205 posts
Latest Posts by airfleck - Page 4
Artist: spookgeist// @spookgeist
❥Permission to repost this was given by the artist. Please do not repost without the artist’s permission. If you liked this fanwork, do take the time to rate and bookmark the original work.
revolution
[ID by @jesus-iscariot: an illustration of anthy and utena. anthy is shown in her rose bride dress, with long wavy purple hair. utena is drawn in her uniform, with long pink hair. they both appear to be floating, with utena falling slightly backwards and anthy leaning towards her. their faces are close together and their eyes are closed, and they look as if they’re about to kiss. their hair appears to be flowing loosely upwards. anthy’s dress is also flowing. behind them is what appears to be a stroke of blue paint, patterned and coloured to look like a night sky, with a black silhouette of an inverted castle. the background is plain white. End ID.]
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
I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.
"So you see, my dear Lucy, this man here is bitchless, no bitch in sight, in fact, I reckon he never felt a woman's touch in his life"
- Abraham Van Helsing, September 3rd.
Peter Nureyev wears exclusively floral patterned button up shirts for the entirety of S3 on the Carte Blanche but nobody ever mentions it because there are more pressing matters at hand
Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?
Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:
“I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn’t do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What’s that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-”
What do you think of Docholligay’s take on Ruka, that being that he’s a projection of Juri’s dark side and that, in shattering the locket, she overcomes?
Man, it is a good-ass take that I love a lot.
It really fixes the one big issue with the otherwise amazing two-parter of episodes 28 and 29 wrapping up Juri’s issues. Which is of interloper Ruka. Personal feelings about Ruka as a character aside (which is really kind of tied up in the ‘men of Utena’ as a whole, that he seemingly gets to waltz in, fuck shit up, and leave with relatively little consequence to himself), it is profoundly weird that this issue of Juri and Shiori’s relationship is only ‘solved’ when this random guy who we have never heard of before and never will again shows up. But that ends up only SUPPORTING Doc’s read.
I had previously read the whole thing of Ruka not being spoken of before and after his time to be more of a function of the insular space-time weirdness of Ohtori where anything that isn’t there might as well not exist to those within it. But that’s just the thing - space and time does weird things in Ohtori and that manifests in odd ways - SEE MIKAGE. Which only grows more relevant as both Mikage’s final episodes and Ruka’s episodes are some of the most blatant foreshadowing of the ending of the show (where Utena ‘leaves’ the school and Anthy frees herself). If Mikage is a ghost, then why isn’t Ruka as well?
I don’t think that Juri necessarily invented Ruka wholecloth. With Doc’s reading in mind I do read him as a combination of Juri’s dark side manifest AND a ghost (that at some point in Juri’s past there was a ‘Ruka’ who mentored her but he’s long dead, hence why everyone else is so confused when the ‘old’ fencing captain shows up). Much like most of the cast, Juri has trapped herself in a toxic pattern regarding her inability to move on from her feelings for Shiori and imagine a happy future for herself (something she thinks would take ‘a miracle’ so mired she is in self-loathing). We see her try to break the cycle before and fail miserably - in episode 17 she throws away the locket, a good and healthy thing, but the moment it reappears in front of her she cannot reject it again. Juri must be aware on a subconscious level that she needs SOMETHING to break through this, but she isn’t prepared to do it on a conscious level - she is tied up in the idea that she can only be happy if Shiori returns her feelings, so to reject Shiori would to be giving up any hope, thus she chases her tail over and over for ‘a miracle’. So the idea of an influential man in her life (and that it is a MAN who is able to, briefly, have a ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship with Shiori is a big part of that) becoming the avatar of all the things she feels she can’t surpass or are holding her back - that sounds like just the kind of thing that can manifest as a ghost in Ohtori’s weird space-time-ness.
Which really only makes the foreshadowing of the end of the series only more potent. I used to bristle at this idea of Ruka being ‘a prince who saved Juri because of his man-love bleh’ since he ‘dies’ after Juri is freed, comparable to the young man in her story about her sister nearly drowning (and comparable to Utena disappearing after opening the coffin). BUT this changes it significantly - much like how Anthy cannot be pulled out of the coffin and must choose to reach back to Utena, Juri ultimately frees herself. Ruka is her manifestation and he ‘dies’ like a prince because ‘princes’ are fuck-all useless - at the end of the day the true ideal of ‘the prince’ never existed, and pursuing that ideal only leads to failure. We are supposed to read Akio and Dios as denigrating Utena in the final episodes when they say she’s ‘just a girl’ - but a nonexistent prince can’t help anyone. Only by reaching out to Anthy as a human being, as a GIRL, can Utena help break this cycle of abuse and loathing that Anthy has mired herself in. By giving herself someone to struggle against, Juri can throw away the rose and forfeit the duel, finally abandoning the endless and futile search for ‘a miracle.’ So really when you read Ruka not as an actual dude who suddenly dies after inserting himself into the drama of these two girls, but as the ghost-simulacrum of who Juri both wants and fears to become, Ruka suddenly makes much more sense in regards to not only Juri’s arc but to the overall themes of RGU.
this idea did not leave my head for a month so i knew i had to draw it or else
not rlly sure how tumblr works but heres knife wife and the babygirl antichrist
I finally finished my Utena re-watch yesterday, binging the last three episodes and Adolescence in one evening, and I am Having Thoughts. Mostly about the story from Akio's perspective, surprisingly.
I don't know if I've ever read anyone's exploration of the story from his pov, so I'm going to brain-vomit about it.
From his pov, he's the one who's trapped. The Rose Bride sealed Dios away from the world, whether for his own good or to keep her brother to herself, or both. The princely part of him, Dios, is trapped, leaving only the human part of him, Akio, out in the world, trying to regain what he's lost and cope without what he sees as his 'real' power. 'The power to revolutionise the world' is, for him, the regaining of his heroic princely aspect that made him something close to a god among mortals, a natural leader, the greatest warrior.
So what is he left with? What does a regular human man have with which to find his place in the world? What is his role, if not a prince? Is he a ladies' man? An intellectual? A fighter? A logical realist who denies the 'miracles' the prince could perform to keep people safe?
It's clear from the Black Rose arc, and from the final scenes, that Akio has repeated the duels in some form many times, assuming that he needs the right sword to open the Rose Gate and access his old power. He holds this 'might makes right' belief that physical strength or a warrior's weapon is the key to power. When Utena, just a girl, succeeds as the winner of the duels, at first he tries to persuade her to stand down, because how could a girl's sword possibly be strong enough to open the Gate? I wondered, during this watch, if this cycle was the first time that any girls had taken part in the duels, and whether that was by design or accidental. In the Black Rose arc, it's 100 boys who are drawn in to find the power or the eternal something. In this latest cycle, it's the student council, a power structure that represents intellectual masculinity: Juri, as a lesbian in a uniform closer to her male counterparts than to the other female students, might possibly have been the first girl to join the duels, an unintentional outcome perhaps inspired by Mikage, who was more easily tempted by a boy than by that boy's older sister. She still represented an aspect of masculinity in her own way, as the logical realist who denies miracles. Likewise, Nanami joins the duels initially to stand in for her brother, and leaves when she is confronted by how damaging the system is to the very people it's supposed to protect.
I wondered if perhaps Utena was never meant to join the duels. If Dios had meant to find Touga and Saionji on that particular day, and stumbled on Utena because they did. If Utena joining and winning the duels was never part of Akio's plan, and that's why he, and all the others, are so perplexed by her and never figure out how to get the better of her. Akio tries to force her into the role of 'Girl' because all he knows is playing the role of 'Man', and what else is a man supposed to do with a girl besides protect her or seduce her?
Utena succeeds because, for all her talk about wanting to be a prince to rescue girls, she gives up that roleplay and acts of of genuine love and compassion. She succeeds in besting the Rose Bride's curse because she doesn't approach it like a man, trying to seduce, fight, or logic her way through, but by loving Anthy and by having the compassion to want to end her pain.
Utena is still very much about smashing the patriarchy (literally in the case of Adolescence), but in its own way it also artfully deconstructs the ways in which patriarchy hurts men too, by limiting the roles available to them. Utena offers an alternative to the masculine roles of warrior, lover, intellectual and cynic, as well as to the feminine role of princess. The student council recognise it in the end, but Akio never does, because he is so utterly stuck in his role. That's why Anthy gets to leave at the end, telling him he's the one that's trapped, because Utena showed her that she, and we, can choose our own roles.
it is ironic but i think an rgu fan's openness to talking about akio is a good gauge of how they're engaging with the show's themes. because he's much easier to digest if you keep him at arm's length, an abstraction of a concept rather than another person inside ohtori who is suffering because of patriarchy. i've seen this fan reactionarism that assumes any acknowledgement of this is inherently apologism, so yes, it's true that akio does hold and grossly misuse power by virtue of him being an adult who surrounds himself with easily manipulated children. it's also true that rgu is a show where just about every character does heinous and fucked-up things to other characters, oftentimes the characters they purport to care the most deeply for.
rgu is about the deceit of binaries, the princes and the princesses, the abusers and the abused, how all of these are assigned to the concepts of gender we encounter under patriarchy, and how this blurs what we can even define as 'abuse'. sure, it's easy when we see saionji and nanami hitting anthy, but does that change after the positions they later find themselves in because of touga? does shiori's manipulation of juri cancel out juri's impossible idealization of her? what about what miki and kozue do to each other? what anthy does to utena? how much sympathy you feel for any of them is probably subjective based on your own experiences, but you're just not gonna have a good time with this show if you need to sort every character into a category of 'abuser' or 'victim' - and i would in fact argue that you've missed the point if you are.
so is akio, then, a victim of anything? anthy calls it out in the end, that he as well has chosen suicide by pursuit of eternity. his sunlit garden of princehood, the devil who could not be a prince, who set up a game nobody can win without ever realizing that he is included in 'nobody'. this entire system is structured to mirror him in its every reproduction and he still can't be satisfied, because he's also just playing a role that's not what he truly wishes to be. you don't arrive at that fascinating a dissection of how patriarchy functions if you're just saying 'akio bad' and calling it a day. i think it's very relevant that akio is only the acting chairman of ohtori. we never meet the actual chairman of ohtori.
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.
Micheal is my favourite character in the whole magnus archives saga- he is just so delightfully unsettling! drew a redraw of an old work on my relisten to celebrate TMPs announcement stuff and my best distorted boy
