"Too much is changing," Homura says. She frowns at you, not in anger, or in anguish, just... contemplative. "You've done... a lot. I don't know how to plan for this, either."
"My plans are, were because I had... tried it all before. I could change things. Try a different way." Homura breathes out, a slow, heavy sigh. "None of it worked." Violet eyes lock onto yours. "At least Mikuni's plans didn't work, either."
(1): Homura implies that she consistently relies on the outcomes of past loops to determine what actions she should take.
"I wanted to scare her," Homura whispers. "I can't- it hurt her, I know it did, but. Scaring her worked. Show her the bad things about magical girls, and she wouldn't Wish until she was pushed."
She takes a shuddering, shaky breath.
"It's- it's the closest thing that's come to working," she says, her voice low and choked and pained. "Scare her. Make her hate me, hate magical girls. I- I can't be charming like you. She- Sayaka called me cool yesterday. Madoka is- Madoka."
(2): Considering (1), Homura implies that based on the outcomes of past loops she has concluded that scaring Madoka is the most workable option for achieving her goals.
I- I can't be charming like you. She- Sayaka called me cool yesterday. Madoka is- Madoka."
(3): Homura implies that "Sayaka calling her cool" is not only something that has never happened, but that it is something
desirable.
Conclusion One: literally just based on the contents of quote (3) it's pretty clear that Homura believes
Sabrina is primarily responsible for how Mitakihara is treating Homura differently this loop. That view is demonstrably false and incredibly toxic, and I refuse to support anything that doesn't smash it straightaway, because on the far side of "demolish that view" is "Homura recognizes that she is partly responsible for the improvements of this loop."
Conclusion Two: Homura doesn't recognize that the differences between who she was and who she has become could have a major impact on how a "befriend Mitakihara" loop would play out. Homura is responsible for how Mitakihara is treating her differently than they used to. She thinks that how Mitakihara is treating her now is Good,
and she believes that Sabrina is primarily responsible for the treatment. This follows clearly from that: if she doesn't recognize that the differences in who she is have this impact, there's no way she recognizes that this impact could be expected in a hypothetical loop.
The Extremely Important Thing that I want to stress here is that teaching Homura how to social isn't the golden goose that we want to hatch in this conversation. It would be nice, but it's a minor consideration at best compared to what we
want, which is to convince Homura that it is in fact possible for her to grow in ways that lead to her being more capable of winning the loops, because
that is what nullifies the impact of the potentialbomb. So, given the opportunity to establish that
that has already happened -- that Homura's growth as a person has given her the ability to achieve better outcomes trying things she's tried in the past -- we
desperately want to do it. And it's just
right here in front of our face.
In a similar vein, Mami did a total one-eighty on Homura during/after the timestop hunt, and the big driver for that wasn't anything
we did, it was the things Homura showed Mami during that timestop. That's also worth pulling up.
[X] What you're doing right now is looking for the places where Homura's understanding conflicts with what you know.
//Literally just stop the "charming" thing. Just stop it. It's irrelevant by comparison anyway.
-[X] You
know, that
Homura is the person primarily responsible for how Sayaka is treating her differently from any past loop. Pretty much the only thing you had to do to cause this was to put the two of them in a situation where they were around each other without Sayaka being convinced that Homura was her enemy, and it's not like that situation hasn't occurred in the past without causing this. Given that, what things does she think are different about her or her actions that would cause this?
--[X] Talk this through with Homura and Mami. Potentially using holograms of scenes from the anime, go through all the visible differences between then-Homura and now-Homura that you and Mami feel would contribute to this.
---[X] At least some emphasis should land on the fact that Homura has a ton of experience behind her now and is consistently signaling that fact whether she means to or not. Try to break things down into as much detail as possible.
//It almost doesn't even matter what we say here. I'm down to leave this entirely up to Firn, Sabrina, and Mami. Adding the next bit shores this up so well that I just no longer care. Mami and Brina can come up with whatever detailwork they want.
---[X] You
also know that
Homura is largely responsible for how quickly Mami went from seeing her as an opponent to seeing her as a friend... And you don't think that Homura has the slightest clue how that worked. Would Mami explain? (Reference: the timestop hunt)
//I have reread timestop hunt so many times now. Mami gets a good look at Homura and that's the end of that. Simultaneously, there's no point in the entire thing where Homura gets even a moderate indication of that process going on in Mami's head.
[X] Ask Homura when the last time she tried convincing everyone to listen to her was.
The worst possible outcome here is that we get to dig up all the little things Homura doesn't understand about social interaction, which is considerably more desirable than talking about "how to do X", no matter
what X is, because figuring out what Homura does and doesn't understand is... well, it gates teaching her about social, honestly. The best possible outcome is a, ah...
Homu-run.
We know -- because it's canon -- that Something is wrong with Homura's learning process.
My current theory is that Homura isn't clearly recognizing all the inputs to a scenario -- just the chain of actions she's performing.
Okay, after a good night's sleep, I see why Torg's plan was speaking to me. Because by "Charm", Homura means "Manipulation". And it's something we've struggled with throughout the quest for largely the same reason Homura has struggled with it. And I think this is a good place to really bare our soul. Not coincidentally, that's also modeling good behavior for Homura in terms of what she needs to do.
[X] "Charming" is sort of the problem. Kyubey is charming. He puts on a cheerful, outgoing facade and has a million years of experience pushing everyone's buttons to get just the reaction he wants.
-[X] Homura and Sabrina are both prone the mistake of treating social as pushing the right buttons. We know things about the people around us that makes pushing buttons easier after all.
--[X] Sabrina's got a track record of failure when she approaches things that way. Things have worked out well for Sabrina when she was EARNEST.
[X] Show
the first timestop conversation with Homura, with us going all robotic. This was private time with Homura, so she can say no to showing it to Mami, but we think it will help.
-[X] We weren't being "charming" there by any definition of the word.
--[X] What we were doing there was letting our guard down. We were honest with Homura about what we knew, what we didn't know, and importantly, what we were feeling.
[X] Show
the conversation with Mami the day after the Lichbomb. This was private time with Mami so she can say no to showing it to Homura, but we think it will help.
-[X] Explain how we were hiding our feelings there, being superficially charming, putting on a goofy fascade, and that was just screwing things up worse.
--[X] Explain how we corrected course and things got better because we started being honest about how we felt.
[X] Show some of Homura successfully connecting with people. Joking with everyone, inviting Mami to hunt at the hospital, Sayaka deferring to her or calling her Captain Ahab.
-[X] Homura finds those successes mysterious because she wasn't trying to manipulate those positive reactions but they came anyway.
--[X] It wasn't Sabrina performing a miracle for Homura. It was Homura letting her guard down and letting her friends get to know her. Making an earnest connection.
[X] There's a difference between earnest and honest that's taken us a while to work out, with the Lichbomb being a great example of us getting the two mixed up
-[X] We aren't being "honest" about the straightforward, raw facts.
--[X] We're hiding infobombs and specific metaknowledge from people and sometimes telling outright bald faced lies to keep those secrets. We try to limit it, but we're doing it.
-[X] We are being "earnest", showing our real feelings for our friends and allies, and they're responding to that.
--[X] You don't have to tell people you're a time traveler or all the horrible things you know are endangering them in order to tell them that you're worried about them and you want to protect them.
This has some very good points in it. "Earnest" in particular
is essentially my preference for behavior in this quest.
There are some issues with it. The convo with Mami after the lichbomb doesn't seem a strong example to me, forex.
But the actual
problem I have with it is that it's missing the bullseye offered up to us by this other thing. Which is completely unacceptable because this is -- well, see above.
I will say -- this line I'm adding:
---[X] You also know that Homura is largely responsible for how quickly Mami went from seeing her as an opponent to seeing her as a friend... And you don't think that Homura has the slightest clue how that worked. Would Mami explain?
will result in a lot of the same things some of the lines in your proposal are targetting. This block e.g.:
[X] Show some of Homura successfully connecting with people. Joking with everyone, inviting Mami to hunt at the hospital, Sayaka deferring to her or calling her Captain Ahab.
-[X] Homura finds those successes mysterious because she wasn't trying to manipulate those positive reactions but they came anyway.
--[X] It wasn't Sabrina performing a miracle for Homura. It was Homura letting her guard down and letting her friends get to know her. Making an earnest connection.
is better serviced just by talking about the timestop hunt which is the high point of "Homura letting her guard down and someone else getting to know her." Mami grabs on to how worried Homura is, how quick Homura is to ally with her, Homura having that nightmare... and that's that. Took Homura a single night to do something she's probably still convinced is totally impossible for her to do.
