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can you believe we're getting THEM back

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.

the scariest toughest goodest boy ever

i always thought that scene in the taz balance finale where merle reconnects with pan and casts zone of truth to burn away the hunger was kind of a tongue in cheek moment where clint casts his signature spell and griffin as the dm humors him by given it a huge affect. like fun but not too noteworthy. but i literally just realized what a phenomenal moment it really was. because the hunger is nihilism. it's hopelessness and pessimism. but the zone of truth dispels all lies and dishonesty. they cant exist under its spell. and that's what nihilism is. a lie. and so when merle cast zone of truth he burned away the lie of hopelessness and if you don't think that's the best thing ever i don't know what to tell you.

oh man i love your Renfield and Dracula art and you're taking requests??? can you draw Art with his three terriers? bonus if Lucy is included (but yeah, if you're not feeling like drawing multiple dogs, just Art is good. or just Art and Lucy. i love Art)

I love Art too, and to be honest I was already planning on doing this, so the ask just pushed me along into getting on with it. I did have to learn how to draw dogs, but that’s a useful thing to learn.

Also doing cute drawings where these characters can be happy before the true horrors take hold brings me joy.

so idk if we’re getting a bard’s lament this season, but regardless of if we are or not i NEED to talk about my most favorite dynamic ever so i can get this convo back out into the universe before a bard’s lament happens because it makes me unwell.

vex and scanlan are, in many ways, the same. they’re deeply insecure, sad people that put on masks to hide it. they’re good liars. so that’s what they do. they stand in front of each other and they lie. and it’s not hard for them to know the other is lying. i mean vex LITERALLY SEES THROUGH HIS DISGUISE EVENTUALLY LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING?

and like, vex is snippy and she can be a bit of a shit and she says scanlan is just some guy without his magic. but he’s also the person she looks up to. she literally travels across the whole continent by herself to make sure his daughter can get to him and she sends kaylie back to him even though she’s distraught and terrified and alone. she’s the one person who actually gets through to him during a bard’s lament and she gets through to him by telling him to stop viewing his daughter as a sacred object. to fix his relationship with her. AND HE LISTENS. like again she is the ONLY person in that room who gets through to him and it’s because she implores him to fix his relationship with his daughter after he cruelly remarks that they went to the fey realm to “fix her daddy issues.”

and scanlan! he teases her and he deflects his seriousness around her with humor as much as he does to anyone. but he teaches vex how to use the broom and he gives her the hat to wear. and he ensures her success when he turns her into a dragon and directly tells a god that she’s mean and greedy and the most perfect one of all of them.

scanlan is a father with a fractured relationship with his daughter and vex is a daughter desperate for her father’s approval.

scanlan is not vex’s father. but when scanlan comes back she does everything she can to try and make sure he won’t leave again despite the way he hurt her.

vex is not scanlan’s daughter. but he walks her down the aisle and makes sure she can see her brother at her wedding and he’s happy to be like her father for a day.

scanlan is NOT vex’s father and vex is NOT scanlan’s daughter but really, aren’t they made of the same stuff?

i’m currently reading stoker’s notes from when he was plotting out and researching dracula.

apparently he took 10+ pages of notes on whitby dialect & slang. it greatly amuses me to imagine the reason mr swales talks Like That is because stoker really wanted a chance to use his research notes at least once in the book

that one episode

funniest thing ever was the sex scene in BD, you’re telling me a 110 year old virgin and an awkward blushing 18 year old had good sex…on their first try? edward was probably holding up 3 medical anatomy textbooks including his battered grey’s anatomy book trying to find the cl!t and dry sobbing every time he got it wrong