Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[Kaizuki]

I agree! There is not a single person in this thread who disagrees! That is not what we're talking about! The only disagreement here is whether we want to go in having made a conscious decision to blush and stammer, because if you're right about it being how Sabrina will naturally say it, that line is entirely unnecessary and will change nothing.

Click to shrink...

...

I'm sorry?

Before I get into this, if you somehow took this line

[X] If Mami is still acting like this in the morning, comment positively on it.

Click to shrink...

to be a vote that we do this

Filtered through Sabrina's perception of Mami: girlfriend, this is what the thread's admiration of Mami's badassery looks like. Sabrina likes it.

I'd quite like to say that out loud.

Click to shrink...

then I really don't know what to say, except that it's not and won't result in it. But let's ignore that possibility for now, because I doubt it's the actual case. So.

First off, let me be very clear: this is the impetus behind why I have posted what I have.

I don't think we've been telling her as an ongoing thing, but there was this during Team Oh God They're Gonna Shoot Us versus Team Oh Yes We're Gonna Shoot You.

Click to shrink...

The 'Stumble through blushingly admitting' thing I really feel can't happen with complete honesty in Sabrina's part.

Click to shrink...

She can and I'm pretty sure has told Mami just that more than twice.

Click to shrink...

I'd like to think I've already explained why these comparisons are wrong, and why I feel I have reason to be offended when I'm accused of advocating that Sabrina act dishonestly.

Your arguments were constituted of "but we already did these completely different things earlier" and "I don't think that can happen without having Sabrina act dishonestly."

If you expect me not to respond vehemently to that...?

And, well.

I agree! There is not a single person in this thread who disagrees! That is not what we're talking about!

Click to shrink...

[X] If Mami is still acting like this is the morning, comment positively on it.
[X] Whenever: Be ready for shopping trip with mom!

Click to shrink...

This is, in fact, exactly what we are talking about!

You are literally voting not to do it!

You don't get to tell me that nobody disagrees with me that we should say this out loud and that we're not talking about it when you are voting not do it.

That's not how this works.

Oh God we are arguing about this?

Click to shrink...

No, we are arguing about that.



Next issue.

Please, just leave any blushing to Sabrina. If you're right she'll do it anyway and the update looks exactly the same as if you did nothing, and if you're wrong the interaction is much more natural than if you have her blush and stammer anyway.

Click to shrink...

People seem to have this wrongheaded idea that there can't be more than one approach to a situation that, when written, comes out feeling "natural." That's not actually true, by the way, and Firnagzen filters stuff that would result in things seeming less than natural, even to the point of not writing in entire portions of votes.

Your position is that I shouldn't point the chapter in a direction that could result in a lot of fluff because it might end up coming out less natural.

My position is that if it can be written in a natural way, it will be incredibly fluffy, and that if it would come out less natural, then Firnagzen won't write it that way. Just like he has in the past time after time after time.

But what do I know about anything? I write dishonest votes! Clearly my actual objective is to endanger the natural feeling of the writing by voting for a direction that will be thrown out if it can't be written naturally.

[X] If Mami is still acting like this in the morning, comment positively on it.
-[X] Tell her that you find it attractive when she's being confident and passionate.
[X] Whenever: Be ready for shopping trip with mom!
[X] If you wake up early:
-[X] Check if Niko's awake.
--[X] Comment you really need a way to communicate in private (no KB overhearing).
--[X] Let her know about Riona.
-[X] Enchant Grief for use later with Sayaka.
-[X] Bake muffins for everyone.
[X] Morning proper.
-[X] GOOD MORNING, MITAKIHARA!
-[X] Check up on Nagisa. Apologize for not calling in so long.
-[X] Sayaka
-[X] Did she make a decision yet? If not, that's completely fine.
[X] Cut before leaving for school.


@Firnagzen, please threadban me for three days. I have work to do and I can't afford this. Thank you.

 

[Raiseth]

I am dropping this Quest.
I will still read it, because the writing is quite superb, but I no longer see any point for me to participate in it nor do I feel capable of contributing anything useful to it.

Good luck, and all that.

I'm leaving the vote for this post to mCooperative, because this is not about me making a loud exit and banging the door as loudly as possible with a side dish of [] null, but after this one, I'm done.

See you in other threads, people.

 

[Kaizuki]

If you don't think that first line stands on its own, that's an easy fix. Here:

[] If Mami is still acting like this in the morning, tell her that you like it when she's being confident and/or passionate.

Click to shrink...

then I really don't know what to say, except that it's not and won't result in it. But let's ignore that possibility for now, because I doubt it's the actual case. So.

Click to shrink...

This is going to be the part where I go slam my head against a wall because my fucking brain damage is ignoring the possibility that maybe, when you suggested a "fix" (which is by the way not a fix -- without the cues from the blushing and stumbling it's not going to be clear that "like" has the meaning it's supposed to carry) to be used if I felt the first line "didn't stand on its own", you were fucking implying that you felt that everything I fucking said would result from that first line, isn't it.

Fuck my fucking life. I fucking hate myself every fucking time this fucking happens. FUCK.

Great now I get to go through another fucking cycle of fucking stupid fucking introspection and fucking GOD DAMMIT

Sorry, I guess. Not that I even know whether or not I should be apologizing. How the fuck am I supposed to know how much of what I said was fucking justified? Own fucking brain won't fucking TELL ME! GOD DAMN IT!

... Sorry. I'm just going to fucking leave now. The MCooperative vote will not result in saying what needs to be said, but you know what, I can just say it later in another thousand pages or whatever.

[X] Null

 

[Vebyast]

Goddammit. Kai, you're right and he's wrong. Now put your vote back up so I can vote for you.

 

[obssesednuker]

...
Where's that Gif of the guy from Community College walking in with a pizza only to find everything is on fire? Like, how did we go from the fluff update to cat girl apparently having a breakdown?

 

[Vebyast]

Because people think that characterization is something that happens all by itself and accused Kai of being a liar.

We told Mami she looked like an angel. Sabrina blushes whenever Mami touches her. Honesty means we vote to do those things. Suppressing it is unnatural. This "don't do shit" line of thinking is what caused that catastrophe in the junkyard and I am disgusted to see it coming back. Especially when its proponents accompany their idiocy with insults directed at the one person in this entire fucking thread that can make Mami happy.

Edit:
You know what overrides any possibility of natural fluff? Explicitly removing it from your vote and calling it "unnatural" and "dishonest". It's like you're all trying to hurt Mami by turning off all of Sabrina's emotions. I hope that firnagzen vetoes your vote and tells you all that you're wrong.

 

[Kaizuki]

...
Where's that Gif of the guy from Community College walking in with a pizza only to find everything is on fire? Like, how did we go from the fluff update to cat girl apparently having a breakdown?

Click to shrink...

Well I'm partway through said breakdown so let me give you a basic summary.

A few days ago... Thursday, specifically, I made a really gargantuan leap forward in terms of my recovery from the fucking shit that's wrong with me. And it was spectacular. I was -- I was finally free from so many of the gods-eternally-damned godawful neural problems that've fucked me over the last two and a half years.

...

High up on the list of said problems has been a certain tendency towards interpreting things antagonistically.

I used to be so much better at accounting for... for instance, people just not making the same assumptions as me.

And then I got sick. And... I couldn't... even disagreeing with me was personal. Someone being on a different track from me, and making an argument against me? I could be just furious.

And I hated... hate it. I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. I'm not supposed to be angry over that sort of thing. It's pointless, and I don't feel that way in that situation. But I couldn't fix myself well enough / fast enough / at all, at first. And so I gradually practiced accounting for it. If I couldn't not feel that way, then I could take actions that would avoid reflecting my feeling that way.

It didn't always work, but it worked well enough. I mean, I haven't gotten thrown off the site, yeah? Fucking miracle that. Dunno how the bloody hell I managed it.

And then... Thursday, I... I wasn't completely well. But it was... it was amazing. An ocean to a puddle. I was free.

And then, as always, I fell backwards. Because that's how this works. I get things, they go away, I get them again more easily, eventually I keep them.

Today I recovered a ton.

But not as much as Thursday.

I made the mistake of thinking I was free. I thought I wasn't subject to the bullshit I've fought off for the last two and a half years. I didn't police my actions...

And I promptly interpreted Torg misinterpreting something as him doing... maybe not something actively malicious but certainly idiotic enough to resemble it. And then I wrote that thing.

Guess what?

I was wrong.

I was wrong.

How much of what I said can I stand by? What parts of it are just vitriol and bias charged into pretty words? Can I even think rationally about the problem anymore, with all the... the... thatness attached to it?

 

[Vebyast]

Kai. Torg said that voting to properly represent Sabrina's emotions was "dishonest" and "unnatural". Accurately modeling his mind is not useful or healthy. Stop trying to do it.

 

[Torgamous]

you were fucking implying that you felt that everything I fucking said would result from that first line, isn't it.

Click to shrink...

No, you're right that mCooperative's vote doesn't really say that on its own, but the result you're going for seemed so obvious that I hadn't really thought about it. Which ends with me supporting a vote that's subject to basically the same objection I raised to your vote but in the other direction.

You know what overrides any possibility of natural fluff? Explicitly removing it from your vote and calling it "unnatural" and "dishonest".

Click to shrink...

That's not what this is.

 

[Kaizuki]

Kai. Torg said that voting to properly represent Sabrina's emotions was "dishonest" and "unnatural". Accurately modeling his mind is not useful or healthy. Stop trying to do it.

Click to shrink...

None of that's the problem, Vebyast.

If you don't think that first line stands on its own, that's an easy fix. Here:

[] If Mami is still acting like this in the morning, tell her that you like it when she's being confident and/or passionate.

Click to shrink...

This is, in fact, exactly what we are talking about!

You are literally voting not to do it!

Click to shrink...

This is the problem.

He... he literally said it. "If you don't think that first line stands on it's own, that's an easy fix. Here: just alter the first line so it's a little more specific."

And I guarantee that I read that post. Because... because I did.

 

[Vebyast]

No, you're right that mCooperative's vote doesn't really say that on its own, but the result you're going for seemed so obvious that I hadn't really thought about it. Which ends with me supporting a vote that's subject to basically the same objection I raised to your vote but in the other direction.

That's not what this is.

Click to shrink...

Then explain why you are making your vote blatantly disagree with reality and saying that that's better than an accurate vote.


Edit: Sabrina blushes and stammers when she says things like that to Mami. If you explicitly remove that from your vote, your vote is less accurate. It pushes Sabrina away from blushing and stammering when she says those things. There may be a problem with the first line, but the blushing and stammering was an observation of reality. Removing it is not what was needed.

 

[Kaizuki]

[X] If Mami is still acting like this in the morning, comment positively on it.
[X] Blushingly admit that you like it when she's being confident and/or passionate. It's... attractive.
-[X] Kiss her on the cheek.
[X] Whenever: Be ready for shopping trip with mom!
[X] If you wake up early:
-[X] Check if Niko's awake.
--[X] Comment you really need a way to communicate in private (no KB overhearing).
--[X] Let her know about Riona.
-[X] Enchant Grief for use later with Sayaka.
-[X] Bake muffins for everyone.
[X] Morning proper.
-[X] GOOD MORNING, MITAKIHARA!
-[X] Check up on Nagisa. Apologize for not calling in so long.
-[X] Sayaka
-[X] Did she make a decision yet? If not, that's completely fine.
[X] Cut before leaving for school.

If it's somehow unnatural firn won't print it. If it is natural it'll be Top Fluff. I think that's all there is to be said. That much, at least, was accurate.

 

[Torgamous]

Then explain why you are making your vote blatantly disagree with reality and saying that that's better than an accurate vote.

Click to shrink...

I wasn't voting to compliment Homura's massive biceps, I was voting for an insufficiently specific directive instead of an overly specific one.

[x] Kaizuki

 

[Vebyast]

[x] kaizuki

Thank you.

 

[Kaizuki]

I made the mistake of thinking I was free. I thought I wasn't subject to the bullshit I've fought off for the last two and a half years. I didn't police my actions...

Click to shrink...

I was too broken to be a decent person if I just acted the way I was. So I crafted a ramshackle emulator in what mind I had, and I ran my image of myself on it at a lag.

It's... I'm... Thursday. Thursday, I was able to do away with it. To stop second-guessing my every action, to stop trying to edit what I write into what it should be if I myself were writing.

 

[rkyeun]

Hmm, do we need to make some kind of good familiars that eat people's grief?

Click to shrink...

SphereAnts. Instead of CubeBees.

 

[Vebyast]

wasn't voting to compliment Homura's massive biceps, I was voting for an insufficiently specific directive instead of an overly specific one.

Click to shrink...

If you don't mind, I'm going to use your post here as the platform for a small aside on information theory in the context of linguistics.

Accuracy and precision are different things. Language rarely has enough degrees of freedom for a movement through the space of possible natural-language statements to change precisely one of those dimensions. They are tightly coupled.



The decrease in specificity in your vote admitted many, many more new universes in which Sabrina was not acting correctly than it admitted new universes in which she acted correctly. You see how, in the above visualization, the larger circle is not only twice the size of the target but centered well outside it? It may cover more of the target - even quite a bit more - but it also covers a ton of stuff that's not on the target at all.

Now read these things:

The 'Stumble through blushingly admitting' thing I really feel can't happen with complete honesty in Sabrina's part.

Click to shrink...

that line is entirely unnecessary and will change nothing.

Click to shrink...

That line may change nothing, but simply removing it was flat-out wrong. It was less precise, but the loss of precision was weighted waaaay to one side, introducing a huge amount of error.

If you really want to hedge your bets, you'd write something like "Admit to Mami that you like her. No, you're not blushing, that's just, uh, swamp gas reflecting the light of Venus. Wait, no, Venus is yellow, blushing is pink, swamp gas reflecting the light of Mars, yes that's better, and it even goes with Mami's goddess-of-war symbolism, perfect!". Then Sabrina is totally not blushing at all.

 

[Script Mak3r]

[x] In catgirl we trust

 

[StoneSaint]

[x] Kaizuki

 

[Redshirt Army]

I mean, I kind of fundamentally disagree with the idea of Sabrina as a stammering mess. It just really doesn't fit her characterization in all but the most extreme scenarios, and I don't see admitting a romantic interest in Mami as an extreme scenario.

We've kissed her (in front of all of her/our friends!), we told her that we were going to pick the next date location, we told her she looks particularly good in certain outfits. For all practical purposes we've already confessed.

 

[Onmur]

For all practical purposes we've already confessed.

Click to shrink...

I don't think I'm disagreeing with you, and this might be pendantic, but this sentence makes me, instinctively, not rationally perhaps, think that no, we haven't covered all practical purposes.

The actualy confession is very important!

(Though I don't know if it can be boarded during the duration of the quest proper, or should be left for post-quest-Brina due to historical quest board reasons, eg., same reason Moid changed POVs when writing SayaKyou fluff some times).

So now I'm looking up the definition of 'practical purposes' online.

 

[Redshirt Army]

I don't think we've flat out said "I love you," but then again Kai's vote doesn't do that either.

...

Why don't we just do that?

 

[Vebyast]

I mean, I kind of fundamentally disagree with the idea of Sabrina as a stammering mess. It just really doesn't fit her characterization in all but the most extreme scenarios, and I don't see admitting a romantic interest in Mami as an extreme scenario.

We've kissed her (in front of all of her/our friends!), we told her that we were going to pick the next date location, we told her she looks particularly good in certain outfits. For all practical purposes we've already confessed.

Click to shrink...

Sabrina's already stumbled her way through the bigger bits of the last update. Not "stammering" yet, but definitely headed in that direction:

"Thank you," you murmur. "I... I don't want to be alone, either."

Click to shrink...

"I..." you stir, pulling back and smiling at Mami. "It's... it's hard to articulate these things, sometimes, but... I could show you."

Click to shrink...

It kind of makes sense, thematically? The biggest mystery we have is still Sabrina herself.

Why don't we just do that?

Click to shrink...

Hmm. I actually don't know! Are we saving it for something?

 

[Onmur]

I don't think we've flat out said "I love you," but then again Kai's vote doesn't do that either.

...

Why don't we just do that?

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: TL;DR

It's been only two weeks.

Remember Mami's reactions to waking up hugging Sabrina? A love confession might be too much at this point, it's not risk free.

Their relationship is progressing very well as it is, and Mami and Sabrina are enjoying it. A change of pace is, at least, not strictly necessary.

Quick made relationships and confessions tend to, IRL, be a thing psychology-studied professionals look out for as a symptom of something being wrong in a teenager's life.

Quest boards history requires any sort of first person writen romance to be writen veeeeeery carefully.

I think there's a few concerns, based on that it's only been two weeks that Mami and Sabrina have known each other.

One concern is that it might be way, way too quick for Mami. Sabrina and Mami have been progressing their relationship inch by painstaking inch, and it's working and progressing pretty well.

Teenagers in general need time, sometimes lots of time to do this progress. Midjudging the... speed at which to advance a relationship can be catastrophic. To not exaggerate, teenager psychology 101 is to look out for teens who are comfortable going straight into confessions and such without prior experience, because it's a sign something might be very wrong.

Related, relationships that develop very fast tend to also break apart very fast. It is one thing that worries me about O&K, though tempered somewhat by the fact their relationship is bound by a Wish.

I don't know if it's a reflection of the thread, or simply caution because of the past history of quest boards, but I think Firn wants to be cautious with this; he's admitted to being unsure as to whether he's handled the whole relationship well enough so far.

And, well, Sabrina's and Mami's relationship is working, and growing each day. Is there a need to skip to love confessions two weeks in? Beyond the concern of how Mami (or Sabrina, I guess?) would take it, is it not going to happen in the future in which Sabrina and Mami enjoy their relationship together, that we need it to happen now?

 

[Kaizuki]

What onmur said and also I'd prefer to hold on to it for later usage.

We only get to say it the first time once. Lemme figure out where we are after this and see what issues crop up. Then we can figure things out.