The pic?
You don't want to know.
I mean, I don't know where it hails from originally.
But where I took it from?
Well. The best explanation I can come up with, without you having to see for yourself
It was an angry Russian TvTropes site.
Edit: Maybe Faraway-R could explain this better...
Oh, wait you weren't talking about the pic at all, nevermind
Actually, the "angry Russian TvTropes site" is better described as "Russian counterpart to 1d4chan". In tone and in general layout, that is.

The variety of topics covered is a lot broader, though.
 
I am absolutely not arguing we can tell people on a whim. We totally need to be careful. But careful is not the same thing as paralyzed, which is what we have been in regard to the witchbomb.
OK, my read from this and your previous post is that you are understimating the Witchbomb quite a bit.

The Witchbomb's effects are far beyond mere Grief build up. Keep in mind the people to whom the Witchbomb is relevant are teenagers, which from a psychoanalytic perspective are human beings in a state of crisis. They're not supposed to have a stable identity.

You drop the fact there's a monster inside their souls that's waiting to kill them and take their place, the same kind of monsters they fight every day, too? There will be consequences. Even if they might not be visible consequences. In fact, it's usually worse if you can't see consequences from something like that.

Many meguca could start to see themselves as witches/monsters, just like Homura sees herself as inhuman because her Soul in a shiny rock.

This is without even taking into account the respective guca's cultural values. I know most people in this board would be super OK with being Liches, but we know that's not how the PMMM main cast reacts.

Witchbombing megucas will always have more detrimental effects than we can see. The Lichbomb is bad enough with some meguca. The Witchbomb can and does kill. (Hell, the Lichbomb+bad circumstances killed Sayaka in canon).

For a pointed example, in one the spin off mangas, Mami gets Witchbombed and doesn't immediately die. She takes it, talks about it, deals with it, and kills herself a few days later because she can't stand the guilt. It's not far fetched.

The reason we could seem 'paralyzed' in regards to the Witchbomb, is because we currently can't deal with it. Simply as that. Current plan is simply to not bring up the Witchbomb, and try to soften its impact in case it does come up at some point. E.g., research de-Witching; even if we don't actually manage to de-Witch a Witch, if we could show that de-Witching is theoretically possible once the Witchbomb comes up, that could help a lot.

It'd give meguca something to latch onto.
 
Looking back, I'm actually having trouble finding characters in canon that immediately grief-spiraled when they learned the witchbomb. There are a bunch of characters that got homi-/suicidal, but there don't seem to be that many that witch out faster than we can save them. Anything short of that, we can deal with.
Um. You think that a grief spiral is a bigger problem than someone going nuts and trying to kill themselves and the people around them? We can deal with spirals. They suck, but duct tape, clear seeds, and hugs go a long way toward dealing with a spiral. The issue is when we can't cleanse them because they're trying to kill us, or when we don't notice that their gem is filling up because they've run away after trying to kill someone. Your analysis of the dangers of the situation is not convincing.
I am absolutely not arguing we can tell people on a whim. We totally need to be careful. But careful is not the same thing as paralyzed, which is what we have been in regard to the witchbomb.
You may be right about the paralysis. I agree that moving forward with the lowest-risk option is better than not moving forward at all. But that's absolutely not the same as saying things like "Oh they can survive it" and "We don't need to worry about them finding out right here and right now". Our goal is to minimize the risk, not to declare that there is no risk.
would have sufficient time to even solidly nail down why these infohazards are dangerous so they don't speculate or ask Kyubey
That's... not how you warn someone about an infohazard. You tell them that there is an infohazard and that speculating about it or fucking asking Kyubey is the worst thing they could do. Are you... is that seriously what you think is going to happen if we warn them not to think about it? Is that your model of other human beings? Is that what you would do if I told you that there was a thing that would destroy your mind if you thought about it too hard? You'd... actively go and think about it? And ask people what it is?
 
Tentative...? Very not sure about it...? Too tacked on...?

[X] Thank Madokami.

[X] Help Hijiri out of hugs if she's too uncomfortable.
-[X] Observe how she's doing.
-[X] Once appropriate, bring up that Hijiri could help search for Airi.
-[X] Futhermore, ask Hijiri to offer any relevant knowledge she might have held back. Airi's unhinged; the best we can do is help her see reason, and we we're gonna try if we can.
-[X] If necessary, nudge her RE: Oriko's visions.

[X] Ask Saki for a Seed to Clear. Make sure to get Arzt Kochen.

[X] Privately tell Mami: Once you catch Airi, you might need to talk with her alone. Ask for help convincing Kazumi if that's the case.

[X] Once the search starts, beware Hijiri.
[X] If Airi is found, be there, be ready to shut her up if she threatens to drop infohazards.
 
@Vebyast: If someone simply goes "There's bad thing, don't ask" I'm naturally going to wonder what that was about. This isn't about me however, so I'm not sure why you went with that angle. In general from what I know, just telling someone to ignore a thing is fifty/fifty and that's just apathy/trust/etc versus curiosity. If Sabrina just goes "Don't listen to Anri" and Anri ends up dropping a Witchbomb, the team would naturally wonder what's going on because Sabrina was too concise. Once you account for the fact they already have all the clues to deduce the Witchbomb themselves (Soul Gem/Grief Seed similarity & Grief substance found in both), Sabrina's brevity is likely to backfire.
 
That's... not how you warn someone about an infohazard. You tell them that there is an infohazard and that speculating about it or fucking asking Kyubey is the worst thing they could do. Are you... is that seriously what you think is going to happen if we warn them not to think about it? Is that your model of other human beings? Is that what you would do if I told you that there was a thing that would destroy your mind if you thought about it too hard? You'd... actively go and think about it? And ask people what it is?
Honestly? I think lots of people would do just that. People are not always rational and/or cautious, and Sabrina isn't inherently going to be trusted. Trying to justify ignoring the warning, in order to sate curiosity, isn't hard.

Assorted "justifications:"

"Oh, I'm sure I can handle it."

"What's she keeping from me!? This is too important not to know."

"How bad could it really be?"

"She's lying. She's trying to keep us in the dark."

"Knowledge is power. I can't fix something I don't know about."
 
I know most people in this board would be super OK with being Liches

:p
I'll not say I'd be "super okay" with it. I'd be fine...ish.
Oh God, my soul is in the rock, what do I do, what do I do?! ( there's a rock&roll joke here somewhere, but I can't find it )

But yeah, maybe it's Christianity and Western culture in general, maybe it's D&D, most likely not really thinking that hard on the concept, but it's not that big of a deal for many people on the thread, including me.
Can someone please explain me what's so different with Japanese view on soul, and why is it "horrible" it resides in a rock, instead of a body? Maybe transhuman crisis?
 
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Perhaps my previous response was a little too flippant. Let me be a little more clear about what my issue is.

I am not trying to argue for deliberately witchbombing anyone, now or even in the immediate future. I am aware that the witchbomb can cause a number of long-term psychological issues if not handled carefully. I agree that ideally, we should get a de-witching solution before we even think about witchbombing anyone.

What led me to include the witchbomb discussion was a couple of much-lower-risk actions that have been discussed in the last few updates. Primarily, figuring out if Kazumi and/or Anri have been witchbombed and warning the Pleadies that infohazards exist.

In the case of warning people about infohazards, the entire point is to keep people from digging into dangerous information, so unless we think the Pleadies are going to completely ignore a serious warning from a friend and go looking just to be contrary, warning that there are infohazards is so low risk as to be negligible. And it's dwarfed by the potential protection our friends gain if we can just say, "hey, we're at risk of hitting and infobomb, let's change topic/keep this person from talking/not talk to Kyubey about that."

In the case of figuring out who knows about the witchbomb, most of the changes we've seen have been directly caused by us or are mostly changes to make timelines make sense or slightly change peoples motivations so they aren't quite as batshit insane. Events that caused inmportant reactions have not been that prone to change, and we've already seen two reactions that relied upon characters being witchbombed in canon (Kazumi's high grief level and just everything about Anri). And it's not like we need to be indelicate to figure this out. Asking Kazumi if she's made any massively upsetting discoveries puts her no closer to the witchbomb than she was before. More importantly, if she has been witchbombed, not knowing leads to her being much more vulnerable to all those psych problems as she thinks she can't confide this in anyone. So while it is possible she doesn't know, the risk of her finding out from us asking is low enough to be outweighed by the potential risk if we don't ask.

And in both of these cases, the general response was that we couldn't risk it. That even a 1% chance that someone might find out about the witchbomb was enough to throw out the issue, regardless of what damage not dealing with it could do. And if it were a 1% chance of ending the world, or every meguca being witchbombed at once, I would agree, but a single magical girl being witchbombed is something we can deal with. We'd probably have to drop whatever else we were doing and focus on them for quite a while, but there are things that would be worth that risk and it's silly to keep ignoring important infobomb mitigation strategies because of a small chance of a witchbomb.

That was my complaint about paralysis. I completely agree with all the above reasoning for not actually witchbombing people, but if we keep ignoring less risky courses of action because we're scared there might be a witchbomb, we're going to wind up with problems down the line. For instance, we may need Nico's help with dewitching in the future. If that happens, I worry that we won't be able to overlook the "deliberate witchbombing so she can help us" part to consider the risks of not having dewitching and thus not being able to (carefully) witchbomb anyone else. I don't think that's actually going to happen, but the point is the "any chance of a witchbomb means no-go" attitude is detrimental, often to our long-term ability to make the witchbomb less of a problem.
 
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"Do you wish to remain in the dark, about information that will undoubtedly disturb you?"

(Guess which let's plays I've watched recently :p )

Mami is OK with knowing more dangerous infohazards exist, because she's got the experiences of crumpling under the weight of one, and of Sabrina caring for her deeply. She can trust Sabrina; she can willingly ignore whatever darker secret is out there.

Most meguca don't have experiences like that, and we're not their limpet, so... yeah, most would want to know, to ask KB for one.

Right now, the way I see through this, is to use Kazumi's trust in Mami; we ask Mami to talk Kazumi into letting us talk with Airi alone (if it comes up) and to not ask, to trust. Hopefully enough.

:p
I'll not say I'd be "super okay" with it. I'd be fine...ish.
Oh God, my soul is in the rock, what do I do, what do I do?! ( there's a rock&roll joke here somewhere, but I can't find it )

But yeah, maybe it's Christianity and Western culture in general, maybe it's D&D, most likely not really thinking that hard on the concept, but it's not that big of a deal for many people on the thread, including me.
Can someone please explain me what's so different with Japanese view on soul, and why is it "horrible" it resides in a rock, instead of a body? Maybe transhuman crisis?
It wasn't aimed at you, specifically. ;)

AFAIK, in japanese culture (a part of it, of course) the Body and the Soul are one whole thing, and what KB does, separating them, is basically the worst sort of mutilation imaginable. And people have... instinctual reactions towards that sort of thing. :p

This is my understanding in a few words. The problems goes a lot futher than that, I'm sure.
 
It wasn't aimed at you, specifically. ;)

AFAIK, in japanese culture (a part of it, of course) the Body and the Soul are one whole thing, and what KB does, separating them, is basically the worst sort of mutilation imaginable. And people have... instinctual reactions towards that sort of thing. :p

This is my understanding in a few words. The problems goes a lot futher than that, I'm sure.

I didn't mean it like that, I just listed myself as an example.

Ah, and Christianity teaches us that body and soul are separate, so it's not a huge problem if one is separate from the other, because they are already sort-of-separate. I see.
Actually, that would really help me out in that one thing I was considering for a few years. And it looks like I need to rethink some concepts...
Edit: Huh. I used the word "separate" three times in that sentence. Separate has three vowels and it's derivative was used most often in the third episode of Star Wars. Three times three... Half-Life 3 confirmed!

I need to study up on the Eastern cultures. And the Western cultures, come to think of it.

( which let's play? I didn't get the reference. )
 
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I didn't mean it like that, I just listed myself as an example.

Ah, and Christianity teaches us that body and soul are separate, so it's not a huge problem if one is separate from the other, because they are already sort-of-separate. I see.
Actually, that would really help me out in that one thing I was considering for a few years. And it looks like I need to rethink some concepts...

I need to study up on the Eastern cultures. And the Western cultures, come to think of it.

( which let's play? I didn't get the reference. )
(Evil Within)

Perhaps my previous response was a little too flippant. Let me be a little more clear about what my issue is.

I am not trying to argue for deliberately witchbombing anyone, now or even in the immediate future. I am aware that the witchbomb can cause a number of long-term psychological issues if not handled carefully. I agree that ideally, we should get a de-witching solution before we even think about witchbombing anyone.

What led me to include the witchbomb discussion was a couple of much-lower-risk actions that have been discussed in the last few updates. Primarily, figuring out if Kazumi and/or Anri have been witchbombed and warning the Pleadies that infohazards exist.

In the case of warning people about infohazards, the entire point is to keep people from digging into dangerous information, so unless we think the Pleadies are going to completely ignore a serious warning from a friend and go looking just to be contrary, warning that there are infohazards is so low risk as to be negligible. And it's dwarfed by the potential protection our friends gain if we can just say, "hey, we're at risk of hitting and infobomb, let's change topic/keep this person from talking/not talk to Kyubey about that."

In the case of figuring out who knows about the witchbomb, most of the changes we've seen have been directly caused by us or are mostly changes to make timelines make sense or slightly change peoples motivations so they aren't quite as batshit insane. Events that caused inmportant reactions have not been that prone to change, and we've already seen two reactions that relied upon characters being witchbombed in canon (Kazumi's high grief level and just everything about Anri). And it's not like we need to be indelicate to figure this out. Asking Kazumi if she's made any massively upsetting discoveries puts her no closer to the witchbomb than she was before. More importantly, if she has been witchbombed, not knowing leads to her being much more vulnerable to all those psych problems as she thinks she can't confide this in anyone. So while it is possible she doesn't know, the risk of her finding out from us asking is low enough to be outweighed by the potential risk if we don't ask.

And in both of these cases, the general response was that we couldn't risk it. That even a 1% chance that someone might find out about the witchbomb was enough to throw out the issue, regardless of what damage not dealing with it could do. And if it were a 1% chance of ending the world, or every meguca being witchbombed at once, I would agree, but a single magical girl being witchbombed is something we can deal with. We'd probably have to drop whatever else we were doing and focus on them for quite a while, but there are things that would be worth that risk and it's silly to keep ignoring important infobomb mitigation strategies because of a small chance of a witchbomb.

That was my complaint about paralysis. I completely agree with all the above reasoning for not actually witchbombing people, but if we keep ignoring less risky courses of action because we're scared there might be a witchbomb, we're going to wind up with problems down the line. For instance, we may need Nico's help with dewitching in the future. If that happens, I worry that we won't be able to overlook the "deliberate witchbombing so she can help us" part to consider the risks of not having dewitching and thus not being able to (carefully) witchbomb anyone else. I don't think that's actually going to happen, but the point is the "any chance of a witchbomb means no-go" attitude is detrimental, often to our long-term ability to make the witchbomb less of a problem.
I do want to prod carefully into the possibility of Kazumi being Witchbombed, as long as we're not during a period of crisis, such as now.

And there's probably ways to get people to help with De-Witching without actually Witchbombing them.

(Like, "hey I found a degrief Witch's soul becomes calmer, rather than being super mad. Maybe we can science how to make them sane and happy". Any excuse we make up is probably a crapshot, though.)

Really, I think the consensus is to inform people of infohazards existing. We just need some help with the Social from Mami's side.
 
Do Not Witchbomb People If You're Not Prepared To Take Care Of That Person 24/7. A person who's been witchbombed is basically on Suicide Watch, and Sabrina is way too fucking busy to devote that sort of time to anyone except maybe Mami, who specifically asked us not to tell her.

Knock this the fuck off, this is literally so toxic of a line of thinking it's making people ragequit the thread. We've already got two fucking nutcase psychopaths to deal with without alienating and deconstructing the psyches of our friends. Holy shit.
 
Knock this the fuck off, this is literally so toxic of a line of thinking it's making people ragequit the thread. We've already got two fucking nutcase psychopaths to deal with without alienating and deconstructing the psyches of our friends. Holy shit.
Wow. Huh. I'm somewhat wondering if this is a joke or if you're really so paranoid about the Witchbomb that you've become strong evidence of the paralysis mentioned.

I mean, if we can't even talk about it without people going ballistic, we're never going to get anything done. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't just skip the whole ensuing discussion in your rage.)
 
Well. This can only end well.
I'm going on a prolonged vacation to Mumi Quest until the fighting dies down and corpses stop piling up. ( or until the next update, I guess )
Later! :V
 
Going to be frank here.

The only sane course of action right now is to warn people that there are infohazards. We have voted this in several times and it just never happened. It is obvious and well-accepted that this is the only sane way to handle Yuuri.

One faction is voting to warn of infohazards with the justification of "They're going to figure it out if we warn them, but witchbombing people isn't a big deal". This faction agrees with the correct course of action but with two or three major flaws in their reasoning, one of which is not just offensively bad but has historically been used by posters who tended to receive moderator attention for making other posters physically ill and attempting to sabotage the game. Another one of their arguments is founded on a diabolus ex machina of such magnitude Wildbow would call it unbelievable grimderp idiot ball behavior.

The other party refuses to have anything to do with a vote that's driven by logic like "witchbombing people isn't such a big deal". This is entirely reasonable, because, historically speaking, people that are okay with witchbombing people tend to do things that make other posters physically ill and attempt to sabotage the game.

What is not reasonable is that the second party has now associated the only sane course of action with the "let's witchbomb everyone!" argument. In other words, people are thinking with their endocrine systems instead of their brains and the well has been truly and thoroughly poisoned. Some members of this party are additionally reacting with open hostility directed at near-strawmen, which further damages the situation by polarizing debate and denying rational thought. This isn't helped at all by the part where the other party tends to react to challenges by digging themselves deeper, presenting steadily less defensible opinions on nearly everything as their beliefs are more closely examined.

You can see this dynamic in the total lack of meaningful discussion about this update and its vote. Everyone that would normally be putting together a reasonable, supportable, and helpful vote is unable to manage their cognition well enough to resolve the cognitive dissonance and get to actually thinking about the situation. They are unable to handle the fact that the correct answer is being supported by such godawful logic by half the thread. That or they're so fucking angry at and disappointed with everyone in the entire goddamn thread that they had to take a break so they didn't get themselves banned.

Now. Can we please come to the conclusion that we should just fucking warn them not to talk to Yuuri because, even though the witchbomb is horrible and this course of action leads to a tiny increase in the chance of them learning about it, that tiny increase is way the hell smaller than the flat-out rollable-on-platonic-solids chance they'll hear about it from Yuuri if we don't tell them to lock down communications?
 
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Wow. Huh. I'm somewhat wondering if this is a joke or if you're really so paranoid about the Witchbomb that you've become strong evidence of the paralysis mentioned.

I mean, if we can't even talk about it without people going ballistic, we're never going to get anything done. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't just skip the whole ensuing discussion in your rage.)

I mean I'm not a good yardstick for the thread here; I have literally irl vomited over this subject in the past.

Also Veb is absolutely right and I'm sorry for accidentally fanning that fire. For the record I'm fine with warning everyone that Airi has infohazards, I've been advocating making sure we're ALONE with her the entire time.
 
Slight re-wording.

Still not feeling this is quite right.

[X] (Not out loud) Thank Madokami.
[X] Help Hijiri out of hugs if she's too uncomfortable.
-[X] Observe how she's doing.
-[X] Once appropriate, bring up that Hijiri could help search for Airi.
-[X] Futhermore, ask Hijiri to offer any relevant knowledge she might have held back. Airi's unhinged; the best we can do is help her see reason, and we we're gonna try if we can.
-[X] If necessary, nudge her RE: Oriko's visions.
[X] Ask Saki for a Seed to Clear. Make sure to get Arzt Kochen.
[X] Ask Mami for help; Airi is an infohazard threat, so you'll need to talk to her alone. We obviously can't explain why we need this, to the Pleiades. Can she help convince Kazumi of this?
[X] Once the search starts, beware Hijiri.
[X] If Airi is found, be there, be ready to shut her up if she threatens to drop infohazards.
 
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Going to be frank here.

The only sane course of action right now is to warn people that there are infohazards.
Well, that WAS the conclusion of the discussion that just happened, I'm pretty sure.

But I too would greatly appreciate it if people would stop reading any discussion at all as "let's Witchbomb everyone right this instant!" I've seen it a few times and I haven't even been here all that long. (Admittedly, one time was my fault.) No one has ever seriously argued that, and no one will.

EDIT: In retrospect, I guess I'm not even all that surprised that there was a secret Witchbomb cabal. No one has argued for immediately Witchbombing everyone... recently?
 
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Well, that WAS the conclusion of the discussion that just happened, I'm pretty sure.

But I too would greatly appreciate it if people would stop reading any discussion at all as "let's Witchbomb everyone right this instant!" I've seen it a few times and I haven't even been here all that long. (Admittedly, one time was my fault.) No one has ever seriously argued that, and no one will.

Actually, they have. There was literally a secret Witchbomb Cabal discussing how to Witchbomb Mami; I know because I observed it as a member. And there's been multiple times voters came in here suggesting we should just rip off the bandaids. One time someone even suggested we should turn people into witches for being inconvenient.

You really need to read this thread better if you don't know why people have that gut reaction. People have tried to gamble with the psychological wellbeing of Sabrina's friends multiple times.
 
Slight re-wording.

Still not feeling this is quite right.

[X] Thank Madokami
[X] Help Hijiri out of hugs if she's too uncomfortable.
-[X] Observe how she's doing.
-[X] Once appropriate, bring up that Hijiri could help search for Airi.
-[X] Futhermore, ask Hijiri to offer any relevant knowledge she might have held back. Airi's unhinged; the best we can do is help her see reason, and we we're gonna try if we can.
-[X] If necessary, nudge her RE: Oriko's visions.
[X] Ask Saki for a Seed to Clear. Make sure to get Arzt Kochen.
[X] Ask Mami for help; Airi is an infohazard threat, so you'll need to talk to her alone. We obviously can't explain why we need this, to the Pleiades. Can she help convince Kazumi of this?
[X] Once the search starts, beware Hijiri.
[X] If Airi is found, be there, be ready to shut her up if she threatens to drop infohazards.

No thanking Madokami out loud.
 
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