#the brides are only allowed to exist in relation to their duelists

[dreamerslovechaos]

*wakes up in a cold sweat* the reason the black rose arc had to be forgotten by everyone is because its foundational tenet operated on giving the Brides agency to protest against their role in the dueling system and seek to leave it, further exemplified by its final shot being that of anthy's complicitness in the dueling game. the black rose arc gives a 'voice to the voiceless' and exploits their rage against their lives into rage against the Bride - which though it furthers ohtori's system of oppression (the dueling game is built upon exploiting the internal conflicts of the duelists after all), the methodology of giving 'voices' to the Brides by allowing them to Speak Their Mind within the framework of 'self improvement' via seeking out therapy is shown to be antithetical to ohtori academy as a whole because true self actualization of the bride will mean the end of ohtori academy as a system. in this essay i will

[regallibellbright]

All right, the initial draft was too long to be postable, but here we go

TWEWY/Utena crossover, taking place circa Cowbell of Happiness on Utena’s end and sometime post-OG on TWEWY's, not necessarily Neo-compliant. (Don’t question the timeline too hard, it won’t hold up at all even with Ohtori Time Weirdness, but half the reason this exists is to put Neku Sakuraba in the Bad Therapy Elevator.)

The thing about Ohtori is that it simultaneously is and is not part of the existing UG structure. It functions, in many ways, like a UG under the control of an extremely powerful Composer who's exerting a LOT of control over the environment. (Which extends beyond the school proper into the nearby town and forest. The city from Episode 33 may have been another illusion or may have been Akio getting permission to enter someone else's territory, but the highway he drives down during the radio segments is still part of Ohtori's sphere of influence.) There is no RG in Ohtori, but somehow time has not frozen the way it would in an Inversion. It seems, on the surface, like a pleasant place. Imagination is refined and Soul is (eventually) recycled through the Duel structure. It has a relatively low erasure rate, an oddly high intake rate, and functionally ZERO people who leave except through erasure (the last graduate was a decade ago,) but Imagination rates are stable and sustainable, somehow. No one's entirely sure how exactly its Game operates - the line between "Player" and "Reaper" doesn't meaningfully exist, the closest thing to Officers are the duelists of the Student Council who are allegedly Players, the time frame per cycle is inconsistent, it's not actually clear if everyone taking part in the Game is actually dead or if everyone in the Ohtori UG is actually part of the Game and either way they're all interacting with each other, and the results are, again, completely inexplicable. The records are terrible, too. But at the same time, no one wants to know what's going on there.

Because then there's the part where its governors are arguably a step beyond 'deity' and more like loose personifications of narrative concepts. No one's sure exactly how old they are, or if they were human in origin once or have always been what they are. No one's sure which one is actually the Composer - siblings Anthy Himemiya and Akio Ohtori have shared, stolen, counter-stolen, freely ceded, “freely ceded,” and combined abilities so thoroughly over the eons that even THEY probably no longer remember how things started, or know who holds the power now. If you separated them, odds are they’d both lose their powers entirely. Policy is to treat them both as Composers of the same UG. Akio is definitely the one who exerts stronger control over the Duelists, but Anthy's the one responsible for Ohtori being a surreal timeless bubble of symbolism, dreamlike architecture, and bizarre animal-related shenanigans.

(The rest of the Higher Planes probably know, or at least suspect, how dysfunctional THAT relationship is. The abuse, the incest, the ways Anthy gets mistreated in her role as the Rose Bride, the million swords of hate. Using Duelists as sacrificial pawns as part of their whole game isn't strictly speaking a problem. The fact that any given Proxy only really belongs to one of them, but they work together with each other to manipulate those Proxies is much more questionable. But anyone who's interested in helping realized a long time ago that doing that would require either of them to accept help. That's not happening any time soon. It's easier and less frustrating to just keep your distance.)

No one likes Ohtori. It's allowed to keep existing mainly because the alternative means dealing with Akio and Anthy way more often, firsthand, and also because no one is entirely sure they COULD get rid of it. Doing that would probably mean somehow managing to erase one or both of the Composers, and again, they're more concepts than anything else. The Prince, however much he's fallen (or claims to have fallen,) and the Witch and Rose Bride and Eternal Bearer of the Swords of Hate and whatever much she might have been, once. But they all have a vested interest in making sure that it isn't, like. Expanding or anything. So occasionally you have to send someone in there to check on it, because the outer barriers are so strong you CAN'T keep tabs on it without going in there. For an Angel, it's safe to go in and come out.

Somewhere in the realm of twentyish years ago, Touga and Nanami Kiryuu got sucked into the hell nexus that is Ohtori Academy. Some time after that, their cousin Yoshiya Kiryuu became Composer of Shibuya. (Their names are written with the same kanji but officially localized differently, at 2-1 Joshua was outnumbered so I'm using the Utena romanization here.)

They're probably still in there! Time isn't real inside Ohtori! They won't remember how long they've been there or how old he's supposed to be in relationship to them! They may not actually remember he exists when he's not there in front of him!

... No, this wasn't something you get to refuse, Kiryuu. Someone has to check in on the hell school every few years. Go visit your cousins. Consider how lucky you are that you can still see some of your nominally-human family.

At no point in this did anyone ask Joshua what his cousins are like, or if he actually liked them. He's been on Ohtori Duty every 3-5 years since he took over and has been hoping for their erasure ever since.

And so eventually, some time after the events of the original game, Joshua shows up at Hachiko with a PARTICULARLY insincere smile asking if anyone wants to come meet his cousins who are studying at a school they've never heard of, because it's actually inside its own exclusive little nightmare dimension!

The Gang, understandably, Has Some Questions about this. Starting with "Why would ANYONE agree to that?"

On the other hand, they're also kind of morbidly curious how terrible something has to be for JOSHUA to call it a nightmare dimension. And the fact that he apparently has cousins who he's in something resembling contact with.

... Once Neku and Rhyme were curious enough to say yes, Shiki and Beat pretty much had to agree too, just to make sure the others get back safely (or everyone gets stuck in the hell dimension together.)

And so, armed with no information whatsoever and the Angelic equivalent of "Property Of Joshua Kiryuu, Do Not Put In Duels" tags, it's time for a semi-metaphorical interdimensional bus ride to Ohtori!

This will be a terrible time for all involved.

[ograndebatata]

A variation to headcanons in series and type

Well... as I have said in another post, I am also a fan of Sofia the First. And after some work I’ve been doing on an Elena of Avalor oneshot that involves Sofia the First characters, I decided to post my headcanons on one of them here. 

Technically, I’m not sure they even count as headcanons, given they involve an original character who the series hardly gives an actual confirmation exists: Lucinda the witch’s father. 

For anyone who mostly follows Elena of Avalor, Lucinda is a witch who appears in that series. She starts out as wicked, but becomes good in her first appearance and remains one of Sofia’s friends from then on. 

We see her mother, Marla, in a few episodes (though her name is only given in the credits) and while she starts out as a wicked witch in her first appearance, she does good spells for her daughter’s sake once her daughter reveals she’s become a good witch, and by her next appearances she seems neutral at worst. 

We never actually see Lucinda’s father, but I have been headcanoning so many characters as orphans from at least one parent that I wanted to change things up.

To answer the question of where he is in the series, these are the answers.

- He doesn’t appear in ‘Mom’s the Word’ because that was Mother’s Day, and Lucinda and Marla were on their special activity, so he was not around at that specific time.

- He also doesn’t appear in ‘Cauldronation Day’, because that’s a witches only event, and thus men are not allowed. 

- As for ‘Too Cute to Spook’, he doesn’t appear because he was handing out treats or pulling tricks depending on the kind of scare he got. 

So, check below the cut for a few headcanons of a lighter nature about a quasi original character, with references to Lucinda and Marla.

 Lucinda’s father, Marla, and Lucinda

His name is Sören, but he is better known as Sören the Strong, which was the title given to him after he was a victor of many magic duels. He was born in the kingdom of Norberg, and looks like the typical man from there - tall and brawny with sharp features. He has blue eyes, and honey blond hair darker than the average Norberg native.

Like his wife and daughter, he was born to a family of magical people, with a warlock father and a witch mother, and had magic himself. But instead of a magic wand, he uses a magic warhammer, like wizards in Norberg typically do. He was gifted from a young age, and as an adult he became a professional duelist, like he had wanted to from when he was a kid.

While it sounds evil and problematic to those who don’t know about it, it’s not as much as it sounds by the least. Any events of magical dueling as a form of sport always have trained healers on hand, and there are rules that forbid things like the use of any permanently damaging, much less lethal, magic. While it is true that not everyone respects the rules and there are accidents, the overall rate of dueling-related deaths or permanent injuries is no greater than for any other magic-related sports like enchanted ice dancing or flying horse races. All the same, only adult challengers are accepted and they have to consent to the inherent risk before enrolling in any competition.

Unlike his wife, Sören was never particularly wicked. No saint maybe, but certainly no devil either. He never resorted to underhanded means to win his duels, and while he was both a bit of a sore loser and a bit of a sore winner, he was not so to any unbearable extent.

He met Marla during one such competition (as magical dueling allows mix-gender matches) where they were set up against one another. Marla did not expect to win, as she had only joined in to prove herself to other wicked witches she knew, but she was very much set to defeat Soren after the ‘nauseating support’ she saw him being given. Sören was more skillful than her indeed, but when she, out of desperation, used another kind of spell to defeat him, he lost soundly. It was the least far he ever got on a magical dueling event of such a high level.

Sören sulked at first, but the day afterwards, when her next match was about to begin, he went to Marla and wished her luck. Surprised, Marla could only stare dumbly until the referee shouted at her to come in.

She lost that time, as she dueled against another witch, and one who wasn’t of the sort susceptible to fall for any of her wiles.

When the event ended, Sören told Marla he’d like to see her again. Marla was surprised, as all other men she knew either ran in terror from her (which she liked) or tried to use their masculine charms to be spared from her curses (which she didn’t like, and for which she ended up cursing them more violently than she would otherwise). Sören simply seemed to accept her as she was, wickedness and all. That softened Marla enough for her to agree to see him.

They saw one another for years afterwards at many sorts of events where magic practitioners gathered, and eventually got married. Not exactly a big affair for the bride’s side, as wicked witches don’t have many friends, but the groom’s side was not all that numerous either, as Sören had deliberately kept the wedding private and many guests who would have otherwise come were turned off by the fact the bride was a wicked witch.

Once their daughter was born, both Marla and Sören were involved parents from the beginning, which was not looked at very favorably by either side of the family in general. Sören’s family was overall not impressed that he had retired from competitive dueling after he got married, and Marla’s thought in general that her husband was too not-wicked, if not outright good.

It was hard for both, but they stood by their decision. At first, Lucinda grew up as a wicked witch like her mother had, which Sören accepted - she was his daughter, and he loved her dearly. 

When it turned out she wanted to be a good witch instead, Sören was a bit surprised - after all her mother was wicked, her grandmother was wicked, her great-grandmother was wicked, and any previous witches in her mother’s side of the family were wicked. His family had a few good witches, but not that many either.

All the same, she was his daughter, and he loved her no matter what.

Marla was a bit more disappointed - she had kept hoping that her daughter’s goodness was just a phase. But she kept supporting her daughter’s decision, she slowly found her own wickedness decreasing… and eventually, realized she had already placed herself on the side of neutral that leaned closer to good.

By that point, it had become natural enough that she simply kept being so, and realized she liked it enough. At any rate, her husband’s feelings for her did not change, and that was the most important.

Perhaps neither of their lives had turned out like they envisioned them, but both Sören and Marla were satisfied in the end.