Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
It's not gonna follow logic all the time. it's a system that has no hope of being made complete by one person/community. the best that Firn or any writer can do is an approximation of sense, founded in what the original story suggested and in the principles of story telling.

We should look into making an artificial soul gem that lets non contracted potentials transform without a contract/becoming a rock. Would be a good way for madoka to be a long range artillary piece, and further disincentivize making a contract even in a really desperate situation.
 
Angrygenius said:
From what I understand of the Incubator's system, i take potential to mean 'how much have you suffered in your life'

This is probably why Kyuubey found Madoka's potential to be so unordinary - Other than her drunk mother (who isn't even that bad, might i add), her life experience does not fit the massive amount of potential she has.

Hitomi's potential is probably so low because she hasn't suffered in life: Her family is loaded, she has a good social circle, and she has a good school life. This experience would naturally give less potential than, say, having your mother die of a terminal illness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My read is that potential is just that: How much capacity you have as a person to change the future, for good or ill, and specifically how much capacity you have to change the lives of everyone around you. Teenagers will naturally have more then, both because they have longer left to live, and because they're still changing as people; There are a number of ways their lives could go, even if a lot of "who" they are has settled in.

Beyond that, the sort of people who, by talent and effort or luck of birth and circumstance, attract the attention of others will naturally have more potential. Someone who has no drive to change the world around them, or who seeks to maintain things as they are, will have a sharply limited potential whether or not they are in a position of power. I would imagine personal suffering almost certainly affects that, as it can be a powerful source of drive to change your own and others lives, but only those who can make their suffering a source of strength, rather than being destroyed by their experiences, will grow in potential from that.

For reference, I read grief a little differently than Sabrina does IC. I don't see it as "personal emotion and suffering" so much as curses, specifically the ability to inflict suffering, on oneself yes, but also including the potential to inflict suffering on others.

I'd read Madoka here having high potential, then, for a few reasons: As far, as metaphysics, its because she's connected to her lives in other realities, and whatever the soul really is is flowing between that and affecting far more people than it "should." But its also higher because she she has both her own vague recollections and Homura's outright help keeping her away from wishes she'd regret or which would be limited in impact, so she's more thoughtful and less impulsive with her wish than she otherwise would be.

Aside, I'd also headcanon that people who are generally weird in some way or another would probably have more potential on average because they come to the world from perspectives outside the normal, and so they naturally have abilities to affect the lives of others in ways that otherwise wouldn't happen. That said, that is a headcanon based in personal logic, rather than supported by the text anywhere I'm aware of.

Finally, it's occurred to me that magical girls dying early also limits their ability to enact real change. Which makes the system and the way it uses up girls a force of stasis. Given that Kyuubey is often read as a metaphor for society, I would think that is probably not an accident.
 
JIMI94 said:
It's not gonna follow logic all the time. it's a system that has no hope of being made complete by one person/community. the best that Firn or any writer can do is an approximation of sense, founded in what the original story suggested and in the principles of story telling.

We should look into making an artificial soul gem that lets non contracted potentials transform without a contract/becoming a rock. Would be a good way for madoka to be a long range artillary piece, and further disincentivize making a contract even in a really desperate situation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Let's not go the Bleach mad science route of creating weaponized artificial souls. Now we should probably make a study of important questions like 'What the heck even is a soul?' and 'Are teenage girls really the only ones who can use magic?', but if we ever reach a point where we try to make artificial soul gems then we've probably gone too far. I know you didn't really mean it that way, but if we ever create any magic focus crystals or something we need to triple check that they aren't sapient.
 
Torgamous said:
You're correct. That's also where the tarantula was.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So to summarize! We have Witch Quest, where the protag 'gucaed Hitomi into Hermione Granger, and Crossbreed Priscilla Quest, where Hitomi had... something. Even looking through the thread notes nothing is joggin' the noggin. :sour:

Angrygenius said:
Dunno. Might have something to do with the emotionality that teenaged girls are known for.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Phoenixian makes a good point on an actual explanation, but QB's MO on 'guca potentiality is generally questionable. I lean more towards the Fargo interpretation, that being potential for hope and despair being the actual crux (making it loosely comparable to Worm's Trigger Events).
 
justinkal said:
I always got the impression that Kyubey was specifically talking about changes in emotions. Searching for the largest or most frequent swings in emotional state.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Right let's be clear: the actual problem is that if we had magical boys, they'd "Wizard out" instead of Witch.

E: though uh, this whole line of discussion strikes me as something I should avoid perpetuating...
 
Last edited:
I am of the firm opinion that due to the feminist allegory of magical girl -> witch transformation, only girls can possibly contract without impinging the thematics. Thus I very strongly suspect that any "boys" who contract would actually be AMAB girls.

Firns opinion's may differ. I'm just going by memory of the show.
 
I think that Kyubey choosing to make girls into his victims makes the theme stronger than if his hand was forced, tbh. After all sexism is the result of human choices throughout history, there was no law of nature saying that only women could be suppressed.
 
blast flame said:
I think that Kyubey choosing to make girls into his victims makes the theme stronger than if his hand was forced, tbh. After all sexism is the result of human choices throughout history, there was no law of nature saying that only women could be suppressed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

fair enough, I suppose.

I just don't see why an alien should follow human convention on this stuff. Not unless it's something intrinsic to the magic.
 
So the easiest explanation of the magical girls being only, well, girls, is the doylist one that it's in the trope.

The watsonian one was given by Kyuubi that only teenage girls produce enough emotions to violate entropy.

Which uh... Yeah.

It's easy to headcanon that away as an "incubator truth", that is, there are reasons other then that which Kyuubi withheld, all of which taken together mean no boys, and teenage girls on average being more emotional is just one.
 
Last edited:
r s said:
So the easiest explanation of the magical girls being only, well, girls, is the doylist one that it's in the trope.

The watsonian one was given by Kyuubi that only teenage girls produce enough emotions to violate entropy.

Which uh... Yeah.

It's easy to headcanon that away as an "incubator truth", that is, there are reasons other then that which Kyuubi withheld, all of which taken together mean no boys, and teenage girls on average being more emotional is just one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well of course only teenage girls produce enough emotions for his purpose, only those who make a wish start making enough emotion to start overturning entropy, and they don't let boys make a contract.

Actual reasons could be that some boy wishing that Magical Boys didn't exist, or that culturally, girls are easier to manipulate, or that Kyuubi is just emotionally stupid and is just mistaken. Remember, he was wrong about his prediction of Madoka's wish or Homura's rebellion, or that whole 'Dewitching is impossible'.

Anyway I'm bored, so anyone wants to talk about Sabrina in Hogwarts? Which house would she be in.
 
jmcdavid said:
Either Gryffindor, cause we're prone to charging where Sayaka fears to tread, or Hufflepuff, because we're working hard to make a happy ending happen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Actually, @Godwinson had argued in their Discord that we would be Slytherin, cause we would probably try to 'fix everything', like the house divisions, and making sure as few deaths happen, and try to steer the Slytherin house away from stupidity in general. I myself also lean towards that house cause Soul Gem = Horcrux. Also grief control but that makes things boring very fast.

Edit: Also, the sorting hat chooses based on best direction for improvement, not what you are already good at. So that excludes Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw is probably already covered by our very fast thinking and knowledge of the player base. So that leaves Slytherin, which we need for better guile.
 
Last edited:
Perfectly understandable, and as a very cool man once said; "Go the F**K to SLEEP!"

We definetely can wait.
 
Phoenixian's speculation that Kyubey targets teenagers because they can become anyone feels right, to me, and as for girls, we could maybe finagle something like "Kyubey doesn't fucking understand emotions so he misunderstands the cultural norm of men suppressing their emotions as men just feeling less like a fucking alien could be expected to do", maybe.

Re: Hitomi being a Magical Girl, it's important to keep in mind that like... Kyubey doesn't contract Sayaka in the earliest loops either and it's strongly implied that he only does so to manipulate Madoka. Hitomi isn't as easy to manipulate so he probably doesn't bother. She's basically too smart to have potential.

Word of God, btw, is that Timeline 1 Madoka was weaker than Sayaka. She was probably only ever contracted in the first place because of her desperate wish to help a cat, combined with how much she absolutely jumps at the call.

I imagine Kyubey's mindset was probably something like "Walpurgis is coming and Mami's methods have kind of locked this town down so that no one tries to invade it, and anyone else contracted tends to walk out with disillusionment; but she's still going. I need Mami to witch out so I can free up this real estate; she's about used up as a recruiter.

...Hey, this kid seems like she'd witch out or die REALLY FAST and she's exactly the type of person Mami gets heavily overinvested in. Hmmmmm....."
 
Personally, I liked @AuraTwilight 's speculation that Kyubey preferentially contracts girls because for most of history, a girl going missing or dying young would cause less alarm in society than a boy doing so.

It strikes the right tone in terms of Kyubey being a heartless utility maximizer, the whole magical girl as feminist allegory thing, and self-perpetuating awful systems.
 
Firnagzen said:
Argh. Sorry, update is not happening tonight. I'm forcing myself to curate my sleep better, so... yeah. Apologies.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As a person who for the past 2 weeks has gone to sleep at 5 AM and woken up at noon, i can sympathize.

It's gotten to the point where sleep is more like a suggestion than a bodily need. Like "yeah i should probably sleep, but this fanfiction is really good, and i wanna play some more minecraft, and i wanna surf pintrest, and what was i thinking about again?"
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top