[ID: ten shots from 'revolutionary girl utena' with excerpts of black text edited onto them. the first is of akio embracing utena in the duelling arena, holding her sword and talking down to her. utena is wearing a princess dress. text reads: 'and lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been.'
utena prying open the coffin behind the rose gate. text reads: 'but she did look back,'
anthy staring up at utena from within her coffin, her expression confused. text reads: 'and i love her for that,'
utena smiling at anthy inside her coffin, tears in her eyes. text reads: 'because it was so human.'
the swords of hatred pulsing towards utena as she lies defeated on the ground. text reads: 'so she was turned to a pillar of salt. so it goes.'
utena and anthy's hands being wrenched apart. text reads: 'people aren't supposed to look back.'
anthy about to leave ohtori, smiling and wearing her pink outfit. text reads: 'i’m certainly not going to do it anymore. i’ve finished my war book now. the next one i write is going to be fun. this one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. it begins like this:'
young anthy hanging limply as the swords of hatred protrude from her body. she is sihloutted against a red background. text reads: 'listen: billy pilgrim has come unstuck in time.'
a photo of utena and anthy, in which akio has been cropped out, sitting in a pink frame upon a table. there is also a pink rose frame around the shot. text reads: 'it ends like this:'
a close-up of the photo, still with the pink rose frame, in which utena and anthy are tentatively holding hands. text reads: 'poo-tee-weet?' /end ID]
revolutionary girl utena (1997) / kurt vonnegut, slaughterhouse 5
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hi novel! do you have any meta / thoughts on taissa’s relationships with simone and sammy? I really want them to go into that more, similar to the shauna-jeff-callie storyline in s2
Simone and Sammy are what should have been. The life Taissa would have led if they’d never crashed. Even if it wasn’t Simone, even if it was Van, the idea of the perfect happy family is what matters. I think it matters that she’s the only one we see have a warm moment with her parents before the crash; that would shape her whole outlook. Grow up, go to good schools, get a great job, marry a beautiful woman, build a life that makes sense. And we know from Tai telling Shauna about her dream life: this is exactly the path she takes. Shauna’s dreams change utterly as soon as they crash; Tai, the bastion of repression, doesn’t change hers at all. She comes home, and she’s different, she’s traumatized, she has lost and hurt and has all these horrible dark secrets—but she believes if she just works hard enough, she can overwrite the shadows with the light of a life she’s wanted all along.
The problem with this as it applies to Simone and Sammy is they’re not plans, they’re not dreams, they’re people—and to have the meaningful, wonderful relationships that make that Perfect Life, she needs to be able to communicate with them as such. And she doesn’t. She doesn’t let herself. She won’t explain anything of what she went through to her wife; even when push comes to panicked shove, she just demands Simone leave her alone. She doesn’t even feel that “it” factor when it comes to Simone, because she can’t let herself. She’s forever tied intensity of feeling to a loss of control, a loss of who she was “meant to be” before the accident.
Her family, her job, all of it is emblematic of Before Tai. The Tai who didn’t have a sleepwalking problem, who never watched her girlfriend get nearly mauled to death, who never ate her friends to stay alive, who never gave into the hunt. It can’t ever be healthy, for her or for Simone and Sammy, until she accepts that Before Tai is gone. She’s been stitched together with the Taissa who survived the wilderness. And accepting that runs contrary to the perfect life she’s tried so hard to create. She can fall back into old habits with her old friends and old love, but the new version of her? That Taissa isn’t allowed those behavior patterns.
It’s really interesting looking at her family vs Shauna’s, because 1) they’re the only two of the core six to build a traditional family post-rescue, and 2) Shauna tries to play the same game—except the “dream life” she’s living isn’t Shauna’s at all. It’s Jackie’s. Or what she feels she stole from Jackie. And because of that, because Jeff and Callie were never Shauna’s dream, I think it makes it a little easier to let them into the darkness. Tai won’t let herself do that, because it’d be admitting a kind of defeat, and that really isn’t Tai’s style.
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Nunny! I'm sending you asks for your game.
I'm tempted to send you the entire post and just see the Nunny Rant. You might not even do She-ra. I'm thinking of She-ra sending these but go off about star wars or something else if you think it applies better to the question :D
the character everyone gets wrong (ahahhahahaaaaaaaaa)
8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about (im sure there is a long list)
9 and 10 - Worst part of fanon and worst part of canon (imo there is some overlap)
13. worst blorboficiation
14. that one thing you see in fics all the time
25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing
lakhglkajfas, I think my rant would mostly just be keyboard smashes and crying emojis so this is the better way to go lol!
the character everyone gets wrong
God, like, fucking- ALL of them. :) Buuuuuut the one that's bugging me the most recently is Mermista.
I am SO sick of post canon Mermista in c/a fics specifically. Mermista would not hold a grudge that hard that long and that violently!!! Stop having her hate Catra and actively be out to do harm to her. Mermista's response to losing her kingdom was like a bad breakup where she just cried in a tub eating ice cream. Her response to seeing HORDAK at the end of the series was just a, "So are we good with him now?" implying that she's chill to be chill.
Mermista and Catra 100% would sit at a table calling one another a bitch (begrudgingly fond and pretend to not be) back and forth. Mermista would not be out to skin Catra alive! Mermista wants to talk to Catra about her murder novels because Perfuma reads too slowly and doesn't like spoilers but she NEEDS to talk to someone about the butler who has a brain cell because Sea Hawk seemed to miss the whole first half of the book AND FURTHER MORE-
9. and 10. - Worst part of fanon and worst part of canon
Worst part of fanon is the fucking shippers. This went from one of the more open and accepting fandoms for all ships that I'd ever been in to one of the worst.
Like, straight up, one of the fics that lives rent free in my head is an explicit fic where Catra and Hordak enthusiastically consent to having sex. Like Hordak is trying to be kinda standoffish but can't stop looking at boob window tits, he was Entrapta trained I'm afraid. The number of times I think of his awkward proposing they do it more frequently followed shortly by Catra dressing and winking saying, "Seriously, great cock!" is a lot lol. It's such a porn movie style fic and there is something fantastic to be said about it.
But you even hint that Catra could be headcanonned as anything besides a lesbian and your body will be found in a few months time in several different bags. Suggesting Catra and Hordak having any romantic or sexual relationship probably gets you reported to the fucking government or something. So there's a reason it's never made a rec list from me but fuck it I'm mentioning it now.
They aren't real. If I want to occasionally have a giggle about them and make my little dolls bump uglies everyone else should politely not look while my fellow weirdly sane people who get that this is all make believe but sure we're the freaks here come poke and enjoy!
Fucking shipping wars and discourse man. I'm sick of it.
Worst part of canon for me is the censorship and uncertainty that caused various issues with the plot and prevented the show from being even stronger. You can see it in real time while watching, but man it was wild in December 2018 to see how professional media talked about the show and Catra and Adora being adoptive sisters, to AJ (I think?) getting dumped on for repeating that idea and having to apologize, to the open gayness at the end. I love SPOP, but the rocky terrain the crew-ra had to navigate really did impact the quality and created weird gaps that asshole fans hunkered down into. Like, we cannot pry some of those fuckers out.
8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about
I need you to understand that my immediate response when I started writing this answer out was a very strained and painful sigh through my nose as my brain returned a static white noise sound.
I am really tired of forcing this jock!Adora and slacker!Catra thing. Like, it started in modern AUs but it's gone and infected people's idea of canon as well. It falls into a bit of the "dumb adora" trope, which people just don't seem to actually understand what that means or is about. It also falls into Shadow Weaver's narrative of who Catra is which is wild. Like. Really wild.
You are telling me Catra, a cat person who grew up in a military, is actively against exercise? Yes, she would 100% sleep in a sunbeam for a nap, and then she wakes up and craves some low key chaos and violence.
You are telling me Adora, forced into a golden child and leadership position, is bad at reading and math and science because all she cares about is training? Adora 100% enjoys physical fitness and using her body, but she's got a sharp mind on her and there's no way in hell she doesn't like to work it too.
I am just exhausted with it in modern AUs, and now it has gone to infect canon interpretations. It flattens their characters out, ignores/denies parts of their abuse, and nukes their abilities from orbit. I hate it so so much.
Also if I have to see one more fic or art piece where Catra is willingly and happily wearing dresses, skirts, and heels I swear to fucking god I will KILL. :)
13. worst blorboficiation
Again, this is all of them. Everyone suffers from being blorbo'd to an insane degree, but it just shifts depending on which character is the favorite of that part of the fandom. You have talked several times about the insanity of Catra fans vs. Hordak fans, the blorboification is insane there. Same with Catra fans vs. Glimmer fans.
Like. God damn. I'm so glad the Adora vs. Catra fan fights died out real quick because this fandom is exhausting enough.
With Catra being my favorite it's extra exhausting because there is CONSTANTLY people attacking her and then total asshats trying to defend her who I do not want to be associated with. I love her. She's a fucking idiot and a bastard and a baby. Somehow, every take on her is both the worst and factually correct and then the fandom fights.
Tipsy, I. Am. Tired.
14. that one thing you see in fics all the time
OKAY
Let's fucking talk about how GLIMMER IS NOT AN EVIL BITCH. Can we talk about that? STOP TRYING TO LEAVE THIS POST AND SIT YOUR ASS DOWN WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THIS AGAIN because someone needs to hear it louder in the back.
Glimmer is the character who is probably be done the dirtiest by the fandom but for wildly different reasons throughout the whole show. Hands down.
After S1 fandom took Glimmer and made her into an entitled dumbass whiner who threw money and her titles at her problems. They made her act like a child without any complexity. And it 100% took me from not really liking her character much to detesting her which is outrageous every time I remember that I kinda hated her at that point.
This did not improve post S2. :)
Post S3 probably was the most sympathetic and understanding the fandom was to Glimmer but it came at the cost of trying to bulldoze Catra for the Portal and people making callout posts like these characters were real people. I feel like the rise of some of the G/A shippers that I really can't stand was around this time. It was catra vs. glimmer fans going bat shit and drawing lines for ships.
If they couldn't assassinate Glimmer's character, by god the fandom would assassinate both Catra and Adora's in wildly different ways instead!
Do I need to talk about post S4? The idea of dark Glimmer and Glimmer going off the rails should have been a fun thing to play with in the sandbox and instead just writing it down made me cringe. Now Glimmer has to be an evil bitch because she had a trauma response and made bad decisions, now she is irredeemable because I made up a situation where she did something she didn't in canon for reasons so OOC someone probably slapped Donut Steel on it somewhere.
There was a little lift post series, but man people are holding onto Glimmer being a spoiled brat to play off of for Catra or a cruel bitch for Catra and, again, as a Catra fan, I want to bite bite kill kill bite kill kill kill!!!
Glimmer is allowed to grow up from being a spoiled kid who had good intentions and was naive. She is allowed to be over eager, bratty, petty, silly, funny, caring, and smart too. She's allowed to make bad choices and struggle with how to recover from it.
STOP MAKING ME THE LEAVE BRITTNEY ALONE MEME FOR GLIMMER
25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing
Shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs, shut up about redemption arcs-
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