It'd Be Interesting To Make A Chart Of Various Dracula Adaptations And How They Deal With Certain Issues.

"love is what makes us human" actually it's 'select all images with boat' but go off I guess

in the sunlit garden, holding hands / because i’ve never forgotten our promise, i’ve come all this way at last

14/06/24

happy pride month to them

NOTE: in a few weeks im gonna have my bachelor's degree!! in the meantime, i've been doing some comms work and i somehow ended up speedrunning painting this piece lol. decided that the flats looked better than a shaded version, so here we are. im esp proud of ayda's hair in this one

AITA for trying to eat my landlord's fancy takeout?

So my [523 F] sisters [498 F/492 F]and I are fully stay-at-home, and our landlord [530 M] brings us most of our groceries. Now things have been tight recently and so we only have grocery runs about once a month, and last night was one of these. Our house has a pretty clearly delineated men's half and women's half, so when we saw the food [21M] in our rooms we assumed it had been left there for us. But then our landlord burst in with our groceries and started screaming and shouting and getting really violent about the idea that we would touch his special treat after he'd forbidden it and just carrying on and told us to get out (this was our room, keep in mind). And I guess I had known that he had ordered fancy takeout, but it wasn't like it was labeled or anything, and it's not like there wasn't plenty to go around. His reaction just seemed really uncalled for. AITA?

funniest thing ever was the sex scene in BD, you’re telling me a 110 year old virgin and an awkward blushing 18 year old had good sex…on their first try? edward was probably holding up 3 medical anatomy textbooks including his battered grey’s anatomy book trying to find the cl!t and dry sobbing every time he got it wrong

Ninth Saints

close up on faces cause I like em

I finally finished my Utena re-watch yesterday, binging the last three episodes and Adolescence in one evening, and I am Having Thoughts. Mostly about the story from Akio's perspective, surprisingly.

I don't know if I've ever read anyone's exploration of the story from his pov, so I'm going to brain-vomit about it.

From his pov, he's the one who's trapped. The Rose Bride sealed Dios away from the world, whether for his own good or to keep her brother to herself, or both. The princely part of him, Dios, is trapped, leaving only the human part of him, Akio, out in the world, trying to regain what he's lost and cope without what he sees as his 'real' power. 'The power to revolutionise the world' is, for him, the regaining of his heroic princely aspect that made him something close to a god among mortals, a natural leader, the greatest warrior.

So what is he left with? What does a regular human man have with which to find his place in the world? What is his role, if not a prince? Is he a ladies' man? An intellectual? A fighter? A logical realist who denies the 'miracles' the prince could perform to keep people safe?

It's clear from the Black Rose arc, and from the final scenes, that Akio has repeated the duels in some form many times, assuming that he needs the right sword to open the Rose Gate and access his old power. He holds this 'might makes right' belief that physical strength or a warrior's weapon is the key to power. When Utena, just a girl, succeeds as the winner of the duels, at first he tries to persuade her to stand down, because how could a girl's sword possibly be strong enough to open the Gate? I wondered, during this watch, if this cycle was the first time that any girls had taken part in the duels, and whether that was by design or accidental. In the Black Rose arc, it's 100 boys who are drawn in to find the power or the eternal something. In this latest cycle, it's the student council, a power structure that represents intellectual masculinity: Juri, as a lesbian in a uniform closer to her male counterparts than to the other female students, might possibly have been the first girl to join the duels, an unintentional outcome perhaps inspired by Mikage, who was more easily tempted by a boy than by that boy's older sister. She still represented an aspect of masculinity in her own way, as the logical realist who denies miracles. Likewise, Nanami joins the duels initially to stand in for her brother, and leaves when she is confronted by how damaging the system is to the very people it's supposed to protect.

I wondered if perhaps Utena was never meant to join the duels. If Dios had meant to find Touga and Saionji on that particular day, and stumbled on Utena because they did. If Utena joining and winning the duels was never part of Akio's plan, and that's why he, and all the others, are so perplexed by her and never figure out how to get the better of her. Akio tries to force her into the role of 'Girl' because all he knows is playing the role of 'Man', and what else is a man supposed to do with a girl besides protect her or seduce her?

Utena succeeds because, for all her talk about wanting to be a prince to rescue girls, she gives up that roleplay and acts of of genuine love and compassion. She succeeds in besting the Rose Bride's curse because she doesn't approach it like a man, trying to seduce, fight, or logic her way through, but by loving Anthy and by having the compassion to want to end her pain.

Utena is still very much about smashing the patriarchy (literally in the case of Adolescence), but in its own way it also artfully deconstructs the ways in which patriarchy hurts men too, by limiting the roles available to them. Utena offers an alternative to the masculine roles of warrior, lover, intellectual and cynic, as well as to the feminine role of princess. The student council recognise it in the end, but Akio never does, because he is so utterly stuck in his role. That's why Anthy gets to leave at the end, telling him he's the one that's trapped, because Utena showed her that she, and we, can choose our own roles.

I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.

theyre fighting a god in the morning

You can love a character & still admit when they’re wrong. I love Nanami but can acknowledge her flaws (she has none) & can hold her accountable for her wrongdoings (she's never done anything wrong in her life) & call her out for her actions (which are always correct)