I'm going to shut up too, because I'm just heading towards a derail down that road.
I tremendously oppose a lot of what I was hearing in here but honestly, I think in this particular setting I'm not interested in engaging with it... don't get me wrong I end up wanting to but I tend to delete whatever I write because, just... discussing this shit with anybody here is so utterly pointless. The impact is near-nil for a cost of hours and hours. And if I write one thing then -- I mean, however many readers and replies later I'm just like "No I do not want to continue this discussion, I have better uses for my time."
I'm going to shut up too, because I'm just heading towards a derail down that road.
I tremendously oppose a lot of what I was hearing in here but honestly, I think in this particular setting I'm not interested in engaging with it... don't get me wrong I end up wanting to but I tend to delete whatever I write because, just... discussing this shit with anybody here is so utterly pointless. The impact is near-nil for a cost of hours and hours. And if I write one thing then -- I mean, however many readers and replies later I'm just like "No I do not want to continue this discussion, I have better uses for my time."
I totally understand—I think it's very anxiety based for me, but sometimes I'll write out a ton of words, and then I realise someone will reply to me, and then I'd have to reply to them and ugh it's just effort I can't commit and I delete it all. Especially since I'm kind of bad at articulating my thoughts.
Anyway, back to something easy and relevant:
Good thing we brought so many people to this meeting; they've all been golden.
Should probably check in with Oriko at some point, see what she thinks.
"Concur," Hitomi says, her mental voice clipped and excited. "Time to be impertinent, they're practically inviting it. Natural lead in; ask why she would trust you with just one meeting. Is it magic?"
Whoops forgot I deleted this too. Anyway this looks really great, the two of them getting excited about their involvement in this kind of fashion bodes *really well* for the long term.
I totally understand—I think it's very anxiety based for me, but sometimes I'll write out a ton of words, and then I realise someone will reply to me, and then I'd have to reply to them and ugh it's just effort I can't commit and I delete it all. Especially since I'm kind of bad at articulating my thoughts.
Anyway, back to something easy and relevant:
Good thing we brought so many people to this meeting; they've all been golden.
Should probably check in with Oriko at some point, see what she thinks.
I totally understand—I think it's very anxiety based for me, but sometimes I'll write out a ton of words, and then I realise someone will reply to me, and then I'd have to reply to them and ugh it's just effort I can't commit and I delete it all. Especially since I'm kind of bad at articulating my thoughts.
Anyway, back to something easy and relevant:
Good thing we brought so many people to this meeting; they've all been golden.
Should probably check in with Oriko at some point, see what she thinks.
The discussion on whether Toshimichi deserves to be in charge is interesting and relavant in the long term, but what's important now is why she wants the position. I remain unconvinced by the 'she wants power' reasoning and I think we will go down the wrong path if we start from that assumption.
Again, a lot of what we've seen makes no sense if Toshimichi's ultimate goal is to be in control of Tokyo. At the top of her wishlist is for Sabrina to join Chiyoda which would make the group much more powerful and secure, but would absolutely hurt her position of authority. She obviously has some kind of truth/intention seeing power* and I seriously doubt she thinks she can control Sabrina in any meaningful way if she is any good at reading us. Joining Chiyoda would cement the group as the top faction, but Toshimichi herself would probably end up playing second fiddle to Sabrina in the long term. We've seen no evidence of any kind of mind control or memory fuckery so far, and we never really had anything concrete about it anyways. I don't doubt that Toshimichi wants to stay at the top, but I seriously doubt it's because she wants to rule with an iron fist.
At the end of the day Toshimichi and Chiyoda are people with wants and needs, and I think it's more important to approach them with that in mind rather than as a political entity with powers and weaknesses. There's a temptation to think of this situation as a political game with winners and losers. I don't think this quest is like that and I dislike the idea that we are trying to out-maneuver them in this meeting. Toshimichi and Chiyoda are not our opponents in chess game and our goal isn't to beat them. We want to help them too and our goal should be to figure out what they want so we can give it to them in a way that doesn't hurt others. Or to convince them there is a better way and lead them towards that. It didn't work with Rionna or Hamisaki, but those are our failings and we should learn from them.
Sorry about the messier-than-usual post. I am also having trouble collecting my thoughts, but I know I don't like the idea of moving towards conflict with others just because we don't understand their motivations yet. It may have been unavoidable in some of our past encounters, but I think it's absolutely avoidable here.
* I don't think her magic is as simple as mindreading or information gathering. A lot of powers in PMMM are very conceptual (Yuki and buildings for example). Meguca powers often don't make logical sense in the details of how they function as we have noted with Homura's timestop. It just works in a way that they expect or want. Toshimichi's magic could be a passive sense of hostility or attempts to deceive, like Celestials in DnD which always know when they hear a lie. It would certainly fit with the mirror of truth she carries.
Random fact: I had this one planned wayyyyy in advance, and if you hadn't gone all in on Iowa, they'd have shown up over Mitakihara practicing exactly that. With their, y'know, gunboat.
Hmm. I think we've about learned what there is to learn from this conversational thread. At this point I'm mostly satisfied that Chiyoda is on the level, though I reserve the right to change my opinion depending on what comes up during the council meeting. Here's what I'm wondering:
Should we ask Chiyoda about the memory manipulation?
As I see it, there's three possible outcomes:
a) They're on the level, they explain that they did it for more or less the reasons we expect (keeping the witchbomb under wraps), we reach an understanding.
b) They're not on the level, in which case this gives us a lever to pry that can of worms open and find out that they're secret monsters before we give them a ton of power.
c) They don't know about it/are affected themselves, in which case we definitely want to figure out what the hell is going on.
We'd need to phrase it in a way not to have them become overly defensive if they were just using it for the witchbomb, of course.
Hmm. I think we've about learned what there is to learn from this conversational thread. At this point I'm mostly satisfied that Chiyoda is on the level, though I reserve the right to change my opinion depending on what comes up during the council meeting. Here's what I'm wondering:
Should we ask Chiyoda about the memory manipulation?
As I see it, there's three possible outcomes:
a) They're on the level, they explain that they did it for more or less the reasons we expect (keeping the witchbomb under wraps), we reach an understanding.
b) They're not on the level, in which case this gives us a lever to pry that can of worms open and find out that they're secret monsters before we give them a ton of power.
c) They don't know about it/are affected themselves, in which case we definitely want to figure out what the hell is going on.
We'd need to phrase it in a way not to have them become overly defensive if they were just using it for the witchbomb, of course.
It might be as simple as just having our team reveal all our powers first and prompting them to reciprocate. We could go from there is nothing fits what we've observed. Might be a faux pas in Tokyo? We would also need to confirm if this is okay with our team.
Hmm. I think we've about learned what there is to learn from this conversational thread. At this point I'm mostly satisfied that Chiyoda is on the level, though I reserve the right to change my opinion depending on what comes up during the council meeting. Here's what I'm wondering:
Should we ask Chiyoda about the memory manipulation?
As I see it, there's three possible outcomes:
a) They're on the level, they explain that they did it for more or less the reasons we expect (keeping the witchbomb under wraps), we reach an understanding.
b) They're not on the level, in which case this gives us a lever to pry that can of worms open and find out that they're secret monsters before we give them a ton of power.
c) They don't know about it/are affected themselves, in which case we definitely want to figure out what the hell is going on.
We'd need to phrase it in a way not to have them become overly defensive if they were just using it for the witchbomb, of course.
We may be able to phrase it in a manner like this:
We have one last concern to bring up, if you may. While it's inconclusive, we have heard stories about some past events that occured that lead us to believe that at least one member of your group seems to have memory manipulation abilities or something of a similar nature. Can you confirm this to be the case?
Hmm. I think we've about learned what there is to learn from this conversational thread. At this point I'm mostly satisfied that Chiyoda is on the level, though I reserve the right to change my opinion depending on what comes up during the council meeting. Here's what I'm wondering:
Should we ask Chiyoda about the memory manipulation?
As I see it, there's three possible outcomes:
a) They're on the level, they explain that they did it for more or less the reasons we expect (keeping the witchbomb under wraps), we reach an understanding.
b) They're not on the level, in which case this gives us a lever to pry that can of worms open and find out that they're secret monsters before we give them a ton of power.
c) They don't know about it/are affected themselves, in which case we definitely want to figure out what the hell is going on.
We'd need to phrase it in a way not to have them become overly defensive if they were just using it for the witchbomb, of course.
So I've been tinkering with exactly this since we got here.
I would take your "We'd need to phrase it..." and call it an entire case:
d) They're "guilty" and also on the level, but we botch the fuck out of things in our approach to inquiring.
But, I'm convinced that it's easy enough to work around and that we should do it. I think the same way you do about this; the worst possible case is that actually they're malicious and we had ought to be fighting them.
There is one other thing I'd like to do in some circumstances, which is: namedrop Rionna Mag Aiodh.
Because I still find it hard to take that in any way besides "Somebody from this place tried to murder us with a proxy."
Codesnip:
[] As you said when you arrived, they've saved a lot of lives. You respect that, and there are a lot of scenarios where you're prepared to just accept it if the memory magic going around in Tokyo is their work. Frankly it would be a bigger issue if it wasn't. //Just insert minor cues around the actual question. "We respect you for this important, good shit you've done", "You don't need to be afraid of this being a problem if you admit it", etc. Little things that change the flow introduced by basically accusing them of mindwiping people from to be much, much more acceptive.
-[] After hearing them out, ask if they've ever heard of Rionna Mag Aiodh. Decline to explain if they answer in the negative. //"We think somebody from Tokyo tried to murder us with an Irish bogeywoman" isn't really the footing we want to establish for this visit, but I do think it's valuable to check whether they have any information on or connection to her.
Random fact: I had this one planned wayyyyy in advance, and if you hadn't gone all in on Iowa, they'd have shown up over Mitakihara practicing exactly that. With their, y'know, gunboat.
It was so hard to not say anything about that. Curse you for spoilers given in January 2017. Three and a half years of sitting on it. *shakes fist at the sky, where you sit, in your flying battleship*
It was so hard to not say anything about that. Curse you for spoilers given in January 2017. Three and a half years of sitting on it. *shakes fist at the sky, where you sit, in your flying corn-fueled battleship*
It was so hard to not say anything about that. Curse you for spoilers given in January 2017. Three and a half years of sitting on it. *shakes fist at the sky, where you sit, in your flying battleship*
I'm going to shut up too, because I'm just heading towards a derail down that road.
I tremendously oppose a lot of what I was hearing in here but honestly, I think in this particular setting I'm not interested in engaging with it... don't get me wrong I end up wanting to but I tend to delete whatever I write because, just... discussing this shit with anybody here is so utterly pointless. The impact is near-nil for a cost of hours and hours. And if I write one thing then -- I mean, however many readers and replies later I'm just like "No I do not want to continue this discussion, I have better uses for my time."
sabrina will have to invent/ pen magic socialism, ie - how to make a society fair when its full of literal wizards. (wizards who pretty much universally have cptsd 👀) its going to be a process, she isnt going to get it right everytime. in quest because shes a young teen (spotaneous creation aside) and out of quest because the voters need to be able to reach consensus so our views level out to a gentle, uncontroversial socialism, rather than getting into insular fights about the exact particulars of the better world we all want to strive for irl. i think its safe to say (given the current political climate) that quest participants are not adverse to police and prison abolition, but again, malicious wizards is extrenuous circumstances, and there is no preexisting theory tackling that scenario because it would frankly be bizzare.
i hope i havent spoken out of turn here at all, as it was not my intention.
as for the malicious wizard problem, i think in future, community defense by organised on the level magi would be viable.
