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FringeBenefits Magical Girl Authority™ from in your basement (Veteran) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Magical Girl Authority™
#1751: Jun 18th 2015 at 5:04:12 PM

Chapter 7 of Shattered Skies is now up!

In which a certain someone we all know appears at last...

FringeBenefits Magical Girl Authority™ from in your basement (Veteran) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Magical Girl Authority™
#1752: Jul 5th 2015 at 4:37:23 PM

I took this partly for the cool factor, and partly as a preview for what may happen in the final chapters of Shattered Skies.

Emphasis on what may happen. Since it's intersecting with the Madokaverse, there's no guarantee everyone in this picture is going to live to see the final battle. -Evil Laugh-

Right-click and select "View Image" to see the non-cropped version. Better quality version here: http://fav.me/d901jh1

edited 8th Jul '15 7:08:24 AM by FringeBenefits

SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1753: Jul 7th 2015 at 10:45:34 AM

This video's been showing up quite a bit—a very well-edited, cohesive fan music video telling the story of a previous Walpurgisnacht encounter, set to Maksim Mrvica's Croatian Rhapsody. (Incidentally, I'm convinced that any attempts to get the four girls together to tackle the storm would only end like that. The thing shrugged off enough HE to approximate a tactical nuclear weapon, what are you expecting a squad of megucas to do to it?)

It took me until fairly recently to notice something about the music itself, though, and why it seemed to fit so perfectly.

Namely, hear those three notes the music is built around? Ti-do-la, ti-do-la...

Compare to the three-note or four-note theme that so many tracks in the official PMMM soundtrack are built around: the three notes that open Numquam Vincar or close Puello in Somnio (Homura's Theme), the three notes ending the phrases in Sis Puella Magica!, and—slightly modified to ti-do-ti-la—the notes ending Deretum, Sayaka's Theme.

There's a lot more, too; that three-note/four-note motif is what much of the PMMM soundtrack is built around. And, in an excellent choice by the video editor, it also happens to be the motif that underlies the melody of Croatian Rhapsody, which is why it seems so natural.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Enthryn (they/them) Since: Nov, 2010
(they/them)
#1754: Jul 7th 2015 at 6:24:23 PM

[up] I've seen that video before, but I never realized exactly why the music seemed so reminiscent of some pieces from the Madoka Magica soundtrack. Nice observation!

Do you know of any other music with a similar motif?

mercuriesandrandomness Since: Oct, 2014
#1755: Jul 10th 2015 at 8:41:48 AM

Off-topic, but I attempted to write an AU where Hitomi does contract... which stalled out due to exams.

There's also this one: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4119427...

My AO3. Results may vary
BigMadDraco Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1756: Jul 11th 2015 at 7:10:10 PM

Witch idea:

Judith. The Witch of Betrayal. Her nature is cruelty. Her victims experience unbridled confidence, rising hope, and new found strength. She does this so their despair will be all the greater when they fall. They seldom do.

Familiar: Creonte These goat like familiars lead Judith's victims out of her barrier at the cost of their own lives.

Essentially the idea is for a "good" witch that is nevertheless crazy and malicious in intent. In her former life she was basically evil Mami. Someone that made the magical girl life look glamorous, but who knew all the dark secrets. She would intentionally drive other magical girls to witching out just so she would have grief seeds when she needed them, she would build teams to kill large number of witches then either murder or witch out all the others, she would take delight in rubbing their faces in the petty things they sold their soul for, etc.

She still has the same basic MO, build people up to pull the rug out from them and knock them down, it's just now she's supernaturally good at the former and no longer has the cunning to do the latter.

SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1757: Jul 13th 2015 at 2:22:21 PM

That'd be a very large departure from the standard witch behaviour of "eat peoples' souls", which seems to be constant across all witches, regardless if the meguca that birthed them had good intentions or evil. (Even well-intentioned megucas like Sayaka ended up turning into a people-eating monstrosity.) So, a positive witch seems unlikely to happen without Shenanigans; it might try to do that but end up eating people or driving them to suicide anyway.

Although, on the much-neglected subject of familiars, there does seem to be an aspect of a witch-hunting campaign that the show doesn't portray. Namely: a city is a large place for a witch to hide; it could potentially take weeks or months for a meguca to be able to narrow down and find the witch's barrier, longer if the meguca can't spend all her time hunting and has to go to school (for instance).

In that duration, it's very likely that the meguca will come across large numbers of the witch's familiars. It's even probable that the meguca will get to fight the same witch several times—remember, when a familiar successfully consumes a human, it becomes a duplicate of the witch that birthed it. Of course, it makes for bad TV to show the same magical-girl versus the same witch, repeated six or seven times. But the tactical implications are important: the different iterations of the same witch all would use the same general tactics, build their barriers in roughly the same way, and share the same sets of strengths and weaknesses; the magical girl hunting them, on the other hand, would be learning and adapting if she were halfway competent. Assuming a meguca survives her first combat experience against one "lineage" of witch, she should be able to clean up the rest of its kind with much less effort and get a fairly decent number of grief seeds out of the deal.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
BigMadDraco Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1758: Jul 13th 2015 at 6:32:06 PM

The idea is that as hope and despair balance out, in this case the witch brings hope because the Magical Girl brought despair. Even then, it's not that she doesn't seek to drive people to suicide and steal their souls, it's that she sucks at it.

Sereg Since: Jun, 2010
#1759: Jul 14th 2015 at 12:21:18 PM

The hope and despair balance is a load of rubbish that Kyouko made an incorrect guess about and convinces a grief spiralling Sayaka of. It's obviously wrong if you look at what actually happens. What actually happens is that despair out-competes hope.

SCMof2814 Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: I don't mind being locked in this eternal maze!
rikalous World's Cutest Direwolf from Upscale Mordor (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1764: Jul 15th 2015 at 10:14:09 PM

So for 'fic writers intending to work in the original, pre-rewrite 'verse, I've come across some grimly apropos sources for writing megucas. The source material is not easy reading, but the insights can be invaluable.

Namely, look into interviews with child soldiers—my particular source was the Osprey Essential History on the Iran-Iraq War, which included interviews with two survivors of the Iranian Basij militia, one fourteen, one sixteen. These were the ones who were expected to clear paths for the Pasdaran human wave attacks by trampling mines and drawing machine-gun fire; casualties were horrific. The comparisons to megucas should come naturally enough.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1765: Jul 20th 2015 at 11:35:20 AM

Here's a bit of an experiment for the thread. Which well-known historical or mythological figures were likely contractees or candidates?

We know Cleopatra, Jeanne d'Arc, and Anne Frank were three of the canonical ones. Which others are possible? Keeping in mind that magical girls tend to become famous or other accomplish great things, then die young; we get a bit of an extension if we include deaths in the 20s. (It is unlikely for a meguca to live that long, but Homura herself would have been—per word of god—around 22 years of age in subjective time. Other particularly iron-willed candidates might have lasted just as long, especially if they contracted in late adolescence.)

I'll start by listing a couple of possibles: Historical.

  • Princess Anastasia Romanova of Russia. Died/disappeared 1917 at 17 years of age. As a bonus, there is a persistent rumor that she had her jewels with her all the way until her death. (Runner-up candidate: her sister Maria.)
  • Jadwiga, King of Poland. Died at age 24. Her marriage at age twelve to Prince Jagiello of Lithuania heralded the creation of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, which would stand as one of Europe's great powers for centuries; Jadwiga herself was known for being devoted to charity and to the common folk. Norman Davies paints a portrait of her in his history of Poland (start at the bottom of the page): "Thus were the fortunes of two countries served by the tears and humility of an unhappy girl."
  • Any one of a number of Chinese Imperial consorts/concubines. Ages tend to be vague, and vaguer the further back you go; Chinese history is replete with stories of concubines gaining great prestige and political power. Input from anyone familiar with Chinese cultural history would be appreciated.

Mythological.

  • Isolde of Ireland. Mythological. Subject of Tristan and Isolde. Ages may need to be juggled around a bit, of course. (See also Juliet.)
  • Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights, possibly.
  • Electra or Iphigenia from Greek mythology; Dido of Carthage from the Aeneid.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Psyga315 Since: Jan, 2001
#1766: Jul 20th 2015 at 12:01:35 PM

[up] Or if you wanna pull a Nasu, genderswap Rasputin.

RBomber Since: Nov, 2010
#1767: Jul 20th 2015 at 12:55:16 PM

Ah, yeah. Including that bit where Walpurgisnacht is basically a Ghostapo project Gone Horribly Right?

SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1768: Jul 20th 2015 at 1:15:01 PM

Gender aside, Rasputin survived far too long to be a contractee. The general standard of "live fast, die young, leave behind a good-looking corpse soul-eating abomination" winnows out a lot of potentials.

Unless you want to posit that Rasputin was the soul-eating abomination in question. (Even then, I think Ungern Sternberg would've been a better candidate.)

(There's two more potential candidates, though, come to think of it: Sacajawea and Pocahontas. Both died relatively young. I have a feeling that a lot of Amerindians would fill the "potential candidates" list, if only because smallpox epidemics meant that there are a lot of early deaths.)

edited 20th Jul '15 5:18:32 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
BigMadDraco Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1769: Jul 20th 2015 at 6:16:13 PM

Going by that measure, so did Cleopatra. She was 39 at the time of her death.

rikalous World's Cutest Direwolf from Upscale Mordor (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
World's Cutest Direwolf
#1770: Jul 20th 2015 at 6:22:51 PM

If that is Cleopatra in the montage, and not some child pharaoh who got lost to history like whatsisface tried to pull on Hatshepsut or something, she must have been a god among megua. In a less literal sense than certain other characters.

RBomber Since: Nov, 2010
#1771: Jul 20th 2015 at 6:54:17 PM

Actually, this had been done before. A History of Magic, everyone? Includes Eve (that Eve]], and government project very similar with SWA schtick.

SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1772: Jul 20th 2015 at 6:56:14 PM

An excellent point. I think it was meant to be Cleopatra, but I didn't take the time to look at her biography to confirm or deny.

There is an alternative, brought up in (I believe) the Kazumi Magica manga series: namely, contract reversal. If I recall correctly (can't find the source), if a second girl is willing to pay the cost and go straight to witch, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollarsgrief seeds, a meguca can revert to being a normal girl. Someone with a sufficiently dedicated friend, or alternatively sufficiently ruthless to talk another girl into it, might be able to reverse her own contract.

I'd love to see confirmation or denial of this, though.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
BigMadDraco Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1773: Jul 20th 2015 at 8:27:40 PM

It's Kazumi Magica, it's better to assume none of it counts.

SabresEdge Show an affirming flame from a defense-in-depth Since: Oct, 2010
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#1774: Jul 20th 2015 at 9:07:02 PM

Or, if they don't contradict canon (as they don't), mine them for ideas on how the world works.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
rikalous World's Cutest Direwolf from Upscale Mordor (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
World's Cutest Direwolf
#1775: Jul 21st 2015 at 1:37:12 AM

[up][up][up]I remember nothing of the kind from Kazumi. Or from anywhere else, for that matter.

And most of the stuff introduced in Kazumi come from the Pleides being mad scientists, so mining it's of limited use for non-mad-scientist meguca stories.


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