After making sure they have adequate background knowledge (lichbomb; QB Is Not Your Friend; run out of seeds and you'll die horribly) we (or our proxy) just hand over a couple of fully cleansed seeds, with appropriate warnings regarding their properties, tell them we'll keep the things clean forever, and request the seeds of whatever witches they take down in return to ensure we can keep offering the fully cleansed seeds. Simples.
If there's any question about them returning the seeds they acquire - if the information and cleansed seeds we offer don't buy us the favour? If they don't care that QB is screwing them? If it doesn't matter to them that they're withholding a vital resource with little marginal utility? If we can't win them over by offering a bigger buffer of fully cleansed seeds?
If none of that works, we can just straight-up buy the things. How much do you think it'll take to wow a bunch of unfortunate teenagers adequately? A thousand US, per seed, irrespective of state, no questions asked? Five? Ten? Twenty? Better question - who cares? How many times do I have to raise we can become obscenely rich with almost no effort before it sinks in?
I like it as a plan for individual magical girls, we can't really extend it to the whole country though until we have workers under us because it requires us to multi-bomb people. Quite a few are going to witch out from a multi-bomb like that, unless we're there to pull the grief out manually or we have a representative with full-clear seeds doing it.
So how bout we do trade till we have the workers, infrastructure and cash required to pull it off. Market winning would take a few days because we have small starting capital (rob the Yakuza in another city?). As a longterm system, grief trade isn't amazing because as you've said we get a meguca population explosion. The thing is though, that would take months to be a problem and we can just switch to full-clear seeds the second it does. Population growth is a slow thing.
There is one other thing: getting votes like that going is a bit like herding cats. How confident are you that we can pull off a plan that involves days working the stock market, finding employees, lichbombing them, dealing with their breakdowns, convincing them to lichbomb others and so on and so forth? Because I'm not sure I could pull it off. It would take (IRL) weeks of concerted effort that I'm really not sure we can expect from SV.
I like it as a plan for individual magical girls, we can't really extend it to the whole country though until we have workers under us because it requires us to multi-bomb people. Quite a few are going to witch out from a multi-bomb like that, unless we're there to pull the grief out manually or we have a representative with full-clear seeds doing it.
So how bout we do trade till we have the workers, infrastructure and cash required to pull it off. Market winning would take a few days because we have small starting capital (rob the Yakuza in another city?). As a longterm system, grief trade isn't amazing because as you've said we get a meguca population explosion. The thing is though, that would take months to be a problem and we can just switch to full-clear seeds the second it does. Population growth is a slow thing.
There is one other thing: getting votes like that going is a bit like herding cats. How confident are you that we can pull off a plan that involves days working the stock market, finding employees, lichbombing them, dealing with their breakdowns, convincing them to lichbomb others and so on and so forth? Because I'm not sure I could pull it off. It would take (IRL) weeks of concerted effort that I'm really not sure we can expect from SV.
I like it as a plan for individual magical girls, we can't really extend it to the whole country though until we have workers under us because it requires us to multi-bomb people. Quite a few are going to witch out from a multi-bomb like that, unless we're there to pull the grief out manually or we have a representative with full-clear seeds doing it.
So how bout we do trade till we have the workers, infrastructure and cash required to pull it off. Market winning would take a few days because we have small starting capital (rob the Yakuza in another city?). As a longterm system, grief trade isn't amazing because as you've said we get a meguca population explosion. The thing is though, that would take months to be a problem and we can just switch to full-clear seeds the second it does. Population growth is a slow thing.
There is one other thing: getting votes like that going is a bit like herding cats. How confident are you that we can pull off a plan that involves days working the stock market, finding employees, lichbombing them, dealing with their breakdowns, convincing them to lichbomb others and so on and so forth? Because I'm not sure I could pull it off. It would take (IRL) weeks of concerted effort that I'm really not sure we can expect from SV.
I'm unsure what the disparity in setup required would be like - either way, we're establishing the infrastructure from scratch, making the arrangements as we go, and it almost certainly won't go quite as planned.
As for the latter, though - we can delegate almost all of this. Starting making loadsamoney requires that we make plenty of empty seeds available to Oriko, but that's all. Once we can start throwing around lots of clear seeds and cash (maybe a month or so, if we don't do anything too overtly disruptive) getting agents out there shouldn't present major problems - we've already got a significant pool of good candidates - and once they know what's expected of them, all that's really required of us is that we clear the seeds they bring in.
Kyuubey is a more difficult foe. But the simple existence of a grief supply chain and witch reclamation doesn't threaten his model as far as I can tell. The amount of grief he collects directly from us would exceed the amount he normally gets from grief seeds (due to people using magic more freely); the number of girls who contract would probably be about the same, and the proportion who witchout due to stress would probably be only slightly lower. Many fewer girls would witchout due to starvation, but that number would be more than offset by the number who witchout (from stress) multiple times. The net result is more energy for Kyuubey, much longer lifespans for meguca, and less worry about starvation. I wouldn't feel terribly confident relying on this observation, though. Kyuubey might see things differently or have other problems with the system that I didn't anticipate. One possible issue is that this model makes the masquerade (ultimately) unsustainable due to the huge number of meguca that would end up existing. I'm not really sure why Kyuubey wants to have a masquerade in the first place, though, so I don't know how this would affect his decisions.
Once we implement a supply chain, it will protect everyone within its range from starvation (even if there isn't a steady supply of witches), since we would still offer free cleanses of soul gems from our remote locations; it's only the grief seeds themselves that we would do trades for. People with grief seeds would have more options (e.g. they could live farther away from the distribution points), but nobody would need to starve.
There's a massive problem with this proposed model. Even if grief seed acquisition is a secondary concern for QB, most of its returns are likely to be directly tied to the number of witchouts that occur.
Being able to reverse witching doesn't stop becoming a witch being terrible.
Being able to reverse witching doesn't stop being a witch being terrible
Being able to reverse witching doesn't stop witches eating people. If there are significantly more megucas and a similar proportion of them witch, a whole lot of people are going to die.
Incentivizing it to cause witchouts is a terribad idea, in that it means that directly opposing us and generally making the world a worse place any way it can are economically rational.
I agree that the fact that witchouts still occur under the trade/reverse witching model is a massive problem. We still need to figure out how to break the system more, but even though the trade model is not perfect, it's the best system that has yet been proposed and it's leagues better than the current system, so it's worth pursuing.
I would also like to note that the grief trade model should reduce the number of civilian deaths due to witches. By removing the grief starvation issue, we remove the primary reason for competition between meguca, so they should be more inclined to work together, which means that they should be able to detect and respond to witches more quickly. We do have to make sure that there is still incentive for people to actively hunt witches (which is another potential problem with free cleanses model), but we should make sure that we set up the trade system in such a way that witches get detected and defeated as quickly as possible. We can add further incentives like additional training, monetary bounties, and quick response teams to help take down more dangerous witches, etc. The greater number of meguca will (unfortunately) lead to more witchouts in total (even if it's less frequent for each individual girl), but it also leads to more meguca to detect and respond to those witchouts, so the total number of civilian casualties should decrease.
I'd think that the revelation that the Witches they've been killing used to be just like them, and they are fated to either die horribly to them at some point or become one of them, would break a clear majority of them in short order.
I'd think that the revelation that the Witches they've been killing used to be just like them, and they are fated to either die horribly to them at some point or become one of them, would break a clear majority of them in short order.
Well I'm talking about after we've got a way to reverse them. From a grief seed (so they haven't really been killing them... just giving them to Kyubey. Who presumably tortures them for all eternity. Shit. Might want to come up with a way to soften that.)
(so they haven't really been killing them... just giving them to Kyubey. Who presumably tortures them for all eternity. Shit. Might want to come up with a way to soften that.)
The biggest problem with using our powers to fix the magical girl system is a certain Incubator.
Keep in mind what he did in Rebellion. As long as we remain an isolated anomaly he will probably leave us alone but if we start screwing up his system he's going to begin screwing with us.
Yes, the full implications of the witchbomb are really, really horrible. But not knowing about those implications is even worse (e.g. all of those clueless girls who keep giving their grief seeds to Kyuubey). Once people know about the witchbomb, they can start working with us on fixing it, so we do want Mami (and others) to know about the witchbomb, but we're all terrified of that initial shock (i.e. we want to avoid people going catatonic, suicidal, insane, or depressed enough to witch out). I wonder if medication might help blunt the effects of the initial shock? "I have something important to tell you that is going to be extremely shocking, so please take this pill first - it will keep you calm while I tell you." What medication would be useful for this purpose?
Yes, the full implications of the witchbomb are really, really horrible. But not knowing about those implications is even worse (e.g. all of those clueless girls who keep giving their grief seeds to Kyuubey). Once people know about the witchbomb, they can start working with us on fixing it, so we do want Mami (and others) to know about the witchbomb, but we're all terrified of that initial shock (i.e. we want to avoid people going catatonic, suicidal, insane, or depressed enough to witch out). I wonder if medication might help blunt the effects of the initial shock? "I have something important to tell you that is going to be extremely shocking, so please take this pill first - it will keep you calm while I tell you." What medication would be useful for this purpose?
Are you suggesting we load them up on valium and then witchbomb them? It's not like it'll blunt the initial shock anyways, and long-term problems still persist. Sounds like more effort than it's worth.
You sigh as you fall in behind Kyouko. Yuma glances back, still gnawing on the pocky stick, and gives you a happy little wave that you can't help but smile at before turning your attention back to Kyouko's question. She would go for the hard question first, huh?
"No, she didn't," you say, shaking your head with a quiet sigh. "I told her I'd be here, but sticking my nose into everyone else's business is entirely my own idea. And honestly... She's not doing well." You blurt out that last line before you can lose your nerve.
Kyouko stops dead, Yuma continuing on a step before herself being brought up short by her hand, held in the redhead's. Kyouko half turns, glancing at you sidelong with narrowed eyes. "Oh?" she drawls, her posture loose and deliberately relaxed.
You... should probably explain. "Yeah," you say, keeping your hands hanging neutrally at your sides. "She... she gets morose. Withdrawn, if I so much as bring you up."
Faded crimson eyes narrow slightly.
Yuma glances anxiously up at her adopted big sister, then at you.
You meet Kyouko's eyes squarely. "You know Kyuubey. The little white rat was using Mami. She didn't take the news well."
With a loud, expressive crunch, Kyouko bites through the pocky stick in her mouth, and she holds her hand up to the stick, shoving it fully into her mouth, before replacing it. "Shi-" she chokes off the word, lips flattening together. Her jaw works for a moment, before she pivots sharply and stalking off, towing Yuma along by the hand.
"Owie, owie, big sis, you're hurting Yuma," the younger girl cries, almost dragged bodily along with the crimson haired girl's longer strides.
Kyouko flinches, stopping in her tracks and abruptly releasing Yuma's hand. "Shit. Sorry, Yuma," she says.
"It's OK, big sis," Yuma says, reaching out to pat the back of Kyouko's hand.
Slowly, Kyouko turns her hand to take Yuma's again, before glancing back at you. "Well?" she says challengingly. "We eatin'?"
"Yeah, yeah," you say, flapping a hand at her.
Kyouko snorts, and stalks off, radiating anger. You note, though, that she's shortening her strides to match Yuma's shorter legs.
Teenagers.
You trail after the pair.
"Cleansing's still an unconditional offer, by the way," you call after the redhead. "I'd like to do it for filled Grief Seeds, yes, filled, since otherwise they'd be wasted."
"Filled Grief Seeds hatch into Witches, lady," Kyouko snaps.
"So half fill them," you say.
"'Half fill them' she says." Kyouko affects a nasal tone, but continues on, gait unbroken. "Well la-di-da."
... She probably can't afford that, can she? You fall silent, continuing on.
"Sabrina?" Mami, of course.
"Hey, Mami," you say, as Kyouko steps out of the park, lush greenery giving way to the bustle of the streets. "How was basketball?"
"Ah... we won!" Mami says.
"That's great," you say warmly. "What are you doing now?"
"Oh, I just finished showering, we're waiting for our next class," Mami explains. "It's math, next!"
"Mmm. Still on integration by parts?" you ask. You're... pretty impressed with the curriculum, you think, for a middle school.
"Ah, yes," Mami says. "I think we're doing class practice today."
"Makes sense," you agree, following Kyouko as she saunters across the road, enormously voluminous ponytail swaying behind her. "I'm sure you won't have trouble, Mami."
"Thank you," Mami says. "Um... Do you know of you'll be able to make it for lunch?"
"I think so, and I'll try my best, Mami," you reassure her for what must be the hundredth time.
"Alright," Mami says happily. "See you, Sabrina!"
"See you, Mami," you reply.
You eventually find yourself in front of the same buffet restaurant as last time. At this time of the day, there's no queue at all, and the three of you secure a corner booth. You pay, of course, handing over the money without complaint.
Kyouko watches, and departs for the buffet line with Yuma at her side, the two returning with heavily laden plates. You collect one of your own, and by the time you return with your sparsely laden plate, Kyouko's already departing for her second.
You eye the remains -bones and gravy- on her plate, and Yuma, still working slowly through her own plate. She peeks at you with her huge blue eyes, before returning to her food.
As you eat slowly, you watch Kyouko collecting food, piling her plate high.
The redhead slams back down into her seat as you chew thoughtfully on a mouthful of barbecued pork, and bites into her own food with voracious speed, biting down angrily on the food as of it offended her.
You clear your throat. "So, uh," you say, watching the food vanish down Kyouko's mouth just about as fast as she can shovel it in. "We stopped Oriko. She and Kirika are... fine, but we're keeping them under house arrest."
Kyouko clears her mouth for long enough to give you a withering glare and a, "Well, good for you," before returning to tearing the meat off a chicken drumstick, polishing it clean in three swift bites.
"Sabrina?" Yuma's voice sounds in your head, quavering timidly.
You glance at her - the younger girl is, to all outward appearances, still concentrating on her food. You look back at your own food, picking up a drumstick. "Yes, Yuma?"
"Why is big sis so angry?" Yuma asks. "Who's Mami?"
[] Write-in
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Nom nom.
Holding in abeyance:
[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.
Well, that's not going amazing. I'm sick today so I'm holding off voting till I can think clearly again.
Hey at least she's not angry with us! And she obviously still cares for Mami, which is nice.
Thoughts on offering Kyouko an experimental fully clear seed? We're going to need to field test those things at some point anyway and she needs the help.
[jk] Mami and your big sis, they used to be friends. The best friends. Kyouko was the butch one in that relationship, obviously.
[jk] Koko my old buddy ole pal old friendo! There's this thing I've been working on, it's like a grief seed that lasts a few hundred times longer than normal. Good shit right? I mean what would you do for something like that eh? Trick question, I'm just giving this thing away! Catch!
-[jk] I'ma boop your fang now -boop-
-[jk] Don't let it touch normal grief seeds or weird shit happens, like, for real.
[jk] Hey you wanna help me fight this big-ass witch thing that'll be here in a couple weeks? Fucker throws skyscrapers and stuff so I thought 'hey, who's the biggest badass nearby?' and lo and behold here I am talking to her.
[jk] Mami and your big sis, they used to be friends. The best friends. Kyouko was the butch one in that relationship, obviously.
[jk] Koko my old buddy ole pal old friendo! There's this thing I've been working on, it's like a grief seed that lasts a few hundred times longer than normal. Good shit right? I mean what would you do for something like that eh? Trick question, I'm just giving this thing away! Catch!
-[jk] I'ma boop your fang now -boop-
-[jk] Don't let it touch normal grief seeds or weird shit happens, like, for real.
[jk] Hey you wanna help me fight this big-ass witch thing that'll be here in a couple weeks? Fucker throws skyscrapers and stuff so I thought 'hey, who's the biggest badass nearby?' and lo and behold here I am talking to her.
Huh. It looks like Kyouko isn't taking our offer to cleanse grief seeds seriously. If we leave things as they are, it sounds like she's just going to keep filling them up completely and giving them to Kyuubey. We will have to at least tell her about cleared seeds to get her to listen. But the Mami situation is a bomb waiting to happen; we need to either defuse it or at least distract her to keep it from exploding before we do anything else. I can't think of a way to defuse it at the moment, so I'm going to go with distraction:
[] To Yuma: "Mami is my mentor and she was also Kyouko's mentor. Kyouko is angry because she doesn't like hearing about her friend being hurt, just like you would be angry if you heard about Kyouko being hurt. They had a falling out a while ago, but I hope that they can be friends again eventually."
[] Ask Yuma how she has been doing and how she likes her new magical powers. It's a good thing to talk about and it should distract Kyouko a bit.
[] Tell them that we've been experimenting with grief seeds and found that we can pull out more grief from it so that it can last a lot longer.
-[] Warn of the danger of putting clear seeds near normal witch seeds.
-[] Ask if they would be willing to test one for us.
--[] If they accept, remind them that it is experimental and ask them to contact us immediately if they notice anything odd about the clear seed.
--[] Say that we'd like to come back in a few days to check on them.
[] Inform them about the end of the Sendai conflict.
-[] Including the 3:2 grief seed exchange.
--[] We need more grief seeds for experimentation. As long as the clear seeds work out, offer to trade partially full grief seeds in exchange for clear seeds at a rate of 3:2.
[] To Kyouko: 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.
[] Ask about any other magical girls in Kasamino.
[] Telepathy Yuma. Try and make sure your big sis cleanses her own gem too, okay?
Are you suggesting we load them up on Valium and then witchbomb them? It's not like it'll blunt the initial shock anyways, and long-term problems still persist. Sounds like more effort than it's worth.
According to Wikipedia: "Valium may also be used before certain medical procedures (such as endoscopies) to reduce tension and anxiety," so it sounds like it would help in this situation? It definitely won't blunt all of the initial shock, of couse, but every little bit that lessens that first peak is good. And it's not much effort, just a trip to the pharmacy and one line of dialogue beforehand.
The long-term problems (i.e. getting depressed when reminded of the witchbomb) are problems that we are just going to have to deal with if we want Mami (or Yuma or Madoka or anyone else) to help us with our plans. Being close enough to provide immediate emotional support and to cleanse gems frequently will do wonders. I definitely don't propose using Valium (or whatever) long term, just the once in order to blunt the initial impact.
Edit: added Ugolino's line about Yuma reminding Kyouko to cleanse her gem, and added a conditional to the clear seed experiment saying that we want to drop by to check how it's doing.
I say we just loan her a regular seed and avoid the potential issues with it blowing up in our face. Kyouko doesn't have grief control powers for dealing with the issues with "overcharged seed" and we almost had a witch spawn in our pocket last time.
We WANT Kyouko to drop by Mitakihara later out of concern so the Mami thing isn't completely bad.
The 3/2 thing is really out of place and doesn't help. It's completely unworkable for Kyouko because she has NO seeds to spare at all, to the point where she can't even partially fill seeds. Things here do not look good at all to the point where without Sabrina I suspect Kyouko might actually get herself killed/witch herself out if she runs into a tough witch while with no spare cleanses and a partially filled gem.
[]Your big sis and Mami were best friends. They just aren't talking to each other right now. She's angry because Kyubey...hurt her.
[]Try and get through lunch without any further trauma. Find something upbeat to talk about. Ask Yuma how she feels about cheese.
[]I've...got some more news.
-[] Inform her about the end of the Sendai conflict.
-[]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.
[]Offer a regular grief seed. We're the bearer of bad news. It's the least we can do to make up for it. Ask to cleanse if she needs it.
[]Can we drop by again in a few days? We can drop by even if the seed's full since we're all of 5 minutes away.
[]Telepathy Yuma. Try and make sure your big sis cleanses her own gem too, okay?
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