This was originally, like, a bunch of things including a vote, but it grew into something a lot more important so I dumped the chaff into storage and am posting this.
@AuraTwilight could you look this over for me? And maybe
@Godwinson. This may be
pretty opaque to people who lack the context of Wraith Arc or who just... haven't spent a lot of time in here.
Abstract: a new viewpoint for the loops which will hopefully provide a goal state to push Homura towards.
Homura believes that she can't deserve happiness because of all the pain she has caused Madoka across the loops -- this is why she eventually surrenders in canon: she decides that there is no way out and that the only thing she has achieved each loop, each reset, has been to force Madoka to walk through the hellscape of their Spring one more time. In canon the potential bomb, when dropped, breaks her resistance by causing her to conclude that each loop can only get worse, and so Madoka can only ever suffer
more as long as Homura continues to travel through time. Unmaking this belief is nearly impossible, because Homura perceives that it is a [FACT] that [SHE HAS CAUSED MADOKA UNTOLD AMOUNTS OF PAIN], and she has spent at least a decade in a hell that has driven this deeply into her psyche.
As of these last couple posts, she seems willing to accept that victory is possible and that she
wants that -- she even seems to have accepted that Madoka's wish affecting this timeline is acceptable as long as victory is achieved. But her self-hatred persists, and the thought of being
happy -- she can't accept it, because she doesn't deserve it after putting Madoka through so much [PAIN].
Our problem is that nobody has really even been able to envision a stable state to bring Homura into. She is so incredibly traumatized, so riddled with irrational psychoses, so full of
self-hatred, that she's practically a witch walking. We require either a method of circumventing Homura's belief that it is a [FACT] that [SHE HAS CAUSED MADOKA UNTOLD AMOUNTS OF PAIN], that is, some way by which we can convince her that the past is irrelevant as long as the future is [GOOD]... or a method of undermining that belief, that is, some way by which we can convince her that [SHE IS NOT GUILTY]. But convincing her that the past is irrelevant is impossible as a method of accomplishing this, because she'll never accept that it's irrelevant that she has hurt Madoka. Never. And convincing her that she's not guilty of having hurt Madoka... that's impossible too. Right?
But... if we put this under a microscope, the cornerstone of this belief system is that Madoka would have
wanted her to stop looping if it was causing Madoka suffering.
If that can be undermined in the right way, the entire accursed architecture might fall apart. But how?
Here, perhaps we can take a lesson from beyond the anime. For those who have read through Wraith Arc, the general belief is that Homura was meant to fight by Madoka's side, using her shield to take Madoka back in time
with her, and that that would have led to a Good End -- instead, of course, we get the end of Wraith Arc where
Kyubey is the first being to exploit Homura's time travel alongside her, which subsequently leads to an attempt by Kyubey to overthrow the law of cycles and culminates in the birth of Homucifer. The takeaway from that, I think, is that if Madoka and Homura fighting side-by-side would have produced a Good End, it must have involved a resolution or abortion of Homura's self-hatred over her causing Madoka to suffer.
A leap of logic produces this: if Homura can be convinced that Madoka
willingly chose to keep going, then what is there left for her to be tortured by?
Perusing the script of episode ten produces a few more ingredients.
The solution we can piece together with this is to convince Homura that the two of them have been fighting together this whole time
and that she simply hasn't realized it.
We'll use her perception of Madoka across the timelines as a single person to weave a reality where
Homura didn't need to use her shield's ability to carry others back in time to fight alongside Madoka. Where for every step Homura has taken, every battle she has fought for Madoka, Madoka has been fighting however she can for
Homura at the same time. Where every loop was initiated at Madoka's behest, and every tragedy suffered by two souls bracing each other as best they were able.
Madoka
didn't doesn't want their story to end at Walpurgisnacht.
Madoka
believed believes that Homura is worth protecting.
Madoka
didn't doesn't want to be tricked into contracting by Kyubey, but
felt feels that some things are more important -- Homura especially.
Madoka
knew knows that Homura can go back, and so she makes a wish to protect Homura from Walpurgis to ensure that Homura doesn't die, preserving hope for the future. Homura telling her that she can go back or not has nothing to do with it -- Madoka knows it in her heart anyway and tends to dream about it at the start of loops.
Homura's job is to protect Madoka, and Madoka's job is to protect Homura -- whether from suicide by Walpurgis, emotional exhaustion, friendly fire, or anything else. Homura may feel like she's tried absolutely everything, but the time loop hasn't been Homura's fight alone, and her partner made a request of her. Madoka asked Homura not to let Kyubey fool her. Last loop, Homura
succeeded at that. And last loop, Madoka found something new -- a way to stack the deck of the next loop.
Nothing Homura has ever done has imposed unwanted suffering on Madoka... Because there has never been a loop that Madoka would accept, and she would rather go through it again than give up on Homura.
I
believe this is a potential stable state, which I think is more than anything we've suggested in the past can say. It presents a viewpoint from which Homura has never hurt Madoka, where the loops were a linear progression towards
actually preventing Kyubey from fooling Madoka -- we can pass off most of the wish-endings as either being successes on Homura's end where Madoka was still experimenting with wishes to see what she could get to happen before hitting on something
really really good last loop, or we can pass them off as minor failures on Homura's end where she had
almost gotten the parts right that she needed to so Madoka could make a wish that wouldn't be QB tricking her -- and just generally where the loops are so much less
awful than they are from her current point of view... where there's more
hope in the world.
The detailwork is, I think, doable. A lot of mileage out of "Madoka is stuck working off of really incomplete memories that are more like gut feelings / dreams than actual knowledge, and waiting until she can't wait any longer before she wishes lets her gather as much context as possible," for instance. I want a thorough fucking review of everything in here before I start suggesting ways to go about pursuing it, though.
Also:
