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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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LadyLynn said:
The impression I've been getting this update is that the Souju's read of Sabrina's character might be significantly more insightful than we previously gave them credit for - it's just that they're touching a different part of the Sabrina-shaped elephant than everyone else, and can't see the rest.
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Yeah, I keep thinking back to how they practically fell over each other to apologize for "intruding on our domain" the first time their cleansing trick came up. It seemed nonsensical at the time, but it perfectly fits with Sabrina's instinctive reaction here.
 
[X] Witch Hunting therapy
-[X] Check your Soul Gem as you fly over there. You aren't Grief Spiralling, you would've felt that, but better to be sure and see what happened in your Soul.
[X] Ask Kyoko and Yuma if they would be willing to take a turn being the therapists this time.
--[X] Yes, really.
---[X] No, this isn't a prank.
----[X] 5 star buffet?
-[X] Pull a Marshmallow proof barrier out of Hammerspace. No need for space lawyers to have another true-from-a-certain-point-of-view rumor to spread about Sabrina actually just wanting all the grief to herself or whatever.
--[X] Thank Kyoko for putting up with us once again. Yuma is young, but children can see things about people that others miss. (eye-glance at Kyoko super sneakily)
-[X] "So, all of 5 minutes ago, I might have discovered that actually succeeding in removing Grief maybe feels like going against my Wish..."
--[X] "Do you want to hear my Wish before or after I tell you what happened?"
--[X] Soul Gem in hand, start from the Soujou's demonstration and........tell Kyoko and Yuma about how it felt. Honestly.
--[X] Fear of cabbits and/or grief monsters? Jealousy of others intruding on our Wish? General control issues? .....actually desiring Grief to still exist?
-[X] Your soul probably hasn't changed much even if you were directly rejecting your Wish, but you can take a look at it with the Scanner. Maybe the blinker fluid is low?

I do honestly think letting Yuma be involved, even just as a person listening, will be good for emotional support for Sabrina, and Kyoko a bit, and also for Yuma herself. Emotional understanding/intelligence and experience has to come from somewhere and this is, overall, a pretty low-intensity discussion to witness/be part of. (compared to something like Mami and Kyoko's confrontation, or Homura's friendship lesson on the tower)
 
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This seems a bit too detailed, don't you think? I don't really think we need such explicit permission to ask our friends for advice. And what do you mean by marshmallow proof barrier?

ETA: after several rereads, i understand you just meant privacy barrier, which is agreeable. Am of the opinion we should just have a permanent privacy barrier when discussing with other meguca. Just gotta modify the barrier to have a voicemail 😝
 
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theshroomdude said:
This seems a bit too detailed, don't you think? I don't really think we need such explicit permission to ask our friends for advice. And what do you mean by marshmallow proof barrier?
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Off-white, squishy and with no real substance inside. I think marshmallow is a good descriptor for what it would feel like to crush Kyubey in your hands.
 
Yknow, maybe we should be thinking about us here, too. About the thread, that is.

While I like to think Sabrina has grown beyond being purely "SV avatar", she still inherited her characterization from us, from SV.

Here at SV we love connecting with our Super Special Protagonists, who can do things nobody else can, who inspire awe and adoration from those around them. We write chapters and omakes about characters just reacting to how cool and wild our protagonists are, and when we play quest protagonists we love to have them do dramatic things and monologue like supervillains because we love seeing them have that spotlight.

And if that's where Sabrina came from... perhaps it isn't so strange that Sabrina would feel jealousy at the prospect of being less special?
 
Edison_Trent said:
Ask Kyoko if any people are trapped in the Witch's barrier or Kissed right now.
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I feel like she'd take that the wrong way. She's already stepping out of her comfort zone by asking for our help, so "is it really that important or can we focus on my issues first" seems like a bad response. Besides, it's not like killing the Witch will take very long if we're going all-out, and we can always talk afterwards.
 
LadyLynn said:
Yknow, maybe we should be thinking about us here, too. About the thread, that is.

While I like to think Sabrina has grown beyond being purely "SV avatar", she still inherited her characterization from us, from SV.

Here at SV we love connecting with our Super Special Protagonists, who can do things nobody else can, who inspire awe and adoration from those around them. We write chapters and omakes about characters just reacting to how cool and wild our protagonists are, and when we play quest protagonists we love to have them do dramatic things and monologue like supervillains because we love seeing them have that spotlight.

And if that's where Sabrina came from... perhaps it isn't so strange that Sabrina would feel jealousy at the prospect of being less special?
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Honestly, I disagree. Sabrina isnt plugged into SV, she plugged into this thread specifically. Nobody on this thread thinks that Twins' technique is somehow bad. Some - like me - might want further confirmation that there's no some hidden side-effect waiting to screw us over but thats the extent of hostility to it. If testing proves there's nothing wrong then I dont think a single person would find a reason not to start sharing it with everyone; unlike Clear Seeds blind distribution of which could cause chaos, this technique is direct opposite since it requires at least two people working together and rewards more people joining in; plus its kinda slow so for day to day cleanse its amazing, much less so for going on infinite-magic-fueled power trip.
 
ExploerTM said:
Honestly, I disagree. Sabrina isnt plugged into SV, she plugged into this thread specifically. Nobody on this thread thinks that Twins' technique is somehow bad. Some - like me - might want further confirmation that there's no some hidden side-effect waiting to screw us over but thats the extent of hostility to it. If testing proves there's nothing wrong then I dont think a single person would find a reason not to start sharing it with everyone; unlike Clear Seeds blind distribution of which could cause chaos, this technique is direct opposite since it requires at least two people working together and rewards more people joining in; plus its kinda slow so for day to day cleanse its amazing, much less so for going on infinite-magic-fueled power trip.
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Big agree here. Everyone here is saying either "This is great! Let's share it with the world posthaste!" or "This is great! Too great . . . what's the catch? How do we protect this from QB?" I haven't seen a single negative reaction in 3 pages. If we are Brina's internal monologue, and we are universally thrilled, then from whence does this potential jealousy or Wish rejection arise from? I'm not saying it's impossible, or even improbable, but I wouldn't accept it without proof. I especially wouldn't accept it as a thought terminating assumption—"Clearly we're just jealous and there can be no real risks to this."
 
The explanation i'm biased towards is that the feelings just come from Sabrina as a person.

When i look at Sabrina and try to dig into why she does what she does, i just see a person absolutely desperate to help the people in this system.

I'm not sure she can even envision an existence that isn't built around being of service to others.

I'd argue that a lot of Sabrina's traits, like how she needs to control situations, needs to push in her perspective or how she meddles even where she isn't wanted, comes from that burning need.

Dig even deeper, and you reach why she'd want to structure her life this way (in my opinion at least).

From where i stand, she believes her purpose in life is saving Magical Girls. She believes her very 'birth' came to be for this purpose. Her wish was made in service of this purpose.

Seeing this technique that cleanses Grief without her, i could see how this might look like the beginning of the 'end'. In extreme terms, like a tool that has been working towards making itself obsolete, but just now realises what this will mean.

Logically, it doesn't make sense of course. Sabrina has value outside of her 'use', and even forgoing that, there doesn't need to be a great mission/purpose for her to still make a difference in people's lives. Hell, even with the system 'fixed', problems will always continue existing

I'm just not sure to what degree logic would impact feelings...

(Is my explanation correct? Most likely not.

Dry reading and research papers have consumed my existence. (Fan)fic info was kinda.. burnt.

That is to say, my knowledge/understanding of Sabrina as a character is shaky at best. My reading also doesn't include the mechanical impacts of Wishes which is actually very important, but i can't effectively apply because my understanding of that stuff is also weak.

Excited to see this chat reach the actual answer to all of this!)
 
Reminder: Even if Sabrina wished for something somewhat nonsensical to the goal of system breaking (like, Unlimited Trees), Madoka's wish of "Everything can be Fixed" must still be in effect regardless. There must be a way of eliminating grief without Sabrina explicitly doing so. We should really do more experiments on what happens to released grief though. If it literally does nothing, then we're making mountains out of molehills. Confirm before catastrophizing.
 
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Firnagzen said:
" We knew, we knew it from the moment we were in your presence. We understand that you wish to hide it from others, but we know.( You are the End of Grief, Her hand upon this world. You are the angel of salvation, born of the shattering of that Which Was. It is your perogative to hide what you are, o angel, but we understood
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Well, there's a phrase that bodes.

As for their Grief technique, I think now's the time to do some Science! with Nico on what happens if we let enough Grief leave our control at the same time, enough that it clumps together instead of fading away, as that may be birth of Wraiths and something we'd need to deal with if we were to share the technique.

Now to try to read the four pages of posts that have already accumulated...
 
I don't see it in the science log. Have we tested flavored Grief? Akin to Hope magic. Grief is already the physical byproduct of negative emotions, so perhaps it's too late to flavor the Grief, since it's already extant, but perhaps we would be able to separate a sample of Grief into its components. Jealous Grief, Furious Grief, Depressive Grief, Despondent Grief, etc. Perhaps there's even some sort of continuum between the emotions which can be distilled into Grief and those which can be imbued in Magic—an Ambivalent Grief/Magic blend?

Seems fruitful to investigate, would perhaps allow us to better understand or even directly commune with Grief seeds if properly developed.
 
Just finished reading the update, don't have time to read the thread (I should be working) so I may be retreading ground or completely off base but anyway here are my thoughts

The soujus veneration of souls is what lead to the development of this technique. The same beliefs that have them worship Sabrina, and led to them kidnapping girls thinking they were saving them once they had the technique. I don't think that's what's bothering Sabrina else she'd have figured it out on her own.

The key is that they had a bunch of victims. Magical girls who were kept alive by this method. "it is easier with more Soul Gems."

I can think of two scenarios this implies. The first is that they're able to induce this synchronization in other Gems non-consentually, which is very ick but not the worse of the two options. I don't think this is what's happening because I feel like they'd have brought it up if it were the case.

The other is that the girls we recovered were the ones both willing to work with their captors and able to learn this difficult technique quickly. Meaning there were likely lots of magical girls that the soujos actively caused to witch out. This also explains why the rat didn't interfere. They weren't spreading the knowledge and they were a net positive in grief generation. Especially if their victims who survived with them were despairing while surviving.

Hopefully this makes sense I'm writing this on my phone while doing 3 other things and I'm a bit scattered
 
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Wutnhammer said:
The soujus veneration of souls is what lead to the development of this technique. The same beliefs that have them worship Sabrina, and led to them kidnapping girls thinking they were saving them once they had the technique. I don't think that's what's bothering Sabrina else she'd have figured it out on her own.
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I think it bears mentioning that they did the collection thing in canon too. I'm not exactly familiar with the source material either aside from the wikiblurb, but their motivation here is better than in the story that was. It's one of the details that seems to have changed with Madoka's Wish.

theshroomdude said:
I don't see it in the science log. Have we tested flavored Grief? Akin to Hope magic. Grief is already the physical byproduct of negative emotions, so perhaps it's too late to flavor the Grief, since it's already extant, but perhaps we would be able to separate a sample of Grief into its components. Jealous Grief, Furious Grief, Depressive Grief, Despondent Grief, etc. Perhaps there's even some sort of continuum between the emotions which can be distilled into Grief and those which can be imbued in Magic—an Ambivalent Grief/Magic blend?

Seems fruitful to investigate, would perhaps allow us to better understand or even directly commune with Grief seeds if properly developed.
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I think we already have confirmation of flavored Grief in canon.

Devil Homura at least very pointedly asks, I think, the Incubator what it thinks happens when a soul gem fills up with something "other than grief", or something to that effect. I think she calls what's tainted her gem "love" but given her broken state at that point...yeah, I'd call that love-flavored grief, as an example. It's just near exclusively formed from yearning and the pain of loss, obviously.
I don't think Grief would be receptive towards "positive" things, since it's kind of antithetical to it.
 
Firnagzen said:
Could you refresh and check again? It should be fixed now.
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Still superwide for me on mobile; all the other text is normal but that one line (up through "we know.") has no line breaks, requiring a lot of horizontal scrolling, and most of the ruby text for the remainder of the statement is missing when the rest of the text does break to a new line.
 
October Daye said:
And all of this makes me think there's another shoe to drop here. That there's something more to it than just the Incubators arranging for the knowledge to die with the ones who keep discovering it, that maybe there's some downside we haven't seen yet.

That maybe there IS a rational explanation to Sabrina's emotions: it's both the Wish that created her and the Wish she herself made trying to warn her that this isn't a silver bullet, that there is Something Wrong Here That You Just Haven't Seen Yet.

But only time will tell, and until then...
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So I'm posting this from the update page (Haven't read to far ahead to know if someone else brought it up yet) and my current theory is that the reason maybe related to this. \/
Firnagzen said:
You watch as the freed Grief tries to clump back up.
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Previously I had pointed out (here) that since we are post-Rebellion that it is entirely possible for wraiths are a thing that can exist. We have also previously noted that grief outside of Sabrina's control tends to try and clump up but just doesn't seem to have the amount needed to do so. Given this thought my idea is that perhaps the girls who previously discovered this process would potentially shed enough grief in one spot to form wraiths that would proceed to attack them while they were focused on the ritual. Any survivors of the attack could likely witch-out on the spot from both expended magic use and the guilt of getting their friends killed. Thus, it becomes its own self-keeping secret.
The Souju's wishes may have been what prevented this from happening to them somehow.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Yeah, this is almost certainly a Wish thing. Maybe a Wishborn thing in particular too, but this just generally falls into the broad bucket of "relinquishing control", which is something Sabrina is bad at, and relinquishing control over grief in particular, which conflicts with her wish even further.
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....Actually.

Maybe that's exactly it.

I mean, yes, I don't think it's wrong to suggest that Sabrina is a little bit grouchy at being made possibly-unnecessary in the long run. But it's not just that, it's the specific mode of the technique -- because essentially, the technique is exactly disposing of Grief by losing control over it.

The technique starts with Grief embedded in your magic -- part of your soul, part of you, and implicitly going where you go. It's contained and bounded and controlled, it's just in a place you don't want it.

Then you go hand it to someone else, and they hand it back, and you do this again and again and again faster and faster until you lose your grip on the Grief. The Grief slips from your grasp, and falls out into the universe.

And this, on the broad scale, is doing what you want -- moving the Grief out from somewhere you don't want it, to somewhere you don't mind it. But in the details, it's a technique where everyone involves forces themselves to lose control over their Grief, allowing it to slip away. It's fundamentally opposed to Sabrina's Wish, even if the end result is what she wants.
 
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