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rubycity_rp
PLAYER
Name: Kari
Age: 25
Personal Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
karijou
E-mail: supitskari@gmail.com
AIM/etc: Karijou#2339 (discord), legione dentro (aim)
CHARACTER
Name: Madoka Kaname
Canon: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Age: 17 and a few months!
Timeline: Third timeline, after her assisted suicide
Items with character at canon point: Given where Madoka just was, she'll likely have the clothes on her back (a black skirt with an uneven hem, and a very pretty shawl made of fog), a spider-silk bow and arrows, and a silver pendant with a grey and opalescent stone set inside.
Personality: So let's start this off with a quick acknowledgement: I'm apping Madoka from a timeline where things go a fair deal differently for her (in almost universally negative ways). Because of this, I'll be establishing her base personality shown in the final timeline - how she acts before she contracts with the Incubators - and only afterwards describe how this specific Madoka's circumstances have changed her.
Madoka Kaname, when she's first introduced, appears to be a fairly average young girl. She cries as easily as she laughs, and she's the kind of person to grab her friend's hands or just hug them tight on a whim. She hangs around with her two close friends, listens to pop and enka in her spare time, and does her homework - not always well, mind you. She has a loving relationship with both parents and her little brother, and about the biggest thing she has to worry about is whether or not she'll ever amount to anything (and maybe if she'll get a love letter of her own).
It's when Kyubey finally calls to her that she is drawn into conflict, and it is in conflict that her true character shines through. Despite having no powers of her own (for a show basically named "magical girl Madoka magical," she sure takes her sweet time getting there), Madoka does everything she can to watch out for her friends. Some of this is obvious, like the moral support she offers; however, she even sticks around during battles just in case she needs to make a contract to save a friend. When it comes down to it, Madoka is willing to sell her soul into a painful life of battle (and later, to even become a witch) if it means saving the life of another.
And this selflessness isn't just restricted to her friends. When she finally does make her wish - a tremendous one, one that effectively allows her to shoulder the burden of every magical girl that has existed and ever will - she does so without dwelling on the pain it will cause her or the power it will bring. To her, all that matters is that all the girls who have fought before her shouldn't be punished for their dreams. She is supremely idealistic - willing to trade her material existence for a chance at hope for all others, and to do it all with a smile. After all, if she can make a miracle like that come to fruition, it's worth any pain it might bring, right?
Still, this willingness to take action comes with its own problems. When Madoka doesn't have something to fight for, or some way to fight for it, she doesn't have much confidence or even sense of self. She talks throughout the series how nice it would be to be worth something, or to have something she could actually do; she even (briefly) considers making a wish just to be a magical girl early on.
Now, Madoka's canon point - the third timeline of the show - makes a bit of a difference in a few important ways. For one, Madoka makes a contract very early into the loop, and as such doesn't have to deal with as much of her "no purpose" issues for very long. The biggest change, however, is a direct result of the events of the timeline. Sayaka becomes a witch, Mami snaps and tries to kill the other three girls (intending to kill herself afterwards), and Madoka is the one to shoot and kill her first.
This forces Madoka into a different direction of development; even though she's always been capable of doing what needs to be done, personally killing a close friend (one who is still human and conscious, at that) is too much for her. She only barely manages to keep going thanks to the incoming Walpurgis Night; after all, if she gives up hope there, she'll be taking Homura with her. Once she and Homura defeat the great witch, she lies to Homura for the first time (tricking her into taking the last grief seed) and even gives her first "selfish" request of the series: she wants Homura to go back and time and stop her from being tricked by the Incubators. None of this is done out of cruelty or true selfishness, of course; Madoka wants to create a world where her friends can be happy, even if she knows she won't be around to see it.
And so, by the end of the third timeline - when she asks Homura to kill her before she becomes a witch, and Homura tearfully obliges - Madoka has lost a great deal of the innocence she brought with her. She's killed a close friend in self defense, she's seen two other friends die horrible deaths, and she's even put a horrible burden on the one friend she has left. Her words are quiet and hesitant, almost back to how she sounded before she became a magical girl and gained some confidence, and she is able to understand for the first time just how harshly she and her friends have been lied to. But even with all of that, she still holds her ideals to her dying breath. She doesn't ask to die out of sadness or penance, but out of love for the world around her - because even if that world has such unspeakably awful things in it, there's still too much worth protecting to allow herself to hurt any of it.
Because even if this Madoka is filled with regrets, and even if she's seen more than any fourteen year old should ever have to, she is still the same young woman who cries as easily as she laughs.
Personality Development: Her time in the Ryslig peninsula has changed Madoka out of necessity. Part of this is biological, as many of the monsters have certain propensities. Demons tend to do what feels best for them at the cost of anyone around them, and even if Madoka's done everything in her power to avoid acting on those compulsions she can't deny that they're there. That's not even getting into the hunger; on a monthly basis, killing someone is her only option. For the time being, she's taken to a harm reduction approach - if she can stop another life from being taken with the life she takes, then it's not entirely for nothing. She shares her kills with other monsters, she tries to only take what's needed, and if she has to do something that would hurt someone she tries to make it as minimal as possible. Just because it doesn't always work doesn't mean she can ever stop trying.
More than that, though, she's traded away a bit of the old spark of hope in favor of trying to make things as good as she can right now. It's hard to keep your head held high when you know, once the month is up, you're going to have to kill someone, you know? How are you supposed to make "the right decision" when the only option you have involves someone's death? But even with all of that, Madoka does everything in her power to help others where she can - to make sure she brings as much good as she does bad, and to make sure nobody has to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary.
And two and a half years of all this has really taken its toll. Her standards for what is acceptable and what isn't have slipped a long way down the slope; when the Fog God gave her alternate ways of nonlethally feeding, as awful as they were (causing fear and causing pain), she embraced them. She sided with the Fog God solely because of her promise to remain in that world; as awful as the things they were doing could be, it was a hundred times better than monsters and gods being brought back to her home and others. She's befriended people who have done terrible, terrible things, and while she might have done that before Ryslig she wouldn't have the tinge of understanding that she does.
If she met any of her friends like this, she's sure they'd be disgusted with her. But every time her actions save a life, every time she is reminded of the alternative, her resolve is strengthened.
Background: Because there's a lot of things to go through, I'll just link to Madoka's character page and general timeline on the wiki. (In this timeline, Madoka comes from "Timeline 3;" she has no memories of previous or past timelines.)
Previous Game History: A lot of things have happened in Ryslig. In the interest of making a readable app, I'll try and detail the general progression she's gone through rather than individual events:
Immediately after Homura shoots her soul gem, Madoka wakes up drenched on a foreign shore with shallow wounds all over her body. There are several others like her, she finds - humans (and an alien or two) who have washed up almost overnight. Although things appear fine at first, the world around them grows progressively more horrifying, and when the end of the month rolls around everyone begins to transform - their bones and skin warping as they mutate into monsters. Some move faster than others: Madoka's heart stops, but nothing else happens to her, and so she begins to spend her time trying to help others survive and figure out their new changes.
The situation grows worse with each day that passes. The humans in the area want nothing to do with these strange new beasts and shun them. The changes begin to warp people's minds rather than just their bodies. Within another month, every monster has become aware of a new hunger: they must feed off humans, or they will go mad from the pain. Madoka digs up a grave on the outskirts of town and tries to feed off the remains within; this kickstarts her changes, and by the time the night has passed she's stretched and grown into the shape of a wendigo. Overcome by shame at what she considers her own weakness (and subsequent punishment), she flees into the woods and hides for nearly two weeks.
She only shows her face again when she hears the news: more people are arriving, just two months after the original arrivals. To her great dismay, she finds her friends Mami and Homura among them - Homura from the distant future, and Mami immediately following her own death. After a reunion exactly as awful as anyone could have expected, Madoka decide to prioritize taking care of the people she can over her own desperate wish to hide away. This is made simpler by a stroke of blind luck: Tonika, a girl whose changes Madoka had helped with, offers her and her friends a place to stay a whole city over - a place they will remain for almost a full year.
The next year is a chaotic one, to say the least. Madoka joins the service of the Fog god under duress, and becomes a hesitant ally to the being that brought them all there. She tries to grow accustomed to her new changes, watching out for each new group of arrivals as they come and offering what she can when they change. With each set, Madoka grows more used to her new home, even starting up a cafe with Mami in the nearby city of Bavan. When Tonika and their other roommates vanish, Madoka and Mami take a final step to move into the new cafe and start dating shortly thereafter.
Things aren't perfect, of course. As time passes, Madoka becomes more and more devout to the Fog, and when Mami vanishes from the peninsula she pledges herself fully - even killing a follower of the opposing Fourth god to try and prove her devotion to the cause she believes will minimize harm for everyone else. When she willingly offers her own life in an attempt to bring back one of the Fog's gifts, a monument for the departed, she is blessed and made the first monster Priestess of her god. Even with her new, highly controversial status - very few people appreciate being brought to Ryslig and forced to kill humans, after all - Madoka does her best to keep looking after the people she can, worshipper and human and monster alike.
Shortly before I'm taking her, she goes to see the witch/goddess Mana and ask if there's a way to get rid of the wendigo's hunger. She is given it, albeit by transforming her into a demon (stealing souls instead of cannibalizing meat).
Abilities: Through her time in Ryslig and in service of the Fog God, Madoka's gained a whole lot of ridiculous powers. In the interest of keeping things as easy as possible, I'll be removing anything that isn't a trait of the basic demon template:
Network/Actionspam Sample: Thread between Madoka and Homura, from Ryslig. (Madoka was still a wendigo at this time, but her voice remains largely unchanged.)
Prose Log Sample: It's been three weeks now, and she still hasn't fed on anyone.
She sits on the bed in her small apartment with her knees curled to her chest, trying very hard to keep focused and calm as she thinks. Four weeks is the cutoff, right? She'll know for sure by then. She doesn't feel like she's starving yet, which is good, but she's been a wendigo for two years - anything now is full compared to that. She's pretty sure that doesn't make for a very good guess of how far along she is, at least. Maybe she could buy some time by hurting someone? It's better than killing them, it's true, but the thought of being the only monster here doing things like that is almost too cruel to consider. Would it really be right to keep herself alive, if that were the case...?
Not that she wants to die, of course. She wants to live, so badly it hurts. She hopes, beyond anything she can remember having hoped for, that the hunger is gone - that a week will come and go, and that she'll still be the same person standing here. But hope alone isn't enough to change anything. She knows that now, better than almost anything else she's learned from that place. So she stands and heads to the wall, and she marks off the calendar in red, six days from now. Six days - that's how long she can give herself to find out how this place works. If she can just find out whether the hunger is still there in the next six days, she can go back to an almost normal life. No killing, no hurting people or chasing them down to eat their screams - just a normal life in this empty place. And if she doesn't...
She shakes her head, biting her lip to try and stop the thought. She'll think about that when the time comes. Right now, she's got work she has to do.
Name: Kari
Age: 25
Personal Journal:
karijouE-mail: supitskari@gmail.com
AIM/etc: Karijou#2339 (discord), legione dentro (aim)
CHARACTER
Name: Madoka Kaname
Canon: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Age: 17 and a few months!
Timeline: Third timeline, after her assisted suicide
Items with character at canon point: Given where Madoka just was, she'll likely have the clothes on her back (a black skirt with an uneven hem, and a very pretty shawl made of fog), a spider-silk bow and arrows, and a silver pendant with a grey and opalescent stone set inside.
Personality: So let's start this off with a quick acknowledgement: I'm apping Madoka from a timeline where things go a fair deal differently for her (in almost universally negative ways). Because of this, I'll be establishing her base personality shown in the final timeline - how she acts before she contracts with the Incubators - and only afterwards describe how this specific Madoka's circumstances have changed her.
Madoka Kaname, when she's first introduced, appears to be a fairly average young girl. She cries as easily as she laughs, and she's the kind of person to grab her friend's hands or just hug them tight on a whim. She hangs around with her two close friends, listens to pop and enka in her spare time, and does her homework - not always well, mind you. She has a loving relationship with both parents and her little brother, and about the biggest thing she has to worry about is whether or not she'll ever amount to anything (and maybe if she'll get a love letter of her own).
It's when Kyubey finally calls to her that she is drawn into conflict, and it is in conflict that her true character shines through. Despite having no powers of her own (for a show basically named "magical girl Madoka magical," she sure takes her sweet time getting there), Madoka does everything she can to watch out for her friends. Some of this is obvious, like the moral support she offers; however, she even sticks around during battles just in case she needs to make a contract to save a friend. When it comes down to it, Madoka is willing to sell her soul into a painful life of battle (and later, to even become a witch) if it means saving the life of another.
And this selflessness isn't just restricted to her friends. When she finally does make her wish - a tremendous one, one that effectively allows her to shoulder the burden of every magical girl that has existed and ever will - she does so without dwelling on the pain it will cause her or the power it will bring. To her, all that matters is that all the girls who have fought before her shouldn't be punished for their dreams. She is supremely idealistic - willing to trade her material existence for a chance at hope for all others, and to do it all with a smile. After all, if she can make a miracle like that come to fruition, it's worth any pain it might bring, right?
Still, this willingness to take action comes with its own problems. When Madoka doesn't have something to fight for, or some way to fight for it, she doesn't have much confidence or even sense of self. She talks throughout the series how nice it would be to be worth something, or to have something she could actually do; she even (briefly) considers making a wish just to be a magical girl early on.
Now, Madoka's canon point - the third timeline of the show - makes a bit of a difference in a few important ways. For one, Madoka makes a contract very early into the loop, and as such doesn't have to deal with as much of her "no purpose" issues for very long. The biggest change, however, is a direct result of the events of the timeline. Sayaka becomes a witch, Mami snaps and tries to kill the other three girls (intending to kill herself afterwards), and Madoka is the one to shoot and kill her first.
This forces Madoka into a different direction of development; even though she's always been capable of doing what needs to be done, personally killing a close friend (one who is still human and conscious, at that) is too much for her. She only barely manages to keep going thanks to the incoming Walpurgis Night; after all, if she gives up hope there, she'll be taking Homura with her. Once she and Homura defeat the great witch, she lies to Homura for the first time (tricking her into taking the last grief seed) and even gives her first "selfish" request of the series: she wants Homura to go back and time and stop her from being tricked by the Incubators. None of this is done out of cruelty or true selfishness, of course; Madoka wants to create a world where her friends can be happy, even if she knows she won't be around to see it.
And so, by the end of the third timeline - when she asks Homura to kill her before she becomes a witch, and Homura tearfully obliges - Madoka has lost a great deal of the innocence she brought with her. She's killed a close friend in self defense, she's seen two other friends die horrible deaths, and she's even put a horrible burden on the one friend she has left. Her words are quiet and hesitant, almost back to how she sounded before she became a magical girl and gained some confidence, and she is able to understand for the first time just how harshly she and her friends have been lied to. But even with all of that, she still holds her ideals to her dying breath. She doesn't ask to die out of sadness or penance, but out of love for the world around her - because even if that world has such unspeakably awful things in it, there's still too much worth protecting to allow herself to hurt any of it.
Because even if this Madoka is filled with regrets, and even if she's seen more than any fourteen year old should ever have to, she is still the same young woman who cries as easily as she laughs.
Personality Development: Her time in the Ryslig peninsula has changed Madoka out of necessity. Part of this is biological, as many of the monsters have certain propensities. Demons tend to do what feels best for them at the cost of anyone around them, and even if Madoka's done everything in her power to avoid acting on those compulsions she can't deny that they're there. That's not even getting into the hunger; on a monthly basis, killing someone is her only option. For the time being, she's taken to a harm reduction approach - if she can stop another life from being taken with the life she takes, then it's not entirely for nothing. She shares her kills with other monsters, she tries to only take what's needed, and if she has to do something that would hurt someone she tries to make it as minimal as possible. Just because it doesn't always work doesn't mean she can ever stop trying.
More than that, though, she's traded away a bit of the old spark of hope in favor of trying to make things as good as she can right now. It's hard to keep your head held high when you know, once the month is up, you're going to have to kill someone, you know? How are you supposed to make "the right decision" when the only option you have involves someone's death? But even with all of that, Madoka does everything in her power to help others where she can - to make sure she brings as much good as she does bad, and to make sure nobody has to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary.
And two and a half years of all this has really taken its toll. Her standards for what is acceptable and what isn't have slipped a long way down the slope; when the Fog God gave her alternate ways of nonlethally feeding, as awful as they were (causing fear and causing pain), she embraced them. She sided with the Fog God solely because of her promise to remain in that world; as awful as the things they were doing could be, it was a hundred times better than monsters and gods being brought back to her home and others. She's befriended people who have done terrible, terrible things, and while she might have done that before Ryslig she wouldn't have the tinge of understanding that she does.
If she met any of her friends like this, she's sure they'd be disgusted with her. But every time her actions save a life, every time she is reminded of the alternative, her resolve is strengthened.
Background: Because there's a lot of things to go through, I'll just link to Madoka's character page and general timeline on the wiki. (In this timeline, Madoka comes from "Timeline 3;" she has no memories of previous or past timelines.)
Previous Game History: A lot of things have happened in Ryslig. In the interest of making a readable app, I'll try and detail the general progression she's gone through rather than individual events:
Immediately after Homura shoots her soul gem, Madoka wakes up drenched on a foreign shore with shallow wounds all over her body. There are several others like her, she finds - humans (and an alien or two) who have washed up almost overnight. Although things appear fine at first, the world around them grows progressively more horrifying, and when the end of the month rolls around everyone begins to transform - their bones and skin warping as they mutate into monsters. Some move faster than others: Madoka's heart stops, but nothing else happens to her, and so she begins to spend her time trying to help others survive and figure out their new changes.
The situation grows worse with each day that passes. The humans in the area want nothing to do with these strange new beasts and shun them. The changes begin to warp people's minds rather than just their bodies. Within another month, every monster has become aware of a new hunger: they must feed off humans, or they will go mad from the pain. Madoka digs up a grave on the outskirts of town and tries to feed off the remains within; this kickstarts her changes, and by the time the night has passed she's stretched and grown into the shape of a wendigo. Overcome by shame at what she considers her own weakness (and subsequent punishment), she flees into the woods and hides for nearly two weeks.
She only shows her face again when she hears the news: more people are arriving, just two months after the original arrivals. To her great dismay, she finds her friends Mami and Homura among them - Homura from the distant future, and Mami immediately following her own death. After a reunion exactly as awful as anyone could have expected, Madoka decide to prioritize taking care of the people she can over her own desperate wish to hide away. This is made simpler by a stroke of blind luck: Tonika, a girl whose changes Madoka had helped with, offers her and her friends a place to stay a whole city over - a place they will remain for almost a full year.
The next year is a chaotic one, to say the least. Madoka joins the service of the Fog god under duress, and becomes a hesitant ally to the being that brought them all there. She tries to grow accustomed to her new changes, watching out for each new group of arrivals as they come and offering what she can when they change. With each set, Madoka grows more used to her new home, even starting up a cafe with Mami in the nearby city of Bavan. When Tonika and their other roommates vanish, Madoka and Mami take a final step to move into the new cafe and start dating shortly thereafter.
Things aren't perfect, of course. As time passes, Madoka becomes more and more devout to the Fog, and when Mami vanishes from the peninsula she pledges herself fully - even killing a follower of the opposing Fourth god to try and prove her devotion to the cause she believes will minimize harm for everyone else. When she willingly offers her own life in an attempt to bring back one of the Fog's gifts, a monument for the departed, she is blessed and made the first monster Priestess of her god. Even with her new, highly controversial status - very few people appreciate being brought to Ryslig and forced to kill humans, after all - Madoka does her best to keep looking after the people she can, worshipper and human and monster alike.
Shortly before I'm taking her, she goes to see the witch/goddess Mana and ask if there's a way to get rid of the wendigo's hunger. She is given it, albeit by transforming her into a demon (stealing souls instead of cannibalizing meat).
Abilities: Through her time in Ryslig and in service of the Fog God, Madoka's gained a whole lot of ridiculous powers. In the interest of keeping things as easy as possible, I'll be removing anything that isn't a trait of the basic demon template:
- Flight. Madoka can straight up fly with those wings of hers, yo.
- Fire. Madoka can create and control fire to a moderate extent (nothing too spectacular), and can stand in flame without any ill effects.
- Teleportation. By creating a ring of fire on the ground, Madoka can erupt a short distance away in another burst of fire.
- Paralysis. Madoka can bind a regular human in place so they can't move, as long as she's concentrating on it.
- Possession. Madoka can possess another being for up to an hour, while they remain cognizant of what's going on. (This would not be used in any way without player consent.)
- Soulstealing. Madoka can steal a being's soul and devour it, and did so as her primary means of sustenance. This would not be done without player (and mod) consent, it would require her overpowering someone first, and she'll honestly try to avoid this under any means possible.
- Suffering leech. Not exactly an ability, but Madoka feeds off any suffering she inflicts. Think that feeling right after you take a bite of chocolate, but whenever she hurts someone.
- Salt. She is intensely averse to the substance in all its forms; she can't cross a line of salt while on foot, and touching or consuming it in any significant way will hurt or incapacitate her.
- Holy magic. Anyone capable of using something that would be deemed "holy," whether it's blessed water or a Cure spell, will cause searing damage or death to Madoka.
Network/Actionspam Sample: Thread between Madoka and Homura, from Ryslig. (Madoka was still a wendigo at this time, but her voice remains largely unchanged.)
Prose Log Sample: It's been three weeks now, and she still hasn't fed on anyone.
She sits on the bed in her small apartment with her knees curled to her chest, trying very hard to keep focused and calm as she thinks. Four weeks is the cutoff, right? She'll know for sure by then. She doesn't feel like she's starving yet, which is good, but she's been a wendigo for two years - anything now is full compared to that. She's pretty sure that doesn't make for a very good guess of how far along she is, at least. Maybe she could buy some time by hurting someone? It's better than killing them, it's true, but the thought of being the only monster here doing things like that is almost too cruel to consider. Would it really be right to keep herself alive, if that were the case...?
Not that she wants to die, of course. She wants to live, so badly it hurts. She hopes, beyond anything she can remember having hoped for, that the hunger is gone - that a week will come and go, and that she'll still be the same person standing here. But hope alone isn't enough to change anything. She knows that now, better than almost anything else she's learned from that place. So she stands and heads to the wall, and she marks off the calendar in red, six days from now. Six days - that's how long she can give herself to find out how this place works. If she can just find out whether the hunger is still there in the next six days, she can go back to an almost normal life. No killing, no hurting people or chasing them down to eat their screams - just a normal life in this empty place. And if she doesn't...
She shakes her head, biting her lip to try and stop the thought. She'll think about that when the time comes. Right now, she's got work she has to do.