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Malathyne
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CONTENT WARNINGS: Puella Magi rightly deserves its reputation as being full of suffering. Kyoko's canon deals with violence (fantasy and otherwise) centered on children and teenagers, suicide, suicidal ideology, body horror, the manipulation of young girls, and violation metaphors (again, centered on young girls). Kyoko's personal history deals with all of the above, as well as starvation, youth homelessness, domestic abuse, and murder/suicide by fire and hanging. Shit can get heavy, so be warned.
Character Name: Kyoko Sakura
Series: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Age: Estimated to be 14-16; I'll be playing her as 15 (see History for explanation)
From When?: End of Episode 9 when she's about to kill herself to destroy Oktavia
Inmate/Warden: Inmate, for sure. Kyoko has a LOT of trauma to work through for a kid her age. Meeting and fighting with Sayaka may have reminded her what her original ideals were, and made her realize she wants to go back to them, but she never actually gets the chance to follow through with that because she dies soon after. And remembering that she once wanted to protect others is still a far cry from processing what happened in her life -- or deconstructing her bad coping mechanisms. And they're not just bad, they can be actively destructive to herself and to others.
She has difficulty making herself emotionally vulnerable to others -- She fills the anime trope of "tsundere," fighty on the outside and soft on the inside, and this also means she struggles to properly express what she really feels. Multiple times in canon, across the different timelines, she runs into the issue of getting her back up against a wall and saying cruel things she doesn't even really believe just because she's on the defensive -- even with people she cares about, even when what she actually wants is to connect.
She's prone to picking fights, partly because it feels like a(n emotionally) safer and easier form of communication to her, partly because she's simply self-destructive and it's a familiar emotional outlet for her, partly because she thrives on getting reactions out of people. (This is true even when she's in a happier, healthier mindset; at its most benign, she likes teasing people. But when she's in a worse place, that habit takes the shape of something distinctly less positive. She will even use this tactic to be able to say that she's the one who egged them into the fight, so everything bad that came from it was her fault. This happens to reflect the way she internalizes bad things that happen as her responsibility as a coping mechanism.)
She spent the past year of her life in a state of indifference towards others' suffering -- She stops trying to save other people from the witches and familiars that only magical girls can fight, instead leaving them to be preyed upon in order to further her own survival (reference canon information in History for details). She's brazen and unapologetic about this when confronted, never even walking back her attitude even after remembering what her old ideals used to be. (Canon never brings it up again, leaving it unaddressed.) This both stems from and feeds into how she's very much willing to slot herself into the position of "the bad guy" while convincing herself she's doing what's best.
And, in another timeline, she can't turn her back on a young girl she rescues from a witch's labyrinth, despite her adopted philosophy of dog-eats-dog, it's-okay-if-people-get-eaten-if-it-means-I-survive. She can compartmentalize bad things happening to other people so long as they aren't happening in front of her -- Then, she can't help but take action, because of her true ideals deep down. This coping mechanism of compartmentalizing her trauma and justifying herself is bad enough as it is, but left unchecked and unexamined, could lead to worse roads.
Even so, she completely shoulders the "responsibility" for what happened to her family, blaming herself wholesale -- instead of considering that her father was not quite the good person she always believed he was, and that she isn't responsible for his actions.
On a broader scale, she also has major trust issues with society and authority (and adults in particular) from when her family (including herself and younger sister, both under the age of ten at the time) was left to starve. She was forced to grow up fast, and not only will buck the idea that she's still a kid, but that she should be treated with more consideration because of it. Then there's the issues from her family, in particular her father, that she hasn't ever really begun to unpack.
As if all that's not enough, there's also the matter of her death -- It's something she chose. And she chose it with the thought that by killing herself to destroy Sayaka's witch, then Sayaka wouldn't have to be alone. Being alive despite that -- Or, rather, being offered a second chance, when Sayaka isn't getting one, and she thinks that Sayaka deserves one more and has more to live for besides -- It's going to be a tough reality for Kyoko to face, and it's going to be a strong reason why she backslides from her canon development a bit on arrival.
Underneath the layers of trauma and bad coping mechanisms, there's genuinely a good heart down there, one that wants to protect and caretake -- one that just wants to live happily with her friends and family. And by the time of her death, she's even taken the first few steps towards returning to being true to that heart by recognizing she still wants those things. But she's still going to get worse before she gets better...
Arrival: Moment of death
Abilities/Powers: Buckle in, y'all. I am so sorry there is so much of this.
Magical Girls and Soul Gems
Despite her anti-hero and tsundere nature, Kyoko is a magical girl. To become one, a girl must have the potential and be approached by Kyubey, who will offer to grant her a single miracle in exchange for her accepting the duty of fighting witches. If she makes a contract with him, then he removes her soul from her body and houses it in a Soul Gem. This shields her from the worst of the pain of combat, and keeps her from dying when a normal human otherwise would, so she can heal her body with magic and keep fighting. It also allows her to control her body from a distance of a hundred meters away from her Soul Gem. If her Soul Gem goes farther than that, then her body collapses and is indistinguishable from a corpse, and it will begin decomposing in three days.
Soul Gems are also the source of a magical girl's power. All of her magic is stored there, and when she uses it, the Soul Gem becomes tainted and its glow dims. It's worth noting that despair can also darken a magical girl's Soul Gem. In these situations, if her despair is strong enough, even if her Soul Gem is cleansed with a Grief Seed (see below), it's possible for it to become tainted again and quickly.
Soul Gems can be transformed into engraved silver rings for safe keeping when a magical girl isn't transformed. While most of the time, magical girls cannot use magic when they aren't transformed, they can project smaller versions of their weapons from their rings.
Grief Seeds and Witches
In order to refill her magic and restore her Soul Gem's luster, a magical girl's only option is to use something called a Grief Seed. Grief Seeds are dropped by witches once they are killed, and they are basically the "eggs" of witches. If a Grief Seed absorbs too much impurity from Grief Seeds or from the world at large, then it will hatch into the same kind of witch that dropped it, so once a magical girl uses up a Grief Seed, Kyubey takes it and processes it safely.
Witches are very powerful magical beings who can create their own worldspaces, called labyrinths, which overlap reality as if a separate plane. They use labyrinths to hide from the sight of regular humans, which they prey on and lure into their labyrinths. It is said that witches spread curses, as they can affect humans near their labyrinths, twisting their thoughts and behaviors to cause them to do things like commit suicide, murder, arson, collect or lure other humans to the witch, etc. Humans affected by witches will have a symbol on their body called a "witch's kiss," and the symbol each witch bestows is different.
Witches can also create lesser magical beings called familiars, which serve their mistresses and fulfill specific purposes for them. Usually, they occupy the labyrinth, but occasionally slip out into the world, where they can create their own barriers and spread curses. However, familiars cannot drop Grief Seeds, as only witches do. If a familiar "eats" enough humans, it will grow into another copy of the witch that spawned it.
Unfortunately, the magical girl system is designed to doom them. Whenever a magical girl's Soul Gem becomes completely tainted, whether it's from using too much magic or from despair, her Soul Gem becomes a Grief Seed and she hatches into a new witch. In the process, a great amount of energy is released, which is Kyubey's true goal.
"Kyubey" is the Japanese name for his kind, whose true name is Incubator. (We're shown in Puella Magi Tart Magica that he's been called many things across time and across the globe; in France, he was called Qube. It also isn't uncommon for him to be mistaken as an angel or other mythological figures.) Incubators are from another planet and seek to solve universal entropy through the magical girl system.
Kyoko's witch is Ophelia, the Witch of Abandonment.
Magical Girl Powers
There's a suite of abilities that all magical girls possess. The first is the ability to "transform" into their magical girl forms, which changes their outfits, enables them to use magic, and spawns their weapon(s). It's worth noting that while outfits and transformation sequences can happen naturally with the magical girl having little to no control over them, it's possible for them to completely influence both things.
A magical girl also has some amount of influence over her weapons. However, she is limited by what she understands; Mami's signature weapon is the musket, but she failed to create other kinds of guns because she didn't understand how they work. Homura had to learn how to make bombs from the Internet before she could magically create her own. Weapons can also be bestowed upon them, as Perenelle does for the magical girls in Tart's group in Tart Magica.
However, a magical girl doesn't have to be transformed to have access to all of her abilities; the only magic limited to transformation seems to be combat-related magic. She always has access to her sixth sense, telepathy, physical enhancements, and imbuing objects with magic. Her sixth sense allows her to be able to sense other magical girls, witches, and other uses of magic. It is through this sense that she can track familiars, witches, and magical girls, and identify the individuals that created those magical signatures. She can use telepathy to communicate not only with other magical girls, but regular humans as well, limited ambiguously by range (a la "speed of plot"). She cannot use telepathy to read thoughts or emotions, only speak directly to her targets' mind.
A magical girl's physical enhancements are left ambiguous in canon, but given that they've been seen doing things like scaling tall buildings like a typical powered anime character, even without being transformed, there has to be some amount of it going on. Relatedly, they can also heal their bodies with their magic, allowing them to recover from the injuries they get from fighting witches (or other magical girls). They can also heal other magical girls with this same power, and even use it to keep corpses fresh, so it's likely they can heal regular humans as well, though there isn't an example of this in canon.
There are times in the series where magical girls imbue objects with magic, enhancing them and even turning them into magical weapons. Examples include when Mami turns Sayaka's baseball bat into something that would help fight off familiars; when Kyoko enhances public use binoculars to see (and hear?) from miles away; and in the mobile game Magia Record where magical girls who are not very strong create makeshift weapons by imbuing pebbles or regular cloth with magic. The capabilities of the imbued object likely depends on how much magic the magical girl put into it.
All magical girls also have an ability unique to them based on what wish Kyubey granted. Examples from across the series include advanced healing, greater healing of others, permanent invisibility, time travel, teleportation, self-glamour, turning into and traveling between shadows, and sensing enemies.
Kyoko's Powers
Kyoko's weapon appears to be a long spear with a large red spearhead, but it can break down into sections connected by chain at her will. She can also create and throw shorter versions of it (seen in Episode 9 when she opens the barrier to the witch Oktavia's labyrinth), and seems to be able to cause it to lengthen at will (as shown in her fight with Sayaka in Episode 5).
Kyoko's wish was for people listen to her father's preaching, which created a congregation for him but they were brainwashed into following him, instead of choosing to do so by their own will. As a result, her unique power was centered on illusions, called "enchantment" by Mami and Kyubey in Different Story. She was able to create multiple mirror images of herself, similar to stereotypical ninjas. Mami called this power "Rosso Fantasma." Her illusions became more and more believable the more she worked on her powers. However, because her wish ultimately led to the destruction of her family, Kyoko came to reject the power that came from her wish, and psychologically repressed the ability to use it. In Different Story, she describes it as having forgotten how to use it.
However, it also shows that she's able to regain that power once she begins to process her trauma — At the end of Different Story, Kyoko has decided she wants to use her power to protect her family again (in the context of considering Mami the only family she has left). Still, Mami comments that her illusion magic isn't as refined as it used to be (as Mami recognizes the magic when she came in physical contact with it), probably due to that skill being unused for so long, as well as the fact that Kyoko is still re-learning how to use it. Over time, with practice and probably also with more trauma processing, her illusion powers would likely only grow stronger and more refined again.
In order to survive, she had to learn how to fight with this handicap. Kyubey did not expect her to live long after she repressed Rosso Fantasma, but Kyoko trained herself back up, and became even stronger than she was before. As a result, coupled with her status as a veteran magical girl (having been one for two years), she's known for being powerful. One such ability that she has retained or learned afterwards is the creation red chains, which she often uses to make walls (seen in Episode 4 and 9, when she kept Madoka out of both fights; and in Different Story, Kyoko is able to create chains without being transformed, so long as her Soul Gem is in its true state instead of being a ring). This ability is referred to in an obscure corner of canon (which I can't seem to track down for the life of me, probably the PSP game?) as "Latticework Barrier."
Her special attack, called a Magia (which uses a lot of magic), is called Kugatachi. This is the move she uses when fighting Oktavia at the end of Episode 9, and a version of it can be seen in Magia Record ([video], no spoilers).
Power Nerfing
All combat ability and physical enhancement will be locked away. She'll still be more durable than she would be normally, because her body will not die unless her Soul Gem is destroyed, but there can be a threshold if the mods want there to be one -- An example of like, if she gets decapitated or something similar, then she'll still death toll as normal, which... is probably a good idea anyway, because I feel like that's a special level of body horror. (Bad joke for that example: "Help, I have no mouth and I must scream.") No, but I'd imagine it'd be something like, "her body is dead, what's going on?" if the Admiral wouldn't respond to a revival request from a warden like typical.
Which, omg! That's a terrible thought, because then someone would have to smash her Soul Gem in order for her to be truly dead, and so they'd have to find an inmate to do it because a warden would get demoted for killing an inmate, right?!
Anyway, she'll still be able to change her Soul Gem from its ring form to its egg form, and she'll still suffer from the downsides related to Soul Gems (if it breaks, she dies + if it gets taken too far from her body, it drops dead until returned, etc.).
She'll still be able to transform into her magical girl outfit, but won't be able to do anything with it, not even summon her weapon. (Just because it's funny.)
As discussed with the mod team previously (unless you guys have changed your minds / have new ideas on how you want it handled), Kyoko will arrive in the game with a clear Soul Gem. It will be polluted at a greatly reduced rate so long as her powers are nerfed, equally reducing the likelihood of her becoming a witch during that time. But once her powers are returned to her by a warden... Kyoko becoming a witch (and so she would have to be defeated by other player characters before death tolling) will be on the table.
Kyoko's Skills
Kyoko's most notable mundane skills fall under how adaptable she is. She chooses to be homeless, and lives off of street smarts, stealing money and food, and sleeping in unused hotel rooms. She first developed such skills when her family was destitute, and she was stealing food for her family to survive on, but after she loses her family, she dedicates herself entirely to that lifestyle. While we don't know details of her day-to-day living, it's clear that her skills in thievery and breaking and entering and other such activities are at least good enough for her to avoid being arrested.
Personality:
When people first meet Kyoko, one of the first takeaways is often her in-your-face attitude. She's rude, irreverent, and confident — and, if you're unlucky enough, she's even outright aggressive. It's easy to write her off as a typical "bad girl," and she certainly doesn't care what people think about her or the way she lives. Even though she survives by stealing money, food, and shelter (like sleeping in unused hotel rooms) — and throwing people's lives away — she's unapologetic. Her skin is thick (so long as something doesn't trip her specific issues), and she would definitely describe herself as not being bothered by much. Despite how much she loves to pick fights, she has a kind of blasé attitude as she goes through her day-to-day living, doing what she pleases without concern for others.
There's definitely a ruthless edge to her; she's willing to let familiars kill humans so they'll grow into witches, so that she'll get the Grief Seeds she needs to survive. She openly and derisively criticizes more altruistic magical girls like Mami and Sayaka, who hunt familiars anyway in order to protect the people they would prey on. But this is where we run into one of Kyoko's key themes: what you see isn't always what you get. It is easy to assume here that Kyoko is cruel to altruistic magical girls because she's judging or attacking their way of living, or that she hates the concept of selflessness, or that she's dedicated to her ruthlessness. But the truth is more complicated than that, and to really understand, you have to take a hard look at her background.
Kyoko made her contract to become a magical girl founded on a selfless wish. She wanted to help her family, which had been living in poverty for years, not even able to put food on the table. She wanted the world to listen to and accept her father's preachings, because she wanted him to be happy. So, she made her wish for people to listen to her father's words. It gave her the power — and "duty" — to fight witches, and for a time, she thought she was saving the world alongside her father. Except the truth was that her magically granted wish brainwashed a following for her father — They were compelled to listen, they didn't choose to. And the discovery of this truth sent her father spiraling into despair and violence; he became an alcoholic, physically abusive to Kyoko's mother in one known instance, and called his daughter a witch who sold her soul to the devil. In the end, he would take not only his own life, but the life of Kyoko's mother and little sister, as well as burn down their home.
Kyoko doesn't want to see others making what she believes to be the same mistake she made. She thinks that making a selfless wish to become a magical girl, and fighting in a selfless way, will only end in tragedy, not just for the girl, but for her loved ones. Despite Kyoko's tough attitude, she doesn't want others to suffer the same way she did. This betrays her outer presentation of someone who doesn't care about what happens to other people, and shows that she still is driven by the desire to protect, even if her scope has narrowed considerably to only things that directly affect her out of sheer survival instinct. But it's more than just wanting to protect these girls — Why would she be so hostile to them?
Kyoko's life hasn't really taught her how to be vulnerable, or often rewarded her for it. She wants to protect herself, just as much as she wants to protect others. Unfortunately, this means she isn't very good at baring her emotional vulnerability, and is prone to lashing out instead of communicating her real feelings. In both Madoka Magica and Different Story, there are scenes where Kyoko attempts to speak more honestly, only for her to get carried away with her frustrations and urges to defend herself, and speak cruelly or say things she didn't necessarily mean or believe, and therefore worsen her relationships instead. Open communication can be difficult for her, especially when she doesn't feel like the playing field is even. And it's partly why she seems to love fighting so much — It's a method of communication that feels emotionally safer to her, even if it's physically more dangerous.
But another undeniable factor in that is how confident she is in her combat skills — and it isn't undeserved. In order to stay alive after rejecting and suppressing her natural illusion magic, she had to re-learn how to fight, and is so successful that she survives to be considered a veteran — and very strong — magical girl. This showcases one of her understated strengths: her ability to adapt. When her family was destitute and struggling to have food on the table, she chose to act and learn how to steal in order to provide for them. And her ability to adapt applies even to her ideals; when she came to the conclusion that her ideals were wrong, and that they had led her family to ruination, she changed to new ideals. (Even if those old ideals are buried, but not dead. Kyoko loses sight of her belief in heroes and friendship saving the day, but never actually loses them. They're still an intrinsic part of her — Something she can deny and repress, but never rid herself of permanently.)
At the end of the day, underneath all the coping mechanisms she developed in the face of her harsh reality, Kyoko is dedicated and willing to do whatever it takes to protect what she cares about, whether it's her family, herself, or her ideals. It's difficult for her to leave well enough alone and stay out of things once she's invested. She has to act, she has to do something, even if her methods can be considered to be on the "brute force" end of things more often than not. There's definitely a better girl here than people expect — one who simply wants to live happily with her friends and her family — even if she's hidden under all her layers, disguised in an attempt at self-defense.
Barge Reactions:
Kyoko's life as a magical girl can be pretty weird at times, and she's had to be quick on her feet even when in shock or pain just to survive. There will be a lot of grumbling and kvetching as she adapts, just because that's her personality, but since she's good at rolling with the punches, adapting to the strangeness of a pandimensional prison ship won't be the hard part here. And that includes the horror aspect -- Kyoko has faced a lot of horror in her life already, and fights witches in their reality-altering labyrinths every day just to survive. Weirdly, she'll have a harder time emotionally adapting to the free availability of food. You can bet she will be hoarding food in her cabin anyway.
I've mentioned before that on arrival, Kyoko will be backsliding from her canon development. In one timeline (shown in the Japanese-only Madoka Magica Portable game), Kyoko says that Sayaka was the last hope she had left -- That she had failed to save her precious family, and Mami, her old mentor and first friend, had also died, and now Sayaka. What Kyoko wants most is to protect the people who matter to her -- and at every turn, she hasn't been able to succeed. And saving Sayaka was her last hope. So she's going to take the fact that she failed to even do this one thing, die properly to keep Sayaka from being alone, pretty hard. (Here's a link to the video/translation of the scene I'm referencing. Content warning for Kyoko's absolute mental breakdown.)
In addition, Kyoko associates her magic with agency. In canon, she says that she was only able to live the way she wanted to after getting her magic. Even with the price tag attached to becoming a magical girl, she's lashed her sense of identity to it, because she was finally able to feel like she had power and meaning in her life where she'd been largely helpless. As a result, having her powers nerfed will be another contributing factor to her backsliding -- She'll feel helpless again, and she'll fall back on her coping mechanisms to feel safe.
It's inevitable that she'll end up being one of those inmates who doesn't see the point in graduating and leaving. For one thing, her self-worth issues tell her she isn't worthy of a second chance, but the biggest hurdle is the reality of being a magical girl. If she goes home, then she'll either die to a witch (maybe even soon, because she would join Homura in the fight against Walpurgisnacht), or she would become one. These are the unavoidable truths of being a magical girl. And if she doesn't go home, if she goes to another universe -- Then there wouldn't be witches, which means no grief seeds, which means she'd become a witch. Of course, these are the only the options she'd imagine for herself, not the only ones available to her in truth -- But regardless, she's going to feel trapped in a horrible limbo. Wanting her death, while deep down not wanting to die, while being unable to imagine a future where she survives.
Path to Redemption:
The first and most basic barrier Wardens will encounter with Kyoko will be age-based: her distrust of authority and adults in general. Consistency as well as proving that they truly can understand her will be key to taking down this wall brick by brick. If Kyoko can empathize with them in some way, and see parts of herself in them -- even better.
The life she's led has put her in an isolated position of feeling like no one, or very very few people, will ever understand her. Being a magical girl isolated her from her peers, and magical girls are more often rivals than they are friends. The one time someone who isn't a magical girl -- and an adult to boot -- found out about her magic, it was her father, and we know how badly that ended. Then you add on the societal layers -- living as the daughter of an ex-communicated priest who appeared like a wannabe cult leader, who then became a murderer... living poor and then a homeless orphan in Japan, with the alternative being the less-than-stellar foster system... Kyoko is used to being alone. It's something she had accepted as part of her life before she met Sayaka, who reminded her of all the things she had hoped for in life.
Kyoko already wants to be better. She already doesn't want to be the way that she is, and doesn't like herself very much because it feels like she can't seem to change. The coping mechanisms she's built up to protect herself and to survive might make her feel safe, but they don't make her happy with herself. She will lash out, she will dig down instead of out. It's what she knows. She wants to change. She just doesn't know how, and because of the truths behind being a magical girl, she never had the chance to learn. And she genuinely cannot imagine living to eighteen, let alone even further into adulthood.
She needs to be shown that it's possible for her to live the life she wants to live. That it's okay to hope -- at all, but especially to hope for better. That there's a happy life ahead for 'people like her.' She'll need to find confidence in her ability to protect the people who matter to her, even if she can't always save them. She likewise needs to learn that it's okay for her to connect with other people, after how badly these past few times have gone, on top of her existing trust issues.
But that's still just the first step in her graduation process -- the foundational stone for her to start pushing up, instead of digging down. She'll need to unpack everything that happened with her family, and to accept the idea that her father wasn't as good of a person as she thought -- that he failed her and her sister as a father. (I'm pretty sure that she'll always blame herself about what happened, at least a little bit, but if we can cut away at that, too, it'd be great.) She'll need to unpack the way her relationship with Mami ended, and learn how to process her regrets. She'll need to unpack everything about what happened with Sayaka. She'll need to unpack the way she and her famly were failed by society... There's a lot going on here.
She'll need to learn how to process, period, because while it's an amazing sign of her resilience that she didn't become a witch after her family died, she survived by repressing her trauma and burying parts of herself.... And by abandoning parts of herself, as Magia Record posits by referring to the Doppel (witch alternate; long story) of one of her game units as "the Doppel of Self-Abandonment," where her standard one matches Ophelia's title, "the Doppel of Abandonment." So that's another bad coping mechanism she needs to fix, right there.
She's a kid who doesn't want to be treated like a kid, who has been given a seriously raw deal by life, even before she became a magical girl. And, honestly, it REALLY shows.
History:
It's worth noting that the Puella Magi series involves multiple timelines. Kyoko's history with Mami (Different Story, volume one) is consistent across them, as Homura's time loop starts some time afterwards, but the rest of Different Story as well as the other entries are all alternate timelines of Madoka Magica that she appears in (and thus reveal different aspects of her personality).
Links: Setting glossary | Kyoko + alt wiki | Madoka Magica (main series and canon point) | Different Story (backstory and alt timeline) | Madoka Magica Portable (alt timeline) | Oriko Magica (alt timeline) | Magia Record (alt timeline)
While in the anime, we don't know how long Kyoko has been a magical girl, in the Drama CD: Farewell Story (the first version of the telling of Kyoko and Mami's history), it's stated that she was a magical girl for a year before meeting Mami, and then it's estimated that another year passes after that before the start of Madoka Magica. However, in Different Story, Kyoko tells Mami that she's a new magical girl, and Mami is the one who says she'd been a magical girl for about a year by that point.
For the sake of ease, I'm going to assume that Mami had been a magical girl for a little over a year and Kyoko a little under, and that Kyoko assumed that most magical girls survived longer than the reality (she hadn't had much, if any, interaction with other magical girls beforehand). This means, assuming Kyoko is fifteen during the events of Madoka Magica (and similar moments in other timelines), that she contracted with Kyubey when she was thirteen, and then she met Mami when she was fourteen.
Sample Journal Entry:
Oi, wardens. I wanna ask something.
The Admiral is paying you with a wish, right? He'll grant you one miracle for doing this job. Whatever you want. If you can think of it, he can do it. You aren't even risking your life for it, not really, just your time and work. You can call it whatever you'd like, but when it comes down to it, he'll grant your wish if you save someone's life. 'Cause if we don't graduate, we're dead. That's how it is.
Are you spending your wish on something for yourself? Or for someone else? Do you seriously think it's gonna turn out the way you imagine it?
What're you gonna do when it doesn't?
Did you even think about any of this at all when you signed on?
Sample RP:
test drive
Special Notes:
User DW:
casinolightsE-mail: PM or
Other Characters: -
CONTENT WARNINGS: Puella Magi rightly deserves its reputation as being full of suffering. Kyoko's canon deals with violence (fantasy and otherwise) centered on children and teenagers, suicide, suicidal ideology, body horror, the manipulation of young girls, and violation metaphors (again, centered on young girls). Kyoko's personal history deals with all of the above, as well as starvation, youth homelessness, domestic abuse, and murder/suicide by fire and hanging. Shit can get heavy, so be warned.
Character Name: Kyoko Sakura
Series: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Age: Estimated to be 14-16; I'll be playing her as 15 (see History for explanation)
From When?: End of Episode 9 when she's about to kill herself to destroy Oktavia
Inmate
She has difficulty making herself emotionally vulnerable to others -- She fills the anime trope of "tsundere," fighty on the outside and soft on the inside, and this also means she struggles to properly express what she really feels. Multiple times in canon, across the different timelines, she runs into the issue of getting her back up against a wall and saying cruel things she doesn't even really believe just because she's on the defensive -- even with people she cares about, even when what she actually wants is to connect.
She's prone to picking fights, partly because it feels like a(n emotionally) safer and easier form of communication to her, partly because she's simply self-destructive and it's a familiar emotional outlet for her, partly because she thrives on getting reactions out of people. (This is true even when she's in a happier, healthier mindset; at its most benign, she likes teasing people. But when she's in a worse place, that habit takes the shape of something distinctly less positive. She will even use this tactic to be able to say that she's the one who egged them into the fight, so everything bad that came from it was her fault. This happens to reflect the way she internalizes bad things that happen as her responsibility as a coping mechanism.)
She spent the past year of her life in a state of indifference towards others' suffering -- She stops trying to save other people from the witches and familiars that only magical girls can fight, instead leaving them to be preyed upon in order to further her own survival (reference canon information in History for details). She's brazen and unapologetic about this when confronted, never even walking back her attitude even after remembering what her old ideals used to be. (Canon never brings it up again, leaving it unaddressed.) This both stems from and feeds into how she's very much willing to slot herself into the position of "the bad guy" while convincing herself she's doing what's best.
And, in another timeline, she can't turn her back on a young girl she rescues from a witch's labyrinth, despite her adopted philosophy of dog-eats-dog, it's-okay-if-people-get-eaten-if-it-means-I-survive. She can compartmentalize bad things happening to other people so long as they aren't happening in front of her -- Then, she can't help but take action, because of her true ideals deep down. This coping mechanism of compartmentalizing her trauma and justifying herself is bad enough as it is, but left unchecked and unexamined, could lead to worse roads.
Even so, she completely shoulders the "responsibility" for what happened to her family, blaming herself wholesale -- instead of considering that her father was not quite the good person she always believed he was, and that she isn't responsible for his actions.
On a broader scale, she also has major trust issues with society and authority (and adults in particular) from when her family (including herself and younger sister, both under the age of ten at the time) was left to starve. She was forced to grow up fast, and not only will buck the idea that she's still a kid, but that she should be treated with more consideration because of it. Then there's the issues from her family, in particular her father, that she hasn't ever really begun to unpack.
As if all that's not enough, there's also the matter of her death -- It's something she chose. And she chose it with the thought that by killing herself to destroy Sayaka's witch, then Sayaka wouldn't have to be alone. Being alive despite that -- Or, rather, being offered a second chance, when Sayaka isn't getting one, and she thinks that Sayaka deserves one more and has more to live for besides -- It's going to be a tough reality for Kyoko to face, and it's going to be a strong reason why she backslides from her canon development a bit on arrival.
Underneath the layers of trauma and bad coping mechanisms, there's genuinely a good heart down there, one that wants to protect and caretake -- one that just wants to live happily with her friends and family. And by the time of her death, she's even taken the first few steps towards returning to being true to that heart by recognizing she still wants those things. But she's still going to get worse before she gets better...
Arrival: Moment of death
Abilities/Powers: Buckle in, y'all. I am so sorry there is so much of this.
Magical Girls and Soul Gems
Despite her anti-hero and tsundere nature, Kyoko is a magical girl. To become one, a girl must have the potential and be approached by Kyubey, who will offer to grant her a single miracle in exchange for her accepting the duty of fighting witches. If she makes a contract with him, then he removes her soul from her body and houses it in a Soul Gem. This shields her from the worst of the pain of combat, and keeps her from dying when a normal human otherwise would, so she can heal her body with magic and keep fighting. It also allows her to control her body from a distance of a hundred meters away from her Soul Gem. If her Soul Gem goes farther than that, then her body collapses and is indistinguishable from a corpse, and it will begin decomposing in three days.
Soul Gems are also the source of a magical girl's power. All of her magic is stored there, and when she uses it, the Soul Gem becomes tainted and its glow dims. It's worth noting that despair can also darken a magical girl's Soul Gem. In these situations, if her despair is strong enough, even if her Soul Gem is cleansed with a Grief Seed (see below), it's possible for it to become tainted again and quickly.
Soul Gems can be transformed into engraved silver rings for safe keeping when a magical girl isn't transformed. While most of the time, magical girls cannot use magic when they aren't transformed, they can project smaller versions of their weapons from their rings.
Grief Seeds and Witches
In order to refill her magic and restore her Soul Gem's luster, a magical girl's only option is to use something called a Grief Seed. Grief Seeds are dropped by witches once they are killed, and they are basically the "eggs" of witches. If a Grief Seed absorbs too much impurity from Grief Seeds or from the world at large, then it will hatch into the same kind of witch that dropped it, so once a magical girl uses up a Grief Seed, Kyubey takes it and processes it safely.
Witches are very powerful magical beings who can create their own worldspaces, called labyrinths, which overlap reality as if a separate plane. They use labyrinths to hide from the sight of regular humans, which they prey on and lure into their labyrinths. It is said that witches spread curses, as they can affect humans near their labyrinths, twisting their thoughts and behaviors to cause them to do things like commit suicide, murder, arson, collect or lure other humans to the witch, etc. Humans affected by witches will have a symbol on their body called a "witch's kiss," and the symbol each witch bestows is different.
Witches can also create lesser magical beings called familiars, which serve their mistresses and fulfill specific purposes for them. Usually, they occupy the labyrinth, but occasionally slip out into the world, where they can create their own barriers and spread curses. However, familiars cannot drop Grief Seeds, as only witches do. If a familiar "eats" enough humans, it will grow into another copy of the witch that spawned it.
Unfortunately, the magical girl system is designed to doom them. Whenever a magical girl's Soul Gem becomes completely tainted, whether it's from using too much magic or from despair, her Soul Gem becomes a Grief Seed and she hatches into a new witch. In the process, a great amount of energy is released, which is Kyubey's true goal.
"Kyubey" is the Japanese name for his kind, whose true name is Incubator. (We're shown in Puella Magi Tart Magica that he's been called many things across time and across the globe; in France, he was called Qube. It also isn't uncommon for him to be mistaken as an angel or other mythological figures.) Incubators are from another planet and seek to solve universal entropy through the magical girl system.
"Our civilization created technology that could convert the emotions of a sentient lifeform into raw energy. Unfortunately, our species does not possess the capacity to experience emotion. So we studied various species throughout the universe until, finally, we found you humans. With the size of your population and the rate of reproduction, the amount of emotional energy produced by a single human is greater than the amount used between its birth and growth. Human souls truly are the energy source that could counter entropy! And the most effective of all are girls in the second stage of development, who experience the greatest fluctuations between hope and despair. In the moment when your Soul Gems flare out and turn into Grief Seeds, enormous energy is created. It is the job of us Incubators to collect that energy."Each witch is understandably unique to the magical girl she used to be, drawing powers, design, and symbolism from her life, her wish, her powers, and even where she became a witch.
— Kyubey, Episode 9 of Madoka Magica
Kyoko's witch is Ophelia, the Witch of Abandonment.
Magical Girl Powers
There's a suite of abilities that all magical girls possess. The first is the ability to "transform" into their magical girl forms, which changes their outfits, enables them to use magic, and spawns their weapon(s). It's worth noting that while outfits and transformation sequences can happen naturally with the magical girl having little to no control over them, it's possible for them to completely influence both things.
A magical girl also has some amount of influence over her weapons. However, she is limited by what she understands; Mami's signature weapon is the musket, but she failed to create other kinds of guns because she didn't understand how they work. Homura had to learn how to make bombs from the Internet before she could magically create her own. Weapons can also be bestowed upon them, as Perenelle does for the magical girls in Tart's group in Tart Magica.
However, a magical girl doesn't have to be transformed to have access to all of her abilities; the only magic limited to transformation seems to be combat-related magic. She always has access to her sixth sense, telepathy, physical enhancements, and imbuing objects with magic. Her sixth sense allows her to be able to sense other magical girls, witches, and other uses of magic. It is through this sense that she can track familiars, witches, and magical girls, and identify the individuals that created those magical signatures. She can use telepathy to communicate not only with other magical girls, but regular humans as well, limited ambiguously by range (a la "speed of plot"). She cannot use telepathy to read thoughts or emotions, only speak directly to her targets' mind.
A magical girl's physical enhancements are left ambiguous in canon, but given that they've been seen doing things like scaling tall buildings like a typical powered anime character, even without being transformed, there has to be some amount of it going on. Relatedly, they can also heal their bodies with their magic, allowing them to recover from the injuries they get from fighting witches (or other magical girls). They can also heal other magical girls with this same power, and even use it to keep corpses fresh, so it's likely they can heal regular humans as well, though there isn't an example of this in canon.
There are times in the series where magical girls imbue objects with magic, enhancing them and even turning them into magical weapons. Examples include when Mami turns Sayaka's baseball bat into something that would help fight off familiars; when Kyoko enhances public use binoculars to see (and hear?) from miles away; and in the mobile game Magia Record where magical girls who are not very strong create makeshift weapons by imbuing pebbles or regular cloth with magic. The capabilities of the imbued object likely depends on how much magic the magical girl put into it.
All magical girls also have an ability unique to them based on what wish Kyubey granted. Examples from across the series include advanced healing, greater healing of others, permanent invisibility, time travel, teleportation, self-glamour, turning into and traveling between shadows, and sensing enemies.
Kyoko's Powers
Kyoko's weapon appears to be a long spear with a large red spearhead, but it can break down into sections connected by chain at her will. She can also create and throw shorter versions of it (seen in Episode 9 when she opens the barrier to the witch Oktavia's labyrinth), and seems to be able to cause it to lengthen at will (as shown in her fight with Sayaka in Episode 5).
Kyoko's wish was for people listen to her father's preaching, which created a congregation for him but they were brainwashed into following him, instead of choosing to do so by their own will. As a result, her unique power was centered on illusions, called "enchantment" by Mami and Kyubey in Different Story. She was able to create multiple mirror images of herself, similar to stereotypical ninjas. Mami called this power "Rosso Fantasma." Her illusions became more and more believable the more she worked on her powers. However, because her wish ultimately led to the destruction of her family, Kyoko came to reject the power that came from her wish, and psychologically repressed the ability to use it. In Different Story, she describes it as having forgotten how to use it.
However, it also shows that she's able to regain that power once she begins to process her trauma — At the end of Different Story, Kyoko has decided she wants to use her power to protect her family again (in the context of considering Mami the only family she has left). Still, Mami comments that her illusion magic isn't as refined as it used to be (as Mami recognizes the magic when she came in physical contact with it), probably due to that skill being unused for so long, as well as the fact that Kyoko is still re-learning how to use it. Over time, with practice and probably also with more trauma processing, her illusion powers would likely only grow stronger and more refined again.
In order to survive, she had to learn how to fight with this handicap. Kyubey did not expect her to live long after she repressed Rosso Fantasma, but Kyoko trained herself back up, and became even stronger than she was before. As a result, coupled with her status as a veteran magical girl (having been one for two years), she's known for being powerful. One such ability that she has retained or learned afterwards is the creation red chains, which she often uses to make walls (seen in Episode 4 and 9, when she kept Madoka out of both fights; and in Different Story, Kyoko is able to create chains without being transformed, so long as her Soul Gem is in its true state instead of being a ring). This ability is referred to in an obscure corner of canon (
Her special attack, called a Magia (which uses a lot of magic), is called Kugatachi. This is the move she uses when fighting Oktavia at the end of Episode 9, and a version of it can be seen in Magia Record ([video], no spoilers).
Power Nerfing
All combat ability and physical enhancement will be locked away. She'll still be more durable than she would be normally, because her body will not die unless her Soul Gem is destroyed, but there can be a threshold if the mods want there to be one -- An example of like, if she gets decapitated or something similar, then she'll still death toll as normal, which... is probably a good idea anyway, because I feel like that's a special level of body horror. (
Which, omg! That's a terrible thought, because then someone would have to smash her Soul Gem in order for her to be truly dead, and so they'd have to find an inmate to do it because a warden would get demoted for killing an inmate, right?!
Anyway, she'll still be able to change her Soul Gem from its ring form to its egg form, and she'll still suffer from the downsides related to Soul Gems (if it breaks, she dies + if it gets taken too far from her body, it drops dead until returned, etc.).
She'll still be able to transform into her magical girl outfit, but won't be able to do anything with it, not even summon her weapon. (Just because it's funny.)
As discussed with the mod team previously (unless you guys have changed your minds / have new ideas on how you want it handled), Kyoko will arrive in the game with a clear Soul Gem. It will be polluted at a greatly reduced rate so long as her powers are nerfed, equally reducing the likelihood of her becoming a witch during that time. But once her powers are returned to her by a warden... Kyoko becoming a witch (and so she would have to be defeated by other player characters before death tolling) will be on the table.
Kyoko's Skills
Kyoko's most notable mundane skills fall under how adaptable she is. She chooses to be homeless, and lives off of street smarts, stealing money and food, and sleeping in unused hotel rooms. She first developed such skills when her family was destitute, and she was stealing food for her family to survive on, but after she loses her family, she dedicates herself entirely to that lifestyle. While we don't know details of her day-to-day living, it's clear that her skills in thievery and breaking and entering and other such activities are at least good enough for her to avoid being arrested.
Personality:
When people first meet Kyoko, one of the first takeaways is often her in-your-face attitude. She's rude, irreverent, and confident — and, if you're unlucky enough, she's even outright aggressive. It's easy to write her off as a typical "bad girl," and she certainly doesn't care what people think about her or the way she lives. Even though she survives by stealing money, food, and shelter (like sleeping in unused hotel rooms) — and throwing people's lives away — she's unapologetic. Her skin is thick (so long as something doesn't trip her specific issues), and she would definitely describe herself as not being bothered by much. Despite how much she loves to pick fights, she has a kind of blasé attitude as she goes through her day-to-day living, doing what she pleases without concern for others.
There's definitely a ruthless edge to her; she's willing to let familiars kill humans so they'll grow into witches, so that she'll get the Grief Seeds she needs to survive. She openly and derisively criticizes more altruistic magical girls like Mami and Sayaka, who hunt familiars anyway in order to protect the people they would prey on. But this is where we run into one of Kyoko's key themes: what you see isn't always what you get. It is easy to assume here that Kyoko is cruel to altruistic magical girls because she's judging or attacking their way of living, or that she hates the concept of selflessness, or that she's dedicated to her ruthlessness. But the truth is more complicated than that, and to really understand, you have to take a hard look at her background.
Kyoko made her contract to become a magical girl founded on a selfless wish. She wanted to help her family, which had been living in poverty for years, not even able to put food on the table. She wanted the world to listen to and accept her father's preachings, because she wanted him to be happy. So, she made her wish for people to listen to her father's words. It gave her the power — and "duty" — to fight witches, and for a time, she thought she was saving the world alongside her father. Except the truth was that her magically granted wish brainwashed a following for her father — They were compelled to listen, they didn't choose to. And the discovery of this truth sent her father spiraling into despair and violence; he became an alcoholic, physically abusive to Kyoko's mother in one known instance, and called his daughter a witch who sold her soul to the devil. In the end, he would take not only his own life, but the life of Kyoko's mother and little sister, as well as burn down their home.
Kyoko doesn't want to see others making what she believes to be the same mistake she made. She thinks that making a selfless wish to become a magical girl, and fighting in a selfless way, will only end in tragedy, not just for the girl, but for her loved ones. Despite Kyoko's tough attitude, she doesn't want others to suffer the same way she did. This betrays her outer presentation of someone who doesn't care about what happens to other people, and shows that she still is driven by the desire to protect, even if her scope has narrowed considerably to only things that directly affect her out of sheer survival instinct. But it's more than just wanting to protect these girls — Why would she be so hostile to them?
Kyoko's life hasn't really taught her how to be vulnerable, or often rewarded her for it. She wants to protect herself, just as much as she wants to protect others. Unfortunately, this means she isn't very good at baring her emotional vulnerability, and is prone to lashing out instead of communicating her real feelings. In both Madoka Magica and Different Story, there are scenes where Kyoko attempts to speak more honestly, only for her to get carried away with her frustrations and urges to defend herself, and speak cruelly or say things she didn't necessarily mean or believe, and therefore worsen her relationships instead. Open communication can be difficult for her, especially when she doesn't feel like the playing field is even. And it's partly why she seems to love fighting so much — It's a method of communication that feels emotionally safer to her, even if it's physically more dangerous.
But another undeniable factor in that is how confident she is in her combat skills — and it isn't undeserved. In order to stay alive after rejecting and suppressing her natural illusion magic, she had to re-learn how to fight, and is so successful that she survives to be considered a veteran — and very strong — magical girl. This showcases one of her understated strengths: her ability to adapt. When her family was destitute and struggling to have food on the table, she chose to act and learn how to steal in order to provide for them. And her ability to adapt applies even to her ideals; when she came to the conclusion that her ideals were wrong, and that they had led her family to ruination, she changed to new ideals. (Even if those old ideals are buried, but not dead. Kyoko loses sight of her belief in heroes and friendship saving the day, but never actually loses them. They're still an intrinsic part of her — Something she can deny and repress, but never rid herself of permanently.)
At the end of the day, underneath all the coping mechanisms she developed in the face of her harsh reality, Kyoko is dedicated and willing to do whatever it takes to protect what she cares about, whether it's her family, herself, or her ideals. It's difficult for her to leave well enough alone and stay out of things once she's invested. She has to act, she has to do something, even if her methods can be considered to be on the "brute force" end of things more often than not. There's definitely a better girl here than people expect — one who simply wants to live happily with her friends and her family — even if she's hidden under all her layers, disguised in an attempt at self-defense.
Barge Reactions:
Kyoko's life as a magical girl can be pretty weird at times, and she's had to be quick on her feet even when in shock or pain just to survive. There will be a lot of grumbling and kvetching as she adapts, just because that's her personality, but since she's good at rolling with the punches, adapting to the strangeness of a pandimensional prison ship won't be the hard part here. And that includes the horror aspect -- Kyoko has faced a lot of horror in her life already, and fights witches in their reality-altering labyrinths every day just to survive. Weirdly, she'll have a harder time emotionally adapting to the free availability of food. You can bet she will be hoarding food in her cabin anyway.
I've mentioned before that on arrival, Kyoko will be backsliding from her canon development. In one timeline (shown in the Japanese-only Madoka Magica Portable game), Kyoko says that Sayaka was the last hope she had left -- That she had failed to save her precious family, and Mami, her old mentor and first friend, had also died, and now Sayaka. What Kyoko wants most is to protect the people who matter to her -- and at every turn, she hasn't been able to succeed. And saving Sayaka was her last hope. So she's going to take the fact that she failed to even do this one thing, die properly to keep Sayaka from being alone, pretty hard. (Here's a link to the video/translation of the scene I'm referencing. Content warning for Kyoko's absolute mental breakdown.)
In addition, Kyoko associates her magic with agency. In canon, she says that she was only able to live the way she wanted to after getting her magic. Even with the price tag attached to becoming a magical girl, she's lashed her sense of identity to it, because she was finally able to feel like she had power and meaning in her life where she'd been largely helpless. As a result, having her powers nerfed will be another contributing factor to her backsliding -- She'll feel helpless again, and she'll fall back on her coping mechanisms to feel safe.
It's inevitable that she'll end up being one of those inmates who doesn't see the point in graduating and leaving. For one thing, her self-worth issues tell her she isn't worthy of a second chance, but the biggest hurdle is the reality of being a magical girl. If she goes home, then she'll either die to a witch (maybe even soon, because she would join Homura in the fight against Walpurgisnacht), or she would become one. These are the unavoidable truths of being a magical girl. And if she doesn't go home, if she goes to another universe -- Then there wouldn't be witches, which means no grief seeds, which means she'd become a witch. Of course, these are the only the options she'd imagine for herself, not the only ones available to her in truth -- But regardless, she's going to feel trapped in a horrible limbo. Wanting her death, while deep down not wanting to die, while being unable to imagine a future where she survives.
Path to Redemption:
The first and most basic barrier Wardens will encounter with Kyoko will be age-based: her distrust of authority and adults in general. Consistency as well as proving that they truly can understand her will be key to taking down this wall brick by brick. If Kyoko can empathize with them in some way, and see parts of herself in them -- even better.
The life she's led has put her in an isolated position of feeling like no one, or very very few people, will ever understand her. Being a magical girl isolated her from her peers, and magical girls are more often rivals than they are friends. The one time someone who isn't a magical girl -- and an adult to boot -- found out about her magic, it was her father, and we know how badly that ended. Then you add on the societal layers -- living as the daughter of an ex-communicated priest who appeared like a wannabe cult leader, who then became a murderer... living poor and then a homeless orphan in Japan, with the alternative being the less-than-stellar foster system... Kyoko is used to being alone. It's something she had accepted as part of her life before she met Sayaka, who reminded her of all the things she had hoped for in life.
Kyoko already wants to be better. She already doesn't want to be the way that she is, and doesn't like herself very much because it feels like she can't seem to change. The coping mechanisms she's built up to protect herself and to survive might make her feel safe, but they don't make her happy with herself. She will lash out, she will dig down instead of out. It's what she knows. She wants to change. She just doesn't know how, and because of the truths behind being a magical girl, she never had the chance to learn. And she genuinely cannot imagine living to eighteen, let alone even further into adulthood.
She needs to be shown that it's possible for her to live the life she wants to live. That it's okay to hope -- at all, but especially to hope for better. That there's a happy life ahead for 'people like her.' She'll need to find confidence in her ability to protect the people who matter to her, even if she can't always save them. She likewise needs to learn that it's okay for her to connect with other people, after how badly these past few times have gone, on top of her existing trust issues.
But that's still just the first step in her graduation process -- the foundational stone for her to start pushing up, instead of digging down. She'll need to unpack everything that happened with her family, and to accept the idea that her father wasn't as good of a person as she thought -- that he failed her and her sister as a father. (I'm pretty sure that she'll always blame herself about what happened, at least a little bit, but if we can cut away at that, too, it'd be great.) She'll need to unpack the way her relationship with Mami ended, and learn how to process her regrets. She'll need to unpack everything about what happened with Sayaka. She'll need to unpack the way she and her famly were failed by society... There's a lot going on here.
She'll need to learn how to process, period, because while it's an amazing sign of her resilience that she didn't become a witch after her family died, she survived by repressing her trauma and burying parts of herself.... And by abandoning parts of herself, as Magia Record posits by referring to the Doppel (witch alternate; long story) of one of her game units as "the Doppel of Self-Abandonment," where her standard one matches Ophelia's title, "the Doppel of Abandonment." So that's another bad coping mechanism she needs to fix, right there.
She's a kid who doesn't want to be treated like a kid, who has been given a seriously raw deal by life, even before she became a magical girl. And, honestly, it REALLY shows.
History:
It's worth noting that the Puella Magi series involves multiple timelines. Kyoko's history with Mami (Different Story, volume one) is consistent across them, as Homura's time loop starts some time afterwards, but the rest of Different Story as well as the other entries are all alternate timelines of Madoka Magica that she appears in (and thus reveal different aspects of her personality).
Links: Setting glossary | Kyoko + alt wiki | Madoka Magica (main series and canon point) | Different Story (backstory and alt timeline) | Madoka Magica Portable (alt timeline) | Oriko Magica (alt timeline) | Magia Record (alt timeline)
While in the anime, we don't know how long Kyoko has been a magical girl, in the Drama CD: Farewell Story (the first version of the telling of Kyoko and Mami's history), it's stated that she was a magical girl for a year before meeting Mami, and then it's estimated that another year passes after that before the start of Madoka Magica. However, in Different Story, Kyoko tells Mami that she's a new magical girl, and Mami is the one who says she'd been a magical girl for about a year by that point.
For the sake of ease, I'm going to assume that Mami had been a magical girl for a little over a year and Kyoko a little under, and that Kyoko assumed that most magical girls survived longer than the reality (she hadn't had much, if any, interaction with other magical girls beforehand). This means, assuming Kyoko is fifteen during the events of Madoka Magica (and similar moments in other timelines), that she contracted with Kyubey when she was thirteen, and then she met Mami when she was fourteen.
Sample Journal Entry:
Oi, wardens. I wanna ask something.
The Admiral is paying you with a wish, right? He'll grant you one miracle for doing this job. Whatever you want. If you can think of it, he can do it. You aren't even risking your life for it, not really, just your time and work. You can call it whatever you'd like, but when it comes down to it, he'll grant your wish if you save someone's life. 'Cause if we don't graduate, we're dead. That's how it is.
Are you spending your wish on something for yourself? Or for someone else? Do you seriously think it's gonna turn out the way you imagine it?
What're you gonna do when it doesn't?
Did you even think about any of this at all when you signed on?
Sample RP:
test drive
Special Notes:
bonus - network intro?
Suddenly, it switches to video, showing a very close-up shot of the face of, you guessed it, a teenage girl. Her brow is furrowed and her red eyes are both frustrated and curious.] I guess that turns on the camera. Games... Where do I get games? Game store?
[It seems she's still talking to herself, unaware her video is being broadcasted. After a moment of continuing to tap randomly on her phone, she grumbles outright.] Nothing? Seriously? Tch... I knew it. I don't care what that one guy said. This is definitely hell.
[The camera spins, showing a blurry shot of red hair, and then there's a clattering sound. She's tossed her phone down. After a moment, she speaks again, this time softly.] ... I mean, obviously. Where else would I go? [She sounds almost disappointed, as if some part of her had still hoped...]