quantity, but that's a question we can only answer after we succeed for the first time.
theauthor
Birdie
- Location
- Soerabaja
Apologize then. My sense of humour can be quite unpredictable.
Undo rating now.
Why not?
If we can solve the grief starvation issue and reverse witching, then we will have broken the system more completely than Madokami did in canon (she only prevented the witches from causing more harm rather than actually reverting them). And we shouldn't ever stop improving. Once the immediate issue of grief starvation is solved, it will be time to start organizing meguca to provide more emotional support and to more effectively detect and defeat witches. And this can start at the local level before the global problem is completely solved (and it's something we should work on whether or not we are capable of reversing witching).
A more complete way of breaking the system would be to achieve global range and collecting all grief before it has a chance to fully manifest (rather than requiring people to ship grief seeds to us), but I doubt that will be possible. We ought to try anyway, but there is no precedent of success here, whereas with Witch reverting, we at least have the assurance that it is at least theoretically possible.
Another way of breaking the system would be to control the incubators so that they don't form any more contracts. I haven't given much thought toward how we could do this yet, but it's also possible that this still wouldn't fix the underlying problem (i.e. if human grief is the problem regardless of the presence of incubators). Again, this is a valid goal to pursue regardless of whatever else we do: we don't want the incubators screwing us over after we find some solutions to our problems.
What is your plan for breaking the system that requires reversing witching to be the last step?
I'm not saying that dewitching is a trivial problem. On the contrary, it's extremely expensive (in terms of the effort and emotion involved). I just think that it's a problem that we can solve in a relatively short period chronologically (i.e. a few weeks to a few months), during which time we probably wouldn't have time to amass but around ten to fifty seeds, depending on how long it takes and how many people we trade with.
Last edited:
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
As I understand it the extreme time dilation means Homura never quite finished witching. Finding some wood in a mostly-burnt-out campfire doesn't mean that ash really is wood deep down.
FlatlineAskari
*feline scrutiny*
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Pronouns
- Any
It involved deliberate interference with the process of witching, occurred after Madoka's canon wish, and involved some degree of divine intervention.
If we find a means to reverse witching without providing an alternative means to cleanse soul gems that'll outlive us, we have achieved nothing of consequence. We may actually have made matters worse.
Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
I disagree. Free cleanses is an abstract thing that magical girls will assume they have to be friends with you or do favours to earn. Therefore, every girl we get to agree to cleanses we will have to convince individually. Trade on the other hand is just a thing you do with whoever, news of someone trading 3 full for 2 empty seeds will spread leading to girls seeking us out, trading, returning home and telling others about the deal. Free is suspicious, but a good deal will bring magical girls from far and wide.
The current status of the grief market is that nearly 100% of filled seeds are given to Incubators, permanently killing the girls inside. The quicker we change that to a system where the seeds are not destroyed, the better. At our current rate we are simply not doing that, and we never will, because we are not going to convince a nation or a planet worth of magical girls one update at a time. For it to be done, it has to be done mostly off-screen, which means that most of the work has to be done by others, which means grief trade.
The girls killed while we set up the system will remain dead forever, while we have essentially unlimited time to figure out the resurrection side. Our priority should be to set up the system right now. No-one is going to vote for a plane ride to every major city to give out pamphlets, recruit teleporters and set up a supply chain because it is dull as dishwater. So we have to get NPCs to do the work. So, either we're going to pay some NPCs in cleanses (which we can't do because we're already giving free cleanses to all the ones we know), or we do grief trade
In this situation we have not screwed anyone over. We've given them an extremely generous deal, taken a thing that is worth nothing to them and given them back something that is worth a great deal. They are very happy with the trade. 3:2 is not aggressive stockpiling. We could offer 4 full seeds for 1 cleansed seed and still be giving a fantastic deal, the best deal in the world as it happens because we are taking something with zero value to these girls.
Aside from that, at post scarcity grief there's not incentive for people not to give the things to Kyubey. Consider a Magical Girl who doesn't know the witchbomb (most of them) who wants to kill witches to save lives. She would naturally trade a seed to two to Sabrina for full clear seeds, then spend 2 years killing witches and giving the used normal seeds to the Incubator. The girls are killed and we can never bring them back. We can change this in only a few ways:
1 We can witchbomb every magical girl in the world (dear god no, let's not do that)
2 We can give full seeds value by doing grief trading, ensuring that no sane meguca will willingly give them to Incubators.
Some scarcity is required to keep those seeds/girls from being destroyed. Notable plans that do not fix this include:
3 Free super cleansed seeds for all, once a given girl has a reasonable stockpile (>6 months) an Incubator would find it trivial to convince her to give him filled seeds. The fuckers can be convincing.
4 Asking everyone very nicely not to give him any. His word against ours, we're a randomer, he's probably their friend. Large percentages of magical girls still destroying seeds, huge time investment to pull off, unacceptable.
Other benefits of trade system: the ability to casually throw 5 seeds at an unfortunate meguca (stipulating they return them when full) is both less unnerving and more impressive than just using our power. Meguca put more weight on seeds than they do on our power, making them better gifts to new acquaintances.
TL: DR Can you think up a better system we can actually pull off without a massive time investment that saves the seeds currently being destroyed across the country?
Actually, the primary example of Witch->Meguca in Rebellion is our good friend Nagisa. She spent half the movie as a witch and rest of it as a meguca with no apparent problems.
Edit: obviously this required divine intervention, but it definitely shows that it is possible and that the witch and the meguca are the same person.
Last edited:
We could hire meguca as our representatives and send them around with a supply of clear gems and offering free gem cleanses and trading full seeds for empty ones. This probably would be better than relying on the mail. Once things get going, some of our representatives might settle down in one location (though the location would probably more like a coffee shop than a gas station) and periodically ship seeds back and forth in bulk to us using reliable couriers.
Agreed. Becoming immortal and/or ensuring that our grief cleansing skills can be used by other meguca or automated by machines are high priority research goals.
The phrase "divine intervention" is the point at which we go "isn't going to happen"- since there isn't and never will be a law of cycles here unless something goes wrong.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
As a grief manipulator, our power grows as we get access to more grief. We only need a dozen more grief seeds to enact our master plan. Mwahahahaha.
The fact that, as you say, we're taking something worthless and giving them something many would kill for makes our operations suspicious regardless of the exchange rate.
I actually agree with all this, but it doesn't mean we have to charge Kyoko right now.
theauthor
Birdie
- Location
- Soerabaja
There's still a bit issue from my theory. But only two i can point out.
1. We need to hire a meguca girl to guard the grief seed stockpile.
2. We need a lots of seed to make it actually useful.
Maybe i'm missing something? Or just too paranoid?