This wanders a bit, but... It conveys everything I want it to.
Source Redacted -- Ugolino said:
Yes.
Plot shenanigans of the sort Firn's been beating us over the head with from day 1. Actually talking to people and using her head rather than mindlessly mashing the grind science button since that's pretty much just soulless tech development in and of itself rather than actually relevant or meaningful.
Again, don't expect good results from playing Planescape Torment as though it was X-Com.
Because it's Madoka's happiness as well, because we can fix it without pushing her to throw her life away, and because Homura's happiness may as WELL be the universe for this timeline.
Also because it's quite likely suicidal on multiple levels.
PMAS seems to basically be original flavor PMMM. That means science bullshit is definitely not the right answer here since PMMM is nothing if not supportive of the power of friendship over individual munchkining.
Source Redacted -- Redshirt Army said:
Source Redacted -- Ugolino said:
Actually talking to people and using her head rather than mindlessly mashing the grind science button since that's pretty much just soulless tech development in and of itself rather than actually relevant or meaningful.
How? I'm not being facetious, I honestly don't see how socializing will let us save Cleopatra, or stop QB from continuing to make contracts, or reach other emotional species.
We are not Cauldron.
...
...
We face a similar situation, are close (setting-relative) to being as OP, and we're certainly close to being as secretive.
But there are three big differences. The first is that we don't know that our best weapon (Grief Manipulation / Contessa) can't solve our main problem. The second is that we have a single pocket nuke, press-to-win (Madowish). The third is that we
know that we have already tipped our hand to the enemy (how far being a matter of debate, of course) and so bringing more people in isn't nearly as possibly-really-bad.
You can criticize the analogy all you want, but when you throw your hands up at the idea of cooperation being useful
that thoroughly, you are trying to be Cauldron. Don't try to be Cauldron. There's a lot of fanon about the topic, but it really all has some grounding in reality. Cauldron could have
really, really used Lisa, for instance. Probably countless other thinkers and etc. that were ignored in favor of looking for a silver bullet. Studying our powers exhaustively hoping we'll find something to win the quest is absolutely looking for a silver bullet. That doesn't make it a bad idea, quite the opposite it's a great idea because studying our powers tends to give us new stuff. But it
does make it looking for a silver bullet. And worse than that, it makes it looking for a silver bullet with
only one pair of hands.
There will be Meguca out there who will have useful things to contribute. Mami, for example, seems to be a 160-IQ genius who has basically predicted every quirk of our powers even if that's mainly Firn using her to narrate. I'd point to Asunaro but people would call that a one-off; instead I'll suggest that there may be historical evidence of what has happened, in the past, to groups of Meguca that have defied Kyubey. I'll point out that modern science is not the brainchild of Albert Einstein but the results of thousands of minds working together. And most of all, I'll point out that
we do not know enough about magic, and trying to learn more about it on our own looks to be a very, very long term-project.
Mami can't be the only successful Magical Girl on Earth. Japan is a tiny fucking island chain in the scope of the planet. Out there are all kinds of Meguca, each of which has their own tiny speck of insight into the workings of magic. Some of those specks are going to be relatively gargantuan; the product of years of research into some field of magic. Every last one of them is valuable.
Every last one of them is accompanied by a tiny light, flickering in the dark, constantly being joined by new lights and constantly losing old companions as they are snuffed out and their specks of knowledge lost.
When you deride social as you have, you ignore the potential of those specks and their lights. We are not the sole force for good in PMAS-verse, just the most resilient. We are not the most knowledgeable, just the most versatile. If one could connect each and every one of the lights in a great web, and share the collected knowledge among them, the rewards that could be reaped from the act are equally unknowable and undeniable. Magic is the force that elevated Madoka into a
Concept. It is surely capable of saving Cleopatra, stopping QB, and enabling spaceflight.
And it could be so
easy. That's the spectacular part, how easily this might be done, if clear seeds can be trusted to function as grief repositories and if Kyubey can be "trusted" to not sever the telepathy net. Take a traveling meguca, and offer them a clear seed in exchange for their service as an intermediary. Send them out to recruit other traveling meguca for the same purpose, and to offer a single use of the clear seed in exchange for their writing down a telephone number from Japan and registering with the traveler's telepathy net. The telephone number goes to an answering service that offers directions to a meeting place in Japan where a meguca can get a grief seed converted to a clear seed in exchange for a brief conversation regarding their abilities.
Within the year Mitakihara would be Meguca Mecca, there'd be an index of powers, specializations, and special skills, and we'd have a way to contact anyone in that index if we felt a need -- and anyone on that index would equally be able to "call 911" as it were.
Don't dismiss the lights flickering in the darkness; we're not Cauldron.
