#actually revolutionary

[redelk10]

NEW ORGANELLE DROP!!!! It’s called the Nitroplast

[lobstermatriarch]

So my book club is reading Ir*n Wid*w for our meeting this weekend and I was.

so excited.

Nonbinary author, main character in a poly relationship, rooted in Chinese mythology and folklore, reportedly feminist and queer perspective, 4+ stars on Goodreads. It’s perfect on paper.

I’m now almost 2/3 of the way through and giving up, I’m just disappointed and angry. How do you pretend to be a feminist book when for 200 pages the MC is the only named character who’s not a dude? It’s this hugely misogynistic setting and yet the MC is the only girl who is Super Special enough to have an Opinion about what’s going on, all the other women are docile/obedient or treacherous. And even then, MC’s agency is pretty limited! She spends a lot of time thinking angry, rebellious thoughts or spitting badass one-liners, but for the most part the narrative is relying on her boyfriends and luck to actually move the plot forward. She has no friends, no interests except love interests, no complexity or personality besides being angry and reacting to the things men do. I also understand that there’s some big twist and government overthrow coming up too (and I can only hope that it’s the MCs idea), but again, I’m almost 2/3 of the way in!!! I can’t wait forever for this super special Strong Female Character to start having some agency again!!!!! It would help if the writing itself was better, but I mean... it’s serviceable. It’s fine. I’ve enjoyed books that have had worse technical writing, but that’s not a huge point in anyone’s favor.

Love that a nonbinary author of color is getting so much attention and popularity, but, like... this is not the revolutionary work I was sold on. This is barely beyond the H*nger Gam*s, and at least in the H*nger Gam*s the sister that MC wanted to protect/avenge had a personality!! I can’t get invested in a book that hasn’t really passed the Bechdel test halfway through despite having a female MC, especially when said MC barely has an inner life of her own. We don’t even know where the anger comes from! It’s this horrible misogynistic world and without any in-universe explanation for how she learned this stuff she is operating on our morality system. Do you think that maybe, maybe there could have been a series of smart women who figured this out over time and taught it to her? Nah, as said above, all other women in this world are meek and submissive and she's just smart and special enough to figure this all out on her own.

(Even worse, her boyfriends have figured this out before the other women, so they are the only people she has had any positive interactions with at this point. It just helps to drive home the message that you can’t trust or rely on other women, only the hot guys! Great stuff for “feminist” YA!!!)

Another quick aside, the fact that this was pitched to me as a queer book makes me wanna scream. I’m bi! I like dudes! I like that she has multiple men interested in her and each other!! But this is a fictional society that has been maiming and killing women for centuries and you can’t be assed to actually, I don’t know... include some women?? Plus it is so clearly not written for gay/bi men, so having the big queer relationship being a flimsy romantic interest between the MCs two boyfriends feels more like old school yaoi voyeurism than queer lit to me.

I can’t help but feel like this book’s popularity is just an influencer following at this point. I don’t think I’d be so viscerally angry if it wasn’t held up as this new YA standard for feminist, queer lit, and if the author themself wasn’t making such a huge deal about “breaking down barriers.” I’m frustrated and sad that this is what we’re holding up as the future, when in so many ways it’s taking a few steps backwards.

tl;dr read a book that was pitched over and over across various platforms as this big breakthrough in YA fiction and found it less compelling/progressive than a lot of 90s shoujo anime

[itsthislake]

“Icarus.”

it's all about freedom really

Credit goes to An Sifakah for the poem. Enjoy!

Support me on Ko-fi maybe?

[sealskin]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/41pu2j0alrvmmqq/AADcNEo2K-fsdlacFfuXnKtva?dl=0

Above is the link to an audio file with Palestinian music, read-aloud poetry, storytelling, and excerpts from speeches on history and liberation. It was gathered by Radio Al Hara, an internet radio station broadcast from Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Amman in Jordan, founded during the pandemic as a way to connect during isolation. “Al Hara” means ​“the neighbourhood” in Arabic. From the river to the sea! 🇵🇸

[empty-movement]

Chiho Saito's Illustration Collection artbook is the highest-quality visual media in the Utenaverse. Oversized, single-sided, heavy pages with extremely high quality printing. It is the first artbook I ever scanned.

In 2001, the average screen resolution was 800x600, and I delivered a 1250px wide collection that for a while, took $60 A MONTH to host, because no normal website was hosting images of this ludicrous size. It took my scanner almost an hour to capture a third of each page. I spent months piecing the scans together in Photoshop. It was one of my first true Utena labors of love, and the result is that for decades, these copies have been the definitive copies of Chiho Saito's artwork on the internet. For a very long time, even kinda now, if you see these images, they're probably my scans.

But decades have passed, and I've never been happy with these results, because they couldn't capture the fine details, the paint spills, the sketch beneath poking out, the brilliant use of gradients of dark color to pop the image but drive me insane. What I am finishing up now is a true, archival copy of the artbook. One that delivers such high resolution, that these can print posters larger than the originals, and thanks to some truly brilliant descreening tech, (Thank you Sattva) I've been able to dig up fine details in the work that the printing obscured, but undeniably included.

It's been over 20 years, and it shows. 1250px? Nah, my archive copies are 15,000px wide. I can't wait to finish this and share it with the world. <3

[marzipanandminutiae]

I'm at the Boston Massacre site

I'm at the SweetGreen

I'm at the combination Boston Massacre site and SweetGreen

[georgelore]

so sorry the first thing i mention about the united smp is an anti tweet but i was laughing so much reading the qrts and that one was the best honestly

[astrateiaa]

I submitted a request for an ask game hosted by @streetlight-halo . But then I realized I wanted to do my own version too, so have song #38 on my Revolutionary Girl Utena playlist with Nanami. The song is “I Bet on Losing Dogs” by Mitski, but I think everyone knows that already lol

[k16is]

[waterghostype]

crusty kid

[vampirical-formula]

To the end

[opia-jpg]

give me a reason to believe

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Someday someone at GMMTV will wake up and realize that Force Jiratchapong, who keeps getting cast as the alpha male seme, is actually meant to be...

the Regina George...

the Sharpay Evans...

the Carla Santini...

Let him be THAT GIRL, the diva he can deliver. Let him be the spoiled nepo princess. Let him be petty and fashion, the cattiest gay bitch in the club. Make Book his service top (and actually put in effort to the relationship for once). Let him use his actual speaking voice and kill every girlie who thinks they're at his level with just a glance of his side-eye. He was not gifted with this face and attitude for us to waste it on boring traditional ideas of masculinity!!!

In short, #freeforce

[yuriwarrior]

if miracles exist, then the girl you hate is right. if miracles exist, then that means it's your own fault she's with someone else. if miracles exist, then that means you weren't doomed from the start. if miracles exist, then utena didn't win by chance. if miracles exist, you doomed yourself. if miracles exist, then the girl you love is right

[himemeiya]

Woke Akio discovers the pride section at his local Target

[demento-mori]

Kozue is fr the most underrated rgu chracter imo. She's only in like, 4 episodes, but she steals the show every second she's onscreen.

She's 13. She's bisexual. She has gifted kid burnout. She rescues baby birds and tries to kill creepy teachers. She kissed a girl in a moving car. She previously tried to kill that same girl. She has parallels with like every other character in the show. No one else is doing it like her. Legendary. Iconic even. I like to think that, post-canon, she pulled the good old staircase trick one last time on Akio before leaving. Its what she deserves.