I cannot believe

That it has taken me 20 years

To understand that the Utena movie is what happened to Utena after the series.

It's a fever dream of the major plot points. It's regret and guilt and despair. It resonates constantly with the whisper of the story of a person who tried to save someone and died in their place. It's a brittle-edged rewrite of everything that happened, except this time Utena knows from the start what she's up against, and this time Anthy will do anything - anything - to show her that she didn't fail.

The movie is Utena trapped in a tiny world of her own creation that is yet an echo of the world of Akio's creation. The movie is Anthy fulfilling her promise to find Utena and save her in turn. The movie is the reassurance that the series did not end in despair.

And I will fight to the death to defend the car thing. It's the whole point. Utena could never save Anthy by picking her up and carrying her out of there like an object. But she can make of herself a vehicle, and Anthy can choose to take the key and leave.

Secret Third Option: “this bitch is crazy, but aren’t we all? Hope it works out for her”

so we all agree that harrows letter to camilla in htn explained the lobotomy right. or at least explained that she removed all memory of gideon to preserve her soul. do you think camilla thought ‘yeah sounds like a solid plan’ or was she a hypocrite who thought, ‘this bitch is crazy. i, camilla hect, on the other hand am responding to my necromancer’s death in a way that is correct and normal’.

One of the things I've always loved about the manga is that it goes into slightly more detail about what Tuxedo Mask's deal even is, and it turns out:

He has no magic powers at all (except, it later turns out, some healing abilities). He cannot attack youma with sparkles and he does not have a transformation sequence.

He is having horrible prophetic dreams about how he has to find something called a Silver Crystal to save a princess of some sort.

He is vaguely conscious that he is wearing Formal Wear in the dreams (as Prince Endymion) and he has to do something to hide his identity so he starts dressing up in a tuxedo and mask when he starts doing Tuxedo Mask Missions. He has to get the tuxedo dry-cleaned between missions.

... the Tuxedo Mask Missions are literally jewellery heists because again, initially, the only information he has to go on is "find the sparkly crystal" so he's just like... scouring the news for special-sounding diamonds and hoping.

Then this amazing girl shows up and she's strong and beautiful and terrified but doing her best and she can ZAP THE MONSTERS with her powers and also she's WEIRDLY FAMILIAR and seems to have more information than he does so he starts trying to figure out where she'll be and turns up there too in case the Silver Crystal is there but then sometimes she's in danger or doubting himself and he can't LEAVE her and and and...

"I BELIEVE IN YOU SAILOR MOON!"

Ok it's very funny to laugh at Tuxedo Mask for showing up and doing nothing, but his job was never to actually fight the monsters.

His job was just to show up and believe in Sailor Moon so overwhelmingly resolutely that she remembers she's a fucking demigod long enough for HER to fight the monsters.

Because she's the only one strong enough to do it in the first place, and in this regard Tuxedo Mask is the first example of being "Kenough" in this essay I will

I adore the falling angel and rising ape quote as much as anyone, but that’s actually not the bit that takes me out at the knees every time I reread Hogfather.

No, that honour is reserved for the moment at the end of the book when Susan throws the iron poker.

Context: Susan is a governess. She has two children in her care, and she has responded to their fears of monsters under the bed etc by beating those monsters up with the poker. It’s Discworld, so the monsters are real… but also it’s Discworld, so the fact that the children believe the poker can deal with anything is Important.

During the finale of the book, these two children walk in on a confrontation featuring a) their governess Susan, b) the literal incarnation of Death (seven foot tall skeleton in black robes) who is, at that time, eating a biscuit, and c) a human man who enjoys torture and is not shy about communicating that fact. The human man steps behind Death for cover. Susan throws the poker at him anyway. The poker passes through Death without harming him, and skewers the human man. Who chokes out in his dying moments an affronted question as to HOW that could possibly have happened.

And one of the children says, calmly, “It only kills monsters.”

pratchett will write an entire book about the grim reaper pretending to be santa claus while the grim reaper’s granddaughter goes about hunting down the dumbass who decided to kill santa, and then right when you think you’re done and the oddly pointed shenanigans are winding down he hits you with “humans need fantasy to be human. to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape,” and knocks you into next wednesday

Daily reminder that we do not actually live in a dystopian movie put the apocalypse down and back away slowly. You know when your cleaning a room and you pull everything out of it's draws to sort through it and you're like "what the fuck have I done I'm never going to be able to tidy all of this" I think that's the stage we're at in the world. Thanks to social media we've pulled out all the messed up shit from the cupboards of the world, it was always there but now we can see it and we're going to have to sort it all out we made this mess and we can fix it. Falling to the floor sobbing will not clean a crusty room. A group of people working systematically (preferably with music in the background) will.

Reblogging to add my periodic reminder that I don’t accept collection requests for my fics, for this and other reasons. Collections are like anthologies. If I write a story specifically for a challenge or collection, then it goes in that collection. Otherwise it’s an automatic no.

It’s worth noting that this stuff doesn’t have to be malicious action from the person who owns the collection. A LOT of people don’t realise that collections aren’t intended to be used as rec lists or personal bookmarks, and therefore don’t realise that making changes to a collection can have this effect on the fic itself. As stated above, the author can fix this IF they notice that it’s happened. If a fic has been orphaned since being added to the collection, or if the author isn’t really active on AO3 anymore, that’s not going to happen.

I've seen a lot of fics disappear from my bookmarks, some 10+ years old, because they were added to an unrevealed collection. It makes me wonder if people realize what your fic being added to a collection actually means and if the authors approved it automatically without realizing what would happen.

If someone adds your fic to their collection, they can hide it! They can mark the collection as unrevealed and your fic will be unreadable to anyone other than them! If you're writing works for a surprise event, like a Secret Santa, this is really nice.

But if you're just writing and someone adds your fic to a collection for their own personal use and marks it as unrevealed, that. . . really sucks.

I bookmarked this fic in 2017, almost 5 years ago. Knowing me, the fic itself was probably at least a couple years old at the time I bookmarked it.

This is a 5+ year old fic that is completely inaccessible now because it was added to a collection that, as far as I can tell, is literally just for the collection owner's own reference. There's almost 30 fics in the collection, all of them unrevealed.

Please don't blindly accept collection requests and if your works ARE in a collection, make sure that they aren't being hidden without your knowledge or consent.

How many times can the same thing break your heart?

Boooooooo :(

WHAT IS A SUPER BOOP??

WHAT IS A SUPER BOOP??

Hey you know what's super funny about the idea of "good bi rep"?

For a character to be canonically bi you have to make sure and establish that they're attracted to multiple genders. Not all mediums allow you to get inside every character's head or show what they're thinking. Flirting can be read ambiguously, and god forbid they flirt with a character who's not into them and be read as pushy or predatory. So it can be super handy to just mention an ex or two! But you better not mention too many exes because that would make them a slutty bisexual which is (checks notes) bad, and you definitely better be careful about making them poly, because that might make them, uh... greedy. Oh, and those exes? They better be perfectly amiable breakups with no conflict or drama, because it's bad to represent queer people in toxic or abusive relationships (especially queer women! very bad), and you definitely can't have them have lost a partner if the partner was queer because that's "bury your gays..." You should probably also eliminate all trauma from their backstory, just to be safe. You should probably also make sure they're not involved in crime, deception, or anything of the sort, because that would make them "deviant" and a stereotype.

But don't worry! Once you've carefully crafted your nice, monogamous, experienced-but-not-too-experienced Lawful Good bi character, you will be rewarded with your audience deeming them "boring" and quickly passing them over for other characters. :)

hello tumblr

Reblog to let your followers know that they’re safe from jumpscares/screamers/etc from you on April 1st but they are NOT safe from getting boop’d like an idiot amen

guy who has chronic pain and fatigue: man why can't i do more stuff

Sousou no Frieren | Ep27 | You showed me a spell to create a field of flowers. I thought it was beautiful. For the first time in my life, I thought magic was beautiful.

“90s shoujo anime is all about noncing” factoid actually just statistical error. Akio “Nonces Georg” Ohtori is an outlier and should not have been counted or in fact allowed within three miles of a school.

Ohhh we’ve got to the bit of Utena with the constant background imagery of Things Impaled By Many Spikes and my husband has NO IDEA.