Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Gadjo · Apr 13, 2015

You see, you say that the incubators can't beat Madoka, but Homura did. Sure, she trusted Homura, but it shows she isn't infallible. She'd have to do that same thing again whenever she saved anyone the incubators. If that wasn't necessary, why would she have given up her memories at all? She, an omniscient goddess, thought it was too dangerous to give the incubators information.

Again, developing a new system that doesn't screw us but gives the incubators more energy is all well and good, but:
A: Our plan and the incubator's current system must be mutually exclusive. Otherwise, they'll just do both.
B: The very moment they find a more efficient way, they'll use it, even if it betrays us. Meaning that we would have to be conducting experiments at incubator level forever. That's slavery. "Make sure there is never a better system than the one you gave us or we'll screw you and your entire race over" about sums it up.

AuraTwilight said:
3) Warn that if they pull any bullshit we will legit just wipe out their entire fucking race, and maybe a fuckload of stars with no life-bearing planets out of pure spite because all they care about is muh enerjees

If we can threaten that, why wouldn't we just do it? Fuck those guys.

Ugolino · Apr 13, 2015

Megucas might be powered by their wishes, but that doesn't really make "wishful thinking" a good plan for any given goal.

Torgamous · Apr 13, 2015

Ugolino said:
Megucas might be powered by their wishes, but that doesn't really make "wishful thinking" a good plan for any given goal.

If someone tells me that it's wrong to hope, I'll tell them they're wrong every time.

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
If we can threaten that, why wouldn't we just do it? Fuck those guys.

1. Currently, incubators are our best bet for disposing of grief.
2. Not all incubators are necessarily as bad as Kyuubey. We have a sample of one and that is insufficient moral grounds (in my books) to justify killing all of them.
3. Species wide extinction is a bit extreme. Kyuubey's actions have caused humanity to become extinct in some timelines (so this course of action would be "fair" from one point of view), but ideally we shouldn't sink to his level.
4. Other species would probably take note and might treat humanity as hostile.
5. If we can accomplish our goals by threatening to destroy the incubators without actually needing to carry out that threat, then that's a better solution.

AuraTwilight · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
You see, you say that the incubators can't beat Madoka, but Homura did. Sure, she trusted Homura, but it shows she isn't infallible. She'd have to do that same thing again whenever she saved anyone the incubators. If that wasn't necessary, why would she have given up her memories at all? She, an omniscient goddess, thought it was too dangerous to give the incubators information.

Homura has the benefit of emotionally-fueled, karma-bound magic that's specifically tailored to her karmic-looping, yandere-rabu for a particular goddess in particular. The Incubators have nothing comparable. Not even most other Magical Girls do. It was an 100% bullshit, once ever chance of bullshit wrapped in bullshit-smelling bullshit on a bullshit-encrusted plate balanced on a pile of even more bullshit.

She gave up her memories so that the Nagisa/Sayaka team could prod Homura to a healthy mindset without Kyubey fucking with her head so they could lift her out of the situation without having to fight Homulilly but oh well.

Also just because it doesn't really weaken your position doesn't mean you make a habit out of handing intel to the enemy, broseph.

If we can threaten that, why wouldn't we just do it? Fuck those guys.

Moral highground, bluh bluh ethics, bluh bluh.

Also I don't want to be doing all that fucking menial work/have Sabrina do it for eternity. Goddamn can you imagine how much fucking cosmic micromanaging it must be to put all that energy to it's optimal usage throughout the entire fucking universe? Holy FUCK, let them do it, it's practically punishment enough. It's like pudding farming in Nethack.

Torgamous · Apr 13, 2015

boonerunner said:
2. Not all incubators are necessarily as bad as Kyuubey. We have a sample of one and that is insufficient moral grounds (in my books) to justify killing all of them.

Lack of emotions goes a long way to giving them all the same moral weight.

boonerunner said:
3. Species wide extinction is a bit extreme. Kyuubey's actions caused humanity to become extinct (so this course of action would be "fair" from one point of view), but ideally we shouldn't sink to his level.

They wouldn't hold it against us.

boonerunner said:
4. Other species would probably take note and might treat humanity as hostile.

If they're that fond of the Incubators then fuck 'em.

boonerunner said:
5. If we can accomplish our goals by threatening to destroy the incubators without actually needing to carry out that threat, then that's a better solution.

If the Incubators care about their species in particular being destroyed then a threat will ensure that they neutralize us at the first opportunity. In other words, we can not accomplish our goals by threatening to destroy the Incubators without following through.

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

On the other hand, Kyuubey himself completely deserves to go to his final resting place. If we could guarantee that killing him would send an example to the other incubators so that they don't mess with us in the future, then it would totally be worth it. However, we do not know enough about their psychology to know if they would react by backing off or if they would treat Kyuubey's death as a provocation and react by sending surgical nuclear strikes (or worse).

This is the type of thing that makes me say that we need to learn more about the incubators. If we are unwilling to talk with Kyuubey directly, maybe we should see what happens if we trap one of his bodies inside a grief interdiction field. Does it get cut off from his main consciousness? Would we still be able to access information from his brain?

Gadjo · Apr 13, 2015

AuraTwilight said:
Also just because it doesn't really weaken your position doesn't mean you make a habit out of handing intel to the enemy, broseph.

Like you said though: an omniscient goddess. You don't give enemies intel when you're a fallible human because you actually have to deal with the unknown. If she knew they couldn't touch her, she would have just showed up and gotten it over with.

AuraTwilight said:
Also I don't want to be doing all that fucking menial work/have Sabrina do it for eternity. Goddamn can you imagine how much fucking cosmic micromanaging it must be to put all that energy to it's optimal usage throughout the entire fucking universe? Holy FUCK, let them do it, it's practically punishment enough. It's like pudding farming in Nethack.

Eh... I'll be honest: I don't give a shit about the heat death of the universe. It's not for billions upon billions of years. Everything has its place and everything dies. Including the universe.

TechSY730 · Apr 13, 2015

Torgamous said:
If someone tells me that it's wrong to hope, I'll tell them they're wrong every time.

Hope for a better system. Sure!
We may very well be able to find a way to make the system less sucky on a practical level in such a way that the "loss" to the Incubators is not worth the effort to take us out directly.
We would need to be on the lookout for indirect methods, sure, but we can cover ourselves against most of the indirect methods we know Incubators use. It would not be easy by any means, but that at least seems feasible.

But finding a way to beat them? Lol, NO!

In fact, short of some sort of "ascension" (either us, Madoka, or whoever), or possibly it already "happened" due to "timey-wimey" stuff (like if the worst case "feathers theory", it being Homucifer, was somehow true), I don't really see any other way of getting a good ending that wouldn't be SOD breaking. If the Incubators are even a fraction of how powerful as being concerned about the heat death of the universe would imply, we just have NO SHOT of "bringing into line" the Incubators or even "merely" kicking them off this planet.

...

Actually, that a great argument against MadoWish theory. Madoka's OMGWTFBBQ levels of potential + ascending to a higher state of being was STILL not enough to really "fix" the universe; the universe STILL found a way to give her the middle finger and continue to troll her (through Homura, yes, but that still counts). Basically, we CAN'T fix everything; not even Madoka's potential would be strong enough to give us the power to do that (Universe's assholeness OP, plz nerf!

). At best, we can make things "less broken" on a "practical" level for megucas.

EDIT: Removed baseless speculation.

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

Torgamous said:
Lack of emotions goes a long way to giving them all the same moral weight.

Human morals are not based on emotions, they are based on actions. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that incubators work the same way. Saying that all other incubators are equally as culpable as Kyuubey just because they lack emotions is not fair.

4. Other species would probably take note and might treat humanity as hostile.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

If they're that fond of the Incubators then fuck 'em.

This is primarily a practical concern; I don't want to deal with the incubators only to have the squid show up the next day. But it's also bad from a publicity perspective. The incubators have probably convinced everyone else that they are the heroic knights who fight the good fight against entropy. So if humanity shows up on the intergalactic scene as the ones who wiped out the incubators, we're going to have a difficult time in future diplomatic efforts.

If the Incubators care about their species in particular being destroyed then a threat will ensure that they neutralize us at the first opportunity. In other words, we can not accomplish our goals by threatening to destroy the Incubators without following through.

This depends on how the incubators think. At the present, there is insufficient data to determine how they would react, so we have to assume the worst: that they would neutralize us at the first opportunity. But it would be better if we could get more data.

techsy730 said:
Hope for a better system. Sure!
We may very well be able to find a way to make the system less sucky on a practical level in such a way that the "loss" to the Incubators is not worth the effort to take us out directly.
We would need to be on the lookout for indirect methods, sure, but we can cover ourselves against most of the indirect methods we know Incubators use. It would not be easy by any means, but that at least seems feasible.

I agree that a diplomatic solution (possibly enforced by a wish) is our best bet in the long-term. But many of the posters seem to think that diplomacy is impossible, and if that is true then the only other option is destruction. Preferably destruction of the incubators.

techsy730 said:
But finding a way to beat them? Lol, NO!

In fact, short of some sort of "ascension" (either us, Madoka, or whoever), or possibly it already "happened" due to "timey-wimey" stuff (like if the worst case "feathers theory", it being Homucifer, was somehow true), I don't really see any other way of getting a good ending that wouldn't be SOD breaking. If the Incubators are even a fraction of how powerful as being concerned about the heat death of the universe would imply, we just have NO SHOT of "bringing into line" the Incubators or even "merely" kicking them off this planet.

You underestimate the ingenuity of humanity when it comes to engineering death. Our powers are bullshit enough that it is not a question of whether it is possible to destroy the incubators but what the most effective way to do so would be and whether we would be justified in doing so.

Torgamous · Apr 13, 2015

boonerunner said:
Human morals are not based on emotions, they are based on actions.

Ah. That explains why pouring poison into an anthill that hasn't killed anyone is a war crime.

boonerunner said:
At the present, there is insufficient data to determine how they would react, so we have to assume the worst: that they would neutralize us at the first opportunity. But it would be better if we could get more data.

How would you propose getting more data on how the Incubators would react to a credible existential threat?

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
Eh... I'll be honest: I don't give a shit about the heat death of the universe. It's not for billions upon billions of years. Everything has its place and everything dies. Including the universe.

It's not the heat-death of the universe (per-se) that is at stake. It's the survival of sentient life. If you were notified that the Sun was declining due to lack of energy and that humanity would die out if nothing were done and an alien race came with a solution that would artificially pump energy into the sun and let humanity live longer, then you would probably think of that solution as a good thing. The time scales are still on the order of millions of years (so it's beyond our capacity to properly think about), but ideally this type of long term project is something that we should be interested in (though all of our other problems are much more immediate).

Torgamous said:
How would you propose getting more data on how the Incubators would react to a credible existential threat?

By asking Kyuubey questions to understand how his moral system works (because currently we don't know much more than "entropy bad"). Or by capturing one of Kyuubey's bodies inside an interdiction field and interrogating it/analyzing its memory banks.

Gadjo · Apr 13, 2015

boonerunner said:
I agree that a diplomatic solution (possibly enforced by a wish) is our best bet in the long-term. But many of the posters seem to think that diplomacy is impossible, and if that is true then the only other option is destruction. Preferably destruction of the incubators.

Seriously though: why do you consider long-term alliance with them to be doable? We know for a fact that we'd have to make absolutely certain that we were nothing but benefit to them at all times. Threatening them won't work- they aren't emotional, so they'll be able to logically see through a bluff. And if we were capable of destroying them, I'd say we just do it. It would be a little unsavory, I'll admit, but as it is they are predators and we are prey. We have to think of our own well being first.

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
Seriously though: why do you consider long-term alliance with them to be doable? We know for a fact that we'd have to make absolutely certain that we were nothing but benefit to them at all times. Threatening them won't work- they aren't emotional, so they'll be able to logically see through a bluff. And if we were capable of destroying them, I'd say we just do it. It would be a little unsavory, I'll admit, but as it is they are predators and we are prey. We have to think of our own well being first.

How about an alliance that is enforced by wish based magic (like the arrangement that Homura pulled at the end of Rebellion). Does that sound potentially doable?

Ugolino · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
Everything has its place and everything dies. Including the universe.

I think Sabrina's mindset is more Waters of Mars than Ninth Doctor.

Or maybe on a bad day...

"If you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn't one. It stops with me."

Gadjo · Apr 13, 2015

boonerunner said:
How about an alliance that is enforced by wish based magic (like the arrangement that Homura pulled at the end of Rebellion). Does that sound potentially doable?

Well, the example you're using isn't so much an alliance as it is slavery (Homura did pretty much enslave them) but keep in mind it required some crazy specific circumstances and a piece of the power of a goddess. That would pretty much require a madowish. And Homura would literally kill us if we suggested such a thing while knowing its implications.

rikalous · Apr 13, 2015

Just want to note for the record that it is notionally possible for Sabrina to come to a peaceable accord with Kyubey, if Firn's dubiously-canon snippets can be trusted. However, this accord was shown to be reached only after the stars had been replaced with magic substitutes and everyone Sabrina knew was long gone, so probably not something that's going to be feasible in the next update or two.

boonerunner said:
This is primarily a practical concern; I don't want to deal with the incubators only to have the squid show up the next day. But it's also bad from a publicity perspective. The incubators have probably convinced everyone else that they are the heroic knights who fight the good fight against entropy. So if humanity shows up on the intergalactic scene as the ones who wiped out the incubators, we're going to have a difficult time in future diplomatic efforts.

At this point, we know effectively nothing about interplanetary relationships, except that there are indications of extraterrestrial meguca being a thing. I do not see how any speculation on such scanty information is going to be fruitful.

techsy730 said:
Madoka's OMGWTFBBQ levels of potential + ascending to a higher state of being was STILL not enough to really "fix" the universe; the universe STILL found a way to give her the middle finger and continue to troll her (through Homura, yes, but that still counts). Basically, we CAN'T fix everything; not even Madoka's potential would be strong enough to give us the power to do that (Universe's assholeness OP, plz nerf! ). At best, we can make things "less broken" on a "practical" level for megucas.

What? The universe doesn't have a personality, assholish or otherwise. The only cosmic force working on ways to screw over Madokami was Urobuchi, and that's not an issue for Sabrina unless "Firnagzen" is his online name. That one particular wish to make things better in one particular way did not fix everything does not indicate that fixing everything is impossible. That's like saying that since Kyouko's wish for people to listen to her father didn't make things better for the Sakura family, no wish she could have made would make things better for the Sakura family.

Gadjo said:
Eh... I'll be honest: I don't give a shit about the heat death of the universe. It's not for billions upon billions of years. Everything has its place and everything dies. Including the universe.

"That's just the way it is" strikes me as an odd position to take in a thread titled "system breaker" based on a show where the triumphant ending was the heroine rewriting the laws of the universe retroactively to its beginning.

TechSY730 · Apr 13, 2015

*sudden topic "snapback"*

Sigh, I am a bit sad about the further delay of some of the "science" things I have been curious about, but I sort of understand the goal behind Mura's science list (lots of low priority but short things).
If we want this "science session" to be more "goal focused", then optimizing the time we have to spare for "checking off" as many items from the list makes sense for this session, which means picking as many things as we think we can do in that time. Even though, by coincidence, all such items currently happen to be lower priority ones.

Just so long as we don't make this the "scheduling policy" we use for every science session (that way leads to mid-priority long projects getting "starved" by potentially many lower-priority small ones), that should be fine.

AuraTwilight · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
Like you said though: an omniscient goddess. You don't give enemies intel when you're a fallible human because you actually have to deal with the unknown. If she knew they couldn't touch her, she would have just showed up and gotten it over with.

Yea but on the other hand, Sayaka and Nagisa and Madoka all took the chance to like, take a break and have a vacation and hopefully improve Homura's mindset and emotional well-being. And it would've worked if Homura didn't have a craw up her ass.

Eh... I'll be honest: I don't give a shit about the heat death of the universe. It's not for billions upon billions of years. Everything has its place and everything dies. Including the universe.

Counterpart: Fuck that.

Techsy730 said:
Actually, that a great argument against MadoWish theory. Madoka's OMGWTFBBQ levels of potential + ascending to a higher state of being was STILL not enough to really "fix" the universe; the universe STILL found a way to give her the middle finger and continue to troll her (through Homura, yes, but that still counts).

This assumes Homucifer is not ultimately part of Madokami's plan and/or for the betterment of the universe because God's Ways Are Mysterious Bluh Bluh.

Rikalous said:
What? The universe doesn't have a personality, assholish or otherwise. The only cosmic force working on ways to screw over Madokami was Urobuchi, and that's not an issue for Sabrina unless "Firnagzen" is his online name. That one particular wish to make things better in one particular way did not fix everything does not indicate that fixing everything is impossible. That's like saying that since Kyouko's wish for people to listen to her father didn't make things better for the Sakura family, no wish she could have made would make things better for the Sakura family.

To be fair, while the universe doesn't seem to be sentient or anything, all this talk about wishes causing distortions and karmic destiny blatherbloo does imply that the universe of PMMM has a metaphysical means of balancing out reality-warping shenanigans so that you can't just get what you want straight up, no kickbacks.

TechSY730 · Apr 13, 2015

rikalous said:
What? The universe doesn't have a personality, assholish or otherwise.

Well, yea, there is a reason I put that in parenthetical followed by a

I was making a silly, oversimplified, anthropometric metaphor.
Of course I don't actually think the universe itself of PMMM has an actual personality. I was merely describing the sorts of things it seems to try to do (seemingly as one of that universes laws or princibles) as something similar to what we humans would usually ascribe "asshole-like" behaviour if a person were to do something like that to us.

...

This is why I tend to spam the quotation marks when I am intentionally using metaphors, similes, or "figures of speech" to try to convey a concept (usually because I can't think of a way of specifying it more exactly and literally without being even more excessively verbose than I already am).
In this sort of written context (forum posts and comments on the internet), it can often be very hard to tell if I am using such imaginative comparisons or if I am speaking literally.

justinkal · Apr 13, 2015

techsy730 said:
*sudden topic "snapback"*

Sigh, I am a bit sad about the further delay of some of the "science" things I have been curious about, but I sort of understand the goal behind Mura's science list (lots of low priority but short things).
If we want this "science session" to be more "goal focused", then optimizing the time we have to spare for "checking off" as many items from the list makes sense for this session, which means picking as many things as we think we can do in that time. Even though, by coincidence, all such items currently happen to be lower priority ones.

Just so long as we don't make this the "scheduling policy" we use for every science session (that way leads to mid-priority long projects getting "starved" by potentially many lower-priority small ones), that should be fine.

As a counterargument, I think its actually better to focus on a large number of small goals when we have science sessions rather than a single large goal because it lets us avoid hitting road blocks in our power growth.

I'd say the ideal strategy would be to do lots of small experiments, each of which have a result that contributes progress towards a larger goal. For instance, learning to change the size of objects is both useful in its own right and mastering that skill would likely be useful for trying to do anything related to a pocket dimension, such as a barrier.

boonerunner · Apr 13, 2015

Gadjo said:
Well, the example you're using isn't so much an alliance as it is slavery (Homura did pretty much enslave them) but keep in mind it required some crazy specific circumstances and a piece of the power of a goddess. That would pretty much require a madowish. And Homura would literally kill us if we suggested such a thing while knowing its implications.

As far as we know, Homura was a fairly ordinary girl who did not have particularly high "potential" before she contracted; she definitely did not have Madoka levels of "potential". But she made a bold wish which allowed her to reset time itself. In fact, we have seen exactly zero cases of people who did not get exactly what they wished for. We have a few examples of people who wished for small things because they assumed that larger things were impossible, but we have yet to see a case where someone made a wish which was too ambitious to be fulfilled. It seems likely to me that "potential" has little to do with what wishes are possible (apart from maybe wishes like Madoka's which should have been logically impossible), and that "potential" is primarily the way that incubators measure how much energy that they'll get out of a transaction. I see no reason why a wish that enforces good behavior on incubators (forcing them to actively work with us to prevent witchouts, for instance) should not be doable.

AuraTwilight said:
To be fair, while the universe doesn't seem to be sentient or anything, all this talk about wishes causing distortions and karmic destiny blatherbloo does imply that the universe of PMMM has a metaphysical means of balancing out reality-warping shenanigans so that you can't just get what you want straight up, no kickbacks.

On the contrary, all of the wishes we know about have been granted fully, giving people exactly what they asked for in the way that they intended it. But one of the lessons that PMMM teaches is that what people ask for is usually not what they really want, and that the dissonance between the two is unhealthy in the long term. Much of the tragedy in PMMM came from normal human dissatisfaction, not from any sort of cosmic "balance".

AuraTwilight · Apr 13, 2015

Boonerunner said:
On the contrary, all of the wishes we know about have been granted fully, giving people exactly what they asked for. One of the lessons that PMMM teaches is that what people ask for is usually not what they really want, and that the dissonance between the two is unhealthy in the long term. Much of the tragedy in PMMM came from normal human dissatisfaction, not from any sort of universal "balance".

While you're thematically correct, Kyubey LITERALLY says witches cause unexpected distortions. Even if it's just butterfly causality like Kyouko's dad killing her family and such. It's also brought up that Hope and Despair always balance out to zero. The series makes a point of emphasizing this as a metaphysical law of the Puellaverse.

Gadjo · Apr 13, 2015

boonerunner said:
As far as we know, Homura was a fairly ordinary girl who did not have particularly high "potential" before she contracted; she definitely did not have Madoka levels of "potential". But she made a bold wish which allowed her to reset time itself. In fact, we have seen exactly zero cases of people who did not get exactly what they wished for. We have a few examples of people who wished for small things because they assumed that larger things were impossible, but we have yet to see a case where someone made a wish which was too ambitious to be fulfilled. It seems likely to me that "potential" has little to do with what wishes are possible (apart from maybe wishes like Madoka's which should have been logically impossible), and that "potential" is primarily the way that incubators measure how much energy that they'll get out of a transaction. I see no reason why a wish that enforces good behavior on incubators (forcing them to actively work with us to prevent witchouts, for instance) should not be doable.

...We have very good reason to believe that potential dictates the degree to which your wish can be fulfilled though. I mean, in SD, that "mind control" girl, who really just turned out to have a "I'm a friendly" sphere that could totally be overcome, wished to have complete control over her betters (or something like that) and got nothing near that level of power. And Kyubey talks a few times about how someone has enough potential to grant certain wishes. Saying that it isn't a big factor is making an enormous assumption and ignoring available evidence. It's wishful thinking really.

SynchronizedWritersBlock · Apr 13, 2015

[x] Set two alarms, once for lunch, one for 1h before that.
[x] General: Use magic sight for every experiment. If we don't get a good look, repeat things. Cleanse as we accumulate corruption.
[x] While getting started, telepathy Mami and ask her if she'd like to tutor us in magic & advise us on some things we want to try after dinner tonight?
[x] Observe our own soul gem and in particular Dedolere. Compare to Hildegard and to what we remember of active grief seeds and deactivated soul gems. How is our soul gem's activity different and in what ways? What if anything is missing from the clear seed that exists in our soul gem?
[x] Use the method to revive a MG from unconciousness on Hildegard. Care not to damage the seed.
[x] Attempt to heal the seed. It's possible we get insinctive feedback that this is not possible, in which case stop and move on. If no feedback or if positive/indeterminate feedback, continue healing until the first alarm.
[x] Multitasking during healing: Create grief items from the following lists. No need to check if they function right, no need to even look at them, just a simple yes/no in the background if they can be made. Focus on the healing and do not continue this if it is too distracting.
-[x] List 1: Item to remotely view a location/person. Item that lists information requested of it. Item that points towards what the user specifies. Item that blocks mental influence on the wearer. Items that let their users communicate mentally. Item that takes non-grief inputs and produces what we specify from those inputs (3d printer for non-grief materials basically). Item that does the same but specifically without any grief in the output. Item that automatically draws grief from soul gems and stores it as marbles. Item that does the same from soul gems and grief seeds, but only upon touching them. Item that destroys grief it's fed. Item that reactivates the soul in an inactive gem/seed. Item that re-creates a soul gem around a soul. Item that restores grief seeds to soul gems.
-[x] List 2: Item that identifies and analyzes all the parts of a soul gem. Item that lets the user communicate with deactivated seeds and gems. Item that scans a seed/gem and displays the soul's body. Item that does the same but creates the soul's body.
[x] If healing is a bust (as in we instinctively feel it's impossible), create and test the items from List 2 above, then if we still have time create but do not test the items in List 1.
[x] Stop when we hit the first alarm.

Scheduling:
I want to get the clear seed testing done first thing, because I want time to react to new information in the subsequent vote. I've reserved one hour for other projects at the end, but if we actually make progress or there are revelations, we can easily cut into that time.

Non-clear-seed matters:
For magical experimentation, we can literally lock down a time to commit to this if we're worried about never getting around to it. All we have to do is telepathy Mami and ask her. Today's evening is free. I've added a line to the vote.
My preferred non-seed experiments are grief longevity/range, and barrier creation. If we want to practice magical skill, however, I would not object to a simple "[] Practice enchanting rocks for one hour." No joke, that will get us further than anything else.

Clear seed tests:
I detailed my observations of what we've already tried earlier. Based on these, my primary goal is to get the soul in the seed exerting any kind of magic on its own again. Think the magical "heartbeat" of Oriko's ~~seed~~ GEM FUCK. Our own magic could be used to kickstart this process, or we could heal the seed until it does this naturally (possibly adding magic to it in the process), or any number of things.
It's also possible we'll need to add something specific to the seed to form it back into a gem. This would require magical skill to form the appropriate parts. I am in this case, using grief testing as a substitute for these parts, so we know what we have to make as we acquire magical skill later. I left the items that could be potentially destructive to the grief seed out of "List 2" so that we specifically do NOT test them.

Grief engineering:
Ok, I realize there are some absolutely pie-in-the-sky ideas here. But it is literally a yes/no check to see if these things are possible, and by running the yes/no check in the background we don't lose any time from more important things. Even if all we get out of it is a grief facsimile of a success, we can then analyze that and attempt to recreate the same without using grief. If all we get is No, then we lose literally nothing.
I have very deliberately left descriptions of the items blank, because I want them to take whatever shapes and forms are most natural. This has had symbolism before, which is something I want to preserve.

Stopping point for this vote is when we have 1h left, so we have reaction time or so we can move on to non-clear-seed topics.

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Doka

Aspiring Gynoid

The Sorcerer of Smiles

Aspiring Gynoid

Doka

Aspiring Gynoid

Doka

Doka

The Sorcerer of Smiles

The Sorcerer of Smiles

Doka