Made A Lucy And Arthur Lockscreen For Myself Because I Am Completely Normal About Them…

it's so funny doing Dracula Daily this year but missing it last year because everyone else is frothing at the mouth at the harbingers of what's to come and I'm just like

the whole dashboard crying and shitting their pants over some paprika rn

Kozue and Miki - an incestuous half or a broken whole? analysis

To this day I have no understanding of what was going on with Miki and Kozue. In fact, they were my least favourite part of the show not because they aren't interesting but because what they represent seems so muddled, and it's where the few criticisms I have of RGU come in. I only have a few ideas.

I think the main point of the twins being there was to highlight the difference in their life experiences because of their gender. Miki is relatively 'innocent' as compared to Kozue who knows more about the world, but misreads sexuality as a tool she can use for power rather than a part of a system she's only a cog in.

It's shown pretty early on with the teacher that is inappropriate to Miki - he doesn't really notice that the teacher he admires is a pedophile, but Kozue does and takes the matter into her own hands. She seems to resent him for this difference and how he idealizes their childhood that she does not remember as fondly, seeing him as immature and 'holier than thou' for it (while she herself longs for the cloeness they had). Miki just finds it difficult to accept her as the same person that was his best friend growing up and gets upset at her dating life.

This is where what people read as Miki's 'madonna/whore complex' comes in, which I disagree with. He projects the sister he remembers from his childhood onto Anthy, a girl who is sweet and nice and talented like him, while incidentally having a crush on her. Meanwhile, he sees Kozue as someone who's become unrecognizable and disproves of her. I don't agree with this idea, because that's not really what madonna/whore is - he's not really attracted to Kozue, nor does he see Anthy as a mother figure. He does however differentiate between their character based on how 'pure' he finds them to be. I think this idea could have been applicable if it weren't for the fact they weren't, you know, twins.

Mika falls easily into misogynistic thinking to get what he wants, even as it contradicts what he believes at first. It's the reason for his first and last duels. He wants to respect Anthy and her choices, and actively believes himself to be doing so, but when given power and opportunity to 'win' her, he always chooses the advantages the system gives him over her. He's not a flawless person.

However, I would actually argue it's more that the show portrays Kozue as the one who is unable to move on from the bond they had, to the extent that in the black rose duel, she tries to kiss him. I guess on some degree it might have been a comment to how her view of sexuality = power was so strong she tried to apply it to her own brother. She is highly implied to be a victim of statutory rape by Akio, and constantly has sex with older boys like Touga too, believing she is the one in power and control in both scenarios not that she is a preteen being exploited. It makes sense she would project the abuse outwards.

Their relationship is toxic on account of Miki's ideal for his sister as something she never was nor will ever be, and his dislike for her personality and choices, but Kozue does not want to let him move on or try to re establish their relationship as something else at first. He continues to drink the milkshakes (affection and care), offers them to her, she rejects them. It's the reason why she's get coaxed into dueling to supposedly kill anthy. It's only after that she becomes more amiable to him and accepts the milkshakes (and an innocent kiss on the forehead).

The black rose arc's sword scenes are a heavy metaphor (though not direcly meaning) for assault, and if we take the movie into consideration, it makes explicit how far this fixation of hers goes.

I honestly believe that their entire relationship in the show would make more sense if they were not twins, but childhood friends. As it stands, if you read the show from its commentary on gender rather than read based on symbolism and metaphor, it seems like it's more a commentary on the difference between female incestuous abusers and male ones. Kozue wants to keep Miki close to her because brothers are a boon in this system, and she sees his romantic interests as competition to her familial ones. It's a common dynamic, which I see especially here in Pakistan, where sisters and mothers in law treat the new wife badly or as a threat, and it does seem incestuous.

While I can appreciate the commentary, it seems strange the only female character that displays incestuous abusive tendencies is also seen as less threatening or not very serious. It seems less on account of their similarity in age, and more because the show does err on the side of women as perpetual victims, therefore incapable of abuse. (For anyone that reads this and gets upset, I know she's just a teenager being played by the system. I am commenting more on the show's portrayal of the idea itself than a repudiation of Kozue as a character.)

This is why I argue their arc would have been better if this obsession had seemed less romantic or if she was portrayed as a childhood friend (though I cant imagine a show like Utena not wanting to explore twins).

If you look at it more through a metaphorical lens of what they represent I feel there is a different story. I believe on some level, Miki and Kozue can be read as one person and the internal struggles of selfhood and identity in the loneliness of adolescence. They represent the ease of having a stable sense of self in childhood, before the ego develops, before life forces a split. They were one until music (mathematics, perfection) split them apart. I would say the second Miki duel episode is what makes this the most obvious - we literally see their ruptured childhood self and how they see themselves as a one that works in two pairs following their parents divorce and abandonment, instinctive wild animals according to Kozue (in other words, all id).

Miki and Kozue represent a lot of opposites not in terms of personality but choice:

idealism / cynicism (mikis perfectionism and distaste for kozues, understanding of the world as 'impure' and acting to 'game' the system)

the difficulty in reconciling two very different views of reality and history (Miki idealizing the past by projecting it into his present, Kozue acting on the present based on her love for the past)

the unhealthy obsession with the self (miki in his perfectionism, kozue in chasing miki's attention)

against unhealthy connection outwards (miki in how he judges how kaoru purposely picks those bad for her and her trying to use her sexuality in a system that exploits her for it, kozue in how she resents miki's ignorance of those bad for him and how he utilizies patriarchal structure to get what he wants).

All of this is based on an unhealthy understanding of the past as better, un'adult'erated even, an uncomplicated understanding of the world as best when not contradictory - but that is not reality. Reality is contradictions, it is the twins, and it is not their inseparablity in youth. There is no purity in being whole that is to be idealized.

In this sense, I would say the show does them right. It's where the whole twin thing does pay off.

Either way! I am confused.

You carried me once, friend, and now I'll carry you.

[Prints here]

star fighter

It'd be interesting to make a chart of various Dracula adaptations and how they deal with certain issues. Things like:

Dr. Seward is:

Lucy's ex

Lucy's father

Lucy AND Mina's father

some rando

non-existent

Renfield is:

Just some guy (old)

Just some guy (young)

Jonathan Harker

Jonathan's employer

Jonathan escapes the castle by:

Dying immediately

Getting killed by the Girlies

Getting turned into a vampire

Becoming Dracula's thrall

He just leaves

He was never in the castle in the first place

This character does not exist

Seriously the options are WILD. I haven't consumed nearly enough adaptations to do it myself but I think it would be a very funny group project

🌹

Hiromu Arakawa’s genius is obvious throughout all of FMA but her first and biggest leap of genius was in how she crafted her protagonist. 

Arakawa realized the burgeoning youth of the early 2000s wasnt interested in another plucky spry optimistic young shonen protag. Instead she gave us a short ugly egotistical asshole smarter-than-you atheist with so much money and power that people could no longer best him in arguments by telling him “dude shut up ur literally like 12″ 

Five pages in we’re told Edward’s famous and rich and powerful. Five more pages and he’s calling some girl stupid for thinking God exists. Five more pages and he’s proven right. Five more and he’s kicked an evil priest’s teeth in. And no one can tell his mom on him.

Hiromu Arakawa figured out the dream of every edgy young weeb discovering internet arguments for the first time and she cast them an idol made of gold.

Other people have commented on all the funny jokes last year about Jonathan not realizing that he was in the novel Dracula whereas this year we’re very aware of him being uneasy and already saying goodbye to Mina in the second email. Well, personally, I think it was me, the reader, taking everything as a delightful joke. It wasn’t Jonathan ‘not realizing he was in Dracula’ it was me, not realizing that I was reading Dracula. I only had a vague idea of pop culture and a Sesame Street Count to go off of. It was me, a modern thinker, thinking how bad can vampires really be? Aren’t they rather funny? Or sexy? Or weird guys with the personality of mayonnaise and the skin of a disco ball? Not sure what my point is exactly but I feel very confident that Jonathan is taking this situation Much More Seriously than I would if I was on a business trip. And reading it the second time is more nerve wracking then the first, because I know now what to expect, and can’t do anything about it.

If I was Camilla I would be giving "Dulcinea" the hard fucking silent treatment too watching Palamedes bring her tea and tenderly drape her in his bathrobe only for her to barely give him a second glance or even say hello and go back to batting her lashes at the first well-muscled butch teenager she laid eyes on. Never mind the fact that she literally doesn't acknowledge the fact that Camilla exists when Camilla thought they were at least friends. She's not wearing the pulmonary drain he invented for her even though it works as intended and she audibly badly needs it. I'd be on the news