Airfleck - Airfleck

i don’t think I’m ever going to get over this line

star fighter

another gravity falls animation! :3 hope yall enjoy!

Lament for Vax’ildan

because when I saw that Icarus painting I had to 👀

✨painted in procreate on ipad pro / do not repost

✨ inspired by Lament for Icarus by Herbert James Draper

it is ironic but i think an rgu fan's openness to talking about akio is a good gauge of how they're engaging with the show's themes. because he's much easier to digest if you keep him at arm's length, an abstraction of a concept rather than another person inside ohtori who is suffering because of patriarchy. i've seen this fan reactionarism that assumes any acknowledgement of this is inherently apologism, so yes, it's true that akio does hold and grossly misuse power by virtue of him being an adult who surrounds himself with easily manipulated children. it's also true that rgu is a show where just about every character does heinous and fucked-up things to other characters, oftentimes the characters they purport to care the most deeply for.

rgu is about the deceit of binaries, the princes and the princesses, the abusers and the abused, how all of these are assigned to the concepts of gender we encounter under patriarchy, and how this blurs what we can even define as 'abuse'. sure, it's easy when we see saionji and nanami hitting anthy, but does that change after the positions they later find themselves in because of touga? does shiori's manipulation of juri cancel out juri's impossible idealization of her? what about what miki and kozue do to each other? what anthy does to utena? how much sympathy you feel for any of them is probably subjective based on your own experiences, but you're just not gonna have a good time with this show if you need to sort every character into a category of 'abuser' or 'victim' - and i would in fact argue that you've missed the point if you are.

so is akio, then, a victim of anything? anthy calls it out in the end, that he as well has chosen suicide by pursuit of eternity. his sunlit garden of princehood, the devil who could not be a prince, who set up a game nobody can win without ever realizing that he is included in 'nobody'. this entire system is structured to mirror him in its every reproduction and he still can't be satisfied, because he's also just playing a role that's not what he truly wishes to be. you don't arrive at that fascinating a dissection of how patriarchy functions if you're just saying 'akio bad' and calling it a day. i think it's very relevant that akio is only the acting chairman of ohtori. we never meet the actual chairman of ohtori.

So I rewatched the entire dinner scene instead of sleeping, and here’s my hot take: I don’t care about Trent. He’s an asshole abuser, so I will eat up others’ probably far more insightful meta on THAT topic.

No, I want to talk about Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb.

That scene didn’t go at all like I expected it to. I think I, and everyone else, were expecting the mind games, the subtle threats, the manipulation…

But I wasn’t expecting half of it to be directed towards Astrid and Eodwulf.

In those previous encounters, we kind of got what we thought the two of them would be – confident, duty bound, convicted, a certain sense that they were where they wanted to be, that they knew their environment and had some control. Astrid came from a place of slightly patronising pity for Caleb. Eodwulf didn’t bother talking to the Nein overly.

So we all sat here and made jokes about Caleb’s evil ex-friends, donning their scariest wizard robes and staring stonily down the table for the evening. That’s what we expected. People who didn’t hesitate. People who, though abused and brainwashed, were committed to the cause, were perpetuating the cycle.

That is not what we got.

They start that way. Annoyed at the Nein’s antics. Stern. Supposedly full of conviction. But there was no righteousness, and they got more and more nervous as the night went on.

Astrid and Eodwulf were afraid. Astrid was not one step away from coldly offing Trent and taking his place. She was leaning away from him, begging Caleb to stop provoking Trent, stop calling attention to her. Eodwulf was reluctant to talk, was worried about how Caleb would react, froze up as soon as things started getting confrontational.

Every moment of their interactions at that table screamed ABUSE. 

I’m sure our previous assumptions are true. I’m sure they kill, torture, and do worse for the Empire. I’m sure they defend it at every point, have parroted lines they refuse to let go of. It’s possible that they mean it.

But those weren’t powerful mages who’d grown up to shoulder the horrors of their youth as just and right without another thought. Those were beaten dogs.

On top of that, those were beaten dogs who know they’re not allowed to think for themselves. Every time Caleb asked Astrid a difficult question – every single time – she would look over at Ikithon nervously, steel herself, and then mimic him almost exactly.

I didn’t realise until rewatching the scene, but her speech pattern varies GREATLY between speaking in a manner I believe to be honest, and speaking about dicey topics like the Empire, her duty, their actions, and so on. When addressing more vulnerable topics, Astrid spoke softly and looked like this:

Whenever she had to speak about something that she clearly felt she was on thin ice with? She lowered her voice, evened it out, and changed her cadence to match Ikithon’s perfectly, the only difference being that her voice is slightly higher pitched. It’s so close I sometimes had trouble telling if Caleb was talking to Ikithon or to her.

Astrid straight up told Caleb that whoever is her superior is right, and she and Eodwulf will do as that superior says. Nothing more. No moral judgements of her own. Eodwulf, for his part, never directly defended his actions or their jobs. Whenever he was pressed, he looked to Astrid. Who, in turn, would look to Trent.

That’s a pretty obvious sign of what’s going on, here.

The only times Eodwulf is startled into genuine reactions are when Trent drops the first real bombshell on Caleb, at which point he makes these faces:

And afterwards, when Caduceus parted with a scathing last word to Trent, wherein both he and Astrid looked like this:

Astrid tried to share her hair techniques with Jester. She smiled when the Nein joked about kidnapping her. Eodwulf liked the moniker they gave him. Eodwulf decided he liked Caduceus right after he’d told Trent no one would mourn him.

As soon as that dinner was over, Eodwulf pulled out alcohol, took a swig, passed it to Caleb, who took a swig, and then to Astrid, who took a swig. That quick and unhesitating exchange speaks of long experience. Long experience leaving Trent’s presence and immediately trying to get drunk.

It said a lot about the three of them, I think. That little moment, the ease of it, how normal it seemed, displays a genuine (at least at one point, and maybe still) camaraderie between them, and also a genuine unease in Trent’s presence, even after a decade and a half.

And that leads to the other thing I wasn’t expecting, but maybe should have. Caleb.

He’d hesitated from condemning Trent. This was the man he had spent most of the campaign running from, the man who had groomed him into killing his family, and yet he was reluctant to speak about violence, even though his friends half begged him to give the okay on it.

I think we were expecting Caleb to hunch his shoulders, to look away, to be eaten up by anxiety. And maybe he would have been shrinkingly cautious through the whole affair. Y’know, if Trent hadn’t said Caleb’s parents would have been okay with him burning them alive. If Astrid and Eodwulf hadn’t desperately tried to blend in with the furniture at every opportunity.

Caleb starts the dinner making these kind of faces:

But slowly, that changes. He stops doing his usual habit of avoiding eye contact and rubbing at his arms. He starts glowering when Trent tries to insist that Caleb’s parents’ deaths were a good thing, were what they wanted, would bring honour to the family he had eradicated, somehow. He likes it less when Trent claims credit for his escape. He really looks pissed when Astrid tries unconvincingly to argue that what they did was okay, obviously signalling her discomfort with the situation.

By the end of the night, Caleb looked Trent in the eye and said he dreamed of murdering him, brutally, with his bare hands. By the end of the night, Caleb had THIS look on his face as he stared at the man who’s haunted his every moment for as long as he’s been a lucid adult:

This Caleb? This is the Caleb who isn’t paralysed by his own guilt and fear. This is a Caleb who is very, very angry.

So regarding the dynamic between Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb? The script was, in the end, rather flipped. We went in expecting three wizards trying to manipulate an overwhelmed Caleb. Instead, we got one wizard crushing the souls of two others under his heel, with the only one currently outside his direct influence growing more and more furiously bold as the situation became evident.

The fact that Trent was his abuser was never going to bring Caleb to violence on its own. But Caleb called Astrid and Eodwulf “friends,” present tense, the day before he watched them sit, afraid of saying the wrong thing, through a dinner with their abuser. I don’t think he’s going to be so hesitant about violence towards Trent in the future.

They may have learned very little about Trent and his true intentions. It’s even possible that everything we saw of Eodwulf and Astrid is some elaborate fiction, though I don’t think so. But whatever else, it did one thing I’m not sure Trent wanted; it solidified a path forward for Caleb that he wouldn’t commit to before, and I don’t think it involves Trent surviving.

La Belle Dame sans Merci

It appears that today JHark continues your thesis statement of him having an "I will not let such a small issue stop me" pattern

Let us recap!

May 3rd: *paprika gives incredible thirst*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me! *more paprika*

May 4th: *locals crying, hugging his knees, begging him not to go*

Jonathan: *significantly more unsettled* I won't let a little thing like that stop me

May 5th: *this door has no handle*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me...? Though I admit I am at a loss as to what to do about it

May 8th: *dracula yeets the mirror*

Jonathan: *annoyed* I won't let a little thing like that stop me *does his best with his shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal*

May 8th: *the castle is a veritable prison*

Jonathan: *running madly around like a rat in a trap* I won't let a little thing like that stop me!!! *sitting down quietly* ahhhh fuck

May 12th: *envelopes extremely see-through*

Jonathan: *resolving to write to Mina later in shorthand* I won't let a little thing like that stop me *immediately snoops on Dracula's letters*

May 15th: *the door is locked, the key is gone*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me. It's probably in the Count's room

May 15th: *one door not technically locked just suck*

Jonathan: *putting his back into it* oh I definitely won't let a little thing like that stop me...

And a bonus:

Dracula, May 12th: Don't go to sleep anywhere else in the castle or you will Literally Die. From, uh. Nightmares.

Jonathan, May 15th: I won't *yawn* let a little thing like *yawn* that stop me.... zzzzzzzz

one (1) gerard

Kozue and Miki - an incestuous half or a broken whole? analysis

To this day I have no understanding of what was going on with Miki and Kozue. In fact, they were my least favourite part of the show not because they aren't interesting but because what they represent seems so muddled, and it's where the few criticisms I have of RGU come in. I only have a few ideas.

I think the main point of the twins being there was to highlight the difference in their life experiences because of their gender. Miki is relatively 'innocent' as compared to Kozue who knows more about the world, but misreads sexuality as a tool she can use for power rather than a part of a system she's only a cog in.

It's shown pretty early on with the teacher that is inappropriate to Miki - he doesn't really notice that the teacher he admires is a pedophile, but Kozue does and takes the matter into her own hands. She seems to resent him for this difference and how he idealizes their childhood that she does not remember as fondly, seeing him as immature and 'holier than thou' for it (while she herself longs for the cloeness they had). Miki just finds it difficult to accept her as the same person that was his best friend growing up and gets upset at her dating life.

This is where what people read as Miki's 'madonna/whore complex' comes in, which I disagree with. He projects the sister he remembers from his childhood onto Anthy, a girl who is sweet and nice and talented like him, while incidentally having a crush on her. Meanwhile, he sees Kozue as someone who's become unrecognizable and disproves of her. I don't agree with this idea, because that's not really what madonna/whore is - he's not really attracted to Kozue, nor does he see Anthy as a mother figure. He does however differentiate between their character based on how 'pure' he finds them to be. I think this idea could have been applicable if it weren't for the fact they weren't, you know, twins.

Mika falls easily into misogynistic thinking to get what he wants, even as it contradicts what he believes at first. It's the reason for his first and last duels. He wants to respect Anthy and her choices, and actively believes himself to be doing so, but when given power and opportunity to 'win' her, he always chooses the advantages the system gives him over her. He's not a flawless person.

However, I would actually argue it's more that the show portrays Kozue as the one who is unable to move on from the bond they had, to the extent that in the black rose duel, she tries to kiss him. I guess on some degree it might have been a comment to how her view of sexuality = power was so strong she tried to apply it to her own brother. She is highly implied to be a victim of statutory rape by Akio, and constantly has sex with older boys like Touga too, believing she is the one in power and control in both scenarios not that she is a preteen being exploited. It makes sense she would project the abuse outwards.

Their relationship is toxic on account of Miki's ideal for his sister as something she never was nor will ever be, and his dislike for her personality and choices, but Kozue does not want to let him move on or try to re establish their relationship as something else at first. He continues to drink the milkshakes (affection and care), offers them to her, she rejects them. It's the reason why she's get coaxed into dueling to supposedly kill anthy. It's only after that she becomes more amiable to him and accepts the milkshakes (and an innocent kiss on the forehead).

The black rose arc's sword scenes are a heavy metaphor (though not direcly meaning) for assault, and if we take the movie into consideration, it makes explicit how far this fixation of hers goes.

I honestly believe that their entire relationship in the show would make more sense if they were not twins, but childhood friends. As it stands, if you read the show from its commentary on gender rather than read based on symbolism and metaphor, it seems like it's more a commentary on the difference between female incestuous abusers and male ones. Kozue wants to keep Miki close to her because brothers are a boon in this system, and she sees his romantic interests as competition to her familial ones. It's a common dynamic, which I see especially here in Pakistan, where sisters and mothers in law treat the new wife badly or as a threat, and it does seem incestuous.

While I can appreciate the commentary, it seems strange the only female character that displays incestuous abusive tendencies is also seen as less threatening or not very serious. It seems less on account of their similarity in age, and more because the show does err on the side of women as perpetual victims, therefore incapable of abuse. (For anyone that reads this and gets upset, I know she's just a teenager being played by the system. I am commenting more on the show's portrayal of the idea itself than a repudiation of Kozue as a character.)

This is why I argue their arc would have been better if this obsession had seemed less romantic or if she was portrayed as a childhood friend (though I cant imagine a show like Utena not wanting to explore twins).

If you look at it more through a metaphorical lens of what they represent I feel there is a different story. I believe on some level, Miki and Kozue can be read as one person and the internal struggles of selfhood and identity in the loneliness of adolescence. They represent the ease of having a stable sense of self in childhood, before the ego develops, before life forces a split. They were one until music (mathematics, perfection) split them apart. I would say the second Miki duel episode is what makes this the most obvious - we literally see their ruptured childhood self and how they see themselves as a one that works in two pairs following their parents divorce and abandonment, instinctive wild animals according to Kozue (in other words, all id).

Miki and Kozue represent a lot of opposites not in terms of personality but choice:

idealism / cynicism (mikis perfectionism and distaste for kozues, understanding of the world as 'impure' and acting to 'game' the system)

the difficulty in reconciling two very different views of reality and history (Miki idealizing the past by projecting it into his present, Kozue acting on the present based on her love for the past)

the unhealthy obsession with the self (miki in his perfectionism, kozue in chasing miki's attention)

against unhealthy connection outwards (miki in how he judges how kaoru purposely picks those bad for her and her trying to use her sexuality in a system that exploits her for it, kozue in how she resents miki's ignorance of those bad for him and how he utilizies patriarchal structure to get what he wants).

All of this is based on an unhealthy understanding of the past as better, un'adult'erated even, an uncomplicated understanding of the world as best when not contradictory - but that is not reality. Reality is contradictions, it is the twins, and it is not their inseparablity in youth. There is no purity in being whole that is to be idealized.

In this sense, I would say the show does them right. It's where the whole twin thing does pay off.

Either way! I am confused.