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I was expecting anything but not Bard

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chinese college girls slay (cr: 哭天喊地六仙女）

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apparently i’m a millennial woman

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It has become more widely known that jotun men from Norse mythology can give birth and generally people immediately jump to “That has to mean they’re trans men!” but one of the first things we’re told about jotuns is that they’re intersex in a fantastical way where they have both penis and vagina because they are creatures of chaos. Well, some of them.

The first jotun Ymir had both and mated with himself (the text literally say he had both) to create the jotun race. Then there’s King Godmundr who gave birth to nine wolf pups by his wizard werewolf boyfriend, which of course highlights that sometimes jotuns birth animals or monsters, the most famous instance being Angrboða giving birth to Hela, Fenrir and Jörmungandr by Loki.

But it also seems like not all jotun men can give birth naturally, Loki being one of them. Every time he gave birth he had to transform himself into a female form via magic. Most famously he was a mare when he gave birth to Sleipnir, but Odin also tells us Loki has taken the form of a human woman many times so he could sleep with men (and get pregnant) which suggests Loki likes sleeping with men but prefers to do it in the form of a woman (Loki then says Odin has done the same so he has no right to judge). Godmundr for example is called out for “being a man acting like a woman” because he likes to bottom so much but still in his male/intersex form.

And the stories are pretty clear on wether someone is a man, a man transformed into a woman, or a trans person. In one story we’re told Freyr’s house is filled with “men dressed and behaving like women”. Also the fact that Loki use his mother’s name as his last name could mean a million things. Maybe it’s because she was an Æsir goddess so he’d get more respect from the Æsir by taking her name. Maybe his mother was actually his father Fárbauti who gave birth to him. And maybe Loki isn’t intersex because he’s only half jotun.

It’s all just fun speculation but if jotuns were turned into a high fantasy race like elves and dwarves the mythology provides a ton of interesting implications about jotun biology.

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queen of the world to me

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that crying “babe I’m so horny!” meme but the response references the queen’s funeral holiday

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Some fanart of this ancient figurine! Also got commissioned to draw her hanging out with a friend!

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Women want one thing and it's quite obvious, A large affordable interconnected North American Rail Network

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You Cannot Fully Understand Revolutionary Girl Utena Without Understanding Mobile Suit Gundam

I never seem to see people talk about this much, if at all, even though this is The Gay Utena Site, and since I like both yuri and robots I'm going to volunteer to be the one to talk about it.

Yes, I said what I said, you cannot fully understand Revolutionary Girl Utena without understanding Mobile Suit Gundam (1979).

Now that you've seen some Gundam fanart by Chiho Saito, let's dig in.

First, I'm going to give a brief synopsis of Mobile Suit Gundam. For those of you unfamiliar with this franchise, I'm going to be talking about the original show, the first in the series, which came out in 1979.

It focuses on a teenage boy named Amuro Ray who climbs into the cockpit of a giant experimental mech called a Gundam in order to survive an attack on his space colony. He gets recruited into this ongoing conflict primarily because he has no choice, and is the main pilot of the Gundam. Amuro is a smart but introverted kid who is terrified about being thrust into this war, but eventually begrudgingly accepts it because he knows there's not much else he can do about it.

(if you think you've seen this before, yes, shocker, Hideaki Anno is a massive Gundam fanboy)

Towards the end of the show (or the middle, if you're watching the compilation movies), he develops into a "newtype", a sort of quasi-mystical new human evolution that gives him preternatural abilities and allows him to predict the movements of enemies in battle. This concept is important for the rest of this post.

He has a rival named Char Aznable, a delightful bitch of a man who decides to kill his boyfriend in order to get back at his boyfriend's dad and is all around a magnificent bastard. Char, too, becomes a newtype, though he's not a particularly good one. Most of his battle prowess as a mech pilot comes from experience. He makes up for this by recruiting a young woman named Lalah Sune, who is an extremely powerful newtype, to fight for him.

Amuro meets Lalah and is smitten by her and they develop a sort of psychic newtype connection (the newtype stuff is really hard to explain - just bear with me). Unfortunately, she is his enemy, and ultimately she dies by throwing herself in front of Char to protect him from Amuro, and Amuro kills her.

Lalah Sune is dead, so shortly after we are first introduced to her.

Char and Amuro, meanwhile, go on to have an extremely homoerotically charged rivalry for the rest of the show and this relationship continues in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985) and the movie Char's Counterattack (1988). Lalah occasionally shows up as a Force Ghost newtype spirit, mostly to try to get Char and Amuro to stop fighting and kiss and make up, like she's some sort of cosmic fujoshi. But she has served her part in the story. She died to advance the narrative of two very sad boys. That was her purpose. (And I say this with all the love in my heart, by the way, because Mobile Suit Gundam is one of my favorite anime shows of all time and Char and Amuro are two of my favorite characters of all time.)

Now let's move on to Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Chiho Saito drew a lot of Gundam fanart. Like, a lot of it. Here's her delightfully shoujo take on Char Aznable.

She seems to have been particularly enamored by Char and Lalah and their toxic relationship. She liked this so much that she straight up took Lalah as inspiration for Anthy. This isn't just me speculating, she has admitted this.

And what about Char? Well, Chiho Saito spun him into a character called Silver Mask, who would eventually morph into Akio. Note the mask and cape. Here he is next to Char Aznable and his mask and cape.

Anthy and Akio are, of course, their own very well developed characters. They are not carbon copies of Lalah and Char by any means. But the connection is there, and this is especially interesting when you compare Lalah's role in her story to Anthy's in hers. Lalah's purpose is to be killed to advance the narrative of two men. And Anthy tells us that in the end, all girls are the Rose Bride, forever in pain for the benefit of the men around them. Revolutionary Girl Utena is a very good story on its own but it's also a meta story about the role of women in anime and storytelling in general.

There is probably a lot more to say about this, including the Mobile Suit Gundam -> Revolutionary Girl Utena -> Witch From Mercury full circle pipeline, and also I'm sure there is a LOT to say about the fact that Lalah and Anthy are both Desi, but although I am a person of color myself I am not Desi so I don't feel particularly informed enough to speak on that (but I would love if other people did). Mostly I just wanted to get this out there. You would not have Revolutionary Girl Utena, at least not the way it is, without Mobile Suit Gundam, and you would not have a lot of yuri without Revolutionary Girl Utena, so everyone please say thank you, robots, for the yuri.

In closing, here's a direct shoutout to Gundam in Utena, featuring Anthy taking charge of the story.

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Part 1 of my modern avatar au, the fire nation

#oh I LOVE this!!

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no multi option, agonize and choose, no results option, pick one to find out or scroll onward

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All I want in my life is whatever this is 😌