#I'm bad at tagging anyway so who cares

[whatever-letmebe]

So, I was feeling curious (and bored) again and this time decided to watch The Shortest Distance is Round [because somebody, by which I mean @gillyweedgrl, told me not to watch it yet and that just made me want to watch it immediately, of course]. It was meh. Fucked up but not in a way that gave me any strong reactions / emotions. I'm actually kinda relieved. But there are more installments and I think I will watch all of them at some point. I can't not do it.

Update: Okay, I've watched part 2 now and liked it much more. Now I feel a bit hopeless and empty. (Goal achieved, I guess?) That was good, in a fucked-up, I-don't-need-to-experience-it-a-second-time kinda way. Some parts are so absurd that it borders on funny. And I assume that's intended. Like the love story between the two henchmen. Or the fact that for some reason, every man just really wants to fuck Haruto / Yuki. Visually, part 2 was also more interesting imo. Loved the pole dancing.

2nd Update: Alright, I'm watching part 3 right now and I'm just having fun xD There's a magical metallic dick, there's two goofy henchmen (one of them used to be an IT guy and wanted a career change), there's lots of torture. Also lots of sex but none of it is hot to me. People go absolutely wild for the person they love in this universe. I want Haruto and Ruka to become murder husbands. Ooh, the magical metal dildo is also a dagger?! Hell yeah, seeing Shibahara get murdered was glorious! The Shortest Distance really did the "I was behind everything all along" plot twist twice, huh. Staying true to the movie's name, I see. Good for you, Ruka, and your killer dick. Or well, maybe not good for you, after all? (unclear)

Anyways, it's 2:30 am now. I had a bad headache earlier but The Shortest Distance has cured me. This was a cool experience. Actually not as dark as I thought it would be (the mood / atmosphere of the films, I mean. The plot is extremely dark.)

[myimaginationplain]

I've come to the conclusion that being assigned the fandom-mandated "sunshine character" is the worst possible fate a character could face

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[transmascutena]

Good evening (or morning, depending on your timezone).

Absolutely no hate, but I want to ask how you reconcile your enjoyment of the show with the reality of what Ikuhara has (most likely) done?/gen

I understand Death of the Author, but what drew me to Utena in the first place was its theme of critiquing the patriarchy and calling out abuse, which feels somewhat hypocritical now. I resonate with this show, and many of Ikuhara's other shows, on a personal level, which is why I am especially disappointed with the accusations since I now have to wonder how that reflects onto me as a person...?

Obviously I don't know you personally, but you seem to spend a lot of time and care on your analyses (which are great btw) so have you also struggled with this?

Again, there is like zero judgement when I say this and I'm absolutely not trying to come off as hostile (in case that is how this reads). And, there is no pressure on you to answer this and I'll completely understand if you want to ignore the ask.

Thanks.

hi, i've been thinking about this as well since yesterday, and it is kind of tough to figure out how to feel about. i think it's important to remember that ikuhara did not make revolutionary girl utena alone, for one. he had a whole team of writers and animators and producers and so on, that it would not exist without. obviously ikuhara played a big part in the show's creation, but far from the only one (if it was, i have no doubt it would be very very different), and . idk what my point really is here but i don't think his actions reflect on the show as a whole. it still is what it is, it still says the same important things about our society's systems of abuse that we've always talked about, even if the director didn't understand it or didn't want to understand it or however you want to put it. and by extension i don't think it reflects on to all the people who have enjoyed the show, who have seen their experiences in it, who have learned from it more about how this kind of abuse works and so on. and i think we need to be aware of what has (allegedly, but again, i believe it) happened, but i don't necessarily think we need to write off the show just because he had a hand in making it. because it is just as important as we've always known it to be, you know? though i think there are (as there has always been and there always is in anything) elements of the show to be critical of, and maybe some new things as well in light of this. i'll have to think about it more.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

I gotta say, a personal pet peeve of mine is when people get really into Scourge (making aus and fanart and fics and posts and whatnot) and go "OMG Scourge needs someone to be like his Tails" and then they either make a whole new oc or assume Fiona takes that spot

Miles Erasure

[tiffanybluesclues]

Every week someone makes a post about how annoying it is that Dick Grayson fans don't acknowledge his flaws, and every week someone replies with an explanation that the flaws OP listed are entirely fanon and inconsistent with canon as it actually happened and at this point I have to assume that none of those explanations are ever going to stick because clearly some people just want the fanon to be true.

Anyway, I'm just putting this here for me to edit and add relevant-to-the-topic links later so I'll have them nicely at hand to read and sooth my frustrations when it gets real bad out there. (Echo chambers are good when we use them to drown out character mischaracterizing fanon.)

[admiral-arelami]

AITA If My Favorite Character is a Fascist?

Uh oh. The Fascsplainers are at it again. Yes, we know what fascism is, thx.

[ettadunham]

sometimes i remember the hunger games and how nobody actually paid attention to what was in those books

[pocketramblr]

I always found it slightly awkward how media makes siblings or people who see each other as siblings call each other brother/sister all the time as in real life you almost never see people do that with their own siblings (maybe someone out there like that)

In the case of Arkham Shadows I see why they did though because Bruce quite literally tells Harvey he loves him and Harvey says it back. Can't have the audience think Batman is in love with the DA.

They had Bruce pay for his college, pay for his campaign, pay for his surgery, pay for his therapy and had Harvey have him as his best man at his wedding. Wow..... Sugar baby Harvey is real.....

The calling sibling title thing is less common in English than in some other languages for sure- me and a couple of my siblings do it on occasion, but it's for a bit then. More common is when I call one of my close family friends "my sister" or "my nephew" when talking about them to someone else because it's faster and easier to say that than to say "my friend who I've known since she was born and lived with for a few years and consider a little sister" or "child of a close family friend who considers me an aunt" to someone who doesn't know them. Which is a lot of words to say that if they wanted to fully sell me on the brothers thing they should have either had a different bit or should have referred to the other as "my brother" when talking to an unrelated character instead.

But "oh no we have to make Bruce not look gay" has been a problem DC has struggled with more than once for many decades and it basically never works so I guess at least they didn't try to solve it this time by having Bruce pick a lady love over Harvey or cutting the holding hands thing

Because I saw that scrapbook! I know Harvey has been Bruce's sugar baby since he was ten years old! But we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him the love of his life because ok technically that's Gotham but also because gay. And we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him his best friend because they're not ten anymore and somehow that seems gay also. So brothers it is, I guess. Even if I think my brothers would bite my finger if I ever tried to pay for everything for them on that scale, guess it's different at billionaire levels

[immortalsins]

went running and can report i'm still not that person

[22degreehalo]

Okay I finished the movie. (Spoilers follow!)

I liked the parts about Barbie as an actual doll. I liked the ending! It was fun and creative and had some real emotion to it!

I didn't... enjoy the portrayal of gender.

The movie just really does not seem to want to face up to the idea that in the Barbie world, women are the privileged class. They hold all positions of power and property. Barbie doesn't even know where the men live?

Yes, it's all deliberately weird and surreal. But it's all just too weird and surreal to relate much to the real world. The climax relies on assuming that the barbies would essentially relate perfectly to a random real-world woman, which... even if it were true that all women IRL can relate to each other, their life experiences are just way too different.

(Yes, the patriarchy got introduced into Barbie land! But... how??? It's very hand-waved. Why would the privileged class suddenly completely turn the system 180 just because a guy came by with some books? It almost feels like a reverse-racism thing...?!)

And then, in the end, the kens still aren't treated equally. The movie jokes that 'someday' they'll have as much power as women IRL. But... we literally just spent the last hour exploring how shitty women have it. So now the kens have it even worse than that. And that's okay?

Again: it's meant to be dumb and silly. But we're also supposed to suspend our disbelief and live in this world for two hours. And the world just doesn't really jive with the tone. The more you think about it, the more you treat it as a real place, the less sense it makes. It only works if you laugh off the kens as just privileged white guys just because they resemble them.

Which, also! The movie in the end tries to be comforting to men and say that they don't need to be defined by their girlfriends or whatever! Which is actually a good message IRL: for too many men, being able to Date A Woman really is treated as the ultimate arbiter of human worth! (It... makes little sense in the world, where it seems like the kens really do need to rely on the barbies? But. see above.)

Except the entire way through, the idea of men having feelings is mocked and laughed off. Like I said, they imply that a gender non-conforming man would have absolutely 0 reason to fear violence at the hands of other men, which is... completely detached from reality?! Everything a stereotypical 'man' might care about is treated as being not really all that good, men's fears of abandonment or failure are eye-rollingly chalked up to 'egotism' (again, despite the status of the kens in this world), and when Ken cries at the end, it's presented as humiliating, as opposed to the dignified crying Barbie does on multiple occasions.

To be clear: I am not accusing the movie of misandry. I'm accusing the movie of being excessively cruel towards men who do not fit the stereotypical image of 'masculine', and then also being kind of pointlessly mean at those who do, as well.

Like, in the climax, one of the ultimate scenes of 'female empowerment' has the barbies pretend to listen while the kens play the guitar at them ('Push' by Matchbox 20, which is a good song IMO??? But it's treated as like. Objectively bad.), only to deliberately check their phone to show they don't care, then get up and talk to another man instead. And all of this is framed as, like 'playing on their petty egos and jealousies.' And not as like... them opening up? To someone they like? And trying to do something nice? And then being hurt when they don't feel the connection they wanted?

(Also men getting angry at other men, or staging a 'war', is treated as entirely petty and silly and kinda funny. Just an 'own goal', so to speak. Which, again, feels very insensitive when men... do in fact violently attack other men over reasons like jealousy.)

(Also also it's treated as super arrogant when a man tries to help out a woman who is literally saying aloud that she doesn't understand and wants help??? Because it's soooo offensive to think a woman can't do something she says she can't do??? even though the end of the movie is all about how women shouldn't have to be perfect and should be allowed to be just normal and not really good at anything???? I'm so confused.)

It's just... such a weird mix of a genuinely fun and creative campy setting, which then mixes in the most weirdly tone-deaf and old-fashioned gender essentialism possible. It tries to be progressive at the end, but the setting is already so stuck in those ideas (that inverting gender power dynamics would be really good actually since women are better in power, that men don't have any real legitimate reason to have emotions so it's weird and dumb if they do) that it doesn't track. It doesn't match the actual events of the movie.

It's not just an empty popcorn movie. Frankly, it'd be a lot better if it was!!!!!!! (At least for me, hahah.) It's best appreciated, honestly, if you do turn your brain off and just enjoy the pretty visuals and the nice moments at the end. Which is sad. Because it clearly does try to do so much more than that! But all those attempts just... make the movie more confused and weird and kind of mean?

Basically, the movie tries to do a whole 'haha what if we switched the power of the genders' but then still wants to treat all of the men like they're privileged white guys, even though there's 0 worldbuilding reason for that to be justified. (Plus also it has the typical 'wacky misandry' problems of being incredibly shitty to GNC and disabled men. but like I just expected that literally always nowadays.)

So yeah uhhh. unfortunately I gotta say that I don't really agree with those 'lollllll men hate this movie even though it literally just says that they're okay by themselves and don't need to base their worth on women!!!!!' like YEAH but it also implies some pretty. questionable stuff about oppression and mental health and how much we should respect men who have ~delicate fragile emotions~ too.

[svtskneecaps]

so what i'm putting together from osmosis and the wonderful livebloggers and the incredible arkanis english updates account is something like this

Prefeito Jota: Hello, I'd like to hire you to investigate what happened in my city/island(?)!

Bagi, who was previously "invited" to a mysterious island/city by its elected official, subsequently trapped on the mysterious island/city, investigated the deep mysterious history of the island/city, came to no conclusions, found her brother after years of searching, was separated once again from her brother, gained and lost an adopted daughter (possibly to being kidnapped by the island government, which was evil), gained and lost a demon fiancée (possibly to being dragged back to hell, so there's no way to find her), gained and lost a close demon friend to dubious circumstance (did he die for his children? is he with skeppy in the gas station?), and has had an unknown amount of time to process and/or suppress all of this: Sure! :D

[redgearsmovin]

man .

[nostalgia-tblr]

Reminding myself that I resolved not to delete any fics that have a bookmark on them😭

[feral-ass-raccoon]

i'm bored as shit. have some random genderfuckery tricks i like to pull in public because it's funny

[just for some context: i'm like a stereotypical white girl. barely above 5', pale as hell, round faced, and i have blonde hair/blue eyes. i look like a fucking 6th grader. i do all of these as much as possible and i've had at least 4 different people do double-takes when they see me]

1] i dress in faded colors. like not super bright, not pale/pastel, buy i wear a lot of green, purple, black/grey, and sometimes blue. maybe not a big deal but it does mean i don't blend in easily w/ other girls at like. the mall nd shit

2] i do the Man Sit. you know the one where they have their legs spread wide and they lean forward w/ their elbows on their thighs and clasp their hands?? yeah, that. hell even just sitting with my feet apart.

3] sometimes i wear makeup but it's. JUST a little bit of eyeliner. i spend maybe five minutes on it. it's usually a day or two old. i simply do not care but some people look at me weird??? idk but it's funny

4] i look people in the eyes* when i'm walking. usually bc i'm staring at wherever i'm going but sometimes someone will make eye contact and i don't bother looking away. they usually do lmao

5] usually when i'm out with friends i'm the shortest one there [85% of my friends are taller than me by at least 6 inches. sobs.] but like. it's not a huge deal until i'm walking with 4 other people that are all a foot above me in height and ig that's confusing for some people. again idk why this works

6] i never rember my glasses but i don't wanna make it obvious, so i don't squint per se??? but like i do kinda narrow my eyes and apparently it looks like i'm staring something/someone down. according to a friend. so maybe i can actually pull off a death glare

anyways. yeah i've had a grown ass man look personally offended because i walked by and didn't acknowledge him and that was way too much of an ego boost for 7th grade raccoon <3