#an: nanami is so often described as a statue of some sort that it just

[lysmune]

marble figures

      your eyes spill red, his hands carve your disaster.

(Nanami Kento/F!Reader) 

Inspired by the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, which stemmed from the copious amount of times I’ve seen Nanami described as a statue of some sort, prompted by adelek’s ave maria. and flintstrike’s erosion (both of which are gorgeously written fics. Please check them out).

     Nanami Kento was a statue of a man, that much you understood, weathered down by the autumn rain and the burden of existence. Erect, upright, upstanding, a model masterpiece whose shoulders sagged ever just in Tokyo’s watercolour nights.

     He’d allowed you to taste the cool of his lips then. He reclined in the chair and shuttered his eyes as you kissed yourself against him.

     If he breathed, you didn’t notice.

     Tucked between the blurring haze of the city skyline, the blue light of computer screens and whirring of overworked fans, you typed in distant silence with him and swallowed the event into bygone. He never spoke of it either.

     Not until summer, at least.

     Drenched in syrupy heat and the cliché of romance, you held your gaze for a minute too long in the still waters. Lips wet, he let you kiss him again and this time, Galatea cupped your cheek and returned your thoughtless affection, borne of warmth and heat for the first time since your meeting.

     And you, Pygmalion, marvelled at the way marble yielded to life.

     In the quiet spaces, the dark, early hours of a morning where the only ones that dared so peek at your twining bodies were the gods, Nanami bared to you his heart. It thrummed and pulsed, and weighed heavy in the palm of your hand as he confessed to the endless thoughts he had of you.

     Hypnos rarely ever graced him, but you did.

     “Why?” you asked as he brought your knuckles to his lips.

     He seemed to ponder the question, then, “You compelled me.”

     Sincere, earnest, an accusatory hush that you chose to ignore as he held your body deft and prayed your name, head between your thighs in worship to his creator. Slowly, you studied the lines of his form: the noble slope of his nose, the sharp gauntness of his cheekbones, the angular dignity of his jaw, the flex and ripple of his muscles every time he moved closer, gold spun hair brushing ivory skin as he looked at you through glassy aqua irises, stern and gentle.

     I could never take credit, you thought as he called you his god; you could never have made a man so beautiful.

     Yet Galatea had only ever known Pygmalion.

     And he had only ever known you.

     And it was always so violently quiet, whatever it was you had with each other. Clipped replies, the unanswered phone calls, questions that he’s never asked; your doubts grew large and plaguing by the day. Despite the intimacy of each embrace, everything else contradicted, revolted, a growing fissure you couldn’t quite mend.

     A lacuna.

     This is just who he is, you convinced, dripped in the honey of his words as he coaxed you to his making, as your eyes wept roses when he touched you holy, made you sigh his name the way revellers would at the feet of god. He made sure you knew what a sight you were, a marvel of Aphrodite’s kindness when she blessed you awake, the only one who’d ever afflicted him with pining, with yearning.

     “No one else,” he affirmed as you sobbed his name.

      No one else, you repeated in delight when he cuffed a golden chain around your wrist, subtly proclaiming that you were his to all those he worked with across the office’s three floors.

     No one else, you reminded yourself when he forgot the plans you’d made with him, the rush of work and urban havoc gnawing him alive. Dinners at upscale bars were his preferred method of apology, next to the glass bottles of Keiko Mecheri and small lily of the valley bouquets. He never said his sorry’s, never wrote them down either, even though those would’ve meant more than petty treasures.

      No one else, you clung to those words still, when he began to dye you in his colours, mazarine blue and wheaten yellow. He painted the winding patterns of his childhood into you, your arching back his fine-bone china, the fire of his palms your kiln. Nanami was a sometsuke ceramicist, and you were his greatest creation.

     Behind the mirror reflection of a brightly lit bathroom, you found the perfection of yourself confounding. Warped, twisted, unsightly, a repulsive mess of parts you couldn’t comprehend.

     Galatea was unsettlingly beautiful.

     Nanami stripped you bare that night and made love to your body. You, however, watched from the carcasses of your milky whites, watched as you moved to the rhythm of him. Your arms wrapped around his neck while your voice sang his name, flushed into his flesh as lines blurred. You never knew how honey-sweet you sounded, how perfectly small you were in his massive, calloused hands, like you were made just for him.

     You felt unrecognisable.

     And Pygmalion was hopelessly, unwaveringly infatuated.

     “What do you love about me?” you asked in your nakedness; Nanami twisted onto his side and looked at you. Fingers came to touch your cheek.

     “Everything,” he simply replied, a nauseating calm of a smile gracing his features.

     Betrayal coiled around the spaces between your ribs. It felt like an excuse, a cheap-shot answer that rang hollow through the marrow of your bones, a refusal to elaborate because he could not, even if he tried. He didn’t know you, and neither did you.

     Whoever you were prior to him, you could no longer reconcile with.

     So you curled against him as he caged you in a lavish lovelessness, the glossed lacquered surface of his empty words weaving you together into someone new. Desperate, you reached for the image in his mind, a tapestry of faces that shifted every time he chipped you away.

     Tsutsuji, he called when he cupped the curve of your figure. Tsubaki, he called when you looked up at him through your lashes. Suzuran, he called when he smelled the perfume he gifted you on your pulse. Sumire, he called when you reddened at his touches.

     You were all of them and none of them all at once.

     In the sunlight of a nine-to-five morning, the bracelet around your wrist glittered, beautiful and dangerous. It felt heavy. Your eyes had easily found his, the softest, emptiest shade of forget-me-not petals. You smiled. Something cracked at the shell of your ear.

      Who are you?

     You stopped right before the door. Winter slipped from underneath as puddles formed. Even in the stillness, you could not find yourself, so you answered your question with the one thing you knew:

      Nanami.

     And then you were in his arms again, wholly and utterly engulfed, your existence brought to life only through his divinity.

     Galatea was nothing without Pygmalion.

     And you were nothing without Nanami.

[sneakystorms]

I’m compiling my “reading campbell as an utena fan” reblogs into one post cuz that was getting ridiculous. 

Literally no one asked for this but i took Campbell’s hero with a thousand faces out of the library and I’m going to note anything that reminds me of revolutionary girl utena. Here we go

Literally the first thing in the book, a picture of medusa’s head. I’m suddenly reminded of how much emphasis there is on anthy’s coiling locks of hair as well as her eyes. I read in a liveblog that it’s significant kanae was struck by seeing anthy’s eyes when she removed her glasses - the glasses serve as a protective measure meant to conceal anthy’s emotion, but also her power. Reminds me of how modern reimaginings of medusa always wear dark glasses to not turn people to stone.

Page 7, on unsolved childhood issues: “we remain fixated to the unexercised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood” It’s not very revolutionary to suggest that this is one of the main themes of the show; akip remains in his adolescent state of having left behind his childishly idealistic self (or rather been forced to leave it by anthy) but refusing to progress to true adulthood, choosing rather to fruitlessly chase that childhood state. Other characters are guilty of this too, of course, but it’s less striking because they’re actual adolescents - this is a somewhat expected (though Campbell wpuld argue, not natural) stage in their development, whereas akio is clearly past his due date and dragging everyone down with him.

Page 30, on myths and fairy tales - “typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph” Not super relevant to rgu itself, but I’d often wonder about the relationship between myth an fairy tale, seeing as rgu relates heavily to both. Utena’s revolution, in the end, is microcosmic - she helped a friend, and achieved a higher degree of self awareness than before.

Page 32, on the world navel: “the torrent pours from an invisible source, the point of entry being the center of the symbolic circle of the universe, the Immovable Spot of the Buddha Legend, around which the world may be said to revolve. (…) the tree of life, i.e., the universe itself, grows from this point. It is rooted in the supporting darkness; the golden sun bird perches on its peak; a spring, the inexhaustible well, bubbles at its foot. Or the figure may be that of a cosmic mountain, with the city of the gods, like a lotus of flight, upon its summit, and in its hollow the cities of the demons, illuminated by precious stones.” WHEW. Where to even begin. In the context of ohtori this would obviously be the gate in the forbidden forest, and the arena itself. There is a spring of sorts at its bottom (even a wall of water), and a bird figure features at the gate. The arena with its staircase resembles a rose, which is close enough to a tree. You could even see the black rose’s basement as the demon hollows.Of course, we eventually find out that it’s all fake, a stage set by akio with anthy’s help, which in this context positions akio as a sort of false god.

Page 35, again on the world navel: “wherever a hero has been born, has wrought, or has passed back into the void, the place is marked and sanctified. (…) someone at this point discovered eternity. (…) the one who enters the temple compound and proceeds to the sanctuary is imitating the deed of the original hero. His aim is to rehearse the universal pattern as a means of evoking within himself the recollection of the life-centering, life-renewing form.” This one mostly caught my attention because of the word eternity, but then i thought of dios’s grave… Since his grave, the arena and akio’s planetarium are really one and the same, it could easily follow that anyone who enters it is seeking to emulate dios, or the prince archetype in abstract. This certainly applies to utena and akio, and perhaps other duelists as well to some extent.

OH WE GETTING TO THE TASTY PART NOW…… ANTHY TIME BITCHHH ITS THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS CHAPTEROk immediately I’m struck by the phrase “the queen goddess”. I know akio says he thought of anthy as a goddess once, I’m trying to remember if anyone ever refers to her as a queen… she’s mostly seen in context of the princess-witch dichotomy but once you really get down to it it’s more complicated, like is the rose bride basically the epitome of the princess archetype? It does include hyperfemininity, victimhood, obedience, passivity and power that can be obtained by marrying her but which she cannot wield herself… but the rose bride role is also explicitly tied to the witch, since it’s anthy’s punishment for imprisoning dios… It’s also interesting how despised she is - the princess role is supposed to be respectable (especially if we connect the princess witch dichotomy to the Madonna whore complex) but anthy is constantly mistreated and degraded - which, yes, makes her more of a princess in Utena’s (and the viewer’s) eyes, but is also a direct result of her role as the rose bride. If the rose bride position is basically the dragon that the prince has to save the princess from then can the rose bride be synonymous with the princess?Wait I was originally going to talk about something else I think. Well anyway I guess the Ockham’s razor is that the narrative had to make sense somehow and couldn’t JUST be metaphors but. Idk man food for thought. Maybe the rose bride as a role is supposed to be a blend of the princess and witch traits, or maybe it’s meant to showcase how the two are just different sides of the same coin. Anyway I’m one sentence into this chapter and my bedtime is in 7 minutes

Campbell describes the two types of goddesses as representing the good mother - forever youthful, beautiful and kind - and the bad mother - split here into four types but generally cold and distant. I’m tempted to connect the two to the princess and the witch (or the Madonna and the whore) but Campbell explicitly connects the bad mother to Diana and emphasises her chastity, when sexuality is such a big part of both the witch and the whore… hmm

K it’s late so I’ll continue sometime else but I wanted to mention that this whole thing was a result of reading this fantastic essay on anthy and specifically the part about Campbell’s goddess

Page 97, still on the goddess: “woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations: she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his fetters. And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released for every limitation. Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure. ” This is the passage quoted in the essay that inspired me… The part about transfigurations is painfully reminiscent of anthy for sure, but the “she can never be greater than himself” sounds more like utena to me, makes me think of that digibro quote about how romantic interests in self insert power fantasy shounen anime (either Sao or asterisk war in this case) are often supposed to be the second best warrior right after the number one hero because they’re a sort of status symbol but of course can’t undermine the hero’s ego. Similarly akio wants utena at her strongest and only wants her because she is the strongest but still wants her beneath him. Also the phrasing of “the knower and the known” is so telling…. Even if a woman is meant to signify great knowledge it’s still in a way that makes her something passive, an object for the hero to consume. This reminds me of the born sexy yesterday video where he remarks on how even if the female character is supposed to be impossibly wise it just means the male hero is the one who gets to “discover” her

Page 99, still on the meeting with the goddess: “and when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed-whether she will or no. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace” God, what a creepy and accurate way to portray utena and akios relationship. He sees her as worthy of becoming his bride, he rapes her, he almost has her serve herself to him on a golden platter until she decides to pick up the sword and fight him. He sees himself as her god.

desktop is really fucking this up depending on what device i rb on but alas. lets continue. surprisingly enough i don’t have much to say about the woman as temptress chapter in relation to anthy because now that i think about it, the men of ohtori don’t really see her as one? nanami does, and maybe kozue too, but anthy generally isn’t very proactive when it comes to romance or sex… I guess Miki would be the closest example, since she seems to consciously try and get his attention by playing the piano, but Miki is pretty oblivious to it, so.Trying to think of other characters who might fit that trope… Kozue does act pretty provocative both towards the random dude she flirted with and Miki, but their relationship is one I don’t have much of a grip on tbh. Really the tempting spotlight is pretty firmly on Touga and Akio in this show haha

reading the “atonement with the father” chapter and, like, it’s kind of annoying how much the male hero is the default in this book, with the female hero only an occasional mention, but it does remind me of anthy’s incredibly fucking disturbing line about how akio is “more like her father” since their parents are nowhere to be seen. i don’t really have anything profound to say, but it is pretty interesting that parents are such a non-entity in rgu, given how prominent the mother and father figures are in psychoanalysis and archetype theory. should akio be read as anthy’s father, acting as one in the absence of the real thing, the same way he acts as the chairman? i’m not super familiar with the electra complex theory, but if the resolution to the oedipus complex is letting go of the unhealthy attachment to to mother and reconciliation with the father, i guess the analogous resolution to the electra complex would be letting go of the father? which anthy, in this reading, does do… but then again in rgu it’s akio who rapes anthy and we see him rather than her initiating sex so i doubt the writers had uncritically reproducing freud’s theory in mind

nothing too insightful but in the chapter the magic flight campbell talks about a welsh myth about Caridwen and she seems like a perfect witch character

page 209, on freedom to live - campbell quotes the end of the grimm brothers’ little briar rose, but precedes it with “When the Prince of Eternity kissed the Princess of the World, her resistance was allayed”. the phrasing of course caught my eye, but i’d never really seen anyone go in depth about the similarity between sleeping beauty and utena’s childhood story… the shadow-faced version that sometimes appears at the start of an episode omits utena sleeping in her coffin, but includes the prince kissing her tears away - something that did happen in the ep34 flashback, but was not what made baby utena get up. i suppose i don’t have anything terribly profound to say about the relationship between rgu and sleeping beauty, aside from some similar elements - the sleeping princess kissed awake by her prince, the princess in the grimms’ version being called briar rose, and the unspecified thorny bushes possibly being roses as well… and the witch, of course

page 259, matrix of destiny. “The universal goddess makes her appearance to men under a multitude of guises; for the effects of creation are multitudinous, complex and of mutually contradictory kind when experienced from the viewpoint of the created world. the mother of life is at the same time the mother of death; she is masked in the ugly demonesses of famine and disease. The Sumero-Babylonian astral mythology identified the aspects of the cosmic female with the phases of the planet Venus. As morning star she was the virgin, as evening star the harlot, as lady of the night sky the consort of the moon; and when extinguished under the blaze of the sun she was the hag of hell” campbell continues to insist on tying every female character back to the mother, which doesn’t really seem to be very relevant with anthy, but i’m digging the various aspects of the woman. seems interesting to me how this is at least the second time he’s characterised the woman in myths as someone constantly changing roles and aspects (first time was on page 97) whereas i don’t really see this tendency in male characters. women seem to need to constantly adapt, shift their identity to suit the male character, who is allowed to remain stably himself. also fascinating are the particular archetypes campbell brings up - the virgin (princess), the harlot (rose bride? the position does seem to be given respect on some level, but in practice she doesn’t get much... add to that the design elements tying her to the “scarlet woman”, and possibly even the playboy bunnies, and her duties do seem to include sleeping with every Engaged if the movie is anything to go by), consort of the moon (we all know what akio and anthy’s connection to the moon...) and the hag of hell (witch)

this has very little to do with rgu but reading the Mwuetsi/Massassi myth kinda makes me sick lol!!! not only does it include the first man being given a woman but he symbolically impregnates her with some oil from a horn (subtle, also done without her knowledge since she was asleep) and she gives birth to all the plants on earth. ew

UH OK HE THEN GOES ON TO SLEEP WITH HIS DAUGHTERS.... AND THEN TO RAPE HIS NEXT WIFE.......... MR CAMPBELL CAN I GO like i know it’s old myths so it’s all symbolic or whatever but that doesn’t make it any easier to read lol

page 296, an offhand comment of “The characteristic adventure of the first [type of hero] is the winning of the bride - the bride is life” and my brain automatically supplied “life... eternity... that which shines... the power of miracles... the power to revolutionise the world” LMAO