It's not perfect but at the least people seem to be able to read it and come up with conclusions matching what I'm trying to convey.
Please please please feel free to ask for clarification or anything or just yeah. Aura and I think this is the shit and we've spent a long ass time looking at it, so please try not to jump to any conclusions too quickly and hear me/us out, I guess. Thank you for being great people.
What the fuck is kaizuki saying? edition, uh, let's go with 2.
Okay.
So, to understand where I'm going with any of this you first have to understand why Homura hates herself.
And the first thing I'm gonna say about that is that really, she hates herself for
fuckin' everything. The most accurate depiction of all the things she hates herself for is supposedly presented by the
clara dolls, but for the sake of explanation and because one of them is
vanity and she really, really doesn't give a flying
fuck about
vanity, we're gonna go over the big points, of which there are three.
One. Most of all, Homura hates herself for being
useless -- for not being able to defeat Walpurgisnacht, most of all, but also for being unable to save Sayaka, Mami, Kyouko, etcetera. She hates that she has made essentially no progress since timeline
zero, when she was a
civilian and
everyone fuckin' died, and she believes that she is useless because of that. What good is a time-travelling hyper-lethal time-stopping meguca that literally can't accomplish anything more than she was able to as a pig-tailed civilian with no magic and a
heart condition? No good at all.
And she hates herself for it. This is why the clara dolls call her "Good-For-Nothing" after she becomes the devil.
She is
absolutely a suicide risk because of this even if we defeat Walpurgisnacht,
especially if her bonds with the people around her are still weak at that point, and in some ways our existence has only exacerbated this. Everything
we do just kind of
works. And she doesn't even
understand how. Clearly if
we had been in her place the loops would have ended long, long ago. That was her thinking up until... two posts ago, anyways. After belietold her that Madoka's wish is still in play this may have changed somewhat. Still thinks she's completely useless, though.
Two. On top of her self-hatred for being
useless, and
partially stemming from it, Homura hates herself for... virtually everything ever to do with Madoka. Homura feels she has
failed Madoka, Homura feels she has
hurt Madoka, Homura feels that she is
torturing Madoka. This gets really, really complicated.
The most basic components of this appear inside each loop. Homura blames herself for being a good-for-nothing who cannot save Madoka's friends from their horrible fates. Homura blames herself for being a good-for-nothing who cannot save
Madoka from her horrible fate. To a much lesser extent Homura probably even blames herself for the Madokas of recent loops having less happiness in their lives than the original -- the Mami of timeline zero made it to Walpurgisnacht, with all that entails about that Madoka and Mami not having dealt with the lichbomb or witchbomb, and the Sayaka of that timeline therefore not having witched out, and so on and so forth. Thus, Homura hurts Madoka inside each loop.
But that's not the real problem. Comparatively speaking, Homura doesn't even care about that. The real problem is that Homura sees each use of her time-travel magic as carrying a cost in suffering for
Madoka. The logic is actually painfully sound. The events of March 16 - April 30 are, by any account, well past horrific and deep into hellish. Kyubey, who is of course basically Satan, engineers (with some help from WPN) not only the death and destruction of everything Madoka ever loved but also the
acquisition of more things for Madoka to love and the ripping away of
those (Mami, Kyouko, mainly).
Now, being SV, I know a lot of us basically view time loops as searches for a solution or etcetera, where there is always a way out and the protagonist will gain power in the time loop until they find it.
But Homura isn't a protagonist. Homura is a good-for-nothing, remember? That's how she sees herself after hundreds of loops through hell have brought her exactly no closer to saving fucking
anyone.
If there's no way out of the time loop, then the allegory you're looking for is
Prometheus, being tortured constantly and reset so it can happen all over again. Chained to a mountain for eternity, with no future or hope, better for him to just
die so that his pain will end. And Homura is responsible for "regrowing the liver" so that it can be eaten again.
And she chooses to do so, time after time. She
chooses to put Madoka back through the torture of March 16 - April 30, time after time. It doesn't matter whether or not Madoka retains the memories of that torture. As long as there is no end to the loops, Homura is merely engineering an eternal torture chamber for Madoka. And Homura blames herself for doing exactly that.
Three. Lastly, Homura hates herself for being
selfish. She believes everything we just went over, so you need to ask yourself, "Why hasn't she just given up if she believes she is simply engineering Madoka's eternal torture?"
And that... that's the last kicker. Homura blames herself for being unable to let Madoka
go. Homura believes that
Madoka would want her to let Madoka go. Homura believes that the right thing to do would be to take a Desert Eagle out of her shield and
shoot herself right in the soul gem, and in doing so put an end to Madoka's eternal torment.
But she can't. She just
can't. It's not because she thinks there is a chance of success. That's not it at all.
It's because she just
cannot bring herself to give up on saving Madoka. She just
cannot bring herself to give up
Madoka. (Because she's head over heels in love with the girl, but she doesn't understand that). And she blames herself for being a selfish
bitch who can't bring herself to let go of Madoka when the only thing that clinging to Madoka is doing is
hurting Madoka.
Conclusion. If we want to help Homura, we have to somehow work through
all of that. Yeah, I know, right?
Holy fucking shit, kai, how can you even dream of doing anything to help Homura through that?
Well, it's actually pretty easy to state what would be necessary to... I'm not going to use the word "fix", here, but one can imagine a way to undermine all the ways Homura hates herself. It's actually pretty simple in hindsight, as most things are, it just sounds completely impossible to achieve!
One. The loops need to have had a purpose that Homura was integral to accomplishing. There needs to have been a goal, a way out,
and Homura needs to have been both working towards and making progress towards that goal. This would obviate many of the problems: no longer would Homura have been engineering Madoka's eternal torture out of her own selfishness, basically. It's a huge and absolutely necessary step towards resolving Homura's view of herself as the selfish good-for-nothing, because as long as the loops had no purpose, Homura is guilty of having pointlessly inflicted at least a decade of torture on Madoka, which by itself is more than enough to make her hate herself.
Two. Homura needs to understand that Madoka
would have wanted this. Homura's entire issue of blaming herself for being selfish stems from her belief that Madoka would have wanted her to give the fuck up and stop torturing Madoka. If Homura can be brought to understand that Madoka would not have wanted that, that Madoka would have wanted her to keep going and keep trying, then
that particular massive bundle of self-hatred
almost (see
Three) evaporates into thin air. (As a side note, that's the main objective that this vote is pursuing, but more on that later).
Three. Homura needs to see
Two not only in terms of "Madoka would have wanted this" but also in terms of "The actions I have taken have resulted in an absolute net reduction of the amount of suffering inflicted on Madoka." Essentially, that Madoka's desires are reasonable and sufficiently in Madoka's self-interest for Homura to accept them instead of just brushing them off. It's not enough for Homura to know that Madoka would have wanted this, because Madoka has a tendency to sacrifice herself for others and
that is not okay BAD MADOKA NO! As long as Homura's actions have inflicted a net increase in suffering on Madoka, Homura will never be okay with herself. But if that could be changed...
Right, great job kai, you've come up with a fucking wishlist, pun not intended. It's still pointless! How could you possibly bring Homura around to all of that!?
This is where the magic that a few people (me, aura, mcooperative) have been squealing about comes in, along with the weird opaque rants that I've apparently been going on. It turns out that there is solid evidence laying around that can be used to derive everything on that wishlist.
One. We open by making the assertion that we
know that Madoka would have wanted Homura to do what she has done
because Madoka is capable of outright telling us that much and does so. This is what we want to establish during this vote. We accomplish this by citing Madoka's various odd impulses and dreams as being essentially the products of past loops (which they are). The key point we make is that Madoka could have chosen to give up if she would have wanted Homura to give up.
The guts of the logic behind this are centered around the absence of a particular feedback cycle. Essentially, if Madoka felt she was being hurt by Homura's actions, then the information that she receives from past loops would have been painful. That combined with the pain of the loops would have generated more pain and etcetera, much like a grief spiral. Eventually Madoka would just give up.
Except that's not what we see. Instead we see that the information from the past loops is basically "trust Homura."
I realize that sounds kind of loose, especially the whole "Madoka gets information from past loops" thing. What's to stop that information from just being the same every time or whatever?
That's where Madoka's dream comes in. Suppose Madoka was getting the same information every loop. Then Madoka has been dreaming of present Homura instead of braids Homura since the very start, long before present Homura even existed. That's way, way more far-fetched than the alternative that Madoka gets information from past loops. And if we accept that Madoka gets information from past loops, the rest of the argument falls into place pretty easily.
That's without even considering any of the other arguments for this being a thing, some of which skirt too close to the potentialbomb to be used IC -- chief among those is simply that since Homura is tying together timelines with Madoka at their focal point,
of fucking course she's getting information from past timelines.
Two. One basically accomplishes the
Two of the previous section. It does not, however, resolve the previous section's
Three. However, we can achieve that
Three by adding something more: we only really need to go ahead and point out the consequences of Homura deciding to stop looping, and what Madoka would think of them, and then point out that those consequences being
acceptable is only even remotely
thinkable if one believes that the loops aren't ever going to get anywhere. Doing that leaves the previous section's
Three hanging on only by the thread of there not being a resolution to the loops (previous section's
One). This is actually the easiest part of the whole thing, because Madoka more or less did it for us.
"You can go back in time, right, Homura? You can go back and change everything... so that we don't end up like this...
" that is what Madoka Kaname said to Homura way back in timeline... three? two? One of the first. Because Madoka Kaname
doesn't fucking want to end up lying face-up in a shattered city, turning into a witch, with everyone and everything that she knew and loved dead and destroyed. And if Madoka hasn't given up, then that
definitely means that she still isn't willing to accept
ending up lying face-up in a shattered city, turning into a witch, with everyone and everything that she knew and loved dead and destroyed. There is a
reason that Madokami called Homura her best friend. 'Cuz Sayaka sure as
hell wasn't managing to do anything about that.
Three. This is the hard part. We have to handle the previous section's
One, and... that does require talking about wishes. I want to handle this part last, because it's far and away the most sensitive, and I think that if we can first demonstrate an ability to provide alternatives to some of Homura's other ingrained beliefs she'll be a lot more willing to listen to this.
The first thing we have to do is to finally raise a point that has been floating around since the ancient times of daily updates and UgoMura, because there's no other choice. It has to be pointed out that Madoka's request not to let Kyubey trick her is not specifically a request to not allow Madoka to make a contract.
That comes with a lot of baggage. Before that we obviously need to say that we oppose a Madowish being made in the current timeline. Which we do. And frankly we'll probably want to devote a large space to just working with Homura over exactly what Madoka said, and how Madoka could make a wish that would not involve her being tricked.
The next thing we point out is that Madoka's situation is unique as all hell. She's been in a position where she can make wishes without consequence, because Homura will rewind time, protecting her from the consequences (eternal suffering) of making a wish. And with the information transfer from previous loops, it should be possible for her to avoid making the same wish twice. (Pet theory: this is why she never wishes to revive Mami or Sayaka or etcetera. She's tried it before and it didn't work.)
At this point readers can likely guess the eventual direction. If Madoka can avoid making the same wish twice (which is actually not falsifiable, because two wishes of identical wording but different intent would be different wishes, and Homura would have no way to discern specific intent), then the only obstacle to Madoka making as many wishes as she wants until she finds one that results in a better future is Kyubey's accursed trickery. Absent Homura's actions, Madoka would just end up wishing for cake or something every loop, because
seriously fuck Kyubey. However, there are clearly wish options in existence which result in much more interesting things. Anomalies in general? Probably. Sabrina? Well, she's not natural, so let's go with
definitely.
This is sufficient to handle previous section's
One, and it turns out to synergize very, very nicely with everything we're aware of Madoka ever doing and/or saying. "Homura's mission was never to defeat WPN alone, it was to protect Madoka while she figured out how to pretty much shape the entire universe into what she wanted it to be. Madoka would never have gotten anywhere on that except that Homura turned out to be a Professional Madoka Protector. We think they're pretty much done at this point, but if something ends up happening... That's Homura's job. It's to prevent Kyubey from tricking Madoka, by protecting her from lies, coercion, monsters, etc, and from the consequences that she would face if she made a wish and Homura wasn't around to turn back time afterwards."
