To be fair, I'd never get the offer as I am an adult male.
I can't know how I'd want it to resolve because by definition it can't resolve. If it's granted then it hasn't been granted which means it has which means it hasn't ad infinitum.
The very fact that you believe that means that you're not accepting the contract.
Does the thread care about anything? If so, we can do it better with Barriers.
Unconvinced.
The thirty-minute Barrier creation fugue seems to be irritating, but not dangerous in the least;
So ... you think that being completely incapable of reacting to something trying to kill you isn't dangerous?
we've done it twice with no ill effects.
Inability to react
is an ill-effect.
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.
Which may have saved our lives as only one of her feathers got through before we closed the way.
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.
You seriously think Mami wouldn't have mentioned that by now in this conversation? Mami is treating the feather seriously. Plus, that kind of coincidence is ridiculous. It looks like you're looking for excuses to dismiss this just because you don't like the most obvious answer.
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.
No. This isn't clear at all. We know
nothing. Perhaps she was trying to get in and we blocked her, cutting off one of her feathers. Maybe she dropped it by accident. Maybe she creates feathers unavoidably when using her magic like others make light or guns make noise. Maybe feathers is on our side and warning us that barriers let in the rel threat.
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 can sense meguca. You're telling us that Kirika snuck into our barrier, without our invitation (worrying in itself) without being noticed by us or Mami and got back. ... Right.
What do you actually think Kyubey can do if we, y'know, treat him decently?
Kill us? Manipulate us into witchbombing Mami? Make us think an action which guarantees suicide is a good idea? Convince meguca who hate him that we are the enemy? I'm sure he can come up with a lot more ideas if we give him the opportunity.
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?
I've thought barrier creation was too dangerous since after Mami confirmed that we rally are unresponsive for thirty minutes. The feather just makes it far 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.
I do. Homura
didn't go hostile in the time period since our last conversation until now. The fact that it's taken
this long means we did something right with our promise.
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 fact that Sabrina, Oriko and Kirika are all still alive means that it did help. Until our promise, I'm sure Homura was planning on killing Orika and Kirika
right then.
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.
I disagree with this interpretation.
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.
Firn has repeatedly assured that "magic is bullshit", that we are a lot more powerful than we think we are and that we need every edge we can find. He's stated that our witch is an ontological threat, meaning that we should be capable of becoming an ontological threat
without witching out too. We've also been given indication that we can duplicate
any witch's abilities, which means we can duplicate
any magical girl's abilities, which means we have access to every possible wish. Which basically means we can grant ourselves any power we can imagine. Firn has repeatedly indicated that we are thinking too small.
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.
As is grief. woopdeedoo.
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.
This is an assumption. We have exactly as much reason to believe we can work around it with our other abilities.
We can have multiple entrances, likely spaced far apart in the real world.
We were struggling to do that. If you want that, just grief up portals directly. Or the key to the lost room.
From canon, we can force magical girls and civilians alike into the Barrier.
We can already force people to go where and do what we want. It isn't hard.
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.
All possible with an ordinary box of grief. None of this stuff is difficult or impressive with us.
These are all things we know risk-free, no possibly dangerous experimentation needed.
Have we managed it with a barrier yet? No? Then this isn't true.We already know we can do the same thing with grief.
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.
Canon barriers have an entrance. We'd need to get it to them. It's no more useful than what we have now.
Every time we use our powers, we incur risk.
Yet you just called barriers risk free. We wished for control of grief. Not barriers. Barriers going haywire on us is more inline with what we wished for than vice versa.
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.
Barriers are new to us. Meguca powers, which our griefhax is, are older than witch powers, like barriers are. Redefine it to us and we've had our grief powers longer. Besides, I disagree with your premise. Feathers can't use something she doesn't know.
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.
Homura hasn't killed her yet. That's an improvement.
The primary evidence that our Barrier had nothing to do with the creation of the Feather was that we repeated the exact same operation twice, and only the second time resulted in a Feather. It could be like Mami says and our Barrier attracts Witch behavior, but it happens sporadically rather than every time. That's possible. But the primary difference between the two barrier creation events was the presence of Mami (and her near-witchout), and that might be significant.
Or last time, our barrier was filled to the brim with feathers and we were lucky none got through. Or, as guessed earlier, the first one attracted her ttention, allowing her to use the second.
If "Feathers" is Homucifer, then this isn't a question of us doing reality-warping and allowing her to act. Rather, whatever reality-warping event allowed Homucifer to arrive in this dimension happened a while back and Homucifer is already present (invisibly) and spending most of her time watching over Madoka (which is why most of Oriko's visions concerning Madoka are obscured). Homucifer's primary concern is Madoka, but she does care about the others as well, Mami most of all (since she was Homura's sempai for many loops). I could easily see Homucifer noticing Mami's freakout and being upset with Sabrina for causing it to happen.
So, Homucifer decides to punish Sabrina by kissing Sayaka? That's a very odd hypothesis.
Right, sorry. I think that's close enough to what I was saying, though.
Dropping an entirely mundane and un-dangerous feather could not conceivably have any benefits to Feathers other than scaring us. It's remotely possible that it's an unavoidable side effect of Feathers using her power, but if that's not the case (it doesn't seem very likely to me) she must be trying to scare us.
Or she's on our side and warning us. Or she dropped it/shed it by accident. We don't know enough to make assumptions like this.
I'm pretty sure we haven't actually asked Mami if she noticed that. This, you might remember, is one of the things I want to check on. But, even if she didn't notice anything, she was very much distracted at the time, and could plausibly have missed it. She was also inside the Barrier, and probably wasn't able to see outside of it.
Again, someone snuck into our barrier and Mami either never noticed that or she has decided not to mention it for some weird reason. What's the opposite of shadowruns? Lightwalks? I mean, this is like deciding that your friend calling you to warn you about the armed man in your garden is trying to stop you from going outside to meet the free pizza delivery man.
Barriers sometimes have physical manifestations; this can be seen, for example, in the canon scene where Kyouko watches Sayaka fight a Witch from outside of the Barrier. If that was the case this time (and the barrier dissolution scene reads to me like it was) then someone would just need to have left the feather on top of the Barrier in order for it to appear where it did.
It appeared from our exit point.
Witch kisses are not "unprecedented."
We've been repeatedly told they don't kiss in this manner.
It is also not especially unprecedented that the Witch arrived a day early; we've prevented the creation of two Witches so far, and killed many others sooner than they otherwise would have been, so maybe Elsa Maria spotted the vacancy. I don't think Homura's notes were ever claimed to be 100% reliable anyway; surely, random chance applies to Witches. We also know that our appearance disrupted Kyubey's normal pattern of contracts.
Both Homura and Oriko disagree with you. That isn't "this was unexpected". That was "this is impossible". At least on of the withes w stopped was confirmed by Homura to not always happen.
The only thing at all surprising about this particular Witch behavior is that Oriko claims not to have foreseen it. If you don't think Oriko could fake that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Mami and Homura both say that this witch acted completely abnormally. You're continually ignoring evidence to support your wants.
No more so than for any other magical girl, to which he canonically provides helpful advice; Mami listened to everything he said, and she lived for a very, very long time. Moreover, we happen to have energy manipulation powers that could be very valuable to him, and that he seems to be very interested in.
Mami was Kyuubey's puppet. We don't want to be.
The whole reason we made the promise was that we thought it would make Homura happier. My argument is that the promise did not in fact make Homura happier, and therefore we shouldn't make more promises like it in the future. And your response is... that we don't actually care how happy Homura is?
It
did make Homura happy. If it didn't, Kirika and Oriko wouldn't be alive. We care how happy she is, but it's not the only thing we care bout.
Barriers are the most OP power we have! This is a perfect argument for keeping them!
No. They're actually rather weak. We already have an instant death radius, can create any substance, even if it's fictional, instantly bind completely, can create fictional properties, can enhance our combat ability, detect enemies, instantly form any object we want, produce energy, fly at sonic-lie speeds (and possibly much faster), shield ourselves, shred things ... etc. And there's loads more we haven't tried yet. Barriers are unimpressive in comparison.
In terms of importance, "Feathers" (or the threat it covers) is the most dangerous thing we have heard about, so obtaining information about the threat in order to stop it should be one of our highest priorities.
In terms of urgency... things are a bit more complicated. We haven't yet asked Oriko when the threat is due, so we don't know how urgent it is. And even if we did ask Oriko, the date would merely be an upper bound - "Feathers" has demonstrated the ability to act outside of Oriko's knowledge, so the threat could easily arrive sooner than she predicts.
Which means that testing our ability to acquire such information is higher still. Yet higher is calming down Mami and Homura and using our powers won't do it while they're in this state.
But right now, at this very moment, Homura (and Mami) are worried about "Feathers". Coming up with a way to find out information about "Feathers" is urgent. Finding out more information about "Feathers" would be a much better way to reassure Homura than promising not to experiment with Barriers (we already promised that, incidentally).
Later. Right now we need to remind her that we're on her side. Not an information dispenser.
This is unlikely to work, but we might as well give it a try.
A lot of it's unlikely to work, but not doing t at all is
guaranteed not to work.
That sounds like checking if something is "witchy", which we can already do without a scanner. The concern is not that the Feather was originated from the barrier, but whether "Feathers" can use our Barrier as a kind of portal. Or something. I'm not really sure what kind of scan we could do to check for this. We can probably check if the Feather matches any known birds, for what that's worth.
Basically, the idea behind the scanner is detecting for things that came through the barrier (as opposed to made of grief).
I don't think it's entirely mundane. it does talk to us, after all. Even if the feather was technically mundane and Feathers can talk wo us anytime they want, the fact that they choose to do it when we hold the feather makes it 'special'.
Not really? We don't know that. There's a lot of ideas, sure, but we haven't really tried anything with Barriers. The constructs we made inside the Barrier are actually the same as the ones we make outside of it. Maybe the Barrier could help in expanding our range, maybe we'll find we can't make two doors to the Barrier more than 100m apart in the outside World.
And there's the downside of Barriers: Not the time it takes to make one, or even how it puts our friends on edge if we keep it around. The nature of the Barrier: It's an inner, private World where the owner loses themselves and disconnect from the outside World. Even before this feather dropped, I was already wondering if the Barrier was actually worth it. What if we actually lose ourselves in there? The 30 minutes trance was bad enough, and not necessarily the only way we can lose time.
Agreed.
