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Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You

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I just remembered a potential way to get more time.

Echo said:
"Um, this is kind of a silly question, but... do you really not need to sleep?"

Maiko laughs. "Technically, no. In fact, technically I can survive without food, water, or even air. Magical girls are ultimately sustained by their magic. Of course, it's wasteful to burn magic providing your body with energy you could get from eating, but sleep is entirely unnecessary."

"Whoa," you say. "So I could totally get all my homework done then stay up all night reading manga and still be fine in school the next day?"

"With practice," Maiko says. "Sleeping is a hard habit to break."
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Any arguments for why we shouldn't ask Maiko for advice on breaking this unhealthy habit, and possibly trying to practice tonight? I'm pretty sure that time is much more valuable to us than a few Grief Seeds; in fact, it could be spent on getting more Grief Seeds.
Also, consider the fact that magical invasions are likely to occur at night, so Yui is going to need to pull all-nighters then go to school anyway; it's better if we learn it now.
 
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I read somewhere that we would get sleep deprivation for a while, possibly hurting our combat effectiveness. Other then that, I can't really think of any reasons to say no.
 
somewhatLazy said:
I read somewhere that we would get sleep deprivation for a while, possibly hurting our combat effectiveness
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Well, according to Maiko, it's possible to just get rid of sleep with no negative consequences, in long-term. Even if Yui would be a little sleep-deprived in the transition period, it would offer massive benefits later, when the situation really worsens. I think cost/benefit here is in favour of trying it now.

@Crimson Doom, @somewhatLazy, @Shaseyu, @DarkLight140, @redzonejoe, would you mind me adding the following into my vote?

[ ] Ask about learning to not sleep. Time is very valuable in your situation, after all. Is there any tips Maiko can offer? How long the transition to sleepless existence would take? Is it possible to gradually decrease the length of sleep, as opposed to ceasing sleeping all at once?
-[] If the transition wouldn't take too long and won't be too taxing on your mental state, begin practicing not sleeping tonight.
 
Noumero said:
[ ] Ask about learning to not sleep. Time is very valuable in your situation, after all. Is there any tips Maiko can offer? How long the transition to sleepless existence would take? Is it possible to gradually decrease the length of sleep, as opposed to ceasing sleeping all at once?
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Don't think it'll actually work (Maiko probably will be against that), but there is no harm in asking.
 
While I agree that learning to not sleep is important, given that we know there is a fairly sizable period of disorientation and sleep deprivation involved before we can adjust I'm not comfortable doing it right now. We need to have enough minions lieutenants trusted friends available to handle anything and everything which comes up without Yui's input, on the assumption that Yui will be functionally unavailable, before I'm willing to support going ahead with that.

Sleep deprivation is really bad for effectiveness in all endeavors and the organization we're building in Nagamioka is heavily dependent upon Yui's social skills. We can't effectively conduct recruitment and diplomacy as a groggy near-incompetent (which is what basically anyone becomes after two or three days without sleep) and there is currently no one that I would trust to handle that even close to as well as Yui can. Given the incredibly high priority that recruitment and diplomacy have right now, that means taking Yui out of action for even a few days is an unacceptable cost. Combat is less of a problem, if only because we have more combat skill than social skill on hand in a pinch.

I don't have a problem with gathering information about it but actually putting it into practice seems premature unless we can count on the disruption of Yui's competence being minimal (which as far as I know we can't). Maybe we could start learning related skills- ignoring pain or hunger, for example- in an effort to prep in a way that won't impact our abilities?
 
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@DarkLight140, point taken. Would you disagree with the following?:

[ ] Ask about learning to not sleep. Time is very valuable in your situation, after all. Is there any tips Maiko can offer? How long the transition to sleepless existence would take? Is it possible to gradually decrease the length of sleep, as opposed to ceasing sleeping all at once, or otherwise ease into the transition?
-[] If there are ways to start getting rid of sleep without major negative effects on your mental state, begin practicing it tonight.
 
I like it.

Ideally, we'd start off by supplementing sleep with magic. Make it so we only need 5 hours a night instead of 8. Then 4, then 3, then 5 or 6 every two days, etc.
 
That seems reasonable enough. I'm a little wary of exactly will or won't qualify as "major negative effects", but presumably the characters can handle the details without screwing it up.

We need to get pain negation lessons sooner rather than later, too. Our combat effectiveness was significantly decreased by tanking a couple crossbow bolts, and being able to disable us with such comparatively minor injuries is a huge problem in battle. It's probably more likely to get us killed than a called shot to the soul gem if we don't handle it.
 
Okay, so this meta-motion is passes by a majority vote. @Crimson Doom is, of course, free to raise his objections later or change his vote.

[X] Accept
-[X] Meet them after school tomorrow

[X] Head home, do homework, then go to bed
-[X] Ask Maiko to use her spookybook tonight to find info on the Nerima group.
--[X] Mention the possibility of Soul Gem protection. Between Maiko, Himari, magical objects left from other members of Momoko's team, and your potentially versatile magic, is it possible to accomplish at least one of the following: protective casing for Soul Gems, decoy Soul Gems, Soul Gem concealment, perception-blocking enchantments?
---[X] Stress that it's not a top priority right now, so Maiko shouldn't overwork herself because of it, but it's something to consider for long-term.
--[X] Ask about learning to not sleep. Time is very valuable in your situation, after all. Is there any tips Maiko can offer? How long the transition to sleepless existence would take? Is it possible to gradually decrease the length of sleep, as opposed to ceasing sleeping all at once, or otherwise ease into the transition?
--[X] If there are ways to start getting rid of sleep without major negative effects on your mental state, begin practicing it tonight.
-[X] Have Minami locate the Yoshikawa and Kawaguchi girls via spy sat and knowing where they live. Determine magical girl status if possible.
--[X] If either is a magical girl, brainmail them (MinamiNet optional) and introduce yourself, arranging an in-person meeting at their convenience or "as fast as I can walk over there", whichever they'd like.
--[X] If you haven't given Yumi's old team their seeds yet, brainmail them to meet you sometime at their convenience for a handover.

[X] Just follow your usual routine for going to school

DarkLight140 said:
We need to get pain negation lessons sooner rather than later, too. Our combat effectiveness was significantly impacted by taking a couple crossbow bolts, and being able to disable us with such comparatively minor injuries is a huge problem in battle
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Good point. I already suggested scheduling training/sparring for Yui and other new magical girls; perhaps it could be done as part of it?
 
Noumero said:
@DarkLight140, point taken. Would you disagree with the following?:

[ ] Ask about learning to not sleep. Time is very valuable in your situation, after all. Is there any tips Maiko can offer? How long the transition to sleepless existence would take? Is it possible to gradually decrease the length of sleep, as opposed to ceasing sleeping all at once, or otherwise ease into the transition?
-[] If there are ways to start getting rid of sleep without major negative effects on your mental state, begin practicing it tonight.
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I personally don't like this. Like, kind of a lot. While there aren't explicit consequences for it, I would argue there is a need to maintain as much as Yui's normality as possible. Maiko hinted at it earlier on, but girls who abandon their normal lives or even aspects of them have a really crappy time of it all. We've seen a lot of unhappy full-time magical girls, I'd rather avoid that if at all possible.
This just kind of pushes Yui into future behaviours that when asked to prioritise meguca-ing and maintaining her normal life, she'll pick meguca. Which is good from a take-control-of-the-city standpoint, but there is a life beyond this.
I mean, in all likelyhood this will all end in tears so it won't be a real concern but again, I'd rather put the effort into maintaining Yui's normal life over other possibilities.

For another thing, I dislike from a kind of meta perspective, which is more of a super-duper personal arguement that can be ignored. I think it's not really something Yui would ask for and that we're only pushing for it for mechanical benefits over actually dealing with any particular problems at hand. Same with the magical gem protection thing, but that doesn't have any other issue attached to it, so I can't really argue against it.
 
Subjective said:
I personally don't like this. Like, kind of a lot. While there aren't explicit consequences for it, I would argue there is a need to maintain as much as Yui's normality as possible. Maiko hinted at it earlier on, but girls who abandon their normal lives or even aspects of them have a really crappy time of it all. We've seen a lot of unhappy full-time magical girls, I'd rather avoid that if at all possible.
This just kind of pushes Yui into future behaviours that when asked to prioritise meguca-ing and maintaining her normal life, she'll pick meguca. Which is good from a take-control-of-the-city standpoint, but there is a life beyond this.
I mean, in all likelyhood this will all end in tears so it won't be a real concern but again, I'd rather put the effort into maintaining Yui's normal life over other possibilities.

For another thing, I dislike from a kind of meta perspective, which is more of a super-duper personal arguement that can be ignored. I think it's not really something Yui would ask for and that we're only pushing for it for mechanical benefits over actually dealing with any particular problems at hand. Same with the magical gem protection thing, but that doesn't have any other issue attached to it, so I can't really argue against it.
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Likewise. Not to mention that more playable time in a day slows the pace of the quest.
 
Subjective said:
I personally don't like this. Like, kind of a lot. While there aren't explicit consequences for it, I would argue there is a need to maintain as much as Yui's normality as possible. Maiko hinted at it earlier on, but girls who abandon their normal lives or even aspects of them have a really crappy time of it all. We've seen a lot of unhappy full-time magical girls, I'd rather avoid that if at all possible.
This just kind of pushes Yui into future behaviours that when asked to prioritise meguca-ing and maintaining her normal life, she'll pick meguca. Which is good from a take-control-of-the-city standpoint, but there is a life beyond this.
I mean, in all likelyhood this will all end in tears so it won't be a real concern but again, I'd rather put the effort into maintaining Yui's normal life over other possibilities.

For another thing, I dislike from a kind of meta perspective, which is more of a super-duper personal arguement that can be ignored. I think it's not really something Yui would ask for and that we're only pushing for it for mechanical benefits over actually dealing with any particular problems at hand. Same with the magical gem protection thing, but that doesn't have any other issue attached to it, so I can't really argue against it.
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I dunno about you, but if I was told IRL that I could ignore the need to sleep, I'd be all over that.

When Yui first met Maiko, she'd gone over a week without sleep and hadn't even realised it. Her body looked tired, but she was still operating at a pretty high capacity.

It would take some sort of alien personality I can't fathom to realize that they can magic away all of their tiredness with no known downside (hence asking), and choose to not do so despite their almost overwhelming workload of life-saving importance.

FelOnyx said:
Likewise. Not to mention that more playable time in a day slows the pace of the quest.
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Witch-hunts in quest are basically skippable events. That'll probably be our most common 2am activity, so... Not really.
 
Subjective said:
I personally don't like this. Like, kind of a lot. While there aren't explicit consequences for it, I would argue there is a need to maintain as much as Yui's normality as possible. Maiko hinted at it earlier on, but girls who abandon their normal lives or even aspects of them have a really crappy time of it all. We've seen a lot of unhappy full-time magical girls, I'd rather avoid that if at all possible.
This just kind of pushes Yui into future behaviours that when asked to prioritise meguca-ing and maintaining her normal life, she'll pick meguca. Which is good from a take-control-of-the-city standpoint, but there is a life beyond this.
I mean, in all likelyhood this will all end in tears so it won't be a real concern but again, I'd rather put the effort into maintaining Yui's normal life over other possibilities.
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I actually see not sleeping as something that will help make it much easier for Yui to maintain a normal life. If that seems counter-intuitive, I'll explain.

In the very first post, Yui's biggest personal problem was that she was good at everything but never the best, with great expectations of her to do nothing in particular. Her wish was a direct counter to that feeling of lacking purpose- and she's fully committed herself to the purpose that it bought her. She's determined to be in charge of Nagamioka, to protect its people and its magical girls, and to make the world a better place through her power and convictions. This is incredibly important to her, to the point that I don't think it's even a question whether she'd choose normal life or magical girl life should she be forced to make that choice. The one that gave her life meaning takes priority.

If we see her normality as something to be preserved, then, we need to approach the question of how to do so with the understanding that Yui herself is going to unhesitatingly sacrifice that priority on the altar of her passion for her career as often as she thinks is necessary or beneficial. So the appropriate metagame question to ask is, "what can we do to make Yui not see sacrificing large amounts of normality as necessary or beneficial?"

And one easy answer to that is, "make sure that she doesn't often have to choose between being a magical girl and a normal one". By not sleeping, witch hunting moves from an afternoon/evening activity to something that she can do between midnight and four in the morning. She can integrate team bonding/meetings with ice cream and karaoke to maintain a semblance of normal girl activities being done during normal person hours, and greater time available overall she can worry less about things like not having her homework done because she was too busy with fighting off invaders resulting in stressing her relationship with teachers/parents and creating a burden on her normal girl's life that she can't explain.

In short, moving to a lifestyle of not sleeping might be a pretty inhuman thing, but it frees up so much time that it will massively reduce stress on Yui in a dozen other ways, meaning that it will preserve her ability to act and feel like a normal girl overall.
 
redzonejoe said:
I dunno about you, but if I was told IRL that I could ignore the need to sleep, I'd be all over that.
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As would I, but my most stressful actives are pretty petty. Yui's are not. Spending all day herding magical teenage girls, some of whom are unrepentant murderers, and relaxing with a night of fighting monsters made of the inner thoughts of broken teenage girls with no sleep in between doesn't seem like a recipe for a healthy mind.

I will say is a useful skill to learn at some point if we only use it occasionally, but I'm opposed to going no sleep ever.
 
DarkLight140 said:
This is incredibly important to her, to the point that I don't think it's even a question whether she'd choose normal life or magical girl life should she be forced to make that choice. The one that gave her life meaning takes priority.
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I feel you. This is a really good basis for arguing Yui's personal reasons for not sleeping and well as a stance on why she's already gonna screw herself if it's meguca v. normality. However, I would argue against this in that Yui hasn't backed this kind of idea up. She's committed herself, so far, to her homework, to paying attention in school, and to her normal friends whenever she can.

DarkLight140 said:
In short, moving to a lifestyle of not sleeping might be a pretty inhuman thing
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This is really the exact reason I disagree with the no-sleep thing. Yeah, it'd give more time to do the things that would overall reduce stress, but sacrificing various bits of normality to maintain a better facade of being normal feels like a self-defeating process. I don't know, it's easy to use magic to solve all these problems, but I worry that it's gonna bite us in the arse harder than dealing with time-prioritisation will. Mostly just because magic just tends to be inherently biased towards messing with people.

I'll support a vote for finding out about the no-sleep thing because it's easier than mustering a resistance effort but I'm opposed to the implementation of it. We'll have to see how hard Maiko chides us about it though because she tends to be super focused on keeping Yui as balanced as possible.

Oh and one last thing, because discussion is fun, how sure are we that surprising the new magical girls via brainmail won't freak them the fuck out? You know, after violating the privacy of their homes? Of course, what they don't know won't hurt them.
 
FelOnyx said:
As would I, but my most stressful actives are pretty petty. Yui's are not. Spending all day herding magical teenage girls, some of whom are unrepentant murderers, and relaxing with a night of fighting monsters made of the inner thoughts of broken teenage girls with no sleep in between doesn't seem like a recipe for a healthy mind.

I will say is a useful skill to learn at some point if we only use it occasionally, but I'm opposed to going no sleep ever.
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Most people would jump on this chance just to do better in school. Lets them study more.

The fact that Yui's duties are so much more important means she's that much more likely to be interested in this ability. IC, Yui has every reason to want to learn how to lessen her sleep requirements.

In terms of what's best for her, as decided by concerned parents or whatever, she can always take a night off if the stress is getting to her. It shouldn't be too hard for Yui to tell herself that she has 50 spare seeds, she deserves a break. Then she can spend a few hours listening to weird music or whatever before going to sleep, because more time awake doesn't just mean more work, it also means more play.
 
Last argument on the whole sleep thing.

All the concerns people have about putting normalcy first, and needing downtime and whatnot, ALL of those concerns are things we can control via votes.

Let me assure you now. If Yui is affected negatively by lack of sleep, if her performance starts to suffer, if friends and family begin to show concern for Yui's exhausted appearance, I will vote with you to send Yui home to sleep.

It's better to have the ability and not use it than to not have it and need it.
 
Subjective said:
Oh and one last thing, because discussion is fun, how sure are we that surprising the new magical girls via brainmail won't freak them the fuck out? You know, after violating the privacy of their homes? Of course, what they don't know won't hurt them.
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I'm sure that it will freak them out less than calling them on the phone would, which given Minami's skillset would probably be about as difficult to manage.

More to the point, if Yui can't spin telepathic contact with another magical girl out of nowhere into something positive and exciting instead of leaving them worried about it, no one can. And as you note, the fact that Minami is watching them while they talk can just go politely unmentioned, at least until they're on-side and possibly forever.
 
Subjective said:
I personally don't like this. Like, kind of a lot. While there aren't explicit consequences for it, I would argue there is a need to maintain as much as Yui's normality as possible. Maiko hinted at it earlier on, but girls who abandon their normal lives or even aspects of them have a really crappy time of it all. We've seen a lot of unhappy full-time magical girls, I'd rather avoid that if at all possible.
This just kind of pushes Yui into future behaviours that when asked to prioritise meguca-ing and maintaining her normal life, she'll pick meguca. Which is good from a take-control-of-the-city standpoint, but there is a life beyond this.
I mean, in all likelyhood this will all end in tears so it won't be a real concern but again, I'd rather put the effort into maintaining Yui's normal life over other possibilities.

For another thing, I dislike from a kind of meta perspective, which is more of a super-duper personal arguement that can be ignored. I think it's not really something Yui would ask for and that we're only pushing for it for mechanical benefits over actually dealing with any particular problems at hand. Same with the magical gem protection thing, but that doesn't have any other issue attached to it, so I can't really argue against it.
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But how will we ever attain our final, perfect form of a unstoppable, unsleeping, adorable god-empress of all mankind without these measures?
 
I'm not sure about the no sleep plan. We need to keep Yui, our magical girl empress, happy, and sleep is important. It gives her time to calm down (sleep is great for that), and makes her feel connected to normal people like Natsuki and her parents.

Also, what if they notice that she's not in her bed, but outside doing who-knows-what? Yui's parents give her a lot of freedom, but her being outside the house during night when you thought she was inside just screams shady and suspect business.
Of course they probably won't check, but better safe than sorry. Family emergencies or other such late night stuff requiring Yui could end with them stepping into an empty bedroom.
 
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