Hitching a Ride on the Night Bus

@the-twilight-duchess 3 - C4 - Ganondorf (Any, you fool)

My iteration of Ganondorf would like to know why you waited until the last minute to ask for an extension.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

[ID: two screenshots from 'revolutionary girl utena' of nanami and touga standing in the rose garden. nanami imploringly clings to touga, who stands stiffly with his face obscured from the audience. in the first screenshot, nanami says: 'i know i have to accept that you go out with girls.'

but i digress, top ten things about nanami that make me love her more than anyone else in the world ever is the way that she’s so concerned with touga’s well-being and him not being ‘swarmed’ by girls, and at the same time. so wonderfully selfish and entitled. and at the same time. so horribly insecure and guilty about all of that. you know nanami was a terribly lonely and unnoticed child, her only ‘friends’ are lackeys she’s met within the show’s current-day timeframe, her parents ignored her (we dont need to get into whether or not that’s fortunate for her), when she says touga’s ‘smile was for me and me alone’ she really means that. like i believe her!!!! and i understand why he’s so important to her, because it’s like he’s the only person who has ever seen and loved her. and she’s so desperately sad and insecure because she killed his cat and he’s been cold with her ever since and oh god oh god i just need someone to say no one else will do it has to be you just once.

the guilt that nanami feels about Existing. being alive being born taking up space being a (weird non-)person at all. especially the guilt about killing that cat, especially the guilt about Changing her brother (which she has entirely accepted as something she did btw, always wondering why he’s so cold to her nowadays and reasoning that’s it). you know she’s repenting she’s saying over and over again i did this terrible thing and i regret it every day and im awful and terrible and selfish because i still want this one thing i need this one thing. maybe i can get it if i make sure nothing like this ever happens again. framing all these girls as ‘vermin’, a ‘swarm’, worrying herself about their intentions or uncleanliness or whatever. her brother sat catatonic in a room for who knows how long and she’s not supposed to try and fix that for him? try and make sure no one ever puts him in that state again?

i think. maybe. what im getting at here. is the princeliness of the little sister, princehood exercised by a sister. princehood here is the desire or ability to save someone, to exert control and power over them. as i said above nanami is guilt and insecurity and shame and entitlement all bundled together, and that’s partially imho because she has this idea of touga as her prince and she’s his princess, but touga rarely and minimally plays along with it and instead purposefully exacerbates this tendency of hers to. well. get possessive and defensive. and this makes all of those negative feelings they both have worse! it’s like theyre always playing this fucked up game of chicken where they just keep on expressing sentiments that almost get at how they really feel about things and then at the last second they both just regress back to these equivocations that obfuscate The Truth (not pictured here).

one’s character has no impact on whether they were/are a victim or not, victim status is not something that is only afforded to the palatable.

With the finale out now I think a central theme that I've recognized and really adore is "all of these characters are more complex than an audience would appreciate." They are all being squished into a child-friendly set of archetypes, be that by Caine, Jax, or metatextually, the fandom. Caine doesn't want them complaining, swearing or having sex, they just have to go on endless, mindless, youtube-monetizable adventures. He's the ringmaster, he puts them in a bright poppy's playtime ass stage and demands for funny to happen. Meanwhile, Jax doesn't want to address the dire reality of their situation and copes by playing along, treating himself and all the characters as flat archetypes with no internality, so that the elephants in the room can safely be ignored. The fandom, meanwhile, is quietly guilty of all the same things. "Why isn't my favorite character acting in accordance with my headcanon? Which characters are flatly evil so we can hate them? Will they achieve my perfect happy ending? Because if not I'll be mad about it."

It doesn't work. Because they're more complex than that. They're people, they need more, they have emotions and traumas and wants and needs. Ragatha isn't always cheerful, she's not just the mom friend, and she's not some manipulator either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. Pomni isn't always anxious, she's a natural leader and she wants the best for everyone, but she's not perfect either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. And Jax isn't just a villain, he's a very complicated ball of traumas whose consistent first instinct is to push everyone away, hurting others so that he won't get hurt himself. He's a person, trying his best, and very often failing. She might even be a girl. Zooble isn't just a grump, Gangle isn't just a wimp, Kinger isn't just crazy. They're humans. And humans aren't always good. They're messy, screwed up, complicated things. They're things that can't be flattened down to archetypes, no matter how much Caine, Jax, or the fandom wants it.

The fandom wanted a bunch of cookie cutter adventures with good guys and bad guys, but what we got is just a bunch of people, stuck together, their traumas rubbing up against eachother until something catches fire and explodes. And I think that's way more interesting. I'm glad the show is that. I understand not everyone feels that way, though. A lot of people wanted something less nuanced. But I don't think the show not matching your expectations is the show's fault. I think people just need to come at it with the right mindset. Meet the story where it's at.