Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Have we even tried googling him?
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
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- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) 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?
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- He/Him
JIMI94
Birdman with a cauldron on it's head
- Location
- The Garden of Earthly Delights
Honestly I like to imagine they weren't even really mind control per se, but basically prevented people from just ignoring or deflecting his preaching, and have to hold it to the same standards as their current beliefs. If so the people who would have joined his flock would be people who had less cogent beliefs before, who ended up realizing his stuff made more sense. Cocomittantly, someone who had a better meme would be immune to everything that contradicts it, besides maybe having to debunk it manually. As well, presumably if someone came along with a better idea it may be able to dislodge his words, though presumably at a similar disadvantage to what he had before himself.
Given that the wishes don't seem to twist in that sort of way, and I'd like to imagine young Kyouko didn't want everyone to obey her dad unquestioningly, just genuinely listen to what he had to say. It's possible she may herself still have his words rattling in her head, but that once we can poke holes in it they may lose their sort of grip.
Given that the wishes don't seem to twist in that sort of way, and I'd like to imagine young Kyouko didn't want everyone to obey her dad unquestioningly, just genuinely listen to what he had to say. It's possible she may herself still have his words rattling in her head, but that once we can poke holes in it they may lose their sort of grip.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That definitely doesn't fit with my interpretation of Kyoko's story.
As you say, wishes go by intent, not literal genie words. Kyoko's intent was not that people would listen to her father, but that they would listen and believe what he was telling them was true. Sure, she wanted that, in part, because she already believed it was true. But it was an explicit wish to violate free will, since the people who freely chose to leave the church when they didn't like what Pastor Sakura was preaching were the problem Kyoko saw her wish as solving.
I know we've got strong feelings about mind control that might tempt us to say what Kyoko did must've been something less invasive, less of a violation of another's being, because we like Kyoko and sympathize with her plight. To whitewash what she did in order to not have to reconcile the fact that we rightly consider Kyoko as a victim in what happened with our feeling that violating someone's mind is unforgivable.
In a sense, I imagine this is what Pastor Sakura might have been feeling when he realized that he hadn't just finally found a receptive audience for his sermons. Free Will is placed on a very high pedistal in common Christian apologetics due to the idea that it must be the highest possible good if God chooses not to violate it even when people use it to enact the most horrific evils upon their fellow man.
I think Kyoko did, in fact, do a bad thing. I don't think Kyoko is unforgivable for doing it, and I do think there were a lot of mitigating circumstances which make her less culpable for the decision she made. But I do think she did wrong, violated other people on a deep, fundamental level. She didn't mean for that to be what she was doing, but I think it's more that she didn't think through the implications.
Wishes aren't literal genies, but they aren't benevolent genies either, carefully arranging things so we'll get what we really want instead of what we intended when we asked for it.
And I don't know how I missed something so obvious, but Kyoko wished people would listen to her father. And her father blamed her for his murder/suicide. It had seemed like such normal survivor's guilt and hindsight showing her where she went wrong that she tried to pass on to Sayaka. It somehow never occurred to me that her inability to forgive herself might not be entirely natural.
- Location
- United States
That might not be a very good idea. The last time Mami came up in conversation, Masami was insensitive enough that Sabrina almost took a swing at her.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Because Sayaka, with her keychain-of-many-powers, is part of the Polyarmory, with Homura (guns-in-shield-of-holding), Mami (ribbon-engineering-is-the-greatest-in-the-world) and Sabrina (utili-grief).I'm not sure why you put Sayaka down, as quite obviously she's going to wind up dating both Kyoko and Hitomi.
But she's the Tsukkomi to whenever we do a particularly bad wordplay, like Polyarmory.
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- Location
- Georgia
It wouldn't be hard to set up a fanfic explanation where you add some details to alter the context of her wish, but I agree that you can't assume that broader context exists in canon just because it can be created in a fanfic. You'd mostly need to have the father complaining that people wouldn't listen long enough to understand his point before judging it, for example.
I agree that the simplest interpretation is probably the most horrific, in the sense of a violation of free will, in the same way I find "love potions" or ideas along those lines to be utterly evil in most cases. In Harry Potter, the twins' joke shop sells love potions... but the only ones we get any details on are love potions you use on yourself, and that makes a huge difference. In a number of fanfics, purebloods often use lust potions or the like on themselves for the purposes of generating an heir, but with no long term effects. This is fine, too, so long as people are willingly choosing things for themselves.
If Kyoko's wish did make people actually believe what her father said, then, yes, her own magic may have turned in on itself, and that's why she lost her power of clones in the first place, exactly how Oriko lost hers. A side effect of that interpretation is that Kyoko might gain a new magic, if we can help her resolve her conflict over her family's fate.
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- He/Him
We may not get more details about the ones the twins are selling, but in book 6, Ron eats some candy that had been sent to Harry that had been laced with a love potion. He becomes obsessed with the girl who'd sent Harry the candy, mooning over her dramatically until Slughorn whips up an antidote for him.
At the moment, I'm more worried about the possibility that Kyoko might have gotten mind fucked by her own wish by being forced to believe it when her father told her everything that happened was her fault.
That she might not be able to process this in a healthy way and internalize that her father made his own choices and has his own part of the blame because the magic of her wish is still in effect, forcing her to keep believing what he told her, that it was all her fault.
If that's the case, it is even more urgent than I thought that we figure out how to wrangle a rogue wish and get it back under control, and meanwhile get Kyoko to always be wearing one of those self control enchantments we made and maybe get her hit with anti-magic on the regular.
Because if she really is under mind control to forever blame herself for the death of her family...
Lopezelpesado
Space worm best worm.
- Pronouns
- Something
Now this just makes me wonder....
What the hell would happen if we made a potion with grief? Like, magic potions.
What the hell would happen if we made a potion with grief? Like, magic potions.
- Location
- United States
We might want to talk to Yuki about that, because what she said earlier is interesting:
There are "few" things that can undo a Wish, but it sounds like they do exist and she's had at least a little experience with them.
- Location
- Georgia
I'm not sure I can articulate what I was trying to say without creating the very derail I was trying to avoid with the minimalistic comment you were responding to. HP has two kinds of love potions show up, really. One is used on the self, willingly, and the other should better be labeled as "rape potions". In that setting, even Hermione doesn't seem to think twice about what they really mean because girls(for the most part) are fed the myth of creating love through a potion without that being an absolutely horrible thing to do to anybody.
Kyoko wanted people to listen to her father, but we don't know how much or what impact her background had on her frame of mind when she made that wish. Best case scenario, people were stopped from making a snap decision long enough to actually hear his argument and judge it. Worst case, anything her father said would be believed, regardless of what was being said and the merits, or lack thereof, of any perspective or argument he offered.
My point about her getting a new magic was a pragmatic factor to get people to vote for it at some point, but was also a mechanistic point: Oriko lost her precog because of understanding a disconnect between what she thought she wanted and what she'd been trying to get. Kyoko's magic talent getting lost could be a symptom of her wish turning against itself, leaving it in a feedback loop. If we could have blasted her with antimagic back then, perhaps that would have broken the loop, but she has years of hating herself to overcome, too, now. Still, if the speculation that Feathers is Homura's wish acting beyond herself, then solving Kyoko's root issue(presuming your thoughts on the matter are correct, here) may serve as an achievable and laudable small scale experiment/proof of concept.
Even if it doesn't help the overarching goals, helping Kyoko would be a good thing, but the calculous of how much time we have left before Walpurgisnacht needs to be considered for an informed choice on what to do with that time. Just helping her find closure, no magic needed beyond looking into what really happened, is something I would support, but I feel compelled to consider the purely pragmatic before deciding, even if I ultimately decide to tell the pragmatic to go *bleep* itself
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Fortunately, we are going to be meeting with her later on to get the emergency exit for Madoka that Homura and Hitomi have been setting up installed. And we did promise to keep her up to date on our plans.
It certainly feels like a safer thing to poke at and get a handle on what we're dealing with than jumping straight to the Law of Cycles as our first try at this sort of thing. Not safe, but certainly safer.
My worry was that mundane help might not be able to help her unless we can counter the brainwashing magic. Thus, we would need a two pronged approach, both helping Kyoko process the experience AND keeping the magic at bay with antimagic and self control enchantments while we do so.
Meanwhile, it might help to see if there are any recordings of Pastor Sakura's sermons out there. Any variant on the standard Christian themes of forgivness and redemption might be a useful tool to construct a counter-meme using the same wish magic to give Kyoko a way out. Painful as it would be to hear her father's voice again. Actually figuring out what the content is in order to find something to use as a counter-meme would probably be best handled second hand, by asking one of the former members of the church to describe or maybe even repeat the sermon to us. Even if there is no magical influence on Kyoko, it might help her to hear it anyway.
Other avenues of investigation for working out how to counter the magic more directly include Yuki, Niko, and Akane, who all may have relevant information.
In extremis, there is also Kyubey, who seemed confident in his ability to manipulate the Law of Cycles once he was able to observe it, even knowing it was a product of a wish. He bit off more than he could chew then, but he might actually have something able to counter a less potent wish. Plus he almost certainly has those recordings of Pastor Sakura's sermons. Obviously, anything he tells us is inherently unreliable and likely dangerously misleading, so this should be saved as a last resort.
Also, we should talk to our friends about what we're thinking before we rush off. They will have insights. And if we're (I'm) shadowrunning too hard, they're in a good position to talk us down.
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- Location
- Georgia
What I meant with that line is that I support trying to help Kyoko in this manner regardless of whether her problems are magical or mundane.
I wonder whether your interpretation was intended by Firn(Oriko's/Kirika's magic come to mind), and whether that is now true, regardless of original authorial intent, since s/he clearly reads the forums for things that influence Sabrina's thoughts.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The bit with Oriko and Kirika's magic interaction was one of the things that came to my mind when this occurred to me as well.
(For the record, Firn's profile says male.)
Firn is certainly capable of adapting his narrative, as seen with Oriko's unexpected early downfall. And I suspect the wish rejection details we learned from that were, in part, improvised to account for the unexpected shift in Oriko's role in the narrative. On the other hand, he's clearly been thinking about the underlying magic system pretty deeply and has answers about how it works figured out that he is showing off with characters like Akane and the mysteries about what exactly she is, and I doubt he'd end up shifting the underlying (if still obfuscated from the player base) foundations of the system that he's been dropping hints about and building his mysteries around.
Any new ideas he does add in after the fact would have to be at least compatible with the secret truths he's got in mind already, otherwise he risks clues he's already dropped no longer pointing to the new truth.
All that said, I am very simulationist in terms of my writing and GM style (back when I was still running a gaming group), so that might be biasing me about how likely such a retcon might be.
But yeah, whether her father's words blaming her are literally stuck in her head with magic or not, I do think helping Kyoko get them out and find a way to forgive herself for what happened is definitely worth pursuing.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
I'm not going to weigh in on the topic that this was in response to, but instead to comment on this meta-topic about @Firnagzen's approach to the underlying foundations of what's going on. Firn absolutely loves sprinkling things that in retrospect are obvious references to secrets regarding the story -- they're things that aren't terribly useful as clues, but are instead the narrative equivalent of puns because he's a jerk like that. For an example that's already become obvious, and was remarked on in the narrative directly:
Which is a sort of thing that doesn't work if he's going around shifting the foundation of the work willy-nilly. There are a few things that I've been spoiled on that have similar retrospective-hints that date back to 2014.
The thread influences Sabrina's thoughts and mood, and her actions affect the plot moving forward, but if we want to change the story we have to do it ourselves. Which is kinda the point.
ExploerTM
Ruin has found you at last!
- Location
- Russia, Perm
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
...implications of yet another wish going horribly wrong aside - another Tuesday at this point, really; surprised ours and Madoka's still working as intended (BUT FOR HOW LONG?!?!?!?!?) - I feel like this wording sounds a bit... hypocritical. I can't in good fate call what she did wrong. A mistake - sure. But wrong implies that she even understood what is going on. Last time I tried arguing that megucas should be held a bit more responsible for whatever they do (I cant even recall what argument was at this point) but everyone swiftly pointed out that they just a bunch of traumatized 14 year olds, they understand fuck all. So implying that half-starved 11-12 year old girl who just wants her family, her father be happy can even begin to think through consequences of how wording affects wishes... well, this is wrong.
I honestly wound't have bothered this much given that this is not a vote but since thread does affect Sabrina's thought process I felt like I need to type this.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I guess my issue with this theory is that Oriko and Kirika's things were their mindsets influencing their magic. The trick wasn't that Oriko wanted to die because her magic only showed her dying, it's that Oriko wanting to die made her magic only show her dying. Kirika's magic functioning as a metaphor for her relationship with Oriko, too, is flowing from character to magic.
I'm hesitant to call anything for the other direction. I hated the idea that Ono being mad at us must be mind control, and I'm not a fan of this one either. Kyoko never needed magic to believe what her father told her. She loved and idolized him. Arguably the point of her wish was that she wanted everyone else to see him like she did. And I think it would diminish that connection if step one of getting her to stop blaming herself for her family's deaths was performing a ritual to counteract the magical curse of self-loathing he cast on her. That would turn a perfectly good character arc into "look at this weird effect of how magic works!"
It's about the people. With Oriko and Kirika, the magic was about the people. I don't think that we're going to find that in Kyoko's case the person is about the magic.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm trying to make a distinction between whether Kyoko's wish, as stated and with its intended meaning was for a thing that was morally wrong to wish for, and whether and to what extent Kyoko is morally culpable for any moral wrong that may or may not be there.
Kyoko's emotional maturity, education, life circumstances, and much more besides all contribute to the argument that Kyoko was not morally culpable. Not to mention Kyubey and his high pressure sales tactics. That does not impact one way or the other whether we consider the thing she wished for to be moral or not.
Take Nagisa's canon wish to share one last cheesecake with her mom before she died, a wish I think we agree is not an immoral thing to wish for, despite the obvious ways it was suboptimal. We don't consider Nagisa culpable for that suboptimal choice because of the many aforementioned factors involved.
Kyoko's situation is much the same. I don't expect a young child to have carefully considered the moral philosophy of mind control or possibly even notice that what she was wishing for would be mind control. So even if what she wished for was something I consider immoral rather than suboptimal, I also don't hold Kyoko culpable, for much the same reason.
That is certainly a fair point.
I do think said curse could work just fine as a metaphor for how her more mundane survivor's guilt and unresolved issues make it harder for her to see herself as a good person, and the method of curse breaking tying in to how one would seek to resolve the mundane issues being explored through metaphor, but I can certainly see how it would be easy to stray off theme.
- Location
- Georgia
Which is why the first step we wanted to take was to investigate her father's church and teachings. Antimagic may be needed later on, but we need to have something to work with the mundane portions of the problem before addressing the magic can solve anything. She's had years for her survivor's guilt to eat at her, and getting rid of a compulsion won't undo all of that. Regardless of whether her guilt is magic reinforced, helping her deal with that is a good thing and worthwhile.
As for changing the setting, it doesn't take much changes to go from 'here is a thing I already showed can happen' to 'here is that same thing applied to a specific character in a way I didn't anticipate'. Firn isn't Wil E. Coyote, Super Genius. He's not going to anticipate every conclusion we may reach, every idea we'll have, but that doesn't mean he can't adapt our ideas into his setting and story.
SeQuester
Novice explorer
- Location
- Russia
- Pronouns
- He/His
He could troll us right back in that case.
Here we are, sitting and thinking why nobody listened to him? Was he too progressive? Turbo-homofobic?
And then it is revealed that people didn't want anything to do with him because he thought Jesus was a mass hallucination or something.
There's an entire Wikipedia page full of christian heresies of varying levels of obscurity and weirdness.
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- He/Him
I still like the idea that he was preaching that there were literal demons abducting people into portals to hell and that mass suicides were a product of supernatural forces possessing people.He could troll us right back in that case.
Here we are, sitting and thinking why nobody listened to him? Was he too progressive? Turbo-homofobic?
And then it is revealed that people didn't want anything to do with him because he thought Jesus was a mass hallucination or something.
I mean, we know Kyubey wasn't following his usual MO of mind wiping Pastor Sakura, and was using that specifically to fuck with Kyoko in an attempt to drive her to despair. Why not have a few memories of witnessing Witch activity that no one else will ever believe push the father of one of the potentials he's cultivating into increasingly deranged rants that lead to their family starving, and the potential increasingly desperate for a way out? Perfect for producing a poorly thought out wish the potential is sure to regret.
TJSomething
That's... that's impossible!
We actually already know that the heresy he was preaching was Madokami-ism and it was also actual mind control.
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- Location
- Georgia
Interesting. That definitely supports the idea that Kyoko's guilt is being reinforced by the magic of her wish.
StellarMonarch
Myrmidon
- Location
- Québec
Doing my nth rereading because I love this fic too much
IIRC Sayaka up and nearly vomited in class, didn't she? Her parents must've been pretty damn alarmed if they were told anything about it. Between her increased involvement with Constellation and the whole mess with O&K some weeks ago and then Kyuubey's mindwipe it doesn't feel fair to me that they're still in the dark about everything. Something to talk to her about, imo.
I'm morbidly curious about what the rumor mill at school thinks of all the recent events. There's a mysterious transfer student, the same students are asking to go see the nurse multiple times a week, Tomoe Mami is skipping class several times a week despite having had a perfect attendance record before, and also there's her mysterious white-haired foreigner girlfriend that suddenly appeared one day. Not to mention that Sayaka just talks to birds in public now too and acts like she understands them and her house fucking burned down.
Honestly, there must be at least a couple girls at school trying to drag answers out of them. Unless Kyubey deals with it, I guess.
IIRC Sayaka up and nearly vomited in class, didn't she? Her parents must've been pretty damn alarmed if they were told anything about it. Between her increased involvement with Constellation and the whole mess with O&K some weeks ago and then Kyuubey's mindwipe it doesn't feel fair to me that they're still in the dark about everything. Something to talk to her about, imo.
I'm morbidly curious about what the rumor mill at school thinks of all the recent events. There's a mysterious transfer student, the same students are asking to go see the nurse multiple times a week, Tomoe Mami is skipping class several times a week despite having had a perfect attendance record before, and also there's her mysterious white-haired foreigner girlfriend that suddenly appeared one day. Not to mention that Sayaka just talks to birds in public now too and acts like she understands them and her house fucking burned down.
Honestly, there must be at least a couple girls at school trying to drag answers out of them. Unless Kyubey deals with it, I guess.
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