thank you for giving me a reason to bring this up again <3 marriage and captivity have one thing in common mainly: not being able to return. so mostly it lies in how divorce is impossible. like yes technically it's a legal process a couple that wishes to be one no more can undertake but as a woman in particular availing yrself of divorce is itself conceptually fantastical enough to render transformation unnecessary for erotics. hence: the transliteration of marital confines.

the silt verses

iwtv pilot: in throes of increasing wonder

here the supernatural/vampiric lust is not a substitute for patriarchal romantic possession, it is representative of it. louis' framing of his turning as the adaptation of prey to predator (mortal to vampire) serves to obscure how it is in fact submission of the mundane variety--and all the more dangerous for it. the lack of metaphor is striking!

the promise of happiness

i love captivity erotics because they give up. there's no pretense of equality. in an environment where divorce is not only impossible but shameful the shame in that desire can be relocated to the site of the violence and explored there instead, with nothing to lose. im also thinking of bazazilio's video essay where she talks about the importance of reframing not only activity and passivity, as sara ahmed does, but also strength and weakness, to frame weakness not as a failure of character but instead as a necessary decision, helpful or harmful, to create a specific set of circumstances with a resourceful positionality. and what is being a wife if not an exploitable role. both in the sense of social significance and domestic labor. this can apply to gay relationships too i guess. if your world is bigger than mine.

vivia

i forgot to mention im not trying to legitimize stockholm syndrome grooming etc as concepts i think victims are the best judge of their own positions, and dismissing their point of view as being mired in the captor's/groomer's line of thinking to suggest that they're complicit and compliant in their own abuse is entirely unhelpful. marriage can be a form of captivity--as can any kind of family, and there is no source of pleasure bereft of influence from its surroundings. it's less abt sexualizing a situation and more abt mapping the paths desires could take within its walls. what does preference look like in this kind of pool.

phantom thread

our vampires, ourselves

could not resist adding this. the lack of choice is of course central here: it's a theme in the silt verses, as well as implicit in lestat's offer to turn louis. make nice with the monster and you will live.

the company of wolves

throughout the story of utena, the ones who "revolutionize the world" are generally seen as the ones who buy the most into the patriarchal system and want to uphold it. their "revolution" is in controlling others for the sake of their own ego, not about genuine change. they all see themselves as revolutionary, but none of them revolutionize anything. they are all tools of the system and fail to escape it.

utena's "revolution," then, is when she no longer buys into that system. the "revolution" of rgu is one in which you realize the system is broken and reject it entirely. this could be read as an individualist perspective, but i don't think that's necessarily the case. rather, rgu's core tenant is that you cannot control other people. everyone has agency, and they must decide how to use that agency themselves. attempting to control others is childish. becoming an adult is realizing the only person you can change is yourself.

the reason i don't think rgu is about systemic change or revolution in the leftist sense is because the story ends before we can begin to see how rgu views that process. our characters' arcs are about rejecting the current system, not about building a new one, which is fundamental to the idea of revolution. the world outside the current system is a complete unknown to the characters and the audience. we don't know what a different world would look like. that's part of what's so scary about rejecting the current system, but rgu insists it's still worth it.

I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING CRAZY. "cutting someone open is like the closest you'll ever get to someone" i know this is a certain brand of eroticism that is big on tumblr.com, and look, i love the locked tomb. sob emoji. but this post is very much violence removed from violence, sex removed from sex. sexualized violence removed from both sex and violence. reblogged by someone who thinks you are evil for thinking rape is hot.