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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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So, uh. I was just contributing to funposting earlier, but I realized something that might be kind of important?

You might recall how I've mentioned a few times in the past that we should figure out who all else lives here, for threat assessment purposes, because Asunaro should be overpopulated with meguca; The Freezer contained nearly 3 dozen Soul Gems at its peak, and only around about a third of that was from the Soujus and their collection. Well, we've been here for a while now, and we've still neither heard nor seen hide nor hair of anyone not a Pleiades Saint (or copy thereof).

We don't actually know the Freezer doesn't exist. It's dubious; we've been in the museum to visit Niko's lab, but we haven't necessarily seen the whole facility (and Niko's lab appeared to be in her home in PMKM). Michiru is still around, and the Anti-Kyuubey Barrier isn't established (though the technology for it is being prototyped), but there's still a possibility that witchbombing happened through alternate means and a pogrom of some sort did still occur. As I've mentioned earlier, news wouldn't necessarily have spread, even through Nadia, due to powerful memory magics on tap. That, and no matter how much timeline flux occurs, the same general events still always occur.

Gemming people isn't necessarily and strictly and bad thing per se, especially in a Witch-strapped city like this one, but it's definitely something we need to work towards establishing and resolving through magiscience because where the fuck is everyone.
 
Always Happening said:
So, uh. I was just contributing to funposting earlier, but I realized something that might be kind of important?

You might recall how I've mentioned a few times in the past that we should figure out who all else lives here, for threat assessment purposes, because Asunaro should be overpopulated with meguca; The Freezer contained nearly 3 dozen Soul Gems at its peak, and only around about a third of that was from the Soujus and their collection. Well, we've been here for a while now, and we've still neither heard nor seen hide nor hair of anyone not a Pleiades Saint (or copy thereof).

We don't actually know the Freezer doesn't exist. It's dubious; we've been in the museum to visit Niko's lab, but we haven't necessarily seen the whole facility (and Niko's lab appeared to be in her home in PMKM). Michiru is still around, and the Anti-Kyuubey Barrier isn't established (though the technology for it is being prototyped), but there's still a possibility that witchbombing happened through alternate means and a pogrom of some sort did still occur. As I've mentioned earlier, news wouldn't necessarily have spread, even through Nadia, due to powerful memory magics on tap. That, and no matter how much timeline flux occurs, the same general events still always occur.

Gemming people isn't necessarily and strictly and bad thing per se, especially in a Witch-strapped city like this one, but it's definitely something we need to work towards establishing and resolving through magiscience because where the fuck is everyone.
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Poke Oriko and ask if she saw anything like that? Ask Kazumi and co what they intend to see if they're willing to say it?
 
Vebyast said:
Poke Oriko and ask if she saw anything like that? Ask Kazumi and co what they intend to see if they're willing to say it?
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I don't think Oriko will be much help at this point; she was looking for fairly specific things, her visions dropped in fidelity the further away they got from her in both time and space, and it's been days since she lost her powers. We'll have to be very careful about trying to probe the Saints about it, but I've been wanting to ask them about other Girls in the city for a while now.
 
Muramasa said:
We have enough on our plate as is. Let's focus on our current problems please.
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I really don't like this logic; we have massive multitasking and putting things off is guaranteed to end with us forgetting it and causing huge problems for ourselves down the road. Redshirt is right that this is the best time to do this. If it would be "distracting", then we're just going to have to spread things out over multiple votes and run at higher time dilation ratios.

Okay. Do we want to risk trying another "do two half-updates in the same vote" thing? It'd help with the Hijiri situation too - there's a natural point to break after finishing the speech and request and collecting the responses, one that I was honestly kind of leery about fast-forwarding over to get to the Yuuri conversation.
 
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Always Happening said:
We don't actually know the Freezer doesn't exist. It's dubious; we've been in the museum to visit Niko's lab, but we haven't necessarily seen the whole facility (and Niko's lab appeared to be in her home in PMKM). Michiru is still around, and the Anti-Kyuubey Barrier isn't established (though the technology for it is being prototyped), but there's still a possibility that witchbombing happened through alternate means and a pogrom of some sort did still occur. As I've mentioned earlier, news wouldn't necessarily have spread, even through Nadia, due to powerful memory magics on tap. That, and no matter how much timeline flux occurs, the same general events still always occur.
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Seems unlikely that a collection of soul gems on ice wouldn't have any grief accumulated, and if they had grief, Sabrina would have sensed them when she was in the building unless someone was actively concealing them with magic or something.

So it seems pretty unlikely that there are a bunch of magical girls on ice already.
 
Always Happening said:
So, uh. I was just contributing to funposting earlier, but I realized something that might be kind of important?

You might recall how I've mentioned a few times in the past that we should figure out who all else lives here, for threat assessment purposes, because Asunaro should be overpopulated with meguca; The Freezer contained nearly 3 dozen Soul Gems at its peak, and only around about a third of that was from the Soujus and their collection. Well, we've been here for a while now, and we've still neither heard nor seen hide nor hair of anyone not a Pleiades Saint (or copy thereof).

We don't actually know the Freezer doesn't exist. It's dubious; we've been in the museum to visit Niko's lab, but we haven't necessarily seen the whole facility (and Niko's lab appeared to be in her home in PMKM). Michiru is still around, and the Anti-Kyuubey Barrier isn't established (though the technology for it is being prototyped), but there's still a possibility that witchbombing happened through alternate means and a pogrom of some sort did still occur. As I've mentioned earlier, news wouldn't necessarily have spread, even through Nadia, due to powerful memory magics on tap. That, and no matter how much timeline flux occurs, the same general events still always occur.

Gemming people isn't necessarily and strictly and bad thing per se, especially in a Witch-strapped city like this one, but it's definitely something we need to work towards establishing and resolving through magiscience because where the fuck is everyone.
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The Pleiades only started to fridge people when they found out that Magical Girls turn into Witches. Given that they likely don't know that here, they probably haven't started putting people in the Freezer.
 
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Always Happening said:
The Freezer contained nearly 3 dozen Soul Gems at its peak,
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Three dozen? I counted around 90 Soul Gems when I was re-reading PMKM.

... I've still need to re-read Vol. 5...

Phigment said:
Seems unlikely that a collection of soul gems on ice wouldn't have any grief accumulated, and if they had grief, Sabrina would have sensed them when she was in the building unless someone was actively concealing them with magic or something.

So it seems pretty unlikely that there are a bunch of magical girls on ice already.
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The Freezer is as Mirai's Teddy Bear Museum, and we haven't been there.
 
Vebyast said:
I really don't like this logic; we have massive multitasking and putting things off is guaranteed to end with us forgetting it and causing huge problems for ourselves down the road. Redshirt is right that this is the best time to do this.

Okay. Do we want to risk trying another "do two half-updates in the same vote" thing? It'd help with the Hijiri situation too - there's a natural point to break after finishing the speech and request and collecting the responses, one that I was honestly kind of leery about fast-forwarding over to get to the Yuuri conversation.
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Our ability to multi task is good but far from perfect. Several issues have fallen by the wayside because our multitasking has limits. Especially when we've been faced with difficult and complex social issues... just like the one we're facing now. I'm saying we should focus on the clear problems in front of us right now then the nebulous ones we're in a poor position to deal with and would be major distractions from what we need to accomplish right now.
 
JarringToaster said:
The Pleiades only started to fridge people when they found out that Magical Girls turn into Witches. Given that they likely don't know that here, they probably haven't started putting people in the Freezer.
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There's a chance that they have been witchbombed - IIRC in canon it was Yuuri the First that did that.
Muramasa said:
Our ability to multi task is good but far from perfect. Several issues have fallen by the wayside because our multitasking has limits. Especially when we've been faced with difficult and complex social issues... just like the one we're facing now. I'm saying we should focus on the clear problems in front of us right now then the nebulous ones we're in a poor position to deal with and would be major distractions from what we need to accomplish right now.
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Our multitasking is not limited to the degree that you think it is. We just have to not write bad votes. As proof:
Redshirt Army said:
[x] Multitask. All of the following threads should be running:
-[x] Keep Niko and Kazumi updated on Hijiri's claims and stated motives while they make their way to you. Be gentle and regretful when speaking to Niko. Get memory device instructions.
-[x] Telepathically confer with Mami, Sayaka, Saki. Hijiri's claimed motives don't match her actions. Malice, or ignorance?
--[x] Take over updating everyone else so Saki can focus on analysis. Yuuri's still out there, so keep hunting and stay alert.
-[x] Act empathetic. Reassure Hijiri that you want all magical girls to be able to have peaceful lives. Whatever the final resolution of this is, you'll ensure she's treated as a person throughout.
-[x] Ask Hijiri for a connection to Yuuri. Ask Yuuri what she thinks she's doing. Keep people at risk from infohazards away from the conversation.
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This vote, with six parallel complex actions including multiple serious-business conversations, was just explicitly stated to be within our capabilities:
Firnagzen said:
OK, no, that was my mistake and I apologise. Sabrina is capable of that degree of multitasking, but I didn't write it that way because I didn't realise that was the intent.
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This is not nebulous. This is not something we can put off. This is not something with ill-defined bad outcomes or difficult solutions or any kind of inconvenience at all. It is not something we have to put effort into nor does it have opportunity costs. It is something that can resolve in two paragraphs of update with a short addition to the vote. There is no conflict that must be resolved by multiple iterations of voting. Things aren't falling by the wayside because Sabrina is insufficient, things are not making it into the update because we didn't write the vote with sufficiently clear indications of multitasking.

We need to talk to Sayaka about getting home so that her parents do not wake up to find their daughter disappeared. We need to do it probably in the next half-hour or so to avoid trouble. I am not going to let us put this off.

Vote is now something like 20 words over. I'll fix it in the morning.

[x] Propose bringing Hijiri along. She has useful information.
-[x] Privately to allies: Plus it'll let you keep working on her.

[x] Simultaneously: Telepathy Sayaka and discuss showing up for her parents and for school. Fly a clone home? Augment with chibi for +multitasking?

[x] Get that conversation with Yuuri. Use the opportunity to therapy-ize Hijiri a bit.
-[x] Hijiri's choices have had the serious real-life consequence of damaging everyone's ability to trust her. Undoing that will require making different choices going forward.
-[x] Help her feel safer by expressing your desire to help everyone, including people that've made bad choices and interfered with other people's peaceful lives.
-[x] Give her an easy opportunity, let her help you help her: She can let go of the memory thing and help you deal with Yuuri.

[x] Ask the group to let you speak to Yuuri alone. She knows dangerous things and you don't want her to have everyone's brainmail address.

[x] Greet Yuuri cordially. Ask her how her day is going. Does she have any plans, by chance?
 
I haven't been following the discussion closely so I don't know if this has come up yet, but...could we just ask Mami to ribbon-snatch the memory thing?
 
Vebyast said:
Ugh. We need more words. Can you work any of your magic language-compressing ways on this vote? Need to preserve the part where the entire middle chunk is in terms of Hijiri's agency, but other than that I don't think there's anything particularly fiddly.
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I'll allow an extension to 200 words.
Tiroth said:
I haven't been following the discussion closely so I don't know if this has come up yet, but...could we just ask Mami to ribbon-snatch the memory thing?
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Sabrina could grab the device by Grief, now that she knows where it is - initially, Hijiri was entirely cocooned in Grief and paper, so you wouldn't even have known where to look. The issue of grabbing it, or not, is now a matter of whether you want to do it.
 
So uh. Anyone know a safe way to check if Kazumi's been witchbombed?

Because in hindsight, the way she hid her grief levels from her team is a super fucking red flag considering that Anri is active.
 
Phigment said:
Seems unlikely that a collection of soul gems on ice wouldn't have any grief accumulated, and if they had grief, Sabrina would have sensed them when she was in the building unless someone was actively concealing them with magic or something.

So it seems pretty unlikely that there are a bunch of magical girls on ice already.
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A 3-7:1 gank can take someone down before they can use much magic at all, or even feel much emotion outside of surprise, and the Pleiades have/developed a spell to interrupt a Soul Gem's connection to a body directly without having it to separate it from the body physically. Offline Gems also have a very minimal grief accumulation, and the ones in the Freezer were further placed in a stasis barrier.
Onmur said:
Three dozen? I counted around 90 Soul Gems when I was re-reading PMKM.

... I've still need to re-read Vol. 5...
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From the close-up shot I remember of the Freezer's Gem plinth, there were ~36. If they hadn't integrated the Soujus' stock completely before the Hyades incident, it could be as high as 50 (though I'd have to go back and check the Souju battle, since I'm estimating there).
AuraTwilight said:
Also at least a large portion of the girls in the Freezer are from out of town anyway.
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While a reasonable assumption, this is never implied, to the best of my knowledge, except for the Soujus' collection. Umika's barrier also only affected the city of Asunaro proper, and we don't know how it affected people entering/leaving the area. At the very least, we know that A: One of Kaoru's former teammates is/was a Magical Girl, and B: There were enough non-Pleiades Magical Girls in Asunaro to necessitate a formal campaign to hunt them down and Gem them.
AuraTwilight said:
So uh. Anyone know a safe way to check if Kazumi's been witchbombed?

Because in hindsight, the way she hid her grief levels from her team is a super fucking red flag considering that Anri is active.
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While any sort of leader-to-leader talk on infohazardous materials will have to wait for later, I still think asking about other Asunarans should be a priority, since it's relevant to the current security situation-- if there hasn't been a purge, the Pleiades ought to have local/regional rivals who may be willing to collaborate with Airi, or lone vagrants who might work for her in exchange for magic or protection.
 
Faraway-R said:
A running joke on Mitakihara Middle School is that it has an inordinately good cirriculum. All based on a joke of "God was our dropout" which refers to Madoka becoming Madokami without ever graduating from said Mitakihara Middle.
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No...its based on the mathematics we see on the show, which is like college entrance exams level.
 
Even with an extra 50 words to play with, I don't think that we can get to the conversation with Yuuri in this update on top of sorting out Sayaka's situation and talking Hijiri down. Plus, I feel like we should probably ask Hijiri about Yuuri before we make contact: if Hijiri's honest, it gives us information about what Yuuri's up to; if she's dishonest, we can see if her account doesn't match up with what Yuuri is saying or what we know about her through metaknowledge.


[x] Gently explain to Hijiri why she can't leave. Yes, she is a real person with all the rights thereof. And when real people steal stuff and attack people, they don't get to just leave until they've made things right.

[x] Telepathy: Ask everyone to give you some room so you can try to talk her down.

[x] Simultaneously: Telepathy Sayaka and ask how to handle her parents waking up soon. Fly back? Send clone? Text them claiming she had an early softball practice? What about school in a few hours? Call out sick?

[x] Therapy-ize Hijiri a bit.
-[x] Like any person, Hijiri's choices have consequences. What she did damaged people's ability to trust her. But it's still possible to win that trust back.
-[x] Help her feel safer by expressing your desire to help everyone, including people that've made bad choices and interfered with other people's peaceful lives.
-[x] Give her an easy opportunity, let her help you help her: Let go of the memory thing. It's not doing her any good now: everyone knows where she is and Niko's clearly immune to it. All it's doing is preventing you from helping her.
-[x] If successful, ask about Yuuri and what exactly happened between them.

Word Count: 197.
 
Always Happening said:
From the close-up shot I remember of the Freezer's Gem plinth, there were ~36. If they hadn't integrated the Soujus' stock completely before the Hyades incident, it could be as high as 50 (though I'd have to go back and check the Souju battle, since I'm estimating there).
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Well, in Vol. 3 we've got these:



Aaand... look at this shit.

Just look at it.

Later, in Vol. 3:

 
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