#THE NARRATIVE

[ohmerricat]

missy doesn’t understand that she’s in the wrong genre. she believes she’s in a darkly alluring gothic romance instead of an optimistic sci-fi show. in her genre, gifting your estranged ex/enemy/lover/best friend/twin flame an indestructible undead army to prove to him that your will to power is identical is the most romantic gesture imaginable. it’s victory via surrender, it’s control through abdication. all her scheming to “corrupt” him, to demonstrate that they’re the same deep down, that his sanctimonious morality is nothing but a method of keeping his own conscience clean, that’s the hannibal gene, the lestat gene (*obviously the dynamics aren’t 1-to-1 similar, but… close enough) and missy’s tragedy in death in heaven is in that, within the narrative format she’s trapped in, she can never succeed

[gin-no-g]

last one for now!!!

dungeon meshi text posts 13/?

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[thefawnfallacy]

doomed by the narrative? no, no, tortured by the narrative. the narrative hates Sam Winchester, the narrative wants Sam Winchester dead but Dean Winchester, the audience and the antithesis to the narrative, does not want him to be anything but alive. in fact, the story is only a story if Sam is in it.

[lavenderhayes12]

me when fated soulmates

[transmascutena]

i find it so interesting the way the ideas of being "special" and "chosen" are pretty synonymous with each other within rgu's narrative. wakaba is envious and resentful of the way utena, anthy and saionji are special (mirrored in every black rose duelist and their respective student council member), and she only gets to be considered special herself when she is chosen by one of them. but then, the only reason utena and the student council are considered special in the first place is because they too have been "chosen". by akio. which is, you know, not a good thing for them! and the show makes sure that you can sympathize with both the characters who are chosen in this way, and the problems that come with it, as well as the characters who aren't and how they struggle with that. because at the end of the day it's just another system that turns people against each other to prevent them from recognizing the real issue.

[wiishopwednesday]

[francorchampions]

I feel like we collectively don't talk enough about the symbolism of Max being exactly 16 days older than Charles

[hopeworth]

obi-wan & anakin: you are cain and he is abel and this is how it always ends

[star wars: episode iii - revenge of the sith novelisation // star wars: episode i - the phantom menace (1999) // john darnielle // star wars: episode ii - attack of the clones (2002) // dante émile, 'after abel' // star wars: episode iii - revenge of the sith (2005) // rosanna warren, gods and mortals: modern poems on classical myths, 'turnus' // obi-wan kenobi (2022) 1x06 // richard siken, 'planet of love' // star wars: episode iv - a new hope (1977) // richard siken, 'war of the foxes']

[verdemint]

Lewis interview after the US Gran Prix 2015

oh the irony

"its not easy having me as teammate... in a FRIENDLY WAY I'M THE WORST TEAMMATE YOU CAN HAVE"

"...which is good thing FOR ME ;)))"

they're crazy

[prettygirlgerard]

the way prorev was literally just six weeks like imagine you spend six weeks fucking your guitarist in front of god and everyone and then at the end you’re like surprise!!! I’m getting married :) and everyone’s like to a woman???

[r0bzombixx]

— smoke signals, phoebe bridgers

[ohmerricat]

circular gallifreyan is circular because doctor who is a circular narrative 🌀 when you are a time-sensitive like them you conceptualise everything as a cycle with no beginning or end. including language. which is also music. yay

[emotionalsupportsoccerball]

Brb Crying

From @kellohara

[judeiscariot]

why were they literally up on stage doing light puppyplay im abott to kill myself

[transmascutena]

some thoughts on photography and memory in utena:

on the wall in nemuro memorial hall, there are pictures of real people. i'm not sure who they are, but i assume they're of people involved in making the show. either way, they're obviously not real; in the close-up shots of them, they change into pictures of the black rose duelists and other imagery from the show. i imagine it's there as a fun detail by the creators, but also to show how weird and inconsistent reality itself is in the black rose arc.

as for the black rose duel images themselves, it's possible that they are literal as i've talked about in a previous post, but what i think is more likely, is that utena noticing them is a visual representation of her connecting the dots of what's really been going on in this arc.

when mikage brings up the idea of memories and eternity, we see the picture on the wall behind utena, of her at her parents funeral. and behind mikage we see one of his own defining memories.

a pretty clear line is being drawn between memory and photographs. in fact, memories are so important to mikage that photographs are his black rose duel symbol. it's the one he keeps of mamiya and tokiko, altered to look like anthy's disguise, just like his memories are. through mikage we see both how memories of the past can keep you trapped in it, as well as the malleability of these memories. let's look at everybody else:

saionji has a framed photograph of him and touga as kids on his desk. he values their friendship, or at least the memory of how it used to be. he idealizes the time touga was less cruel (or maybe just the time saionji wasn't aware of his cruelty.)

miki doesn't have any literal photographs of kozue or the sunlit garden, though his memories of them are often framed as such. he also keeps a picture of anthy amidst his sheet music. she is his idealized memory now.

juri has the locket of course, inside of which is a cutout of shiori from a picture captured in the moment that ends up defining their entire relationship. is this the version of shiori that juri idealizes? not really, but she is fixated on her resentment of shiori's percieved cruelty, just not the cruelty of taking the boy away. juri keeps this photograph closer than anybody else does with theirs, but she also keeps it hidden. this could mean she treasures her memories the most out of everyone, and is also the least open about it, although i'm not sure i believe the first part.

nanami has the photo-album of her and touga; she idealizes her relationship with him, as well as their childhood. when she makes the connection that touga is adopted, the photos are scattered all over her bed, probably to represent her emotional state.

touga doesn't keep any photographs from what we see, which makes sense with everything we know about him. unlike the rest of the council, he doesn't have any idealized memories of his childhood. but he does use akio's camera, so let's talk about that.

the camera is, much like the car, a tool that only akio is shown to own (although, wakaba does mention a photography club in episode 34.) like the car, it is used to facilitate his grooming (specifically of touga and saionji when he takes those shirtless pictures with them.) and, also like the car, he offers to lend it to touga, to make him feel more like an equal part of the whole thing. unlike the car though, touga accepts the camera.

the photoshoot scene in episode 37 has a transition where the camera shutter sound effect is played over the previous scene. over the shot of utena and anthy holding hands after confiding in each other about akio. i think it's to show that he's always watching, and that they can never truly be free of him as long as they're in ohtori.

i think it also shows the idea of akio framing the narrative of the show as a whole. he plays a sort of director role in it, in that he directs the events happening, as well as how they're portrayed. it's no coincidence that he is quite literally behind the "camera" in episode 33. like the car, a symbol of akio's power and sexual abuse (which is not-coincidentally also present in all of the photoshoot scenes,) his camera (his narrative, his biased framing of events) is ever-present.

and then there's the most important photograph in the show, the frame it all ends on. the picture utena and anthy took together is, unlike every other photograph, used as a look into their future. the reason they take it in the first place is because utena realizes she has no photos of anthy, which distresses her, presumably because she worries that their friendship might not last forever, and she wants something to remember anthy by. this obviously comes with the risk of making anthy an idealized memory, like every other person put in a photograph in this show, but instead it ends up as a symbol for their love. akio may have set up the camera, but anthy (with the help of chu-chu) manipulated their positions so her and utena could hold hands. she also cuts akio out of the frame, much like she cuts him out of her life in the last episode. she doesn't want his presence to tarnish her and utena's memory anymore (although he isn't completely gone from the photograph either, as he will never truly be forgotten.)