Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
EX-AG-GER-ATE!
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
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The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
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- My own little world
Hmmm, a possibly dumb question but it's stuck in my mind and it's relevant to the discussion: All those little flashes we see during PMMM, is it possible some or all of those are Madoka's past-timeline memories?
Stuff like the cut to the window getting cracked but not broken and the sudden scene and lighting change from rain to red night with Sayaka showing her soul gem keep coming to mind in particular.
Stuff like the cut to the window getting cracked but not broken and the sudden scene and lighting change from rain to red night with Sayaka showing her soul gem keep coming to mind in particular.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
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- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
I tend to think it might be so, when I consider the matter. Is there any concrete word about it, or is it one of those "the Doyleist reasons are symbolic, the Watsonian ones are 'yes these are prolly memories' " things?
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
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- Russia
It could've been done to pay homage to Revolutionary Girl Utena, I guess.
That, or my favorite hypothesis, i.e. Madokami retroactively adds people, things and events to the anime, is correct.
Though I was talking about chairs.
Anyway. Does anyone else think that Madoka and Homura need to sit down and have a long, long talk sometime soon? Preferably before one of them becomes a universal constant or rips another in two and then noms her divine part, for example?
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
A potential concrete point: Madowishes have proven that they can reach through the loops to have persistent effects. "Protecting Madoka" involves not just protecting her inside a single loop but also keeping her from making a Wish that'd render Homura's job impossible. By that standard, Homura's done a much better job of protecting Madoka than she did in Canon.
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- Location
- Illinois
The basic gist of the idea is to proceed by establishing that Madoka had some ability to retain --
Y'know what? *digs around in notes*
Here's what the next step is according to the blueprint.
-[] Ask her if she is aware that Madoka dreams about her before they meet each loop.
-[] She was never precisely fighting alone. It's very problematic -- Madoka doesn't get the full time-travel experience, she only gets gut feelings and insufficiently specific prophetic dreams. But it is enough to preserve some of the important stuff, not even as actual knowledge but as just enough of a push, a feeling, for her to act differently based on it.
I want to clarify, that is not a vote. That's... blueprint. The objective is to establish:
A) That Madoka has some ability to retain information across timelines, and to act differently based on that information
Secondarily, the following critical points arise from this which we may wish to raise immediately or hold off on:
1) If Madoka is capable of retaining and gaining information across timelines, it should be possible for her to give up, or to stop trusting Homura, etc. If Homura was truly hurting Madoka across the timelines, each timeline would be contributing more and more to Madoka pushing Homura away. Instead, she dreams of her. She gets urges to trust her.
- Subnote that gaining information is not as well established as preserving information. We -know- she preserves information. Gaining information is -to my knowledge- an inference from the nature of her Canon dream. If the nature of the dream changed at all across the loops, we have gain as opposed to some subset of loss and equality, because the dream is of near-present Homura rather than moemura. So, the alternative to gain is that Madoka has been dreaming the same dream since before Homura had ever existed in anything like that state. I find that monumentally unlikely. Other Canon material -- Oriko Magica -- might contain more backup for this stuff. I've been relying on Aura who -has- read all that stuff, so there shouldn't be anything to -undermine- this in there.
(Everything after this is more or less a restatement of essay, I think)
The subsequent objective is to clarify Madoka's goals in the loops. That basically consists of quoting the things Madoka said in episode ten. Then we follow that by tying in Homura's magic as protecting Madoka from becoming a witch (time travel undoes the witchout as much as it undoes the wish), and emphasizing Madoka's desire for "them" (undefined, I prefer the interpretation of it referring to pretty much the entire cast but clearly it efers to at least Homura and Madoka) to not end up [dying to WPN with everyone Madoka loves dead too]. At that point we'll have essentially made the argument that Madoka doesn't want Homura to give up so far.
Then we either continue on to the how of reaching a resolution to the loops or not. That stuff is everything else surrounding madowishes and anomalies and Madoka basically being in a position to make an arbitrary number of wishes as long as Homura is there to prevent QB from tricking her into wasting them and from actually suffering consequences of them.
Given @Onmur's track record as of the last couple votes I'm increasingly inclined to trust the shit out of him for how slow to move on this. His last minute suggestion of asking if Homura needed a minute was incorporated by firn as a freebie because it was a good idea, and I think it helped.
Ehm. I reserve the right to call the catgirl currently writing this post an idiot tomorrow and retract stuff but I think this is essentially accurate. In terms of an actual vote I ain't doing that until tomorrow at least, but I felt like I would have been stifling discussion otherwise.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Throwing my support on Kaizuki again, re:the above post.
- Location
- Illinois
Disclaimer: this post slightly scatterbrained and should be evaluated as subordinate to the previous one I made.
*Nods emphatically*
But, you'll note that her definition of what it means to protect Madoka is rooted, inevitably, in what (a) Madoka/s have told her. It's still rooted in what Madoka wants, it's just distorted by what Homura believes Madoka knows, what Madoka has actually told her, etc. Even in Rebellion she doesn't decide to tear down Madokami until after she hears a statement from Madoka herself, as distorted a statement as it was.
Homura's model of what it means to protect Madoka is based on things we can and will attempt to alter her perspective on.
Point is, we're here to re-frame what it means to protect Madoka successfully by reframing what it means to hurt her. I dont worry much about Homura's denial of Madoka's agency because the way I want to frame it is that, per Madoka's request that Homura change their fate, not carrying out the loops is a massive harm which is only justifiable if the loops are somehow a greater harm, and then the argument goes that since Madoka hasn't given up or pushed Homura away, she clearly doesn't believe that to be the case.
*Nods emphatically*
But, you'll note that her definition of what it means to protect Madoka is rooted, inevitably, in what (a) Madoka/s have told her. It's still rooted in what Madoka wants, it's just distorted by what Homura believes Madoka knows, what Madoka has actually told her, etc. Even in Rebellion she doesn't decide to tear down Madokami until after she hears a statement from Madoka herself, as distorted a statement as it was.
Homura's model of what it means to protect Madoka is based on things we can and will attempt to alter her perspective on.
Point is, we're here to re-frame what it means to protect Madoka successfully by reframing what it means to hurt her. I dont worry much about Homura's denial of Madoka's agency because the way I want to frame it is that, per Madoka's request that Homura change their fate, not carrying out the loops is a massive harm which is only justifiable if the loops are somehow a greater harm, and then the argument goes that since Madoka hasn't given up or pushed Homura away, she clearly doesn't believe that to be the case.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
Yeah, you should not trust that Onmur dude, he's a total dumb.
Did you know he self gave himself the title 'Ace Shitposter'? Atrocious.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, though.
For the record, I've been calm about this up until now, but the fact we're actually going into this attempt to change Homura's worldview, now that makes me feel uncertain.
What I can say right now is that we should be a pillar Homura use to support herself.
Each new piece of information will be a blow on Homura's psyche, and as far as I can see, she could react in two ways...
One is to retract into herself, the other to become panicked, and demand answers at a rhytm she herself couldn't keep up with.
Either way, we need to reassure her, help her keep calm (for example, speak softly and slowly while still keeping up physical contact (which of course we have to because timestop (isn't that wonderful?))).
One thing that might not need mentioning is that we should move at Homura's own pace. If she retracts into herself, reassure her and give her time; if she asks, we need to not leave her hanging.
A problem would be if Homura were to actually become agitated to the point of demanding answers too quickly... but that's covered by proactively helping her calm down.
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This doesn't necessarily follow. If Madoka consistently dreams of the immediately previous timelines Homura, for example, then that works out as equilibrium- Timeline N+1 Madoka isn't necessarily at all more informed about anything than Timeline N Madoka was.
There might be continuity, and I think your overall conclusion is mostly valid, but it doesn't have to be "gain", unless you're defining those terms differently then I am.
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Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
Hm.
In Homura's mind, we're telling her she's failed her promise -by default, at that.
Not that this wasn't going to come up, but no matter what we do, we're gonna make Homura feel she's been making mistakes aaaaaall this time.
Which she was, but unlike her, we know it's not her fault.
If we could spin it, something we could do right now is promise Homura we believe things will work out, her Wish included, and that she will be able to keep Madoka safe. This would mean not addressing this point further until after we're done explaining The Catgirl Theory, reassurance aside.
Otherwise... there's a glaring problem in explaining Why This Isn't So Bad in that we'd basically enter a chain of observations and points where we tell Homura again and again What She Did Wrong. :/
I'd like to ask Homura if she would hear us out, trust us when we promise things can work out, and postpone address specific points until we're done with The Catgirl Theory.
If Homura will have it, it can work. If.
[Q] Call it The Catgirl Theory IC.
So there's a quandary.
In Homura's mind, we're telling her she's failed her promise -by default, at that.
Not that this wasn't going to come up, but no matter what we do, we're gonna make Homura feel she's been making mistakes aaaaaall this time.
Which she was, but unlike her, we know it's not her fault.
If we could spin it, something we could do right now is promise Homura we believe things will work out, her Wish included, and that she will be able to keep Madoka safe. This would mean not addressing this point further until after we're done explaining The Catgirl Theory, reassurance aside.
Otherwise... there's a glaring problem in explaining Why This Isn't So Bad in that we'd basically enter a chain of observations and points where we tell Homura again and again What She Did Wrong. :/
I'd like to ask Homura if she would hear us out, trust us when we promise things can work out, and postpone address specific points until we're done with The Catgirl Theory.
If Homura will have it, it can work. If.
[Q] Call it The Catgirl Theory IC.
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Aura's general theory is that it's the "souls are multiversal" thing, but... I'm inclined to think that's actually not what's going on, because if that were the case I'd really expect to see the same phenomena in Mami, Sayaka, and Kyouko, but we kind of just don't.
No, I think Homura's magic and wish are clawing at their original implementation/purpose and trying to preserve what they can of Madoka when Homura goes back in time. That's my top theory at the moment. Runner up is that they're literally preserving a minimum amount of information for Madoka on purpose "to protect her from the horrors involved in the loops."
I don't intend to raise either of those theories with Homura. I think they open up the possibility that Madoka's continuity is a projection of Homura's wants/needs/etc, which is obviously something I see as absurd and unrealistic, but Homura is rather pessimistic.
And of course we can't (or at least really probably shouldn't) bring up that Homura can bring others back in time until and unless we enter a situation where we kind of really need that ability. Because she'll react with "... I literally failed everyone forever."
No, I think Homura's magic and wish are clawing at their original implementation/purpose and trying to preserve what they can of Madoka when Homura goes back in time. That's my top theory at the moment. Runner up is that they're literally preserving a minimum amount of information for Madoka on purpose "to protect her from the horrors involved in the loops."
I don't intend to raise either of those theories with Homura. I think they open up the possibility that Madoka's continuity is a projection of Homura's wants/needs/etc, which is obviously something I see as absurd and unrealistic, but Homura is rather pessimistic.
And of course we can't (or at least really probably shouldn't) bring up that Homura can bring others back in time until and unless we enter a situation where we kind of really need that ability. Because she'll react with "... I literally failed everyone forever."
I actually am defining gain differently -- the sum total doesn't need to increase, she just needs to be able to derive and pass on new information. The net result is the same -- if Madoka was being hurt by Homura, you'd get a Madoka next loop who would draw further away from Homura and therefore end up with a worse opinion of her because everyone except Homura (and Doka) thinks Homura is a terrible person.
I think we can say with confidence that there has never been a Madoka who has been convinced that Homura is a bad person, who has pulled away from Homura, etc etc etc.
...
*points at the two lines that catgirl ended up removing from the end of last vote*
Remember those
That's what that was
If you think we should import something like them I'm gonna wish really hard that I hadn't removed those XD
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
It's iffy, and would require total backpedalling if Homu said 'no'.
Abouto the other thing, though, remember Homu has been basically tying karma strings all over Madoka, so there's no necessity for any of the other girls to be getting oversoul info; just Madoka.
There literally are connections between this Madoka and the previous ones.
... Maybe we should ask Mami to try and see them with her Ribbon powers. >_>
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Never understood how it worked that-- ah, right.
No, I don't think that clears my objection. Or at any rate, I don't understand how it does. I understand the karma stuff to be "the entire world depends on Madoka because of the time loops."
...
@AuraTwilight is it just me or is there a very real chance that that could work? Not exactly something we'd want to do, I don't feel like traumatizing Mami to hell and back, but...
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
[x] Goal: Homura needs a new viewpoint that has her being successful, that permits Madoka to have made a Wish, and that has the loops as a good outcome.
[x] Potentially useful specifics:
-[x] Keep making sure that this is helping Homura - physical emotional support, checking her understanding as you go, prompting her when a socratic dialog would do more good than harm, etc.
-[x] Provide supporting evidence: Madoka implicitly trusting Homura, asking if they've met before, etc.
-[x] Madoka's dreams aren't incredibly detailed, but they're enough that you think she's been making steady progress.
-[x] Homura succeeded. Madoka could have ended the loops - or worse - if Kyubey had tricked her into Wishing Bad, but Homura was there, and Homura protected Madoka until she could Wish Good.
-[x] You think this is what Madoka wanted when she asked Homura to keep her from being tricked.
-[x] Reiterate that everything will be okay.
Basically summarizing what I think I've read. I'm not too sure about my reading comprehension or understanding of the situation. I've attempted to make the vote stand alone to make it as easy as possible to understand and discuss: High-level long-term goals at the very start, and then give Brinapilot a selection of points that she might be able to use to move toward those goals. Phrase things in terms of giving Homura new viewpoints, rather than pushing her or anything, and provide some suggestions for mechanisms as a proposed specific.
[x] Potentially useful specifics:
-[x] Keep making sure that this is helping Homura - physical emotional support, checking her understanding as you go, prompting her when a socratic dialog would do more good than harm, etc.
-[x] Provide supporting evidence: Madoka implicitly trusting Homura, asking if they've met before, etc.
-[x] Madoka's dreams aren't incredibly detailed, but they're enough that you think she's been making steady progress.
-[x] Homura succeeded. Madoka could have ended the loops - or worse - if Kyubey had tricked her into Wishing Bad, but Homura was there, and Homura protected Madoka until she could Wish Good.
-[x] You think this is what Madoka wanted when she asked Homura to keep her from being tricked.
-[x] Reiterate that everything will be okay.
Basically summarizing what I think I've read. I'm not too sure about my reading comprehension or understanding of the situation. I've attempted to make the vote stand alone to make it as easy as possible to understand and discuss: High-level long-term goals at the very start, and then give Brinapilot a selection of points that she might be able to use to move toward those goals. Phrase things in terms of giving Homura new viewpoints, rather than pushing her or anything, and provide some suggestions for mechanisms as a proposed specific.
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AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Re: your first spoiler, my Multiversal Souls idea addresses that discrepancy with "well, Homura's magic magnifies the effect with Homura due to the tied karma thing."
Battle Pentagram confirms Mami can see karmic connections between people for shipteasing purposes, but it's a learned ability that Firn confirmed she hasn't trained up yet. No word on if it can see multiversal karma shittery, but Madoka SHOULD have assloads of strings on her since even Kyubey can sense that much.
- Location
- USA, Midworld world line
And I will insist that those bindings will visualize in a refined and absolutely beautiful image to anyone with the wit to see them. Homura is quite the Girl Scout.
@Kaizuki , @AuraTwilight I am making problems faster than I solve them!!!!
If we want or need to postulate a metaphysics of how Madoka is holding information from out of loop, there are some fun ways to go about it. I will release all limiters for the notion of common sense to make this argument.
My most generalized argument is that it isn't a side effect of Homura's Wish. In fact, it is a highly conservative reading of Homura's wish. Let's do some Ontology! If existences are 'indexable' by magic, each person and each version of a person are not the same. Homura is probably sliding, rather than reversing time. Otherwise, differences from before loop start would never exist. The Wish power is displaying parsimony, perhaps because Homura was not putting in enough Potential to re-structure the Universe with each loop. If she slides to an acceptably identical Universe, that's good enough - but only if she gets "her" Madoka. So by intending hard enough, Homura wished to redo her first meeting with Madoka. That Madoka right there. They are always in sync.
Mechanic One - Madoka is Homura's passenger during each slide. Homura is only partially reset by the Wish, her memories remain, as does her hoarding. Madoka is also reset, i.e. resurrected, but that may also be imperfect. The imperfection may be finely tuned, to prevent negative performance of Madoka but leave as much of her experience as possible. Trauma (her whole time as a Magical Girl in each loop?) is obviously being deleted. But maybe her unconscious is holding on to her own hopes for Salvation. Her request in loop three was an intense connection to Homura. Perhaps at that point, Madoka was struggling to focus on Homura, and that became Magic. A small amount of her memories of Homura can come through the reset. Memories that would result in a Madoka that Homura would not accept as the Madoka from loop one can't get through in conscious terms, because Wishes are absolute. Dreams and unremembered information are mostly underneath the filter, and they can slide forward with Madoka. But they cannot always be interpreted by Madoka when she comes to. Aaaand we can pull in John Carpenter's "Prince Of Darkness" for a Hollywood implementation that might be known to the author?
Mechanic Two - Relationship tension. Madoka has been gaining knowledge about Homura due to forging a belief into her soul. Some of their loop experiences were intense and resulted in emotional bonding at maximum strength. Much deeper than just memory. Identity is now involved. Since Madoka's original soul is being towed over to the next loop each time, her engrams come with her. She carries over-unity belief in Homura. The equations of causality run both ways for abstracts as this power level. Epistemology believes that knowledge is a mental state. It exists in one's mind. If a person doesn't believe that a particular thing exists then he cannot be knowledgeable about it. So if one believes in the existence of a particular thing at overunity probability, they might spontaneous gain information relevant to the existence of that thing.
Mechanic Three - Soul Control Radius Overlap. Souls have a geometric quality of size or area in higher dimensions. They both made their wishes in proximity? Incubators muck about with the soul WiFi when they upload a new Magical Girl. The process may be perfectly functional, but not literally perfect. For a one time use, no issues. Since Madoka has done this a hundred times, the repeated higher-dimensional contact with Homura adjacent to her is literally forming an entanglement between their souls. It is stable, and now has enough bandwidth to move small amounts of information very slowly. Since Homura isn't being receptive, she doesn't get a dream. Madoka happens to be in a state to receive at the start of loop, and later is not ready to receive, so they seem to stop.
But isn't this unfulfilling as a technical debate? What we need is an emotionally compelling argument that allows Madoka to silently answer the call of the one who is seeking her, or something to that effect.
::steam vents:: limiter reinstated
Of course, Homura might have been getting the easy ride while she was oblivious to the facts? Will Homura gets dreams from Madoka's past now that her resistance is lowered? I'm sure there must be a Nasuverse fanfic where this happens already? I just haven't seen it.
So far, it is simply "Homura aimed her wish at Madoka." After some number of trials, "Madoka made a wish that surrounds Homura." ["In" to "You"] Yin and Yang. A feedback state is initializing. We'd better get them to harmonize before the system gets unstable!
Or we could do this in pop music?
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Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
A karmic shipping chart...
We can use this.
... Can we use this?
It'd be funny as hell if Kwijibo has no connections, and instead Sayaka is a nascent yuri harem protag.
This post was sponsored by Kaizuki. Sorta:
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
So it means the catgirl is actually in the lead.
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
Hijiri Kanna should have the same ability to see karmic ties that Mami does. It's more closely related to her Wish (connecting to others vs. connecting to life), as well, so it ought to be more readily available to her, if not a natural talent.
Thinking about it, Mami ought to have a lot of untapped potential as a healer, too.
EDIT: Expanding on this, shouldn't it be possible, hypothetically, for someone who can see the bonds of karmic fate to manipulate those bonds? With some guidance from, say, Riona and a fully-operational Oriko, it might actually be possible to defuse the potentialbomb by offloading the excess bonds (and potential) from Madoka, making her (and Kriemhild Gretchen) a significantly less appealing target for Kyubey.
Thinking about it, Mami ought to have a lot of untapped potential as a healer, too.
EDIT: Expanding on this, shouldn't it be possible, hypothetically, for someone who can see the bonds of karmic fate to manipulate those bonds? With some guidance from, say, Riona and a fully-operational Oriko, it might actually be possible to defuse the potentialbomb by offloading the excess bonds (and potential) from Madoka, making her (and Kriemhild Gretchen) a significantly less appealing target for Kyubey.
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- Not the asylum anymore
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- She/Her
So, if Mami can see karmic bonds, and we're a walking "fuck you" to karmic destiny (as evidenced by our disrupting Oriko's visions, or our "strange" potential), what does Mami see when she looks at Sabrina?