zoniventris

Today's Nonbinary Character Is:

Setsu from Gnosia!

Aro and ace activism is healthcare reform, so that no one needs to rely on a spouse for health insurance, so that healthcare is available to everybody regardless of income, so that no one’s lived experiences or basic dignity are dismissed or overridden by doctors

Aro and ace activism is well-funded and expansive public transit, so that you don’t need to have someone on hand to drive you places if you are incapacitated, so that you don’t have to pay for an ambulance if you need to get to the hospital quickly

Aro and ace activism is disability and elder care services, so that no one needs a spouse to care for them, so that no one needs children to care for them, so that marriage is not a bind for disabled people, so that people on disability who want to and can live alone can

Aro and ace activism is community-building, it’s public events, it’s free social activities, it’s mutual aid, it’s activities that bring community members together without socializing relying on just a romantic partner

Aro and ace activism is developing a culture of believing when people tell you who they are and what they want rather than assuming you know them better than they know themselves

Imagine being a newly ascended magical girl archangel and suddenly being privy to what amounts to your existence in an effective multiverse and you get to see yourself mostly fall to despair and die over and over again. And through all that darkness there's that girl who in your last life before ascending you were kinda starting to be friends with and kinda hated. And she tries so hard in to save your soul from despair even though you know and she probably knows its useless, going so far as to die for you over and over again just so you don't have to be alone in your despair and death. A girl who, inadvertently through your own follies, you save from a cynical life and a very likely ignoble end and who, in the end, finds meaning to her life if for one brief brilliant moment in trying to save you.

I think there's also the likelihood that Sayaka realized the tragedy of their existence that they were basically exactly what the other needed in their lives to counterbalance each other and save each other were it not for the situation of their existence as magical girls.

And Sayaka can't do anything for this girl who has literally given up her soul for her time and again because she's dead and kyouko is not. But she so dearly wants to. Wants to repay her for all that she's done. Wants to appreciate her back. Hell, maybe just wants the opportunity to meet this girl who fate has clearly bound her to so tighty under less cruel circumstances. To tease her back and kick her ass and have a life together if they can.

"I thought you hate when I look like you."

Thanks so much to the incredible ruiaes for illustrating this beautiful piece of ALLMO and her children!

(Reminder that 1000xRESIST is 40% off for the Steam summer sale 💛)

Someone picking up painting today will create the legends of tomorrow.

And I love the idea that this person will try to create something for the first time because they saw our art today.

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

Some questions I had when I first watched AoU were:

"What's up with Shiori and Touga?" "Why is Nanami absent?" and also "What the hell is That*?"

(*This thing. Alt text: small red crocodile like creature with a string coming from its belly)

In another post, I established that Touga is a ghost, and he's specifically been brought to Anthy's world by Utena who is mistakenly using him as the face of the trauma she's experienced failing to be a Prince and losing Anthy. There are lot of nods to this: the textual fact that he's a ghost, how he's dressed in black, and how he and Shiori exist in this strange space outside of Anthy's influence having conversations with Akio, another dead person. Through this line, we can pretty easily deduce that Shiori is a ghost as well: Juri's ghost.

Textually, in the movie, Shiori is strongly implied to be the girl Touga drowned saving.

This is an important callback to a story from the original series. In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Juri discusses how a boy drowned saving her sister but Juri forgot his name. Soon after Utena disappears from the world, everyone but Anthy forgets her as well even though the mark of how Utena has changed each of them remains.

Like Touga, Shiori is a ghost who has changed our protagonists but has not been called into the world.

This brings us to the questions: Why are Touga and Shiori dead? Why couldn't Anthy bring them into the perfect world she made for Utena?

Two possibilities: like Utena, they escaped or, we can take the movie at face value, they are dead.

I believe that Nanami escaped and that's why even her ghost isn't in the narrative. Anthy goes so far as to get one last silly jab in, but, Nanami is allowed to be free. Based off of that wild assumption I am making, I also believe Touga and Shiori did not escape and instead died.

So how did they die?

There are a few clues. Touga spends much of the movie speaking through the phone to Akio who we also know is dead. Meanwhile, at the very end of the movie, Shiori herself surprises everyone by becoming a car to stop Anthy from leaving her traumatic world behind. Finally, Shiori draws that weird little creature with the string coming from its belly on Touga's shoulder.

"If it cannot break its egg's shell, a chick will die without being born."

The string coming from the belly of the creature is an umbilical cord. It replaces Chu Chu who represented Anthy's true intention. Chu Chu is no longer necessary because we know Anthy's true intention: to live happily with Utena. However, tbis new creature represents a new unknown: the consequence of Anthy's desires. Looming over Utena and Anthy throughout the film is the threat of choosing not to break out into the real world and grow up and, as a result, dying before you're even born.

Utena struggles with suicidal thoughts and Touga manifests these in her. Her pursuit of him throughout the movie can be read as her pursuit of death in the scene where he invites her to join him as he drowns in the elevator.

Meanwhile, Anthy struggles with returning to the security of her trauma. Shiori is her foil in that Shiori has embraced it and, like Anthy once did in the series, is trapping others in this world due to her own pain.

This also explains what happened to Touga and Shiori. They have both embraced the system put into place by Akio and, as a result, have died without achieving revolution long before the events occurred in this movie. When she becomes a car, Shiori in particular demonstrates that she is capable of leaving behind this world, but instead chooses to drag others down with her, something very in line with how she was depicted in the series.

Her brother is dead. Her abuser is gone. The specter of him infects her world though. Anthy seeks out Utena. She brings the people Utena knows and loves into a miraculous school, and she goes to meet Utena, but then the moment is ruined. Utena does not remember Anthy. Even worse, Utena wears the Rose Seal.

In a world void of her abuser, Anthy realizes she does not know how to desire or be desired as anyone other than the Rose Bride. So she falls back into the role. She tries to seduce Utena as the Rose Bride. She tries to fit herself and Utena into a dynamic she is familiar: the naive Prince and the attentive Rose Bride. It doesn't work, and the body of Anthy's trauma rots beneath the roses until it's dug up.

I've always been confused about why Utena was so fixated on Touga in the movie, but on my most recent rewatch, it clicked. In the original series, Utena misremembers Touga as her Prince. In the movie, she is misremembering Touga once more, attributing to him promises and emotions she actually felt for Anthy. Touga is the violence Utena experienced in Akio's world and then forgot once she entered Anthy's world. It's another body Anthy did not account for.

When Utena has her breakdown in the rose garden, she acts in a way familiar to Anthy. She tackles Anthy and shoves her to the ground. White butterflies, associated with sexual violence, flutter in the background and Anthy gives into it willingly. She swears this is what she wants: to be Utena's even if it means being Utena's Rose Bride. But Utena surprises Anthy again. She doesn't hurt Anthy, she just mourns the fact that she never got to see the stars with Touga. And this brings directly to mind their most precious promise from the series: Someday, together, we'll shine.

Utena falls asleep, and Anthy is able to act against the role of the Rose Bride for Utena's sake. She stands, and she destroys her rose garden so that Utena can see the stars.