Quotes / Game Theory (Lyrical Nanoha)

Quotes from the Co-Creators

Oh, Gamesverse. So many collapses. They're standing on the shoulders of so many giants that their heads are brushing the upper atmosphere. Or would be, had most of the giants not tripped one another up, stabbed each other in the kidney and generally fallen over in various different ways, in ages past. So what they're really standing on is a pile of giants' skeletons, some of which have still-spiky bits of ribcage and femur sticking out to gore whoever's currently on top in the ankle.

... basically, the Gamesverse has a history of collapses for a very good reason. Which can roughly be summed up with the word "mages".
— Aleph

Game Theory is not merely a post-apocalypse setting. It's a post-post-post-etc-apocalypse setting, and some occasional post-singularity bits.
— Earth Scorpion

One of the things that Game Theory has as a major theme is that reality ensues, and that doing something crazy-awesome and insane... is crazy and insane, and doesn't have to work just because it's the hero doing it.
— Aleph

Nanoha showed us that the Monsters of the Week could be a backdrop to the real meat of the plot, the character interaction, but then Madoka came along and showed us that the Monsters can still be legitimately, vividly scary. And Game Theory is very much a post-Madoka story, with the harsher rules and the scarier monsters and so on.
— Aleph

My method for working out (Precia's) plan was basically to carefully consider all the variables she's aware of, and put together a strategy that takes all kinds of factors like those into account, and which could not possibly fail.

And then sneak up behind it and hit it very hard and repeatedly with the Spanner of Intheworks. Which in this case takes the form of a plot point that hasn't yet turned up (that you know of), but which will blindside about half of the characters in the story when it reveals itself. Bwaa haa.
— Aleph utterly trolling the readers. The spanner was performing metaphorical Percussive Maintenance.

... I cannot tell you how awesome it is that my fic has got people saying that they hope the insane, child-abusing psycho villainess of the first season survives longer, because they want to see more of the character I've made her into. If ever there was evidence that a character reinterpretation has succeeded, I think that would be it.
— Aleph

Quotes from Game Theory

I just don't feel safe anymore. You know? At first it was like a story, and I was the heroine and helping people and saving a little girl's life. But now… everything's complicated, and the TSAB are meant to be good but they're doing bad things, and we're hiding and scared and… It's nothing like it is in the stories.
— Nanoha, describing the story's progression in a single heart-wrenching piece of dialogue.

Whatever naïve innocence had sparked that attitude, it had already been broken. She knew – Heidi could see it – she knew that the world didn't always work like that, the kind of knowledge that came from personal experience. And yet she was trying anyway, determined to prevent a catastrophe by sheer willpower and effort. Heidi shivered. A look like that, the half-hidden hurt and guilt and age, did not belong in the eyes of a nine-year old. Freakish powers, unnatural strength, older than her years and yet still trying to be hopeful… who was this girl?
— Heidi, reflecting on Nanoha.

I wish things could have been different. Maybe… maybe in another life…
— Nanoha, during her last conversation with Yuuno.

We need not go to Alhazred, children, because we no longer need them. I… I have rivalled, and possibly even exceeded their accomplishments! The Promethean mechanism I designed was not merely a form of life support like the tank, to keep her in stasis where her condition could not worsen. It was a full revival, bringing Alicia completely and entirely back into the world of the living.
— Precia, doing it thirty-five minutes ago.

I thought… I guess I thought I was going to fix everything and have a happy ending where everybody won, and there was nothing to be sad about. But it doesn't always work out like that, does it? Sometimes you can't get a happy ending.
— Nanoha, in the Epilogue

Nanoha:: I was wrong.
Fate:: Wrong?
Nanoha: There are happy endings. Maybe not always, but not never, either. You just… have to work for them. Earn them. Do something worth it.
Fate: Was it? Worth it, I mean.
Alicia: Mmm…… mama?
Precia: (crying) Here. I'm here, Alicia. Right here.
Nanoha: Yes. Yes. It was worth it.
— The Epilogue, when Alicia finally wakes up.

And as her daughter intently settled the garland around her neck, the look on Precia Testarossa’s face could not be called anything less than radiant.
— Last line of the Epilogue.

Quotes from Power Games

Fallen was Galea; its monarchs lost in long-ago war. But the weapons lived on.

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