Jesse, we can't both exist. I'm going to become half of you. And I need you to know that every moment you love being yourself, that's me, loving you and loving being you. Because you're going to be something extraordinary. You're going to be a human being.
Friends of Homura, Chapter 6 – The von Seckendorff-Miki Ballet Company, in collaboration with The Kaname Madoka Foundation, presents: INTERLUDE
Chapter 6 | Read from the beginning
Nothing of you's left on earth — not even a shadow. All you own is here. Would you like that paper-knife? Or that ornament on the mantelpiece? That blue sofa's yours. And I, my dear, am yours forever.
A brief detour to a place outside of the devil’s garden. This won’t take a second, I promise.
male yuri fan: i wish that i could die and be reincarnated as a houseplant in the home of a lesbian couple. specifically without awareness. i don't need to look, just be present and passively cared for
Friends of Homura, Chapter 6 – The von Seckendorff-Miki Ballet Company, in collaboration with The Kaname Madoka Foundation, presents: INTERLUDE
Chapter 6 | Read from the beginning
Nothing of you's left on earth — not even a shadow. All you own is here. Would you like that paper-knife? Or that ornament on the mantelpiece? That blue sofa's yours. And I, my dear, am yours forever.
A brief detour to a place outside of the devil’s garden. This won’t take a second, I promise.
In 2026, it's impossible to watch an American sporting event without seeing an advertisement for sports betting. That's an understatement, actually. It's impossible to watch a single commercial break during an American sporting event without seeing an advertisement for sports betting, which doesn't even account for the advertisements for sports betting that you'll see during the sporting event itself. It's a mania.
Uncut Gems, then, has become unexpectedly prescient, a reflection of a cultural moment when on release in 2019 it looked more like an isolated character study of a singular lunatic gambler.
Despite that, when rewatching this film a lot of the power I felt from it on initial viewing was gone. It makes sense, given how much the film relies on tension to drive interest, and how much the tension is gone when you know how the movie ends. Watching now, with a cooler head, unsurprised every time Howard Ratner seems just about to get off scot free before he makes another outlandish bet, one question kept entering my mind:
How did Howard get this far?
There's a well-respected film tradition, encapsulated by films like Scarface and Goodfellas, of the rise-and-fall crime narrative. (The history of this genre actually stretches far earlier than those movies -- these sorts of gangster films were popular during the pre-Hays Code 1930s.) In these films, an ambitious hoodlum claws their way to the top of a crime syndicate, then become consumed by vices once they achieve the success they craved, precipitating their tragic end. Though not strictly speaking about a gangster, Uncut Gems shares many similarities with these films, with Howard an unscrupulous liar, cheater, schemer, and smuggler aiming for big money in a terrain of loan sharks and gun-toting thugs, chasing brighter and brighter lights, ultimately undone by an addiction to gambling. Even the dialogue style, naturalistic and foul-mouthed, echoes Scorsese.
But in comparing Uncut Gems to a rise-and-fall narrative, the main difference is immediately clear: There's no rise. Uncut Gems takes place over the course of a week, and Howard is already a walking trainwreck from the moment he steps onto the screen. He's already in debt, already hopelessly addicted to gambling, already a compulsive liar. On the other hand, he already owns a successful diamond store, already has a nice home and a wife and three kids.
Assuming a rise-and-fall narrative only with the "rise" prologue lopped off the runtime, left on the editing floor, it's possible to imagine a younger Howard possessing an earnest, hardworking grindset, someone who only succumbs to gambling after he's made a name for himself. The film, though, provides no hints to this past, and in fact frequently contradicts it. By Howard's own admission, his crowning past glory involves starting a trend of diamond-encrusted Furbies, a self-mythos almost too pathetic to be believed. His wife Dinah, seeking a divorce, never states or suggests that Howard was once a better man. She says that he is the most annoying man she's ever met, not that he has become the most annoying. All of his family, friends, and employees act as though Howard has been the way he has for some time.
Yet Howard isn't a young guy. He's in his forties, and has ostensibly (if the Furbies are anything to go by) been in this racket for years, if not decades. During the week depicted in Uncut Gems, his fall seems not only inevitable but inevitably rapid, a self-destruction he hurtles toward as quickly as possible, without even an inciting incident. Yet there is an unseen lifetime behind him, a lifetime of at least some amount of stability.
Of course, that's not exactly true, right? He starts the film $100,000 in debt. His gambling has already dug him into a deep hole, and Uncut Gems is only really depicting a coup de grace, a final failure after the creditors are already closing in. That's at least how the film initially presents Howard, since the information about the debt is made clear around the same time Howard makes his first ill-advised bet (pawning Kevin Garnett's championship ring to do so). However, late in the film, new information appears to question this narrative. When Garnett asks Howard how much he spent for the gemstone that forms the linchpin of the plot, Howard replies that it cost him $100,000 -- the exact same sum as his debt. Howard isn't in debt from gambling, but from smuggling the gemstone into the country.
This completely changes the narrative around Howard. Because Howard is no longer a guy who loses money gambling. He is, in fact, a guy who only wins. Every single gamble Howard makes throughout the movie pays off. He bets on Kevin Garnett twice, and wins twice. He bets $100,000 on the gem, and although it doesn't make him the million he anticipated, he still nearly doubles his money on it.
"This is how I win," Howard tells Kevin Garnett when explaining why he gambles, the only moment in the film where Howard justifies his actions. In the moment, during a first viewing, the statement sounds absurd, because Howard has loan sharks literally knocking at his door while he bets their money on an insane parlay. The tension, the sense of impending tragedy, suggests he cannot possibly win, that he is spinning yet another outrageous lie. But when viewed again, in the context of the film's actual result, it is how he wins. When Howard is killed, it's not because he lost the bet. It's because he was just too annoying ("You're the most annoying man I've ever met") and pissed off the wrong guy. He dies with a triumphant smile on his face, a perpetual moment of bliss he will never wake up from.
Howard Ratner is a man utterly insulated from his own idiocy. Success just comes to him, in an unseen prologue that might as well not exist; he has always been successful, and always will be. On top of winning all his stupid bets, he is surrounded by people who are committed to letting him get away with it. His pawnbroker shows him leniency when he's late returning for the ring, despite threats to the contrary. Kevin Garnett is aware he's being toyed with by a bunch of stupid schemes, but comes back and buys the gemstone anyway. His wife wants to divorce him but seems to be suckered into perpetually waiting until after some holiday to do so. His mistress breaks up with him but comes crawling back. His employees complain, say they're fed up, announce they're quitting, then unceremoniously and without comment appear at work again the next day. He has a rich father-in-law who helps his scheme at the auction despite it obviously being a terrible idea. Most of all, Howard doesn't even owe money to some detached nobody. His creditor is his brother-in-law, who is willing to harass him, even lock him up in a trunk, but who ultimately treats him with absurd lenience, seemingly caught up in the glory of Howard's final win before things suddenly go south. (He doesn't even appear to have charged Howard interest, which given the film's strong fascination with Jewish stereotypes might be an intentional choice given he's an Armenian and not a Jew.)
Howard got this far because everyone, even luck itself, let him get this far. He doesn't even have colon cancer!
In this interpretation of Howard, I can't help but find a parallel to the gambling obsession that has gripped modern sports culture, that has gripped -- in forms like wild stock betting or maniac loose cannon politicking -- the entire country. It's the Grift Economy now, where even the richest and most successful people seem to be hucksters and scam artists, and who somehow keep winning despite every indication that they shouldn't. America is insulated from its own idiocy much like Howard, with completely unfair geographic and historic advantages that seem insurmountable no matter what inane decisions its people make. And like Howard, it has no reason to be this way. Its success is assured regardless.
Perhaps, like Howard, it is this assurance of success that is the root cause of the addiction. If you always win, then gambling isn't risky, is it? It's just a smart investment. Howard's "this is how I win speech" directly juxtaposes him against Kevin Garnett, who is perpetually at practice or at a game or running out the door to go to a game. Garnett is the hard worker, the true grinder (despite his belief in the magic rock that powers him up). Howard simply says, "I'm not an athlete," and presents his gambling as the only alternative to not being one. It's a ridiculous comparison, but it reveals his mindset. Always being successful, the actual process of success is unimportant. Only by creating a narrative around success can Howard feel himself "win." And the more he wins, the more desperate his attempts to create a narrative around winning. He has to constantly push the envelope. It's not enough that he spent $100,000 to smuggle a gemstone he had never seen before out of Ethiopia, make $165,000 on it, and pay back his no-interest loan while pocketing a hefty sum for himself. He has to be the "man who sold Kevin Garnett the magic rock that made him play better." (His son, watching KG win Game 7, shouts pathetically to his friends, "My dad sold that guy a diamond!") He has to be the man who pulled off the impossible, despite the fact that it wasn't actually that impossible at all.
How does the man who always wins keep winning? He has to make it interesting. He is compelled to make it interesting, no matter how stupid the attempt is. No, it's better if it's stupid. That only makes people doubt you more, and your inevitable win feel more like a win. And the win really is inevitable, right? You have all the advantages. You have money and success. You have friends that treat you with kid gloves, only rolling their eyes at whatever hijinks you get up to, threatening to do something about it but never doing anything. There's no way to lose.
You will win, and keep winning. Until, perhaps, one day you become too annoying for your own good.
Friends of Homura, Chapter 5 – Because They All End
Chapter 5 | Read from the beginning
Madoka's personality can change depending on the timeline, depending on when Madoka becomes a magical girl, if she does it. Fans have complained that the Madoka character from the main timeline is weak, powerless, and useless. That her inaction caused many of her friends die. However, we later learn that this version of Madoka is completely different from the timelines in Episode 10 or from the Drama CD Memories of You. This radical alteration is the result of Homura's interference by preventing her from becoming a magical girl that caused a role reversal. Making Homura, not Madoka, the main character until we see a transition or shift taking place during the later part of the series where Madoka truly becomes the main character by trying to change the fate of magical girls.
Madoka first appears to be a naive, gentle girl from a kind family. Though sometimes shy, she makes friends without much difficulty and treats others gently and with respect. In the pre-broadcast November promotional video, she is described as, "A gentle 2nd year middle school girl who thinks of friends before herself." Madoka's mother, Junko, commented that she has always been a good child and never lies.
She has low self-confidence, and she believes she does not have much to offer the world unless she is helping people, which makes becoming a magical girl appealing to her. She has been known to become flustered easily, and in certain circumstances, she can be easily manipulated by others playing on her insecurity and desire to help. As a magical girl, she is more obviously confident in herself than before her wish.
Madoka often tries to help and understand others, even if it doesn’t end particularly well. She’s anxious, scared, and doesn’t fully understand the whole situation, but she desperately tries her best to do so.
It was one of the most complex drawings I’d had in mind for quite a while. I’m already starting to hyperfixate on the flaws. But more than anything, I’m happy that I pushed myself to work on it and actually finish it.
From a distance, Sayaka looks dignified, but up close she’s pouting and blushing… it suits her, I think.
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