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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Godwinson said:
Wrong. The line from Kyuubey on the subject is that their society considered individuals possessing their own emotions to be something akin to mental illness. It's not that they don't have emotions, it's that those emotions varying from the collective is considered an aberration.
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Entirely irrelevant to my point about them given that anyone who shows emotions is executed immediately (or, theoretically, runs away and hides far far away from the hive mind) so the current hive mind or whatever Incubators have, has no emotions whatsoever. The only iteration of Kyubey with emotions that I know of is Small Kyubey from Magia Record. And even he had a piece of human soul stuck in him.

Kebabulon said:
Deja vu, deja vu, I've seen that post before. :V
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Its not even the first time since I found this quest which is relatively recently. I still stand by everything I said and its one of the few things I'll never ever agree with Firn and others about.

That being said, its a pipe dream anyway. Dewitching is infinitely higher priority, and its not like we can actually kick Incubators off of planet without literal divine intervention.

[X] Edison_Trent
 
the meep said:
I will point out that meguca do in fact age. Mami looked a bit younger when she contracted compared to her now two years later. It has been previously theorized in thread that aging is one of those things that can be controlled by meguca who are lich bombed. And even it wasn't then old age could still probably be countered by the normal healing magic that all meguca are believed to have.
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It's entirely possible that the only reason she is aging is because she thinks that she should be, just as there's no need for her to breathe, yet were she to try to stop breathing without knowing that, she'd feel the same pressure any properly organic person would.

ExploerTM said:
Entirely irrelevant to my point about them given that anyone who shows emotions is executed immediately (or, theoretically, runs away and hides far far away from the hive mind) so the current hive mind or whatever Incubators have, has no emotions whatsoever. The only iteration of Kyubey with emotions that I know of is Small Kyubey from Magia Record. And even he had a piece of human soul stuck in him.


Its not even the first time since I found this quest which is relatively recently. I still stand by everything I said and its one of the few things I'll never ever agree with Firn and others about.

That being said, its a pipe dream anyway. Dewitching is infinitely higher priority, and its not like we can actually kick Incubators off of planet without literal divine intervention.

[X] Edison_Trent
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Getting rid of the incubators isn't the same as getting rid of wishes and magic. They are currently inextricably entwined, but we may very well come up with a new system where they're superfluous.

I like in TTS, where everybody knows about wishes and becoming magical girls, in broad strokes, so people go into the situation knowing far more than in canon. I strongly dislike that they still hide the true nature of soul gems, and the Incubators still look for moments of extreme emotional distress for when they approach potentials, and the way even people like Mami let them tell half truths to get people to contract, though, admittedly, in that story the fate and survival of the entire human race relies on the sheer power of meguca, so I can understand how hard these choices would be for the experienced meguca.

Frankly, though, if an Incubator had offered a contract to me, and I knew everything I now know about the system, I'd still have made a wish. It would be a better wish than I would have come up with in ignorance, but still a worthwhile trade to me.

Also, I'd like to add [] Make a Science! appointment with Nico and/or other relevant meguca to test what we just saw with the twins. We've put off such a task for a while without needing a specific test. We now have something specific to test, something that is a bit more urgent, and the more meguca Scientists! we have involved, the better.
 
Firnagzen said:
Yeah, I'll weigh in here too and head off this line of argument. I'm fundamentally not interested in the idea of disempowering or taking away the ability for teenagers to have power. Yes, there are indeed a whole host of problems with how it's implemented as it is, thanks to malicious actors, the Incubators, forcing enormous negative pressures on the system, and that's what this story is about.

Exploring the removal of magic or magical girls isn't going to be a topic of discussion for this quest, or for Sabrina.
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10-4 bossman. To not belabor the point, as i don't think anything will be resolved in this vote anyways, i will point out i don't have any issues with Wishes or magic either. The issue was always with QB. If i came across weirdly or like i wanted to disempower anybody, apologies. In speaking to my spouse on this topic they pointed out that it was obvious my perspective was now impacted by the fact that i have a daughter of my own now.

I like the idea of scheduling an appointment with Nico to discuss science, but am unsure that will fit in the next update.
 
I dont know anything firsthand about madoki magica but to mw the issue is the monopoly on wishes gives the bunnycats undue influence and power. If we could set up a bunnycatless Wish System.. well. Then Wishes are suddenly alot less toxic
 
KRISF said:
I dont know anything firsthand about madoki magica but to mw the issue is the monopoly on wishes gives the bunnycats undue influence and power. If we could set up a bunnycatless Wish System.. well. Then Wishes are suddenly alot less toxic
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The problem with that, well...

If kicking Incubators off of planet is a pipe dream, then reverse engineering how they even do what they do is loo~ooong acid trip. We dont even know if they use magic to begin with or if they use some other form of energy.

Unless Madoka's Wish pulls extra overtime work on top of already existing overtime work and makes so we run into Incubator-traitor who somehow managed to survive the purge and flee.

Or someone makes very precise Wish now that I think about it...
 
theshroomdude said:
I like the idea of scheduling an appointment with Nico to discuss science, but am unsure that will fit in the next update.
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It's a matter of a few sentences in the update, which we can easily do while doing something else, and actually making an appointment means we won't forget to do this in another six months, aka this afternoon. :p

ExploerTM said:
If kicking Incubators off of planet is a pipe dream, then reverse engineering how they even do what they do is loo~ooong acid trip. We dont even know if they use magic to begin with or if they use some other form of energy.
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Kicking the Incubators out, right now, would definitely require a targeted wish. Replacing the system, right now, would take a targeted wish. Studying wishes and QB to see if we can find another route, or just make a better targeted wish? That isn't a pipe dream and doesn't involve selling somebody's soul to obtain, at least not yet. The more we know, the better the odds become of finding a way forward that is not horribly exploitative and based on generating and harvesting extreme emotional trauma.
 
Wyrd said:
It's entirely possible that the only reason she is aging is because she thinks that she should be, just as there's no need for her to breathe, yet were she to try to stop breathing without knowing that, she'd feel the same pressure any properly organic person would.
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Well, that is why I specified meguca who were lich bombed. Tsuruya Yuki is potentially more supporting evidence for this. She is described as having a young appearance but also has acted in a rather mature manner. Certainly not concrete as I would imagine megucas such as her have to grow up quickly, but it does tend to point in that direction.
 
On the subject of wishes as a general thing, I think the most important part to address in the long term is finding a way that everyone can make one. Because otherwise you end up with a situation where some people are born with the ability to become immortal and gain superpowers and other people just aren't, which is a recipe for a lot of resentment at best and a straight-up "some people are more equal than others" society at worst.
 
Firnagzen said:
"I don't..." You trail off with a sigh. "That sort of phrasing makes me uncomfortable. I don't like being put above others like that - I've got all this power and the responsibility that comes with it, but I prefer to be just a fellow magical girl, first and foremost."

" But you're more than that,( It wouldn't be right to treat you as any less than you deserve,) " they say, indignation and that impassioned fervour burning in their mental voices as their words spill and twine and tumble over each other, reverberating in your mind. " 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.) We beg your understanding, our angel, but we don't( we can't) believe it right for us to be so casual."
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Whoa whoa whoa, hold on a minute. "Her hand upon this world, born of the shattering of that which was."? Did they just reference Madokami? There's no way they could know about that without some information gathering ability. Hell, we needed two of them to figure it out ourselves. If they know that much, it begs the question, what else do they know?

We should definitely talk to them in private later.

Firnagzen said:
And you watch with interest as they turn the flow into a circulation, the wisps of Grief flowing in a loop, tugged along by the flow of magic, and... you watch as slowly, agonizingly slowly, shreds of Grief simply drift free, shaken free. It's a delicate, painstaking dance executed by two souls in perfect synchronization, sleight of hand played with the universe.

You watch even as an indefinable sense of sourness burns through you.

You watch as the freed Grief tries to clump back up. Some of it rejoins the flow, and some of it drifts back to their Soul Gems. But it's overall a net reduction - a glacial, finnicky process built on the perfect synchronization of two souls. And it doesn't really handle the Grief, simply releasing it into the environment to merge with the ambient background, but...

You just witnessed Grief being removed from Soul Gems. Not transferred to another, not by Wish magic, and not by you.

By ordinary magic, if such a thing exists.

By a technique that might be learnable.

And yet... your excitement is gone.
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Firnagzen said:
It feels like you're burning. Not in any tangible way, physical or magical. But it burns.

It's everything you've been hoping for, after everything. A way to give cleansing to other people, without them having to depend on you. A way to replace Clear Seeds. It's fussy and slow and presumably needs considerable training, but it works.

So why does it burn like this, now that you have it in front of you, that you've seen it happen instead of just hearing about it?

It's a good thing that someone managed to figure out something like this, even if it's a demanding difficult technique to pull off. Something that you can spread to the world, something that people can learn and distribute. It's not gonna be easy. The Soujus might be a unique case, but the technique itself isn't so complicated that you can imagine that it's entirely unique.

A denial claws at your throat, fighting to be set free.

It's something that must have been invented before, by others, and... lost. Forgotten. Suppressed. Suppressed by a certain alien rat. Distributing this technique is something that threatens the Incubator's profit margins, and that will make it a fight, but it's something that doesn't depend on your Wish.

Something that doesn't depend on your Wish.
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Firnagzen said:
And... don't worry about trespassing on my domain, or anything like that. It's a good thing that techniques for cleansing don't only depend on me."

And even as the lie rolls off your tongue, it burns.

Is it just that it comes from the Soujus? That they, who keep calling you an angel and put you up on that pedestal to all but worship as a divine figure, who kidnapped and disembodied so many people, were the ones to figure it out? Maybe that's part of it, that of all people, it had to be them. That if they have a point about this, genuine insight into your... domain, in their words, then what else might they right about? But it's not the whole of the reason, you don't think.

You glare at a potted plant that has done nothing to earn your ire.
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I think Sabrina's strange dislike of this technique is some kind of magical effect, similar to the sense of wrongness she feels around witches. Sabrina is fairly pragmatic, not prone to pride or jealousy, and one of her things is befriending former enemies. Just looking at her characterization, it would be odd to get upset about this. Not impossible, but odd.

What really makes me think magic is involved in this though, is that this isn't even the first time she learned of this. She found out about it yesterday, and she thought it was a good thing.

Firnagzen said:
"Gotten rid of impurity?" you ask, sitting bolt upright. "I- you mean Grief, right? The stuff that tarnishes Soul Gems?"

"Yeeesss?" they say guiltily. You get the impression they'd be avoiding your eyes, if they could.

"I- no, I'm not angry about that, but I want you to elaborate," you say. "Please."

"We... we use our( my) magic to keep our friends asleep, to preserve the shine of their Soul Gems," they say. "But even with that, we still need to make our Grief Seeds stretch, and we've developed a technique to get rid of the filth."

"So you know of a way to get rid of Grief?" you ask, fighting to keep your voice even even as adrenaline chases through your veins. Madokami above, if this is how you get your hands on a method of cleansing for other magical girls, you're going to scream.

"Um... sort of?" they say, their voice very small. "We pull( push) the muck back and forth between Soul Gems, and it slowly... goes away? But it's very slow, and we need to focus."

"Can you explain more?" you ask urgently, leaning forward. "I- this could be huge for my goals."

It sounds like what they've got is a way to dissipate Grief, like you would by releasing Grief from your control. Which might lead to its own problems, but if that's something teachable, that's still potentially huge.

"It's something we figured out we could do," they say. "We have to push( pull) and pull( push) the... Grief simultaneously, transfer it between Soul Gems, but it's hard to balance it just right. And we found that the more Soul Gems we used, the safer? Each Soul Gem can be tarnished less."

"And then the Grief just goes away?" you ask.

" We think it gets released into the air?( It stops polluting Soul Gems, so we never thought about it much...) " they say. "We're sorry, we're not sure. Um... we should say it takes a long time, maybe a few hours?"

You sit back, staring blindly out at the cloudy skies for a moment, then you take a deep breath and shake yourself.

"Alright," you say. "Thank you for sharing - as I said, this one could be huge for my goals. If it can be learned, it can be taught, and that would be revolutionary. But for now, please give me a moment?"
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She didn't strike me as being upset, aside from dealing with the Soujou's general Soujouness. She seemed surprised, hopeful, and maybe even a little excited.

She only started feeling that burning feeling when she examined the power firsthand with her magical senses, which leads me to believe her strong feelings about this are related to magic, rather than being entirely mundane.

Maybe its because someone else is controlling and destroying the grief that is rightfully hers according to her wish.

Firnagzen said:
"Sorry, sorry," you say, grimacing as you hastily assemble an excuse. "It's just... I got stuck thinking through the implications. It's... maybe I should have put up a privacy sphere for this. It's dangerous, because it's a threat to a certain something's bottomline, you know? And it might intervene if we try to teach this more widely."

"... shit, you're right," Akemi says, frowning. "Didn't think that far."
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Meh, Kyubey already knew they could do it. No point hiding it when they're just demonstrating.

Their cryptic references to the law of cycles on the other hand...
 
DataSnake said:
On the subject of wishes as a general thing, I think the most important part to address in the long term is finding a way that everyone can make one. Because otherwise you end up with a situation where some people are born with the ability to become immortal and gain superpowers and other people just aren't, which is a recipe for a lot of resentment at best and a straight-up "some people are more equal than others" society at worst.
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In To the Stars, everybody is functionally immortal thanks to medical advances. Only a small percentage of the population has the requisite qualities to be able to contract as meguca, but there are a number of references throughout that story that a number of the advances that made their modern life possible were born from generally altruistic wishes.

Romka said:
Whoa whoa whoa, hold on a minute. "Her hand upon this world, born of the shattering of that which was."? Did they just reference Madokami? There's no way they could know about that without some information gathering ability. Hell, we needed two of them to figure it out ourselves. If they know that much, it begs the question, what else do they know?

We should definitely talk to them in private later.
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Neo-Madoka Wished for it to be possible for everything to be fixed. She may have had to have a more direct conversation with these two to point them towards possible redemption. The impression I get of their canon selves is them being too cray-cray to be capable of understanding that they were in the wrong.
 
Menthewarp said:
To say nothing of how many other girl's (or species's) wishes have defanged the incubators magical interface over time into the hands-off manipulators they are now.
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I didnt get the impression that they are defanged in any way; they just optimised the system to its utmost. Objectively, why would they need direct intervention? No one aside from Madoka has powerful enough potential to target their entire civilization or system as a whole with a Wish. As of now, they reap all the benefits with minimal spending.


Wyrd said:
Kicking the Incubators out, right now, would definitely require a targeted wish. Replacing the system, right now, would take a targeted wish. Studying wishes and QB to see if we can find another route, or just make a better targeted wish? That isn't a pipe dream and doesn't involve selling somebody's soul to obtain, at least not yet. The more we know, the better the odds become of finding a way forward that is not horribly exploitative and based on generating and harvesting extreme emotional trauma.
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Studying them has two problems:

1. All their bodies are worthless remote control drones; unless we can reach through such drone to the other side somehow studying them wouldn't help us beating Incubators at all; at best we'd find a way to install jammer that cuts connection and drops all drones dead on spot when they enter its range but 20$ says that Incubators would find a way around it in two days flat (nobody would take it because its a sucker's bet). Plus if we DO connect to the other side, chances of us pulling it off again or even just maintaining connection are in single digits if that.

2. The only way to study Wishes is to see them being granted. Which requires us observing people sell their souls. Repeatedly most likely. Assuming Incubators even would willingly allow us to use a shit ton of equipment to get all the readings (though they most likely would, they are arrogant like that... Or they know that even with all the data we wont be able to crack it anyway...)


Wyrd said:
In To the Stars, everybody is functionally immortal thanks to medical advances. Only a small percentage of the population has the requisite qualities to be able to contract as meguca, but there are a number of references throughout that story that a number of the advances that made their modern life possible were born from generally altruistic wishes.
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Still doesnt solve the problem of some people having straight up super powers.
 
ExploerTM said:
Studying them has two problems:

1. All their bodies are worthless remote control drones;
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They're an intelligent species with proxy bodies. I don't think there's any point pretending we're ever going to fight them physically unless we could infiltrate their civilization and discover some new weakness. We don't need to study their bodies. To learn about their civilization, when the time is auspicious, we would need to talk to them. Diplomacy (feigned unless given reason to be serious) would be the way to learn about our enemy. They're not prey animals to be tracked, they're a rival collective conscious.


ExploerTM said:
2. The only way to study Wishes is to see them being granted.
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Wrong. In no particular order:
1) Survey meguca about their Wish and Power
2) Ask QB (see above)
2a) Induce creation of Juubey?
3) Greifhax. Magic is bullshit.
4) Soul scanner (combine with 1. survey for best results)
5) Seek out Toshimichi to discuss Wishborn status
6) Explore the Souju's apparent knowledge of Madokami/theology
7) Targeted group Science!
etc.

It's trivially easy to pitch ideas for exploring the nature of Wishes.
 
Ultimately it's Firn's quest to QM and he can decide who we wants at his table. While i can't say I get it, it doesn't really seem like a huge deal.

Have we ever considered the logistics of hugging a Witch?
 
Jiven said:
This doesn't sound warranted, he was argumentative not rude or unkind.
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Thread owners (and even more so, quest masters) have broad power when it comes to who they do or don't want in their threads. If Firn wanted someone out, they go. Doesn't matter why. Could have been something on the PM side of things, we don't know.

Suffice to say, not your place, or mine, to question the decision.

Regardless — there is someone we should talk to if we wanna determine whether this is a Wishborn issue.

And we really should get an update on Tokyo at some point, regardless.
 
I believe the problem was them pushing an absolutist interpretation that Firn has asked them to drop. I'd point to exactly what I think the problem is, except we've been asked not to engage. I would like to remind people, though, that, no matter what your views on canon, the Wish that created this story is "I wish everything can be fixed." Presumably, this includes the rats, at least in their impact on Earth and humanity.
Firn's also made it clear that wishing the system never existed(or just the Incubators) isn't something they're interested in writing.

theshroomdude said:
What if we just made a Greifhax device with the purpose of "Allow me to safely hug Witches" ? Or don't we have a universal translator? Would that work on them?
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It's hard to say, partially because the problem isn't that they can't understand us, it's that they're in such a level of emotional distress that they're not really capable of listening. As for restraining them and bringing them to a more neutral state, so that we can possibly get through to them, I'd like to point you to Clear Seeds as us doing exactly that, even if they're unconscious for now. Pouring more positive emotions into the Seeds before we try to contact them is a course we're rather committed to for now.

October Daye said:
Regardless — there is someone we should talk to if we wanna determine whether this is a Wishborn issue.

And we really should get an update on Tokyo at some point, regardless.
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I support talking to them if Firn's willing. We left that plot hanging because Firn was having trouble writing it, and asked us to put it aside.
 
Wyrd said:
I believe the problem was them pushing an absolutist interpretation that Firn has asked them to drop. I'd point to exactly what I think the problem is, except we've been asked not to engage. I would like to remind people, though, that, no matter what your views on canon, the Wish that created this story is "I wish everything can be fixed." Presumably, this includes the rats, at least in their impact on Earth and humanity.
Firn's also made it clear that wishing the system never existed(or just the Incubators) isn't something they're interested in writing.



It's hard to say, partially because the problem isn't that they can't understand us, it's that they're in such a level of emotional distress that they're not really capable of listening. As for restraining them and bringing them to a more neutral state, so that we can possibly get through to them, I'd like to point you to Clear Seeds as us doing exactly that, even if they're unconscious for now. Pouring more positive emotions into the Seeds before we try to contact them is a course we're rather committed to for now.



I support talking to them if Firn's willing. We left that plot hanging because Firn was having trouble writing it, and asked us to put it aside.
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Agree with everything, and understood. I was just trying to switch topics graciously. :V

Also my primary goal in suggesting this was not to fix Witches—it was to work towards our goal of hugging everybody! Are Witches un-huggable? What if everything worked on power of friendship logic? We hug QB a couple times and then every Witch we meet and suddenly Good Ending. 🤔
 
I've been reading this some of the old Mami scenes and i am unsure why i'm putting myself trough this

It's just too fucking sad

Seeing this poor girl trying so hard to not come on as overbearing, constantly fighting against trying to get the tiniest bit of reassurance she isn't alone. It's really depressing. Going to school must be a herculean task every day if a part of her still believes that one day she'll wake up and everything will be bleak again, having wasted so much light

I respect her determination

I'm also glad there are more people living with her. I can tell this much from experience, coming back to your apartment after a long day and having it completely unchanged does direct damage to your sanity

I only ever had to deal with it a short while, but i distinctly remember a night where i was staring at an empty soda can at the exact spot on the table i set it the night before, and thinking 'if i were to just to keel over right now, how long would i lay here without someone finding me?'

Well... i'll pull it back a bit since i don't want to bring down the mood. Instead i'll just say i really like the portrayal of her character.

When i read a story i'm usually just looking for a good time, but secretly i'm always hoping that something is going to strike a chord with me. Mami has really been that for me in PMAS, she reached out from behind the screen with something genuine
 
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