#<- bc this is the best recording of it on youtube and it doesn't initially come up when i google it

[woman-respecter]

actually, nothing any contemporary pop girlie can do will ever reach this level of powerful and emotionally devastating

[coffeestainedcamera]

Hm, I like Topaz now, in a very Succession fan way. I'd not get along with a real-life person like her, but her arc as a debt collector with some moral scruples is interesting. Just going to tag spoilers from here!

Like, she came off as downright friendly at first. Watching her politely fangirl over March and the heroine, I wasn't sure what she was doing on Jarilo-VI (but her staffers' initial trigger-happiness def made me wary). Still, maybe they weren't having their finest day and their boss was reasonable and dropped in for something mundane. Like establishing trade routes for the newly-space-cancer-free planet or whatever.

Translation in alt text for images (bc I can't be bothered to watch the quest in eng on youtube). Please note that I'm literally only a bilingual accountant.

Anyways, then I was like... sorry, credit history? And how would that preclude the planet from reestablishing its connection with the rest of the galaxy? My next thought was that mobster movies are very much a thing in the setting and that she's probably seen Godfather at least twice.

She's a pretty compelling character, debt collector and all. Because on one hand, a lot of her behavior was practically designed to tick me off. Like, if someone were to take me on a museum tour and keep talking about the exhibits in terms of their monetary value, I'd walk away within minutes. It's just such a fundamentally uncurious way to look at art and history. Plus, you know, she's a loan shark.

Still, growing up in an ecological wasteland where you'd have to be rich to escape explains the obsession with money, I suppose. If your only other ticket out of there is to join Evil Corp, guess you'd jump aboard and drink the koolaid. Besides, it's not like she had any actual choice, having been set up to work for them in some capacity by whatever government officials signed the planet over to said Evil Corp in the first place.

So, yeah, it sucked to see her try to inflict the fate her planet suffered on others, in the name of maybe saving them. But would living her childhood afterwards be considered "saved"? This imposition might have been what pissed me off about the character the most.

And yet she ultimately honors their decision not to sign over and even sticks her neck out to her bosses to protect them. Yeah, she stays with them (the biggest employer in the galaxy) and that means she's still going to pull this on another planet later bc it's in her job description. But it's not like she's in my situation, where the profession has a shortage and I keep getting recruiter invites on linkedin even tho I'm employed. So I suppose that's why she's a not particularly likable character with some redeeming moments to me, which happens to be a sort of character I enjoy. Might be my fave now bc I had a Succession-shaped hole in my heart ever since that show ended.

Also, fave moments from this story (translations in alt text):

March taking a doll of Pom-Pom along for the party T_T Also, I hope she holds a fashion intervention for the lead someday! I trust her to get it right, 2000's scene princess tiara and all!

Is the lead canonically braggy, or have I been making a lot of braggy dialogue choices? Wonder if this line changes depending on your track record.

Uncle, seventeen interviews for what seems to be a security guard gig? I mean, yeah, we later find out that he was a "special case" but this is ridic.

Also, lol best quest opening text:

Translation:

"Excuse me, has [heroine] passed?" (The sentence looks blatantly typo'd, as "помер"/"pomyer" is past tense for "died" but it refers to men and the female version would be "померла"/"pomyerla". Also, saying "прошу прощения, это помер []?" sounds like you're trying to clarify if someone truly died and doesn't really make sense as an opening text to someone.)

"I am actually quite alive!"

"Oh, sorry, autocorrect. I meant 'number'." (Number/номер/nomyer is one letter away from died/помер/pomyer)

Anyways, now I'm curious what the original lines were lol

[vaugarde]

hello! same anon that was asking moonscape about pmmm stuff. i've been looking through your pmmm-related posts a bit after i saw your reply and i love the way you talk about the characters and really seem to understand them! do you maybe have some more headcanons or general thoughts you'd want to share? i can never get enough of hearing fan's cool thoughts about the show

AHHH thank you!! im really flattered omg i'll put some general thoughts and rambles under the cut so my mutual who hasnt seen it yet wont see

-i know you said you saw my reply already but just gonna repeat it so its on my blog: homura was a foster child who lost her parents when she was young, and because of her heart condition she was passed around to several different (usually christian) families that usually didn't care much for her, only about the check. this led to her initial meek and self deprecating personality. the reason she latched onto madoka is because she's the first person to ever show her true kindness. when she changes her hair style, she cuts off from her current foster family entirely and lives on her own (and may have stolen the foster checks and other cash to do so)

-on top of that she struggles with her feelings with madoka and feeling like she's cruel and selfish for loving her because of her christian upbringing and going to catholic school. families likely didn't take well to her being gay

-hitomi is a closeted lesbian

-kyosuke gives me egg vibes so.

-im basic i like madohomu best but like polyam holy quintet is so real also

-people who say madohomu is one sided are so wrong. how do u explain any of madoka's actions towards homura when walpurgisnacht happens

-some of my favorite moments in the show relate to homura stuff bc GOD all of her scenes are just. enhanced by the plot twist

-wait ive mentioned this but people who think homura doesn't care about the other girls are so??? literally yes she does care about them, she loves madoka the most of course but she cares about sayaka's life when she goes to retrieve her soul gem and her telling sayaka she'll kill her to spare madoka the pain is clearly just her doing the worst thing she can to force sayaka to act. she's kinda distant from everything she's done at this point and is willing to act cruel to get what she wants.

-i kinda love that canonically mami is the strongest magical girl. mami is underrated tbh, i know she's a main character but her spinoff manga was SO good and she's such a tragic character in her own right. she's a deeply lonely person and even if i didn't care for magia record season 1, i really like the approach they went with her character there, where in this universe she's the one who convinced madoka and sayaka to contract, and when she learns the truth, she becomes ridden with guilt and joins the magias to save them because she feels responsible for their fates now. it's such a good place to take her character (and im kinda sad they eventually go "oh no it was brainwashing nvm")

-i absolutely adore this show's brand of horror. the entire thing is just Off in a lot of ways but it's in ways you struggle to place, and the whole thing is thanks to shaft's editing. there's a youtube vid i watched where like the tilting shots up to where the girls look down on the "camera" or random close ups on objects with quiet sounds adds to the feeling that something is wrong even when the show hasn't taken it's dark turn yet. i think focusing a lot of the actual horror elements on the terror of everyone's situation and gradually revealing how much worse everything is is so perfect, it's all paced perfectly to be as hard hitting as possible. and the actual violent moments are done well, none of them are really THAT bad but they're blunt and shocking enough to hit where it hurts. idk if im describing it right but augh its so good

-on that topic the theory that pmmm is framed as a stage show is also so good. i gotta find the post i reblogged about that bc man it adds to the show