Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[Diomedea]

So my family and I just finished watching Bakemonogatari. And, as I was about to go to bed, I had a thought: Niko (in meguca form) and Shinobu have rather similar headwear, and are both blonde.
To quote yet another good anime, "There is no such thing as a coincidence in this world. There is only the inevitable."
Clearly we must warn Kazumi that Niko is a vampire.

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More directly relevant is all the shared seiyus between the two works. Sayaka isn't merely a hero of justice, she is justice herself. Homura has an improbably large amount of writing utensils stashed on her person (in her shield), and Kyubey, even though seen by the viewpoint character, is invisible to normal people due to a shocking secret (gotta keep those exploitative practices on the down low)!

 

[WorldSlayer]

How about we start by trying to detect the shades with powers we have available? They're expressions of Rionna's magic, I wouldn't be surprised if we had some clever way of interacting with them, between Griefhax, Mami's ribbons, and whatnot.

Wouldn't really help if they're going to start dissipating without maintenance, but it would let us investigate without forcing Sayaka to witchbomb herself.

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I've been saying the same thing.

We really need to at least put some effort into investigating the shades. I'm not saying we need to personally find and interview every damn shade. We do however need to at least find out the basics. Are they conscious? Are they in pain? Are they going to fade away as soon as we lift the timestop*? Are they going to go on a murderous super powered rampage the moment we end the timestop*? You know basic stuff like that.

Spoiler: Tally

Vote Tally : Puella Magi Adfligo Systema | Page 5823 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 145562-145821]
##### NetTally 1.9.10

[X] Express gratitude to your friends.
[X] Grab Rionna's personal effects and hammerspace them.
-[X] Investigate the cider. Have Mami take a look at it.
[X] Get an antimagic enchantment from the Kures.
-[X] Solicit advice from your friends about secure places to keep Rionna's soul gem. Bring up your hammerspace as an option.
[X] Vent to your friends, snuggle your girlfriend. Seriously, that encounter has you stressed out.
No. of Votes: 18
Godwinson
angelofwhim
AsuraKyoko
AuraTwilight
Battleship_Fusou
blast flame
Gadjo
Jiven
Jrin
Kaizuki
Lord Chungus
Nele
Raiseth
Shadowhisker
SomeOneElse007
Spectral Waltz
StoneSaint
Vebyast

[X] Get an antimagic enchantment from the Kures.
-[X] Solicit advice from your friends about secure places to keep Rionna's soul gem. Bring up your hammerspace as an option.
[X] Vent to your friends, snuggle your girlfriend. Seriously, that encounter has you stressed out.
No. of Votes: 1
Baron Ouroboros

[X] Get an antimagic enchantment from the Kures.
No. of Votes: 1
Aranfan

[X] Plan WorldSlayer
-[X] Poke through Riona's things and vent a bit.
--[X] hammerspace her stuff
-[X] Get Anti Magic Enchantments from Kirika and put them on Riona
-[X] See if Sayaka is willing to be Witchbombed
--[X] If yes then Sayaka will copy Riona's power and see what can be done about the shades.
No. of Votes: 1
Plan: ◈WorldSlayer
WorldSlayer

[X] Continue all antimagic and gem disabling actions.
[X] Ask your friends to wait for a few minutes for you to try something, 'just to be safe'
- [X] Make the Soul tri-corder and scan everything in the room. Scan:
-- [X] The flask
-- [X] Her gem
-- [X] Her body
-- [X] Her suitcase
-- [X] Her pockets
-- [X] Every member of the team (just in case she stuck a shade on Sabrina or Mami at the airport)
-- [X] Do a quick sweep of the room
[X] Express gratitude to your friends.
[X] Grab Rionna's personal effects and hammerspace them.
-[X] Investigate the cider. Have Mami take a look at it.
[X] Get an antimagic enchantment from the Kures.
-[X] Solicit advice from your friends about secure places to keep Rionna's soul gem. Bring up your hammerspace as an option.
[X] Vent to your friends, snuggle your girlfriend. Seriously, that encounter has you stressed out.
- [X] Discuss what you can while scanning, if it will take longer than a minute
No. of Votes: 1
PulsarObserver

[X] Try to get a Shade viewing enchantment running, or ask Sayaka to split and try her visual powers in passive mode.
[X] Get a container to form the anti-magic box enchantment
[X] Investigate Rionna's personal items, including cider. Read any documents. Store all for later.
[X] Go to the Kures for box enchantment.
[X] Brainstorm to determine security placed on Rionn'as Soul Gem.
-[X] Measure the rate of Grief accumulation in the Gem.
[X] Plans for travel to Yuki, and vent session after.
[X] Plan suborbital flight to Edinburgh
No. of Votes: 1
HeroCycle

[X] Get Riona's things.
[X] Get Anti Magic Enchantments for Riona and her Gem, from the Kures.
[X] Vent to your friends. Not just Riona, but everything wrong in general. Get it all out.
-[X] Cool down. With hugs. Thank your friends for being your friends.
[X] Ask Sayaka if she's thought about your talk from earlier, if she has questions, concerns?
-[X] If so, take her aside and make sure you can't be heard.
No. of Votes: 1
Onmur

[X] Express gratitude to your friends.
[X] If Sayaka looks like she's going to copy Riona's power warn her against doing so today; if asked why tell the answer is another heavy talk, one you prefer to leave until tomorrow
[X] Grab Rionna's personal effects and hammerspace them.
-[X] Investigate the cider. Have Mami take a look at it.
[X] Get an antimagic enchantment from the Kures.
-[X] Solicit advice from your friends about secure places to keep Rionna's soul gem. Bring up your hammerspace as an option.
[X] Vent to your friends, snuggle your girlfriend. Seriously, that encounter has you stressed out.
No. of Votes: 1
Filraen

Total No. of Voters: 25

Fortunately the leading vote doesn't seem to end the timestop so we should still be good in case of the worse case scenario. Admittedly I think the most like scenario is they'll just float around aimlessly until they run out of magic and fade away but we really shouldn't base our plans on assuming something like that will happen.

Spoiler: Worst case I can think of right now

The worst case I can think of in this case being that the shades are conscious, in pain, there's 0% chance we can fix them in any way, and they're all going to go on a murderous rampage that we have to kill them to stop.

Spoiler: Best Case I can think of right now

It's entirely possible that we actually have a best case scenario where all the shades can be easily be given bodies and want to live new lives and repent for any wrong doings in the past (haha not likely).

Spoiler: Most convenient I can think of

It'd be really convenient if the shades aren't conscious and will quickly fade away with a lack of magic. A non-problem that immediately fixes itself.

*Since this is a possibility we really need to do this while in timestop. It'd suck if we made a bunch of plans to save/investigate/whatever the shades only to find out oops they all faded away or went on rampages while we took a nap. I'm not saying this is hugely likely, I actually suspect the shades will stay around for a while and only a few are likely to go on rampages (and only on Riona's standing orders**) if any at all. However we shouldn't be optimistic when making a plan and it doesn't really cost us anything to spend a few hours performing an investigation in timestop.

**Example orders that could cause us problems include 'protect me' 'guard this place' 'keep people out of here' 'in 12 hours if I don't countermand the order, attack Sabrina'. Those are some pretty obvious orders that could end up causing problematic fights and deaths.

Edit: I just realized I should probably have an example investigation technique. This is just an example, I only made it in a few seconds so it's probably flawed and you shouldn't base anything off it. I'm only including it to demonstrate that yes, there are plans that only take a few hours of investigation to find out the basics. We don't need to spend 5 years in timestop travelling the world and saving everyone if you're worried about that.

step 1: Find Shades, this might include making a spectroscope with enchantment, asking Mami if she can try to locate Riona's signals, following anomalous magic and grief signals, etc.

step 2: Bring shade into timestop, maybe grab it with grief or a ribbon if that works.

step 3: Communicate with shade, we know the shades can see the material world and if we can locate the shades we can see the shade so we can probably talk to it in some manner.

step 4: That's it, we've done it. Basic investigation is complete. With any luck we have enough information to make an actual plan.

 

[HeroCycle]

The first Shade to examine is right here, somewhere. The total numbers are unspecified, but Rionna clearly expected to command one shade for her demo. As a weapon, and given her general plan, Shade(s) were at close quarters the whole time. The volume of Privacy is already ruled out. Given that her itinerary was overnight, part of that volume inside her rolling luggage would not be strictly required. Does she tether her Shades to foci during travel?
The time cost to find one (or more) Shades will not include travel, we are already positioned.

 

[Kaizuki]

I am beginning to have a snaking suspicion that Sabrina is not good at talking to people she does not have meta knowledge of.

Which is kind of darjly amusing.

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We're just fine at talking to people we don't have metaknowledge of. It's the people who openly express their total disinterest in not going about outright murdering innocents that we have trouble with. Wonder why.

Oh, or people with no interest in not dying in their own rooms. #ono#ohno

 

[zxzx24]

We're just fine at talking to people we don't have metaknowledge of. It's the people who openly express their total disinterest in not going about outright murdering innocents that we have trouble with. Wonder why.

Oh, or people with no interest in not dying in their own rooms. #ono#ohno

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I will rescind my statement. And seriously consider staying in the lurk zone. I am just not... Not with this quest for some reason. I don't know how the threads social Dynamics work maybe? Doesnt matter.

 

[Agent Whiskers]

We're just fine at talking to people we don't have metaknowledge of. It's the people who openly express their total disinterest in not going about outright murdering innocents that we have trouble with. Wonder why.

Oh, or people with no interest in not dying in their own rooms. #ono#ohno

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Hardly anyone ever likes the person who flips over the table. Even if that table is horrible, toxic, terrible, and kills people. Okay, maybe that metaphor doesn't work.

Anyway, I personally think the thread is actually pretty decent. It's just that the screw ups tend to be really memorable.

 

[linkhyrule5]

When a magical girl's soul gem is filled to capacity with grief, the girl's witch bursts out of their soul gem, shattering it, as it immediately forms a barrier. The amount of grief in an active barrier is approximately one hundred thousand times greater then the capacity of an average soul gem, meaning that an enormous amount of grief is generated during the emergence of the witch through an unknown mechanism.

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Mostly agreed with this effortpost (thanks!), but want to call this out here as being sufficiently obvious as to be worth engraving in our "textbooks." A magical girl becoming a Witch is in the process of a grief spiral with no lower bound; lacking any detailed observation of a Witch-out in progress in either PMAS or canon, we don't know how long a newborn Witch "has" to produce that quantity of Grief, but between a possible exponential growth mechanism (what limit is there to how depressed you can feel if you don't have a biological substrate?) and a possibly long-ish amount of time (nobody entered Oktavia's barrier for, like, long enough for Madoka to walk there, I think?), I think we can just chalk this one up to the grief spiral.


Also, a general note: the PMMM universe fundamentally works on a somewhat conceptual framework. In particular, karma exists, and is key and crucial to the creation and use of magical girls and magic. Note that in Japanese (因果), and Sanskrit ("karma") itself for that matter, karma refers to both karma-as-we-Westerners-know-it and the simple idea of "cause and effect" in general. As such, the base framework of IRL physics is somewhat in question, and it is entirely possible that rather than having "an ability to manipulate inertia," they possess "an ability to render themselves unaffected by <causality as it relates to momentum>." We should be careful not to let our real-world understanding of physics bias ourselves too much with regards to possibly-conceptual possibly-causality-manipulating magic.

 

[Jonen C]

...So, if we did manage to get an update where Sabrina kept questioning shades long after their nonsentient state became obvious, would Sabrina count as dead?

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Triple inverted reverse Turing test.

Convince yourself that you've been convinced you're a computer by the person you're arguing with which you've previously convinced is the computer.

 

[LendvaV]

Mostly agreed with this effortpost (thanks!), but want to call this out here as being sufficiently obvious as to be worth engraving in our "textbooks." A magical girl becoming a Witch is in the process of a grief spiral with no lower bound; lacking any detailed observation of a Witch-out in progress in either PMAS or canon, we don't know how long a newborn Witch "has" to produce that quantity of Grief, but between a possible exponential growth mechanism (what limit is there to how depressed you can feel if you don't have a biological substrate?) and a possibly long-ish amount of time (nobody entered Oktavia's barrier for, like, long enough for Madoka to walk there, I think?), I think we can just chalk this one up to the grief spiral.

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I believe witching is referred to as a "phase transition", so the large amount of Grief released by the witching process is likely envisioned to be analogous to latent heat.

 

[Redshirt Army]

A magical girl becoming a Witch is in the process of a grief spiral with no lower bound;

Click to shrink...

Mmm, that doesn't quite line up, though. Grief Spirals take multiple days to fill up ~200 marbles, while even a newborn witch has enough grief to manifest a barrier. It's true that newly created barriers aren't as "thematic", with more real-world bleedthrough - Oktavia's still had a strong train station influence - but even a "lite" barrier almost certainly contains tens of thousands of times more grief then the soul gem held merely seconds earlier.

Moreover, if it was an exponential growth curve, we still wouldn't expect witches to be so (roughly) uniform in thier total grief capacity - it looks like there's a fundamental limit to how much grief a soul can contain, even unbound by any container.

Also, a general note: the PMMM universe fundamentally works on a somewhat conceptual framework. In particular, karma exists, and is key and crucial to the creation and use of magical girls and magic. Note that in Japanese (因果), and Sanskrit ("karma") itself for that matter, karma refers to both karma-as-we-Westerners-know-it and the simple idea of "cause and effect" in general. As such, the base framework of IRL physics is somewhat in question, and it is entirely possible that rather than having "an ability to manipulate inertia," they possess "an ability to render themselves unaffected by <causality as it relates to momentum>."

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That's fair - rather then "the ability to manipulate inertia", a more broadly correct statement would be "an ability that apparently manifests as having control over some aspects of inertia".

 

[Onmur]

Mmm, that doesn't quite line up, though. Grief Spirals take multiple days to fill up ~200 marbles, while even a newborn witch has enough grief to manifest a barrier. It's true that newly created barriers aren't as "thematic", with more real-world bleedthrough - Oktavia's still had a strong train station influence - but even a "lite" barrier almost certainly contains tens of thousands of times more grief then the soul gem held merely seconds earlier.

Moreover, if it was an exponential growth curve, we still wouldn't expect witches to be so (roughly) uniform in thier total grief capacity - it looks like there's a fundamental limit to how much grief a soul can contain, even unbound by any container.

Click to shrink...

Maybe there's another factor?

Say, a 'normal' Grief Spiral is Grief feeding unto itself while fighting against the very Hope the meguca possesses. But when the Soul Gem fills to burst, the hope is overwhelemed, 'loses' and the Grief is now free to grow without the limit that Hope used to impose on it.

Or maybe it's something as simple as: Grief self reproduction equals (Grief total / Hope), so as Hope approaches 0, Grief self reproduction approaches infinity?

 

[Torgamous]

Or maybe it's something as simple as: Grief self reproduction equals (Grief total / Hope), so as Hope approaches 0, Grief self reproduction approaches infinity?

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In that case we should be able to draw from a Grief Seed forever without clearing it.

 

[Raiseth]

What makes sense the most, thematically as well as geometrically, is that the function of the accumulation of Grief per unit of time rapidly accelerates at the moment of "fallling into despair", which corresponds with a massive release of energy Incubators collect, let's call it "magic" or "Hope". Without a balancing effect of this energy, Grief rapidly fills the capacity of the Grief Seed, before slowly climbing to a halt, with potential to expend Grief as energy and accumulate it again. This seems possible with only amounts of Grief reaching a so-called critical mass, so that's why Clear Seeds do not accumulate despair with any noticeable speed.

 

[Onmur]

In that case we should be able to draw from a Grief Seed forever without clearing it.

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I guess so...

So it's necessarily something about the transformation itself? I mean, we know that it's the transformation of hope to despair that creates huge amount of energy (Grief), so, uh, am I talking in circles now?

Maybe Grief accumulation is the same for Soul Gems and Grief Seeds (more or less).

Hm... A Grief Seed, a Witch, is a being of despair, right? What about everything else? Maybe there's simply a 'burst' of (Grief) energy because everything else that makes the meguca gets destructively turned into Grief?

Basically 'burning' the meguca up.

 

[Redshirt Army]

What makes sense the most, thematically as well as geometrically, is that the function of the accumulation of Grief per unit of time rapidly accelerates at the moment of "fallling into despair", which corresponds with a massive release of energy Incubators collect, let's call it "magic" or "Hope". Without a balancing effect of this energy, Grief rapidly fills the capacity of the Grief Seed, before slowly climbing to a halt, with potential to expend Grief as energy and accumulate it again. This seems possible with only amounts of Grief reaching a so-called critical mass, so that's why Clear Seeds do not accumulate despair with any noticeable speed.

Click to shrink...

If that was the case, wouldn't Grief Seeds fill up the remaining "empty space" with grief almost instantly, and thus be unusable for cleansing Soul Gems?

 

[DB_Explorer]

If Sayaka copies Rionna's power, use her magic to call all the Shades, ever. "Alright, raise your ghost hand if you want to go to the afterlife. Okay, now raise your ghost hand if you want a new body."

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One shade [former normie]: Can you make me a magical girl if you give me a body? Cuase fuck this being on the bottom of the food chain shit.
Sabrina: But...
Shade: Girl, I'm an undead ghost...thing I'm fine with being a lich.

 

[Filraen]

One shade [former normie]: Can you make me a magical girl if you give me a body? Cuase fuck this being on the bottom of the food chain shit.
Sabrina: But...
Shade: Girl, I'm an undead ghost...thing I'm fine with being a lich.

Click to shrink...

Then it results the shade was male when alive.

But hey, it's the best results of a transexual operation ever! We just have to kill you and pull away your soul kicking and screaming and then recreate a body, we have the technology magic.

 

[blast flame]

Sabrina is far from unfamiliar with the idea of being comfortable with lichdom. It's probably only her friend's horror at it that prevents her from outright revelling in it.

 

[Onmur]

One shade [former normie]: Can you make me a magical girl if you give me a body? Cuase fuck this being on the bottom of the food chain shit.
Sabrina: But...
Shade: Girl, I'm an undead ghost...thing I'm fine with being a lich.

Click to shrink...

Shade: "... Or a robot. I'm not picky, you know?"

Random girl shade: "Hey also want to be magical girl."

Another random girl shade: "Me too."

Random boy shade: "Me too."

Random dude shade: "Dude."

Random boy shade: "What?"

Random dude shade: "Robots are way cooler."

Random boy shade: "No they're not."

Sabrina: *Watches as shades start debating whether Magical Girls or robots are cooler*

Then it results the shade was male when alive.

But hey, it's the best results of a transexual operation ever! We just have to kill you and pull away your soul kicking and screaming and then recreate a body, we have the technology magic.

Click to shrink...

Damn it.

Ninja turtle'd.

 

[Torgamous]

Shade: "... Or a robot. I'm not picky, you know?"

Random girl shade: "Hey also want to be magical girl."

Another random girl shade: "Me too."

Random boy shade: "Me too."

Random dude shade: "Dude."

Random boy shade: "What?"

Random dude shade: "Robots are way cooler."

Random boy shade: "No they're not."

Sabrina: *Watches as shades start debating whether Magical Girls or robots are cooler*


Damn it.

Ninja turtle'd.

Click to shrink...

Magical robot girl is ideal.

 

[Laurelin]

Magical robot girl is ideal.

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Would such a being be closer to Penny from RWBY or Aigis from Persona 3, y'think?

 

[Garaichu]

Obviously

 

[cmwatford]

So my family and I just finished watching Bakemonogatari. And, as I was about to go to bed, I had a thought: Niko (in meguca form) and Shinobu have rather similar headwear, and are both blonde.
To quote yet another good anime, "There is no such thing as a coincidence in this world. There is only the inevitable."
Clearly we must warn Kazumi that Niko is a vampire.

Click to shrink...

Funnily enough it looks like we're getting a Monogatari/Magireco crossover event. Inb4 niko is Shinobu.

 

[Torgamous]

Random boy shade: "Me too."

Click to shrink...

Would a trans shade appear as its assigned gender?

Would such a being be closer to Penny from RWBY or Aigis from Persona 3, y'think?

Click to shrink...

I like Aigis' hips, but neither of them seem to really be owning their robotness. Poppi QT would get my vote over either of those.

 

[Raiseth]

If that was the case, wouldn't Grief Seeds fill up the remaining "empty space" with grief almost instantly, and thus be unusable for cleansing Soul Gems?

Click to shrink...

Because they maintain constant expidenture in order to exist in our reality in compact state or some shit? I dunno.