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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Briefvoice said:
So we need to test that theory. What about exposing someone who is not a magical girl to a *small* amount of grief allowed to disperse? Not the whole cloud or anything, but a couple of marbles worth of juice. See if they feel more depressed afterwards. It shouldn't be too dangerous for them if they're being closely monitored, and it would give a better read on if this stuff actually has an effect on human beings.

Of course, we need a non-magical girl who is "in the know". Luckily there's a great candidate. We can just ask Mado (Homura ninjas in out of time stop and holds a knife to Briefvoice's throat, then disappears again.)

Kyousuke! Of course that's who I was going to talk about all alone. The little brat owes us for helping fix his arm. I don't see why we couldn't ask him to help in a little cautious experimentation for SCIENCE.
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The amounts of grief we could sense in ordinary humans (and we can sense it) when we first tested our powers was described as "faint" and "tiny"... compared to Mami, when her soul gem was only barely clouded.

I suspect that ordinary human tolerances for grief (and hope, for that matter) are much, much lower than for puella magi - and, indeed, that increasing this tolerance is a large part of what QB is doing when it "uncorks" a meguca's magic.

Or, in other words - "a few marbles" is way, way too much for a first experiment.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
That was a common fan theory,
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The last episode straight up says that the general population's curses need to turn into something and since they can't be witches anymore they turn into wraiths. Even if Homura turned out to be wrong about where wraiths come from, that still sounds to me like confirmation that witches could form from free floating grief.
 
Torgamous said:
The last episode straight up says that the general population's curses need to turn into something and since they can't be witches anymore they turn into wraiths. Even if Homura turned out to be wrong about where wraiths come from, that still sounds to me like confirmation that witches could form from free floating grief.
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My point wasn't that the grief wouldn't turn into a monster, it was that calling that monster a "Wraith" in this setting would be poor taxonomy.
 
Redshirt Army said:
The amounts of grief we could sense in ordinary humans (and we can sense it) when we first tested our powers was described as "faint" and "tiny"... compared to Mami, when her soul gem was only barely clouded.

I suspect that ordinary human tolerances for grief (and hope, for that matter) are much, much lower than for puella magi - and, indeed, that increasing this tolerance is a large part of what QB is doing when it "uncorks" a meguca's magic.

Or, in other words - "a few marbles" is way, way too much for a first experiment.
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Okay, so a half marble. Or whatever tiny amount is a reasonable percentage of their tolerance. Sabrina ought to be able to judge it.

I know my post was jokey, but I'm actually serious that we need to find a way to test this. There is a possibility that grief doesn't actually have any path to "renter" a human body in that "dispersed into the cloud" state. It's not like Grief naturally escapes the human heart on its own or transfers between people without magic. If there's no normal path for it to exit a human soul, why assume there's a path for it to enter a human soul?

It may be that when grief disperses it doesn't go anywhere. It may just decomposes into something harmless or into nothingness. I mean, if Grief was easy to create and store without evaporating then Kyubey wouldn't have to go through the whole meguca exercise in the first place. Maybe Grief is inherently incapable of surviving outside souls/soul gems without Sabrina's power.

Do I know any of that is true? No. But then, I don't know it's not true. If Grief does disperse harmlessly, then it makes a lot of things much easier. It needs to be tested somehow.
 
argentorum said:
I've mainly been lurking, so I may have missed the discussion, but is there any particular reason we can't just have Coobs eat all the grief? Our range is decently big. He doesn't even have to be close by.
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For the record, personally I'm wary of using Kyubey for grief disposal exclusively because Coobs seems like exactly the sort of person who would deny us that opportunity to unload Grief if they thought it'd make us witch. Even if we want to get on board with the Coobs' plans to save the universe, we'll have to do it behind their backs because they're so utterly cripplingly incapable of not betraying people. Basically the Coobs have a number in their mind called "expected value of betrayal minus expected value of not betrayal", and as soon as that number gets even slightly positive they jump straight to the backstabbing. And they have a lot of experience of the value of betrayal, and they have very little experience of the value of cooperation due to their history with client species, so their model for the latter tends to be low.

Do not trust the Coobs.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
My point wasn't that the grief wouldn't turn into a monster, it was that calling that monster a "Wraith" in this setting would be poor taxonomy.
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And my point wasn't that it would be called a Wraith in this setting, since witches are what happens in this setting unless Homura was also wrong about that part. I used wraiths as the example because Homura said they came exclusively from free floating grief, which made them a purer example.
 
Torgamous said:
And my point wasn't that it would be called a Wraith in this setting, since witches are what happens in this setting unless Homura was also wrong about that part. I used wraiths as the example because Homura said they came exclusively from free floating grief, which made them a purer example.
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I'm glad we could overcome our communication difficulties, then, fellow human.
 
Briefvoice said:
So we need to test that theory. What about exposing someone who is not a magical girl to a *small* amount of grief allowed to disperse? Not the whole cloud or anything, but a couple of marbles worth of juice. See if they feel more depressed afterwards. It shouldn't be too dangerous for them if they're being closely monitored, and it would give a better read on if this stuff actually has an effect on human beings.

Of course, we need a non-magical girl who is "in the know". Luckily there's a great candidate. We can just ask Mado (Homura ninjas in out of time stop and holds a knife to Briefvoice's throat, then disappears again.)

Kyousuke! Of course that's who I was going to talk about all along. The little brat owes us for helping fix his arm. I don't see why we couldn't ask him to help in a little cautious experimentation for SCIENCE.
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I feel like if we expose someone to the corrupting dark stuff, they'll be really angry, get superpowers, and try to kill us. On the bright side they might also save the world.
 
Briefvoice said:
Okay, so a half marble. Or whatever tiny amount is a reasonable percentage of their tolerance. Sabrina ought to be able to judge it.

I know my post was jokey, but I'm actually serious that we need to find a way to test this. There is a possibility that grief doesn't actually have any path to "renter" a human body in that "dispersed into the cloud" state. It's not like Grief naturally escapes the human heart on its own or transfers between people without magic. If there's no normal path for it to exit a human soul, why assume there's a path for it to enter a human soul?

It may be that when grief disperses it doesn't go anywhere. It may just decomposes into something harmless or into nothingness. I mean, if Grief was easy to create and store without evaporating then Kyubey wouldn't have to go through the whole meguca exercise in the first place. Maybe Grief is inherently incapable of surviving outside souls/soul gems without Sabrina's power.

Do I know any of that is true? No. But then, I don't know it's not true. If Grief does disperse harmlessly, then it makes a lot of things much easier. It needs to be tested somehow.
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Informed Consent: Ethical Topic in Medicine
 
FeepingCreature said:
For the record, personally I'm wary of using Kyubey for grief disposal exclusively because Coobs seems like exactly the sort of person who would deny us that opportunity to unload Grief if they thought it'd make us witch.
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You don't want us unloading grief into Kyuubey because Kyuubey might one day decide not to let us unload grief? That situation is exactly identical to what's happening right now. The solution to someone having a stick isn't to grab the stick and beat yourself in the face with it.
 
So, vote's about to open up. I think our general goals are:
  • Fist bump Sayaka. Good job, super OP, keep it up.
  • Land, greet and introduce everybody, be friendly. Ask how everybody's doing.
  • Cleanse all around. Cleanse Grief Seeds all around.
    • Possibly distribute a Clear Seed. Possible conditions: Use it for good, text Sabrina whenever it's used so we can gather data and audit it.
    • Possibly offload Grief onto Kyubey.
  • Politely ask if Sayaka can copy some powers.
  • Share news and updates on how things're going with other cities.
Any details I'm missing?
 
Torgamous said:
You don't want us unloading grief into Kyuubey because Kyuubey might one day decide not to let us unload grief? That situation is exactly identical to what's happening right now. The solution to someone having a stick isn't to grab the stick and beat yourself in the face with it.
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FeepingCreature said:
For the record, personally I'm wary of using Kyubey for grief disposal exclusively
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So yes, use the Coobs, but never ever rely on them. As in the Fable, betrayal is in their nature.
 
Vebyast said:
Any details I'm missing?
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Main thing is talking with the Hackerguca (Inoue Yuuki) about what we wanted to hire her for. This, too, should happen after we cleanse (and provide clear seeds, if we're doing that), so that it doesn't come off as a precondition for our help.

We want her to make us multiple fake IDs - we can forge the physical documents easily, but need to actually have the data inserted into databases. Additionally, we want to discuss the possibility of tracking a cell phone's physical location, so we can potentially track down that one invisibility girl Homura mentioned is in Mitakihara around now. (Kuroki)
 
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Ah, that'd be the pixels. I wasn't sure if she was here or in Sendai. Okay.

[x] Fist bump Sayaka. Good job, super OP, keep it up.

[x] Land, greet and introduce everybody.
-[x] First things first: Cleansing all around. Cleanse Grief Seeds all around.
-[x] Responsibly distribute a Clear Seed. Conditions: Use it for good, be careful with it, text us whenever it's used so we can gather data and audit it.

[x] After cleansing:
-[x] Ask how everybody's doing, be friendly. Share news and updates on how things're going with other cities.
-[x] If Kyubey shows up, offload most of our Grief and then tell him to GTFO.
-[x] Ask to talk to Hackerguca, you want to hire her for some stuff.
-[x] Leave Sayaka to power copying while you go off to be all cyberpunk.

Should be around 120 words, though I'm not properly controlling for votebox xs.

Could keep going after that, but I think that that's a good-sized update. I expect this to get derailed around the last part. It could also use significant refinement, at the very least it'd work better with actual names in it.

I'm leaving Sayaka to ask for power copying herself because it'd be kind of weird if we asked for her. I figure that if we nudge her about it and head off to talk to Hackerguca it'll be a good opportunity for her to make some friends, which is important if we're going to be appointing her the Chief of Police in the future.

edit: Hm, can't do a Clear Seed in the middle of the vote like that because it takes 10 minutes. We probably should've prepped one before leaving. I'll think about the timing on it. It might be better to ask the most leader-y person in the group to stick around and we give it to them secretly.
 
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[X] Vebyast

Some people are probably going to freak out over potential conflict arising from us handing out Clear Seeds to everyone we meet, but I still feel there'll be an overall boost to stability if we do, and I'm of the opinion that humans (and Meguca) always fight over something, so it may as well be Clear Seeds.
 
Gadjo said:
I mean, realistically talking to kyubey isn't the worst thing in the world, just don't chat with him like you're having coffee together. Short, to the point, don't answer any questions- we have something he wants. He doesn't really understand "rude" and doesn't care how we treat him insofar as polite conversation as long as he gets it.
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I tend to agree. The problem is that going to see Kyubey means ceasing to be in physical contact with Mami for a whole entire minute, and people are very reluctant to do that. :p


Karnewarrior said:
Some people are probably going to freak out over potential conflict arising from us handing out Clear Seeds to everyone we meet, but I still feel there'll be an overall boost to stability if we do, and I'm of the opinion that humans (and Meguca) always fight over something, so it may as well be Clear Seeds.
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If everyone has a Clear Seed, then there's no need to fight over them. It's when only some meguca have Clear Seeds that we have to worry about them stealing, hoarding or withholding them.

If we go the Clear Seeds route then we will eventually have to make one for each and every meguca. Even with one per team, I worry that the team leader could threaten to withhold it to control the others and make it impossible for anyone to resign. That's why I wanted us to use enchantment to create an alternative that we could mass-produce cheaply and easily for wide distribution.


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Torgamous said:
Offer clear seed. I'm not comfortable with a vote that decisive while they're still in alpha.
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I'm pretty sure that "responsibly" means that if they declined, we would not force it on them.
 
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"Responsible" should, hopefully, cover all the micromanagey junk that we could otherwise fight over for pages:
  • Give it to the right person or don't give it out at all. Who has leadership, who has the best ethics/morality, who's the most neutral, who do we trust the most, who's not been starting fights, who's fine being a target in the worst case, who won't abuse it, etc.
  • Make sure they know what we're giving them, what it means, and what they'd have to do to stay safe with it.
  • Let them decide if they don't want the trouble. Informed consent, basically.
Torgamous said:
Offer clear seed. I'm not comfortable with a vote that decisive while they're still in alpha.
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Hm, more timing issues, since we'd want to let them discuss it.

Maybe let them make that decision after we leave, and we can swing back around after Sendai? @Firnagzen: How long was that flight? What'd travel time be between Ishinomaki and Sendai?
 
Vebyast said:
"Responsible" should, hopefully, cover all the micromanagey junk that we could otherwise fight over for pages:
  • Give it to the right person or don't give it out at all. Who has leadership, who has the best ethics/morality, who's the most neutral, who do we trust the most, who's not been starting fights, who's fine being a target in the worst case, who won't abuse it, etc.
  • Make sure they know what we're giving them, what it means, and what they'd have to do to stay safe with it.
  • Let them decide if they don't want the trouble. Informed consent, basically.
Hm, more timing issues, since we'd want to let them discuss it.

Maybe let them make that decision after we leave, and we can swing back around after Sendai? @Firnagzen: How long was that flight? What'd travel time be between Ishinomaki and Sendai?
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IIRC, the flight takes thirty minutes or more. We can just explain the Clear Seeds and offer one, let them think while we talk with Yuuki about our totally legal IDs, then hear whether the group will take the Clear Seed or not.

Which, by the way, I really doubt they won't, but no harm in letting them think about it for a few minutes as long as they know we're not holding it over their heads, and we're asking for the legal ID thing as a favour, not as recompense.

[X] Vebyast
 
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So Wraiths in PMMM are the Wraiths from Dr. Who.

[X] Vebyast

Though I think even Kyuubey would understand GTFO is an insult.

Demons sounds like a better name for universal immune system that deviates from its original purpose to kill humans, while Wraiths sounds more appropriate for entities that formed from free floating grief.

Experimenting with humans even consenting humans informed as best we know of sounds like a recipe for creating the heartless!
 
Vebyast said:
"Responsible" should, hopefully, cover all the micromanagey junk that we could otherwise fight over for pages:
  • Give it to the right person or don't give it out at all. Who has leadership, who has the best ethics/morality, who's the most neutral, who do we trust the most, who's not been starting fights, who's fine being a target in the worst case, who won't abuse it, etc.
  • Make sure they know what we're giving them, what it means, and what they'd have to do to stay safe with it.
  • Let them decide if they don't want the trouble. Informed consent, basically.
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Yes, absolutely. I'll break if there's something that needs more judgement calls.
 
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