Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)

[Valmond]

Everyone thinks better of their ingroup. That's how humans work. The more points of commonality there are between people, the easier it is for them to communicate. Academics will react better to someone with a PhD or working towards one. Muslim leaders will be more inclined to talk to someone who converted to Islam and is making effort to study Quran. African Americans are more likely to vote for an African American politician. This is basic human nature, that nothing short of either a world war with dramatic casualties against an alien invader (ie, an event where all "humans" become an ingroup), or some serious brainwashing will change.

And in the situation of turmoil, where the basics of their society are collapsing, and they are rightfully fearing persecution, such factors of commonality become all the more important.

I am honestly struggling to understand how this is not absolutely self-evident.

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And you think just having suddenly awakened magic will automaticly turn a mundane CEO into a skilled magicians ingroup?

 

[Yog]

And you think just having suddenly awakened magic will automaticly turn a mundane CEO into a skilled magicians ingroup?

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It doesn't need to turn him into a skilled magician. This is not about skill at all, or mostly not about skill (though it seems that one can get useful magical tricks in a matter of weeks). It's about being magical at all. That is the qualitative difference. And yes, it will make a difference.

 

[DeclanDSI]

I just want to say that I really like this quest and what has been done with it so far. Reading while listening to Moonlight Densetsu 20th Anniversary Version gives this quest a very nostalgic feeling.

On another note, yuri shall rule the world! Maybe eventually literally in this quest.

 

[Simon_Jester]

That does raise questions about the Star Twinkle Precure and their two alien members-presumably there's be Senshi versions of them elsewhere on their planets?
Also raises the prospect of Sailor Santa being an Actual Thing, IIRC, apparently an episode features Alien Santa from Planet Santa

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Hm. Star Twinkle Precure... are their fairies from a fairy realm, or explicitly from outer space?

In the latter case, the internal logic suggests that alien planets will have Senshi, though Senshi may vary in power. I don't know exactly what that implies for the plot of Star Twinkle Precure because I know literally nothing about that plot.

In the former case, there could easily be a 'subspace' fairy realm where stars and planets exist that, unlike the larger stars and planets of Earth's universe, do not have Star Seeds.

Hm, if the faeries ever become involved, it would be nice if it is something along the lines of the rich and colorful setting created by J. Corsentino, Time of the Faeries. In the beginning, there was the great mother of all, the Starlight Elemental. She expanded to fill the void and burst into so many motes of light. From this myriad flock, the faeries were born from the sparks of starlight. With them came the foremost daughters of the mother, the 4 great elementals of air, water, fire and earth.

In that primordial era, it was good, for a time at least. It was the age of the paradisiacal Kailand, the great faerie kingdom, with nature vivid and bright in its infancy, wonder and imagination flowing freely, and kai was everywhere to be had. Kai is the energy generated by all living things, and it is the sustenance of the faeries.

Alas, it was not to last, for a terrible misunderstanding between faeries and humans ignited the terrible war that consumed it all. From this suffering was born the Blood elemental, and the Machine elemental would eventually rise from man. In the end, the faeries had to withdraw from the world, and it led to what would become the great sundering of their kind. That which was one would eventually become three.

The commoner faeries withdrew beyond the veil of twilight, dwelling for countless centuries in that beautiful realm of Twilight. The royal faeries withdrew to the realm of E'ven, hidden behind the setting evening sun. It is a realm of light, heat, and air, with little water. In this place, the royal faeries would eventually metamorphose to become the angels. Finally, there were the faeries who could not escape the terrible conflagration of the eschaton. Trapped, they had something crucial ripped from their beings, a gaping hole that would drive them to endless hunger. They became the Darklings.

However, now, in the modern era, thanks to the heartfelt wish of one girl amongst other factors, the faeries are returning. From Twilight came the commoner faeries, trying to restore wonder and imagination to modern humanity, along with doing something about a world that has become so deeply choked by pollution. Those who try the old ways are the street faeries, sometimes being forced to ground their own wings for the magic necessary to work their wonders, for there is precious little of it left in the modern age. Others of them see the need to change and adapt their approach, and so they reformatted themselves, shedding their wings to become the Shadme, a new form of faerie for the new age. Finally, there are those who seek to use modern means to regain their old power, integrating modern robotics into themselves, becoming something of which none had ever conceived.

From E'ven, the royal faeries of eld returned, now angels. They seek to control the wider global stage, viewing the longer term, adhering to doctrine and dogma, seeing the need to control man from the boardrooms and high places to ensure that another such terrible war between man and faeries will not arise. Amongst them is Inanna, one of the mightiest of the angels, and she is also one of the angels with the least love for mortals. However, not all of the angels agree with this position, those who might want to seek another way to coexist with man. They are punished by having their wings and power stripped from them, their memories sealed, and they are cast down into mortal, frail bodies, weak, confused, adrift. They are the nephilim. The first of their number was Pandora, endlessly reincarnating into new vessels, seeking to regain her old power. However, if lucky, the nephilim can remember, regain a spark of that power, a spark that can grow into a brilliant fire, making their wings strong again and carrying them back to their heights of eld. Such is the case of Halyon. She has always been the greatest of the angelic host, and now she will stand at the forefront to lead the great angelic rebellion.

As for the Darklings, lurking in the shadows, feeding from human spirits and emotions, they too have advanced. A street faerie attempted an experiment, infusing a Darkling with glamour, which caused terrible results. From this project gone awry were born the Vampiri. A new and glamourous sort of dark faerie, an even greater threat than the Darklings, for the Vampiri can actually propagate and increase their numbers. Dangerously beautiful and alluring, the Vampiri seek to partake and indulge in it all, blood, sensations, pleasure, and emotions. Those that continue along this path far enough are becoming something else, something actually akin to dragons.

However, even for these darkest of the faeries, there is still hope. For some of the Vampiri, having gorged for so long, actually feel a need to use their abilities for good, to redeem themselves. Their nature is to consume. It cannot be changed, but they can change what they choose to consume from humans. These repentant Vampiri have become the Sin-eaters. What the Sin-eaters consume from humans are such things like incurable cancer or pain that they simply were never able to overcome, causing them to fester and stagnate. By doing so, the Sin-eaters allow the humans to recover, heal, to actually continue improving and progressing. Of course, this pain does not simply disappear, for the Sin-eaters took it into themselves. Therefore, the Sin-eaters need to suffer the entire length and intensity of all that anguish. The agony that Sin-eaters endure can never be fully measured, and it is a terrible burden. To paraphrase, some of the Sin-eaters go mad, while others backslide into the ranks of the Vampiri; as to the rest, however, the rest of the Sin-eaters soldier on as best as they can, hoping that their continued good deeds will someday right their karmic balance, allowing them to walk freely in the light once more, glad of the overall positive effect that they have had upon creation.


It would certainly be rather interesting for the Senshi to encounter faeries like Corsentino's Sin-eaters. Perhaps the Senshi and such Sin-eaters could help one another.

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That sounds like a very elaborate backstory and cosmology that, uh... doesn't really leave a lot of room for other stuff. It "explains everything" rather than only explaining itself, and when we've got so many other settings and things that just don't fit that narrative, it would make a crossover difficult if not impossible.

Uh it's 95 bill is the president he is the incumbent party.

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No, it's not. It's 1992. Reread pretty much any threadmarked post that lists the date and you'll see proof.

Everyone thinks better of their ingroup. That's how humans work. The more points of commonality there are between people, the easier it is for them to communicate. Academics will react better to someone with a PhD or working towards one. Muslim leaders will be more inclined to talk to someone who converted to Islam and is making effort to study Quran. African Americans are more likely to vote for an African American politician. This is basic human nature, that nothing short of either a world war with dramatic casualties against an alien invader (ie, an event where all "humans" become an ingroup), or some serious brainwashing will change.

And in the situation of turmoil, where the basics of their society are collapsing, and they are rightfully fearing persecution, such factors of commonality become all the more important.

I am honestly struggling to understand how this is not absolutely self-evident.

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Let me point something out to you.

Precisely the scenario you seem to view as as unlikely (global warfare against extraterrestrial invaders) is already happening.

The old global order, which segregates nonmagical humans, human mages, and yokai from each other, is facing this new threat- extraterrestrial invasion. In fact, it faces numerous extraterrestrial invasions all at the same time. And the old global order appears to be losing, or at a bare minimum incapable of opposing the worst threats. I don't know how powerful the 'Eternal Tsar' or whatever beings rule magical Egypt or whatever are, but I sure as shit don't see them helping much in the fight against the Dark Kingdom. Do you?

The old order, which imposes divisions on people and artificially heightens the barriers between them, has failed, and if allowed to continue to fail it may doom the world in the long run.

So while in the present moment we have to work with what we've got... In the long run?

We are attempting to alter the shape of society.

We are attempting to create a new, shared sense of "ingroup" that can be broadly inclusive of existing human mages, newly awakened human mages, humans who have not yet been awakened, and any nonhumans who can coexist with everyone else without trying to eat people.

That is, broadly speaking, the overall aspirational project here. We are not trying to create some kind of millet system where mages stick to themselves and keep to "their own kind." We want to actively discourage that behavior, because that behavior creates organizations like the IMO that are at best useless and at worst actively damaging, in that they get in the way of people trying to save hte world.

...

As such, even if we stipulate that you are right and that on average some mages will "get along better" with other mages, making it somehow somewhat easier for a rich man who is a mage to "relate to" (that is, hire) mages...

And by the way I'm not sure that's strongly true...

Well, even if we stipulate that you're right, we are actively striving to push back against that tendency. We want future mages to be more willing to relate to and work with non-mages and yokai, not less.

Which means that instead of catering to the most prejudiced of mages, we should be providing useful opportunities (like doing work for a billionaire) to less prejudiced mages.

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Your mindset that there is some fixed intense automatic clannishness and favoritism that we just have to work with and accept in order to do well? I reject that. Not because I believe no such favoritism exists, but because if we continue to cater to such favoritism, we will sabotage our own long term project to unite the people against external threats.

It doesn't need to turn him into a skilled magician. This is not about skill at all, or mostly not about skill (though it seems that one can get useful magical tricks in a matter of weeks). It's about being magical at all. That is the qualitative difference. And yes, it will make a difference.

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I don't think it will.

Remember that this will be occurring within the context of Sailor Moon running around and awakening hundreds of people.

Any mage who has strong prejudices against working with nonmagical people, and who isn't comfortable or effective in doing so, will extend those prejudices to freshly awakened mages.

Sort of like how "old money" aristocratic families never seem to take "new money" families seriously if they can avoid it. Because this kind of discrimination isn't really about being more comfortable with people who are similar. It's about having a pretext to shun people who are different. If the person who is different alters themselves to be 'similar' now, that doesn't magically eliminate the discrimination. It just results in the discriminatory rotten fucker making up a new pretext for why a person isn't good enough.

 

[Valmond]

It doesn't need to turn him into a skilled magician. This is not about skill at all, or mostly not about skill (though it seems that one can get useful magical tricks in a matter of weeks). It's about being magical at all. That is the qualitative difference. And yes, it will make a difference.

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I am sceptical. Yes, it might help.
Or it might catastrophically blow up in his face if the mages in question consider him a newcomer/poser who used his wealth to buy his way into magic.
And if it does work, the results would be marginal, at best.

Honestly, this feels like you are starting from "i want to bribe this wealthy guy to do things for us" and then working form there to justify why we should give him something most people have no access to.
Sure, no doubt this wealthy dude would love to have magic.
I don't really care.
I object to granting magic to people as bribes on principle, and while i am not going to pretend i might not break that principle if good enough reason is given, so far i have not seen any reason to go against that principle.
If saving the life of his daughter is not enough to get him on our side, i do not want him on our side, or having greater access to magic than random person.

 

[Teiresias]

Well, even if we stipulate that you're right, we are actively striving to push back against that tendency. We want future mages to be more willing to relate to and work with non-mages and yokai, not less.

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I object to granting magic to people as bribes on principle, and while i am not going to pretend i might not break that principle if good enough reason is given, so far i have not seen any reason to go against that principle.
If saving the life of his daughter is not enough to get him on our side, i do not want him on our side, or having greater access to magic than random person.

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I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. Imagine you're a muggle in a group of muggles and mages. You know that it's possible for the mages to give you access to magic of your own, but they refuse to do so, because there are people who 'need it more', and 'you wouldn't get any use out of it anyway'. That's likely to foster envy and resentment, because when people know magic exists, they're going to want it for themselves. Just look at the Superintendent, and how badly she wanted to be awakened, to the point that she was willing to offer herself up as a guinea pig for experimentation with a spell she'd never seen before. If we don't want divisions in our group, we're going to need to offer magic to anyone in our group that wants it.

Everyone's going to end up with magic eventually anyway, so trying to get mages used to working with muggles is pointless in the long run.

 

[Torgamous]

Everyone thinks better of their ingroup. That's how humans work. The more points of commonality there are between people, the easier it is for them to communicate. Academics will react better to someone with a PhD or working towards one. Muslim leaders will be more inclined to talk to someone who converted to Islam and is making effort to study Quran. African Americans are more likely to vote for an African American politician. This is basic human nature, that nothing short of either a world war with dramatic casualties against an alien invader (ie, an event where all "humans" become an ingroup), or some serious brainwashing will change.

And in the situation of turmoil, where the basics of their society are collapsing, and they are rightfully fearing persecution, such factors of commonality become all the more important.

I am honestly struggling to understand how this is not absolutely self-evident.

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So, first off, I dispute the academics one. Elitists exist and in some circles are actively cultivated, but my recent personal experience is that if you spend time in a room with an ornithologist they will happily talk to you about birds for as long as necessary.

The other two I would characterize as reasonable responses to existing power distribution, like Samui getting more comfortable with us as we distanced ourselves from how things work in Onogoro.

Supremacy is cultural, not inherent to humanity, and as you kind of acknowledge with the alien invasion example, what does and doesn't qualify as in the group is still malleable. So identifying a particular prejudice as unavoidable and unmanageable outside of catering to it is not only not self-evident, it's not supported by external evidence.

We are at war with a magic supremacist society. Assimilating the people who buy into it will at some point be necessary, but we don't have to start with our patron's bodyguards when there's no shortage of people who have been fucked enough by that society to reject its premises.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. Imagine you're a muggle in a group of muggles and mages. You know that it's possible for the mages to give you access to magic of your own, but they refuse to do so, because there are people who 'need it more', and 'you wouldn't get any use out of it anyway'. That's likely to foster envy and resentment, because when people know magic exists, they're going to want it for themselves. Just look at the Superintendent, and how badly she wanted to be awakened, to the point that she was willing to offer herself up as a guinea pig for experimentation with a spell she'd never seen before. If we don't want divisions in our group, we're going to need to offer magic to anyone in our group that wants it.

Everyone's going to end up with magic eventually anyway, so trying to get mages used to working with muggles is pointless in the long run.

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I'm not opposed to awakening basically anyone we meet, but that's not the same as going out of our way to awaken this particular person on the grounds of catering to prejudice in a hypothetical workforce.

 

[Gmerguy]

Why?
If it is as a bribe to make them want support us, i am against it purely on principle.
If it is as to be nice to a friend, we should be awakening Naru's mom first at minimum.

Now we should talk to the man at some point, i agree on that, just not in favour of jumping straight to bribing the rich and powerful.
If the man can't see the value of helping people who saved his daughters life, and stopped a demonic hostile takeover of his daughters company, and are working with the government to stop a terrorist organizations (one of which tried to do the takeover, another which attempted the murder) then i am not sure we should be seeking his help anyway.

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Because awakening his magic helps tie him to our faction and to a certain extent vice versa? Awakening his magic places him even further in the new magic faction/group opposed to the IMO and at the cutting edge of the public sphere of Japan, which is to our benefit. And i say even further because he is already supporting us, which the IMO already considers a problem given they mind controlled him before and probably will try to again unless we act to prevent it, which awakening should help with. Conversely from his perspective awakening may grant him more power, but more importantly it also strengths ties to the scouts and makes them invested in maintaining relations. That it also might help against mind control is also a plus.

As for governments collapsing...Outside of the IMO, which has been stated as basically being Hicksville in the magical setting, I don't see it happing to either the non-magical or magical governments. For starters during disasters or war people actually tend to give more power to government rather than less either in the belief that doing so will help resolve the current issues or that going against the government would just make things worse. Blame politiicans and get people fired/heads rolling? sure. Tearing down the entire government to make new ones? Actually kind of rare. So other than the IMO, which is actively being stupid and self destructive, i see consolidation and strengthening, not fragmentation and dissolution. Especially that, given the cat is basically out of the bag, the magical governments that have been handicapping themselves in order to be stealthy? Yeah they have no reason to hold back anymore, especially the ones that are either already in a position of strength/ones with strong non magical governments/have a similar culture across magic/non magic lines. America in particular is going to become a ridiculous powerhouse what with the divide between magic and non-magic basically being a gesture of appeasement to the other magical powers, they are in the best position to adapt and exploit open magic. What we are seeing now is things spooling up, i'd say the next news statement is going to be the magic nations properly taking action now that they have no reason not to do so.

 

[Yog]

Precisely the scenario you seem to view as as unlikely (global warfare against extraterrestrial invaders) is already happening.

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No it isn't. Entire cities aren't being wiped off the map. Substantial portions of the population aren't being conscripted into armies to defend the planet against monsters. We haven't even reached one megadeath yet. There is no common struggle where everyone is participating together.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, this feels like you are starting from "i want to bribe this wealthy guy to do things for us" and then working form there to justify why we should give him something most people have no access to.

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Honestly... yeah, I agree with that.

Sure, no doubt this wealthy dude would love to have magic.
I don't really care.
I object to granting magic to people as bribes on principle, and while i am not going to pretend i might not break that principle if good enough reason is given, so far i have not seen any reason to go against that principle.

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Hm.

Out of curiosity, do you count Superintendent Sakurada as "magic granted as a bribe?"

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. Imagine you're a muggle in a group of muggles and mages. You know that it's possible for the mages to give you access to magic of your own, but they refuse to do so, because there are people who 'need it more', and 'you wouldn't get any use out of it anyway'. That's likely to foster envy and resentment, because when people know magic exists, they're going to want it for themselves. Just look at the Superintendent, and how badly she wanted to be awakened, to the point that she was willing to offer herself up as a guinea pig for experimentation with a spell she'd never seen before. If we don't want divisions in our group, we're going to need to offer magic to anyone in our group that wants it.

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Okay, but Superintendent Sakurada worked with Sailor V for months and has also seen her subordinates repeatedly hurt and endangered and even killed because she's sending them up against magical enemies without much magic of their own.

That's a potent combination. Her eagerness is probably higher than we'll normally see.

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If Mr. Yotsuba really wants awakened magic that urgently, well, his daughter quite literally has our number and we could pop over and do it. I'm not going to object... but then, I'd offer the same thing to Dr. Mizuno or Naru's mom or Usagi's dad. Or our office staff! The number of people directly affiliated with us is small enough that we're probably better off just choosing to be generous and leaving it at that.

However, I don't want to run around going out of our way to awaken people yet. We still don't have a clear understanding of what knowledge it takes to learn to control magic safely, and we are a long way from putting together a viable curriculum for magic classes. I know these are things we eventually want to do, but we should avoid spamming awakenings on people who don't need magic urgently, haven't asked for magic, and who might in fact be inconvenienced by having to take time out to learn magical control instead of their normal activities. Mr. Yotsuba falls under all three categories.

Everyone's going to end up with magic eventually anyway, so trying to get mages used to working with muggles is pointless in the long run.

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I don't agree. Part of the obstacle we face is overcoming the existing mages' sense (at least in countries like magical Japan) that they are special, a breed apart and above. This is a problem in the long run because as we awaken more people, well... "when everyone's super, no one is."

This is especially important because the existing mages have a great advantage in experience and depth of knowledge. I'm pretty sure there is a LOT of sophistication and technique to being a proficient magical healer or other specialist. As such, in the early years of the mass awakening of society, we are going to be heavily bottlenecked by the lack of experienced magical specialists. We will need those specialists, both to create infrastructure (including artifacts that enable faster awakening, potentially), and to make sure the masses of freshly awakened new mages are safe and trained in the basics.

As such, we do need mages to become comfortable with "muggles," because we cannot afford an endgame scenario where we've awakened a lot of ex-"muggles" and the 'old guard' mages aren't willing to work with them. That would be... bad for us.

So we need to deliberately shape things to force the existing mages to accept that yes, they're going to be working together with non-magical people from now on. Because not only is the Masquerade coming down, but there are far too many threats to the world and far too much work to be done in order to create the desired future. People who weren't comfortable working together with their fellow beings of Earth are just going to have to get used to it.

No it isn't. Entire cities aren't being wiped off the map. Substantial portions of the population aren't being conscripted into armies to defend the planet against monsters. We haven't even reached one megadeath yet. There is no common struggle where everyone is participating together.

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Just wait. We're moving towards it. But ultimately, we're going to need unity whether the giant war materializes or not, so we need to NOT constantly enable and tacitly encourage clannishness.

Again, mages who refuse to work with non-mages are doing us a favor. They are singling themselves out as unreliable, and passing up valuable rewards that will instead go to their less clannish and bigoted peers. In time, they will hopefully learn the error of their ways.

 

[Torgamous]

No it isn't. Entire cities aren't being wiped off the map. Substantial portions of the population aren't being conscripted into armies to defend the planet against monsters. We haven't even reached one megadeath yet. There is no common struggle where everyone is participating together.

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There aren't loads of conscripts because it's not that kind of war, but we're very likely to get a kind of Red Scare for weeding out Dark Kingdom plots and collaborators, and that's the part of a war that does most of the work for establishing an outgroup.

 

[DeclanDSI]

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. Imagine you're a muggle in a group of muggles and mages. You know that it's possible for the mages to give you access to magic of your own, but they refuse to do so, because there are people who 'need it more', and 'you wouldn't get any use out of it anyway'. That's likely to foster envy and resentment, because when people know magic exists, they're going to want it for themselves. Just look at the Superintendent, and how badly she wanted to be awakened, to the point that she was willing to offer herself up as a guinea pig for experimentation with a spell she'd never seen before. If we don't want divisions in our group, we're going to need to offer magic to anyone in our group that wants it.

Everyone's going to end up with magic eventually anyway, so trying to get mages used to working with muggles is pointless in the long run.

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I think they are not arguing about the practicality of things so much as the principals of things. Yes there is merit in catering to those with power, but only in achieving short term goals. The long term goals and way of doing things will often require sacrificing short term efficiency for long term efficacy.

As to in-groups and achieving total harmony, people based in a human-esque perspective are beings of associations and subjectivity. Absolute objectivity is impossible for a mind that can possibly be incorrect in any form. People will continue to be biased in perspective, and continue to form connections of like and dislike, right and wrong, same and different in those perspectives. As long as that happens, groups of some form will coalesce, and when perceived deficits over resources of any form, tangible or intangible, become extant, they will come into conflict of any form to alleviate it.

Thus it is a matter of scale and balancing those scales of fulfilling others' interests and Usagi's. Therefore to move forward with certainty, Usagi needs to define her interests and what she is willing to compromise, if any. It seems that if Usagi wants to create any large scale changes, she's going to have to get others to align their interests in at least the same direction as hers, or do so by force where if they do not listen, their interests or the ability to pursue their interests are all together eliminated.

Your mindset that there is some fixed intense automatic clannishness and favoritism that we just have to work with and accept in order to do well? I reject that. Not because I believe no such favoritism exists, but because if we continue to cater to such favoritism, we will sabotage our own long term project to unite the people against external threats.

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I'm just being pedantic here, but you aren't really rejecting such clannishness and favoritism so much as redirecting hostility towards a perceived enemy (not implying they aren't so much as being consistent in description) and making all of the world the clan and favored. If you want objectively no clanism and etc., you're going to have to eliminate all opinions, such that instead of the world fighting against threats, it does nothing against anything, technically not being able to exist at all as that would be a clan in some form, or assimilates all of existence into itself so that there really is no in-group and out-group.

I do realize that I am taking what you are saying to logical extremes, but when people can't clearly define what they are saying, either they are unable to yet put to words what they think or haven't clearly defined what they are saying to themselves - AKA they have a vague or ill-defined idea.

So it's definitely more complicated than just clanism and achieving total harmony, especially when what total harmony is is so ill-defined.

 

[Valmond]

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. Imagine you're a muggle in a group of muggles and mages. You know that it's possible for the mages to give you access to magic of your own, but they refuse to do so, because there are people who 'need it more', and 'you wouldn't get any use out of it anyway'. That's likely to foster envy and resentment, because when people know magic exists, they're going to want it for themselves. Just look at the Superintendent, and how badly she wanted to be awakened, to the point that she was willing to offer herself up as a guinea pig for experimentation with a spell she'd never seen before. If we don't want divisions in our group, we're going to need to offer magic to anyone in our group that wants it.

Everyone's going to end up with magic eventually anyway, so trying to get mages used to working with muggles is pointless in the long run.

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Boohoo, the poor billionaire does not get to be the first one to have a shiny. /s
Again, if that is going to be an issue, i don't want to work with him anyway.
Also, pretty sure we have not made public we can easily awaken people, and our claim of "still studying the process for side effects" remains strong.

Hm.

Out of curiosity, do you count Superintendent Sakurada as "magic granted as a bribe?"

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Nah, i consider that "doing something nice to V's friend".
We may or may not choose to give Alice's dad magic, my problem here is the blatant angle of trying to grant special access to the rich and powerful.
If we choose to give Alice's dad magic, sure, but let's do it after we have already taken a measure of him and have done whatever business agreements we need to do.

 

[Pi In The Sky]

So I've caved to the suggestions of some friends of mine, and have opened a Patreon.

It's a small, Anemic thing right now, but it's there if you have like 2 bucks to toss me a month.

Get more from Lunaryon on Patreon

creating Collaborative Fiction

www.patreon.com

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Should probably drop a link to it in your signature, too.

 

[Elder Haman]

Uh it's 95 bill is the president he is the incumbent party.

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It's 1992, and Bush is explicitly the American President, it's been stated to be so in several updates.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I think they are not arguing about the practicality of things so much as the principals of things. Yes there is merit in catering to those with power, but only in achieving short term goals. The long term goals and way of doing things will often require sacrificing short term efficiency for long term efficacy.

As to in-groups and achieving total harmony, people based in a human-esque perspective are beings of associations and subjectivity. Absolute objectivity is impossible for a mind that can possibly be incorrect in any form. People will continue to be biased in perspective, and continue to form connections of like and dislike, right and wrong, same and different in those perspectives. As long as that happens, groups of some form will coalesce, and when perceived deficits over resources of any form, tangible or intangible, become extant, they will come into conflict of any form to alleviate it.

Thus it is a matter of scale and balancing those scales of fulfilling others' interests and Usagi's. Therefore to move forward with certainty, Usagi needs to define her interests and what she is willing to compromise, if any. It seems that if Usagi wants to create any large scale changes, she's going to have to get others to align their interests in at least the same direction as hers, or do so by force where if they do not listen, their interests or the ability to pursue their interests are all together eliminated.

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I mean, yes, but I don't think that "bribe powerful people with offers of magical awakening" is a good strategy for doing this.

Since one of the core elements of our ambitions going forward is going to be awakening lots of people now that we know it's possible, it's going to undermine our goals if we're passing out bespoke awakenings to private elite individuals as a special service.

Now, it's one thing if we're doing it for the general security of ourselves or our allies. This is why I suggested awakening a team of bodyguards for Mr. Yotsuba, because he is a person we have reason to want to protect, and enemies can fairly easily get to him and endanger him if we're not careful. But we're doing that because it serves our goals, not because we're trying to buy him off.

I'm just being pedantic here, but you aren't really rejecting such clannishness and favoritism so much as redirecting hostility towards a perceived enemy (not implying they aren't so much as being consistent in description) and making all of the world the clan and favored. If you want objectively no clanism and etc., you're going to have to eliminate all opinions, such that instead of the world fighting against threats, it does nothing against anything, technically not being able to exist at all as that would be a clan in some form, or assimilates all of existence into itself so that there really is no in-group and out-group.

I do realize that I am taking what you are saying to logical extremes, but when people can't clearly define what they are saying, either they are unable to yet put to words what they think or haven't clearly defined what they are saying to themselves - AKA they have a vague or ill-defined idea.

So it's definitely more complicated than just clanism and achieving total harmony, especially when what total harmony is is so ill-defined.

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What I'm trying to do is reject as much clannism as possible and create a world order in which people are as much willing to work together to achieve common goals as possible. This does not require some kind of insane logically inconsistent extreme version of anything. It's a straightforward practical concept- expand civil society to embrace diverse groups, make sure that everyone can be secure and thrive in the diverse environment, and work together to bring everyone's skills and resources to bear on the problems we face.

We may or may not choose to give Alice's dad magic, my problem here is the blatant angle of trying to grant special access to the rich and powerful.
If we choose to give Alice's dad magic, sure, but let's do it after we have already taken a measure of him and have done whatever business agreements we need to do.

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I mostly agree with your sentiments, but there's one complication. It's probably going to be a long time before we are "done" doing business agreements with Mr. Yotsuba. At least until we can revive the Moon Kingdom as a properly independent nation, and maybe even after that, the Yotsuba Group is going to be a relevant partner whose choices and intentions affect us.

As such, I just want to note that if we ever do anything for Mr. Yotsuba, it will exist within the context of the network of favors and opportunities we provide for each other. We've provided Mr. Yotsuba with a number of things (saving his daughter's life, for instance, and "less risk of world blowing up")... But he's also provided us with things (far more money than a bunch of teenagers could reasonably accrue, and options to set up things like magic classes much more smoothly).

So we do need to be mindful of that- that we are in a mutually beneficial relationship with this person. And that there will never be a time where the question "but what can they do for us" becomes "nothing important that could be our incentive to do them a favor."

 

[Kkutlord]

We want future mages to be more willing to relate to and work with non-mages and yokai, not less.

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If everyone is special, then no one is. If the magic-using population becomes a majority (near or total better) then any attempts by "old money" would just fail. One can't operate without others, power is meaningless without people willing to play along. Governments can easily be overthrown if enough people collectively decide to. So unless the "old money" types can weather the wrath of the Sailor Senshi, there's no way for "old money" to get anywhere if they can't prove they're a worthwhile investment.

 

[Valmond]

I mostly agree with your sentiments, but there's one complication. It's probably going to be a long time before we are "done" doing business agreements with Mr. Yotsuba. At least until we can revive the Moon Kingdom as a properly independent nation, and maybe even after that, the Yotsuba Group is going to be a relevant partner whose choices and intentions affect us.

As such, I just want to note that if we ever do anything for Mr. Yotsuba, it will exist within the context of the network of favors and opportunities we provide for each other. We've provided Mr. Yotsuba with a number of things (saving his daughter's life, for instance, and "less risk of world blowing up")... But he's also provided us with things (far more money than a bunch of teenagers could reasonably accrue, and options to set up things like magic classes much more smoothly).

So we do need to be mindful of that- that we are in a mutually beneficial relationship with this person. And that there will never be a time where the question "but what can they do for us" becomes "nothing important that could be our incentive to do them a favor."

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Well, yes, i'm sure there will be plenty going forward, but i was thinking of in a more immediate sense.
If/when we meet him, we can decide what kind of business arrangements we need in the here and now, do our business, and then consider if we wantto provide him magic or not.

On the bodyguards.
I am not sure how practical that would be, getting newly awakened magic users, compared to just hiring pre existing magic users, i assume some exist, and we know you can make magically enforced contracts if necessary.
Not to mention there is a danger of some of the similar long term issues than there would be in awakening rich people.
Favoritism, or more importantly, perception of favoritism.
I admit i may be overly paranoid, but i really, really do not want to be seen, at any level, as selling access to magic to the rich and powerful when we are unable to provide it to regular people at mass scale.

So while security is an ongoing concern, i think we would be better served by looking into pre existing commercially available magical bodyguards, wards, weaponry, that sort of thing. Considering there are magic weapons and slaves sold on the open market, i would assume there is a fairly robust pre existing magical security industry. And if availability turns out to be insufficient (there is about to be a rise in demand), think about potential wards we can make.

edit-

If everyone is special, then no one is. If the magic-using population becomes a majority (near or total better) then any attempts by "old money" would just fail. One can't operate without others, power is meaningless without people willing to play along. Governments can easily be overthrown if enough people collectively decide to. So unless the "old money" types can weather the wrath of the Sailor Senshi, there's no way for "old money" to get anywhere if they can't prove they're a worthwhile investment.

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The "old money" can still cause problems, and coddling bigots just means they keep on being bigots and have more room to sway others to their side.
Pre existing mages will have a major head start on knowledge and power (and possibly wealth in some forms), no point in letting them hang onto the idea that magic users (or humans) are somehow better than those who are not.

 

[Torgamous]

But he's also provided us with things (far more money than a bunch of teenagers could reasonably accrue, and options to set up things like magic classes much more smoothly).

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More than that, Crystal Millennium did not have to be as much ours as it is. A magical girl support organization might benefit from having magical girls involved in the decisionmaking process, but it would've been fine with less involvement than Usagi being actually completely in charge of everything.

 

[Razzocnor]

I'm just hearing a lot of support for 'get started on building a magical focus big enough to awaken all of Tokyo all at once, then start moving it to other cities.'.

 

[Valmond]

I'm just hearing a lot of support for 'get started on building a magical focus big enough to awaken all of Tokyo all at once, then start moving it to other cities.'.

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Ah, i see you want a small trial runs first before moving into actual mass awakenings.

 

[Kkutlord]

The "old money" can still cause problems, and coddling bigots just means they keep on being bigots and have more room to sway others to their side.
Pre existing mages will have a major head start on knowledge and power (and possibly wealth in some forms), no point in letting them hang onto the idea that magic users (or humans) are somehow better than those who are not.

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I never said anything about coddling? Besides, being a mage is like being an athlete: they're not inherently better, they were just fortunate enough to have skills that most other don't possess. So if everyone is a mage, only an idiot would keep acting like mages are special.

 

[Valmond]

I never said anything about coddling? Besides, being a mage is like being an athlete: they're not inherently better, they were just fortunate enough to have skills that most other don't possess. So if everyone is a mage, only an idiot would keep acting like mages are special.

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The discussion was about wether we should, whatstheword, accommodate, magicians tribal tendencies.
So, while the word is not used, treating that as anything but wrong and stupid is effectively coddling.
Being a mage is much like being rich, you got randomly lucky and now that luck translates into power and wealth.
Mass awakening is going to help a lot with that, but accumulated priviledge remains ni form of magical knowledge, artefacts, social ties, etc...

And only an idiot would act like white people are better than non white people, but here we are.
World is full of idiots, better to pro actively curb those tendencies than assume they will just go away.

 

[Torgamous]

I'm just hearing a lot of support for 'get started on building a magical focus big enough to awaken all of Tokyo all at once, then start moving it to other cities.'.

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This sounds like a great opportunity for Tokyo Tower to make up for lost screentime.

 

[memoryofglory]

The real reason to awaken Alice's dad is that he's been pretty cool helping us and Naru and Ami's moms aren't briefed yet. But we should at least meet the guy and ask him. Also we should plan for meeting the Prime Minister/Emperor at some point. Or the Queen of England, who knows what Venus is going to spring on us.