times are hard for dreamers

but in the show, the water imagery is much less prominent, and we see it mostly associated with Juri (her shower, her locket), Kozue (swimming pool and that scene where she's trying to hold the water), and to a lesser extent Nanami (cat). And the water imagery is mostly used to mark out certain character points, stages in their development, or their current mood.

excellent tags! and so more things i'd like to add:

water being death themed in general also draws parallels i feel with the common idea of water being life, and also religious imagery of baptism etc and holy water (and utena does have quite some religious imagery tbh)

water as death and rebirth both -- AoU feels like a new version of the old cast, but there seems to me a strong undercurrent of "the past you knew is dead" running through the movie

rose dance scene could be the idea of the death of past selves maybe, but i was also thinking about the roses which are... very red and look a Lot like blood. smth smth the duels maybe? since in AoU we don't see the duel taking much of a forefront.

also kozue in the movie and that bath scene? which i barely understood because they Did Not elaborate on it but. yeah.

kozue and water and death of her past self?

nanami IS death themed but there is still the implication that the cat escaped -- she's less death themed and more. repression themed imo. (like, literally trying to put her problems in a box.)

BLACK ROSE WEIRD ASS WATER TANK I FORGOT ABOUT THAT

also black generally used as a colour of death + the water tank + the dead duelists..... yeah idk how i didn't pick up on that earlier.

funny thing is, in the movie, idth akio drowned? maybe showing how he can't really truly die if the cycle of abuse in ohtori continues.

touga and utena first meeting being in the rain, symbolising his actual death AND the death of their past relationship at this point since utena barely remembers him.

OH MORE WATER THEME: the carwash.

Page 32, on the world navel: “the torrent pours from an invisible source, the point of entry being the center of the symbolic circle of the universe, the Immovable Spot of the Buddha Legend, around which the world may be said to revolve. (…) the tree of life, i.e., the universe itself, grows from this point. It is rooted in the supporting darkness; the golden sun bird perches on its peak; a spring, the inexhaustible well, bubbles at its foot. Or the figure may be that of a cosmic mountain, with the city of the gods, like a lotus of flight, upon its summit, and in its hollow the cities of the demons, illuminated by precious stones.”

the FRIGGIN dueling arena gate!!

there's water all over this bitch!! it makes me think of the river styx, washing away a dead person's memories and in a way marking them as truly dead and separate from the living. and also myths of vampires or other supernatural creatures being unable to cross running water. water as not just baptisinal water and not just death by water (though it is interesting that the black rose students die by fire now that i think about it) but as a boundary between life and death more broadly. obviously rgu is obsessed with transitions from one stage of life to another and the rituals that mark them. death and birth, death and rebirth. idk man...

also, some rainy scenes off the top of my head:

baby utena in the church. there's a storm with thunder and lightning

keiko's black rose episode, especially with the umbrella being her symbol

and tsuwabuki's black rose episode too! two characters connected to nanami...

amazing tags again (and idth it's a stretch but i'll go into that later). first:

baby utena: well the coffin obvs. but ig also the "rebirth" into her ideal of the prince? and. to some extent, the start of the death of touga and saionji's childhood friendship maybe?

the umbrella seems to me to be a shield from the water -> a shield from the death present in ohtori (and ignoring it). i feel like this is a reach though.

nanami! seems to me her water imagery is about the rebirth from death,,, she's present in a lot of people's character developments

OHTORI AND THE SPRING OF ETERNAL YOUTH!! also the sort of "timeless renaissance" architecture it has that belongs to no specific era but is sprawling and ostentatious and feels like everything is in perfect stasis. nothing changes and nobody grows, which is why character development in ohtori is... strange to say the least. (ironic since water is usually the symbol of the fluid, intransient, and unchanging, but that's definitely intentional.)

also: vampires. akio seems undying, eternally young, and also metaphorically feeding off the duelists. i don't think i have an actual point for this, just wanna put it out there.

I won't reiterate the whole post I made before, but I'll just include a couple quotes:

Most mammals have, compared to humans, an elongated jaw. So a little tiny bump of a mammary gland is fine, just enough to get the nostrils away from the teat, and the young can freely breathe while nursing. However, as humans started using fire more and more to cook food - which softened it up, rendering powerful jaws less necessary - their jaws began to shorten, resulting in the development of the chin and other unique facial structures as the face flattened out.

This, of course, meant that babies could suffocate while nursing, which would obviously be bad. But what if... what if nipple further from chest? Bigger bump, so baby's nose have spot to go that isn't directly into mommy's chest? Oh, turns out that works! Of course, as more and more fat stores become dedicated to growing that breast mound to keep baby from suffocating, it becomes harder and harder for the mother to reabsorb that tissue when not nursing (as many other mammals do), so they just... don't. Knockon effects from there, and bam. Tiddies.

I will also say that a few of these points I could have elaborated on more, but that's where we get into metaphysics and theology and so on, and I am trying to stay on topic here for once, hah.

Let's start here: She is the Immaculate Conception, but I do not see her as any more born without sin than any one of us. The original sin is an illusion, really. We do not inherit a soul in any inherent blindness to the Divine; we do very early on inherit a body of societal ideas and rituals based on a hierarchy that favours domination. This in some ways gives us hope to benefit from power, but more profoundly this is an inaccurate view of the human and natural existence, which is equal in value, cooperative, and ecosystemic. Every element in the system, at any scale, will affect its surrounding elements, and thus we can not declare any unworthy of internal betterment or external care.

Mary is the way of remembering our truth. She is the way to Heaven, which is within us.

She was not a perfect vessel simply made for the job and thus only having the capability to seriously consider her options within the range of obedience to God. I think this doctrine conceals something much more profound and probably outrageous to our mind. She was a teen girl who her entire life chose to follow the thread that connected her soul to Godhood, who actively agreed to birth a child from the feminine presence of God - fully knowing that this will be viewed as lowest of acts by everyone around her, and will very likely ruin her prospects for any life in a society at all. She was quite possibly risking her life altogether, but she chose what she believed was right and of love against people or religion.

I believe that the birth of Yeshua was in a big part meant to be a story of restoration of a healthy masculinity and the proper relationship to the feminine, a reminder that we all have an equal nature beyond the incarnate world. Did not work very well, but that's a separate story.

Mary's work is the work of our worth and our calling to care, and she is here to guide us in both, healing hearts that were thought hopeless, helping the prosecuted, reminding us that life is less like a patriarchal race to the top, and more like the circle of her rosary, with its ups and downs and death and rebirth and many, many, miracles and supporting hands. Or that's what it is supposed to be, anyway.

And once this is understood, I believe it is impossible to not work for the rights of women, including their right to exercise their free will even if we would have chosen otherwise, their right to safety from cruelty, their right to be respected and valued and given opportunity.

Now, patriarchy rewards one's proximity to the masculine ideal instead of true emotional, intellectual, or practical contribution. This is why it paints the ideal woman not as a free agent but as an accessory and the supporting hand to the masculine. It also disadvantages queer people as threatening to the hierarchy.

Our world being what it is, this work does mean healing all of our relationships with and restoring the proper value of what we identify as feminine in ourselves and others. If you are seen as a man, you are trained to not do what women are believed to do. If you are seen as a woman, you are trained to both not do what men are believed to do, and what is exemplified as the frowned upon womanhood.

instead they just say “thats normal” or “oh theres nothing wrong with you”. Because in their mind “it wont kill you and i cant fix it” means its not worth mentioning.

But then I went to collect the link on duckduckgo since I don't have my bookmarks at work, and oh god, there's actually thousands of these essays, and even studies now.

So uh. I'll synthesize a bit here:

Doctors need to stop doing this, yes. But for that to happen, med school has to stop punishing this with public humiliations, residency has to stop punishing this with extra shifts, and employers have to stop firing doctors who admit this for "malpractice liability."

New Secret Knots comic, "The River". I hope you like it!

I have created a Discord server to, well, do what is in the title of this post. Please join to support this movement, and please reblog for reach. I will not be able to do this on my own.