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[fairydust-stuff]

safe and soundless

[fairydust-stuff]

Shang Qinghua: why is everyone mad at me? I'm just a little guy!

The Cang Qiong Peak Lords: you orchestrated the murders of thousands of disciples, from all the different sects, on behalf of demons

Shang Qinghua: I was feewing siwwy thawt day :3

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there's something to be said about characters in rgu who can't reconcile their perceptions and desires with the prince/princess dichotomy and what that renders them within ohtori's system. what i'm saying here is there's something to be said about nanami (calf-shaped prince who shouldn't be a prince but is, to a false prince, thereby shattering false prince's self-image), juri (boy-shaped girl who doesn't want to be a prince but is forced to be if she accepts her sexuality, thereby attempting to prevent her from doing that) and saionji (boy princess who would only ever be a prince for one person who, again, is a false prince). like tldr that's such a fucked framework for relationships and how it's expressed with these characters is especially interesting to me

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Hm.

Nanami and Juri are girl princes. Maybe Kozoue too... Shiroi maybe?

Saionji and Miki are boy princesses.

more complicated than this imho but thats just because im weird and transsexual. i have rambled underneath about my feelings about boy-princess- and girl-prince-isms, and the general bullshit of ohtori’s rigid categorisation because it’s something that compels me to no end.

juri is a girl prince but everyone forgets that she's a girl until she actually tries to act like a boy, and then they punish her for it. nanami is like a calf-shaped prince. ive said this before, but it's genuinely how i feel. she's not a girl, she's a farm animal (to ohtori; and admittedly, there isn't much difference in ohtori, but it's explicitly said about nanami when it isnt for other girls).

now. ive never really got the 'miki is a boy princess' thing because like.... sure miki is a 13 year old androgynous little boy with short hair and he doesnt exactly ooze masculinity in everyones eyes but um. two things. one is that he actually commands more respect than saionji as a male and therefore princely figure (saionji isnt princely whatsoever and never tries to be bc his ideas about masculinity are in contradiction with akio's all-american bullshit) and the other is that he is, hilariously in my opinion, the only character other than akio shown to drive the car in the series. like, it's a dream sequence/projector illusion (?) but the fact that we see miki in the driver's seat, hands on the wheel, is kind of a huge deal for the show where they loveeeeeee to refuse to show you stuff that destabilises ohtori's artifice. miki has a very conventional and straightforward desire to be a prince to anthy (you know, if you ignore everything with kozue; but arguably his displacement and warping of his feelings in that way is typically ohtori) and he could totally pull that off imho. he's just a little too young for the moment, and unwilling to manipulate and coerce others like, say, touga is. this isn't to say there's no gender fuckery going on with miki because there 100% is, as there is with all rgu characters, i just wouldnt describe him as a boy princess.

anyway <3 kozue deffo has princely qualities but i would probably box hers in with anthy's. they are both princes repackaged as witches because their genders destabilise the ideal of the prince and its artifice. this is something that happens to all of ohtori's little sisters, because they demonstrate utmostly princeliness towards their brothers, but nanami gets special calf-shaped prince privileges because i have kiryuu sibling brain worms. anthy and kozue are very conscious of their witchification as they are conscious of their sexuality, and how that impacts their relationships with their brothers. nanami is not.

shiori is also an interesting case because she and ruka are. well. theyre just fucking bonkers arent they. everything they say about each other is also equally applicable to themselves. i think that out of our three roles (prince, princess, witch/rose bride), some combination of witch and princess seems most fitting? like shiori is 100% a witch, and ruka was the perfect prince until he got sock-puppeted by akio in such a way that. well ruka's complicated and frankly i dont have time to get into it right now (know, however, that i hate his reanimated guts). shiori wants to be a princess and she wants to be pursued hopelessly but in having that desire, she is a witch. there is perhaps a perverse princeliness to her desire, but id argue that that's just what being a witch is. slayyyyyyy

now in regards to saionji. he's a boy princess but also it's complicated. saionji doesnt want to be a prince and saionji doesnt have any interest in princehood because, fundamentally, he doesnt care for it. princehood is built upon these americanised ideals and aesthetics that dont resonate with his very traditionally japanese understanding and performance of masculinity, and he just feels kind of disillusioned and defensive and all-around miserable that he's being 'left behind' in this 'old world' without any fucking chevys in it. like he doesnt want a chevy but everyone else has massive hardons for chevys and all his male peers think thats the only way to attain true masculinity and it makes him sooooooo mad, and frankly, even though he's a misogynist freak, i get that. maybe i am just an american car hater, who knows.

anyway saionji's inclination to the princess role (it's a bit more of a bride role than a princess role, but these distinctions are muddy; i'd argue a princess is entirely passive, but a bride actively wills the outcome of a duel) is deeply sad to me because it's just like this guy has absolutely no idea what the hell he's supposed to do to have a place in this world, attain specialness, command respect and attention. like he was repeatedly mocked for and excluded from attempting masculinity and he certainly cant be a princess (wow isnt this an interesting idea i wonder if it relates to the transfem reading haha what) and he doesnt feel any inclination towards either gender presentation particularly. he likes woodcarving and cooking, is artistic and earnest and expressive, but he's also a devoted kendoka whose sense of masculinity is closely tied to that practice. his gender is, by ohtori's rules, desperately confused and inconclusive. thus he forms part of the trifecta that is himself, utena and nanami, or as i like to call them: transgender freaks and cowgirl. good lord have they slipped through the cracks of this evil bastard system and attempted to fit all the same, understanding absolutely nothing about the impossible spaces they try to fill.

anyway whatevs. now im gonna talk about anthy and touga because my blog is the anthytouga show in my mind despite rarely talking about them and mainly just reblogging deranged art (affectionate) of them. anthy and touga are bonkers to me because they ARE the norm, but also no they arent. and that's the whole thing. like they embody the ideal so perfectly (prince and princess respectively), but anthy's also a witch, and the rose bride, and touga isn't really a prince. theyre unable to join as a prince and princess should, unable to be virtuous and perfect due to their knowledge and awareness. like, theyre both aware of the artifice of their existences and performances, but neither of them can really artiulate that awareness because doing so would jepoardise the positions theyre currently in. for touga, that's a very valuable one that has him close to 'escaping' (read: getting the key to the birdcage and holding it over everyone else's heads). for anthy, it's also valuable but not for herself, not really. it's valuable because it's a position from which she can help akio, and akio needs her, and she is indebted to akio and obliged to sacrifice herself eternally for him. etc etc etc. god i hate this man. you get what im saying with this. it’s about the precarious position that you are placed in as a victim, the power dynamics of it all. you have the knowledge that could crack the world’s shell easily, but you have been caught in such a way that you believe sharing it would kill you (again). it wouldn’t be worth anything. all it does is highlight how disgusting and awful you really are, and you can’t let anyone know that (the objective truth) because then they will stop loving the idealised you you’ve been performing and see the real you (evil and monstrous). ohhhhh what’s that Judith herman quote about being filled with black slime that pours out of your mouth when you open it. anthytouga hours (i am inconsolable rn)

sorry about this rant! i simply have too much to say about this goddamn show and merely wish to discourage people from 'girl prince' and 'boy princess'-ing characters into boxes. you know, utena's whole girl prince thing is actively critiqued by the show because there's nothing revolutionary about assimilation. every character in this show's cast is androgynous and it's up to us to determine what we think those unique expressions of androgyny mean. there are certainly girl prince-isms and boy princess-isms to characters, some more so than others, but you know. the ambiguity and freedom of the transsexual or whatever

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Suzanne collins wrote a trilogy where a main media propaganda strategy was to market a horrific act of violence as a love story to distract ppl and then it got adapted into a box office breaking movie and ppl made it all about the love triangle. so then since they didn’t get the point the first time Suzanne collins wrote a prequel story about the main dictator and she makes it so that you as a reader want it to be a genuine love story so badly even tho it’s so very clearly not and instead feels extremely unsettling to make her point even more meta which then gets adapted into another box office breaking film and now ppl are making romantic snowbaird tik toks. do u think she’s gonna write another book that’s somehow even more blatant or just give up and start executing ppl? hard to say but I wouldn’t blame her for the second one

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Here some sad Saionji fanart for the day

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anyways, my kin on these characters was out of this world back in the days woah

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Hot take of the morning: Should superheroes kill?

Every time I see a superhero kill a villain, I always see people respond with "Finally. A hero just kills a guy. No "If we kill them we're not better than them handwringing."

Which like okay, there settle down bro.

People always talk about this in moral absolutes though, like heroes shouldn't kill the bad guys because they always have to be better, or heroes should kill the bad guys because retaliating against violence against someone who's trying to kill you doesn't make you as bad as they are.

However, my answer to Should Superheroes kill is - it depends on the hero.

Batman's an entire character is written around how he wants to redeem Gotham and save the city, most of his villains aren't even sent to prison they're sent to Arkham a facility that's supposed to rehabilitee the mentally ill so they can rejoin society. Batman has decided it's his place to stop crime, not his place to decide whether or not people have the right to live or redeem themselves.

Batman is also at risk for being just like his villains, that's why he's foils with Harvey Dent, someone who tried to prosecute people under the law who then snapped and went full violent mobster vigilante. Batman actually is at risk for walking the same path as Harvey if he decides murder is an option.

What inspired this post was Rogue dropping Trask to his death from several stories up, which like you go girl. A lot of people on the internet cheered her on for not showing mercy.

However, in this case killing makes sense for Rogue's character. Rogue didn't start out as a hero, she was raised by Mystique and Destiny, she was a violent terrorist in support of mutant's rights as a member of the brotherhood of evil mutants. She eventually found redemption with the X-men and became a hero insstead.

It makes sense for Rogue's character to take a darker turn and start killing because she's been there before, and now her attempts to walk the high road only to watch people continue exterminating mutants has left her bitter and falling back to her old ways.

In one sense killing a man who made a machine that led to the massacre of mutants on Genosha isn't making you as bad as him, he's the violent instigator here. On the other hand, considering Rogue's past it's a sign of her mental regression though completely understandable because honestly who wouldn't get sick of trying to walk the high road when the result is remy's death and so many other mutants buried.

It's a part of a character arc.

If Peter Parker were to drop a man from several stories up intentionally, that would be a betrayal of his character. Peter never wants to kill his villains, he's interacted with the Punisher before and been disgusted with the guy, he thinks the Punisher is a bully that's barely any better than the people he hates. But it makes total sense for Rogue here.

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Saionji, you beautiful pathetic bastard

I came around to Saionji anyway in the anime, which I could never have predicted given that at the beginning he was easily one of the ones I hated the most, but I really like the way this casts him as, I don’t know if I want to say a bit of a romantic, but at least there’s a sort of gut-level romanticism to what’s going on here with him.

Touga wants power just as bad as anyone else, but he’s a got certain level of pragmatism toward it–he knows he needs to win, and honestly I think half the reason Touga lets so many other people “go first” is so he can study how best to approach this. Saionji is all going on emotion and impulse, and the idea that he feels he DESERVES to have this power to fix everything, in his mind. Even Touga calmly restating, you know, THE GODDAMN RULES OF THE TOURNAMENT is met with a fierce rebuke from Saionji, because that’s not how it’s supposed to work. HIs wanting it is supposed to be enough.

I dunno where the musical is going to go with this–I could go further with it but upon reflection I think a lot of what I’m seeing is necessarily informed by what I know of Saionji from the anime, and so I may just give it a minute to see what this Saionji will do.

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Do you think utena and nanami subconciously consider each other friends? Obviously nanami “hates” utena and utena thinks nanami is a freak, but they spend a not insubstantial amount of time hanging out with and helping each other. There are times when nanami very much seems to prefer the company of utena over that of her yes-gals even though us means probably getting roasted by anthy. And utena seems to be unusually friendly; I think she’d consider most of the people she barely knew and dueled in the black rose arc friends or on their way to it. I don’t think she would ever use the word “acquaintance”

lol this is a cute question bc i think neither of them would consider each other friends (save for the magnanimous way in which utena wants to be friends with everyone) but they are friends. utena is fascinated enough by nanami to hide in the bushes with miki and spy on her throughout the day, which is not the behavior someone would exhibit regarding a person they didn’t care for. nanami “gets her hands dirty” by giving utena advice about end of the world. she thinks utena deserves better, she cares about her, too much to suppress. after all, nanami’s “hatred” of utena reads more as a crush she doesn’t understand and refuses to acknowledge than as a product her jealousy towards utena for being the subject of touga’s affections (frankly, she doesn’t even seem to realize that touga likes her; she’s hyperfocused on anthy for her own personal reasons despite the fact that touga only sees her as a means to an end and not as a person in her own right). and utena clearly finds nanami amusing and sympathetic. when she reads tsuwabuki’s diary and finds out how vindictively and downright cruelly nanami has acted towards anthy, she doesn’t get chauvinistically chivalrously defensive of anthy’s honor the way she does with the rest of the student council, she’s just like “wow you’ve really been up to no good, huh? :D “ she’s almost delighted by nanami’s treachery, like her silly little schemes are more adorable than anything. so, yeah, she thinks nanami is a little freak, but she likes her! she cares about her, she enjoys her company, she wants to help her. which i suppose makes sense, considering that utena’s subconscious drive all along is to free the rose bride of her suffering: in the end, all girls are like the rose bride, and nanami more than most.

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I find it so funny that Wakaba (sweetheart, horrible judge of character most of the time, especially when it comes to the pretty boys/men in her life) canonically hates Touga's guts like. In episode 35 she hears his voice and this is her immediate response

She looks ready to physically attack if necessary. Where's our "Wakaba tackles Touga down a flight of stairs, killing him instantly" episode Ikuhara

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i can't explain why i have so much more affection for saionji than i do for touga since they're both being abused by the same guy (touga for longer even) and they're both horrid little rancid misogynists. and touga even likes cats. but i still mostly hate touga and i still kinda love saionji. in this respect i am hashtag wakabacoded i guess

i think touga is just totally insufferable whereas saionji is actually somewhat endearing when he's not around anthy. plus he's also pretty insightful; despite not actually knowing how to escape the system, he is often critical of it in really trenchant ways. touga is buried in so many layers of cognitive dissonance that even when he makes a breakthrough (with utena in the arena) he still frames it through a logic of possession and exploitation, princes and princesses. plus as bad as saionji's domestic abuse of anthy is, no one, including anthy, sees anthy as a full person, so his treatment of her isn't unique. whereas the way touga isolates, manipulates, dehumanizes, grooms, consumes, and assaults nanami is so fucking dark and sinister and twisted that even knowing that he himself has been abused his entire life doesn't even remotely excuse his treatment of her. and saionji, as much as he does yearn for him, also pretty vocally hates touga, so that scores him some points in my book. yeah saionji is basically objectively better than touga in every way and if not for his horrific desire to possess anthy he'd actually be a pretty cool guy. and he looks great in a denim

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For the ask thing- Revolutionary Girl Utena- I saw you like it and I need more people to scream with lol

Yessss, Utena's a perfect media, haha!!!

Favourite Character

So difficult to decide! I think it has to be Anthy though. I love her, I love how vicious she is, I love how petty she is, and I love how funny she can be. I find myself always so excited by imagining the future, what Anthy's personality develops into when she leaves the garden.

Least Favourite Character

I mean. The correct answer is Akio, but actually, I think Ruka. Ruka is all of Akio's manipulation and lies, but he's stupid enough to actually lie to himself that the girl he tried to break for two episodes actually could fall in love with him. At least Akio never deludes himself into that.

5 Favourite Ships

Utena/Anthy - Duh. No notes, 10/10, liberatory lesbian love

Juri/Wakaba - I really like the idea of Juri finding real kindness and joy in Wakaba, and Wakaba finding somebody who thinks of her as her most special thing.

Juri/Anthy - Not as one of those ships that's cute and good, but one of those ships where they would be a destructively horrible trainwreck, but I find myself fascinated by it. My characterization of Juri is never good enough to do this, so the past three Yuletides, I've been trying to get my gifter to write me the year that Akio decided Juri would be the one who keeps Anthy as a Rose Bride? I think that would have been an unmitigated, fascinating disaster.

Saionji/Touga - Honestly, this one goes either way, in that I like the idea of them maybe leaving Ohtori themselves at one point, and learning how to have a non-toxic relationships to each other? But also, I LOVE the idea of them just stuck in Akio's nightmare play, getting worse and worse and being more and more horrible to each other.

Nanami/Freedom, get her out of there. Be free.

(bonus) Nanami/Kozue - Two things make me consider this intriguing pairing. One, the contrasted imagery they both have, where Kozue is the free bird, the wild animal snarling her way out of the cage, as Nanami as the cow, the domesticated. What does it mean for Nanami to encounter Kozue's philosophy? But also Nanami who drowns the kitten that draws Touga's attention, and Kozue as the one who saves the baby bird, even at her own expense. Something something, compassion, adoration, self-preservation. Fun contrasts! I feel like they would hate each other at first, but find something genuinely transformative in the other. Also they both love Miki.

Character I find most attractive

Juri. The long hair, the fencing, the way she can go both high-femme and pretty butch? Queen.

Character I would marry

Wakaba. I feel like she'd genuinely try to take care of me, and also I would fucking adore her. She's so cute. She's the sort of person you could hang out with for a really long time, and I value that in a person.

Character I Would Be Best Friends With

Tragically, probably Miki. Very similar interests, and as much as I would shake my head at the way he places the girls he likes on pedestals and then demonizes them if they ever tumble off that pedestal, he would also shake his head at my tendency to avoid all my problems like the plague.

(Canon OTP is obviously Utena/Anthy, and non canon is Nanami/Kozue.)

Pairing I Am Not a Fan Of

Obviously, all of the incest ones, but honestly, I'm pretty meh on Shiori/Juri. A fascinating dynamic when done correctly, but when people write stuff about them in the future where everything's fine and they don't have tension between them...IDK. I think it's important to me that even without the homophobic pressure of Ohtori trapping them both, that Juri has created this false image of Shiori in the same way that Miki does for Kozue, and that Juri doesn't really know Shiori very well, in the end, because of her inability to ever really recognize Shiori's jagged edges. I think that would haunt their relationships, even if they tried to be together, how much Juri doesn't actually see or understand Shiori's inner personality.

Most badass character

Anthy.

Character I feel the Writers Screwed Up

Mikage! While I LOVE the aesthetic and thematic focuses of the Black Rose Arc, I think they don't quite knock it out of the park with Mikage. I wish Mikage was a more interesting mirror to Utena, but his devotion to Mamiya just doesn't feel like it's in a strong conversation with Utena's relationship to Anthy, which I think was a missed opportunity! I would have loved to see more about Mikage's obliviousness, where he knows something is wrong but shrugs it off for one more day. Or I feel like pushing further into the idea of Mikage being a prodigy who is out of his depth as a parallel to Utena which doesn't get explored very much. Idk...after such an incredible slate of character episodes, I remember being pretty disappointed at the climax of Black Rose Arc!

Favourite Friendship

Miki&Nanami! I think they keep each other mostly in check! Miki can sometimes shame Nanami into not showing off her mean girl instincts, and Nanami's a lot more savvy and cunning than Miki is, which helps keep him away from self-loathing spirals, or being taken advantage of. They're fun together!

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✨ CW for flashing lights throughout ✨

An ode to the toxic f*ckboys of Utena. (Akio doesn’t really count as a f*ckboy though, he’s just uh…a predator. The Arch F*ckboy, let’s say.)

Song: “Fuqboi” by Hey Violet

Anime: Revolutionary Girl Utena

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ok i saw u mention the anthy-touga-shiori trifecta & i am sooo interested would u plz mind elaborating

imagine youre a gay teenager. now imagine that youre a little faker and a liar and you get your kicks out of pulling epic pranks on people who have wronged you. imagine that you feel the only way you can express your rage and alienation is through the most devastating psychological warfare of all time, for both your victims and yourself. imagine viewing your body as a tool at your disposal and nothing more, nothing less. imagine, once again, being a gay teenager, and believing that being gay is Bad. imagine hating women. imagine playing the part perfectly, or trying to, and making the people who love you Fucking Bonkers about it. certified anthytougashiori moments over here tbh

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You used to be nice... Or did you never used to be? [x]

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anthy and touga like probably hate each other like fr fr but i cannot stop thinking about all the awkward and intense interactions they MUST have had whenever akio would call touga over to the tower. The way that both of them probably feel like they have some sort of "im closer to him/ i know whats going on more/ i have more power than you" advantage over the other. Passing by each other on touga's way out with the iciest glares of all time. uaghhgh