The TL;DR CR Meme

[ceasetoexist]

THE TL;DR CR MEME

It's function rambunction let me show you the rules:

1. Post a top level with your character.
2. Others post with their characters under your top level
3. You go on and on about those two characters CR.
4. Post with your character, get the same.

Comments

Re: Kyouko Sakura | Puella Magi Madoka Magica

[loveedition]

it can't be THAT bad can it

[bedream]

Kyouko's opinion of Ryoko has sort of been this weird little roller coaster filled with loops and twists.

When Kyouko first met Ryoko, she was honestly pretty fond of her. Ryoko was naive, idealistic, and everything that a magi shouldn't be if they didn't want to be crushed by the weight of their circumstances. This meant that Kyouko was worried about her, naturally, and sort of stuck on how she should act towards Ryoko. On one hand, she saw her old mentor, Mami, and her old self (as well as Sayaka, in a sense, since Sayaka too reminds her of her old self) in equal parts in Ryoko. This meant that she wanted to be kind to Ryoko, and she genuinely wanted to see Ryoko somehow make it through okay and with her idealism and innocence in-tact. She wanted to be the mentor to Ryoko that Mami was to her. After all, if Ryoko could make it - if Ryoko could retain her idealism in a reality as harsh as the one that magi were subjected to - then there might just be hope yet. From the time that she meets Ryoko, Kyouko sees her as a source of hope.

At the same time, though, she knew it wasn't realistic of her to think that she could be a mentor to Ryoko. After all, she was no Mami, and she couldn't be Mami no matter how hard she tried. She lacked Mami's finesse, her grace - everything that made Mami the perfect magical girl. She couldn't possibly be the mentor that Ryoko deserved, and trying to be more than she was would just lead to heartbreak somewhere down the line.

As a result, part of her was determined to test Ryoko, in a sense. To be as harsh as she possibly could, to be as cynical and cruel as she possible could, and see whether Ryoko would crumble under the pressure or if she'd persevere. She may have wanted to see Ryoko keep her idealism, but she knew Ryoko's chances of survival would be higher if that idealism were quickly crushed. At the same time, if she went this method and found that Ryoko managed to rise to the challenge and keep her idealism despite Kyouko's cruelty towards her, then it would be all the more reason to have hope.

Her conflicting attitudes on how she should handle Ryoko led to an internal tug-of-war, in a sense, and the result ended in her deciding to mostly keep her distance from Ryoko for the time being.

Then the dungeon happens. Kyouko decides to tag along out of concern for Ryoko, and she ends up being murdered by her.

When she comes back to life, her thoughts on what happened are a mess. She's filled with self-loathing at having been caught so off-guard and for showing concern for someone whom she believes at this moment in time to be a ruthless murderer. Ryoko's naivete, Ryoko's idealism - all of it must have been some sort of act to get Kyouko to let her guard down, and she'd fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

She's furious, but she's far more furious at herself than she is at Ryoko. Magical girls have to be ruthless to survive: this is a belief she's carried ever since her family died, and it's by clinging to this belief that there is no other way to act if one wishes to survive that she's able to justify her own actions and her own abandonment of her old values. Therefore, if someone stoops to such methods in order to thin out the competition, then she can't particularly blame them for it. It's her own fault for being stupid enough to fall for it. She'd been a fool to think of Ryoko as a source of hope.

Ryoko survived, and she died. That's all that matters. From this point on, she becomes quite a bit more jaded.

Then they meet again, and Kyouko learns that she was mistaken. What happened had been a mistake - one that Ryoko regretted deeply. This makes her have to seriously reevaluate her convictions and her worldview once more, and things return to the status quo. Ryoko'd acted mistakenly, and she'd done so out of love for her friends - a motivation that Kyouko could respect and understand.

A month passed. Kyouko received word that Sayaka was gone, and she was crushed by the news. Sayaka had been Kyouko's anchor: even with all the challenges that had been thrown her way, Sayaka had refused to compromise on her morals - something that Kyouko had failed to do. Kyouko is someone who's long given up on herself (because what kind of scum gives up on saving other people so that she can survive?), and she looks to people like Sayaka. If it meant getting Sayaka back, she didn't mind having to dirty her own hands.

After all, her hands were bloodstained already, so what did a few more lives amount to, in the end?

From this point on, she hits peak self-loathing levels, and her faith in the world is strongly dashed. Whereas up until this point the scales had been tilted more in favor of rooting for Ryoko's success through encouragement and fighting alongside her, she now no longer believed that was sufficient to keep Ryoko alive. After all, if Sayaka, whom she had taken the harsh method with and who had managed to endure everything... Sayaka, who was an excellent fighter... could not manage to make it in Nyoi-cho, then what hope did Ryoko possibly have?

She isn't doing Ryoko any favors by coddling her or helping her fight her battles, so she's not going to go that route anymore. In her weird little way, she's still trying to act as a mentor to Ryoko. It's just that she's no longer conflicted on which method she should choose, since she is now convinced that the other method is worthless. After all, Mami went the route of trying to be gentle with her students, and look where that got her. Look where that got them.

And if that is the case, then let the testing commence.