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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Sereg said:
Sure it does. We're at fault. We deserve to be punished. Our victims deserve restitution.
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Punishments need to be tailored to their wrongs in order to be punishments. Getting beat up is in no way reasonable to having kept a secret in a precarious situation, and Sayaka would feel horrible about hitting Sabrina once she learns the situation in full. She's gonna feel bad enough at breaking Mami's table.
 
As I suspected might happen, Hitomi being here has added new complications, and along with the fact that the last vote basically brushed over Sayaka's question to open a whole other can of worms, is forcing us to basically have two arguments at once.

I dunno, the existing votes don't really feel like dialogue to me. Maybe we need to start showing some emotion, here.

[x] She nearly took my leg off with a landmine. I've got at least as much right to pass judgment as either of you.
[x] And no, I didn't deliberately take Oriko's arm as punishment or whatever nonsense you're thinking. This was a war. Real battles between magical girls aren't like anime, they're brutal, and people get hurt very badly. During the fight Oriko got hit by fire from a medium machine gun. A normal person would have died, but a magical girl can survive anything as long as their Soul Gem is intact. I spent hours reattaching her head. I didn't feel up to trying to regrow her arm as well.
[x] Or maybe you think that getting shot and put under house arrest wasn't punishment enough? Well, what would you suggest? Turn her over to the police? Human authorities can't stop a magical girl, and human prisons can't hold them. And that's assuming that the police could even remember that she existed, or have you forgotten about Kyubey's habit of erasing people's memories to keep magic a secret? The only justice for magical girls is what we make for ourselves. So what would you have done? Do you think I should have executed them? Could you have done such a thing? Because I don't think I could. You don't know how hard I had to argue for sparing their lives.
[x] Maybe I should have told you sooner. It's not exactly an easy thing to bring up! I was worried you might do something rash. Which, if you'll note the shards of fucking glass around your feet, turned out to be the case. Maybe I didn't have to right to make that decision, but I wanted to protect you. I didn't want you to end up selling your soul to Kyubey for revenge. I wouldn't want any girl to ever have to subject herself to this life if I could prevent it. God knows I never would have if I hadn't already been dying! But it didn't do a damn bit of good. You wound up making the contract anyway. It would have been a lot easier to keep this secret forever, but I'm telling you now because I thought you deserved to know the truth. If you want to hate me for that, that's your right, but all I ever wanted was to protect the people I care about. All of you.

...it occurs to me that Sabrina has more in common with Oriko than one might think. They both feel that their unique knowledge makes them the only one capable of making the right decisions for the greater good, no matter how the people affected might feel about those choices.
 
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Sereg said:
I've dealt with people who are far more unreasonable than Sayaka and Hitomi when it comes to receiving apologies. I'm happy to appologise a bit more.

Also, not "Hey, I'm feeling bad and/or angry", but "Sabrina's lack of concern for my feelings resulted in her causing me to feel bad and/or angry".
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The person we need to be apologizing to right now is Mami.

Remember Mami? The girl we've been putting through the emotional wringer pretty much every day for the past week? The girl who has staked her continued sanity on our presence, and just last night wrapped us in a ribbon tentacle-hug because she was terrified we might leave her?

Remember how we promised not to keep putting ourselves in danger, not to keep taking stupid risks with our life, for her sake? And you want to let Sabrina be a punching bag for two ignorant little girls, who just trashed Mami's apartment, right in front of her?

You guys want to spend more time grovelling? Do it for her, given we just broke a promise to her, and she's the one with the real problems here.
 
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The Narrator said:
As I suspected might happen, Hitomi being here has added new complications, and along with the fact that the last vote basically brushed over Sayaka's question to open a whole other can of worms, is forcing us to basically have two arguments at once.

I dunno, the existing votes don't really feel like dialogue to me. Maybe we need to start showing some emotion, here.

[x] She nearly took my leg off with a landmine. I've got at least as much right to pass judgment as either of you.
[x] And no, I didn't deliberately take Oriko's arm as punishment or whatever nonsense you're thinking. This was a war. Real battles between magical girls aren't like anime, they're brutal, and people get hurt very badly. During the fight Oriko got hit by fire from a medium machine gun. A normal person would have died, but a magical girl can survive anything as long as their Soul Gem is intact. I spent hours reattaching her head. I didn't feel up to trying to regrow her arm as well.
[x] Or maybe you think that getting shot and put under house arrest wasn't punishment enough? Well, what would you suggest? Turn her over to the police? Human authorities can't stop a magical girl, and human prisons can't hold them. And that's assuming that the police could even remember that she existed, or have you forgotten about Kyubey's habit of erasing people's memories to keep magic a secret? The only justice for magical girls is what we make for ourselves. So what would you have done? Do you think I should have executed them? Could you have done such a thing? Because I don't think I could. You don't know how hard I had to argue for sparing their lives.
[x] Maybe I should have told you sooner. It's not exactly an easy thing to bring up! I was worried you might do something rash. Which, if you'll note the shards of fucking glass around your feet, turned out to be the case. Maybe I didn't have to right to make that decision, but I wanted to protect you. I didn't want you to end up selling your soul to Kyubey for revenge. I wouldn't want any girl to ever have to subject herself to this life if I could prevent it. God knows I never would have if I hadn't already been dying! But it didn't do a damn bit of good. You wound up making the contract anyway. It would have been a lot easier to keep this secret forever, but I'm telling you now because I thought you deserved to know the truth. If you want to hate me for that, that's your right, but all I ever wanted was to protect the people I care about. All of you.

...it occurs to me that Sabrina has more in common with Oriko than one might think. They both feel that their unique knowledge makes them the only one capable of making the right decisions for the greater good, no matter how the people affected might feel about those choices.
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Oh, absolutely. And I say that as the resident Oriko.

I actually kind of like this one.

[x]The Narrator.

@Onmur: That'd be true for a normal person, but we aren't one. Getting beat up is merely a mild inconvenience to us. It's not a serious punishment.

EDIT:

@TheEyes: Mami is not the only person we have a responsibility to and being a punching bag is not a threat to us at all.
 
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GATTAI!?

[X] Calm down.
-[X] Ask everybody to please sit down and let you explain, so you can then hear what they have to say once they know what happened. Then if they want, they can meet Oriko themselves.
-[X] Telepathically reassure Mami that Hitomi she wasn't actually gonna hurt you. We're among friends here. Meanwhile, if everybody agrees to sit down, help clean up the glass.

[X] Ask Hitomi what she means. If she means...
-[X] ... We should've turned them to the authorities:
--[X] What would she have had us do?
--[X] If she brings up normal justice proceedings: Hitomi, how do you try a teenage girl for a crime based on evidence that you don't remember exists? How do you hold a person who can wrench apart the metal bars of a cell, or turn invisible, or teleport? Because of Kyubey's memory wipes, and because of the unpreparedness of the criminal justice system, the judiciary is incapable of putting a magical girl on trial. Furthermore, no equivalent institution exists for magical girls. In fact, the truth of the matter is that, in general, no institutions exist at all for magical girls.
--[X] There is nobody who has a 'right' who judge anybody else; there's only justice if the strongest Magical Girl decides to be just, and then only if you agree with them. Magical Girls normally need to either kill or kick out each other out of their cities, because there's not enough Grief Seeds for everybody to live on. (If necessary, mention how our power is entirely unique in the whole world).
--[X] Last week, we stopped a war that was brewing on Sendai, before it actually got going strong; they might have heard about the 'gas explosion' cover story in the news. We did our best to rescue everyone we could, doing magic in plain sight, but today nobody remembers that; two people died and their friends and families won't know it was because some groups of superpowered teenagers were fighting for their own lives.
--[X] We fought Oriko and Kirika, and we imprisoned them. We did it with no fatalities, and because we did it, nobody else has been hurt by them. And they aren't dead over it.
--[X] ... That's your whole motivation here. You're trying to keep people alive. It's not easy. Oriko and Kirika are alive only because Magical Girls can live with horrible injuries, with missing limbs... or even having their heads cut off. Even then, if Oriko hadn't agreed to the house arrest, we would've have to kill them. That or letting them go to keep doing the exact same things they'd been doing.
-[X] ... If Hitomi was talking about taking Oriko's arm in revenge for hers, that was not the case. Magical Girl fights are brutal, fought with weapons supposed to bring down giant monsters, and as long as a Magical Girl's Soul Gem is intact, she can survive and heal back from anything, assuming she can cleanse her own Soul Gem.
--[X] Oriko lost an arm and her head during the fight; Mami got her arm broken, and both Kirika and us got our legs maimed.
--[X] If Oriko's still missing her arm, it's not for Hitomi's sake, but because it wasn't necessary for her to have it in order to speak with us and surrender, and because it would've been easier to put her down again, definitely, if she tried to fight us again. She's also slowly been healing it up, so it's not like she lost it forever.


[X] Apologize to Sayaka. You did all this thinking about people lives, and that's unfair to her, because what's happened to her was just as horrible and she doesn't deserve second place just because some Magical Girls want to play with other people's lives. We're sorry. But we can only ask her for her help, so things like this don't keep happening.

Sereg said:
@Onmur: That'd be true for a normal person, but we aren't one. Getting beat up is merely a mild inconvenience to us. It's not a serious punishment.
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We and Sayaka still have normal human feelings, so Sayaka would still feel horribad for taking her anger out on us.
 
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[x]The Narrator

Right now I'm far more concerned about Mami's mental health than coddling Sayaka and Hitomi; this vote does a far better job of addressing that issue than the others.

We've been coddling Sayaka too much lately, protecting her from the realities of the world that she signed herself up for, over our objection and her own promise that she wouldn't Contract. This is the predictable result: a self-righteous tantrum by Justice Blueberry that broke Mami's table and is hitting hard on Mami's personal trigger buttons. We need to put our foot down, or these two will continue to think they have the right to act the way they're acting, and that's not okay.
 
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Filling these in for now, unless there's backlash.
Onmur said:
[] Calm down.
-[] Ask everybody to please sit down. You know you should've done this many days ago, but you're trying to make things work right. If they let you, you want to explain what happened, and you want to listen to what they have to say. Then if they want, they can meet Oriko themselves.
-[] Mami can let go of Hitomi, and you try and pick up all the glass shards with your Grief and put them away quickly for now.

[] Ask Hitomi what she means. If she means we should've turned them to the authorities...
-[] What would she have had us do?
--[] If she brings up normal justice proceedings: Hitomi, how do you try a teenage girl for a crime based on evidence that you don't remember exists? How do you hold a person who can wrench apart the metal bars of a cell, or turn invisible, or teleport? Because of Kyubey's memory wipes, and because of the unpreparedness of the criminal justice system, the judiciary is incapable of putting a magical girl on trial. Furthermore, no equivalent institution exists for magical girls. In fact, the truth of the matter is that, in general, no institutions exist at all for magical girls.

--[] There is nobody who has a 'right' who judge anybody else; there's only justice if the strongest Magical Girl decides to be just, and then only if you agree with them. Magical Girls normally need to either kill or kick out each other out of their cities, because there's not enough Grief Seeds for everybody to live on. (If necessary, mention how our power is entirely unique in the whole world).
--[] Last week, we stopped a war that was brewing on Sendai, before it actually got going strong; they might have heard about the 'gas explosion' cover story in the news. We did our best to rescue everyone we could, doing magic in plain sight, but today nobody remembers that; two people died and their friends and families won't know it was because some groups of superpowered teenagers were fighting for their own lives.

---[] We fought Oriko and Kirika, and we imprisoned them. We did it with no fatalities, minimal property damage, and because we did it, nobody else has been hurt by them. And they aren't dead over it.
---[] ... That's your whole motivation here. You're trying to keep people alive. It's not easy. Oriko and Kirika are alive only because Magical Girls can live with horrible injuries, with missing limbs... or even having their heads cut off. Even then, if Oriko hadn't agreed to the house arrest, we would've have to kill them. That or letting them go to keep doing the exact same things they'd been doing.

[] Apologize to Sayaka. You did all this thinking about people lives, and that's unfair to her, because what's happened to her was just as horrible and she doesn't deserve second place just because some Magical Girls want to play with other people's lives. We're sorry. But we can only ask her for her help, so things like this don't keep happening.
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Guilop said:
Question: does Mami know about how badly Oriko was hurt? The whole exploded head thing I mean? I can't remember at the moment.
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We told her Oriko lost her head during the Lichbomb.
 
[X] The Narrator

I can tolerate a mild apology for hammering in that they're both being small-minded idiots...even if only lightly.

Sereg said:
But that isn't what's happening here. I think I of all people appreciate the right to have a dissenting opinion, but basically the opposite is happening here. Sayaka's voice of dissent is the one being chased out and suppressed. Making such a vote while claiming the right to dissent is inherently hypocritical as it's removing Sayaka's right to dissent and my right to agree with her. The opinion being expressed here, which is the one I'm opposing is "Anyone who disagrees with Sabrina or is in any way inconvenient to her is automatically an enemy we should have no problem killing". And yes, I will call that attitude inherently evil. Assuming that I misunderstood the nature of the objection, then I appologise (in which case I would have different objections, but that's another matter).
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Yeah, significant misunderstanding. I'm just saying that it's important that there be a voice for other perspectives, even ones some of us disapprove of, and that choosing to speak up, rather than remain silent or quit the quest due to social pressure, is a respectable thing to do.

Not really advocating for any action IC here, just opposing the mentality of shouting down anyone who disagrees with you. Definitely not trying to silence Sayaka or Hitomi (even if the latter just utterly lost my respect).

Something not being our fault is not an excuse to refuse to apologise.
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Refusing to apologize for something you didn't cause is a refusal to accept injustice. It isn't just an excuse, it's a very good reason not to do so.

Us having tried our best is not an excuse to refuse to apologise. The person we're apologising to being more in the wrong than we are is not an excuse to refuse to apologise. So, I'm afraid to say I vehemently disagree with the mentality some are expressing.
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It seems that makes two of us. Apologizing without just cause isn't kindness or goodness, it's manipulation at best and cowardice at worst.
 
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Higure said:
Yeah, significant misunderstanding. I'm just saying that it's important that there be a voice for other perspectives, even ones some of us disapprove of, and that choosing to speak up, rather than remain silent or quit the quest due to social pressure, is a respectable thing to do.

Not really advocating for any action IC here, just opposing the mentality of shouting down anyone who disagrees with you.


Refusing to apologize for something you didn't cause is a refusal to accept injustice. It isn't just an excuse, it's a very good reason not to do so.

It seems that makes two of us. Apologizing without just cause isn't kindness or goodness, it's manipulation at best and cowardice at worst.
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Okay, I get the first part. I am with you on that much. Also, for your last statement, it seems you thought I said the opposite to what I did say.

Basically, what we have here is a difference in opinion on what a "just cause" for apologising is. To me, someone having been the slightest bit inconvenienced in any way by anything we were even tangentially involved with is a "just cause" for apologising. The person most at fault for something is not the only one who has responsibility for it.
 
[X] "What exactly do you mean Hitomi? I was injured that night as well!"
-[X] After Hitomi answers break back to voting.

Hitomi could mean many more things with that statement than we could provide if-then clauses for. Or even multiple things which would trigger one clause in the wrong context.

Also, I believe that even if we differ on approach, we all would like an explanation.
 
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Onmur said:
[ ] I guessed as much, but I was scared of the consequences, so I stood by and did nothing.
-[ ] I'm trying to rectify this now. I want to introduce you. Maybe you can make your own judgement.

I think we should just let them see O&K at this point. The defaced manor and the state Oriko's in.
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sticking her betwean the rock that is her wanting people who have done something detrimental to suffer and the hard place that is her wanting to hurt people detrimental to her should crack her enough to make her start acting pragmatic, at least about how to make people want to not do detrimental things.
 
Uhh... Narrators vote is way too freaking brutal. Can we tone it down please?

Also yeah I think we do need to explain the brutality. It's not enough to dismiss it as just battle damage.
 
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