...Can you explain to me why exactly are you chewing her out and trying to guilt trip her?
Cause she's been filled with sass to us for zero reason, and tiptoeing around her ego like a delicate eggshell is just framing us as a pushover.

This is Kyoko's language. It fits with her personality and segues directly into everything we've been trying to say. And it sidesteps the issue of smothering her with more charity by weaving an outlet for her.

I don't want to just give her a seed. It's the wrong gesture at the wrong time, when there are other, better options available. The sparring is beneficial and practical for both us and her, as it gives us reason to cleanse regularly, the excuse to talk more, and removes her reservations about our excuses. It makes sense, and prepares us for the future.

Why WOULDNT we try to do this?
 
Regarding the cheese line, we could just say we were asking because we know a girl her age who likes cheese, and it sounded like less of a stupid question in my head.
We aren't on trail for this. No one is asking us It's basically a throwaway line that we put into the vote, and some people are making a big deal of it because apparently every line we have needs to have a fucking multi-page reason behind it.
Maybe not the best way to phrase it, but I like the general idea: we should call Kyoko out on her bullshitting (we really don't need to frame it as a service exchange).
Why, exactly, are we calling Kyouko out on her bullshit? No, really, what the hell?
 
...Can you explain to me why exactly are you chewing her out and trying to guilt trip her?

Actually, what exactly is everyone trying to achieve with this vote? Can't we just move on and offer her the seed?
Because she's risking the death / abandonment of that little kid by being too bloody stubborn and proud to ask for help.

That said, I was being overly aggressive in my particular suggestion. I was assuming you all would collectively tone it down to something slightly less dickish if it actually made the vote. I'm still pretty ill and not thinking particularly well at the minute you see which is why I'm still not voting on anything.
 
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We aren't on trail for this. No one is asking us It's basically a throwaway line that we put into the vote, and some people are making a big deal of it because apparently every line we have needs to have a fucking multi-page reason behind it.

Why, exactly, are we calling Kyouko out on her bullshit? No, really, what the hell?
Eh, maybe the best of ideas. Either way, for this vote, all I really need done is to give her a grief seed and insist that we can totally cleanse filled seeds same day. There's no reason she should be throwing them to Kyubey right now.
 
Cause she's been filled with sass to us for zero reason, and tiptoeing around her ego like a delicate eggshell is just framing us as a pushover.

This is Kyoko's language. It fits with her personality and segues directly into everything we've been trying to say. And it sidesteps the issue of smothering her with more charity by weaving an outlet for her.
Are you fucking serious?

Do you not see how deliberately pissing Kyouko off to make a fucking point is a bad thing?

The payment for sparring thing, I can understand, but how exactly do you think deliberately guilt tripping her and making her angry is going to lead to her being amendable to us offering to pay her for sparring lessons? We'd be lucky if she doesn't chase us off with the business end of her spear.
 
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Why don't we offer to buy training sessions from her? Start at 1 cleanse a session, plus whatever the training cost. Then we can just agree to whatever Kyoko haggles to. Everyone gets what they want, and Kyoko doesn't feel like a charity case, because we're a client, not just some nosy bitch.
The consensus of the voters has been that we never charge anything for cleansing soul gems or grief seeds. Ever. Personally, I disagree with that approach: how are we ever going to break the system if we can't leverage our power for more influence? But it looks like most voters are simply not going to vote for any option where we start charging for cleansing, even if the cost is reasonable. If we want to get hammer training, we're going to have to ask Kyouko for it and hope that she agrees to it out of the goodness of her heart because we don't have anything of value to trade that we aren't already giving out for free. Eventually, (once we figure out how to transform grief seeds back into meguca), we might be able to convince people that we need to establish a grief seed trade but until then it looks like we're going to be penniless and without any influence beyond what we can reach with our hammer and grief-bending.

Treating Kyouko like a charity case does have one advantage. Kyouko's outlook on life is that everyone giving something away for free is either an idiot or else they're hiding the real cost. If we can convince Kyouko that neither of these things are true about us (doubtful, but possible), then she'll end up with a more accurate understanding of the world. We'd still have to do a lot of damage control to repair the damage that this approach would do before it would be possible for her to consider us as a friend, but I guess it's eventually possible? To me it seems that trading with her on her terms and becoming friends with her that way is much more likely to work (and just as likely to fix her broken worldview), but apparently people think that this approach is less "friendly" or something?

If more people are amenable to trading with Kyouko than I previously thought, then please speak up, but the idea has been consistently shot down over the past few days.

Because she's risking the death / abandonment of that little kid by being too bloody stubborn and proud to ask for help.

That said, I was being overly aggressive in my particular suggestion. I was assuming you all would collectively tone it down to something slightly less dickish if it actually made the vote.
We do need to be direct, but excessive aggression is not necessary. Pointing out Kyouko's dark soul gem and the lack of grief seeds should be sufficient to show that something is wrong (and that it threatens both her own life and Yuma's). Once Kyouko admits what's wrong (it's probably the lack of witches, but it could be something unexpected), we can deal with how to help her (cleansing and grief seeds, most likely, but it could be something else).
 
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The heated language isn't remotely necessary, Cannongerbil.
Would you rather I bring back the reaction images?
The consensus of the voters has been that we never charge anything for cleansing soul gems or grief seeds ever.
Err, I'm pretty sure you are misunderstanding things. We were willing to offer her grief seed cleansing services in return for services., we just aren't willing to withhold cleansing entirely for any reason, because doing so is basically condemning them to die when we have the means to prevent it. In short, we are still going to cleanse her regardless, just that it can be framed as being payment for hammer training depending on how things unfold.

The main concern is that offering her cleansing in return for training runs counter to what we told Kyouko during our last meeting about there being no strings behind us offering cleansing and us having no ulterior motive beyond wanting to help others. Some people, me included, think that sticking to the charity case approach is better than going out of our way to act as though we have an ulterior motive for offering free cleanses, and I personally think you are overestimating the risks of simply giving her the grief seeds.
 
I would be amenable to perhaps paying grief seeds for training, but if we do I'd like to explicitly state that cleanses are free forever regardless of the circumstances.
 
Some reflections on regular sparring with Kyoko. And super seeds.

Trainin provides the excuse to clean Kyoko, with the idea she's not going to ask for cleanses a useable justification. Also It's an environment where she can use all her powers without worrying about the mana cost, providing a jungle gym for her to relieve the pressure of
hunting.

Have we considered emphasizing the unique nature of Super Seeds? The manner that they behave and the constraints of their use are not unworkable. And an individual in Kyoko's situation is a perfect recipient. Especially if we see her on a regular basis and are cleansing routinely. It's proactive and let's us see how the seed behaves over a regular period of time with consistent use.

What opportunity are we waiting for to use them? This option is a good solution that has minimal risk and can be aborted at any time.
 
Some reflections on regular sparring with Kyoko. And super seeds.

Trainin provides the excuse to clean Kyoko, with the idea she's not going to ask for cleanses a useable justification. Also It's an environment where she can use all her powers without worrying about the mana cost, providing a jungle gym for her to relieve the pressure of
hunting.

Have we considered emphasizing the unique nature of Super Seeds? The manner that they behave and the constraints of their use are not unworkable. And an individual in Kyoko's situation is a perfect recipient. Especially if we see her on a regular basis and are cleansing routinely. It's proactive and let's us see how the seed behaves over a regular period of time with consistent use.

What opportunity are we waiting for to use them? This option is a good solution that has minimal risk and can be aborted at any time.
I'm not too sure about the everyone's view on this, but I think the odds of something going wrong with this are very low. It's just that the risk (something happening to one of them/Kyoko never ever trusting us again) is far too high.
 
I'm not too sure about the everyone's view on this, but I think the odds of something going wrong with this are very low. It's just that the risk (something happening to one of them/Kyoko never ever trusting us again) is far too high.
How can the odds be low while the risk is high? Surely those are the same thing.

Perhaps you mean the potential cost?
 
Err, I'm pretty sure you are misunderstanding things. We were willing to offer her grief seed cleansing services in return for services., we just aren't willing to withhold cleansing entirely for any reason, because doing so is basically condemning them to die when we have the means to prevent it. In short, we are still going to cleanse her regardless, just that it can be framed as being payment for hammer training depending on how things unfold.

The main concern is that offering her cleansing in return for training runs counter to what we told Kyouko during our last meeting about there being no strings behind us offering cleansing and us having no ulterior motive beyond wanting to help others. Some people, me included, think that sticking to the charity case approach is better than going out of our way to act as though we have an ulterior motive for offering free cleanses, and I personally think you are overestimating the risks of simply giving her the grief seeds.
Here's what the actual vote which included hammer training was:
[] Offer to Kyouko, via telepathy: "I get that you're not too fond of the idea of 'something for nothing', or at least it seems that way, so how about this? In exchange for the services I'm offering, you get to beat me over the head now and again."
-[] From there, explain that your powerset might make you a bit broken in some respects, but that some recent events -- like Sendai -- have given you a bit of perspective on your non-Griefy business . . . and that you frankly suck at it. So, if Kyouko's willing to help un-suck our combat skills, then we could use that as a deal if she wants one.
--[] Offer a Grief Seed as a down-payment on the combat lessons if need be.
-[] Make it clear that we'd honestly prefer to just offer our services for free, and even if she'd rather not train us she's more than welcome to call upon us for it completely free (if we offered the seed, say she can keep it), but that we're offering this deal because the past couple times we've offered it free she's seemed not-too-thrilled by it.
and more recently:
- [] If you really can't stand it as charity, then teach he how to fight in melee. I'm new to this and you must have some pointers.
Combat training was never a primary goal of these votes, it was only ever intended as a band-aid to placate Kyouko. This is still charity (with a flimsy excuse) rather than an actual equivalent exchange. And people were still more comfortable voting for the option where we didn't charge Kyouko.

Obviously I don't ever want to advocate a plan which allows anyone starve who could have been helped by us. But asking for payment in exchange for services rendered to people who have the means to provide payment? That just makes sense. If we offer Kyouko a deal where she gets cleanses in exchange for training, then it should be a fair deal where both of us benefit, not one where we throw in the training as something that we don't really care about but which we add in merely to salve her ego. If we make her the offer of a fair deal, there is a (remote) possibility that she would reject it. But if that happens, we would still have plenty of room to revise our plan to account for her decision in such a way that we can still make sure that she and Yuma don't starve.

Personally, I think that training from Kyouko is really valuable, so here's my vote and we'll see what happens:
[x] Probe further
-[x] Point out that Kyouko's gem was dark and they don't have any grief seeds.
-[x] Ask if there is a shortage of witches or if there's a different problem.
-[x] Kyouko and Yuma need grief seeds and cleansing, we need training in melee combat, so offer the following trade:
--[x] In exchange for daily training in melee combat, offer the following:
--[x] Cleansing of soul gems and grief seeds.
--[x] The loan of Jane for the duration of the training (no shorter than 3 weeks).
--[x] Assistance in witch hunting as part of the training. If the witches are in Kyouko's territory, she can keep the seeds.
[x] Describe the Sendai solution, mention the meguca involved, the reason for the conflict, and the way it was resolved.
[x] Ask if there are any other meguca in Kasamino.
[x] Telepathy Yuma. Try and make sure your big sis cleanses her own gem too, okay?
 
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Would you rather I bring back the reaction images?
Something something condescending, something something self-assured?

Calm down, Cannon, seriously. You very clearly broke the civility there, and there was no need to. Maybe he made a bad argument, maybe he didn't; either way, you could have resorted to a more civil and rational response first before blowing up at him.
 
Allow me to rephrase that: the punishment for failure is far too high. The odds of failure are low, but the price of failure is too high to risk.
Failure of what? Saying no to training just means we're back where we started, where going "what's wrong with you admit you're a failure" is going to result in her kicking us out at spear point at worst, and even if she caves, it's fucking humiliating.

Combat training as a cover saves her face and gets everyone what they want.
 
Combat training was never a primary goal of these votes, it was only ever intended as a band-aid to placate Kyouko. This is still charity (with a flimsy excuse) rather than an actual equivalent exchange. And people were still more comfortable voting for the option where we didn't charge Kyouko.
Personally speaking, it was the flimsy excuse bit that turned me off. We don't really need to have one, and it feels hypocritical to say that we are purely offering our services because we want to help other megucas, and then turning around and selling our services at a cost. And, personally speaking, I would prefer that we stick to our guns about the altruism issue than to purposefully give our actions an ulterior shadow just fit her existing worldview.

Failure of what? Saying no to training just means we're back where we started, where going "what's wrong with you admit you're a failure" is going to result in her kicking us out at spear point at worst, and even if she calves, it's fucking humiliating.

Combat training as a cover saves her face and gets everyone what they want.
Wrong topic, he's talking about the clear seeds.
 
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Personally speaking, it was the flimsy excuse bit that turned me off. We don't really need to have one, and it feels hypocritical to say that we are purely offering our services because we want to help other megucas, and then turning around and selling our services at a cost.


Wrong topic, he's talking about the clear seeds.
The cost is just a cover because Kyoko is being stubborn and we are offering a compromise to do something we want to do anyway im exchange for...something we want to do anyway. We are not Rorschach; not compromising on something as minor as this is silly.
 
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Failure of what? Saying no to training just means we're back where we started, where going "what's wrong with you admit you're a failure" is going to result in her kicking us out at spear point at worst, and even if she caves, it's fucking humiliating.

Combat training as a cover saves her face and gets everyone what they want.
I was talking about testing the clear seed out with her, and the fact that we aren't sure we worked out the kinks. I have no problem with the training.
 
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