Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
I wonder if Kyuubey offers wishes to boys as longs as the wish to become girls. I also wonder how he'd react to a girl using her wish to become a boy (I actually don't think there is anything stopping this).
 
Jonen C said:
Which causes one thing to lead to another and one ill advised QB sponsored wish later we've got Classic Kyoko and Classy Kyo-ko, Confused-but-Intrigued Sayaka and But-Girls-Can't-Love-Boys-Who-Have-Mysteriously-Turned-Into-Girls Hitomi romcom hijinx.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

"But that's forbidden love!" "No it's not. I'm fairly confident no-one's forbidden it, because who would have thought something like this could happen?"

If I didn't have so much uni work at the moment, I'd try to write this. BADLY.
 
boonerunner said:
First off, I don't think that asking for money in return for healing should be at all controversial. That's what hospitals do all the time. We could quibble about how much money to ask for or the best way to ask it, but the underlying idea should be sound.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Can anyone who is opposed to accepting payment for healing explain what they think is different between what I'm proposing and what doctors do every day, because I really don't understand where all the hate is coming from?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think I can explain. In the way people deal with things there is a disconnect between dealings with friends and business dealings people. If a friend brings you a gift of wine, it is considered bad form to attempt to pay the value of it. The correct action is to later return with a gift or favour of similar value. If your friend came over one day and cooked at your barbeque, you would not pay him a chefs wages, you would offer to cook next time. Reciprocation is important but doing so by simply paying the value of the service is unacceptable in most social circles. One reason for this is that it implies that as you are paying for your friend's work, then you are above him in the social structure. There are other more subtle reasons I can't bring to mind right now, but it certainly explains why you're not making any headway.

Friendships essentially work within a favour based economy, and you are trying to argue against it using actual economics. This makes most people extremely uncomfortable, and for the most part people are successful in not thinking about why. That's why such a vote would never get through and also why most people are unable to come up with a more satisfying answer than "because it's wrong". They know that there must be reasons against it, but very few people know what they actually are until they sit down and think for a bit. Even then, it's easy to miss a few. The whole thing works out surprisingly well actually, the system works despite all the actors not being in on the reasons and it makes life a bit more fun.

Sayaka (and the rest of our friends) would think us uncomfortably mercenary if we actually pulled this plan off and think worse of us as a result. If we need money, let's just grab some from the Yakuza tomorrow while we're shopping with Mom. That's as morally unambiguous as it gets.
 
Last edited:
rikalous said:
I'm willing to bet that Mami needs companionship from us more than we need room and board from her. So either she's running a debt to us and we should ask for more money than what goes to room and board, or we just don't frame our relationship in terms of equivalent exchange and go on our merry lives together.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But we did ask for money, so we could treat Kyouko to lunch, remember? :p
 
Tomorrow, while we're robbing the Yakuza blind of all their weapons, lets take some of their money as well. There will likely be some near the rooms where they keep the guns, probably in a safe nearby.

All in favour?
 
Reading turned to a quick skimming rather quickly, so I may have missed this, but re: Money Chat: Sabrina and her friends are all minors, on top of the fact that Sabrina doesn't exist in the legal sense; all of this makes obtaining -or doing much of anything, really- with large amounts of money incredibly impractical. While there is someone who could probably help with that legal entity bit, most of the thread would rather chew out their own eyeballs than have anything beyond the absolute minimum interaction with said fuzzy thing.

In short: Don't sweat about money unless you actually need sums in excess of what Mami's willing to spot you. No need to turn a largely abstracted resource into something less abstract.
 
First off, much thanks to rikalous and SaltyWaffles for your responses. They were a well reasoned and made me think more deeply about some of these issues and allowed me to express some of my concerns/thoughts in a way that is (hopefully) more clear.

rikalous said:
This articulates a problem I have with the charging-money thing that I don't think I was even consciously aware of. We have Kyousuke by the short and curlies. Only meguca can fix his hand, and all the meguca in the area (and a couple potentials to boot) are our allies. We hold his dreams in the palm of our hand. The one that's not gripping the aforementioned short and curlies, I assume. If the deal falls through, he loses his hope of regaining the thing he most loves in the world. We lose a chance at some extra dosh. This is not an equitable arrangement. The reason people keep throwing the word "extortion" around is because that's what using severe power imbalances to make people give you money is generally called.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Extortion doesn't refer to the power imbalance by itself but rather to the misuse of power in that context. The potential for extortion is definitely present (so I guess I can see why people are concerned), but it would only be extortion if the price we ultimately agreed upon were unfair.

And it's not even all that economically defensible, because we've got an artificial monopoly. We're not even that good at healing, he just doesn't have access to Rin or Yuma or any meguca who isn't us-affiliated.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is another way to show the imbalance of power, but it does not mean that we would abuse that power.

I'm pretty sure Kyousuke would promise us his soul and firstborn child if that's what we asked. Any attempt to negotiate a fair price with him is going to be tainted by that desperation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's a very good argument for healing him first and letting him decide what a fair donation would be afterwards. We could even insist that he waits a few days to calm down before deciding what would be fair.

Some people worried earlier that asking for payment before healing Kyousuke was tantamount to threatening to not heal him unless he paid us. But that was not my position at all. If we asked for payment beforehand, it would be in the context of a conversation where he (or his guardians) would be able to decide what price would be fair. But I'm inclined to think that allowing him to fulfill his obligations with a donation would result in a more fair (and less controversial) remuneration.

SaltyWaffles said:
1) Healing Kyousuke is not being done in a professional capacity. We are not a professional healer, and we do not go around offering our healing services to all potential customers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True. I'm not positive how this affects the moral questions, but it definitely is a difference between us and doctors. How would we go about becoming a professional healer, then? Talking to the staff at the hospital, perhaps?

2) It has all kinds of "offer you can't refuse" vibes. Too close to extortion for comfort (even if it isn't extortion at all, etc).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True. But this objection is also true for doctors. That's why the oaths that doctors take are so important. Possibly we should take such an oath if we intend to do regular healing.

3) Would we do the same if Kyousuke had very little money to spare? No? Then double-standard. Sayaka might just mind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This question is also valid for doctors, and like them, our primary goal should be healing, regardless of the means of our patients. A fair remuneration should be proportionate to the means of the recipient.

4) We don't really need the money, and there are other ways to make money should we need it. 50K is a sizable chunk of money to move around, the kind of size that gets recorded and would look suspicious as hell on paper if anyone were to look.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The fact that we don't need the money can be debated, but I do agree that we don't have a pressing immediate need for the money. That's why I removed it from my vote. In the long term, I agree that there are other ways to make money, but all of the plans that have been suggested thus far (stealing from yakuza or a bank, lottery, stock market) are morally offensive to me, and none of them benefit people like becoming a healer on a semi-regular basis would. Are there other ways to make money? We have bullshit magical powers: there are a lot of ways to make money. But very few of them would be as helpful to the world as healing would be. Especially if we can convince other girls to start doing the same type of thing on a global scale. Such a thing could spell the end to many types of sickness and injury and significantly prolong the average human life expectancy.

5) Do you ask for a bunch of money every time you do a friend a favor? Especially when said favor is hardly any imposition for you by nature of assets/status/access/connections you already have by default?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Kyousuke is not our friend. And many of the posters are actively opposed to him becoming our friend. And one of the points that we're trying to make to Sayaka is that this is not about her, so it would be good if we could make a point to Sayaka that we're not doing this as a favor to her but rather we're healing Kyousuke for his own sake (whether it's because he's in pain and we can help or because of his value as a musician, etc).

6) We don't charge money to MG's for healing them, or cleansing them. Sabrina has very explicit, deeply-held convictions about this practice, and charging someone for healing a major injury that would be impossible to heal otherwise would be infringing upon those convictions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As I understand it, our primary motivation is our wish. We want to control ALL of the grief. Ultimately this means cleansing all meguca and destroying all witches (and hopefully reversing them). In the pursuit of this goal, we should never act immorally, but if money can help us achieve this goal more quickly and we can obtain that money in fair exchange for healing, then I am all for it. Indeed, if we can use the money to save more meguca then it would be immoral to refuse payment.

7) The biggest reason we're doing this (and especially now) is because, if we don't, then the only other way to heal Kyousuke is by one of his close female friends contracting with Kyubey. We already know that one of them is at least seriously considering doing just that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Agreed. Healing Kyousuke is primary. Preventing Sayaka from contracting is primary. The potential attraction that could result from healing is a secondary concern and the money thing was only ever suggested as a tertiary idea as a possible resolution to that secondary concern.

8) "Sayaka, you shouldn't become a magical girl. Pay no attention to the fact that I just healed an unhealable injury in a matter of hours and made 50,000 dollars in the process, easy. Like I said, being a magical girl is terrible. Now, I'm off to the bank to deposit the easiest 50K an unemployed teenager has ever legally made. Have fun at school!"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The flashy appeal of magic is obvious, but Sayaka is not motivated by greed any more than we are. A clear explanation of our motives in this case should show that we intend to use the money to cleanse more meguca.
 
Last edited:
........ said:
Reading turned to a quick skimming rather quickly, so I may have missed this, but re: Money Chat: Sabrina and her friends are all minors, on top of the fact that Sabrina doesn't exist in the legal sense; all of this makes obtaining -or doing much of anything, really- with large amounts of money incredibly impractical. While there is someone who could probably help with that legal entity bit, most of the thread would rather chew out their own eyeballs than have anything beyond the absolute minimum interaction with said fuzzy thing.

In short: Don't sweat about money unless you actually need sums in excess of what Mami's willing to spot you. No need to turn a largely abstracted resource into something less abstract.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not nearly as impractical as you'd think. A couple weeks ago we worked out about 5 different ways to make millions in less than a few hours effort. Most were completely legal as well.
 
Jackercracks said:
I think I can explain. In the way people deal with things there is a disconnect between dealings with friends and business dealings people. If a friend brings you a gift of wine, it is considered bad form to attempt to pay the value of it. The correct action is to later return with a gift or favour of similar value. If your friend came over one day and cooked at your barbeque, you would not pay him a chefs wages, you would offer to cook next time. Reciprocation is important but doing so by simply paying the value of the service is unacceptable in most social circles. One reason for this is that it implies that as you are paying for your friend's work, then you are above him in the social structure. There are other more subtle reasons I can't bring to mind right now, but it certainly explains why you're not making any headway.

Friendships essentially work within a favour based economy, and you are trying to argue against it using actual economics. This makes most people extremely uncomfortable, and for the most part people are successful in not thinking about why. That's why such a vote would never get through and also why most people are unable to come up with a more satisfying answer than "because it's wrong". They know that there must be reasons against it, but very few people know what they actually are until they sit down and think for a bit. Even then, it's easy to miss a few. The whole thing works out surprisingly well actually, the system works despite all the actors not being in on the reasons and it makes life a bit more fun.

Sayaka (and the rest of our friends) would think us uncomfortably mercenary if we actually pulled this plan off and think worse of us as a result.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of dealing with Kyousuke as a business transaction (because he isn't our friend), but I can see why many people would think of it in terms of friendship (because he is a friend of a friend), and I didn't adequately consider that angle. Of course, since we're not going to ask for payment, that unfortunately leaves the reciprocation issue unresolved.

If we're not talking about Kyousuke, however, perhaps people would be willing to accept healing-for-profit if the patients were ones we had no social connection to at all? Because that model would potentially heal a lot of people who would otherwise be left injured, possibly even improving the quality of human life as a whole if it caught on at a global scale.

If we need money, let's just grab some from the Yakuza tomorrow while we're shopping with Mom. That's as morally unambiguous as it gets.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I personally think that robbing anyone is wrong and that robbing Yakuza for cash is only different in the degree of wrongness. That being said, I am in favor of taking their weapons (which provide a clear danger to the population and which we have a pressing need for).
 
Last edited:
........ said:
Reading turned to a quick skimming rather quickly, so I may have missed this, but re: Money Chat: Sabrina and her friends are all minors, on top of the fact that Sabrina doesn't exist in the legal sense; all of this makes obtaining -or doing much of anything, really- with large amounts of money incredibly impractical. While there is someone who could probably help with that legal entity bit, most of the thread would rather chew out their own eyeballs than have anything beyond the absolute minimum interaction with said fuzzy thing.

In short: Don't sweat about money unless you actually need sums in excess of what Mami's willing to spot you. No need to turn a largely abstracted resource into something less abstract.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Our lack of identity is the biggest problem. But in Japan, children are allowed to buy and win lottery tickets, for example, so as long as we have Mami/Homura/Anyone buy them for us that way is perfectly legal.

I bet we could make hundreds of thousands live-streaming some of our antics, if you want a 100% airtight model.
 
boonerunner said:
The fact that we don't need the money can be debated, but I do agree that we don't have a pressing immediate need for the money. That's why I removed it from my vote. In the long term, I agree that there are other ways to make money, but all of the plans that have been suggested thus far (stealing from yakuza or a bank, lottery, stock market) are morally offensive to me, and none of them benefit people like becoming a healer on a semi-regular basis would. Are there other ways to make money? We have bullshit magical powers: there are a lot of ways to make money. But very few of them would be as helpful to the world as healing would be.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If we want to be a healer on a semi-regular basis we can do that without charging our patients. Unlike the doctors you like bringing up, this would not in any way affect our healing operations. Like the doctors you like bringing up, we'd need to heal a crapload of people to make a good sum of money if we're charging a reasonable price, and since we aren't a recognized provider we won't get any insurance payments, so actually we'll need to either charge more than three times what people are used to paying or heal more than three times as many people to make a given amount of money. This will be very hard to do with Kyuubey enforcing the masquerade on unrelated civilians.
boonerunner said:
Sabrina is not independently wealthy, Mami is. Sabrina is a freeloader (albeit a welcome one). I would consider it a great improvement if we were able to legitimately obtain enough money so that we can at least pay for our own expenses, if nothing else. Otherwise we are (effectively) charging Mami for cleansing and no one else.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We don't legally exist. Any money we make is going to have to go to Mami anyway, or our ability to earn, store, and spend money will be severely limited.

We're not charging Mami for cleansing any more than a housewife charges her husband for sex. Sometimes when people like each other very much one of them will spend money that the other can't independently repay.
I consider all of these methods of making money to be morally problematic: they each boil down to taking money from someone else and giving them nothing in return, whereas healing people in return for money (or donations) at least allows people to be healed in return. People who would not be healed if we made the money from the lottery instead.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But Kyousuke won't be healed in return. We're healing him no matter what. Any money he gives us will provide him no additional services, in other words, taking money from someone else and giving them nothing in return.
boonerunner said:
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of dealing with Kyousuke as a business transaction (because he isn't our friend), but I can see why many people would think of it in terms of friendship (because he is a friend of a friend), and I didn't adequately consider that angle. Of course, since we're not going to ask for payment, that unfortunately leaves the reciprocation issue unresolved.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ask for front row seats to his next concert if reciprocation becomes an issue.
 
Wonder if our "shopping trip" (If Momura lets us come along) will take us to JSDF and American bases?
 
boonerunner said:
Can anyone who is opposed to accepting payment for healing explain what they think is different between what I'm proposing and what doctors do every day, because I really don't understand where all the hate is coming from?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, Doctors are kind of justified in charging for their services. I mean, they did spend 8+ years studying medicine (which also has a quite expensive tuition, mind), then a few more years as an intern before they are officially qualified as a legal professional in fixing all your fragile, meaty bits. (Which just highlights how heroic NGO's like Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are, but I digress)

Meanwhile, healing is part of the standard meguca package. Yes, it's expensive in grief costs for the non-healer specc'ed, and it requires a teenage girl to literally sell her soul to to the practically-devil... But grief costs are non-existent for us, and Sabrina was coughing her lungs out when she contracted.

If you really, really want to charge Kyouske for healing his hand to, as you say, keep it business-like, then we charge him 100 Yen. With a receipt and all.

Btw, IIRC from one of the games: That crippling injury? Drove him to suicide when it didn't get healed in one of the routes.

Jackercracks said:
Tomorrow, while we're robbing the Yakuza blind of all their weapons, lets take some of their money as well. There will likely be some near the rooms where they keep the guns, probably in a safe nearby.

All in favour?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

AYE.
 
Last edited:
defenestrator said:
Well, Doctor's are kind of justified in charging for their services. I mean, they did spend 8+ years studying medicine (which also has a quite expensive tuition, mind), then a few more years as an intern before they are officially qualified as a legal professional in fixing all your fragile, meaty bits. (Which just highlights how heroic NGO's like Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are, but I digress)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Also the stuff they use to heal people tends to cost money. A doctor who doesn't get money somehow will soon find they are no longer a doctor.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top