Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
I have to say, I like Redshirt's and Kaizuki's options, but it's falling into the same pit that got us into this mess in the first place. Sayaka is a 13-14 teenager who just found out three of her friends have been keeping a secret about people who have attacked and hurt a friend, and then burned down her house, with her family and her inside it. And this happened about a week ago from her perspective. Yes, the situation is taken care of, yes we were upset then, yes we took care of it, but the point is, the responses, sound dry, unemotional. It sounds detached, or worse, it sounds like we he have this moral high ground. Even if we did, and I'm not sure we do considering it's been a week and the only reason we are telling them is because it's almost unavoidable now, it doesn't matter to Sayaka.

One of her friends, one who's quirky, but kind and friendly, and to whom she owes a 'debt' to, has lied to her. By omission if nothing else. Standing tall and strong is not the right path. We need to show remorse, that what we did was wrong. For no other reason than to calm her down, at least.

[X] Telepathy Mami. She isn't going to hurt me. Please don't tie her up- it'll only make her more difficult to calm down.
[X] "Sayaka, I'm sorry. Whatever reasons I had, aren't good enough to justify how much I've hurt you. Whatever you decide to do to me, I deserve it. But please, leave Mami out of it, she doesn't deserve my mistakes to hurt her.
[X] If the opportunity present's itself, hugs, you can never go wrong with hugs.

[x] When she demands to know why we didn't tell her sooner: Cut to voting.

[q] Also if it makes you feel better, she said if you want to you can burn her house down.

I have to admit, I liked my first plan better, but I think it gets the point across better.
 
cmwatford said:
Do we feel bad about not telling Sayaka right away?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Mixed. It might have been a mistake, but it was reasonable enough decision in context to not feel much of regret even if it was a mistake and we consider it such.
Putting Sayaka off as "what's the worst that could happen" until she contracted is, on the other hand, quite regrettable. Still, Sayaka is less important than Homura, Mami and Madoka, and it was her decision despite multitude of warnings, so not too much.

At least, that's my take on it.
 
cmwatford said:
Do we feel bad about not telling Sayaka right away?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't feel particulary bad about not telling Sayaka immediately. I mean yes, we kept important information from her, but it hasn't been all that long in character and we had good reasons for doing so.

I doubt that Sayaka contracting would have been avoided if we told her about this sooner.
 
Like I said, my first plan was better. It's just that I'm worried their isn't enough emphasis on the fact we are sorry, and admitting you're wrong is always a good way to let the other party get some satisfaction.

landcollector said:
This is a dangerous statement to make, imo.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, but at the same time, again it implies 'I am wrong', and it should help calm Sayaka down, because that should be the focus of this vote. The last line of the story post was 'She's all but shaking in anger.' And maybe it's just my semi-cowardly nature, but admitting your mistakes to someone angry at you for making them, usually seems to let them know them and that you acknowledge the repercussions and helps them calm down. Before we move on and actually give our reasoning, we need to make her not so angry. After all, angry magical girl is usually a bad idea.

cmwatford said:
Do we feel bad about not telling Sayaka right away?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think it would have been possible to talk to Sayaka and Hitomi about it earlier. Explain that someone had burned her house down on purpose, and broke her arm for a purpose, but hat we had caught them and were making them pay. Heck a day or two would have worked. I mean, what would she have down? The magical girls had already taken down the 'evil' magical girls. And maybe it would have been fuel for the contract fire, but we already failed on that front. So hindsight. One of the problems form Sayaka's perspective is that we knew, and never told her. Never even hinted at it.

All-in-all, I think Sayaka think's we don't trust her. And in some ways, we don't. She thinks we've betrayed her. And in some ways we have. And I think we should be sorry for that.

ctulhuslp said:
Still, Sayaka is less important than Homura, Mami and Madoka
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And thinking like that, is part of the reason Sayaka contracted. If I remember right, we thought spending time with Homura or Mami was more worthwhile than talking to Sayaka, perhaps when she needed it the most. That's the problem with having some people being important, and others being treated as background characters.
 
Zedman7054 said:
And thinking like that, is part of the reason Sayaka contracted. If I remember right, we thought spending time with Homura or Mami was more worthwhile than talking to Sayaka, perhaps when she needed it the most. That's the problem with having some people being important, and others being treated as background characters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Because that's...truth? Sayaka contracting hurts us mostly because Homura is growing more disappointed, Sayaka herself is not really relevant. From purely utilitarian point of view, as long as we have Homura and Madoka on our side, everything else can burn; add Mami to the list for mental stability of Sabrina and to some degree Homura, maybe add Oriko for precog.

Of course, the whole point is in being better than merely utilitarian, but it is something worth keeping in mind.

And well, as I said, totally disregarding Sayaka, unlike not telling her earlier, is actually quite regrettable, it's just not as bad end-worthy as would be, say, neglecting Homura.
 
Last edited:
Zedman7054 said:
And thinking like that, is part of the reason Sayaka contracted. If I remember right, we thought spending time with Homura or Mami was more worthwhile than talking to Sayaka, perhaps when she needed it the most. That's the problem with having some people being important, and others being treated as background characters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We left without talking to Sayaka because she was busy hugging her parents. We should have stuck around longer and waited and talked, but we just figured she'd be fine one more day.

(Spoiler alert: she wasn't.)
 
ctulhuslp said:
Because that's...truth? Sayaka contracting hurts us mostly because Homura is growing more disappointed, Sayaka herself is not really relevant. From purely utilitarian point of view, as long as we have Homura and Madoka on our side, everything else can burn; add Mami to the list for mental stability of Sabrina and to some degree Homura, maybe add Oriko for precog.

Of course, the whole point is in being better than merely utilitarian, but it is something worth keeping in mind.

And well, as I said, totally disregarding Sayaka, unlike not telling her earlier, is actually quite regrettable, it's just not as bad end-worthy as would be, say, neglecting Homura.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, like you said, one of the whole points is being better than just the utilitarian. But there are people who think like that, and I was just using what you said as an example of that thinking, and why it can backfire. I hope I didn't step on your toes?

Onmur said:
We left without talking to Sayaka because she was busy hugging her parents. We should have stuck around longer and waited and talked, but we just figured she'd be fine one more day.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, that's a good point that I kinda forgot that. Still, maybe if more time had been spent with her before that point it could have been prevented. But hindsight and speculation, you know how it is.
 
Zedman7054 said:
Yeah, like you said, one of the whole points is being better than just the utilitarian. But there are people who think like that, and I was just using what you said as an example of that thinking, and why it can backfire. I hope I didn't step on your toes?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, no stepping at all. I am aware that this is quite callous mode of thinking which is neither all that IC for Sabrina nor the preferred one for the quest. And that it has potential to backfire via people not under constant check-ups.
Still worthwhile point of view to not spread ourselves too thin and to not forget bigger goals or enemies. We can, perhaps, save everybody, but only if we play our cards right.
 
The entire quest has been an exercise in insufficient and inefficient disclosures. That's my take on it. Madoka, Sayaka, and Hitomi were uncontracted and we could've lich, witch, metabombed all of them, and I think that might have been been the right thing to do. At least Lich and Meta, witch is... Bad. Homura should've been fully disclosed to ASAP; with the proper assurances we would have been completely fine.

So do I think we should've told Sayaka sooner? Yeah, I do. I'm going to be arguing heavily for telling Mami that we're going to Asunaro when we do, and telling her why (in redacted terms) we're doing it without her. And I think that we should bring Madoka more thoroughly into the know on things.

I like to trust people. I do.
 
The Oldman said:
Napalm to the face?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And here this popped up in my head:

"Madoka wanna come to Asunaro with me?"

"To do what?"

"To save some meguca!"

"GRARGH!"

*Leaps at Sabrina's face*

"Eek! Homura!"

*Tries to dislodge Homura attached to her face*

"Grrrghhh..."

"Come on Homu, it won't be dange- OW SHE BIT ME! SHE BIT ME!"

"Ah! Bad Homura-chan!"

*Stiffens*

"Come down this instant!"

*Climbs down Sabrina and goes back to Madoka with her head lowered in shame*


So I realized we need a Chibi Homu.
 
Kaizuki's got the right of it, IMO. Our secretiveness is unfortunate, and I honestly wish we weren't caught up in so many lies (whether they be explicit or of omission) right now. Hurts our ability to plan and socialize with friends. If I thought Mami could take it, I'd want to witchbomb her at the earliest opportunity. Problem is she's... fragile, in that regard.
 
Everybody is fragile in that regard. Witchbombing normals ASAP is probably the right thing to do - as long as you can be sure they won't turn around and tell the meguca - but witchbombing magical girls is a bad idea and never do it unless you're absolutely certain you know what you're doing and you have a plan that is guaranteed to work.

Opening the quest with "you're an anime where I come from" was probably a reasonable thing to do. Creepy, but that can be overcome.

I think that not divulging Homura's timestop is a reasonable thing to do. We can dance around it juuuust enough, I think, that Sayaka can have good guesses but nothing she couldn't have already figured out. There's also some awkward wandering in that line. Dunno if it's intentional. In particular, using the third person in the "maimed, broken, and contained" bit maintains some distance that might be valuable (if we don't want Sabrina to admit what she did) or might actively undermine our point (if we're trying to really get the emotion across to Sayaka). "maimed, broken, and contained" is also an arson-murder-jaywalking setup that might not be what we want. We can definitely flow more smoothly through the part preceding it, about the process of finding them.

I think the approach is good, just want to see if I can eke out any incremental improvements. Here's what all the tweaks would look like together:

[] "Your other question. I'm calm now. You remember Homura not letting you copy her power? That's partially because it's dangerous. Sayaka, that night, after we made sure you were safe, Mami, Homura, and I used it for 16 hours straight. We were angry, we were upset, we were scared, and we were not calm. We hunted Oriko down. Searched her house, combed the city, and when we eventually found them, we maimed them, broke them, and imprisoned them."
 
Last edited:
It's only been a week for Sayaka, even the police wouldn't get back to her this quickly, especially if they had a crises every day for that week.

Sabrina held off so that Sayaka wouldn't have this hanging ovef hef head spoiling her picnic.

As much as I admire Sayaka, she isn't owed an apology.
 
Gadjo said:
Kaizuki's got the right of it, IMO. Our secretiveness is unfortunate, and I honestly wish we weren't caught up in so many lies (whether they be explicit or of omission) right now. Hurts our ability to plan and socialize with friends. If I thought Mami could take it, I'd want to witchbomb her at the earliest opportunity. Problem is she's... fragile, in that regard.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This. If there was even one non-Homu person we didn't have any secrets from it would be so nice. Non-Homu because as much as Homu is Homu... Homu.

Matou Sutegobana said:
It's only been a week for Sayaka, even the police wouldn't get back to her this quickly, especially if they had a crises every day for that week.

Sabrina held off so that Sayaka wouldn't have this hanging ovef hef head spoiling her picnic.

As much as I admire Sayaka, she isn't owed an apology.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Closer to two weeks, week and a half, isn't it?

And... Does it really matter if she is or isn't? Because, uh, it doesn't. Matter, I mean.

Vebyast said:
I think that not divulging Homura's timestop is a reasonable thing to do. We can dance around it juuuust enough, I think, that Sayaka can have good guesses but nothing she couldn't have already figured out. There's also some awkward wandering in that line. Dunno if it's intentional. In particular, using the third person in the "maimed, broken, and contained" bit maintains some distance that might be valuable (if we don't want Sabrina to admit what she did) or might actively undermine our point (if we're trying to really get the emotion across to Sayaka). "maimed, broken, and contained" is also an arson-murder-jaywalking setup that might not be what we want. We can definitely flow more smoothly through the part preceding it, about the process of finding them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sayaka should already know that, and if she doesn't, too many others already do. Kyubey already knows, so it's not terribly important to keep it secret.

Part of the point of not being smooth about it... Well, Redshirt's rewording added a bit of jerkiness, but regardless, it's honestly more important to get the points across in a good order with that bit than it is for it to flow.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top