Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
The Narrator said:
While we're not particularly concerned about Madoka being there, we don't particularly want her to be, either; it limits our ability to talk about certain topics, like Walpurgisnacht.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I've argued previously that this is in fact an excellent time to tell Madoka about Walpugisnacht. The other topics that'd give her trouble would also cause trouble with Mami or Sayaka. We've already brought up grief socioeconomics and will actually be giving them another demonstration of that when we talk about Tokyo. My memory isn't great on exactly what else we'd be discussing with Bennouna, though; any other topics that'd be made more difficult by having Madoka along?
 
Vebyast said:
I've argued previously that this is in fact an excellent time to tell Madoka about Walpugisnacht.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm a little concerned about telling Madoka about Walpurgisnacht before she's been apocalypsebombed. Finding out that a city-destroying threat is on its way to her home seems like something that would prompt her to contract regardless of negative consequences to herself.

...actually, putting that aside, the first time she learns about it should probably not be when we're telling somebody else about it. Kind of makes it seem like we didn't think she was worth telling directly.

No other specific topic that we need to keep from her comes to mind, although I do worry that we have to practice any realpolitik, she might frown disapprovingly at us.


Torgamous said:
Magic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Narrator said:
In a well-written story, magic has its own set of internally-consistent rules.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
The Narrator said:
I'm a little concerned about telling Madoka about Walpurgisnacht before she's been apocalypsebombed. Finding out that a city-destroying threat is on its way to her home seems like something that would prompt her to contract regardless of negative consequences to herself.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In canon, she doesn't wish until everybody else is actually dead on the ground in front of her, and that's in the very last loop, when Walpurgisnacht's arrival was the capstone of a loop that'd left the cast basically hopeless, even Homura. This time around, with Sabrina running around being badass, and with our obviously game-breaking powers? Madoka trusts us. Whether or not she's right to is immaterial - the don't-make-a-wish foundation will be fine.
The Narrator said:
...actually, putting that aside, the first time she learns about it should probably not be when we're telling somebody else about it. Kind of makes it seem like we didn't think she was worth telling directly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or that we didn't think that this was worth bringing up to her. We're telling her and actively trusting her with all sorts of other things, particularly the important things like the happiness of our social circle. In those terms, and with how much dakka we bring to bear and how not-worried we're going to be about it? I find it more likely that this will downplay Walpurgisnacht to her.
 
Last edited:
Vebyast said:
In canon, she doesn't wish until everybody else is actually dead on the ground in front of her, and that's in the very last loop, when Walpurgisnacht's arrival was the capstone of a loop that'd left the cast basically hopeless, even Homura.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Two things:

1. Madoka almost contracted three times during the series, in Episodes 3, 5 & 8. The first she backed out of because Mami died. The second was prevented because Homura arrived to save Sayaka so she didn't have to. And the third was only prevented because Homura shot Kyubey before Madoka could wish.

2. Madoka didn't know about Walpurgisnacht in the series until Homura told her in Episode 11, after she'd been witchbombed and begun despising Kyubey.
 
The Narrator said:
Because conceptual invulnerability is conceptually absurd.

No matter how powerful something is, its power isn't infinite, so its defense can't be infinitely strong. If something more powerful can apply a greater amount of energy, then the defense will be breached.

This website takes its very name from the principle that any defense can be overcome if you can apply enough energy to it. That's what "one at sufficient velocity" means.

Look, screenwriters say ridiculous things sometimes. It happens in every franchise. You have to filter those statements through some common sense to turn them into something sane.

It makes a lot more sense for Walpurgisnacht and Gretchen to be difficult to hurt because of how powerful they are, and the conceptual narrative is their vulnerability, the conditions that will make them drop their defenses and allow themselves to die because they feel their purpose is fulfilled
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, no. Not how Magic works...not in the sense you're suggesting, at least.

Logically, it shouldn't matter if you hit Walpurgis, Kriemheld, or (potentially) lesser Witches with a planet moving at C. They give a fuck about Energy, Mass, and Force exactly as much as they want to, because they trump the laws of physics through reality warping.

Can mundane force kill most Witches? Yes. They are still mentally human, to some degree, and expect sufficient force to be harmful to them. A bullet hurts them because they're neither insane enough nor self-aware enough to make it otherwise.

Walpurgisnacht is different (for reasons unclear). It doesn't need a Barrier, and it seems to not he truly *harmed* by mundane force. I could theorize why, but there's not enough solid evidence to mean much for this discussion.

Kriemheld, though? She's Madoka. The girl who, while human, decided that reality needed to shut up and do what she said...and forced it to do just that. In the face if a mundane threat, I imagine Kriemheld would simply (metaphorically) scream defiance and crush physics under her resolve. The girl's a badass, when she puts her whole heart into something.

That doesn't mean a Physics-proof Witch can't be overpowered, though: Magic must defeat Magic. If Kriemheld is warping reality to become invulnerable, a Magus, Witch, or Deity-class Entity (of suffiecient potency) should be able to override that with their own Reality Warping.

Madokami? She could kill Ultimate Gretchen because her Wish had a greater Conceptual "weight" than Gretchen's invulnerability trait did.

Addendum:

For an RL comparison, think of physics as the mechanics in a video game, and using Magic as altering the source code. It doesn't matter what your Attack Stat is if the function that applies damage to your target is disabled, you know?

Countering Magic with Magic means going into the code and changing it again, this time in your favor.
 
Last edited:
Higure said:
Can mundane force kill most Witches? Yes. They are still mentally human, to some degree, and expect sufficient force to be harmful to them. A bullet hurts them because they're neither insane enough nor self-aware enough to make it otherwise.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If your theory is that witches are only hurt by mundane weapons because they believe that they will be hurt by them, then how were Charlotte and Loop 3 Oktavia killed by explosions that they were completely unaware of?
 
The Narrator said:
If your theory is that witches are only hurt by mundane weapons because they believe that they will be hurt by them, then how were Charlotte and Loop 3 Oktavia killed by explosions that they were completely unaware of?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because only being damaged by the category of things you think you should be damaged by isn't the same thing as choosing to be damaged. Magic can passively work off of beliefs.

And even if Higure is wrong about how witches work, the fact that you're finding counterexamples instead of invalidating the basic idea shows how far your claim that conceptual immunity is inherently not internally consistent goes.
 
Torgamous said:
And even if Higure is wrong about how witches work, the fact that you're finding counterexamples instead of invalidating the basic idea shows how far your claim that conceptual immunity is inherently not internally consistent goes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This sentence literally makes no sense. Finding contradictions is how you establish something as not being internally consistent. Internally consistent things by definition aren't self-contradictory.
 
The Narrator said:
This sentence literally makes no sense. Finding contradictions is how you establish something as not being internally consistent. Internally consistent things by definition aren't self-contradictory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Regardless, Torgamous is right about Octavia and Charlotte. I'm not saying they die because they see an attack coming and think they're going to die. They die because they believe that guns and explosions are dangerous to them, and thus the physics within their barriers reflect that.
 
I only want to point out that logically consistent and canonical explanation are two seperate qualificatiions.

So there isn't really a point in debating apples and oranges.
 
The Narrator said:
This sentence literally makes no sense. Finding contradictions is how you establish something as not being internally consistent. Internally consistent things by definition aren't self-contradictory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
A concept that is naturally inconsistent doesn't need you to pull specific examples of inconsistency from the show. It'd still be just as inconsistent if witches were only ever damaged by attacks they saw coming.
 
Think back to our early experiments with grief when we made the grief pretend to be fire. When we put it in water the grief went out because that's what fire would do in that situation. We were then able to alter our grief to stop pretending to be effected by water. Which are the same in that most of them are pretending to be made of a substance effected by physics and aren't self aware enough to fix this vulnerability. Walpurgisnacht is not pretending to be to be effected by physics. Magic can probably get around this by effecting the grief directly. Kuyoko was able to break the manacles we made even though we could flatten a car without our grief changing shape.

Also, we should try to enchant Homura's guns to see if it makes them more effective against grief.
 
Torgamous said:
A concept that is naturally inconsistent doesn't need you to pull specific examples of inconsistency from the show. It'd still be just as inconsistent if witches were only ever damaged by attacks they saw coming.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
"My theory works if you ignore all the data points that contradict it" is not good science.

Higure said:
I'm not saying they die because they see an attack coming and think they're going to die. They die because they believe that guns and explosions are dangerous to them, and thus the physics within their barriers reflect that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's... not unreasonable, given some of the strange reality warping that we see in barriers. Still, you'd think that a lot more witches would be crazy enough to think that they're invincible. I mean, plenty of humans get crazy enough to think that after a dose of methamphetamine or a few tequila shots. It probably wouldn't be enough to just believe they were protected, but if they had the raw power to actually put their crazy into effect, and normal witches didn't have the mojo, that might work. Although it's all a little too Mage: The Ascension for my tastes.

defenestrator said:
I'm not sure, but does the second part of the Mod notice in the thread apply in this case? *points above of reply box*
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It might. Although this is a question that will probably be important when we actually try to kill Walpurgisnacht.
 
Higure said:
Yeah, no. Not how Magic works...not in the sense you're suggesting, at least.

Logically, it shouldn't matter if you hit Walpurgis, Kriemheld, or (potentially) lesser Witches with a planet moving at C. They give a fuck about Energy, Mass, and Force exactly as much as they want to, because they trump the laws of physics through reality warping.

Can mundane force kill most Witches? Yes. They are still mentally human, to some degree, and expect sufficient force to be harmful to them. A bullet hurts them because they're neither insane enough nor self-aware enough to make it otherwise.

Walpurgisnacht is different (for reasons unclear). It doesn't need a Barrier, and it seems to not he truly *harmed* by mundane force. I could theorize why, but there's not enough solid evidence to mean much for this discussion.

Kriemheld, though? She's Madoka. The girl who, while human, decided that reality needed to shut up and do what she said...and forced it to do just that. In the face if a mundane threat, I imagine Kriemheld would simply (metaphorically) scream defiance and crush physics under her resolve. The girl's a badass, when she puts her whole heart into something.

That doesn't mean a Physics-proof Witch can't be overpowered, though: Magic must defeat Magic. If Kriemheld is warping reality to become invulnerable, a Magus, Witch, or Deity-class Entity (of suffiecient potency) should be able to override that with their own Reality Warping.

Madokami? She could kill Ultimate Gretchen because her Wish had a greater Conceptual "weight" than Gretchen's invulnerability trait did.

Addendum:

For an RL comparison, think of physics as the mechanics in a video game, and using Magic as altering the source code. It doesn't matter what your Attack Stat is if the function that applies damage to your target is disabled, you know?

Countering Magic with Magic means going into the code and changing it again, this time in your favor.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Pretty much what Higure said here, more or less. I'm not, and never proposed, that Walpurgis, Gretchen, and the like can ignore everything all the time 5ever, no matter what, to an infinite scale. But unless another magically superior entity basically cancels out their Reality Marble/Noble Phantasm bullshit, well...Yea.

Magic is reality-warping, you kind of have to accept that and deal with it.

Higure said:
Regardless, Torgamous is right about Octavia and Charlotte. I'm not saying they die because they see an attack coming and think they're going to die. They die because they believe that guns and explosions are dangerous to them, and thus the physics within their barriers reflect that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I would instead argue that Octavia and Charlotte are just not magically powerful enough to ignore physics to that level, rather than anything about their mental state or beliefs. Potential is still a thing.
 
The Narrator said:
"My theory works if you ignore all the data points that contradict it" is not good science.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In the counterfactual universe where witches did behave like you thought Higure said they do, you still would have responded to my claim that magic allows conceptual invulnerability by saying it's internally inconsistent for magic to allow conceptual invulnerability. The claim you made is broader than what did or did not appear in Madoka Magica and can not be defended solely by Madoka Magica falling short of confirming a theory about Madoka Magica.
 
The Narrator said:
That's... not unreasonable, given some of the strange reality warping that we see in barriers. Still, you'd think that a lot more witches would be crazy enough to think that they're invincible. I mean, plenty of humans get crazy enough to think that after a dose of methamphetamine or a few tequila shots. It probably wouldn't be enough to just believe they were protected, but if they had the raw power to actually put their crazy into effect, and normal witches didn't have the mojo, that might work. Although it's all a little too Mage: The Ascension for my tastes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that a lot of them are waaaaay more durable than pure physics would suggest. The kinds of explosions Homura was leaving behind around Charlotte, anything less durable than a literal solid block of metal would've been shattered fragments after the first or second bomb. And Charlotte's probably the least durable witch around. Additionally, consider that most Puella Magi are doing the same thing with their own weapons, adding bits of "this is a sword that kills witches" to their strikes. I absolutely would expect some witches to be completely invulnerable to straight physics and to require attacks with extra magical backing, things like Tiro Finale or Madoka's arrows.

(I should point out that calling your attacks, in PMMM-land, is probably a huge buff - Tiro Finale is an Attack That Kills Witches on a magical/weakly-conceptual level. Which fits, since I've heard Aura say that Mami corresponds to Ares when we're drawing mythological parallels.)
 
Last edited:
Actually, quick addendum: Can't it very well be that a witch's "fuck you I win" power can be directly observed? Walpurgis doesn't hide in a barrier because she's, for the most part, perfectly safe at all times. Gretchen pulls things into her barrier, but it seems internal, with her actual body being an externally viewable thing. Because dammit she's on a mission and nothing's stopping her.

The Witch of Despair also has no barrier, just full on smashing everything it wants.

Witches don't use barriers if they don't need its protection.

Also +1 to everything Vebyast said.
 
AuraTwilight said:
Actually, quick addendum: Can't it very well be that a witch's "fuck you I win" power can be directly observed? Walpurgis doesn't hide in a barrier because she's, for the most part, perfectly safe at all times. Gretchen pulls things into her barrier, but it seems internal, with her actual body being an externally viewable thing. Because dammit she's on a mission and nothing's stopping her.

The Witch of Despair also has no barrier, just full on smashing everything it wants.

Witches don't use barriers if they don't need its protection.

Also +1 to everything Vebyast said.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If their not in a barrier then their not in a space were their warping reality to their tastes, meaning their not changing the laws because they feel they don't need to.
 
SpeckofStardust said:
If their not in a barrier then their not in a space were their warping reality to their tastes, meaning their not changing the laws because they feel they don't need to.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Given Walpurgisnacht's circus arrival, I wouldn't be too sure about them not warping reality. Rather, they're just not warping all of reality.
In fact, for Kremhild Gretchen, it would make no sense for her to have a barrier unless it encompassed the world, because her desire is related to it.
Walpurgisnacht is trickier, given that it's the combintation of many witches - perhaps it relates to their play theming. A play must have actors and an audience, after all.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top