My Singing

the met gala is tonight, and i know a lot of us are excited for it. and why not, it's a fun event! but while we're here, please spare some thought for the people of palestine as well. they don't have a platform nearly as big as the met gala does, but they need it more desperately and they need it urgently.

i don't know if any celebrity at the gala is going to mention palestine or speak out for them. but we don't need to wait for a celebrity to show support or tell us what to do. we have power too. every single one of us here has a voice, and the power to uplift others using that voice. we don't need one person to donate thousands. but even if a hundred people donated $5 each that's $500 put towards helping a family survive. and that means more to gazans than i can say.

if you can afford it, please donate to anyone from @gazavetters's spreadsheet (here). if you're uncertain or cannot choose, then please consider:

my friend ibrahim @aburakhiaibrahim (vet | paypal | gfm)

the isnad foundation @isnaddfoundation which provides gazan students with a safe space to study and continue their education (vet | chuffed)

my friend mahmoud @ma7moudgaza2 who is the founder of isnad (paypal | gfm)

if you cannot donate, please reblog so that the post can reach someone who can. thank you.

This video is Janeway and Kes to me

I would say "Don't ask" but actually please do ask (I don't know if I have any answers)

(gordon ramsay on star trek) oh what the hell? the gagh is fucking dead! look at this! it’s not moving. it’s feasting with its fucking ancestors in sto’vo’kor! excuse me, darling, how fresh is this gagh? they’re what? fucking hell. thank you. my god, it’s fucking replicated. wow, fuck me.

my refrigerator w legs barrels towards me and grabs me and stuffs me into its vegetable drawer then casually walks away

I went ahead and read the short story and I'm gonna need at least an hour to process that

an observation from r/severance

Tribbles have picked the wrong man to mess with

People hate on his fashion too much the boy looks perfect

Also I appreciate the fanart of him there's very little

A quick, sketchy tribute to Wesley’s sweaters from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I started watching the show for the first time last year and am now in the middle of the fourth season. Gimme that space fashion!

Undyne tries to be a good lab partner to Alphys but then Frisk shows up with some newfound skills 🐟🦖 Made with Blender!

| Music: [Track 1] [Track 2] | Watch on Youtube |

I Played the Utena Saturn Game

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 2

I shied away from it in 2019, but this year I sank my teeth right back into Revolutionary Girl Utena. It’s simply the best anime! Of course, something as popular as RGU is bound to get some spinoffs. These range from the concurrently-published manga to a shitton of drama CDs to a takarazuka-styled stageplay. And then there’s the visual novel they made for the Sega Saturn, which I decided to go into blind because I thought it might make for some good blogging. I hope I was right!

Yep, this is our main character. God help us

The Utena Saturn game, which was translated in 2015 courtesy of an ohtori.nu user, tries its hardest to integrate itself into the show, pulling artwork, voice actors, soundtrack, and even some FMVs straight out of the series. As such, it feels like a pretty low-budget affair, but I wasn’t expecting anything too glamorous from a tie-in like this. Plotwise, it takes place somewhere towards the end of the show’s first arc, which in practice means that the characters are underdeveloped and less interesting than they could have been (and Nanami is practically a no-show). The plot plays out like a test-run for the Black Rose Arc, with characters gradually getting bent to the villain’s will as the protagonist is left in the dark.

What a coincidence, I put poison in your tea

We find ourselves playing as a personality-free transplant to Ohtori Academy who quickly gets swept under Utena’s wing. As far as yuri-pandering goes, it’s both liberal by Utena show standards and not much at all. As a female student, you can ask the women of the show if they have girlfriends, but you’ll pretty much always get laughed off and chastised for it. I guess that’s true to form for Akio’s academy? Anyways, the character of note here is Chigusa, the other new transfer student. First and foremost, she’s the goth dream girl that the show never quite got, and when she does the same “I get told I look like a boy” bit as Utena, it’s even funnier this time around, considering she’s wearing a dress with a lace-up front. Chigusa is obviously the going to draw the player’s attention the most, because she’s new and mysterious. And the game slaps you on the wrist for that! You see, Chigusa is straight-up evil, and doesn’t even make an attempt to hide it. She starts off by whispering you the wrong answer in math class, but by day three she is straight-up trying to assassinate your character, from tacks in a cake to kicking your lungs out during a soccer match to a poisoning attempt. Unfortunately, if you like Revolutionary Girl Utena, chances are you are a lesbian and thusly like horrible women doing terrible things. Getting any positive relationship points with her will subtract points from everyone else, pretty much sealing your fate if you interact with her more than once.

So you’ve sacrificed everything for Chigusa and all of the Student Council is effectively dead. Surely you’ll at least get some special bad ending, right? Maybe even a little bit of homoeroticism, as a treat.

Your reward is an incredibly brief scene in which your character trips down the dark therapy elevator, confesses that she has no real friends, and is dispatched unceremoniously by Utena in a Black Rose duel.

What a cruel game!

Playing through the game trying to get a real ending unfortunately doesn’t make our villain any more compelling. Like Professor Nemuro, Chigusa is a ghost from the past, a duelist who only wants to use the power of Dios to… travel back in time, steal your dad from your mom, and paradox you out of existence? It’s not even a half-baked ideology like the Student Council members have, it’s just a shitty scheme.

We do get an FMV duel between Chigusa and Utena, but it’s almost entirely made out of recycled frames from past duels, which makes sense given this game’s shoestring budget.

Me at myself before spending an entire evening trying to get my emulation setup to work since this is a two-disc game and that makes it extra finicky

My final thoughts on this game concern everyone’s favorite miracle-iconoclast. I’m a lesbian first and a gamer second, so obviously I picked the Juri route over the rest of the Student Council. It’s mostly standard fare, with her being initially cold, later incredibly distressed at how you admire her and Utena for being Duelists, and finally trusting you enough to let her in on the whole locket mess. Shiori doesn’t actually appear in the game, so Chigusa has to play her part in instigating drama, even making a pass at Juri and stealing her locket (As an aside, Kozue is here, exclusively to have a gay relationship with Chigusa to piss off Miki).

“How do you do, fellow lesbians”

It’s the ending of Juri’s route that really eats away at me. Unsurprisingly, your character catches feelings and doesn’t know how to process being in love with another girl, and Juri pretty much just laughs her off. But as your character prepares to leave the academy for good, Juri kisses her goodbye and hands you a locket with her own face in it.

You don’t have to be an expert in Juri’s arc to know that that’s one of the cruelest gifts she could have given to a fellow repressed lesbian.