I disagree with the position that we need to intervene now. I think that would be counter-productive. Sometime you have to let people do stupid things and fix it later, because people don't always respond to logic.
This is arguably bad for Homura's relationship with Oriko/Kirika, it's definitely bad for Oriko's relationship with Kirika, it's bad for Sayaka's relationship with Oriko/Kirika, and it's bad for the Mitakihara group's relationship with all their allies. We can't just continue onwards like this.
I agree that this is bad - long term. As an immediate issue it can be tolerated until the Iowa situation is resolved. Then we can talk to Homura and Oriko about it in a non-crisis situation when people are not under pressure or stressed, and so they can make better decisions.
Trying to resolve the issue now however, takes away Oriko's agency, puts pressure on Homura and makes her more dependent on our judgement instead of her own (which isn't good long term either) and generally requires everyone to make a calm reasoned decision right when everyone is hyped up for conflict with Iowa (a situation that does not make for calmed and reasoned decisions).
Timing is important in social situations. Forcing a resolution now will risk poor results, and we can just as easily talk about it tomorrow when the timing is better.
Won't our allies notice that Homura is holding Oriko and Kirika's soul gems hostage? I think they would be seriously disturbed to see us treat part of the team like that.
I doubt it. It's not like Homura is going to be flaunting them openly, and some girls conceal their gems location. So if we don't say anything, other magical girls will not suspect a thing.
The only real immediate draw back is tactical. Oriko and Kirika will have to stay with 100 meters of Homura.
Madoka's Wish was "to fix everything", right?
This spawned Sabrina.
Obviously we are going to do our best to break and fix the system, being sickeningly sweet with Mami while we do so.
But Madoka's potential is universal, in terms of extention (correct me if i'm wrong, been a while since I watched PMMM) and power.
Does this means that in every universe the Incubators inhabit, there's a Sabrina trying to break everything, and befriending everyone in her way with the power of brain damage?
Not necessarily.
Sure, they would spawn devoid of personality, with only background knowledge of wherever they end up and a need to rectify whatever wrongs they encounter. But, they would be able to adapt, I imagine. We are pretty good at that.
Not necessarily.
Sure, they would spawn devoid of personality, with only background knowledge of wherever they end up and a need to rectify whatever wrongs they encounter. But, they would be able to adapt, I imagine. We are pretty good at that.
In which case, Urobuchi must be reading the original manga series and wondering, "Who is this emotionless girl? I know I didn't create her. And why is she making everything go off script?"
Emotionless Sabrina would probably be called a Rei clone by anyone reading that manga. The plot would probably be like Madoka teaching a robot the meaning of love.
Emotionless Sabrina would probably be called a Rei clone by anyone reading that manga. The plot would probably be like Madoka teaching a robot the meaning of love.
[X] She's trying. That's what this is, she's trying to work with us, and that requires trust. Trust is a two-way street, so she's taking the first step.
Since simply continuing isn't winning I switch to this as closer to what seems good.
I continue to feel that Kirika ought to be more of a priority. Like, Oriko is doing something vaguely reasonable and somewhat premeditated, and seems to be coping, maybe. Kirika is Sabrina's friend, and it's another of Sabrina's friends that she feels threatened by. I want Kirika to be OK, and I want her to be able to believe that Sabrina is a friend that she can count on.
I'm not saying the sky's going to fall if we only explicitly vote to remark on Oriko's behavior, since I'm pretty sure the actions of Sabrina's various friends will result in some sort of action addressing this, and Oriko is at least talking to her, but I'm not really sure what will happen.
On Homura, why and how we can pull her out of her personal hell
So. If you had any doubt, this is the post.
PMAS, as a thread, has been asking why Akemi Homura did the things she did and didn't do the things she didn't do since literally before its inception. The questions of what things Homura could've done to win the loops and why she didn't do those things are most of a decade old at this point, and it's still not that uncommon to see somebody new show up and ask why Homura never, say, took a loop off to train or whatever.
Likewise, people have been trying to answer those questions ever since they were first asked. I myself have spent some pretty sizable chunks of time in the last four years trying to understand Homura.
The thread more-or-less unofficially canonized an answer to those two questions at some point. Godwinson summed it up for me better than I'd ever have been able to, so I'm gonna use his words, here, though the {} brackets are mine:
Godwinson via discord said:
The particular issue {i.e. why Homura didn't win the loops} is that Homura has never taken time in the loops to work on self-improvement. And that's because she doesn't (and psychologically cannot) take the view of "It might help in a later loop", because it means abandoning this Madoka to her fate
I have come to believe with ~99% certainty that this explanation is, factually speaking, not only irrelevant, but also mostly outright wrong.
Getting to the point, here, is going to take a bit: I need to establish three major pieces first. Please be patient with me.
I'll start my treatment of this by talking about self-improvement. Why do people engage in self-improvement? What counts as self-improvement? And, well, more importantly, when we say that "Homura does not engage in self-improvement", I've actually come to view that as a massively insufficiently clear statement, so I also want to ask: when we say "Homura does not engage in self-improvement", what, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in?
One of those questions has a really obviously correct answer. Why do people engage in self-improvement? People engage in self-improvement because they want to become more capable of doing some thing, whatever that might be.
The question "What counts as self-improvement?", though... you can try to fit various answers to that and, see, any answer I could try to fit to it is just useless wordplay. I'm not going to give an answer to that question from my perspective, but I will tell you what has previously counted as "self-improvement" in the old, incorrect explanation of Akemi Homura's actions:
Anything that Homura didn't try doing to improve her ability to do *insert thing here* was "self-improvement." All the things Akemi Homura did try doing to improve her ability to do *insert possibly different thing here* weren't "self-improvement." If this sounds like, ah, interesting logic to you, well, that's rather the point: the old explanation only makes sense if you decide that all of the ways in which Homura has amassed power over the loops don't count as "self-improvement."
This provides a nice segue into our third question. What, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in when we claim that "Homura doesn't engage in self-improvement?" And while we're at it: what are the actions Homura does engage in while we're claiming that she "doesn't engage in self-improvement?"
Here are some things that we know for fact that Akemi Homura has, in PMAS canon, gone about doing despite our claims that she has never focused on self-improvement during the loops.
> Amassed a giant armory of physical weaponry
> Gone and studied all about guns, bombs, etcetera
> Somehow (via research, one assumes) learned of the existence of, then raided the Vladivostock armory
> Acquired battleship artillery
> Acquired knowledge of a large number of magical girl groups outside Mitakihara
> Hired Fukushima Group at least once (or, more to the point, somehow learned about Fukushima Group in the first place -- with previous bullet, strongly suggests she went looking for allies outside Mitakihara)
None of these are especially interesting except to say "Well, clearly Homura is willing to not only leave Mitakihara but also actively go about trying to 'self-improve' her ability to cause Walpurgisnacht to come to harm." Which, I mean, is already interesting, it must be said-- but my favorite is this one.
> Conducted "Extensive research" on Walpurgisnacht.
"I have only been able to find out what I know about Walpurgisnacht through extensive research," Homura pronounces, now glaring at you with... what? Anger? Curiosity? "I am interested to know how you know that."
This one has Implications, to me. See, there's no possible way Homura could've known whether "Conducting extensive research on Walpurgisnacht" would give her any additional capabilities to use during the loop/s that she engaged in it. The point I want to establish with this list overall is, Homura has clearly taken a variety of paths to self-improve in past loops, and if one looks closely at them, it becomes pretty clear that Homura went, at some point, looking for self-improvement -- improvement of her ability to defeat Walpurgisnacht, specifically -- even where she wasn't, couldn't be certain that she would find it.
That list and its nature are piece one of three.
Piece two is the answer to the question "What, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in when we claim that 'Homura doesn't engage in self-improvement?'" Obviously at some level that's an infinite set, but we can definitely pose a list of core suggestions the thread has always considered ultra-viable.
> Trained her ability to use magic
People accepting that line as sufficiently specific has been part of the problem. It's not. You need a finer level of detail to get to the point I need to make, so we're splitting that up into a handful of finer points.
> Trained her ability to use pure magic as an offensive weapon for use against Walpurgisnacht //To be clear: according to our understanding of Magic, enough practice lets you do pretty much whatever you want. We do see Homura throwing around little magic bullets to avoid gunshot noises. We do not see Homura firing something on the order of Tiro Finale at Walpurgisnacht, and if she'd ever tried she really would've mentioned it when she told us she'd hit Walpurgisnacht with battleship artillery.
> Trained her ability to enchant physical weapons in order to make them more powerful
> Trained her ability to dispel magic (e.g. the bind Mami uses on her)
> Just generally played with magic until she found something useful or promising!
And besides those, here's some more items...
> Trained her ability to convince people to do what she wants
> Gone to a library or somesuch and just started reading things looking for ideas
> Just, like... approached Sayaka before transferring into MMS somehow, in order to befriend her and learn about how to get her to act differently
> What else? Gone to a trustworthy, approachable adult and asked for advice?
... That list is piece two.
Piece three is a question I've applied, sometimes somewhat recursively, to all of the items in the two lists. It goes like this: Where in Homura's life would she have learned the things necessary to see this course of action as a possible and uniquely (versus the things she's already trying/tried) promising avenue to self-improving in a way that would enhance her ability to win the loops?
I am literally going to go over each item in the two lists. I want you to recall that Homura's life can basically be divvied up, in its entirety, into the following categories:
- Her time at the neglectful, possibly abusive Catholic Orphanage with a heart condition that, as far as we can tell, meant she had to spend basically all of her time resting. Recall that her first friend was Kaname Madoka at age 14, and that there is no evidence of Homura being particularly bookish.
- Her time at the Hospital -- you know, someplace like the one where we found Nagisa left alone, ignored, unaccompanied, crying behind a potted plant after her mother died. Again, recall that her first friend was Kaname Madoka at age 14, and that there is no evidence of Homura being particularly bookish.
- Her time at MMS before the loops, which lasted all of a month.
- The living hell of the loops where her social contact was, like, Mami-Sayaka-Kyouko-Madoka to start, none of whom would've had reason to think it their job to educate her in any deep fashion, or say the various things that should be said to young people.
For each item in those two lists, I'm going to give you a response explaining either why I think Homura wouldn't have seen any reason to think of it as uniquely promising and/or possible, or why I think it's immediately obvious that she would have seen reasons to think of it as promising and possible. And I want you to keep in mind these buckets we've divided Homura's life up into. Over and over, I'm going to ask whether Homura would've learned something, whether she would've had any reason to think something. And every time I do, I want you to think about those buckets, and ask yourself if there is one of them where she would've learned a reason/s to think those things from her experiences during those times.
We'll start with the list of things Homura didn't pursue.
> Trained her ability to use pure magic as an offensive weapon for use against Walpurgisnacht
Why would she do this? It's way the hell more magic-efficient to use physical guns. What reason would Homura have to conceptualize, say, the effect of a Tiro Finale as being any different from a really big gun? Why train to use pure magic instead of, like, forging a bigger gun or something? What reason would Homura have to think "Oh, hitting something with magic is different from hitting it with an equivalently powerful cannon"? I mean, what, did she play D&D as a child with her nonexistent friends and learn about resistance types? What possible reason would she have to see this as uniquely promising versus trying, as she has said to us, battleship artillery? And without that sort of understanding, well, this would be objectively idiotic compared to throwing an entire army at Walpurgisnacht, no?
Fun fact: Firn actually dropped what is in hindsight a gigantic, blatant hint that we should talk to Homura about this. See spoiler for details.
It's funny how in hindsight, Firn literally got up and wrote a suggestion into the IC that we talk with Homura about this exact thing.
I thought we'd talked, IC, about magic having a different effectiveness against witches than physical weaponry. So I went back looking for where we did that to see if Homura had, you know, displayed any special interest in it.
I found something else.
See, we did in fact talk about that IC. This is what happened:
"So you know," you call over the wind. "I had a thought."
"Oh?" Mami asks, cuddling your arm closer.
You switch to telepathy, including Sayaka. You'd felt rather than heard Mami's curiosity, mumbled against your arm. "So... I'm pretty sure magic is at least somewhat conceptual in nature," you say. "Things hurt Witches because they are Things That Hurt Witches. So, for example, Sayaka wouldn't do as much damage to a Witch if she just picked up a regular sword and started swinging it."
"Hm..." Mami says, considering that. "I suppose? I've never had occasion to test it."
"We might ask Homura," you note as you bank the flight disc in a lazy curve around a particularly tall antenna. "She does use the most mundane weaponry out of all of us."
"That's true," Mami agrees.
"So..." Sayaka says, sounding confused.
"Well. If the effect is conceptual; a weapon hurts Witches because it's something that hurts Witches, then it would kind of follow that naming an attack actually makes it better," you say. "Because... if it has a name, then it's something..." You wave the hand not being cuddled by Mami. "It's something specific. Am I making any sense?"
Right, I'm going to edit The Vote. Mami will probably realize that Homura's protecting Madoka specially, but no Oriko involvement should mean no implications and she can pass it off as crush or metaknowledge or both.
[x] Having Madoka and Homura along to meet with Bennouna sounds great, if they want to come.
[x] But the cleansing trip... maybe once peace has settled in and these trips are routine, but right now we're not quite sure what these girls are like or how it'll go.
[x] You actually wanted to ask Homura and Madoka if they could hold the fort while the rest of the team was off doing that.
[x] Bennouna or Enchanting is probably first, though, so... everybody meet back up in an hour?
-[x] Thank the Madoparents for having you over!
-[x] Offer Sayaka and Homura rides home.
[x] Before you leave, pull Madoka aside and thank her for the sleepover. Not only was it nice on its own, the sheer normalcy of it is important. Inviting Sayaka was a particularly good idea; Madoka's a Good Friend.
-[x] Speaking of which, ask Madoka to point the friendship cannons at Homura. It'd be good for her, and you're sure she'd appreciate it.
[x] Drop Sayaka off first, then discuss the keeping-Madoka-safe plan with Homura and Mami while flying to Homura's apartment.
-[x] You agree with keeping Madoka away from danger, but she'll always want to help and she's too brave to be simply scared away, so you're giving her other - safer - ways to feel and be included.
-[x] You also want to keep her in the loop, particularly about the current situation and your plans for keeping it under control, so she doesn't worry and feel like she needs to do something.
-[x] For example, you want to bring up the Tokyo situation at some point today and get everybody's input on it.
[x] Fly home with Mami.
-[x] Does she want to try the ribbon-wings again? ^_^
D'you maybe notice just, y'know, a sliiiiightly glaring lack of us voting to say or do these things anywhere in there?
I went back and paged through two posts' discussion before this happened. The subject of conceptual potency is a leak from the thread discussion. We didn't vote to have this conversation. We didn't vote to include, specifically, every magical girl on our team at the time and just kind of not Homura. We specifically didn't vote to say, IC, that we might ask Homura about whether in her experience physical weapons do not hurt witches as well/much as magical.
So, for example, Sayaka wouldn't do as much damage to a Witch if she just picked up a regular sword and started swinging it."
"Hm..." Mami says, considering that. "I suppose? I've never had occasion to test it."
"We might ask Homura," you note as you bank the flight disc in a lazy curve around a particularly tall antenna. "She does use the most mundane weaponry out of all of us."
In hindsight, it is the most blatant fucking hint I have ever seen.
> Trained her ability to enchant physical weapons in order to make them more powerful
What reason would Homura have to view an enchanted shell as any more likely to harm Walpurgisnacht than getting a bigger gun? What's it going to do, enhance the force, the penetration? Why would Homura ever go "man I bet magic is conceptually effective against witches"? Where would she have heard anything to suggest that to her? It's not like she's an avid reader of fantasy novels. Why would this seem promising to her when unleashing an entire army didn't do anything?
> Trained her ability to dispel magic (e.g. the bind Mami uses on her)
How would Homura think to go about doing this? At what point in her life did she learn anything that would give her any idea how to do this? At what point in her life did she learn how to go about looking for anything that would give her any idea how to do this? Using the internet to look up stuff about guns and bombs is not the same as learning that, like, you can post hypotheticals like this on forums and expect people to game the shit out of them... much less how to do so in an interesting enough manner that you get real response. So where's she going to start on figuring out how to do this?
> Just generally played with magic until she found something useful or promising!
Now we get into the really horrible stuff: do you think anybody ever told Homura that inspiration can come from anywhere? I mean, who would've? The orphanage? The hospital? The loops? Why would she see this as promising? Why would she think she could get ideas by doing this? It's got no apparent relation to anything she wants to accomplish unless you make the assumption that there was some point in time where she learned that, you know, just playing around with random stuff could really teach her important stuff she didn't already know.
> Trained her ability to convince people to do what she wants
Who would've ever taught Homura anything about this? Do you think anyone ever explained to her that first impressions were important, much less in a way that would've really stuck? Do you think she understands that social skills are something that can be trained? What, did she learn that from a book, from a friend, off the internet...? When? From what place? From who? If you suggested this to her, where would she even think to start? Why would she see this as possible?
> Gone to a library or somesuch and just started reading things looking for ideas
Again, do you think anybody ever told Homura that inspiration can come from anywhere? Why would she think of doing this as promising when it's got no clear relation to her goals?
> Just, like... approached Sayaka before transferring into MMS somehow, in order to befriend her and learn about how to get her to act differently
Why would Homura think this would go differently than usual? Sayaka always hates her, right? Why would Homura understand that that could be different based on making a different first impression? How would she know how to go about asking Sayaka about herself? Again, Madoka was her first friend at age fourteen.
> What else? Gone to a trustworthy, approachable adult and asked for advice?
Who? How?
Now let's talk for a moment about the list of things we know Homura did do, that are basically attempts at self-improvement.
> Amassed a giant armory of physical weaponry
Natural extension of learning about bombs was guns feat Mami, and it sure seems like it's canon that Mami pretty much got her into that field in general.
> Gone and studied all about guns, bombs, etcetera
Natural extension of guns/bombs, innit?
> Somehow (via research, one assumes) learned of the existence of, then raided the Vladivostock armory
"Where can I get more powerful weaponry" -- locations of military bases aren't exactly unavailable on Google.
> Acquired battleship artillery
"Tiro Finale hurts this fucking thing, right?"
> Acquired knowledge of a large number of magical girl groups outside Mitakihara
"The others can hurt it. Maybe I can get other others to help?"
> Hired Fukushima Group at least once (or, more to the point, somehow learned about Fukushima Group in the first place -- with previous bullet, strongly suggests she went looking for allies outside Mitakihara)
"The others can hurt it, let's hire other others."
> Conducted "Extensive research" on Walpurgisnacht.
"What even is this thing? Why can't I hurt it?"
...
Funny, isn't it, how that list of things Homura didn't do, I was able to write like a paragraph for each one asking where the hell she would've learned the wisdom/control knowledge necessary to think that trying it would be possible/promising, and then the list of things she did do I was able to write literally a sentence or two for each clearly outlining how she would've come to think that that would be a promising, executable action.
Funny, isn't it, how both lists are of possible ways to self-improve, and yet Homura only pursued the one.
Funny, isn't it, how this:
Godwinson via discord said:
The particular issue {i.e. why Homura didn't win the loops} is that Homura has never taken time in the loops to work on self-improvement. And that's because she doesn't (and psychologically cannot) take the view of "It might help in a later loop", because it means abandoning this Madoka to her fate
I mean, the first sentence in there is just factually wrong. Piece one -- the list of self-improvement actions Homura did take -- thoroughly demonstrates that.
The second sentence, to the best of my knowledge and memory, literally came about because it was the best idea anyone had to explain why Homura did what she did and didn't do what she didn't do. That is to say, it's not particularly validatable (asking Homura about her psychology is an Interesting idea), and it's essentially a giant mass of conjecture that the thread feels/felt sounds/ed approximately right. Maybe it's true.
Even if it is, though, it's pretty much irrelevant. It's outright superseded by Homura lacking reasons to pursue the courses of action she didn't take, and then on top of that if Homura is willing to pursue avenues like doing extensive research on Walpurgisnacht, avenues which don't have any remotely guaranteed yield within the current loop... Why not anything else that sounds promising, that might yield rewards within this loop but that she can't be sure about? Pretty much everything I outlined in the list of things Homura didn't do fits that description, so if this second sentence were the only reason why she didn't do them, things just do not make sense. Like, with enough grief seeds, who knows how fast you could start throwing around a Tiro Finale sort of deal? Or enchanting shells to fuck up Walpurgisnacht? And yet, Homura was new to enchantment when we asked her about her personal enchant, and... yeah.
Left not-directly-said while we were establishing the falsity of the classic explanation was that we have a new explanation for why Homura did what she did and didn't do what she didn't do. Specifically: she's the product of a horribly neglected and constrained childhood who is missing boatloads of what might be called "everyman knowledge," and it means that all of this "obvious, promising stuff" is barred to her not because of some, some psychological limitation, but because she's got no fucking clue that it's "promising and obvious." I mean, pretty much the only teacher she's ever had is Mami.
Mami uses guns.
Homura uses guns.
Gee: I wonder why.
This next part is kind of fragmentary because I've had a really hard time trying to fit all these pieces into a single essay. They all click into too many damn places. To be blunt, they're basically all individual realizations flowing from the stuff I've laid out in here, but they're all kind of incredibly crucial and demonstrative. They do things like explain why Homura acts the way she does today, why the potentialbomb is so bad...
...
Firn drops hints about how we should talk with Homura about physical/magical damage types, and Homura shows all this, this deep interest whenever we start talking about the reasons behind, I mean, basically anything. Gee: I wonder why. Almost like she's desperately grasping for that reasoning because she's missing so much everyman knowledge.
...
Godwinson comments to me a couple years ago about how Homura is all "restrained tension and uncertainty." Of course she's uncertain: she's missing swathes of the control knowledge we use to establish conclusions like "okay these courses of action are promising for these reasons and these other ones sound terrible" and then she's amped up on fear and trauma, fear that she'll do the wrong thing 'cuz she's got no fuckin' idea what the right thing is, trauma that as far as she can tell she's picked the wrong thing every time before!
...
Homura sees herself as good-for-nothing. Well hell, if I'd tried every thing I could conceive of as promising in order to save the Light Of My Life, and all of it always failed, and I didn't see any way to improve myself in order to become capable of saving the Light Of My Life, I'd see myself the same fuckin' way.
...
This one's, like, mostly for Aura tbh. Homura's wish was the following:
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!"
Akemi Homura is Power without Wisdom. "The Fool", who walks endlessly and pointlessly through the loops, holding the Power to save the Light of her Life but without the Wisdom to use it correctly; indeed, without even the Wisdom to learn how to use itcorrectly. Infinite roads to victory lie open to her, but she sees none of them, for she is not Wise. Uncertainty and fear are in her every act, for looking about her, she can never comprehend what results her potential actions might have. She comes to view herself as inherently good-for-nothing, for she has exhausted every idea she has ever thought promising as a method of accomplishing the only task that matters, and lacks any notion of how to change herself in order to find more. Helpless, hapless, denied by her lack of wisdom the agency that she was so certain she would gain through her wish for power, she drifts through time without even hope left to her.
...
The potentialbomb "causes [Homura] to despair in truth." The despair comes because she thinks herself good-for-nothing and sees no way whatsoever to improve herself into someone who isn't good-for-nothing, so having a negative impact on the situation makes her think, in canon, that she should just fucking die -- she isn't someone capable of saving Madoka and cannot ever become someone capable of saving Madoka. There are potentially extensions on this -- things like Homura coming to believe she can't be sure she won't accidentally fuck over all the good stuff Sabrina's caused this loop 'cuz she hasn't got the ability to correctly judge the probable consequences of her actions and oops she's responsible for Madoka's potential already and she's been so sure that some of the things 'Brina wanted were bad ideas and they always turned out okay or even good... Like, I could see that happening and, I mean, we're talking about imminent suicide in that scenario, which Sabrina can "pull her back from the brink" of by telling her that 'Brina needs her.
But, well. Homura made a wish that she thought would grant her the agency to not be helpless to do anything but watch the light of her life go to her death. Ending up believing that not only does she not have that agency post-wish, but that she isn't capable of obtaining that agency and has actively made things worse... And that this other person, Sabrina, exists and is obviously capable of that exact agency and doesn't seem to need her help to accomplish it... I mean, god, that's just horrific.
...
Now, the big reward attached to all of this is really simple: if Homura's inability to see a way to become someone good-for-something and her horrific lack of everyman control knowledge are primary issues, fixing those problems ain't that hard. I have a blueprint-style vote in archive that I want some more time to refine and that, well -- just please don't ask me to post that right now but the point is I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how to address those problems in a way maximally comprehensible to Homura, maximally effective, maximally actionable. And the general course it's based on looks fucking spectacular, we lay out to her that these things actually are issues, we tell her they're fixable, we go about helping her fix them and in particular learn how to fix them herself and at the end of the quest we get to watch Homura cut down WPN in a timestop-fueled fusilade of arrows at the culmination of proving to her that she can become someone who can grasp the agency that she sought with her wish to begin with; not just the agency to not be stuck helplessly watching the light of her life go to her death but the agency to never again be helpless period. We also get to play Eye of the Tiger IC during Homura-centric training montages, explaining to her that "It's mandatory." It won't be perfect, don't get me wrong -- girl's been through so much trauma, becoming truly healthy will take a fucklong time, but ripping out the core problems will, uh, will go a long, long way towards that.
So: outcomes time. First off, I want to point out, this is all, like, trivially validatable in, I dunno, probably not even a whole post. It probably even suffices to ask Homura something like, "Exactly what did you do when you 'did extensive research on Walpurgisnacht' and why did you do it?", something bland and unproblematic that pretty well can't have negative consequences. Even if you don't trust the IMO overwhelming evidence for this stuff, we don't have to make any blind goddamn insane leaps of faith like that one time we don't talk about when I was braindead and yeah, we can just one-action verify the core precepts.
Secondly, this has basically given me a working model of Homura. If I ever get around to MQ -- it is, sadly, somewhat out of date these days -- I can actually pick that back up, because I'm no longer blocked on WTF is going on in Homura's head.
Thirdly, just... I dunno. I'm just really happy to have this. The old, classical explanation yielded a ton of really nasty conclusions that have been shooting us in the foot for years at this point. Like, we were seeing conclusions drawn that basically precluded Homura ever being remotely okay ever again. I know at one point I was basically thinking "If we don't solve Homura we are going to lose quest" and I spent a long while thinking about how to use our successes with Mami and Sayaka to somehow leverage successes with Homura even though we didn't truly understand how to help her. This is so, so infinitely preferable and makes so much more fucking sense.
...
...
...
I think at one point I compared the importance of this post's topic/s to telling Mami that we weren't leaving her.
Tomoe Mami wants to stop being alone.
Akemi Homura wants to stop being helpless.
At no point in the million words of this quest, have we ever, ever, ever, EVER so much as SUGGESTED to Akemi Homura, that she could become someone who would/have won the loops.
And I am essentially certain that she doesn't understand that. Because looking at the timeline of her life?
When did she ever have anyone who would've told her she could be anything she wanted to be, who then actually gave her any real reason to believe it?
MASSIVE CREDIT TO @Higure, I've ended up ~having to try to explain this to like four people in the last month or so and of them I swear to god he is the only one I managed to get anything coherent across to. My ability to write this sort of post instead of a horrific blob of stuff is, uh, part of a week old atm feat brain nonsense, and having somebody I actually got this across to reasonably well understand and believe me was... a big deal, considering the, uh, other people to whom I was not able to get this across clearly who... Yeah I was kind of skittish about this because the feeling you get when people react with dismissal to something capital-I Important because you didn't explain it well enough is really shit, especially when they're people you care about.
Credit also to @Vebyast for allowing me to use him as my officially unofficial formal measuring stick for whether this was comprehensible or not.
I'm going to have to re-read this multiple times, but! As per usual, absolute genius, Kai.
As for acting on this... suggest Homura enchant her guns on the way to Yangon or whatever, for the added punch? Seems like a good way to ease into it almost immediately.
I'm going to have to re-read this multiple times, but! As per usual, absolute genius, Kai.
As for acting on this... suggest Homura enchant her guns on the way to Yangon or whatever, for the added punch? Seems like a good way to ease into it almost immediately.
I'll be honest, my thoughts on it at length are that Homura needs the heaviest fucking magical artillery she can get ahold of, and that accomplishing that is at least somewhat conceptual/belief-based.
So I thought to myself, what kind of magical attack would Homura believe could hurt WPN?
There's an obvious answer to that:
Madoka_giant_arrow.jpg
We'll start with those purple magic bullets Homura is capable of throwing around. We'll figure out, with her and probably Mami involved, how to reshape them into arrows. Then we'll add a bow -- conjured ideally, but perhaps not -- and figure out how to dump the right kind & a sufficient quantity of raw power into them that Homura can watch herself go from being unable to penetrate our grief with her physical weapons to ripping through huge quantities of it using the arrows.
The bow fits her entirely too well as a new magical offensive weapon. She literally ends up with one in Wraith Arc via her wish there. And there's an absolute motherload of symbolism to it...
And, um... also we get Eye of the Tiger style training montages with her gradually figuring this shit out and piercing tougher and tougher targets and thinking about it makes me happy inside
OH YOU MEANT RIGHT NOW
uh
atm all i want to do is nuke iowa and leap on this whole thing XD
E: Also I totally want the bow to just literally be Madoka's bow. SO much symbolism aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
PMAS, as a thread, has been asking why Akemi Homura did the things she did and didn't do the things she didn't do since literally before its inception. The questions of what things Homura could've done to win the loops and why she didn't do those things are most of a decade old at this point, and it's still not that uncommon to see somebody new show up and ask why Homura never, say, took a loop off to train or whatever.
Likewise, people have been trying to answer those questions ever since they were first asked. I myself have spent some pretty sizable chunks of time in the last four years trying to understand Homura.
The thread more-or-less unofficially canonized an answer to those two questions at some point. Godwinson summed it up for me better than I'd ever have been able to, so I'm gonna use his words, here, though the {} brackets are mine:
I have come to believe with ~99% certainty that this explanation is, factually speaking, not only irrelevant, but also mostly outright wrong.
Getting to the point, here, is going to take a bit: I need to establish three major pieces first. Please be patient with me.
I'll start my treatment of this by talking about self-improvement. Why do people engage in self-improvement? What counts as self-improvement? And, well, more importantly, when we say that "Homura does not engage in self-improvement", I've actually come to view that as a massively insufficiently clear statement, so I also want to ask: when we say "Homura does not engage in self-improvement", what, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in?
One of those questions has a really obviously correct answer. Why do people engage in self-improvement? People engage in self-improvement because they want to become more capable of doing some thing, whatever that might be.
The question "What counts as self-improvement?", though... you can try to fit various answers to that and, see, any answer I could try to fit to it is just useless wordplay. I'm not going to give an answer to that question from my perspective, but I will tell you what has previously counted as "self-improvement" in the old, incorrect explanation of Akemi Homura's actions:
Anything that Homura didn't try doing to improve her ability to do *insert thing here* was "self-improvement." All the things Akemi Homura did try doing to improve her ability to do *insert possibly different thing here* weren't "self-improvement." If this sounds like, ah, interesting logic to you, well, that's rather the point: the old explanation only makes sense if you decide that all of the ways in which Homura has amassed power over the loops don't count as "self-improvement."
This provides a nice segue into our third question. What, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in when we claim that "Homura doesn't engage in self-improvement?" And while we're at it: what are the actions Homura does engage in while we're claiming that she "doesn't engage in self-improvement?"
Here are some things that we know for fact that Akemi Homura has, in PMAS canon, gone about doing despite our claims that she has never focused on self-improvement during the loops.
> Amassed a giant armory of physical weaponry
> Gone and studied all about guns, bombs, etcetera
> Somehow (via research, one assumes) learned of the existence of, then raided the Vladivostock armory
> Acquired battleship artillery
> Acquired knowledge of a large number of magical girl groups outside Mitakihara
> Hired Fukushima Group at least once (or, more to the point, somehow learned about Fukushima Group in the first place -- with previous bullet, strongly suggests she went looking for allies outside Mitakihara)
None of these are especially interesting except to say "Well, clearly Homura is willing to not only leave Mitakihara but also actively go about trying to 'self-improve' her ability to cause Walpurgisnacht to come to harm." Which, I mean, is already interesting, it must be said-- but my favorite is this one.
> Conducted "Extensive research" on Walpurgisnacht.
This one has Implications, to me. See, there's no possible way Homura could've known whether "Conducting extensive research on Walpurgisnacht" would give her any additional capabilities to use during the loop/s that she engaged in it. The point I want to establish with this list overall is, Homura has clearly taken a variety of paths to self-improve in past loops, and if one looks closely at them, it becomes pretty clear that Homura went, at some point, looking for self-improvement -- improvement of her ability to defeat Walpurgisnacht, specifically -- even where she wasn't, couldn't be certain that she would find it.
That list and its nature are piece one of three.
Piece two is the answer to the question "What, precisely, are the actions that we're saying Homura doesn't engage in when we claim that 'Homura doesn't engage in self-improvement?'" Obviously at some level that's an infinite set, but we can definitely pose a list of core suggestions the thread has always considered ultra-viable.
> Trained her ability to use magic
People accepting that line as sufficiently specific has been part of the problem. It's not. You need a finer level of detail to get to the point I need to make, so we're splitting that up into a handful of finer points.
> Trained her ability to use pure magic as an offensive weapon for use against Walpurgisnacht //To be clear: according to our understanding of Magic, enough practice lets you do pretty much whatever you want. We do see Homura throwing around little magic bullets to avoid gunshot noises. We do not see Homura firing something on the order of Tiro Finale at Walpurgisnacht, and if she'd ever tried she really would've mentioned it when she told us she'd hit Walpurgisnacht with battleship artillery.
> Trained her ability to enchant physical weapons in order to make them more powerful
> Trained her ability to dispel magic (e.g. the bind Mami uses on her)
> Just generally played with magic until she found something useful or promising!
And besides those, here's some more items...
> Trained her ability to convince people to do what she wants
> Gone to a library or somesuch and just started reading things looking for ideas
> Just, like... approached Sayaka before transferring into MMS somehow, in order to befriend her and learn about how to get her to act differently
> What else? Gone to a trustworthy, approachable adult and asked for advice?
... That list is piece two.
Piece three is a question I've applied, sometimes somewhat recursively, to all of the items in the two lists. It goes like this: Where in Homura's life would she have learned the things necessary to see this course of action as a possible and uniquely (versus the things she's already trying/tried) promising avenue to self-improving in a way that would enhance her ability to win the loops?
I am literally going to go over each item in the two lists. I want you to recall that Homura's life can basically be divvied up, in its entirety, into the following categories:
- Her time at the neglectful, possibly abusive Catholic Orphanage with a heart condition that, as far as we can tell, meant she had to spend basically all of her time resting. Recall that her first friend was Kaname Madoka at age 14, and that there is no evidence of Homura being particularly bookish.
- Her time at the Hospital -- you know, someplace like the one where we found Nagisa left alone, ignored, unaccompanied, crying behind a potted plant after her mother died. Again, recall that her first friend was Kaname Madoka at age 14, and that there is no evidence of Homura being particularly bookish.
- Her time at MMS before the loops, which lasted all of a month.
- The living hell of the loops where her social contact was, like, Mami-Sayaka-Kyouko-Madoka to start, none of whom would've had reason to think it their job to educate her in any deep fashion, or say the various things that should be said to young people.
For each item in those two lists, I'm going to give you a response explaining either why I think Homura wouldn't have seen any reason to think of it as uniquely promising and/or possible, or why I think it's immediately obvious that she would have seen reasons to think of it as promising and possible. And I want you to keep in mind these buckets we've divided Homura's life up into. Over and over, I'm going to ask whether Homura would've learned something, whether she would've had any reason to think something. And every time I do, I want you to think about those buckets, and ask yourself if there is one of them where she would've learned a reason/s to think those things from her experiences during those times.
We'll start with the list of things Homura didn't pursue.
> Trained her ability to use pure magic as an offensive weapon for use against Walpurgisnacht
Why would she do this? It's way the hell more magic-efficient to use physical guns. What reason would Homura have to conceptualize, say, the effect of a Tiro Finale as being any different from a really big gun? Why train to use pure magic instead of, like, forging a bigger gun or something? What reason would Homura have to think "Oh, hitting something with magic is different from hitting it with an equivalently powerful cannon"? I mean, what, did she play D&D as a child with her nonexistent friends and learn about resistance types? What possible reason would she have to see this as uniquely promising versus trying, as she has said to us, battleship artillery? And without that sort of understanding, well, this would be objectively idiotic compared to throwing an entire army at Walpurgisnacht, no?
Fun fact: Firn actually dropped what is in hindsight a gigantic, blatant hint that we should talk to Homura about this. See spoiler for details.
It's funny how in hindsight, Firn literally got up and wrote a suggestion into the IC that we talk with Homura about this exact thing.
I thought we'd talked, IC, about magic having a different effectiveness against witches than physical weaponry. So I went back looking for where we did that to see if Homura had, you know, displayed any special interest in it.
I found something else.
See, we did in fact talk about that IC. This is what happened:
D'you notice the parts where Homura is just kind of left out of this and then Sabrina literally says, "We might ask Homura"?
Guess what vote this resulted from.
D'you maybe notice just, y'know, a sliiiiightly glaring lack of us voting to say or do these things anywhere in there?
I went back and paged through two posts' discussion before this happened. The subject of conceptual potency is a leak from the thread discussion. We didn't vote to have this conversation. We didn't vote to include, specifically, every magical girl on our team at the time and just kind of not Homura. We specifically didn't vote to say, IC, that we might ask Homura about whether in her experience physical weapons do not hurt witches as well/much as magical.
This?
Firn. Wrote. This. Entirely. By. Authorial. Fiat.
In hindsight, it is the most blatant fucking hint I have ever seen.
> Trained her ability to enchant physical weapons in order to make them more powerful
What reason would Homura have to view an enchanted shell as any more likely to harm Walpurgisnacht than getting a bigger gun? What's it going to do, enhance the force, the penetration? Why would Homura ever go "man I bet magic is conceptually effective against witches"? Where would she have heard anything to suggest that to her? It's not like she's an avid reader of fantasy novels. Why would this seem promising to her when unleashing an entire army didn't do anything?
> Trained her ability to dispel magic (e.g. the bind Mami uses on her)
How would Homura think to go about doing this? At what point in her life did she learn anything that would give her any idea how to do this? At what point in her life did she learn how to go about looking for anything that would give her any idea how to do this? Using the internet to look up stuff about guns and bombs is not the same as learning that, like, you can post hypotheticals like this on forums and expect people to game the shit out of them... much less how to do so in an interesting enough manner that you get real response. So where's she going to start on figuring out how to do this?
> Just generally played with magic until she found something useful or promising!
Now we get into the really horrible stuff: do you think anybody ever told Homura that inspiration can come from anywhere? I mean, who would've? The orphanage? The hospital? The loops? Why would she see this as promising? Why would she think she could get ideas by doing this? It's got no apparent relation to anything she wants to accomplish unless you make the assumption that there was some point in time where she learned that, you know, just playing around with random stuff could really teach her important stuff she didn't already know.
> Trained her ability to convince people to do what she wants
Who would've ever taught Homura anything about this? Do you think anyone ever explained to her that first impressions were important, much less in a way that would've really stuck? Do you think she understands that social skills are something that can be trained? What, did she learn that from a book, from a friend, off the internet...? When? From what place? From who? If you suggested this to her, where would she even think to start? Why would she see this as possible?
> Gone to a library or somesuch and just started reading things looking for ideas
Again, do you think anybody ever told Homura that inspiration can come from anywhere? Why would she think of doing this as promising when it's got no clear relation to her goals?
> Just, like... approached Sayaka before transferring into MMS somehow, in order to befriend her and learn about how to get her to act differently
Why would Homura think this would go differently than usual? Sayaka always hates her, right? Why would Homura understand that that could be different based on making a different first impression? How would she know how to go about asking Sayaka about herself? Again, Madoka was her first friend at age fourteen.
> What else? Gone to a trustworthy, approachable adult and asked for advice?
Who? How?
Now let's talk for a moment about the list of things we know Homura did do, that are basically attempts at self-improvement.
> Amassed a giant armory of physical weaponry
Natural extension of learning about bombs was guns feat Mami, and it sure seems like it's canon that Mami pretty much got her into that field in general.
> Gone and studied all about guns, bombs, etcetera
Natural extension of guns/bombs, innit?
> Somehow (via research, one assumes) learned of the existence of, then raided the Vladivostock armory
"Where can I get more powerful weaponry" -- locations of military bases aren't exactly unavailable on Google.
> Acquired battleship artillery
"Tiro Finale hurts this fucking thing, right?"
> Acquired knowledge of a large number of magical girl groups outside Mitakihara
"The others can hurt it. Maybe I can get other others to help?"
> Hired Fukushima Group at least once (or, more to the point, somehow learned about Fukushima Group in the first place -- with previous bullet, strongly suggests she went looking for allies outside Mitakihara)
"The others can hurt it, let's hire other others."
> Conducted "Extensive research" on Walpurgisnacht.
"What even is this thing? Why can't I hurt it?"
...
Funny, isn't it, how that list of things Homura didn't do, I was able to write like a paragraph for each one asking where the hell she would've learned the wisdom/control knowledge necessary to think that trying it would be possible/promising, and then the list of things she did do I was able to write literally a sentence or two for each clearly outlining how she would've come to think that that would be a promising, executable action.
Funny, isn't it, how both lists are of possible ways to self-improve, and yet Homura only pursued the one.
Funny, isn't it, how this:
All of a sudden is thrown into so much doubt.
I mean, the first sentence in there is just factually wrong. Piece one -- the list of self-improvement actions Homura did take -- thoroughly demonstrates that.
The second sentence, to the best of my knowledge and memory, literally came about because it was the best idea anyone had to explain why Homura did what she did and didn't do what she didn't do. That is to say, it's not particularly validatable (asking Homura about her psychology is an Interesting idea), and it's essentially a giant mass of conjecture that the thread feels/felt sounds/ed approximately right. Maybe it's true.
Even if it is, though, it's pretty much irrelevant. It's outright superseded by Homura lacking reasons to pursue the courses of action she didn't take, and then on top of that if Homura is willing to pursue avenues like doing extensive research on Walpurgisnacht, avenues which don't have any remotely guaranteed yield within the current loop... Why not anything else that sounds promising, that might yield rewards within this loop but that she can't be sure about? Pretty much everything I outlined in the list of things Homura didn't do fits that description, so if this second sentence were the only reason why she didn't do them, things just do not make sense. Like, with enough grief seeds, who knows how fast you could start throwing around a Tiro Finale sort of deal? Or enchanting shells to fuck up Walpurgisnacht? And yet, Homura was new to enchantment when we asked her about her personal enchant, and... yeah.
Left not-directly-said while we were establishing the falsity of the classic explanation was that we have a new explanation for why Homura did what she did and didn't do what she didn't do. Specifically: she's the product of a horribly neglected and constrained childhood who is missing boatloads of what might be called "everyman knowledge," and it means that all of this "obvious, promising stuff" is barred to her not because of some, some psychological limitation, but because she's got no fucking clue that it's "promising and obvious." I mean, pretty much the only teacher she's ever had is Mami.
Mami uses guns.
Homura uses guns.
Gee: I wonder why.
This next part is kind of fragmentary because I've had a really hard time trying to fit all these pieces into a single essay. They all click into too many damn places. To be blunt, they're basically all individual realizations flowing from the stuff I've laid out in here, but they're all kind of incredibly crucial and demonstrative. They do things like explain why Homura acts the way she does today, why the potentialbomb is so bad...
...
Firn drops hints about how we should talk with Homura about physical/magical damage types, and Homura shows all this, this deep interest whenever we start talking about the reasons behind, I mean, basically anything. Gee: I wonder why. Almost like she's desperately grasping for that reasoning because she's missing so much everyman knowledge.
...
Godwinson comments to me a couple years ago about how Homura is all "restrained tension and uncertainty." Of course she's uncertain: she's missing swathes of the control knowledge we use to establish conclusions like "okay these courses of action are promising for these reasons and these other ones sound terrible" and then she's amped up on fear and trauma, fear that she'll do the wrong thing 'cuz she's got no fuckin' idea what the right thing is, trauma that as far as she can tell she's picked the wrong thing every time before!
...
Homura sees herself as good-for-nothing. Well hell, if I'd tried every thing I could conceive of as promising in order to save the Light Of My Life, and all of it always failed, and I didn't see any way to improve myself in order to become capable of saving the Light Of My Life, I'd see myself the same fuckin' way.
...
This one's, like, mostly for Aura tbh. Homura's wish was the following:
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!"
Akemi Homura is Power without Wisdom. "The Fool", who walks endlessly and pointlessly through the loops, holding the Power to save the Light of her Life but without the Wisdom to use it correctly; indeed, without even the Wisdom to learn how to use itcorrectly. Infinite roads to victory lie open to her, but she sees none of them, for she is not Wise. Uncertainty and fear are in her every act, for looking about her, she can never comprehend what results her potential actions might have. She comes to view herself as inherently good-for-nothing, for she has exhausted every idea she has ever thought promising as a method of accomplishing the only task that matters, and lacks any notion of how to change herself in order to find more. Helpless, hapless, denied by her lack of wisdom the agency that she was so certain she would gain through her wish for power, she drifts through time without even hope left to her.
...
The potentialbomb "causes [Homura] to despair in truth." The despair comes because she thinks herself good-for-nothing and sees no way whatsoever to improve herself into someone who isn't good-for-nothing, so having a negative impact on the situation makes her think, in canon, that she should just fucking die -- she isn't someone capable of saving Madoka and cannot ever become someone capable of saving Madoka. There are potentially extensions on this -- things like Homura coming to believe she can't be sure she won't accidentally fuck over all the good stuff Sabrina's caused this loop 'cuz she hasn't got the ability to correctly judge the probable consequences of her actions and oops she's responsible for Madoka's potential already and she's been so sure that some of the things 'Brina wanted were bad ideas and they always turned out okay or even good... Like, I could see that happening and, I mean, we're talking about imminent suicide in that scenario, which Sabrina can "pull her back from the brink" of by telling her that 'Brina needs her.
But, well. Homura made a wish that she thought would grant her the agency to not be helpless to do anything but watch the light of her life go to her death. Ending up believing that not only does she not have that agency post-wish, but that she isn't capable of obtaining that agency and has actively made things worse... And that this other person, Sabrina, exists and is obviously capable of that exact agency and doesn't seem to need her help to accomplish it... I mean, god, that's just horrific.
...
Now, the big reward attached to all of this is really simple: if Homura's inability to see a way to become someone good-for-something and her horrific lack of everyman control knowledge are primary issues, fixing those problems ain't that hard. I have a blueprint-style vote in archive that I want some more time to refine and that, well -- just please don't ask me to post that right now but the point is I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how to address those problems in a way maximally comprehensible to Homura, maximally effective, maximally actionable. And the general course it's based on looks fucking spectacular, we lay out to her that these things actually are issues, we tell her they're fixable, we go about helping her fix them and in particular learn how to fix them herself and at the end of the quest we get to watch Homura cut down WPN in a timestop-fueled fusilade of arrows at the culmination of proving to her that she can become someone who can grasp the agency that she sought with her wish to begin with; not just the agency to not be stuck helplessly watching the light of her life go to her death but the agency to never again be helpless period. We also get to play Eye of the Tiger IC during Homura-centric training montages, explaining to her that "It's mandatory." It won't be perfect, don't get me wrong -- girl's been through so much trauma, becoming truly healthy will take a fucklong time, but ripping out the core problems will, uh, will go a long, long way towards that.
So: outcomes time. First off, I want to point out, this is all, like, trivially validatable in, I dunno, probably not even a whole post. It probably even suffices to ask Homura something like, "Exactly what did you do when you 'did extensive research on Walpurgisnacht' and why did you do it?", something bland and unproblematic that pretty well can't have negative consequences. Even if you don't trust the IMO overwhelming evidence for this stuff, we don't have to make any blind goddamn insane leaps of faith like that one time we don't talk about when I was braindead and yeah, we can just one-action verify the core precepts.
Secondly, this has basically given me a working model of Homura. If I ever get around to MQ -- it is, sadly, somewhat out of date these days -- I can actually pick that back up, because I'm no longer blocked on WTF is going on in Homura's head.
Thirdly, just... I dunno. I'm just really happy to have this. The old, classical explanation yielded a ton of really nasty conclusions that have been shooting us in the foot for years at this point. Like, we were seeing conclusions drawn that basically precluded Homura ever being remotely okay ever again. I know at one point I was basically thinking "If we don't solve Homura we are going to lose quest" and I spent a long while thinking about how to use our successes with Mami and Sayaka to somehow leverage successes with Homura even though we didn't truly understand how to help her. This is so, so infinitely preferable and makes so much more fucking sense.
...
...
...
I think at one point I compared the importance of this post's topic/s to telling Mami that we weren't leaving her.
Tomoe Mami wants to stop being alone.
Akemi Homura wants to stop being helpless.
At no point in the million words of this quest, have we ever, ever, ever, EVER so much as SUGGESTED to Akemi Homura, that she could become someone who would/have won the loops.
And I am essentially certain that she doesn't understand that. Because looking at the timeline of her life?
When did she ever have anyone who would've told her she could be anything she wanted to be, who then actually gave her any real reason to believe it?
MASSIVE CREDIT TO @Higure, I've ended up ~having to try to explain this to like four people in the last month or so and of them I swear to god he is the only one I managed to get anything coherent across to. My ability to write this sort of post instead of a horrific blob of stuff is, uh, part of a week old atm feat brain nonsense, and having somebody I actually got this across to reasonably well understand and believe me was... a big deal, considering the, uh, other people to whom I was not able to get this across clearly who... Yeah I was kind of skittish about this because the feeling you get when people react with dismissal to something capital-I Important because you didn't explain it well enough is really shit, especially when they're people you care about.
Credit also to @Vebyast for allowing me to use him as my officially unofficial formal measuring stick for whether this was comprehensible or not.
I actually feel honored to be "part" of this thread, and just be present for this.
Shame the best i can do is stick my fingers up and say "kewl".
No need to mention i love this post, and really, right now i just want to clap to you, and i would say "feel inadequate for not thinking something like this" but honestly, i knew i wouldn't be able to give something even close to this.
So, awome .
I'll be honest, my thoughts on it at length are that Homura needs the heaviest fucking magical artillery she can get ahold of, and that accomplishing that is at least somewhat conceptual/belief-based.
True, true. And with Wally looming we don't have time to ease into things- it might even be a liability. Going whole hog with the arcana now might disrupt Mom's concentration for the upcoming fight, but she'll be able to contribute in a more direct way, which will probably do good things for her mental state. And worst comes to worst, we have a dozen other meguca to fill in any gaps.
(Blagh, feel like I'm wording things wrong; falling into trap of obessing over a magical girl's power over the girl herself. Blarghle.)
PMAS, as a thread, has been asking why Akemi Homura did the things she did and didn't do the things she didn't do since literally before its inception. The questions of what things Homura could've done to win the loops and why she didn't do those things are most of a decade old at this point, and it's still not that uncommon to see somebody new show up and ask why Homura never, say, took a loop off to train or whatever.
Particularly that Homura never noticed that mundane weapons are less effective against witches.
That's something I've always thought from the first time I watched Madoka Magica back when it was airing. It was obvious to me that Walpurgisnaught had {Immunity to Physical} which was why Homura could never scratch it. I always assumed that that was just due to my gaming background that I could see that though.
While you have identified an important component of Homura's mentality, I think it is also important to note other things about this wish.
The first is that this is a very selfish wish. It's probably the most selfish wish in the series. I always see people saying it's a selfless wish, but it's not.
It's not a wish to save Madoka, or at least not only that. It's also a wish to supplant Madoka, and ursurp her role as protector.
It's why I saw Rebellion as a perfectly logical outcome, and why it makes perfect sense for Homura to take on the role of Lucifer in a retelling of Paradise Lost, just as it made sense for her to be Faust in the retelling of Faust.
Ultimately this is part of what you have identified. It's a wish to not be powerless anymore, a desire to be the savior instead of the saved. And it also suggests that underneath Homura's adoration of Madoka there is also a very ugly jealously. Homura is constantly trying to prevent Madoka from being useful. Because to Homura it's too dangerous - but also because Homura wants to be the useful one.
But ironically it's Madoka who feels useless just like Homura does.
We've done some work on this with Homura already, but it's an important element not just for Madoka, but also for Homura for her to accept Madoka being able to contribute to important things.
Now, the big reward attached to all of this is really simple: if Homura's inability to see a way to become someone good-for-something and her horrific lack of everyman control knowledge are primary issues, fixing those problems ain't that hard. I have a blueprint-style vote in archive that I want some more time to refine and that, well -- just please don't ask me to post that right now but the point is I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how to address those problems in a way maximally comprehensible to Homura, maximally effective, maximally actionable. And the general course it's based on looks fucking spectacular, we lay out to her that these things actually are issues, we tell her they're fixable, we go about helping her fix them and in particular learn how to fix them herself and at the end of the quest we get to watch Homura cut down WPN in a timestop-fueled fusilade of arrows at the culmination of proving to her that she can become someone who can grasp the agency that she sought with her wish to begin with; not just the agency to not be stuck helplessly watching the light of her life go to her death but the agency to never again be helpless period. We also get to play Eye of the Tiger IC during Homura-centric training montages, explaining to her that "It's mandatory." It won't be perfect, don't get me wrong -- girl's been through so much trauma, becoming truly healthy will take a fucklong time, but ripping out the core problems will, uh, will go a long, long way towards that.
While this sounds really good, I don't think we have to do it all in one action or post.
Rather lets start by doing some simple things. For example, we were searching for something to talk about on our trip to Myanmar. Why not discuss the subject of mundane weapons not being as effective against witches as magical weapons.
That should probably open the option for a more in depth talk with Homura about what things she can do to better empower herself, so that she isn't helpless anymore.
Don't worry about her mental state. The way we're going to approach this is we're going to see if we can't get her to dissociate pretty heavily between her perception of "who she was" and "who she is now" (where "now" is, like, the near future IC). She has a pretty fucking entrenched view of herself as good-for-nothing, I don't see any value in trying to get her to stop thinking of the person she is in that way when we can present this to her as her "becoming someone better."
So, to summarize, you believe that Homura isn't stuck in her rut because she's focused on making each loop the last, but rather that her rut is a result of having tried everything she can think of already and having no idea where to go for more ideas.
I find that plausible.
What I'm not sure of is how this explains how even mentioning the existence of the potentialbomb is a destructive as it apparently is. Because what you've laid out works pretty well with how the potentialbomb itself could impact her, but it doesn't really explain why simply informing her there's an infohazard she doesn't already know about, and which she is particularly susceptible to will do damage.
The first is that this is a very selfish wish. It's probably the most selfish wish in the series. I always see people saying it's a selfless wish, but it's not.
It's not a wish to save Madoka, or at least not only that. It's also a wish to supplant Madoka, and ursurp her role as protector.
The immediate action Homura takes after taking her wish is to go tacklehug Madoka and exclaim about how happy she is that they'll get to be magical girls together. That is not the action of someone who wishes to supplant.
I understand where the misunderstanding comes from:
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!"
You're reading this as "Instead of Madoka being the one to protect me, I want to become the one to protect her."
That's not what is said there. Understand that Homura makes this wish immediately after watching the Light of her Life go to her death against Walpurgisnacht and leave Homura behind, helpless to do anything about it but watch and 'be protected'. No, between that and what's said after she first goes back in time, it's clear to me that what's being said is this:
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But instead of having it be that 'Madoka protects Homura who is helpless and useless', I want it to be that 'if there is something that threatens Madoka, I will be able to protect her!'"
There is no supplantment in that wish. If there were Homura and Madoka would not immediately have started fighting side by side. It is a wish coming from someone who was just made to stand aside and watch helplessly as the only person that has ever mattered to them went to die to a horrifically powerful witch. It is a wish that manifested an ultimate defense meant for multiple people's use: this is why Homura's shield is able to take passengers both into timestop and through time.
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!"
Homura's wish gives her the power to protect both herself and Madoka in any situation by stopping time and then bringing Madoka back in time, away from threat. It has exactly two components: Homura doesn't want Madoka protecting her, and she wants to be capable of protecting Madoka.
Nowhere in there is there any wish "to be Madoka's protector." It's the wish of a girl who wants to quit being fucking useless, to quit being left behind and 'protected', to quit being incapable of protecting the light of her life. Not someone who wants to put the light of her life in a box. That sort of desire came later, as the result of Homura's growing fears and waning self-esteem: as Homura grew less confident in her ability to protect Madoka from various threats, she grew more desirous of keeping Madoka away from those threats. "Madoka becoming a magical girl" became one such threat and that corrupted the reality into "Homura becomes Madoka's protector."
E: There's, like, a LOT more to say about this, a lot more I -have- said about it in discarded drafts, but also I've been writing for 8 continuous hours and I'm dead lol. If somebody would poke me about this in, eh, a couple days, I'd love to expand on it or at least post an explanation that isn't, like, this rambly lol.
So, to summarize, you believe that Homura isn't stuck in her rut because she's focused on making each loop the last, but rather that her rut is a result of having tried everything she can think of already and having no idea where to go for more ideas.
I find that plausible.
What I'm not sure of is how this explains how even mentioning the existence of the potentialbomb is a destructive as it apparently is. Because what you've laid out works pretty well with how the potentialbomb itself could impact her, but it doesn't really explain why simply informing her there's an infohazard she doesn't already know about, and which she is particularly susceptible to will do damage.
That one's easy: Homura is desperate for understanding. If we tell her there's an infohazard she wants to understand it. Instant potentialbomb, just add Homura. She literally does something identical in rebellion. Like, we watch her tear apart an ideal world trying to understand an infohazard, lol.
Iowa's throwing a wrench in a lot of our plans, yes, but we have more than a few opportunities just dropped in our lap here. We can establish an international presence- a positive one, seeing as Iowa was kind enough to provide a casus belli. We can start acting on these revelations regarding Homura right away, and in an unobtrusive manner re: everyone else, because no one will blink at enchanting your gear before battle (which is part of the problem, in hindsight). We make another step towards normalizing relations between the Kures and White Ribbon.
That one's easy: Homura is desperate for understanding. If we tell her there's an infohazard she wants to understand it. Instant potentialbomb, just add Homura.
Thank you, Kai. Your assessment also suggests an answer to one of the biggest Homura bonehead move in PMMM that I never understood. Where she tells Kyubey about the previous timeline, leading to the events of the rebellion movie.
Homura still trusts Kyubey.
She actually believes it's whole "I'm just being honest. You didn't ask the right questions. It's your own fault for not realizing." schtick. When Madoka asked how Kyubey could be so cruel, Homura answered that it didn't think it was being cruel. She doesn't actually get Kyubey's "lying with the truth" thing. More importantly, she doesn't get that this is in fact deception. Calculated deception even.
Ugh, with all the fans not getting this about Kyubey, I don't know how I missed that Homura was making the same mistake. If we tell her Kyubey knows a way to break her, she won't interpret that as Kyubey being able to manipulate and decieve her. She'll interpret it as Kyubey having factual information that if only Homura were reasonable and not emotionally compromised like Kyubey, she'd agree that it was right.
I mean, I knew her self-esteem was in the dumps, but somehow I missed Kyubey was someone she was actively looking up to and modeling herself after despite their antagonistic relationship.
Thank you, Kai. Your assessment also suggests an answer to one of the biggest Homura bonehead move in PMMM that I never understood. Where she tells Kyubey about the previous timeline, leading to the events of the rebellion movie.
Homura still trusts Kyubey.
She actually believes it's whole "I'm just being honest. You didn't ask the right questions. It's your own fault for not realizing." schtick. When Madoka asked how Kyubey could be so cruel, Homura answered that it didn't think it was being cruel. She doesn't actually get Kyubey's "lying with the truth" thing. More importantly, she doesn't get that this is in fact deception. Calculated deception even.
Ugh, with all the fans not getting this about Kyubey, I don't know how I missed that Homura was making the same mistake. If we tell her Kyubey knows a way to break her, she won't interpret that as Kyubey being able to manipulate and decieve her. She'll interpret it as Kyubey having factual information that if only Homura were reasonable and not emotionally compromised like Kyubey, she'd agree that it was right.
I mean, I knew her self-esteem was in the dumps, but somehow I missed Kyubey was someone she was actively looking up to and modeling herself after despite their antagonistic relationship.
We can start acting on these revelations regarding Homura right away, and in an unobtrusive manner re: everyone else, because no one will blink at enchanting your gear before battle (which is part of the problem, in hindsight).
This is excellent work! Although for me in particular, half of it is debunking a point of view I never learned.
If I can summarize to check my own understanding: Homura has been constrained to a fairly narrow scope of exploration in her strategies to defeat Walpurgisnacht because her abusive upbringing discouraged her from wide-ranging exploration. She did actually explore within the space of things she thought would be useful for defeating Walpurgisnacht. Repeated failures reinforced her belief that she was not the kind of person who could accomplish the goal. The point of her wish was that she might one day change this, and personally defeating Walpurgisnacht would be extremely helpful in short-circuiting her self-concept as a useless person. The efficacy of the potentialbomb stems from her interpreting it as her own fault that she can't do this one thing that matters to her.
I think supercharging a magical attack sounds like a generally viable scheme for defeating walpurgisnacht. Out of all the possible outcomes of that fight, I would be totally fine with the outcome if we, like, gather our allies, tell them that Homura made a wish related to this and we'd like to give her first crack at it, and then she shoots Walpurgisnacht (even if she has to charge up an attack for some absurdly long time from within timestop) and it's all a bit anticlimactic.
However, more immediately interesting to me is the idea that a lot of odd Homura things are things she'd be happy to do differently if people bothered to explain themselves more. I have a friend who grew up in an abusive background, and I have a protocol by which I can explain things they might have missed when they were younger and occupied with other concerns. And also, I'm interested in ways to generally expand Homura's social support network. She still only really opens up to Sabrina. Also, it makes me even more interested in trying to flip Oriko and Kirika from "possibly dangerous, check on them constantly" to friends.
Just because we address her wish doesn't mean we shouldn't also try to care for the basic stuff (which isn't a position I'm saying you disagree with), is what I'm getting at. More talking openly with friends, more life experience, more healthy self-concept, etc.
I'unno, let's figure out a way for her self-concept to take credit for "They're a menace to lots of people and Madoka, so my friends and I went and took them down before they had time to realize they ought to be worried". No, she's not doing it all herself, but she's part of a team and we couldn't do it without her.
As I've mentioned before, early-loop Homura jumped at the chance to go examine a city where magical girls don't turn into witches, in Magia Record. The metaphysics may not apply, but the characterization should. That's not the action of someone who isn't willing to look for alternative approaches to solving her problems. So... yeah. The real issue is her abysmal social skills, which both directly kept her from trying to resolve some of her problems with social (as we've done with great success) and kept her from finding someone to brainstorm with to help overcome her other issues.
