Lilibet

In that new Takemiya Keiko fanbook, Saito Chiho said that when she read Kaze to ki no uta, she realized that Revolutionary Girl Utena was basically entirely based on it, just repackaged for the afternoon anime audience.

A boarding school closed off from the rest of the world.

A person who gets cruelly passed around among the powerful elite of the school – and secretly seems to enjoy this on some level.

Another person coming in from the outside to break this status quo and “save” the victim.

But was this “saving” what the victim wanted, or asked for, or needed?

My mind: blown.

“Disturbing, Traversing, Borderless, Shaking Sexuality: The Place where Revolutionary Girl Utena was Born”, translated here.

a few relevant pulls:

The biggest difference is that the victim manages to start healing from her traumas after breaking from her abuser and she gets her happy ending with the protagonist in the outside world, that’s correctly potrayed as imperfect and full of horrors and awful people but is also a place where there’s the hope of change and growth in the better direction, in “Revolutionary girl Utena”; while in “Kaze to ki no uta” the victim doesn’t manage to face his traumas and the outside world is as dark and hopeless as the school enviroment and it ends in tragedy.

Also, @iaiamothrafhtagn is right in pointing out how Ikuhara and Kotani note the racism of western slash fandom correctly and then they shrug at it since a lot of Western fiction is still influenced by old racist and colonialist ideas, hence why I’m happy about works from non-Western or Western minorities authors inspired by their cultures and histories or by Western authors who actually did their research and consulted reliable historians and people from the culture that their works are focused on, and Japan does have a huge problem of racism against foreigners and against the Ainu and the Ryukyuan people.

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

There's worse to come, folks. Strap in and stay strapped.

I made one comment, and it was this:

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

I made one comment, and it was this:

So I have had...several medical procedures this year. Two colonoscopies...the first as a checkup for management of Crohn's disease, and the second three months later because the first found inflammation in my large intestine and the doc adjusted my meds. Second showed improvement so that's great!

I have also this year, after a Lot Of Shit, been diagnosed with endometriosis. My left ovary, in fact, is completely encysted in a 9.2 cm endometrioma. In one month and two days I am having surgery to completely remove the cyst, which will involve completely removing my left ovary. (Righty is hanging on and being a model citizen so far, no cysts at all currently.) After going back and forth with my care team and considering options, I'm going to follow their reccomendations and also undergo a hysterectomy at the same time. Right ovary can stay for now.

This, since American healthcare is a hellscape, costs money. I've done the regular measures to reduce the bills, but they're still adding up. I've maxed out my FSA already for the year and still have about $4,500 to go before I hit out of pocket maximum for my insurance for the year.

So. Any help to defray medical costs...the ones already incurred and the ones I'm about to...would be wildly appriciated.