Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Homura was a weird fucking witch. Hell, she even retains her meguca form. I dunno how useful she is as evidence of normal witch characteristics.

Kirstein, though...I could come up with excuses about how she just instinctively goes for the kill when she senses meguca potential, and her victims came up with the method of suicide on their own, but nothing really conclusive. Mainly I prefer to assume them mindless because thinking of them still being able to comprehend how fucked their existence is saddens me.

That was kinda a result of all the messing around with her Soul Gem the incubators did, I think.

So yeah, Homulily's a strange beast in terms of being a witch.

The main argument for "mindless" is that Oktavia actually went after Madoka. If not mindless, then permanently deranged and insane, which is functionally close enough.

Plus, I'm fairly certain that "can potentially become a meguca" isn't a factor in it. All that magical potential doesn't count for anything until and unless Kyubey contracts with them to unlock it; I suspect it's more that once someone gets drawn into a labyrinth, they have a pretty short window of time for a meguca to rescue them before the witch and/or its familiars kill them. (Unless the witch grabs someone who's well-armed and mentally prepared enough to fend them off, which would be an extremely unusual circumstance, to say the least.)

Also, I agree that Homulilly is an extremely anomalous datapoint.

edited 17th Aug '14 10:23:17 PM by SabresEdge

Sayaka went after Madoka before becoming Oktavia too. She didn't physically attack her, but she still laid out a lot of harsh feelings and resentment towards her during their conversation at the bus stop.

I don't buy mindless. I do buy deranged. Becoming a Witch is a product of succumbing to despair. Being a Witch, therefore, would be a state so thoroughly engulfed in despair that nothing else can surface. It's all the worst thoughts and feelings you've had, with none of the more pleasant emotions to balance it out. Homura's testimony in Rebellion Story supports this: she's alive, she's intelligent, but she's lost her identity, except the pain. It overwhelms and blocks out all other sentiments.

edited 17th Aug '14 10:27:33 PM by TobiasDrake

Question, has it ever been established in canon that the incubator race is a hivemind? I know we see the Kyubey bodies being killed and replaced, but from the way Kyubey refers to them, the Kyubey bodies that we see appear to be more similar to remote controlled robots or drones made specifically to interact with humans rather than their true bodies.

The statement Urobuchi made could be interpreted as the incubators being a hive mind or there being multiple Kyubeys running around.

Yeah it seems that kyubey is just a single person controlling many bodies rather than something like ants.

Yeah I don't really buy that the witches are mindless. It is the normal expectation for person turned monster but, that would be missing the point of them. Looking back it appears that Sayaka may even had heard Madoka back when they try to save her(a strange figure appeared, crying her eyes out, her scream towards Kyouko when she first appeared)

Sad that Sayaka is implied to have remember what she did given rebellion. Nagisa's artwork released afterwards says that Mami looked like the last person she saw in her 'nightmare'.

Maybe but 'mindless' but still so mentally damaged by the change, the end result amounts to pretty much the same thing for all practical purposes.

No the witches are not mindless. They still show high intelligence. Their labyrinths contain writing and aspects of human culture that go beyond imitation.

As I mention previously Kirstein made her victims use an complex suicide method that a mindless being wouldn't know. She made no attempt to place a witch kiss on Madoka and just attempted to kill her. She even used Madoka's memories to torment her as she kill Madoka showing she still had enough intelligence to understand another person.

Sayaka responded to Kyouko and Madoka showing she could understand normal speech although was too broken to respond in a meaningful non-violent way. This is just stuff from the main series.

Er, simply because there is writing in their labyrinth is not proof of high intelligence. It would be if they are regular creatures, but that kind of things go out the window when magic is involved. More to the point, while writing does appear within a witch's labyrinth, they have never demonstrated the ability to read or otherwise interact with them in any significant way. It's entirely possible that the writing is simply a feature of a witch's barrier, or something that they instinctively create, much like the shell of a snail or a beehive.

Also, Octavia never responded to Kyouko or Madoka in any other way than attacking them, or bringing them into range to attack them. Claiming that this is proof of high intelligence is abit like saying that because a bear attacks intruders in her territory, it is obviously highly intelligent.

edited 19th Aug '14 3:51:28 AM by CannonGerbil

You know the idea of witch instincts sounds simple, but it isn't. Where do they get these instincts? All Kyubey does is make sure they become witches and didn't design their nature. Instincts are complex and the show being magic doesn't make that go out the window.

You are saying that they lose their intelligence and gain a bunch a complex mental machinary. Instincts that cause writing that talks about their own wants and feelings which sounds a lot like self-awareness to me.

The instincts I was talking about are mostly concerning their drive to attack people. The argument I made about the words appearing within the witch barrier is that the are a natural feature of a witch's barrier. Much like how a snail's shell grows in spirals, so do a witch's thoughts appear as runes within the barrier. A witch does not have control over the runes much like the same way you cannot control how your hair grows, it just happens. Or at least, that's the argument I'm trying to make.

As evidence that it's not the witches actually writing the words just appear. Octavia Von Sendekoff was named before the witch itself took physical form.

The issue is that a process needs to be there to make their thoughts appear in the labyrinths as words. Either you have to have a whole new or it needs to be preexisting. If it is a new one then where does it come from?

We don't have a lot reference for how labyrinths are constructed. When Sayaka first transformed, her labyrinth was just a twisted version of her location. It took a little less than a day to construct hers. The only reference we have of the process is Homura, were we see her familiar piece it together into a copy of Mitakihara. So the labyrinths don't seem to form into their complex shapes on their own, but rather by deliberate effort on their witch's part.

So the human culture and writing probably should be see as an deliberate effort of the witches either directly or by the means of their familiars to match their preferences and desires. Given the elaborate nature of most of their labyrinths, they should be seen as intelligently design.

p.s why does this thread have so little activity?

edited 19th Aug '14 9:58:21 AM by higurashimerlin

Well, just about anything in PMMM worthy of discussion has already been discussed in some form or another, and since no new information has show up, baring a few exceptions we are basically retreading old ground. so that explains the inactivity.

As for Homura, using her as an example of witch behavior is very problematic, because she is kinda unique in nature. Even when she fully manifests her witch form, she still retains more self awareness than Oktavia ever shows in any of her incarnations, and there are so many variables that are unique to Homulily alone that she really cannot be used as an example for witch behaviour.

Well the only thing really unusually about Homulily's labyrinth besides being an elaborate copy of Mitakihara is that it is inside of her soul gem. She doesn't really act any different on the outside.

My point about Sayaka's labyrinth still stands. The familiars and construction of the labyrinths seem to be deliberate and other explanations require extra mental hardware that humans don't have and Kyubey had no role in building. The only ability they gain is the ability to create the pocket dimensions and they then intelligently fill in those spaces.

I know that becoming mindless monsters that can't tell friend from foe and ally from enemy is a common device, but it isn't what is happening here.

edited 19th Aug '14 1:06:14 PM by higurashimerlin

Found this goodie:

Nice.

Maybe this thread could be more active? I bring up a new subject which I believe no one has discussed and the thread drops dead.

There've been nine posts today. I don't call that dead. Especially for something that hasn't had anything new come out for a while.

You can't kill the Madoka, just like you can't kill the metal.

I mean I am not used to waiting a few hours for a response.

I am consider writing a fanfiction from a witch's point of view.

Make sure there's lots of screaming and pain.

Seems like a logical choice.

Any witch in particular, or just some unnamed horror?

Don't know yet. I have an idea but, I am still working on it.

Except that is precisely what is happening. Sayaka literally cannot tell friend from foe, even after repeated attempts to talk to her, and attacks all intruders to her witch barrier with an animalistic intelligence. All the witches in the series, with the exception of Homura, don't exhibit anything other than animalistic intelligence.

I mean, think about it. Witches are localized reality warpers. If they are truly intelligent, there is any number of ways they can use their witch barrier to communicate with, or if they are hostile, harm intruders, but they don't. Their witch barriers are static, once a theme has been settled on it doesn't change, even when another type of battlefield would be more suitable. This leads me to believe that the witch barrier itself is outside the witches concious control, and since the witch themselves don't exhibit behaviors of their previous selves, there is really nothing to suggest that they retain higher human functions after becoming a witch.

The only exception is of course Homura, but once again, she is a very unique case. Of the other 2 witches that we know the human form of, Charlotte and Oktavia, neither of them demonstrate any hint of their former identities, mindlessly attacking any intruders in their barriers. Homura spent most of the movie existing in some sort of limbo state between a witch and a Magical girl, and even after achieving her witch form, is still able to successfuly communicate, which is something that Oktavia never manages to do over the countless times she witched out.

edited 19th Aug '14 7:57:19 PM by cannongerbil