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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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The Narrator said:
Two problems with that theory:

1.) Those are the two endings from the game that we know absolutely cannot be canon, since if they were Homura would not be here now.

2.) We have examples of times where Madoka did know what Homura had done for her and contracted anyway, like the end of the series and Homura's Revenge (which is not canon, but you like referring to it). So clearly that's not sufficient inducement.

If you're concerned that Madoka will try to Rules Lawyer her way around the apocalypse, then just tell her that it won't work. That in a hundred loops, she's never found a wish that didn't backfire horribly. (Even with the Madokami wish, we wound up with Rebellion, so I don't consider that a lie.) Convince her that it's not worth the risk. Tell her that Homura won't stand for it and will keep resetting time. I've never said that we shouldn't tell her what Homura did for her, just that we need to also tell her that she'll cause the end of the world. Because Madoka has shown that she is willing to break Homura's heart if lives are at stake.

I get the impression that she pretty much always has no clue that her wish can have apocalyptic consequences (and you argued previously that Kyubey doesn't even know, so you can't claim that the "worst of all witches" comment should tip her off if he's supposedly clueless), so for all we know that would enough of a disincentive to stop her from ever doing it. Madoka's presumably sane and would not take risks with the fate of the world.
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Literally none of this even addresses anything I said. 1) and 2) can be dismissed because Word of Firn is that characterization and mechanics are canon even if the events aren't, for PMAS. More specifically, 1) has never happened because Homura never met the conditions (Homura has never beat Walpurgis and has never tried unifying the girls with success due to her own shortcomings and social hangups), and 2) can be dismissed because Madoka contracted to bring Homura back to life so that Homura could get her fucking wish granted. I specifically said that Madoka's conditions for not contracting is everything being taken care of Golden End-style, or Homura guilt-tripping her with a Final Request after she beats Walpurgis.

If you tell Madoka her wish causes the apocalypse, she WILL rules lawyer around it. After all, she could say "did I ever wish to just save the world?" and our truthful answer is "Uh, no." LOL OOPS.

I'd rather not pull Kyubeytruths over Madoka. That cues "You're such a great actress, Sabrina."
 
AuraTwilight said:
After all, she could say "did I ever wish to just save the world?" and our truthful answer is "Uh, no." LOL OOPS.
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We don't actually know the answer to that question. We don't know what wishes she's made over the last 99 loops, only that none of them have prevented the inevitable. You have to figure that there was at least one in there along the lines of, "I wish I could save everybody!"

Are you seriously trying to claim that finding out that she could potentially end all life on Earth would make Madoka more likely to contract? You don't think that concern for human life might discourage her from taking that risk?
 
The Narrator said:
We don't actually know the answer to that question. We don't know what wishes she's made over the last 99 loops, only that none of them have prevented the inevitable. You have to figure that there was at least one in there along the lines of, "I wish I could save everybody!"

Are you seriously trying to claim that finding out that she could potentially end all life on Earth would make Madoka more likely to contract? You don't think that concern for human life might discourage her from taking that risk?
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No, see, now you're being extremely disingenuous. I didn't say she'd be more likely to contract, but it's not a sufficient deterrent because if everything else fails she makes a "I wish everything would be fixed" wish, or "I wish Homura would succeed" or "I wish there were no witches" or whatever else.

The only thing that will actually stop her contracting isn't emphasizing how bad the consequences of contracting would be, because she'll look for a way around it and probably find one because her potential is dead-ass bullshit out of control. The only thing that will work, canonically, according to Magica Quartet's content and also Word of Firn accepting those works as valid, is for Madoka to understand that the act of contracting in of itself is unacceptable.

"The world will be destroyed" is an aftermath product of contracting, and you can separate the two into different causal events because they are, no matter how linked. You need to emphasize that even if everything works out perfectly, contracting will never be okay because Homura doesn't want that for her, and she made a promise, and if she doesn't hold that promise in the end then she's suffered decades meaninglessly, and how Homura is a psychotically fragmented wreck with nothing to show for it.

Don't appeal to the world. That just triggers Madoka's martyr sense. You need to contextualize this problem in directly observable, personal, relatable terms. You need to give her someone she can look at, and see, and experience their suffering outside of a vague, distant abstract. That will hit harder, and be more successful than anything else.
 
So basically, we need to make Homura cry...

*Grabs rifle*
*Pulls charging handle*
*Bullet Flies out*

"....Why?" ;-;
 
[Q] Put cat ears on Homu.
-[Q] Show cat eared Homu to Doka.
--[Q] Have (teary) cat eared Homu ask Doka to not Contract.

Who could resist this?
 
Maybe I'm just not seeing something obvious here, but, why is this discussion being framed as an either-or thing? If we're going to tell Homura's personal story to Madoka, couldn't we, in fact shouldn't we, also tell her the Apocalypse-bomb too? If we're going to tell her the Apocalypse-bomb, shouldn't we also tell her Homura's personal story too?

These just don't strike me as incompatible positions. Both are persuasive, both come at the issue from different angles, and both are self-reinforcing. Why should we not do both?
 
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TheEyes said:
Maybe I'm just not seeing something obvious here, but, why is this discussion being framed as an either-or thing? If we're going to tell Homura's personal story to Madoka, couldn't we, in fact shouldn't we, also tell her the Apocalypse-bomb too? If we're going to tell her the Apocalypse-bomb, shouldn't we also tell her Homura's personal story too?

These just don't strike me as incompatible positions. Both are persuasive, both come at the issue from different angles, and both are self-reinforcing. Why should we not do both?
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I don't see any reason why we wouldn't tell her both, and I've said so at least four times in the late couple days.
 
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Apropos of nothing, I may have a new skill to add to the BrinaMind™: Creating an alcohol-fueled stove out of aluminum (aluminium if you're not American) soft drink cans. It's fairly small (35 mm in height, less than an ounce in weight), but I'm hoping that it'll work when I test it this evening.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Vebyast on Apr 9, 2017 at 6:47 PM, finished with 114348 posts and 27 votes.
  • [x] Apologize to Madoka for the way you phrased that.
    [x] Impress upon Madoka and Bennouna:
    -[x] That Walpurgisnacht Bennouna mentioned is effectively a small natural disaster.
    -[x] Walpy is fucking dead. The people are going to be safe and the city will be too.
    -[x] This is mostly social-fu: filter out girls that're insufficiently idealistic, build community among the girls that do come. Killing Walpy faster is two birds with one stone.
    -[x] If Madoka shows any sign of considering contracting, shut it down. It wouldn't help in this situation, and even if it did, it wouldn't be worth it.
    [X] Remain casual.
    [X] Uh. You did not mean to deliver that to her that way. Sorry, Madoka.
    -[X] City-destroying, potentially, life-threatening, no. The city will be evacuated on the civilian end, and, well...
    --[X] We hold back. A lot. Explain the mecha that we made with Mami the one time, including -- emphasizing -- the ease with which it allowed us to crush that barrier. Frame and describe it as something we did at least semi-seriously rather than describing the giggle-fest that was going on at the time. That was just Mami and us cutting loose just a bit for just a little while.
    -[X] More girls would help limit the property damage, though, which could be considerable, and... You quite like Mitakihara intact.
    -[X] But we're also interested because the kind of person who would help with something like this is the kind of person we most want to support.
    [X] Be apologectic for letting Madoka find about it this way, but reassuring that we've got things under control.
    [X] Yes. It's called Walpurgisnacht, and it's on the scale of a natural disaster.
    -[X] Between the abilities our group has, we can probably kill it without many issues - we've got us providing infinite magic, Mami Tomoe, and Homura as a major force multiplier. And we've got high hopes for Sayaka.
    -[X] The problem would be the collateral damage. With our Grief powers, we could kill Walpurgisnacht alone, but the damage to the city would be considerable.
    -[X] Homura's taken care that the city will be evacuated before the fight, but you want Mitakihara intact. If possible, you want to kill Walpurgis before it even gets here. That means we need more help, and... the kind of magical girls that would turn up for this? Those are the kind of people we want to support the most.
    [x] Explain about Oriko's predictions that we would defeat Walpurgisnacht, but note that she did not specify exactly how that victory would occur nor that it would be without collateral damage to the city. So we want to weight the odds in our favor as much as possible.
    [x] Explain what we know about Walpurgisnacht and ask if Nadia knows any more.
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[x] Apologize to Madoka for the way you phrased that.
[x] Impress upon Madoka and Bennouna:
-[x] The "Walpurgisnacht" that Bennouna mentioned is effectively a small natural disaster.
-[x] Walpurgisnacht is dead meat. Your team is just too strong. The people are going to be safe and the city will be too.
-[x] This is mostly social-fu: filter out girls that're insufficiently idealistic, build community among the girls that do come. Killing Walpurgisnacht faster is two birds with one stone.
-[x] If Madoka shows any sign of considering contracting, shut it down. It wouldn't help in this situation, and even if it did, it wouldn't be worth it.
-[x] Stay relatively professional. Being flippant would make Homura mad.
 
Using the apocalypsebomb as a deterrent for the Madocontract kinda depends on how you phrase it, I think.

>The problem isn't that you're too weak to help, Madoka, it's that you're too strong-- like, absurd bullshit levels of strong, more than Kyuubey's system was ever designed to handle.
>No matter what sort of wish you make, the feedback from it is going to wind up literally destroying the Earth, so you making a contract of any kind is an immediate lose-state for Homura and I.
>That's not all: I'm preeetty sure at this point that my amnesia is because I don't have a past, due to being created by some other magical girl's wish in a previous timeline-- if you make a contract, Homura will reset things again, and I'll probably cease to exist in the new timeline.
 
The Narrator said:
"I wish that all magical girls everywhere no longer accumulated grief or corruption in their soul gems."

If you're going to consider going down that route, then you might as well cut the problem off at the source.
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This would be a good wish as long as it doesn't come with any unacceptable side-effects. But my point was not to come up with a specific wish for Madoka, but rather to specify that any valid wish that she could make must include a caveat that prevents Kriemhild Gretchen from destroying everything.

The Narrator said:
It's not that Homura's goal is irrational; it's our goal, too. It's that she can get a little irrational on the subject. She's been known to overreact just a tad. And her default approach can be a little... iffy. She insists on trying to do everything herself and pulling the Mysterious Stranger act, and ends up making everyone distrust her and shooting herself in the foot right out of the gate. She doesn't trust Madoka with the information that she needs to realize for herself that contracting is a bad idea.
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The "irrational" part that I was referring to is that Homura absolutely refuses to consider any possibility of Madoka contracting because of her promise to Madoka in that one timeline. Even wishes that could plausibly fix things. Homura's attitude also affects Sabrina because it means that Sabrina also has to avoid suggesting such wishes lest she alienate Homura. But Sabrina can at least accept (on an intellectual level) that there are some wishes that Madoka could make which would end up as a net positive.

The Narrator said:
Sabrina's potent and all, but doesn't seem to be on the scale of something like Madokami, at least in terms of raw power consumption. I suspect that if Madoka wished for griefbending, her control radius would be a lot bigger than 100 meters. (We're also really fastidious about keeping our gem clean.) Really, no magical girl, no matter how powerful, has even had anything on par with the potential that Madoka is slinging around.
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I'm not sure exactly what Sabrina's potential is compared to Madoka's, but the indications are that it was somewhat similar. The nature of her impossible powers, for one, and also the fact that Dedolere is equally capable of destroying everything. The 100 meter range does not seem to be a consequence of her wish but rather it is one of the built in limitations of the soul gem that are common to all magical girls. I suspect that this range limit was designed as part of the Kyuubey-tech mechanism of the soul-gem rather than because it's an inherent limitation on Sabrina's power (i.e. Madoka wishing for griefbending would also get a 100m radius).
 
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