You seem to labour under the misapprehension that this thread cares about saving people.
Does the thread care about
anything? If so, we can do it better with Barriers.
And our barriers are suspect to the point using them right now is dangerous for everyone involved.
There is no strong reason to believe that.
The thirty-minute Barrier creation fugue seems to be irritating, but not dangerous in the least; we've done it twice with no ill effects. Moreover, we can almost certainly avoid this cost if we stop closing our barriers for no reason. The only Barrier operation that's shown any sign of Feathers is closing the Barrier, which is a dumb thing to do anyway.
We don't even know where the feather
came from, just that it showed up "where the Barrier was," and that every test we've been able to put it through reveals it to be entirely mundane, and not dangerous in any way. We haven't even asked Mami about it; maybe a fucking crow sat on top of the Barrier when it was forming.
But, if this
was Feathers, she's clearly trying to scare us. Given that fact, it's more likely that our Barrier creation is uniquely dangerous
to Feathers rather than to us. Assuming she's reasonably intelligent, she's probably not going to alert us to her influence on something she wants us to
keep doing.
It might also be that this is Oriko trying to mess with us. Before now, we've only ever heard of Feathers from Oriko, and she could have made it up completely; her distress today, likewise, could be faked. Since the feather that we found is entirely normal, Kirika could easily have taken it off a crow and then dropped it on top of the Barrier.
We had reasons. And dealing with Kyubey is always going to be dangerous no matter what approach we take. More people just prefer not to deal with him at all if they can avoid it. And it's a perfectly valid approach.
What do you actually think Kyubey can do if we, y'know, treat him decently? It's foolish to think that he won't find out things we don't want him to know because we said mean words to him; canonically, he learned about Homura's time powers when she shot him dead, and we're being far nicer than that.
He might make trouble; *-bomb someone, for instance. I wouldn't want to talk to him about our future plans or anything we wouldn't say over telepathy, because he might not know them already. The provenance of the Barrier hanging directly in front of him, which he knows damn well enough about without our help, is not dangerous. And being pointlessly antagonistic with him makes him
more likely to make trouble, not less.
Moreover, canonically Kyubey never outright lies, never breaks a promise, and often says more than he really ought to, eg. his speeches to Madoka. I wouldn't want to
trust that this property holds in
Adfligo Systema, and we'll need massive mountains of salt for anything he says, but talking to him is not going to be valueless for us even ignoring the "he can Witchbomb Mami, and thinking we're too uncontrollable will make this more likely" thing.
No, but we're not helping things by continuing to use something that seen as blatantly dangerous to ourselves and everyone around us.
The only reason it's seen that way by the others is a long string of awful votes on our part.
We have much clearer heads, and we have no strong reason to believe that Barrier creation is dangerous. So let's stop throwing good votes after bad, OK?
The promise has worked fine, and the alternative, (alienating Homura) would've been much worse.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you also believe that Homura might go hostile in the next update. I do not think these two beliefs mesh.
We
did alienate Homura. That's my whole point. We made the promise and it didn't help. She would have been exactly the same amount of alienated had we said something else reassuring, and moreover we would not have then needed to alienate her over and over again every time we talked to Oriko.
The implication of our barrier luring feathers here is bad enough.
There's no reason for it to be
the barrier specifically, though. If it's about our magic, it's probably about our magic in its totality; barriers are probably the
least risky thing we could do with our magic, given that it's basically the only item in our repertoire with extensive field-testing (by witches). The rest, we make up as we go. And, unless someone's voted "[X] Hide in a closet and shake until Walpurgisnacht" and I missed it, we're not gonna stop using the rest of our magic any time soon.
Earlier in the quest, we made Homura into a human being. Even Mami complimented is on that. Now, she's closing herself off again. We're definitely handling social interactions poorly recently.
We used to not treat everyone around us like fragile china dolls. We used to act like a real human being, with goals and desires and faith in ourself. Boundaries of our own, even. Now we just roll over whenever someone frowns at us.
I'm actually inclined to suspect that, in this respect, we're having a problem basically equal to and opposite of canon Homura's. We care
way too much to be normal at this point, and it comes off as... kind of pungently fake. It looks like we've given up on the timeline. Like we've resigned ourselves to Witchouts, and we only care about staving that off for a few more hours, everything else be damned. I think someone else made this speech better than I did...
Sayaka said:
Why don't I trust you? Maybe it's 'cause I can tell you're a liar. You look like someone who's given up on everything. When you talk, you use empty words. In fact, you're doing it now. You say you wanna help me, but I know that's not what you're really thinking. You're not fooling anyone.
Ooooooor we create a grief device that instantly teleports all grief on the planet to our side ... ooooorrr we create a grief device that makes our range planet wide ... oooooorrrrr we create a grief device that teleports us ... ooooorrrr we create a grief device that attracts grief to us on a planet wide scale etc. We aren't even close to running out of better options. The barrier hasn't demonstrated abilities remotely close to that anyway.
We have less than no reason to believe that will work. Similarly ambitious devices have failed. And, frankly, if Firnagzen lets us Grief up a "solve-all-our-problems-without-pain-or-risk-inator," I'm quitting the quest.
There is a huge body of canon and
Adfligo evidence as to how powerful Barriers are. They are pocket dimensions under our absolute control, down to the physics. Going by fake Mitakihara, we can make them as large as we want; if we keep working with Barriers, our hundred-meter limitation is a thing of the past. We can have multiple entrances, likely spaced far apart in the real world. From canon, we can force magical girls and civilians alike into the Barrier. We can definitely keep civilians trapped in the Barrier. Though canon's Witches didn't do this, I'd be very curious indeed to see if we can keep other magical girls trapped as well, since the only time we saw magical girls run away they used an explicit exit in the Barrier, and there is no indication that we are compelled to build one. We can perform magical and Grief effects on things outside the Barrier while we are safe inside it. These are all things we know risk-free, no possibly dangerous experimentation needed.
If we'd had this at Sendai, we could have sucked the combatants into the Barrier and ended it with no casualties to speak of.
We have other abilities with the potential to be far more powerful with zero risk.
Every time we use our powers, we incur risk. We have no idea what about our magic Feathers can or cannot use; in a situation like this, surely you'll agree that the riskiest thing for us to do is to
try something new. Barriers are literally the
only thing we can do that isn't completely new and unique to us.
It worked fine and didn't lose us the use of our precog.
We fret every time we talk to Oriko now, weigh our options and then usually vote "no, let's not." Homura loses a little more of her patience every time. That's about as lost as we can get without Homura actually killing her.
