AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
I honestly half-suspect that Homura might subconsciously enchant her guns to count as magical attacks, so knowing the fragility of Soul Gems is something I'd prefer to ask Kyubey.
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
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- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
I honestly half-suspect that Homura might subconsciously enchant her guns to count as magical attacks, so knowing the fragility of Soul Gems is something I'd prefer to ask Kyubey.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We're building a magical generation ship on Tuesday.I'm all for more forward thinking, but that might be jumping the gun a bit. We don't even have a plan for Tuesday yet.
Didn't someone find a statement from Alivaril that this is, in fact, in the PMAS universe only true due to continuous intervention by the Incubators? (i.e. that some physical constant is actually different in a way that makes entropy much worse, and observations have only given it the same value as it has in the real world because of the influence of Incubators and/or magical girls)
Script Mak3r
(Verified Sun God) (Verified Feathers)
- Location
- Hell of Blazing Fires
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Might you be getting your QMs mixed up? Alivaril runs Ignition.
I did have that mixed up, but I'm pretty sure what I was remembering was a statement by Firnagzen about this quest (Ignition hasn't been back to the PMMM universe in ages, so it wouldn't have been a topic of discussion.)
Found it.
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FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, that kinda changes everything about everything.
GiftOfLove
From the Heart
I'm pretty sure it's explicitly stated that one requires magic to harm a Witch. In one of the first three episodes, I think?
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
I was strictly talking about the time it will take our sun to use up its supply of hydrogen, rather than the heat-death of the universe as a whole, which is predicted to be way, way further down the line.
I can barely even begin to guess what effects changing the Boltzmann constant would have. That feels like it's in "let's set pi to exactly 3" territory. Planetary Astro was a long time ago, but I think if you lowered it then a lot more planets and moons would have atmospheres because lighter gases wouldn't have escaped their gravity, and Earth's would be radically different. I don't think it would change the rate that the sun consumes hydrogen, but I might be missing something. The sun's corona might shrink, maybe? Just a guess.
Honestly, it seems like there are way less problematic explanations one could choose for how the Incubators are using the energy they're gathering, but I'm not the author.
I dunno about that. Except for against Walpurgisnacht, I don't recall her weapons or projectiles ever developing a purple glow or any other telltale signs of enchantment. And she killed a witch with a homemade pipe bomb when she was a rookie with no real grasp of how to use her magic.
It's easy to test for the PMAS setting, at least. Has Sabrina ever sensed magic on Homura's bullets or grenades?
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Not all magic has a visible tell, and I'm proposing that it might be an unconscious thing. Hell, putting things in her shield might apply basic enchantment on the basis of just being stored inside her magic weapon.
It just makes sense to me that Puella Magi intrinsically apply enough magical force to all their attacks so they can bypass "lol mundanes don't matter" witch armor.
As for Walpurgisnacht, canonical intent based on how she's treated in various videogames is that she can just ignore literally anything she wants in order to instill Helplessness in dramas. She's the personification of "fuck you, you lose."
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
There seems to be a sliding scale of resistance to ordinary weapons, with familiars at the bottom and WPN being effectively impervious to them; it probably varies from witch to witch.
Like SPARTANS, magical girls' main advantages against witches aren't offensive, they're defensive and mobility-based. An extremely skilled but otherwise normal human could hypothetically kill them, enchanted weapons or no (Kaoru was able to briefly fend off familiars/familiaresque parts of a swarm-based witch with an ordinary crutch; Sayaka could have with an enchanted bat but for the fact that Mami was ripping shit up too efficiently for her to have a chance), but they'd also get killed or incapacitated by almost any attack that hit them (while Puella Magi have the ability to switch off pain, and those that are lichbombed have no appreciably vital organs) and aren't immune to Witch Kisses (unlike PM).
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Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
Which suggests that a trained military squad sucked into a witch barrier could possibly defeat the wish before the meguca could get there.
THAT would be a hilarious encounter.
THAT would be a hilarious encounter.
Appletank
Acquire Cheese
Sabrina sees the confused commander of a Type 90 sitting in a barrier. Shell casings litter the ground around the tank
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Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
Unfortunately, Kyuubey would brainwash any survivors immediately afterwards.
Such is life in the Imperial Guard.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
Except that they never say or suggest that witches have any such immunity. To the contrary, they went out of their way to include a character that habitually kills witches with (as far as the audience can tell) non-magical weapons. Weren't you the one who said we needed to apply a Doylist perspective?
Frankly, I don't care for the idea. One of the things that made Homura so cool was that she used mundane weapons. Having them be enchanted diminishes her uniqueness.
I think the main problems would be getting lost in the labyrinth without magic to guide them and getting witch-kissed, since they don't have any protection against psychic attacks. Although it's inconsistent whether witches kiss their targets before bringing them into the Barrier or not. Gertrude did to the OL in Episode 1, but not to Madoka and Sayaka in Episode 2.
Not if Sabrina makes friends with them! We told him to quit wiping our friends' memories, after all.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
I'm not really sold on it either 100%, I just have a niggling suspicion I'd like cleared up and it should be easy to do so.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
As far as relevancy to PMAS goes, this isn't really something debatable. Homura either does or does not apply magic, and either way Sabrina would be able to sense it.
- Location
- Your Native Universe
Witches likely aren't immune to mundane weaponry wielded by regular people, but regular people are likely to get ganked by familiars before they can even get close to the Witch. That's also not getting into the fact that some Witches can be really weird with how they work and can be difficult to kill.
Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
What's the weak point on a giant heart suspended in barbed wire and covered in serpentine eyes, is the problem that would be facing the Sergeant of any military squad lost in a Witches Barrier.
With that said, it probably is possible for them to be badass enough to kill a witch on their own. Just very unlikely.
With that said, it probably is possible for them to be badass enough to kill a witch on their own. Just very unlikely.
I'd agree with this, with the possible exception of Walpurgisnacht. It seemed to have some kind of magical barrier around itself, which seemed to harmlessly deflect all but the most powerful elements of Homura's arsenal.
- Location
- Your Native Universe
There's nothing really supporting anything like that though. To be honest, outside of it being made up from a combination of Witches, we really don't know anything about Walpurgis. Most of the stuff we assume about it are just assumptions. Even the common idea that it's less resistant to magical attacks is pretty much fanon at best.
The only thing we might be able to say about it is that it's really durable, and that's only an observation due to it being able shrug off Homura's arsenal.
True, but I think its fairly safe to assume that its got Godhand style "I am completely immune to all attacks that aren't at least this strong" hax, with the minimum threshold to actually affect it being above the strength of most of the mundane weapons in Homura's arsenal.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
The eyes, perhaps?
Honestly, I think they'd probably just aim for the center of mass and put as many rounds on the target as they could.
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
The problem with that explanation is that due to light taking time to reach earth, scientists can and do calculate the constants to see if they've changed ovettime.
A physical constant changing value anywhere in the when intelligent life was theorised to have first came to be would be a clue that we are not alone.
The situation complicates even further when biochemistry is brought into the equation. Boltzmann's constant, IIRC, is also linked to reaction rates for most chemical reactions, especially endothermic reactions like those in photosynthesis and the other synthesis reactions used to create most biochemicals. If that constant goes down, then the extremely delicate balance of reactions that allow life to exist at all gets quickly thrown out of whack; I'd be rather shocked if it turned out that life was possible at all if that constant changed in any significant amount, up or down.
I'm getting quite a bit beyond my own knowledge here, but when I hear physicists talking about different universes and changing cosmological constants they usually disdain talking about dimensionfull constants like Boltzmann's, and instead talk about more fundamental dimensionless constants, like the fine structure constant which dictates the strength of electromagnetic interactions. Constants like Boltzmann's are more like derived constants of the fundamental constants and really can't be considered as separate entities that you can just change without having to change everything else to adjust.
I'll admit the limits of my own understanding and say that I really have no idea what would happen if a super-advanced alien race started messing with fundamental physical constants the way @Firnagzen is implying the Incubators are, but it is pretty clear that if they ever did then life on Earth could only have existed either before they started or after they changed things, certainly not both.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
So I actually read that completely differently.
Bolded bit for emphasis. I read this as saying that, without the incubators around, life as we know it wouldn't exist because the value of k_b would be different, and that their their method of staving off entropy is to change these constants to values that are more suitable for life. I don't know if they're doing it universe-wide or not, nor how far back they're doing it. I wouldn't be surprised if they still have to muck with things like the cosmic microwave background experiments and some of the other deep cosmological results, but tweaking the results coming back from a space telescope is waaaay easier than detecting and intercepting every single experiment on earth that depends on k_b. It also provides a concrete mechanism by which they're combating entropy.Firnagzen in discord said: