Saving the Bluenette (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

What should I do with the epilogue?

  • Total voters
    26
Reader mode
Cookiesndip said:
How is that poetic justice? If anything it's the exact opposite.

What Madoka pulled is relationship ending, especially how it was not only premeditated, but was done immediately once Homura had finally won, after decades of effort and a lifetime of suffering from her looping, and her life previous that was bereft of happiness as well. Madoka's planning spanned most of the timelines post-100, and her calculation to only betray and make the wish when she confirmed that they were finally strong enough to beat her with Walpy's death is even crueler. And you know, the only reason Madoka could even make that wish in the first place, or why everyone could easily overpower her was because of Homura looping for decades trying to save everyone, and they used her efforts to utterly deny Homura's own wish at the moment of her victory.

To be frank, Homura's faith in her was broken here in every fashion possible, as is her relationship with her friends. It'd be a long damn time before she can forgive them, if at all, though Homura is also liable to commit suicide in despair and blame herself for being too damn stupid, unloveable and worthless of a failure as well, a more extreme version of her mindset in Rebellion since she lost her anchor in the cruelest fashion possible. Even if she did recover, I don't think she could bring herself to ever truly trust them again either, she had enough problems with trust in canon due to being constantly chided, distrusted, and hated by her friends, and this didn't happen.

I think a bittersweet ending that doesn't outright reward Madoka for falling to her critical flaw (inability to understand how her actions affect those around her) is far more fitting than a pure happy ending. After all, something that I found was core to PMMM were character flaws driving people to grow beyond them (Kyoko, Rebellion!Sayaka), or suffering because of them (Sayaka, Mami), and in some cases both (Madoka and Homura), but never rewarding anyone for falling to them. That's why I think it'd be a better, more impactful ending if Madoka wins her utopia and godhood, but never regains the love of the girl that had sacrificed everything for her. I mean, PMMM's wishes are all about karmic potential, and her's was gained purely through Homura's efforts, yet trampled on her wish, so having it influence the ending would make sense.

Regardless, there has to be a fitting reponse here. If it's just glossed over and Homura goes back to her friends immediately like an abused housewife, it'd give a sour taste to the whole thing, since it'd affirm that 'yes Madoka is 100% justified', rather than the more ambiguous presentation. It's very much a matter of the 'needs of the many' v.s. 'the needs of the few', which doesn't have a true morally correct answer, but the price of pursuing the former at the expense of the latter shouldn't be discounted, and nor should the exceptionally cruel way it was done, to their main ally at that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


100% agree with all of this. Frankly I'd expect homura to be in suicidal territory after this stunt. It's bad enough that her friends sabotage her and cause her to fail when they don't know anything, but even when she succeeds, she now knows that her friends will knowingly go behind her back and do their utmost in destroying her victory. Her so called "friends" were happy to lie to her and physically restrain her while the one thing she's been working for decades to prevent occurs in front of her eyes.

It's betrayal to the maximum level. So homura gets to walk away from the loops not only with an incredible amount of trauma and abysmal self esteem, but also trust issues that will likely last the rest of her life (are hypothetical new people she meets also going to break her trust and ruin her life's work?)

And the epilogue doesn't help by doubling down with "Homura stop! Your trauma and emotions don't matter anymore! I fixed everything!" And "homura you were wrong but we forgive you." As if she was the one who needed to be forgiven. It leaves an awful taste in the mouth. The idea that homura kills herself is literally more palatable to me than what happened. But madoka almost definitely wouldn't allow her to choose her own death either so a breaking of friendship as she separates from the group is probably the best possible conclusion here.

Still, I don't think you should do a rewrite. Changing the epilogue wouldn't be enough for one thing, but also I doubt your heart would be in it anyways.
 
Last edited:
homustan said:
Still, I don't think you should do a rewrite. Changing the epilogue wouldn't be enough for one thing, but also I doubt your heart would be in it anyways.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've tried putting distance between myself and what's been written so I could be more objective, but I'm still in the middle of processing what I wrote, even now, so my reply will be disjointed.

My interpretation of Homura is that she's just tired, so much so that even vocalizing a feeling of betrayal is too much for her to manage—which was also how I felt while writing the epilogue, so much of that emotion likely shone through.

(The forgiveness isn't unidirectional: Homura actually forgives Madoka before Madoka forgives her.)

Many of your complaints (about the rest of MSY "destroying Homura's life's work") seem predicated on Madoka's godhood not being a instant win condition for everybody. The MSY chasing Homura and Madoka formulating her wish weren't acts of malice: They were just an honest effort to do the greatest good possible for the greatest number of people, including Madoka herself. In terms of their results, they were actually a significant improvement on Homura's endgame goals.

I wonder if the epilogue would've been better received if Homura had personally helped to orchestrate Madoka's wish, such that Homura could act on others without being acted upon. Homura gets outsmarted in the penultimate chapter before the epilogue, and if readers identify with her strongly, I'd expect those chapters to be deeply discomfiting.
 
TropicalNun said:
Many of your complaints (about the rest of MSY "destroying Homura's life's work") seem predicated on Madoka's godhood not being a instant win condition for everybody.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Just pointing out that Madoka had literally no reason to believe herself entirely exempt from the system, no matter the wish, just that she could make any wish. The end-result could have easily gone awry and caused Madoka to become an evil goddess, since the system heavily leans on the concept of equivalent exchange. It could have even broken her as a person altogether with the wish or time, making her the biblical god with all that entails, or is gradually corrupted by her own hubris and omnipotence even ignoring her 'friends' agency and feelings entirely. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, after all, Homura has shown to do jack shit but torture herself with unlimited power, but Madoka 'I want to save everyone' sitting on her laurels with infinite power? Doubtful.

There is precedent with wraiths replacing witches, as well. Point being, she had a good 50/50 chance of basically destroying the universe or becoming the big evil, while basically destroying the sole person who made them powerful enough to do so in the process at the moment of their victory. Just because it didn't end catastrophically doesn't make it okay. Worse, it was calculated, planned, and not loop-exclusive, this is something Madoka had been concealing for dozens of loops, at least, and executed in an exceptionally brutal method.

The epilogue was a slap in the face too really, Madoka seems borderline abusive, and more importantly, barely seems to care or empathize with Homura as a person beyond anyone else, like she's just another of her friends. I think the worst aspect is that they victim-blame as hard as possible, and immediately asks for a wish when she's at rock bottom, rather than actually helping her. I saw Homura's affirmation more as her giving up any delusions or hopes of anything she had entirely.

PMMM is all about equivalent exchange, though who pays is an entirely different question, and even then, like soul gems, with every blessing, an equal, often ironic curse in fate. Sayaka paid for Kyousuke's hand to be healed, but lost her reasons to do so, his heart and her heroism. Kyouko paid for her father's words to be heeded so they could eke out a living, but he saw her as a witch and went mad, killing everyone and subsequently rendered her homeless and destitute. Mami paid for her own survival, but unintentionally led many innocents to their deaths and lost the connections that made that worthwhile.

However, Madoka and Homura are a bit different due to their acausal, atemporal natures. From an achronological perspective, Homura paid to save/protect Madoka through a decade or so of constant failure, hatred from her old friends, and immense suffering. Due to the nature of her wish, Homura becoming Homuicifer was a fait accompli the moment Madoka made her wish, because the scales must always be balanced, and if an godlike entity comes into existence representing hope and offers salvation to puella magi as they die, one must also exist representing despair. If Madoka gained karmic potential from Homura's efforts, so did she herself, for woven and weaver are equally important. For both of them, their beginning's and ends are intertwined so heavily that neither can likely exist as they are without the other either. Superceding the system for good needs them both to work together, as both their respective worlds are flawed in their own ways.

Even Godoka herself isn't wholly exempt from the system, it just seemed like it due to the nature of her wish by destroying Gretchen's endpoint and basically committing temporal suicide. Just like witches were replaced with wraiths, Gretchen's absence necessitated being replaced by Homucifer. Canon Madoka didn't actually change the base mechanics at all, merely redistributed it with grief cube availability, comparatively weaker wraiths, and Incubator incentives shifted to want to draw out a puella magi's lifespan to maximize ROI, from them leading the sheep to the slaughter to mass-produce witches, to puella magi becoming what are essentially farmers.
 
Last edited:
Cookiesndip said:
snip
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We've been going back and forth on this for weeks across both Sufficient Velocity and SpaceBattles and I think we're at an impasse. You powerfully dislike the fic's ending because it disagrees with your analysis of Madoka as a franchise (among other things), to which I don't have much to say except, "This is the story that I outlined; I wasn't scoring myself by your rubric."

I've tried thinking of minor edits that I could make to at least make the epilogue less frustrating to readers who are angry with Madoka, and my two ideas were to have Madoka apologize more deeply and to have her hug Homura (or similar), but when I reread I see:

"I'm sorry for deceiving you," said Madoka. "I wanted to do something to deserve how hard you fought for me. I just couldn't do it where you could see."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They didn't hug – Madoka sensed that Homura was lying down to steady herself. Madoka considered taking Homura's hand but thought better of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

EDIT: I could take out the part where Madoka clutches Homura by the lapels while shouting that they've all just won.
 
Last edited:
Honestly i don't think minor edits would work. Maybe the "Madoka&co talked it over with Homura beforehand" will, and (maybe) for the reasons you stated; "analysis of Madoka as a franchise (among other things)". And that's the issue; everyone is over thinking it, and not in the right way. Homura is a person(...well, a character in a story, but one who is supposed to act like a person), not a "theme". I doubt Homura will ever be truly happy with Madoka making any wish as she is now goes she's had to go through so much and failed so many times she's...well you can all see. If given time to actually see how everyone, including Madoka and Mami(her best friend she has been trying to save for years, and her girlfriend), she should at least get somewhat better. Maybe not happy, but enough to at least accept this outcome.
And honestly what if she hadn't made this or the canon Wish, and Madoka stayed a normal girl? The Incubators would have always tried to make her make a Wish, and probably would have gotten more extreme the older she got. So like it or not this does save Madoka and her loved ones, if only from desperate(...for lack of a better term for a race that says and does kind of act emotionless) sociopaths with reality warping powers. Hell, one of the reasons i love this story is cause Madoka's Wish leads everyone to actually having a happy ending, instead of just a less crappy one.

---Update---
Does any of this make sense? I will be the first to admit i am bad at articulation in general, let alone what's going on in my head. i have gotten better in years but still have issues, and something like this is one of those things that has always given me trouble.
 
Last edited:
Fate/Online said:
---Update---
Does any of this make sense? I will be the first to admit i am bad at articulation in general, let alone what's going on in my head. i have gotten better in years but still have issues, and something like this is one of those things that has always given me trouble.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think you're mostly fine, though I did have some trouble parsing you on first reading, mostly because the break between your two paragraphs didn't render well on my phone (so I saw the entire post as a single block of text).

I read your post as:
  • Minor edits wouldn't make dissatisfied readers happy
  • Substantial edits to the epilogue and Chapter 5 (to thematically and narratively accord with what Cookiesndip's been saying) might be enough
  • People are making a mistake by analyzing the characters' actions at a metanarrative level; they're just people with motivations who won't fit a pattern
  • Homura is deeply, deeply broken, but the power of friendship might help
And then:
  • Any timeline in which Madoka doesn't contract leaves her (to an extent) at the Incubators' mercy
  • You like the fact that the fic has (roughly speaking) a genuinely happy ending
I'm a perfectionist and I do want to go back and revisit the fic's ending – since enough people are complaining to make me think that the text needs to give them better answers, so I probably need to change something – but I've been busy the past month with important life stuff. It might come soon or never, depending on how things work out.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, that's all what i was trying to say.

Wish i could help on that revisit but i have no real idea where to even begin with it.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Back
Top