Originally Posted by hyperborealis
Please talk some more about how Homura's death would have this effect. Is it your idea that Madoka and Homura share a deep, mystical bond that transcends time and space, that can only be reached and felt via the extremity of feeling that Homura's death would cause? Or do you think that Madoka somehow retains a cumulative memory of the timelines, a buried awareness of Homura's dedication on her behalf, which she reciprocates with her own, unspoken feelings of appreciation and love?
Why should there be this bond? this reciprocation of feeling? We know from timeline 1 why Homura is obsessed with Madoka. Homura is a shy and lonely girl, who finds in Madoka her one and only friend. But the converse is not true for Madoka: she is reasonably well-adjusted socially, and has other friends besides Homura.
So the question arises: does Madoka ever reciprocate this intensity of feeling? Does Madoka care for Homura with the same passion that Homura does for her?
If we take Sol Falling's excellent point, that "if Homura travels back to rewrite history, then those past experiences--those past deaths, past promises and past Madokas--in fact cease to exist. On an objective level. They don't carry over, cannot touch anything, have no significance," then all that Madoka knows of Homura is what she knows in the current timeline. In timeline 5, Madoka knows Homura hardly at all. Strictly speaking, Madoka has no bond with Homura worth speaking of.
But even if we allow Madoka to share a transcendent perspective of some kind on all the timelines, the historical evidence is still mixed. If we review the timelines, we notice a great variability in Madoka's relationships with Homura, from the intense happiness Madoka feels for Homura at her success in defeating the witch who rains chairs from beneath her skirts in timeline 2, to the cool distance that stands between them in timelines 4 and 5.
So even if Madoka does "remember" Homura, as you envisage, would there be any place in her remembering where her own heart would reach out to Homura with the same intensity and need that Homura has for Madoka?
On reflection, I don't think so. Madoka does not care for Homura in the same way that Homura cares for her. Much as I hate to disappoint all the yuri shippers out there, Homura's obsessive dedication is sui generis and one-sided.
Brilliant point. In fact, Homura's memory across the timelines is itself a kind of delusion, since there can be no relation between the timelines: each one substitutes and annihilates its predecessor. Which raises the question of just who Homura's trans-temporal devotion is aimed at. Homura does seem to consider all the different Madokas the same person: remember in episode 8 how she castigates timeline 5 Madoka for always sacrificing herself, heaping the blame for the previous timeline Madokas on the current one. The confusion of Madoka's reaction underscores the contradiction you identify in Homura's perspective.
This issue is not simply an interpretative one. Remember Homura's conversation with QB in timeline 4, when QB asks her if she is going to stay and fight Kriemhild Gretchen, and Homura declines, on the account that this is not her timeline. What is Homura's timeline? If it is the first, can she ever get back to it? No! Put Madoka to one side: Homura cannot even overcome the gulf between the current timeline and herself.
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