Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[Ugolino]

In the short term, dewitching research is pointless in terms of tangible results, since even when we crack it, which will take a fair amount of time we aren't spending on other things, we'll have to be very careful about bringing it up to avoid a massive pile of problems.

Define 'short-term' and 'tangible results', please. Because having an additional hook to use on Kyuubey (the ability to deny him a resource that would otherwise inevitably come to him and literal creation ex-nihilo of the thing he set up a massive industrial depression engine for), as well as the ability to acquire literally unlimited power (create grief, grief->energy) is a pretty damn tangible result, and frankly, since it falls under our actual wish (we wished to control grief, not souls, remember?), it should take less time to do so as well.

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Not really- just having dewitching as a confirmed option gives us a major safety net both in general for if we lose someone and if Mami or the others find out about the Witchbombing. It allows us to seriously break the system in a way we haven't done so far and in a way that actually helps people- which removing grief from circulation wouldn't since it hurts Kyubey without helping his victims.

tl;dr: It has amazing payoffs right from the start.

Short term- What can we use it for right now?
tangiable results- What does this trick do to make our life better or advance our goals?

Kyubey won't noticeably care either way other than to possibly consider us a bonus to his onetime Madowitch energy quota- and we've been over why bargaining with him is unreliable. It boils down to being unable to trust him and painting a bullseye on our backs, even more than we already do.

Destroying or making grief doesn't seem all that helpful even if they do work which is slightly doubtful. It's a step above the usual SCIENCE party trick suggestions but only just.

 

[FlatlineAskari]

Again, this is not something that should be a priority and where a success would be more or less pointless. When the alternative is just stuffing grief into QB- and we're not escaping him one way or another, we all know that- I still don't see this as a good use of time and effort.

What, are we just going to stop feeding Kyubey marbles? I'm sure that wouldn't prompt him to step up his campaign to get rid of us. He's still keeping up a veneer of civility for now- as much as it's an act to lull us into a false sense of security, it isn't the worst approach we could be dealing with.

Besides, we've been lugging around tons of grief with no issues whatsoever for the entire quest. Seems a bit silly to get worried about it now of all times.

Grief is the one thing that will never be in short supply, and that we'll never have trouble getting rid of.

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If anything that magic can do enchantment can duplicate, deleting grief could change the world. No problems with cleansing, for anyone, ever again. No problems associated with liberating corrosive gas that might turn into monsters. No problem with QB profiting from breaking people. No problem with QB at all. If we can make a grief-deleting artifact, it'll be comparatively easy to duplicate, because there's no limit on the time or magic that can be expended doing so. The whole planet will rapidly become unprofitable.

 

[Ugolino]

If anything that magic can do enchantment can duplicate, deleting grief could change the world. No problems with cleansing, for anyone, ever again. No problems associated with liberating corrosive gas that might turn into monsters. No problem with QB profiting from breaking people. No problem with QB at all. If we can make a grief-deleting artifact, it'll be comparatively easy to duplicate, because there's no limit on the time or magic that can be expended doing so. The whole planet will rapidly become unprofitable.

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If- which in this case is majorly doubtful. I'm fairly sure that making magical gem cleansing artifacts is impossible- or at the very least costs considerably more grief to make than it can cleanse.

Besides, the problem we have isn't deleting grief or dealing with it when it's out in the open, it's getting grief out of their gems in the first place or do we want to delete the grief while it's inside soul gems- where the Witch effectively is the guca's soul?

So yeah, grief deleting won't be the solution to cleansing either. And in that case, we would actively pose a threat to Kyubey that even he couldn't afford to ignore and he'd potentially go for desperate measures.

So, Ugolino is now arguing against examining griefhax no matter the situation? I think his opinion on the matter can be safely ignored now. It's not a question of utility, it's a blanket, stonewalling "I dun wanna"

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Or maybe it'd be a waste of time that doesn't get us anything. Much like most of the other half-baked science ideas being constantly suggested. Priorities. We're bad at them.

 

[FlatlineAskari]

Besides, the problem we have isn't deleting grief or dealing with it when it's out in the open, it's getting grief out of their gems in the first place or do we want to delete the grief while it's inside soul gems- where the Witch effectively is the guca's soul?

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Citation needed. A witch is not identical to grief; we've stripped all the grief off a witch before.

And in that case, we would actively pose a threat to Kyubey that even he couldn't afford to ignore and he'd potentially go for desperate measures.

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You've consistently claimed this is an invalid argument, used against you.
Besides, what's he going to do? We aren't the only enchanter alive. Given infinite magic (and the ability to delete grief is effectively the same as infinite magic), any enchanter can turn one into a planet's worth of them. Once the knowledge is in the wild, there's no bottleneck, he'd probably have to write off the planet to put the genie back in the bottle; doing that would defeat the object of the exercise.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Dewitching is helpful. It makes numerous social interactions much easier and lets us rescue girls who are in constant agony, potentially for decades. In an ideal world, it's required. This makes it a win condition. Singular, one of many.

But in an ideal world, there also won't be a Kyuubey contracting girls. This means we either have to negotiate with the Incubator (in which case the ability to create or destroy grief is a massive bargaining chip), or we have to overpower the impossibly powerful intergalactic civilization (in which case unlimited access to the source of our power, and the ability to leverage that power through one of the fundamental forces of the universe, would be absurdly useful).

In my opinion, creating/destroying grief is as much a win condition as dewitching, and likely to be fundamentally easier for our powerset to perform.

That said, I don't support doing that particular line of research while distracted and traveling. Grief is not a toy, and I'm getting flashbacks of that antimatter explosion omake while thinking about it - not to mention issues with Kyuubey if we pull it off.

 

[Ugolino]

"Bargaining" and "Incubator" are not words that go together well- we're better off dealing with literally everything else before trying to handle QB, one way or another.

Besides, us playing with grief disposal would probably get noticed. Which could be bad.

I'm really not sure grief removal is anywhere near as useful as reliable cleansing, social links, and dewitching for a good end.

Citation needed. A witch is not identical to grief; we've stripped all the grief off a witch before.

You've consistently claimed this is an invalid argument, used against you.
Besides, what's he going to do? We aren't the only enchanter alive. Given infinite magic (and the ability to delete grief is effectively the same as infinite magic), any enchanter can turn one into a planet's worth of them. Once the knowledge is in the wild, there's no bottleneck, he'd probably have to write off the planet to put the genie back in the bottle; doing that would defeat the object of the exercise.

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And you want to see what happens when we try doing that to a "normal" Witch in a soul gem? When we have no idea what state the soul of a clear seed is in? I'd rather not.

I liked it so much that I thought I'd borrow it- and unlike Sereg's pipe dreams, this actually WOULD pose a threat to his entire operation, more so than at any moment in canon. He expected to survive and profit off Madoka's canon wish, even.

You're assuming that enchantment bullshit even works that way when in canon and in quest...we've seen it make a bat sparklier and make a magical barrier. Hardly specific magic at all.

 

[Redshirt Army]

@Ugolino

We either bargain with the Incubator (which, as you've noted, has a record of turning out poorly, so we better make sure we have some very good bargaining chips to do it with), or we overpower him (the 'fight teh qb' attitude you've disparaged repeatedly). What alternative is there in a Good End?

 

[FlatlineAskari]

I'm really not sure grief removal is anywhere near as useful as reliable cleansing, social links, and dewitching for a good end.

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Your plan for reliable cleansing is nonexistent. It hinges on an ongoing, completely unprecedented feat of logistics, which you handwave as 'pah, logistics. How hard can it be?'

 

[Ugolino]

Your plan for reliable cleansing is nonexistent. It hinges on an ongoing, completely unprecedented feat of logistics, which you handwave as 'pah, logistics. How hard can it be?'

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Yep! We're completely fine on that front so far. We're meeting groups for their used seeds soon and have access to a teleporter so for the foreseeable future? I really don't see any grounds for complaint about progress there.

@Ugolino

We either bargain with the Incubator (which, as you've noted, has a record of turning out poorly, so we better make sure we have some very good bargaining chips to do it with), or we overpower him (the 'fight teh qb' attitude you've disparaged repeatedly). What alternative is there in a Good End?

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Deal with everything else first and worry about that bridge when we come to it. Worst case scenario: he's still on-planet and we need to deal with him making contracts but at that point if that's the worst we need to worry about? I'd consider us lucky.

 

[defenestrator]

Deal with everything else first and worry about that bridge when we come to it. Worst case scenario: he's still on-planet and we need to deal with him making contracts but at that point if that's the worst we need to worry about? I'd consider us lucky.

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So the solution is to completely ignore it, and let Future-Sabrina deal with it instead? Mmmkay.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Yep! We're completely fine on that front so far. We're meeting groups for their used seeds soon and have access to a teleporter so for the foreseeable future? I really don't see any grounds for complaint about progress there.

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The number of social commitments we have is already putting a strain on our time, and that's with sporadic cleansing of a fraction of the girls in Japan, one country. So it's only not an issue for the foreseeable future if your foreseeable future doesn't include ever expanding to the rest of Earth.

 

[EtchedSteel]

Yep! We're completely fine on that front so far. We're meeting groups for their used seeds soon and have access to a teleporter so for the foreseeable future? I really don't see any grounds for complaint about progress there.

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We will hit a stalling point eventually with how many meguca we meet to which we offer the current alternative, so better to start thinking on another posibilities.

Mark my words. "Think". Not actively "look for them" for now, but in the near future.

You know we can't focus on many things at the same time, even if we want to. Same goes for eventual emergencies that might show up. What you say might work on paper, but it actually might not work that way.

 

[FlatlineAskari]

And you want to see what happens when we try doing that to a "normal" Witch in a soul gem? When we have no idea what state the soul of a clear seed is in? I'd rather not.

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Is there any reason, at all, to believe there would be ill effects? We've extracted grief from gems ever since the start of the quest.

You're assuming that enchantment bullshit even works that way when in canon and in quest...we've seen it make a bat sparklier and make a magical barrier. Hardly specific magic at all.

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Mami seems to think so; Mami's the expert.

Yep! We're completely fine on that front so far. We're meeting groups for their used seeds soon and have access to a teleporter so for the foreseeable future? I really don't see any grounds for complaint about progress there.

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This is workable because we're dealing with a handful of people, all of whom have seeds. You want to get rid of all of the seeds and deal with all the people. Your position is untenable.

 

[defenestrator]

Yep! We're completely fine on that front so far.

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Oh yeah, forgot to add: Ono completely disagrees with this assumption.

 

[Ugolino]

Is there any reason, at all, to believe there would be ill effects? We've extracted grief from gems ever since the start of the quest.

Mami seems to think so; Mami's the expert.


This is workable because we're dealing with a handful of people, all of whom have seeds. You want to get rid of all of the seeds and deal with all the people. Your position is untenable.

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Yeah, no, that's not safe science when you want to just make grief go away indiscriminately. If we delete a guca soul in our blundering, that's hardly a desirable outcome. Maybe the part where it reads as "witch" is a reason for the sensible to think of better ways to handle the problem than deleting things inside someone's soul.

Okay, do you think Mami believes timestop bracelets are possible with enchantment?

My position is fine, thanks. Good of you to harp on about "get rid of all the seeds!" again.

Oh yeah, forgot to add: Ono completely disagrees with this assumption.

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Ono was a social screw-up if anything.

 

[RexHeller]

The number of social commitments we have is already putting a strain on our time, and that's with sporadic cleansing of a fraction of the girls in Japan, one country. So it's only not an issue for the foreseeable future if your foreseeable future doesn't include ever expanding to the rest of Earth.

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This gave me an idea; can we make Grief clones of our self? It doesn't solve the the issue above because of the range restriction or have any bearing on the current problem but it's something to keep in mind of SCIENCE! later.

 

[Muramasa]

Err... no we already have major logistics issues. The base cleansing arrangement without developing a fallback is foolishness and will fall apart.

 

[FlatlineAskari]

Yeah, no, that's not safe science when you want to just make grief go away indiscriminately. If we delete a guca soul in our blundering, that's hardly a desirable outcome.

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Souls are not made of grief. We know this.

Okay, do you think Mami believes timestop bracelets are possible with enchantment?

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So she says.

My position is fine, thanks. Good of you to harp on about "get rid of all the seeds!" again.

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That's exactly what you've been advocating!

There'll be a transitional period where there are seeds we haven't gotten to yet, sure, but that's just that. A transitional period.

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In as many fucking words!

 

[Ugolino]

Err... no we already have major logistics issues. The base cleansing arrangement without developing a fallback is foolishness and will fall apart.

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The only issues so far are ones of our own making- Megane and Kyoko are doing fine, Ono's being Ono and is killing herself through extremely ill-advised magic use (ie: very much the exception rather than the norm and a social problem.) We're going to get around to Sendai shortly and they've been apparently keeping up on things. Everyone else in our immediate vicinity? Mami, Homura, and even Sayaka? They're great.

I don't see any basis outside of thread shadowruns for claiming we have logistics issues.

Souls are not made of grief. We know this.


So she says.

That's exactly what you've been advocating!
In as many fucking words!

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The Witches are inside the soul gems and the source of magic. We also know this. Do you know what Witches are generally made of, and what we have good reason to think the composition of a soul gem is? Because that doesn't strike me as a good thing to try and bleach the insides of with remote grief destruction.

Yeah, no, pretty sure that a)Mami doesn't think timestop bracelets are possible and that she'd be utterly, hilariously mistaken if she did. That'd be stupid.

You're being salty about something that has nothing to do with this argument. I want that to happen if possible and think your position on it makes no sense- but it has nothing to do with this argument. This is beneath you, sdj.

 

[Sasha]

Meh, better to literally just go there rather than >random science again. When at best nothing's going to come of it, and there's a tiny chance it might just backfire, why bother?

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That's the final nail in the coffin for me. You repeatedly present your personal opinion as fact, ignore relevant information that doesn't suit your needs, and consistently respond to ideas you don't like with blatant contempt.

If this is the way you're going to behave in a discussion, well, I'm just not going to bother. Consider yourself ignored.

 

[defenestrator]

Megane and Kyoko are doing fine

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Wasn't there a concern much earlier in the thread (like a couple hundred pages ago), that Kyoko only has a seed or two between her and Yuma?

 

[EtchedSteel]

I don't see any basis outside of thread shadowruns for claiming we have logistics issues.

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They're not gonna be the only meguca we're going to meet.

Let alone, "save". You know better than anyone who compulsive Sabrina is reagarding on her role as "the savior", so don't tell me you're deliberately ignoring this minor detail. >_>

Also, could you all guys stop the fucking passive-aggresive smackfest for good? Things are better told when not throwing dirt at each other eyes in the meanwhile, don't you think?

 

[Ugolino]

Wasn't there a concern much earlier in the thread (like a couple hundred pages ago), that Kyoko only has a seed or two between her and Yuma?

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They're alive. We're dropping in and feeding them seeds. That is fine.

 

[chocolote12]

You're assuming that enchantment bullshit even works that way when in canon and in quest...we've seen it make a bat sparklier and make a magical barrier. Hardly specific magic at all.

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Okay, do you think Mami believes timestop bracelets are possible with enchantment?

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Soooooooooo... it can't do these things, but enchanting can somehow turn witches back into magical girls? Something that is much harder, and with no precedent at all, is more likely than something possible with regular Meguca magic?

Make up your mind, Ugo.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Everyone else in our immediate vicinity?

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Yeah, that's the issue. We haven't broken the system if we can only cleanse those around us. Hell, we won't break the system if we figure out dewitching but can only do it to those near us!

I don't want three girls to do 'great' ('great' here apparently meaning barely better than canon), I want every single magical girl to not have to worry about becoming an eldritch abomination because they had a bad day!