Salty

Inconsistent art style because I’m still experimenting I have a terminal mdhm brain rot Previously goes as Any0neee

[fishesauce]

Salty Art’s Tags

#salty art <-(My art tags. View all my arts & doodles here)

#oc art <-(Original character arts)

[atamascolily]

Sometimes I wish more Madoka Magica fans were familiar with Thunderbolt Fantasy - Gen Urobuchi's wuxia fantasy puppet epic - because he keeps using certain tropes there that I think will also appear in Walpurgis no Kaiten and it's difficult to explain without context. I'll try to keep the TBF discussion to a minimum here, but there's a remark from an interview with Urobuchi about TBF season 4 on the Febri website from February 2025 (English translation by Hibari) that's stuck with me:

Unintentionally, I came back to destiny…the essence of being human. I think that people are people because they are not able to change the past and cannot defy the future, and I always return to this topic when I am writing science fiction. It’s a kind of an ode to humanity.

You see why this is relevant to WnK, right? Homura's wish is to change the past, and she struggles continually because it goes against the way the world works. But the fact that she tries is what makes her human. The heroes in Urobuchi's works are those who fight the inevitable and believe in choice and free will; his villains are nihilists who believe themselves to be enforcers of destiny.

(I don't really want to revive a bunch of discourse here, but while Madoka Magica can be interpreted through a feminist lens, that doesn't automatically mean that Urobuchi himself is a feminist. Rather, as his remarks here attest, I think Urobuchi is fundamentally humanist - which ends up appearing as feminist in Madoka Magica because of the predominantly female cast pitted against a male-coded avatar of an oppressive system. Unfortunately, his shows with mixed gendered casts do not fare so well for the female characters, but that's a discussion for another time.)

Anyway, without going too far into Thunderbolt Fantasy spoilers, in later seasons, there is a demon named Azibelpher - the name is not subtle - who manipulates time to his own advantage. In classic Urobuchi fashion, this comes with horrendously awful unexpected consequences, as the luxurious life he desired essentially destroys him and he spends most of his time lounging around and drinking in ennui. The price of getting what you want is getting what you want, even (especially) for a demon:

It’s the same as how a game becomes boring once you use cheat codes. Because they cannot defy destiny, people are human, they feel happiness and sadness, but if they gain the ability to change destiny however they like, they lose something as a human being, that’s probably the basic idea.

It's hard not to read this passage and not think of Devil Homura slouching on her throne in the WnK trailer. Having complete control over everything and shaping the world according to her desires is not good for her mentally or emotionally on so many levels. Having intentionally embraced the role of a villain, she is unable to stop, and yet in spite of all her power, she has lost something important in the process. This is on top of the fact that she's attempting to defy fate - she is doubly doomed to fail.

Homura has created a perfect world, but one of the recurring themes in Urobuchi's works is that we need to experience both good and bad things in order to be fully human; for better or worse, it is our struggles are what make us who we are. In Madoka Magica, this view is espoused by Madoka in episode 10 when Homura proposes becoming witches and destroying the world; in Madoka's view, the world is worth saving in spite of the pain and suffering and in that scene I think she represents both the show's core beliefs and those of Urobuchi.

As a writer, Urobuchi really loves this kind of dualism and contrast between characters, which is one reason why I think the series will ultimately end with Madoka and Homura balanced as cosmic forces in a world where both joy and sorrow (and magical girls and witches) coexist. If our humanity comes from fighting fate, true maturity also comes from accepting what we cannot change and loving the world as it is in spite of everything (while still holding true to our values and changing what we can).

But back to Urobuchi again:

Science fiction is, in the end, a genre that often leads to the question of how to define being human. When I try to depict that in my way, I don’t try to show “This is the essence of being human” or “This is great about people,” but rather tend to imagine “What are people lacking that makes them human?” In this setting, I often write characters that attain what they are lacking and thereby lose their humanity as villains. That is intentional, to a degree, but also a kind of compulsion, that makes me notice “I wound up coming here again…” (laughs)

What does losing your humanity mean in a post-Rebellion world and what does it look like? My guess is this is where the second Homura comes in - as a splitting of the self that arises as an unintended but inevitable consequence of Homura's actions. (Conveniently, this kind of splitting already exists in the lore and even has its own name - witch - which seems like it might be relevant!)

Having attained what she wanted, Homura becomes her own enemy, literally and metaphorically. Remember, Homura's world is her labyrinth, which is her soul, and the human psyche manifests in all kinds of weird and unpredictable ways inside them (and that's without even touching whatever is going on with Walpurgisnacht, who is also likely tied to Homura in some fashion).

This kind of splitting also appears in Thunderbolt Fantasy with a different character who excises a portion of their soul in order to take over the world. It goes badly, as you might expect, when the expelled soul piece manifests as a doppelganger and returns to destroy them. There is also an overarching time loop that cannot (nor should not) be changed, as it is necessary for the entire story to hold, along with many smaller loops within loops. Sound familiar?

This is not to say that I think WnK will necessarily follow the same trajectory as Thunderbolt Fantasy in all respects, just to say that you can really see Urobuchi playing with the same themes, because that's what authors do - they write about what fascinates them over and over again. This is what Urobuchi is referring to it when he calls it a compulsion - he can't help himself - and as writer, I know exactly what he means. The parallels between his series exist and while it's possible WnK may go in an entirely different direction than anything I've laid out here, the thematic groundwork for the ideas I've laid out is nonetheless visible and it makes me feral.

One way out of the trap Homura has set for herself is to return to her humanity and become whole again (or to use Urobuchi's framing, to give up the perfection, power, and control she sought to achieve). To make her peace with the past and with herself, to accept what happened, and move forward into the future. She has to heal after hitting rock bottom, because the alternative is death. I know which one I'm rooting for.

Homura alone cannot change fate, cannot defeat Walpurgisnacht. But Madoka can. Who knows what will happen if the two of them work together to remake the universe?

[atamascolily]

The other reason why it's a bad idea for characters in a Gen Urobuchi story to get what they want (in addition to the author-specific philosophical reasons I discussed in my earlier post) is that characters who have completed their arcs are superfluous to the narrative and he has a tendency to violently excise them immediately afterwards.

I've heard a lot of people say that Urobuchi's writing is characterized by shocking twists and unexpected deaths, but I think a more accurate way of putting it is that Urobuchi isn't being cruel for cruelty's sake, he's being narratively efficient, and (this is key) narrative efficiency often takes the form of ruthlessness. Once a character is no longer needed, they are removed from the story in the most direct way possible - and it just so happens that that usually involves death. Thus we have Mami's death at the end of episode 3 and Kyouko's at the end of episode 9, among others, but once you notice the pattern, you start to see it everywhere in his works.

This is not to say that death is the only way to remove a character from the narrative - in Thunderbolt Fantasy season 4, Urobuchi switches it up by having two characters abruptly fall in love and walk off into the sunset together. His argument for it in the Febri interview basically boils down to "fulfilled love isn't that different from death in story terms" - the same reason why all of Shakespeare's plays end in either marriage or death. But it's certainly not the option he's best known for, to put it mildly.

So, to recap, there are at least 3 ways Urobuchi likes to wrap up a character arc in his stories once the character achieves their goals:

Death (most common option by far)

Becoming a villain (irony)

Love (very rare but possible)

Viewed in this light, the ending of the Madoka Magica anime is striking in that Homura does not fulfill her character arc - she doesn't get what she wants, and so she keeps on fighting, and this is framed as valiant and noble, if bittersweet. Rebellion twists this a bit, as sequels so often do, by implying this is not because Homura is happy with the situation, but because she lacked the power and circumstances to change it. Once she does, she achieves what she wants and becomes a villain (option #2) and the story ends there at the culmination of her dream. But that's only temporary; since there's a sequel, something will inevitably happen to dislodge that.

So once again when pondering the "final" ending of the series, we're back to love or death, hahaha. Given everything, I'd be surprised but delighted if "love" turned out to be openly romantic in this case; I think it's more likely for Homura and Madoka to be platonic life partners with plausibly deniable queer subtext.

[atamascolily]

One reason Homura is doomed to suffer is that her relationship with Madoka is built on a fundamental paradox. Homura loves Madoka for her kindness, her compassion, her willingness to save others, all of which are epitomized by their first meeting at school and again when Madoka saves Homura's life. At the same time, those exact same traits are what pull the two of them apart in every single timeline, as Madoka's kindness, compassion, and drive to save others drive her to her death.

Homura fights Walpurgisnacht in order to save Madoka, yes, but in a very real way, she's also fighting against Madoka's fundamental nature, and she can never, ever, win, as the ending of Rebellion proves. No matter what the circumstances, these are Madoka's core traits, the ones that define her as a person (consider how in the flower field scene, Homura identifies Madoka as the real thing by her "kindness" and "warmth" as opposed to literally any other traits). If by some magic, Homura could erase them, the girl that emerged wouldn't be Madoka anymore, just a stranger with her face and voice.

That in itself would be enough to induce complicated feelings in any relationship, but it gets worse because of Homura's lack of self-esteem: she doesn't feel she is worth saving. Her reaction to Madoka's first death in the original timeline is telling: "Why? Even if you were going to get killed all along, it wasn't worth saving me if you're not alive!"

The third timeline is even more explicit, with Homura envisioning a world where she and Madoka are together forever as witches, where Homura's abnegation of self and her love for Madoka could find a stable balance that would never be overturned--and Madoka rejects it completely and irrevocably, without any warning whatsoever.

Instead, she asks Homura to go on living without her because Homura can go back in time. People are usually focused on the part where Madoka asks Homura to save her personally, but before that Madoka asks her to "change everything... so we don't end up like this". The "we" here is ambiguous, but Madoka also means Mami, Kyouko, and Sayaka here, not just her and Homura. (Remember, this version of Madoka murdered Mami to save Homura, and has been understandably traumatized by it!) And not only does Madoka reject Homura's offer to die together, she also rejects Homura's worldview completely--stating explicitly the world is worth saving, in spite of the horrors--and asks Homura to kill her in order to prevent the very fate that Homura advocated for them both just moments ago (i.e, becoming a witch).

This is, in my opinion, one of the most pivotal scenes in the entire show, the one that catalyzes Homura's worldview, that changes her life, that transforms her utterly, that is so deeply seared into her psyche she can never let go of it (as we see in the climax of Rebellion). The fandom tends to focus on the grief and guilt and self-loathing, which is obviously a huge piece of it, but you can also see in that moment why Homura might hate Madoka for it, too: for saving Homura's life once again instead of her own, when Homura didn't want it; for forcing Homura to keep on living and fighting in order to see her again; for asking Homura to mercy-kill her (the one thing that traumatized Homura more than anything else she ever experienced).

Over and over again, Madoka keeps leaving Homura behind, and it's perfectly understandable why Homura might resent that, why she might hate it, and hate Madoka for doing that to her, even though she loves Madoka, because the things that she loves about Madoka and the things that she hates about Madoka are fundamentally the same. This is what I think the concept movie trailer was getting at with its references to "that cruelty, that gentle radiance", which also appears in the WnK trailers as "a radiance so kind, that it is even cruel".

Rebellion explicitly states that love and pain are intertwined for Homura, and I think all of the negative feelings Homura might have for Madoka are a part of that, even though Homura will never (consciously) admit to them. It's one reason why the Clara Dolls, those avatars of Homura's unconscious, are throwing fruit at the Madokami stele while Homura worships it--on some level, she hates Madokami even as she loves her (because she loves her), but those negative feelings are suppressed and acted out via proxies instead.

You could argue that Homura doesn't actually hate Madoka, just the Madokami part, but what exactly is the difference between them? Homura's rebellion is predicated on the assumption that she can remove the girl from the Law of Cycles, but instead of getting the same reaction from the flower field scene, Homura discovers that she can't remove the impulse that created the Law of Cycles from the girl--simultaneously the trait she loves most about Madoka and the one she's been fighting the whole time! The primary differences between amnesiac human Madoka and Madokami are ones of power and agency, not kindness and compassion. No wonder Homura is in hell.

The irony, of course, is that so much of Madoka's self-sacrificing tendencies are driven by her own lack of self-esteem and self-worth; she is not so different from Homura in that respect. However, from Homura's perspective, Madoka is enough as she is because Homura loves her, hence Homura repeatedly telling her she doesn't need to change; Madoka's relationships to her family, friends, and most especially Homura, are enough to justify her continued existence. In context, this request to "not change" is about Madoka becoming a magical girl or not, but on a larger level, Homura is asking for the impossible: in order to be the sort of person who could "stay the same" the way Homura wants, Madoka would have to already be someone other than who she is!

At the same time, Homura's inability to let go is her core trait and Rebellion ends with her doubling down on it. In order to be the sort of person who could "move on", Homura would also have to become someone completely different, and I genuinely don't know if that's possible. [In real life, absolutely, but characters are not real people, and it's hard for me to imagine Homura without her core traits, just like its hard for me to imagine Madoka without hers.]

Okay, so if changing Madoka and/or herself is off the table, what other course is left to Homura? Well, if the world is such that Madoka feels compelled to sacrifice herself, maybe change the world so she doesn't have to. This is what Homura was trying to do by defeating Walpurgisnacht by herself, but even if she'd succeeded, it would have only been a matter of time before something else happened and Madoka was compelled to do something about it. (In the PSP game, there's a scenario where Homura manages to win, although she dies in the process, and Kyubey is like, "well, that didn't work out, but I'm sure something will come up that will make Madoka want to contract and I'll be right there when it does".) And becoming the devil also changed the system, but not enough - Madoka comes perilously close to reverting right in front of Homura's eyes.

One solution is to destroy the Law of Cycles permanently, so that Madoka can never rejoin it and leave Homura behind again. This is bad for everyone else for obvious reasons, but it would allow Homura the opportunity for a do-over on the whole "become witches together" offer that Madoka rejected the first time around. This is something that the original Homura is (probably) not ruthless enough to go through with, but I suspect the other Homura might find it an ideal solution. TBD.

Homura and Madoka coexisting as concepts sounds great, except for the fact that their current concepts are mutually exclusive, to the point that I'm not sure it's possible for both divine forms to exist at the same time. Maybe this isn't the case, and it's fine, but I don't know how it would even work - Madokami doesn't need a counterbalancing devil, and the devil set up her entire system explicitly to keep Madokami out of it, so it doesn't seem like there's much room for coexistence there.

What Homura and Madoka really need is a new system, something that will allow Madoka to save people (either without dying or because she's reached an end state where death/change is no longer possible), and Homura to stay with her forever - a world where each of them can be happy without sacrificing their core traits for the other, perhaps as a new kind of being that doesn't exist yet. They have to be together, they have to be equals, and they have to be inseparable for any kind of long term stability. That's a tall order, but I think it's possible - but only at the end of a long, circuitous, and increasingly improbable road that creates the exact set of circumstances necessary for its creation.

Or at least I hope so, because that's the good end. We already had the end where Homura failed and kept on going (original anime), and the one where she technically achieved her goal, only for it to slip away from her (Rebellion), so the only options left are to change, to die, or a secret third thing. I'm not a betting person, but given the odds and Urobuchi's general theory of character development, I'm placing my hopes on a secret third thing.

[atamascolily]

Saw this meme while browsing and immediately had to repurpose it because it's so perfect for her.

[fishesauce]

Transfer my art block to Homura 🥹✌️

[fishesauce]

Is this a new adventure?

[fishesauce]

Fed by despair, Starved by hope.

[fishesauce]

Homucifer trying to not be all over Madoka challenge impossible

[ayilings]

holy wounds festering

[fishesauce]

They are sickening.

[cinthgarden]

Your companion.

[zephyr-heart]

This is Monika to me

[fishesauce]

Pmmm x Dbh

[fishing-lesbian-princess]

The Madoka Magica girls act the way they do largely because that’s what things are like when you’re 14. However for Homura, when you add up all the time she’s been in loops, she’s actually 26. You might think this means she has no excuse, but considering she’s been 14 years old for 12 years, I think she’s the most 14 any girl has ever been

[wormontwostrings]

everything is fine

[fishesauce]

@matchach art style study

[fishesauce]