[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Mend
AGE: 21
JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
missmend
IM: smashkolnikov @ aim
PLURK: smashkolnikov
E-MAIL: smashkolnikov@gmail.com
RETURNING: n/a
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Homura Akemi [Homulily]
SERIES: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
CHRONOLOGY: Episode 12; after speaking with Madoka’s mother
CLASS: [Anti-] Hero
BACKGROUND:
Homura’s family and early childhood are not discussed in the course of the anime. She appears to live alone, but has money to her name; at the earliest we see her, she is in a hospital recovering from a heart condition, but has no visitors. If her family is alive, they are not a factor in her life; fittingly her role in the story is that of a lone character.
Initially very shy and demure, Homura is (chronologically) introduced in episode 10 as a transfer student to Mitakihara Middle School. Prone to bullying and friendless, she nearly succumbs to the fatal call of a Witch, only to be saved by Madoka Kaname and Mami Tomoe, in this timeline a Puella Magi team. Madoka becomes Homura’s closest friend and idol, a guiding beacon of how to be a good person. Thus, when Madoka dies in battle against Walpurgis Nacht, Homura makes a wish with the Incubator Kyubey over Madoka’s corpse:
"I want to redo my meeting with Kaname-san. Instead of being protected by her, I want to protect her!"
The contract completed, Homura reawakens in the hospital a month before Walpurgis Nacht, clutching a Soul Gem, now a Puella Magi herself. Her power comes in the form of an hourglass and shield that allow her to stop and rewind time; other fighting prowess and abilities she exhibits came from training and fighting Witches alongside Madoka and Mami, or stealing firearms to supplement her lack of offensive magic. Unfortunately, regardless of what she learns, Madoka continues to die fighting the Witch Walpurgis Nacht – or worse.
When the anime opens in episode 1, Homura has already repeated several timelines, and failed to save Madoka in each one. She has rewound time at least four times – potentially, and likely, many more than that. She knows the truth behind the creation of Puellae Magi (to create Witches, the energy they produce in the transformation used to starve off the entropic death of the universe), seen her friends and comrades die and go insane several times, and had her best friend die in her arms again and again. These incidents have jaded her; Homura Akemi has become a distant, cold soldier whose obsessive mission in life is to keep Madoka Kaname from becoming a Puella Magi by any means necessary. Ironically, however, the continual rewinding of time has concentrated an enormous amount of power in the body of Madoka herself, ensuring that when she does become a Puella Magi – and consequently a Witch – she will be the strongest one in existence, thus making her a larger and larger target for the manipulator Kyubey. In the final timeline (the main setting of the anime), Homura has refused to allow Madoka to become a magical girl and decided to fight Walpurgis Nacht on her own, the other girls of the series having met their fates.
Despite compulsive planning, a surplus of military hardware, and crazed determination, ultimately, Homura alone does not have the strength to defeat the Witch.
Thus, Madoka – who by now knows of Homura’s past and the true purpose of the Puellae Magi – sneaks out of a storm shelter and appears before Homura just before she loses hope and becomes a Witch herself. Madoka makes a contract with the Incubator:
"I wish to erase all witches from existence before they're even born. Every witch in the universe, from the past and the future, with my own hands.”
Because Homura’s repeated resetting of the timeline has increased Madoka’s ability to cause change in the world – thus increasing her power as a magical girl – and because of the nature of her wish itself, Madoka becomes an omnipotent goddess figure, taking upon her all the suffering of every Puellae Magi of the past. Though this makes her a Witch that destroys the world, her own wish prevents this from happening and the paradox makes a new world that Madoka cannot exist in (being simultaneously a Witch and not-a-Witch). Homura is left to say good-bye to her oldest and dearest friend and given one of Madoka’s hair ribbons.
In this new world, nobody but Homura remembers Madoka. Homura remains a magical girl but with altered powers, using a bow and energy arrow reminiscent of Madoka’s own powers. She fights against Demons – creatures made manifest by the grief in the world – with Kyoko and Mami, trying to carry on Madoka’s will and memory.
Homura’s story ends, and her role in the City begins, following a conversation with Madoka’s mother in the new world.
PERSONALITY:
To talk about what Homura Akemi is now, one needs to talk extensively about what she was. For the majority of the series, she comes across as heartless, calculated, monotonous, cruel, and practically robotic. By her own admission, she does not care about Sayaka’s path or end fate, sheds no tears over Mami’s death, and faces Kyoko’s fall without a flicker of visible emotion; she knows her nature and accepts it objectively, does her duty, and proceeds through life with the sole devotion to fulfill her mission.
"With kindness comes naïveté. Courage becomes foolhardiness. And dedication has no reward. If you can't accept any of that, you are not fit to be a Puella Magi."
The reason behind her behavior is fatalism. Homura has experienced all the different ways scenarios play out – telling the others the truth, keeping information to herself, watching Madoka become both a magical girl and a Witch, killing the Incubator, letting it live, etc. Through this, she has detached herself from the great majority of events around her, focusing only on ensuring that she is alive in order to keep Madoka alive and safe. Nothing else matters. Yet interestingly, in contrast to her fatalistic attitude towards much of life, she is propelled by the firm and unshakeable hope that she can and will save Madoka, regardless of how many times she has personally seen the story end.
--"Why does she go that far to fight?"
"It's because she still seeks hope. I imagine if it comes down to it, she'll nullify this timeline, like she has done in the past, and continue fighting. She'll continue to repeat this meaningless chain of events having come out none the wiser. Giving up and no longer moving forward holds the same meaning to her now. The moment she's convinced that there's no way for her to change your fate, that all of this was pointless, Akemi Homura will lose to her despair and change into a Grief Seed. She knows this for herself. That's why, to her, there is no choice. It doesn't matter if she even has a chance to win; she has no choice but to fight."
It therefore can be said that she is a zealot for her cause, refusing to accept an alternative despite all evidence to the contrary. Her interaction with Madoka for much of the visible timeline even go far to show that she has stopped viewing Madoka as a person and more an idea in her head – she fights not for the Kaname Madoka in front of her, but for the first one who befriended her when she was weak and powerless. This is not meant to imply that she has no attachment towards the present Madoka (for we see at the end how much Madoka’s departure from the world wrecks her) but rather that she has managed to emotionally distance and detach even from the person that means the most to her.
"Kaname Madoka, do you value your life? Do you think that your family and friends are important to you?"
"If they are, then you should never think of changing yourself. Otherwise, you will lose everything that is precious to you."
Episode 12 shows Homura for what, at her core, she is and has become. When she cannot defeat Walpurgis Nacht, she begins to break down, to lose hope. Her hands shake, her demeanor cracks, and she realizes for the first time that, maybe, she cannot fulfill her dearest friend’s dying wish. Had Madoka not appeared in that moment and made her wish, this would have been the tipping point for Homura to have become a Witch, a creature of grief and suffering and evil; she had been balanced that carefully on the edge.
To Madoka, she expresses finally all her sorrow and frustration, crying as she begs Madoka to stay in the universe, to stay with her. And in that moment, when she is stripped down to her emotional core, Homura is thanked for all that she did, and told to live her life, given the hope that Madoka will always be with her, somewhere. This was the acknowledgement that she needed, given by someone who made it matter more than anything.
And so Homura could begin to heal.
She now has her reason to live, rather than living just for Madoka’s protection. She is starting to make connections with other people, even Mami and Kyouko whom she has turbulent histories with, and mature into a healthier person. Even still, what has happened to her has effected her irrevocably; she has seen and done too much that she is removed from too much of the population.
POWER:
[canon] magical girl transformation: Homura can change into her Puella Magi form, which is physically indistinguishable from her human form except for a change of clothing. However, as a Puella Magi, Homura has increased strength, stamina, and pain tolerance. Thus while she is not as strong as someone specifically gifted with super strength, she can deal with and dish out more pain than you’d think a thirteen year old girl could. Her wounds recover quicker in this form as well.
[canon] time freeze: Using the power of her original wish, Homura can stop and start time at will. In the City she cannot rewind time. The extent of this ability is to freeze time for an hour maximum and then resume it again, allowing her to set up traps in advance and move into more strategic positions. Any individual or item that is in physical contact with her while she uses this power remains unaffected by the stopping of time.
[canon] limitless storage capacity: Homura wears a buckler that doubles as a kind of pocket dimension. She can put an infinite number of things inside of it and never feel the weight, and is able to pull anything out of it at any given moment. She will be arriving in the City with nothing inside of that storage space, however.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[Honestly, she’d rather not have to bother with this damn thing in the first place. But it’s been a little more than a week now and grabbing people off of the street to question them has helped, but not enough.]
..where is a place to stay indefinitely. [That’s all that she needs to say on that matter. No need to put her face or voice out there – just a single message to all she can.]
[However, Homura’s not finished. She finds herself an isolated seat on a rooftop, looking over familiar names in the masterlist of this phone. Biting the inside of her cheek, flipping the phone open and closed over and over. Uncertainty isn’t usually in her nature, but, sometimes it’s called for.]
[Finally, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, she sends a voice message, locked and private, to a few choice names in contacts.]
We need to talk. ..come to the courtyard by the school at twelve o’clock.
[And she grips the phone closed, tight in her fist, eyes shut and a rough sigh leaving her lungs.]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Ten minutes to midnight.
Homura’s found herself a good perch to look down on the world from. The wind tonight blows her hair all over her face, but its never mattered to her before, and it hardly matters now. The city, below and around her, looks different than she remembered it, though this is not the first night she’s been in this place, looking at these sights. Mitakihara’s been too ingrained into her brain; it can’t remember more streets and buildings.
But, as she glides onto the next roof, carried by the wind, Homura wonders if there was more to the homesick feeling in her deepest hearts.
There’s no bridge in this place where Madoka found her and offered out her hand. No streets or beaches where they had run and laughed and been two normal girls in a normal world of gossip and ice cream and cooing over cats. The roof she stands on is to a school, but it’s not the school she has memories or feeling to. It’s not the one where she first met that smiling face that comes to mind at the very word ‘friend’.
There was no trace of Kaname Madoka’s ghost anywhere here.
It made her wonder if she should even care.
Homura takes her hair and throws it over one shoulder and carefully reties the ribbon in her hair. The only thing that mattered among all these people and all these grey buildings and dark skies was a little strip of ribbon and –
She stops.
Madoka wouldn’t want her to think of that.
It takes a long sigh, a final adjustment of the bow and her bangs, and Homura starts moving again. Her limbs feel heavy but without sensation. At the edge, she looks down across a dark courtyard, looking in the corners below and the far walls, seeing nothing. There’s rarely movement at this hour, but Homura and the things she comes to meet and fight and kill.
But even the middle of the night somehow has her thinking of the day and light that can’t be seen or felt anymore.
She touches the end of the ribbon in her hair. She feels it softness in between her fingers, when the cold has bitten off other feeling.
It gives her the reason to jump down onto the courtyard, and to walk forward from that.
FINAL NOTES:
Homura wears a ring on her left middle finger, the nail of which has a purple star on it in civilian form. When she transforms into a Puella Magi, this ring transfigures into her Soul Gem, which is embedded into the back of her left hand, as seen here. The ring/Soul Gem cannot be removed from a thirty foot radius of her person, or else she reverts to a lifeless corpse.
NAME: Mend
AGE: 21
JOURNAL:
missmendIM: smashkolnikov @ aim
PLURK: smashkolnikov
E-MAIL: smashkolnikov@gmail.com
RETURNING: n/a
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Homura Akemi [Homulily]
SERIES: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
CHRONOLOGY: Episode 12; after speaking with Madoka’s mother
CLASS: [Anti-] Hero
BACKGROUND:
Homura’s family and early childhood are not discussed in the course of the anime. She appears to live alone, but has money to her name; at the earliest we see her, she is in a hospital recovering from a heart condition, but has no visitors. If her family is alive, they are not a factor in her life; fittingly her role in the story is that of a lone character.
Initially very shy and demure, Homura is (chronologically) introduced in episode 10 as a transfer student to Mitakihara Middle School. Prone to bullying and friendless, she nearly succumbs to the fatal call of a Witch, only to be saved by Madoka Kaname and Mami Tomoe, in this timeline a Puella Magi team. Madoka becomes Homura’s closest friend and idol, a guiding beacon of how to be a good person. Thus, when Madoka dies in battle against Walpurgis Nacht, Homura makes a wish with the Incubator Kyubey over Madoka’s corpse:
The contract completed, Homura reawakens in the hospital a month before Walpurgis Nacht, clutching a Soul Gem, now a Puella Magi herself. Her power comes in the form of an hourglass and shield that allow her to stop and rewind time; other fighting prowess and abilities she exhibits came from training and fighting Witches alongside Madoka and Mami, or stealing firearms to supplement her lack of offensive magic. Unfortunately, regardless of what she learns, Madoka continues to die fighting the Witch Walpurgis Nacht – or worse.
When the anime opens in episode 1, Homura has already repeated several timelines, and failed to save Madoka in each one. She has rewound time at least four times – potentially, and likely, many more than that. She knows the truth behind the creation of Puellae Magi (to create Witches, the energy they produce in the transformation used to starve off the entropic death of the universe), seen her friends and comrades die and go insane several times, and had her best friend die in her arms again and again. These incidents have jaded her; Homura Akemi has become a distant, cold soldier whose obsessive mission in life is to keep Madoka Kaname from becoming a Puella Magi by any means necessary. Ironically, however, the continual rewinding of time has concentrated an enormous amount of power in the body of Madoka herself, ensuring that when she does become a Puella Magi – and consequently a Witch – she will be the strongest one in existence, thus making her a larger and larger target for the manipulator Kyubey. In the final timeline (the main setting of the anime), Homura has refused to allow Madoka to become a magical girl and decided to fight Walpurgis Nacht on her own, the other girls of the series having met their fates.
Despite compulsive planning, a surplus of military hardware, and crazed determination, ultimately, Homura alone does not have the strength to defeat the Witch.
Thus, Madoka – who by now knows of Homura’s past and the true purpose of the Puellae Magi – sneaks out of a storm shelter and appears before Homura just before she loses hope and becomes a Witch herself. Madoka makes a contract with the Incubator:
Because Homura’s repeated resetting of the timeline has increased Madoka’s ability to cause change in the world – thus increasing her power as a magical girl – and because of the nature of her wish itself, Madoka becomes an omnipotent goddess figure, taking upon her all the suffering of every Puellae Magi of the past. Though this makes her a Witch that destroys the world, her own wish prevents this from happening and the paradox makes a new world that Madoka cannot exist in (being simultaneously a Witch and not-a-Witch). Homura is left to say good-bye to her oldest and dearest friend and given one of Madoka’s hair ribbons.
In this new world, nobody but Homura remembers Madoka. Homura remains a magical girl but with altered powers, using a bow and energy arrow reminiscent of Madoka’s own powers. She fights against Demons – creatures made manifest by the grief in the world – with Kyoko and Mami, trying to carry on Madoka’s will and memory.
Homura’s story ends, and her role in the City begins, following a conversation with Madoka’s mother in the new world.
PERSONALITY:
To talk about what Homura Akemi is now, one needs to talk extensively about what she was. For the majority of the series, she comes across as heartless, calculated, monotonous, cruel, and practically robotic. By her own admission, she does not care about Sayaka’s path or end fate, sheds no tears over Mami’s death, and faces Kyoko’s fall without a flicker of visible emotion; she knows her nature and accepts it objectively, does her duty, and proceeds through life with the sole devotion to fulfill her mission.
The reason behind her behavior is fatalism. Homura has experienced all the different ways scenarios play out – telling the others the truth, keeping information to herself, watching Madoka become both a magical girl and a Witch, killing the Incubator, letting it live, etc. Through this, she has detached herself from the great majority of events around her, focusing only on ensuring that she is alive in order to keep Madoka alive and safe. Nothing else matters. Yet interestingly, in contrast to her fatalistic attitude towards much of life, she is propelled by the firm and unshakeable hope that she can and will save Madoka, regardless of how many times she has personally seen the story end.
"It's because she still seeks hope. I imagine if it comes down to it, she'll nullify this timeline, like she has done in the past, and continue fighting. She'll continue to repeat this meaningless chain of events having come out none the wiser. Giving up and no longer moving forward holds the same meaning to her now. The moment she's convinced that there's no way for her to change your fate, that all of this was pointless, Akemi Homura will lose to her despair and change into a Grief Seed. She knows this for herself. That's why, to her, there is no choice. It doesn't matter if she even has a chance to win; she has no choice but to fight."
It therefore can be said that she is a zealot for her cause, refusing to accept an alternative despite all evidence to the contrary. Her interaction with Madoka for much of the visible timeline even go far to show that she has stopped viewing Madoka as a person and more an idea in her head – she fights not for the Kaname Madoka in front of her, but for the first one who befriended her when she was weak and powerless. This is not meant to imply that she has no attachment towards the present Madoka (for we see at the end how much Madoka’s departure from the world wrecks her) but rather that she has managed to emotionally distance and detach even from the person that means the most to her.
"If they are, then you should never think of changing yourself. Otherwise, you will lose everything that is precious to you."
Episode 12 shows Homura for what, at her core, she is and has become. When she cannot defeat Walpurgis Nacht, she begins to break down, to lose hope. Her hands shake, her demeanor cracks, and she realizes for the first time that, maybe, she cannot fulfill her dearest friend’s dying wish. Had Madoka not appeared in that moment and made her wish, this would have been the tipping point for Homura to have become a Witch, a creature of grief and suffering and evil; she had been balanced that carefully on the edge.
To Madoka, she expresses finally all her sorrow and frustration, crying as she begs Madoka to stay in the universe, to stay with her. And in that moment, when she is stripped down to her emotional core, Homura is thanked for all that she did, and told to live her life, given the hope that Madoka will always be with her, somewhere. This was the acknowledgement that she needed, given by someone who made it matter more than anything.
And so Homura could begin to heal.
She now has her reason to live, rather than living just for Madoka’s protection. She is starting to make connections with other people, even Mami and Kyouko whom she has turbulent histories with, and mature into a healthier person. Even still, what has happened to her has effected her irrevocably; she has seen and done too much that she is removed from too much of the population.
POWER:
[canon] magical girl transformation: Homura can change into her Puella Magi form, which is physically indistinguishable from her human form except for a change of clothing. However, as a Puella Magi, Homura has increased strength, stamina, and pain tolerance. Thus while she is not as strong as someone specifically gifted with super strength, she can deal with and dish out more pain than you’d think a thirteen year old girl could. Her wounds recover quicker in this form as well.
[canon] time freeze: Using the power of her original wish, Homura can stop and start time at will. In the City she cannot rewind time. The extent of this ability is to freeze time for an hour maximum and then resume it again, allowing her to set up traps in advance and move into more strategic positions. Any individual or item that is in physical contact with her while she uses this power remains unaffected by the stopping of time.
[canon] limitless storage capacity: Homura wears a buckler that doubles as a kind of pocket dimension. She can put an infinite number of things inside of it and never feel the weight, and is able to pull anything out of it at any given moment. She will be arriving in the City with nothing inside of that storage space, however.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[Honestly, she’d rather not have to bother with this damn thing in the first place. But it’s been a little more than a week now and grabbing people off of the street to question them has helped, but not enough.]
..where is a place to stay indefinitely. [That’s all that she needs to say on that matter. No need to put her face or voice out there – just a single message to all she can.]
[However, Homura’s not finished. She finds herself an isolated seat on a rooftop, looking over familiar names in the masterlist of this phone. Biting the inside of her cheek, flipping the phone open and closed over and over. Uncertainty isn’t usually in her nature, but, sometimes it’s called for.]
[Finally, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, she sends a voice message, locked and private, to a few choice names in contacts.]
We need to talk. ..come to the courtyard by the school at twelve o’clock.
[And she grips the phone closed, tight in her fist, eyes shut and a rough sigh leaving her lungs.]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Ten minutes to midnight.
Homura’s found herself a good perch to look down on the world from. The wind tonight blows her hair all over her face, but its never mattered to her before, and it hardly matters now. The city, below and around her, looks different than she remembered it, though this is not the first night she’s been in this place, looking at these sights. Mitakihara’s been too ingrained into her brain; it can’t remember more streets and buildings.
But, as she glides onto the next roof, carried by the wind, Homura wonders if there was more to the homesick feeling in her deepest hearts.
There’s no bridge in this place where Madoka found her and offered out her hand. No streets or beaches where they had run and laughed and been two normal girls in a normal world of gossip and ice cream and cooing over cats. The roof she stands on is to a school, but it’s not the school she has memories or feeling to. It’s not the one where she first met that smiling face that comes to mind at the very word ‘friend’.
There was no trace of Kaname Madoka’s ghost anywhere here.
It made her wonder if she should even care.
Homura takes her hair and throws it over one shoulder and carefully reties the ribbon in her hair. The only thing that mattered among all these people and all these grey buildings and dark skies was a little strip of ribbon and –
She stops.
Madoka wouldn’t want her to think of that.
It takes a long sigh, a final adjustment of the bow and her bangs, and Homura starts moving again. Her limbs feel heavy but without sensation. At the edge, she looks down across a dark courtyard, looking in the corners below and the far walls, seeing nothing. There’s rarely movement at this hour, but Homura and the things she comes to meet and fight and kill.
But even the middle of the night somehow has her thinking of the day and light that can’t be seen or felt anymore.
She touches the end of the ribbon in her hair. She feels it softness in between her fingers, when the cold has bitten off other feeling.
It gives her the reason to jump down onto the courtyard, and to walk forward from that.
FINAL NOTES:
Homura wears a ring on her left middle finger, the nail of which has a purple star on it in civilian form. When she transforms into a Puella Magi, this ring transfigures into her Soul Gem, which is embedded into the back of her left hand, as seen here. The ring/Soul Gem cannot be removed from a thirty foot radius of her person, or else she reverts to a lifeless corpse.
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