[OOC: DDD app]
Player nickname: Fel
Player LJ: raspberrybeanie
Way to contact you:
Email: fantasygirl@blueyonder.co.uk
AIM: hangswithtraps
Other: plurk: Tenfel
Are you at least 15?: YYY
Current Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Pearl Fey, England, Lyle Dylandy, Roxas, Sam Linnfer
Character: Madoka Kaname
Fandom: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Character Notes:
History: When we first meet Madoka Kaname, she’s nothing more or less than an ordinary junior high school student. She’s got a loving family, a couple of close friends, and she’s the class nurse. But there’s nothing special about her on the outside, nothing that would make you think she was special. Certainly nothing that would indicate that she’s actually one of the most important people in the entire multiverse.
One night Madoka has a strange dream where she’s watching a girl fight an impossible battle against a giant monster. The next day, a mysterious transfer student by the name of Homura Akemi transfers into Madoka’s class, and that’s when everything changes. Not only is Homura aloof, insanely smart and athletic, and uncommonly pretty, she also seems to take a direct interest in Madoka, and more to the point, she’s the exact same girl that Madoka saw in her dream the night before. Later that day, Madoka hears a voice in her head calling for help and along with her friend Sayaka, follow it in time to rescue a small ferret-like creature called Kyubey from none other than Homura herself. Before anything else can happen, however, the world around Sayaka and Madoka suddenly changes into a nightmarish, horrific backdrop and the girls are surrounded by equally horrific creatures. Luckily, at that moment the girls are rescued by a magical girl called Mami, who drives away the creatures and heals Kyubey.
Kyubey and Mami explain that Kyubey has the power to grant wishes, but in exchange for the wish and as part of the contract, the girls must agree to become magical girls and fight the witches that plague the city. Kyubey adds that both Sayaka and Madoka have the potential, but Mami adds that they should both think carefully about their wishes before they make them, since if they became magical girls, they’d be risking their lives. Mami invites the two girls with her on a witch hunt the next day, and after school, they track the witch to a building where a woman is being controlled to commit suicide. The three girls make their way into the witch’s barrier, and Mami defeats it, saving the woman and earning a Grief Seed from the witch, a magical object that can be used to recharge Mami’s Soul Gem, the source of her magical power.
During another witch hunt with Mami, Mami reveals to Madoka and Sayaka that she made her wish after she was in a traffic accident, and didn’t have time to think about it, and also warns Sayaka about making a wish for somebody else’s sake. The next day, Sayaka and Madoka find a Grief Seed embedded in the wall of a hospital. Madoka runs to find Mami, and when she returns, Sayaka and Kyubey have already been swallowed up by the witch’s barrier. As Madoka and Mami race to catch up with them, they are stopped by the appearance of Homura, who warns Mami against fighting the witch because this one is different. However, Mami doesn’t listen, and to stop Homura from following them, ties her up with her magic ribbons. Mami and Madoka carry on towards Sayaka, and as they talk, Madoka confesses that her only wish is to become a magical girl and help others so that her life can have some sort of purpose, and adds that Mami doesn’t have to be a magical girl alone anymore. Mami is overjoyed by this, and the two finally reach the centre of the witch’s maze, where the witch, Charlotte, appears. Mami fights her, but suddenly, Charlotte’s form changes into that of a giant caterpillar, and kills Mami by biting off her head while Madoka and Sayaka can only watch. Mami’s death releases the binding on Homura, and she rushes into to defeat the witch and claim the Grief Seed, leaving Madoka and Sayaka to grieve Mami.
Mami’s death sends Madoka into new doubts about becoming a magical girl, and she tells Kyubey that she’s too scared to make a contract with him at the moment. After visiting Mami’s old apartment, Madoka runs into her friend Hitomi, who has a witch’s kiss on her neck and seems to be in a trance. Madoka follows her to a building where other people with witch’s kisses are gathering to commit a joint suicide. Madoka manages to stop the process at the last minute, but she’s swallowed into the witch’s barrier herself. Suddenly though, Sayaka rescues her as a magical girl, as it turns out that Sayaka had made a wish to give the boy she loved back the use of his arm so that he could play the violin again.
Madoka is worried about Sayaka becoming a magical girl, since it seems so dangerous, and meets Homura at a coffee shop, asking her to look out for Sayaka. Homura tells her that she can’t, since Sayaka already made the wrong choice and it’d be better if Madoka gave up on her, and once again warns Madoka not to become a magical girl. Madoka is even more worried, and follows Sayaka to her first fight. However, while Sayaka is trying to defeat a witch’s familiar, a new magical girl called Kyoko suddenly appears and stops the fight, explaining that it’s stupid for Sayaka to waste her energy on familiars that can’t drop Grief Seeds. Sayaka and Kyoko begin to fight, but all of a sudden, Homura appears and interrupts the girls.
Homura knocks Sayaka out after saving her from being stabbed by Kyoko, who asks Homura whose side she’s on. Homura says that she’s against the troublemakers and also scolds Madoka for not following her advice to let Sayaka be. Later on, Madoka, desperate for everyone to get along, tries to persuade Sayaka to work with Kyoko, reasoning that more magical girls would be a bigger help against the witches, but Sayaka shoots the idea down. That night, Kyoko and Sayaka get into another fight on the top of a bridge, but before it can get anywhere, Madoka grabs Sayaka’s Soul Gem off her in desperation and throws it over the bridge’s edge. To Madoka’s horror, as soon as this happens, Sayaka collapses. To add to Madoka’s horror, Kyubey reveals that what Madoka just threw over the edge was Sayaka herself - her Soul Gem is literally Sayaka’s soul, meaning that her body, and all other magical girls’ bodies, is just an empty husk that relies on proximity to the Soul Gem to keep moving. Luckily, Homura manages to rescue Sayaka’s Soul Gem, and Sayaka regains consciousness.
The next day, Madoka notices that Sayaka has skipped school, and becomes even more worried about her friend. At lunch, she confronts Homura on the school roof and asks her why she didn’t tell them the truth about the Soul Gems, since she clearly knew about it before. Homura tells her that she’d tried before, but no-one had believed her, and again warns Madoka to stay away from Sayaka and give up on her. The following night, Madoka joins Sayaka on another witch hunt, and seeing Madoka there makes Sayaka cry onto her friend’s shoulder, since she feels that since she’s now effectively a zombie, she’s lost any chance of ever being with the boy she loves. After recovering, the two head out to fight the witch. But inside the barrier, Sayaka starts to lose some of her sanity, and ignoring Madoka’s pleas to stop, starts hacking and slashing at the witch with no regard for her own injuries, since if she doesn’t want it to, “it doesn’t hurt at all!”
After the battle, Sayaka refuses to use the Grief Seed the witch dropped, and Madoka helps her to go back home. Madoka is distraught over what Sayaka is doing and says that she just wants to make her happy, but Sayaka brushes Madoka off and runs, telling her not to follow her. Sayaka goes missing shortly after that, and no matter how hard Madoka looks, she can’t find her. The following night, Madoka finally seems to give up hope and sits down on a bench, worried about Sayaka. Kyubey shows up and the two of them have a conversation about Madoka’s potential as a magical girl, which is apparently the largest that Kyubey has ever seen. Madoka almost agrees to become a magical girl to save Sayaka, but before she can make the contract, Homura turns up and shoots Kyubey before breaking down in tears at Madoka’s feet, asking why she always has to sacrifice herself. Madoka is confused, but has a sudden flash of memory, remembering that she once knew Homura before. Before Homura can confirm or answer, though, Madoka rushes off to resume her search for Sayaka.
By the time Madoka finds Kyoko and Homura accompanying Sayaka’s lifeless body, it’s too late; Sayaka’s Soul Gem has shattered from all the despair she was feeling and transformed into a Grief Seed, turning Sayaka herself into a witch. Homura explains that that’s the fate of all magical girls, while Madoka cries over Sayaka’s lifeless body.
Later that night, after Madoka returns home and is crying in her room, Kyuubey shows up again and explains that he is actually a member of an alien, emotionless race that is trying to prevent the heat death of the universe. Magical girls and witches are part of the method the Incubators are using to counter it, as the powerful emotions given off by teenaged girls can be harnessed into energy for the universe. Since the Incubators have no morals, they see nothing wrong with using humans for that purpose. Madoka, shocked and angry, tells Kyubey to leave, and he does, but not before telling Madoka that when she feels like dying for the universe, she knows where to find him.
The next day, Madoka ignores Hitomi when she tries to speak to her, and instead skips school to talk to Kyoko, who has a plan to try and reason with Sayaka and remind her about being human, to turn her from a witch back into a girl. Madoka and Kyoko join forces and enter Sayaka’s witch barrier. While Kyoko fights Sayaka and protects Madoka, Madoka tries to get through to Sayaka by talking to her. But try as she might, it doesn’t work, and Madoka is knocked out. While she is out cold, Kyoko carries out a suicide attack on Sayaka so that she doesn’t die alone, while Homura rescues Madoka and takes her out of the labyrinth.
It’s at this point in the series that we find out the truth about Homura and all the events up to now: the timeline of events as we know them is actually the latest in a long line caused by Homura’s wish and her time travel powers. In the original timeline, Madoka was already a magical girl who rescued Homura from a witch’s barrier along with Mami, and died defeating the Walpurgis Night witch. Madoka’s death was what caused Homura to become a magical girl, so that she could go back in time and protect Madoka. However, the more Homura repeated the timeline, Madoka, who had been quite confident and sure of herself in the original timeline, grew less confident and capable, while at the same time, her potential as a magical girl grew and grew. In addition, Madoka’s fate only grew worse and worse, until in the timeline before the current one, Madoka had transformed into a horribly powerful witch after finally making a wish to defend Homura and defeating the Walpurgis Night in one blow.
The reason behind Madoka’s growing magic potential is Homura herself; by repeating time so often, Homura has created endless parallel universes that all revolve around Madoka, giving her more magical potential in the current timeline than any other magical girl in history.
Meanwhile, back in the current timeline, Madoka attends Sayaka’s funeral and denies knowing anything about Sayaka’s death. After talking with Kyubey, who tries to convince her that without the magical girl system, human society wouldn’t have progressed beyond living in caves, Madoka goes to visit Homura and talk about the coming of Walpurgis Night, which is coming to destroy the city just as it did in all the other timelines before this one. During the talk, Homura finally reveals the truth about who she is to Madoka and the story of all the timelines she’s been in before this one.
That night, the city is evacuated due to a storm caused by Walpurgis Night, and while Homura begins to fight the witch, Madoka is sent to the shelters with her family. Madoka makes an excuse to leave the room so she can talk to Kyubey, asking if Homura will survive the battle with Walpurgis Night. Kyubey, however, is evasive, and persuades Madoka to go see for herself. As Madoka goes to see, she’s stopped by her mother, but argues that even though she knows that other people care for her, there’s something that she has to do to help set things right. Reluctantly, her mother allows Madoka to go, and Madoka reaches Homura just as the other girl is losing hope and about to turn into a witch.
Madoka apologises to Homura for everything that she’s gone through for Madoka’s sake, but says that she will become a magical girl. So saying, she turns to Kyubey and makes her wish: to erase all witches from existence, on every world and in every time, before they are even born, with her own hands. Kyubey is staggered as Madoka is essentially wishing to become a god, but grants the wish, since Madoka’s power is so huge that she would be able to do so.
Madoka transforms into a magical girl and proceeds to travel through time and space, healing defeated magical girls and making their Soul Gems vanish. Madoka’s wish has created a supermassive Soul Gem, and while Madoka has become hope itself, thus creating enough hope to make a brand new universe, she’s also shouldered enough despair for her witch form to end a universe. However, with her new powers, and thanks to the nature of her wish, Madoka is able to defeat her own witch self and safeguard the universe.
Thanks to this, though, Madoka has essentially erased her physical self and all memory of herself from the universe, ascending to a higher plane of existence where she will guide magical girls away before their Soul Gems can be corrupted into Grief Seeds. After a final talk loaded down with lesbian subtext with Homura, during which she gives the other girl her hair ribbons as a momento, Madoka leaves to carry on her new duties.
Meanwhile, in the new universe Madoka’s wish created, nobody but Homura and Madoka’s little brother Tatsuya remember her. Meanwhile, the magical girl system works differently, with magical girls fighting demons and vanishing at the point they would have turned into witches thanks to Madoka’s interference.
TL;DR MADOKA STARTS AS AN AVERAGE JANE AND IN THE END BECOMES GOD. 8D
Personality: Madoka comes across as almost painfully ordinary. She’s cheerful and friendly, only moderately intelligent, and rather clumsy and ditzy at times. Basically, she’s a sweet girl, one that’s easy to love and to make friends with, but you wouldn’t have her down as anything special when you talked to her.
The thing which is immediately obvious and unfailingly constant about Madoka is her kindness and compassion. Above all else, Madoka is a kind and gentle soul, and her greatest wish in life is for everyone to get along and be happy. She’ll offer her help to people if she can, and her unwavering support and friendship if she can’t. She’ll give everyone a fair listening ear, and will even make an attempt to understand or befriend those who seem at odds with her at first. Madoka’s kindness in a world as cruel as hers is both her greatest asset and her biggest flaw; she simply cares too easily and too much. Hand in hand with this go her optimism, her belief in the power of friendship, and her hope - all traits that would be admirable in any other world with magical girls. Not so much in her own, where they often serve more as a hindrance than a help.
Madoka also, for the most part, wears her heart on her sleeve; when she’s happy, she smiles and laughs, when she’s excited, everyone else will know about it, when she’s scared, she screams or freezes up, and when she’s sad, she cries. It’s as simple as that. It makes her come across as childish or even a little weak and helpless sometimes, but the reality is that she’s just unfailingly honest with her emotions.
Madoka may seem ordinary, plain, ditzy and even a little thick, but nothing could be further from the truth. Madoka has hidden depths that would surprise even her. She’s painfully aware of her own insignificance and her lack of any real talents, and inside, she’s desperately searching for some sort of purpose or meaning to her life. But the truth is, Madoka has a lot of inner strength and courage. Although she won’t hide her fear, and she’ll often cry or freeze up, Madoka will still walk into danger to support her friends in spite of her own obvious fear and her lack of any real skills. Occasionally, her initiative in the heat of the moment has saved lives, such as when she intervened to stop the group suicide in episode four - however, it should also be noted that rash actions like this have also proved to be bad on occasion, such as when she threw Sayaka’s Soul Gem away in an effort to stop her and Kyoko fighting. She also has a great desire to protect the things she loves, a strong sense of justice and of right and wrong, and an inability to understand how anyone could act deliberately and unfeelingly in a way that would harm others. When it comes down to it, Madoka has a core of steel, and once she finally knows which path she is taking, can look her destiny unflinchingly in the face, either when it’s her own death against Walpurgis Night in timeline 1, or effectively erasing herself from existence in the final time loop.
Other: I’ll be taking Madoka from the same timeline as the one our Homura is currently in and playing through canon that way.
Additional Links:
First Person (entry type):
Dear Diary,
Homura-chan did so well today! Mami-san and I were a little unsure at first because she still hasn’t been a Puella Magi for that long, but she’s gotten so much better since we met her. The way she defeated the witch today was amazing!
We’ve become such good friends since Homura-chan transferred here, even when we’re not doing anything to do with being a Puella Magi. It makes me so happy that I’ve got such a great friend. I’m so lucky!
Mami-san says that there’s a Walpurgis Night coming soon. It makes me nervous, but… I’m sure that since there’s three of us, we’ll be able to protect the city together. After all, we’re all Puella Magi, so even if it’s dangerous, we have to be!
I can hear Papa calling for dinner now, so I think I’ll stop writing. Until later!
Third Person: (Used prompt: There's a wallet on the sidewalk. What now?)
Madoka’s walking home with Sayaka and Hitomi when she spots it. Well, spotting is perhaps the wrong word; in actual fact, it’s because Madoka steps on it that she notices it at all. She stumbles back, almost tripping over her own feet, with a small “oh” of surprise, bending down to pick it up.
It’s a wallet, made of worn brown leather that’s warm from lying in the sunshine. Madoka looks right, then left, but there’s no one else on the street apart from her and her friends. Whoever dropped this, they’re long gone.
She’s opening the wallet to check for a name before Sayaka and Hitomi notice she’s stopped.
“Oi, Madoka,” Sayaka calls. “What have you got there?” Madoka looks up, motioning towards the wallet.
“Mm, it’s nothing!” she calls. “Only, someone dropped a wallet…” She looks back down inside, checking the contents. There’s some loose change, adding up to maybe a little more than 1000 yen, a credit card, some old sweet wrappers, and a picture of a young woman holding a baby. Madoka smiles when she sees it; the baby looks adorable.
“Whoever this belongs to, they’re probably missing it,” she says thoughtfully. She thinks for a moment before she nods to herself. It’ll mean that she’ll get home a little late, since it’s out of her way, but the only right thing to do is hand the wallet in to the police as soon as possible. She’s sure that her mother will understand.
Closing the wallet, she smiles sheepishly at her friends. “Sorry, Sayaka-chan, Hitomi-chan,” she tells them. “But I’m afraid I have something to do. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
As she turns to go, Sayaka calls her back, talking about how she’s not letting Madoka wander around the city by herself where any shady person could grab her out of nowhere, and illustrates her point by grabbing Madoka around the waist and making her squeal, the two of them giggling while Hitomi shakes her head at their antics. Madoka is still giggling by the time she and Sayaka finally start heading towards the police station, but when she finally stops, she lets out a breath, a grin on her face. She can’t help thinking about the person who owns the wallet - the young woman in the picture, or maybe even her husband - and of just how happy they’ll be when it finally finds its way back to them.
Player LJ: raspberrybeanie
Way to contact you:
Email: fantasygirl@blueyonder.co.uk
AIM: hangswithtraps
Other: plurk: Tenfel
Are you at least 15?: YYY
Current Characters: The Tenth Doctor, Pearl Fey, England, Lyle Dylandy, Roxas, Sam Linnfer
Character: Madoka Kaname
Fandom: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Character Notes:
History: When we first meet Madoka Kaname, she’s nothing more or less than an ordinary junior high school student. She’s got a loving family, a couple of close friends, and she’s the class nurse. But there’s nothing special about her on the outside, nothing that would make you think she was special. Certainly nothing that would indicate that she’s actually one of the most important people in the entire multiverse.
One night Madoka has a strange dream where she’s watching a girl fight an impossible battle against a giant monster. The next day, a mysterious transfer student by the name of Homura Akemi transfers into Madoka’s class, and that’s when everything changes. Not only is Homura aloof, insanely smart and athletic, and uncommonly pretty, she also seems to take a direct interest in Madoka, and more to the point, she’s the exact same girl that Madoka saw in her dream the night before. Later that day, Madoka hears a voice in her head calling for help and along with her friend Sayaka, follow it in time to rescue a small ferret-like creature called Kyubey from none other than Homura herself. Before anything else can happen, however, the world around Sayaka and Madoka suddenly changes into a nightmarish, horrific backdrop and the girls are surrounded by equally horrific creatures. Luckily, at that moment the girls are rescued by a magical girl called Mami, who drives away the creatures and heals Kyubey.
Kyubey and Mami explain that Kyubey has the power to grant wishes, but in exchange for the wish and as part of the contract, the girls must agree to become magical girls and fight the witches that plague the city. Kyubey adds that both Sayaka and Madoka have the potential, but Mami adds that they should both think carefully about their wishes before they make them, since if they became magical girls, they’d be risking their lives. Mami invites the two girls with her on a witch hunt the next day, and after school, they track the witch to a building where a woman is being controlled to commit suicide. The three girls make their way into the witch’s barrier, and Mami defeats it, saving the woman and earning a Grief Seed from the witch, a magical object that can be used to recharge Mami’s Soul Gem, the source of her magical power.
During another witch hunt with Mami, Mami reveals to Madoka and Sayaka that she made her wish after she was in a traffic accident, and didn’t have time to think about it, and also warns Sayaka about making a wish for somebody else’s sake. The next day, Sayaka and Madoka find a Grief Seed embedded in the wall of a hospital. Madoka runs to find Mami, and when she returns, Sayaka and Kyubey have already been swallowed up by the witch’s barrier. As Madoka and Mami race to catch up with them, they are stopped by the appearance of Homura, who warns Mami against fighting the witch because this one is different. However, Mami doesn’t listen, and to stop Homura from following them, ties her up with her magic ribbons. Mami and Madoka carry on towards Sayaka, and as they talk, Madoka confesses that her only wish is to become a magical girl and help others so that her life can have some sort of purpose, and adds that Mami doesn’t have to be a magical girl alone anymore. Mami is overjoyed by this, and the two finally reach the centre of the witch’s maze, where the witch, Charlotte, appears. Mami fights her, but suddenly, Charlotte’s form changes into that of a giant caterpillar, and kills Mami by biting off her head while Madoka and Sayaka can only watch. Mami’s death releases the binding on Homura, and she rushes into to defeat the witch and claim the Grief Seed, leaving Madoka and Sayaka to grieve Mami.
Mami’s death sends Madoka into new doubts about becoming a magical girl, and she tells Kyubey that she’s too scared to make a contract with him at the moment. After visiting Mami’s old apartment, Madoka runs into her friend Hitomi, who has a witch’s kiss on her neck and seems to be in a trance. Madoka follows her to a building where other people with witch’s kisses are gathering to commit a joint suicide. Madoka manages to stop the process at the last minute, but she’s swallowed into the witch’s barrier herself. Suddenly though, Sayaka rescues her as a magical girl, as it turns out that Sayaka had made a wish to give the boy she loved back the use of his arm so that he could play the violin again.
Madoka is worried about Sayaka becoming a magical girl, since it seems so dangerous, and meets Homura at a coffee shop, asking her to look out for Sayaka. Homura tells her that she can’t, since Sayaka already made the wrong choice and it’d be better if Madoka gave up on her, and once again warns Madoka not to become a magical girl. Madoka is even more worried, and follows Sayaka to her first fight. However, while Sayaka is trying to defeat a witch’s familiar, a new magical girl called Kyoko suddenly appears and stops the fight, explaining that it’s stupid for Sayaka to waste her energy on familiars that can’t drop Grief Seeds. Sayaka and Kyoko begin to fight, but all of a sudden, Homura appears and interrupts the girls.
Homura knocks Sayaka out after saving her from being stabbed by Kyoko, who asks Homura whose side she’s on. Homura says that she’s against the troublemakers and also scolds Madoka for not following her advice to let Sayaka be. Later on, Madoka, desperate for everyone to get along, tries to persuade Sayaka to work with Kyoko, reasoning that more magical girls would be a bigger help against the witches, but Sayaka shoots the idea down. That night, Kyoko and Sayaka get into another fight on the top of a bridge, but before it can get anywhere, Madoka grabs Sayaka’s Soul Gem off her in desperation and throws it over the bridge’s edge. To Madoka’s horror, as soon as this happens, Sayaka collapses. To add to Madoka’s horror, Kyubey reveals that what Madoka just threw over the edge was Sayaka herself - her Soul Gem is literally Sayaka’s soul, meaning that her body, and all other magical girls’ bodies, is just an empty husk that relies on proximity to the Soul Gem to keep moving. Luckily, Homura manages to rescue Sayaka’s Soul Gem, and Sayaka regains consciousness.
The next day, Madoka notices that Sayaka has skipped school, and becomes even more worried about her friend. At lunch, she confronts Homura on the school roof and asks her why she didn’t tell them the truth about the Soul Gems, since she clearly knew about it before. Homura tells her that she’d tried before, but no-one had believed her, and again warns Madoka to stay away from Sayaka and give up on her. The following night, Madoka joins Sayaka on another witch hunt, and seeing Madoka there makes Sayaka cry onto her friend’s shoulder, since she feels that since she’s now effectively a zombie, she’s lost any chance of ever being with the boy she loves. After recovering, the two head out to fight the witch. But inside the barrier, Sayaka starts to lose some of her sanity, and ignoring Madoka’s pleas to stop, starts hacking and slashing at the witch with no regard for her own injuries, since if she doesn’t want it to, “it doesn’t hurt at all!”
After the battle, Sayaka refuses to use the Grief Seed the witch dropped, and Madoka helps her to go back home. Madoka is distraught over what Sayaka is doing and says that she just wants to make her happy, but Sayaka brushes Madoka off and runs, telling her not to follow her. Sayaka goes missing shortly after that, and no matter how hard Madoka looks, she can’t find her. The following night, Madoka finally seems to give up hope and sits down on a bench, worried about Sayaka. Kyubey shows up and the two of them have a conversation about Madoka’s potential as a magical girl, which is apparently the largest that Kyubey has ever seen. Madoka almost agrees to become a magical girl to save Sayaka, but before she can make the contract, Homura turns up and shoots Kyubey before breaking down in tears at Madoka’s feet, asking why she always has to sacrifice herself. Madoka is confused, but has a sudden flash of memory, remembering that she once knew Homura before. Before Homura can confirm or answer, though, Madoka rushes off to resume her search for Sayaka.
By the time Madoka finds Kyoko and Homura accompanying Sayaka’s lifeless body, it’s too late; Sayaka’s Soul Gem has shattered from all the despair she was feeling and transformed into a Grief Seed, turning Sayaka herself into a witch. Homura explains that that’s the fate of all magical girls, while Madoka cries over Sayaka’s lifeless body.
Later that night, after Madoka returns home and is crying in her room, Kyuubey shows up again and explains that he is actually a member of an alien, emotionless race that is trying to prevent the heat death of the universe. Magical girls and witches are part of the method the Incubators are using to counter it, as the powerful emotions given off by teenaged girls can be harnessed into energy for the universe. Since the Incubators have no morals, they see nothing wrong with using humans for that purpose. Madoka, shocked and angry, tells Kyubey to leave, and he does, but not before telling Madoka that when she feels like dying for the universe, she knows where to find him.
The next day, Madoka ignores Hitomi when she tries to speak to her, and instead skips school to talk to Kyoko, who has a plan to try and reason with Sayaka and remind her about being human, to turn her from a witch back into a girl. Madoka and Kyoko join forces and enter Sayaka’s witch barrier. While Kyoko fights Sayaka and protects Madoka, Madoka tries to get through to Sayaka by talking to her. But try as she might, it doesn’t work, and Madoka is knocked out. While she is out cold, Kyoko carries out a suicide attack on Sayaka so that she doesn’t die alone, while Homura rescues Madoka and takes her out of the labyrinth.
It’s at this point in the series that we find out the truth about Homura and all the events up to now: the timeline of events as we know them is actually the latest in a long line caused by Homura’s wish and her time travel powers. In the original timeline, Madoka was already a magical girl who rescued Homura from a witch’s barrier along with Mami, and died defeating the Walpurgis Night witch. Madoka’s death was what caused Homura to become a magical girl, so that she could go back in time and protect Madoka. However, the more Homura repeated the timeline, Madoka, who had been quite confident and sure of herself in the original timeline, grew less confident and capable, while at the same time, her potential as a magical girl grew and grew. In addition, Madoka’s fate only grew worse and worse, until in the timeline before the current one, Madoka had transformed into a horribly powerful witch after finally making a wish to defend Homura and defeating the Walpurgis Night in one blow.
The reason behind Madoka’s growing magic potential is Homura herself; by repeating time so often, Homura has created endless parallel universes that all revolve around Madoka, giving her more magical potential in the current timeline than any other magical girl in history.
Meanwhile, back in the current timeline, Madoka attends Sayaka’s funeral and denies knowing anything about Sayaka’s death. After talking with Kyubey, who tries to convince her that without the magical girl system, human society wouldn’t have progressed beyond living in caves, Madoka goes to visit Homura and talk about the coming of Walpurgis Night, which is coming to destroy the city just as it did in all the other timelines before this one. During the talk, Homura finally reveals the truth about who she is to Madoka and the story of all the timelines she’s been in before this one.
That night, the city is evacuated due to a storm caused by Walpurgis Night, and while Homura begins to fight the witch, Madoka is sent to the shelters with her family. Madoka makes an excuse to leave the room so she can talk to Kyubey, asking if Homura will survive the battle with Walpurgis Night. Kyubey, however, is evasive, and persuades Madoka to go see for herself. As Madoka goes to see, she’s stopped by her mother, but argues that even though she knows that other people care for her, there’s something that she has to do to help set things right. Reluctantly, her mother allows Madoka to go, and Madoka reaches Homura just as the other girl is losing hope and about to turn into a witch.
Madoka apologises to Homura for everything that she’s gone through for Madoka’s sake, but says that she will become a magical girl. So saying, she turns to Kyubey and makes her wish: to erase all witches from existence, on every world and in every time, before they are even born, with her own hands. Kyubey is staggered as Madoka is essentially wishing to become a god, but grants the wish, since Madoka’s power is so huge that she would be able to do so.
Madoka transforms into a magical girl and proceeds to travel through time and space, healing defeated magical girls and making their Soul Gems vanish. Madoka’s wish has created a supermassive Soul Gem, and while Madoka has become hope itself, thus creating enough hope to make a brand new universe, she’s also shouldered enough despair for her witch form to end a universe. However, with her new powers, and thanks to the nature of her wish, Madoka is able to defeat her own witch self and safeguard the universe.
Thanks to this, though, Madoka has essentially erased her physical self and all memory of herself from the universe, ascending to a higher plane of existence where she will guide magical girls away before their Soul Gems can be corrupted into Grief Seeds. After a final talk loaded down with lesbian subtext with Homura, during which she gives the other girl her hair ribbons as a momento, Madoka leaves to carry on her new duties.
Meanwhile, in the new universe Madoka’s wish created, nobody but Homura and Madoka’s little brother Tatsuya remember her. Meanwhile, the magical girl system works differently, with magical girls fighting demons and vanishing at the point they would have turned into witches thanks to Madoka’s interference.
TL;DR MADOKA STARTS AS AN AVERAGE JANE AND IN THE END BECOMES GOD. 8D
Personality: Madoka comes across as almost painfully ordinary. She’s cheerful and friendly, only moderately intelligent, and rather clumsy and ditzy at times. Basically, she’s a sweet girl, one that’s easy to love and to make friends with, but you wouldn’t have her down as anything special when you talked to her.
The thing which is immediately obvious and unfailingly constant about Madoka is her kindness and compassion. Above all else, Madoka is a kind and gentle soul, and her greatest wish in life is for everyone to get along and be happy. She’ll offer her help to people if she can, and her unwavering support and friendship if she can’t. She’ll give everyone a fair listening ear, and will even make an attempt to understand or befriend those who seem at odds with her at first. Madoka’s kindness in a world as cruel as hers is both her greatest asset and her biggest flaw; she simply cares too easily and too much. Hand in hand with this go her optimism, her belief in the power of friendship, and her hope - all traits that would be admirable in any other world with magical girls. Not so much in her own, where they often serve more as a hindrance than a help.
Madoka also, for the most part, wears her heart on her sleeve; when she’s happy, she smiles and laughs, when she’s excited, everyone else will know about it, when she’s scared, she screams or freezes up, and when she’s sad, she cries. It’s as simple as that. It makes her come across as childish or even a little weak and helpless sometimes, but the reality is that she’s just unfailingly honest with her emotions.
Madoka may seem ordinary, plain, ditzy and even a little thick, but nothing could be further from the truth. Madoka has hidden depths that would surprise even her. She’s painfully aware of her own insignificance and her lack of any real talents, and inside, she’s desperately searching for some sort of purpose or meaning to her life. But the truth is, Madoka has a lot of inner strength and courage. Although she won’t hide her fear, and she’ll often cry or freeze up, Madoka will still walk into danger to support her friends in spite of her own obvious fear and her lack of any real skills. Occasionally, her initiative in the heat of the moment has saved lives, such as when she intervened to stop the group suicide in episode four - however, it should also be noted that rash actions like this have also proved to be bad on occasion, such as when she threw Sayaka’s Soul Gem away in an effort to stop her and Kyoko fighting. She also has a great desire to protect the things she loves, a strong sense of justice and of right and wrong, and an inability to understand how anyone could act deliberately and unfeelingly in a way that would harm others. When it comes down to it, Madoka has a core of steel, and once she finally knows which path she is taking, can look her destiny unflinchingly in the face, either when it’s her own death against Walpurgis Night in timeline 1, or effectively erasing herself from existence in the final time loop.
Other: I’ll be taking Madoka from the same timeline as the one our Homura is currently in and playing through canon that way.
Additional Links:
First Person (entry type):
Dear Diary,
Homura-chan did so well today! Mami-san and I were a little unsure at first because she still hasn’t been a Puella Magi for that long, but she’s gotten so much better since we met her. The way she defeated the witch today was amazing!
We’ve become such good friends since Homura-chan transferred here, even when we’re not doing anything to do with being a Puella Magi. It makes me so happy that I’ve got such a great friend. I’m so lucky!
Mami-san says that there’s a Walpurgis Night coming soon. It makes me nervous, but… I’m sure that since there’s three of us, we’ll be able to protect the city together. After all, we’re all Puella Magi, so even if it’s dangerous, we have to be!
I can hear Papa calling for dinner now, so I think I’ll stop writing. Until later!
Third Person: (Used prompt: There's a wallet on the sidewalk. What now?)
Madoka’s walking home with Sayaka and Hitomi when she spots it. Well, spotting is perhaps the wrong word; in actual fact, it’s because Madoka steps on it that she notices it at all. She stumbles back, almost tripping over her own feet, with a small “oh” of surprise, bending down to pick it up.
It’s a wallet, made of worn brown leather that’s warm from lying in the sunshine. Madoka looks right, then left, but there’s no one else on the street apart from her and her friends. Whoever dropped this, they’re long gone.
She’s opening the wallet to check for a name before Sayaka and Hitomi notice she’s stopped.
“Oi, Madoka,” Sayaka calls. “What have you got there?” Madoka looks up, motioning towards the wallet.
“Mm, it’s nothing!” she calls. “Only, someone dropped a wallet…” She looks back down inside, checking the contents. There’s some loose change, adding up to maybe a little more than 1000 yen, a credit card, some old sweet wrappers, and a picture of a young woman holding a baby. Madoka smiles when she sees it; the baby looks adorable.
“Whoever this belongs to, they’re probably missing it,” she says thoughtfully. She thinks for a moment before she nods to herself. It’ll mean that she’ll get home a little late, since it’s out of her way, but the only right thing to do is hand the wallet in to the police as soon as possible. She’s sure that her mother will understand.
Closing the wallet, she smiles sheepishly at her friends. “Sorry, Sayaka-chan, Hitomi-chan,” she tells them. “But I’m afraid I have something to do. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
As she turns to go, Sayaka calls her back, talking about how she’s not letting Madoka wander around the city by herself where any shady person could grab her out of nowhere, and illustrates her point by grabbing Madoka around the waist and making her squeal, the two of them giggling while Hitomi shakes her head at their antics. Madoka is still giggling by the time she and Sayaka finally start heading towards the police station, but when she finally stops, she lets out a breath, a grin on her face. She can’t help thinking about the person who owns the wallet - the young woman in the picture, or maybe even her husband - and of just how happy they’ll be when it finally finds its way back to them.