#ellistxt

part of the reason the black rose arc is so important and effective is that for the first time in the show, utena has to fight people who are weaker than her, who have less knowledge and agency than her, who haven’t been (actively) complicit in the duelling games and the commodification of the rose bride. so much of utena’s identity prior to this has been based on being the underdog, the ✨self-made prince✨, the hero on a quest to save victims of injustice..… and then all of a sudden she’s fighting literal elementary schoolers and girls whose names she never even bothered to learn and her own heartbroken best friend. and yes, they’ve been turned into tools by mikage and akio, but ultimately utena is the one who has to defeat them and tear the rose from their breast. and she’s gradually starting to become aware of her own complicity and it’s horrifying for her, and the only thing she can do is not think about it, not think about it, not think about it—

the relationship between henry ii and thomas becket (in becket 1964) is like. you’re a nepo baby with a best friend who you’re homoerotically obsessed with, so you give him a big job in your company so he can be your yes man and you can spend more time together, and you'll never feel alone because he'll always be by your side... but your buddy starts taking his new role super seriously and begins opposing you at every turn, and you're beginning to realise that he loves it, loves the solemn weight of duty, more than he ever loved you (did he ever love you?). and your love for him is a gaping wound, a black hole, and you keep pouring more and more of yourself into it in the hopes that it will make him look at you the way you look at him, and you know it, and he knows it, but you can't stop, you just can't stop letting the love and the need and the insecurity come gushing out of you whenever you're with him, and when he does look at you his eyes are full of pity (horrifically tender pity) and this isn't what you wanted, this isn't what you ever wanted from him. and he might be the only person in the whole world who can actually hurt you (and nobody can ever be allowed to hurt you) so you decide you need to cut him away, quick and clean—but to do that you'll have to cut out your whole heart and live the rest of your life with a bleeding hole in your chest, going through the motions of power with nobody to stand by your side, a shadow of who you once were when you had him. and you know it. and he knows it. and this isn't what you wanted. and it doesn't matter, because this is how it is. this is how it was always going to be.

when i say utena is a show with countless different possible interpretations, i don’t just mean it like ‘different people interpret it differently’; i mean it like ‘at any one moment i am interpreting it in about seven different and often mutually exclusive ways, and it deeply enriches my viewing experience’

arguably the worst thing about the lestat-louis-claudia triangle is that each one of them is the one trapped in the middle. louis is in the middle of lestat and claudia's feud, caught between the two people he loves and unable to choose which one to betray (so he ends up betraying both of them). claudia is the child tossed into the middle of a failing marriage, stuck with being the glue to keep the family together (even as she desperately tries to escape that fate). and lestat is the sharp bone of contention stuck between louis and claudia, the ghost who won't fade, the reminder that she can't ever fully trust him and he can't ever exclusively love her. fun stuff!

do you ever think about how every single juri-centric episode comes directly after a nanami episode? because i do. a lot .

no i’m sorry but dream of the red chamber makes me legitimately insane,,,,, like what do you MEAN she was a flower in her past life and he gave her water and she promised to pay him back with a lifetime of tears,,,, what do you mean ‘the beast of a thousand legs is a long time dying’,,,, what happened to qin keqing????? where did baoyu’s jade go when it disappeared . these two little girls were taken from their families to become actresses for rich families and fell in love with each other so so deeply and then one of them died and the other one burns money for her even though it’s forbidden on pain of beatings or death. wang xifeng is a functionally illiterate teenager who was suddenly put in charge of running the entire jia estate after marrying into the family, and she somehow manages despite that, and then eventually the whole thing comes crumbling down and she is the first one everyone blames. xiangling was kidnapped and and enslaved and abused but all she ever wanted was to write her poems, and then she dies in childbirth and her long-lost father goes to fetch her soul and lead her to the afterlife. they gaslit baoyu into marrying baochai when his grip on reality is already tenuous and diayu is literally on her deathbed... they didn’t even tell him when she died. yuanyang hangs herself from the rafters of her room right after dowager lady jia dies because she knows she’s lost any semblance of control over her own life with her mistress’ passing. ping’er loves xifeng so so deeply and sincerely. all the girls are going to be married away to men and families that could abuse or neglect or exploit them, and they don’t have any choice in the matter. and baoyu cries when he thinks about it because he loves them all so very much. daiyu would rather spend hours burying petals than watch them rot in the stream. after a childhood spent being mistreated by her uncle, xiangyun marries a good husband who she loves, and then loses him almost immediately. all the young people leave the garden eventually and it gets overgrown with weeds. qiaojie is sold by her uncle but saved by ping’er and granny liu and spirited away from the corruption and rot of the jia estate... maybe there’s hope for the children after all. baoyu and diayu love each other so deeply and know each other so intimately and inevitably that they never even try to put it into words, and even the reader is locked out from the bond they share. the stone just wants to experience the passions and tragedies of the mortal world!!! and cao xueqin loved and admired the women in his life so deeply that he wrote hongloumeng partly so that they would be remembered. like????????