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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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...... the more I think about the more I think Madoka is like the *perfect* person for someone like Homura to learn to social with. She won't judge. If you ask her questions to make sure she understands what you said she won't get mad. She's just overall *nice* as long as your trying to talk to her in an honest attempt to be friends.

Like the only other person that might work as well might by Mami (because Mami).

On the other hand... I kinda want to accidentally create a new moe Homura! She's awesome in combat, unflabble under stress!.... blushes and and is adorable when trying to make friends!

Maybe give her rimless or wireframe glasses then the horn rimmed types.... if only because I feel like Homura doing a 'are you stupid' glare OVER the rims of her glasses would be a devestating weapon.
 
[] Show your first meeting with Homura.
-[] You weren't charming there. For part of it you were outright robotic. She still left that conversation trusting you more than when it started.

[] Go over some of Homura's social successes, like inviting Mami on the hunt by the hospital, and also other things that I'm probably going to spend the week looking for. Tell her what she did right.
 
Orchestrator said:
Or, if they are not able to process it all without Witching, give it to them piece by piece, over time.
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Mami is not witchbombed. Do not mention witching out when Mami is here.


On another note, I'm thinking it might be productive to point out that Homura's efforts to get Madoka to hate her have failed utterly. Because I do not believe we ever have or ever will see a loop where Madoka hates Homura. Even when Madoka was afraid of Homura, she never hated her. Nothing Homura has done has pushed her past the point of no return with Madoka caring about her, and we know for an absolute fact that if Madoka knew the full list of things Homura has done, she would call Homura her best friend. Given all the guilt Homura feels for, among other things, that mercy killing, I imagine that discusssion would likely loop back around to her thinking that just means Madoka's too nice for her own good, but we've also seen some of Homura's darkest moments and we still don't think she's a bad person.

Anyway, what Homura accomplished there was not making her hate Homura and/or Magical Girls. What she accomplished was demonstrating that Magical Girl business was deadly serious. And that is not a bad thing. It is definitely something Sabrina has struggled with. We're constantly torn between trying not to make Madoka so worried she feels compelled to wish to help us and trying not to make the Magical Girl lifestyle seem so safe and glamorous that she'll use her wish frivolously, which we know she's prone to doing.

I'd like to ask why Homura was using the magical bolts against Kyubey in that situation. Her usual guns are actually a pretty good way of conveying "This is not a game. This is deadly serious." Given what a deviation from her usual combat behavior it is, I'd like to touch on it. We've seen her do the same thing when she was bluffing Sayaka to try to snap her out of a grief spiral, and again, gun to the head is a more obvious, visceral threat. Is it that she couldn't bring herself to point a gun at her friends, so she went with the magical bolts as a compromise? Was she trying to appear more otherworldly and alien so they would view her as more of a threat?

I think the most important thing we can do for Homura is get her talking and listen to her. Let her drive the conversation and use our questions and comments to prompt her to start talking on her end. Because her not talking is pretty central to her social problems.
 
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She has a very Kyubey-esque way of talking, doesn't she? Literal, blunt, to the point, dispassionate to a degree that comes off as rude...

She just doesn't have Bunnycat-Satan's bunnycat-ness, so she can't get away with it. (Also she isn't a heartless sociopath, so she actually cares about how she affects other people, even if she tries to be inured to it)

[X] Kaizuki
 
Sovereign Hunt said:
She has a very Kyubey-esque way of talking, doesn't she? Literal, blunt, to the point, dispassionate to a degree that comes off as rude...

She just doesn't have Bunnycat-Satan's bunnycat-ness, so she can't get away with it. (Also she isn't a heartless sociopath, so she actually cares about how she affects other people, even if she tries to be inured to it)
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Honestly, I suspect she got it from Kyubey. With all her issues, the thing I'm most concerned about with Homura is that I think she actually admires Kyubey and doesn't fully get what kind of a manipulative bastard he is, treating him kind of as a role model due to how good he is at this social thing.

I mean, look at Homura's social skills. These are not the skills of someone who has a firm grasp on the sort of subtle manipulations that are Kyubey's stock in trade. I believe Homura actually beleives his "not technically lying" schtick. Before we break on our Homusocial, I want to bring that up and make sure she understands Kyubey is not to be trusted. It isn't well suited this vote, but I want it covered.
 
Hanging out for nine years with The Incubator isn't good for anyone, even if you know it is an enemy. In between checking it for a pulse, she actually talked to it / listened to it frequently.
This isn't where her problem comes from?
The roots are actually more comprehensive, from what we know.

What do we know?
Homura became an orphan, at some point. Either interrupted bonds with parents, or incapable parent / parents.
Homura was raised for some period in a low-quality orphanage. Hit-or-miss developmental progress in expected.
Homura spent a high-stress period as an in-patient, without real parents. Her "authority figures" were staff, social workers, nurses and doctors.
Homura also adopted one line of dialog straight out of popular sword movies.


Who taught Homura how to social, then?

We best get to "We know what you are feeling, here's how to tell that to other people using signaling and context."
Lessons, starting with a small one now.
Work through the steps.
 
Torgamous said:
If only she'd pulled from Terminator 2 instead, everything would be okay.
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Shadowhisker said:
Well, if their magical experiments tend to turn out badly, and this time they're intentionally trying to make something bad (magical Skynet), maybe those will chancel out? :thonk:
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Angrygenius said:
"Where is Madoka Ka-"
"NO."
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DB_Explorer said:
Madoka:.... actually can we give Homura a leather jacket?
Sarbina:.. wait wh-
Homura: Done
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By the way, this is like the third time the Terminator franchise has been brought up while I was here.

Some kinda strange version of Godwin's law?
 
Angrygenius said:
By the way, this is like the third time the Terminator franchise has been brought up while I was here.

Some kinda strange version of Godwin's law?
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Something something timetravel something something looping something something inevitability something something determinism something something similar themes something something come with me if you want to live.
 
[JK] if you want to be charming like us, the answer is simple! Dilate your perception of time to a month per social interaction and hotwire your brain to another universe to outsource your social problems! Works with only minimal brain damage!
 
Ace98 said:
[JK] if you want to be charming like us, the answer is simple! Dilate your perception of time to a month per social interaction and hotwire your brain to another universe to outsource your social problems! Works with only minimal brain damage!
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¨Look at your Homura. Then back to me. Then back to Homura. Then back to me. Sadly, Homura is not me, but she could be charming like me if she had amnesia and brain damage instead of angst and time travel loops."
"Ummm..."
"Look down. Now back up. We're in Asunaro with the girl your Homura could be charming like if she had amnesia and brain damage."
"Uhhhhhhhhhh....."
"What's in your hand? Back at me. I have it, it's in this microwave. Two unlimited tokens to the arcade! Look again. THE TOKENS ARE NOW MAMI!"
"Hello!"
"Anything is possible when your Homura is charming because of Brain damage and not angst. I'm on a motorcycle."
"Teach me."
 
Don't know if it's been brought up yet, but based on Madoka's personality, fear was almost certainly never the reason that Madoka delayed contracting. Shes the type of person that is entirely willing to sacrifice her Soul for pretty much anyone in need. No, I'm fairly certain that (after getting a bit of a better read on Homura) she didn't contract entirely because she realized that it would hurt Homura if she did (and her friends and family would be hurt if she died, so the dangers of Meguca ARE a small deterrent).

I mean we saw it when we first arrived in this universe, Madoka wasn't scared of Homura, she was even trying help her make peace with Mami's.

Of course that sort of reasoning only goes so far until the good she can do by contracting outweighs the bad of hurting Homura.
 
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I'm not totally happy with the votes I've seen, so I'm going to give it a shot on my end. As always, feel free to canibalize stuff that looks like it could help and point out any obvious problems I'm too dense to notice on my own.

[X] Continue to be flexible with precise wording, order, etc. Try to draw Homura into talking, because this shouldn't be a lecture.
[X] See, this is why this needs to be a two-way conversation. We looked at the situation from the outside and assumed you didn't realize how you were coming across. It's not the first time we've made mistakes like that and won't be the last.
-[X] Making mistakes is a big part of how you grow socially, and even when you've mastered it, you don't stop making mistakes. You just get better at recovering from them and moving forward.
[X] We don't like people hating Homura, so we'd appreciate it if she would stop trying to get people to hate her.
-[X] Beyond our obvious preference, people who hate you are a lot less likely to listen to your warnings. And you have a lot of things people need to be warned about.
--[X] The fact that Madoka listened to Homura's warning and became more hesitant to contract is a sign Homura didn't succeed in getting her to hate her.
[X] Sayaka thinks you're cool because you are cool.
-[X] She hasn't realized that obvious fact before now because she hasn't gotten to know you well enough before now. All we've been doing is help Sayaka get to know Homura well enough to see it.
[X] Conversations involve two people, and sometimes the problem isn't on your end.
-[X] All our friends have issues. They're all a little broken in their own way. You've seen a little of that with Kyoko and wasting food. Everyone's like that. Kyoko's just more obvious about it.
--[X] Ask Homura to tell us about how she learned about Kyoko's trigger so we can try to generalize that a bit to the rest of our friends.
---[X] How did she change her approach to Kyoko after she learned about it, both in that loop and in future loops?
---[X] Has she learned other things like that?
[X] Don't autopilot to the end of the conversation.
 
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I'm not entirely happy with any of the choices. They all have some good wordings or good points, but they're all flawed in their own ways. For now, I'll go with

[X] Nerevar

@Kaizuki , @Raiseth : there is a lot of ground to cover, and a number of subjects we want to cover, but we're still early into this conversation. It's better to prioritize what is more important for laying the foundation of this conversation--it's important that Homura understand some of the fundamentals (everyone makes mistakes; experience helps you avoid many of them and recover from the ones that you do make; being flawed or inadequate in some way(s) can help people like you more or feel more comfortable with you; better and more open communication results in better relationships; good first impressions are important; properly emoting is something to practice and utilize as much as possible to make others more comfortable with and trusting of you, etc). And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this conversation to convince Homura to move in with Sabrina and Mami? Is that the end-goal we're going to work towards in this conversation, or are we just going to ask her to do it at the end of the conversation, as its own thing?
 
SaltyWaffles said:
And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this conversation to convince Homura to move in with Sabrina and Mami? Is that the end-goal we're going to work towards in this conversation, or are we just going to ask her to do it at the end of the conversation, as its own thing?
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That's in the books?
Huh, need to revise my strategy.
 
Raiseth said:
That's in the books?
Huh, need to revise my strategy.
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Keep in mind that Homura's taken the conversation into a different direction regardless. Unless things naturally flow towards that issue (or present an opportunity to bring that issue up), it's better to address what Homura is clearly so at a loss for now (how to social, and the importance of making friends/allies when tackling something that is just too difficult to face alone), and then bring up the subject of her moving in with Sabrina and Mami at the end (or, if she's really in no state to think about that on top of the other stuff, just suggest that she stay the night over at Mami's).
 
SaltyWaffles said:
And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this conversation to convince Homura to move in with Sabrina and Mami? Is that the end-goal we're going to work towards in this conversation, or are we just going to ask her to do it at the end of the conversation, as its own thing?
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The goal of this conversation is exactly what Sabrina said the goal of this conversation was. Homura moving in with us may have, at some point, been considered as a way to help with that goal, but it's not a goal in and of itself.
 
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