questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
You know...I can't believe my opinion of you can plummet this quickly.
Anyhow, I'll wait for the next chapter before I engage with this discussion again.
“Human Resources” Shouldn’t Be This Literal: A PMMM/ProjectMoon Quest
- Thread starter Lepidoptera
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- library of ruina lobotomy corporation project moon puella magi madoka magica eldritch horror magical girl crossover eldritch protagonist female protagonist fluffy gore non-human protagonist suffering violence discussion is always good civ good decisions identity crises nuclear moth detected parenting powers activate
Anyhow, I'll wait for the next chapter before I engage with this discussion again.
Ok, on reflection, there may a factor of the *we're totally not nazis, trust us* party currently being well on its way to take a good chunk of government control in my country that contributes to my general feelings of *votes don't matter*.
So, sorry about that I guess?
Fucking hell am I feeling cranky.
Let's just wait for the next update.
So, sorry about that I guess?
Fucking hell am I feeling cranky.
Let's just wait for the next update.
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
Ooooh.
Yeah, I get ya, I totally get that feeling.
Still too cranky for my taste though, but I get it.
I thought this was part and parcel of PMMM and Project Moon settings. That characters are able to escape the cycles of misery in the first place is due to herculean levels of effort, with some sacrifice along the way. Combining the two reinforces this characteristic if anything.
The part about feeling like real life votes don't matter is totally fair though.
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- Location
- Earth
Being late to the party is becoming a habit for me, it seems. I do not have much I want to comment on, except this-
To me, this feels like a backwards justification of doing bad things to characters. For one, this is not the canon of either story and has broken out of both to the point Lepi could do whatever in terms of themes. For two, the core of both is not just the herculean effort, it is to understand one another. Social aspects are big in both settings, but they are scarcely relevant in this entire sequence. There is nothing to foster understanding between the warring factions, by virtue of The Adult Who Tells Lies being the opposition. The lines are drawn and now both sides fight it out, the end.
In fact, this whole sequence is the exact failure state of not breaking the cycle that both franchises point at. Just more violence until one side is dead or beaten and has to submit.
and other, similar sentiments.
To me, this feels like a backwards justification of doing bad things to characters. For one, this is not the canon of either story and has broken out of both to the point Lepi could do whatever in terms of themes. For two, the core of both is not just the herculean effort, it is to understand one another. Social aspects are big in both settings, but they are scarcely relevant in this entire sequence. There is nothing to foster understanding between the warring factions, by virtue of The Adult Who Tells Lies being the opposition. The lines are drawn and now both sides fight it out, the end.
In fact, this whole sequence is the exact failure state of not breaking the cycle that both franchises point at. Just more violence until one side is dead or beaten and has to submit.
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
We did tried it with NT earlier in the story before realizing that there was no compromising with our morality and it's stubborness.
There were quite a lot of bargaining with it/her to do it in a less monstrous way back then.
Which reminds me, we still need to visit NT after this.
Technically X and Co are trying to get the girls working for the Adult to realize they are being dupped.
Not exactly succeeding a lot so far but there are some efforts.
- Location
- Earth
I recall. And this is kind of the same problem, to be honest. It directly stems from the major enemies being Abnormalities. Who, you know, can not change their ways.
Basically my point. Because the Adult is so good at manipulating, there is no real possibility of convincing the other side. Especially not in a high-stakes situation like this, where there is no time to really unravel any of the manipulative arguments.
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
And since the Adult is a good manipulator it was hard to meet up with anyone to convince them in the first place.
The only two we managed to convince to our side were already directly opposed the Adult.
Saying that, I feel that it's still nice that X still tries regardless.
NT was indeed pretty close to being human, and X still agreed to ally up whenever the Adult's "side" ask her.
The theme still exists there in that we try to seek understanding and jolly cooperation against a greater enemy.
Even if it's hampered greatly by the fact that Abnormalities are like the exceptions to the rule.
Lepidoptera
Mother of Monsters, Unverified Impuritas Civitatis
- Location
- Indeterminate Unknown
Neither ProjectMoon nor PMMM really have understanding between warring factions, though. The Incubators are and always have been solidly antagonistic forces except when there was a mutual enemy, and Witches are basically just animals. None of the Holy Quintet are ever truly enemies to one another, it's just that circumstances and a lack of information (both through incident and malicious action) keep setting them against one another. Meanwhile ProjectMoon's works are full of outright terrible people for whom the simplest solution to the problems they represent is to just kill them, as well as groups like the Wings or the Head who while not so easily overthrown are still overtly antagonistic with no hope of redemption beyond some individual members. The understanding and accepting that needs to be built in this story is more focused towards the protagonists trying to understand and accept each other and themselves.
That's still worth something, and it will matter. After all you are going to have to do something with all the kids the Adult was working with when this is all done, and summary execution doesn't seem especially appealing.
This isn't going to do any favours regarding X's habit of
A very large part of PMMM is powered by the fact that this is not the case, that witches are people and now they cannot understand you and suffer from it.
Particularly, Madoka's solution is not to kill them, it's to save them, and the reason she does that is because she understands them.
As for Project moon, a very large part of it's theme is *fuck being hard people making hard decision, let's be idealistic and create more understanding*
The head (the structure) may be intractable, but the head members are not, and that's part of the key to victory.
The entire apotheosis of Lobcorp is about giving everyone the ability to understand each other, and the biggest hurdle is precisely because the one that made the plan didn't understand one of the person he used and didn't try to.
LoR does have understanding between warring factions, let's just look at Roland, who I want to remind is an antagonist for a while, and the best ending being obtained by rejecting the idea that both he and Angela are irredeemable and fated to fight.
Or the fact that it's by understanding the dreams of all that came to fight her that Angela reach apotheosis and beat Carmen.
Honestly, this whole "breaking the cycle" framing seems wrong to me. Like, we have this situation, with X and the Wizard being similar in so many ways, with no real possibility of either of their underlings (this is important!) being swayed to the other's side, through no fault of their own.
And the solution, insofar as there is one, is not some kind of overriding (one might say, categorical...) imperative to "break the cycle" or whatever. It's ultimately decided on the ground floor, so to speak. For the MGs, by actually judging, subjectively, to the best of their ability, what those two do; and for X and the Wizard themselves, by following through on their values to the end, because that's what actually matters [for them].
People only ever think about understanding and breaking cycles when they conceive they might be wrong, and that's fine.
Lepidoptera
Mother of Monsters, Unverified Impuritas Civitatis
- Location
- Indeterminate Unknown
I wouldn't consider Angela and Roland to be warring factions, they spend most of the game on the same side and have a genuine relationship as friends before Roland's betrayal. Their conflict is a personal one, with both each other and themselves, learning to not hold on so tightly to the idea that they're owed or that they even need vengeance and satisfaction to feel complete.
Not to mention the existence of the Reverberation Ensemble, who I would consider to be a warring faction with the Library, who are all ideologically opposed to the Patron Librarians in some way or another. They'll never come to an agreement because what the Ensemble wants is fundamentally opposed to what the Librarians want and is also terrible and would result in absolute chaos and mass death, so the only solution there is to fight.
That's fair. I will clarify my statement as saying that preserving that aspect is a straightforward extension of combining the two settings, but not mandatory. Perhaps having someone with X's power is supposed to improve the quest setting to the point where this shouldn't be true, but Lepi has chosen to preserve this aspect for now.
To be fair, the process of understanding in PM since Ruina is all too often gated behind "fight this person and then maybe they'll/I'll be open to realizing something
" (save for Distortion Detective I guess). In a sense, X may be building up to this as we speak.PMMM is closer to not gating resolutions behind overt violence but there are some caveats. Madoka is granted for magical girls, but for witches, I note the original wish was to erase them all even if they did show up in the sequel as fanservice. In Rebellion, I'm not convinced Homura truly understood Madoka, just as Madoka didn't truly understand Homura. I'll need to revisit this once Walpurgisnacht is out.
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But a large part of that at the beginning is false.
Roland is there with one goal at the beginning:
Kill Angela.
He's not on her side, he isn't on her side for real until the Black Silence fight, when he finally accept that he can be on her side and not her antagonist.
The relationship is not genuine, it's a trick from Roland, a trick he ended up believing too, but a trick nonetheless.
Lepidoptera
Mother of Monsters, Unverified Impuritas Civitatis
- Location
- Indeterminate Unknown
Maybe it was a trick in the beginning, but it stops being fake long before the ending. Roland asks Angela if she has any regrets about what she's done or what she's planning a lot. Even if he might not realise it himself, Roland is trying to get Angela to give him an excuse not to go through with his plan. He wants her to talk him out of it, to prove that if she can turn back from the path she's on then so can he. They're not enemies so much as two people both victims of the same world and the same ideology who are set against each other by their inability to let go of the past.
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- N/A
I'm with Lepi on this one. Every interaction with the Wings and Head in PMoon is a choice between capitulation and combat. You cannot compromise with W corp, or the faceless CEOs that chose to torture their passengers; you cannot seek understanding with a Claw any more than you can with Punishing Bird. There is an emphasis on forgiveness and self-understanding, but there is also an acknowledgement that there are people whose goals are incompatible and who cannot be convinced.
PMMM is a bit weirder on this front, because it doesn't really focus on relationships, at least in my reading. There is still the self-understanding angle, but outside of Sayaka and Kyoko none of the relationships between characters change at any point, only their understanding of each other. Madoka's final with is to erase every Witch before it is born, both because death is better than being a Witch and because it removes the Incubators' incentive to drive children to reality-breaking despair.
PMMM is a bit weirder on this front, because it doesn't really focus on relationships, at least in my reading. There is still the self-understanding angle, but outside of Sayaka and Kyoko none of the relationships between characters change at any point, only their understanding of each other. Madoka's final with is to erase every Witch before it is born, both because death is better than being a Witch and because it removes the Incubators' incentive to drive children to reality-breaking despair.
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
To be fair, Lepid's point is more that the Witches are basically impossible to reason with.
Sure, they are people, but they also eat people.
Their behavior is animalistic to the point you cannot communicate nor understand them without knowledge of who they were in the first place.
Madoka's solution to basically "erase" them from the equation isn't exactly one of "understanding" them.
It's like Rabies. You don't consider the disease "people". You consider the people afflicted with it people.
But the witch aren't the disease, they're the people affected by it in that comparaison?
Madoka's last words to Walpurgis are about understanding her, 90% sure.
Her wish is born of her desire for those people to stop suffering, because she understands them and acknowledge they are people.
As for why the stopping of the suffering takes the form of not existing:
Buddhist work, existence is suffering and you want to transcend it.
Lepidoptera
Mother of Monsters, Unverified Impuritas Civitatis
- Location
- Indeterminate Unknown
Nirvana and escaping the cycle of suffering that is existence is an interesting subject because while reaching Nirvana is something to aspire to, it's also not something you're supposed to desire. Desires, after all, are a tether to the material world even if what you're wishing for is outside of it. Rather by living a rightful life and seeking enlightenment detached from the reward you'll get at the end, you naturally arrive at Nirvana without having sought it out.
questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
Witches are a disease.
Instead of magical girls having mental breakdowns and just obtaining depression like normal people, they straight up die and become essentially zombies.
That is a disease.
A zombie technically suffers. It's body is a rotting corpse held together by dark hope and hungry dreams.
But no one consider zombies people do they?
CanIChangeMyName
Just a passing through rider fan, remember that!
- Location
- What are you a cop?
To throw in my 2 cents I feel that the magical girls before witching are the victims in this case with witching/Grief being the disease.
Like Grief is a terminal disease that leads to at least the ego death, if not just straight up death, of the magical girl by turning them into a witch since I can't remember a case of a witch being sentient/remembering being human that didn't involve a wish, but I might be wrong on that
Edit: whoops something went wrong and this posted twice
Like Grief is a terminal disease that leads to at least the ego death, if not just straight up death, of the magical girl by turning them into a witch since I can't remember a case of a witch being sentient/remembering being human that didn't involve a wish, but I might be wrong on that
Edit: whoops something went wrong and this posted twice
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questioningmeme
Just be yourself
- Location
- River of Light
Isabeau is a witch if I remember right.
But she's also quite the special case. Generally speaking, I was referring to run-of-the-mill Witches.
Lepidoptera
Mother of Monsters, Unverified Impuritas Civitatis
- Location
- Indeterminate Unknown
Isabeau's case does involve a Wish, Lapin's. We don't know what Crepuscule de la Reine was like before it got stuck back in Isabeau's body. She's already very much less human once she's been shoved back into her body, and she gets less and less sophisticated the more she leaves her body behind.
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Warm bodies.
I am legend (the book, not the film)
Any work where the zombies are actually people stuck without control and not a completely different entity taking it (without leaving the original owner stuck looking from within) still has the zombies being people too IMO.
Witches are not the disease, witching out is the disease, the witches are the victim.
We still consider people infected by rage people, and they're basically zombies that fear water.
Edit:
Oh, I think I forgot the most important person not to consider witches a disease:
Madoka.
Edit2:
I am also going to add, because it is pretty important:
I really, really dislike the idea that *animalistic*=*not sapient* (which is what most people think when saying something is not *people*)
I firmly believe that there are more sapient animals than non sapient, and that the anthropocentric definition of *people* and *sapient* need to be burned at the stake.
Different doesn't mean not people, alien doesn't mean not people, and the very idea that acting *animalistic* is an automatic disqualification is not something I agree with.
Edit3:
Actually, let me ask you a question:
Let's take a girl and name her alice.
Alice is a perfectly normal girl.
Now let's give her some heavy drugs that make her hallucinate that everyone is a bunch of monsters and lead to her acting incredibly aggressive. Just *animalistic* aggression all around.
Is Alice still people?
And if rhe drugs are permanent, is she still people?
I personally answer yes to both, and witches are pretty much this situation, so I do see witches as people without a single doubt.
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