i was cuddling with my boyfriend last night when his shoulder started tensing up (like he was readjusting or gently pushing me off) and when i asked him if he was okay or needed me to move or something he went “no you’re fine, i was just imagining myself pulling a large rope. i didn’t even realize my shoulder was doing that lmao” then refused to elaborate and i have never been as attracted to him as i was in that moment.

sometimes i go insane over akio idealizing the concept of dios and how his entire scheme to gain his power of strength and nobility back is by finding and subjugating a bride so the two of them can live happily ever after.

it really exemplifies how under patriarchy, the gender binary means man and woman fit perfectly, they need each other/defined by their relationship to the other, and without violent heterosexism, casting you and you into 2 roles...gender really falls apart. in real life, so many men, countless, have their identities deeply tied to their jobs, being breadwinners, providing for their wives and children, to the point they experience deep depression if they lose their job. Akio/Dios dynamic really represents that. Obviously, Dios was never really a noble Prince. He cast damsels into hapless roles, taking away their autonomy and making them passive subjects to his paternalistic heroism. But when Anthy stops him from constantly responding to calls for helps, grinding his body away with work and saving daughters, *that's* when Dios dies. Because "man" under the gender binary means nothing without "woman". And now we have Akio, who is the other side of the patriarchal coin.

Ugh, this is why I really love this show. It's so nuanced because of its willingness to engage with so many arms of the patriarchy and how it operates.

i think that's all pretty accurate. anthy, when she saved dios, took away his role as a prince, and by extention as a man because the two are so tied together for him. and akio resents her for that, even though she saved his life, because she did so in a way that took away his agency and made him feel humiliated and emasculated. this role of prince/man is presented in many ways as the role of saviour, but as the show also points out, a saviour necessarily requires a victim, and if there isn't one, the prince will make one. dios made every girl a princess by saving them, is how the shadow girls phrase it in their play and that has always stood out to me. he did not save them because they were princesses. he (knowingly or not, intentionally or not) put them in that role by playing prince. the parallel to utena is obvious. and akio, now an adult, does something similar (although very deliberately malicious) by trying to make utena a princess and then playing her prince, the saviour, even though he is the very thing she would need saving from in the first place. which is behaviour that is also reflected in every boy in the academy trying to play prince, touga and tsuwabuki most obviously.

akio and the coffin

it’s fascinating how akio both literally IS the coffin of ohtori academy and, simultaneously, is trapped by it. ohtori academy is in many ways a manifestation of the ugly side of adolescence, of clinging on to something in your past and refusing to move forward in your life. every character has something they continue to hold on to despite the fact that they ought to let it go for the sake of growing and maturing. for example, saionji has his inferiority complex regarding touga, his refusal to let go of the simplicity of their childhood together when he felt that they stood on the same ground, and that touga saw him as an equal. everything he does in the series is an attempt to make himself feel as though he is finally on equal grounds with touga. if he would only stop tying his self-image to the perception that touga is somehow above him, that touga looks down on him, then he would be able to let go of that sense of inferiority and move on. but he can’t. juri refuses to let go of the pain she feels regarding her past with shiori, and continues to see shiori as someone who is “innocent”, albeit cruelly - someone who is unknowing of the pain she causes juri through her actions when in fact, shiori in seducing the boy she thought juri loved was deliberately acting to hurt her. if juri would only realize and accept the true intentions behind shiori’s behavior, then she could get one step closer to understanding shiori, to being understood by her, and moving past the pain of shiori’s betrayal. but she can’t. 

most of the characters, except utena and anthy of course, remain in ohtori by the end of the show. while they’ve all made progress in “maturing” thanks to the events they experienced throughout the series - both saionji and touga’s as well as juri and shiori’s relationships have gotten visibly better, as shown in the final medley of scenes - they still have more growing to do, hence why they remain in ohtori academy until their time comes. one day, the show suggests, they might also revolutionize their own worlds - their own selves - and finally leave the coffin of ohtori behind as well. 

so where does that leave akio? i think he can be said to literally be the coffin of ohtori in that he is explicitly shown to try to manipulate others into remaining stagnant, to clinging on to whatever toxic things they are struggling to process and come to terms with, though this is of course only shown via the characters he most directly interacts with. naturally it comes across most clearly with anthy, although i think utena and to a less direct extent, touga, are the other two people who are the most straightforwardly influenced by him. when it comes to anthy, she clings to her love for the person her brother used to be, the older brother who, at least as she perceived, was kind and caring and wanted to protect people. to protect that older brother, she willingly took on the hatred of the world, and continues to endure the pain of it to this day for what is implied to be centuries. but akio has shown time and time again, through the repeating dueling cycles, that if he was ever kindhearted and genuinely caring, those parts of him are gone now. i do believe he cares about anthy to an extent even now, but whatever affection he has for her is paltry in comparison to his desire to reclaim his power as prince dios. it’s for that purpose that he set up the entire dueling system, for which he freely allows duelists to treat anthy like a prize and an object. and additionally, because anthy is so integral to the power he has now in ohtori, he uses emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse to keep her tied to him. he’s willing to not just let her wellbeing come last, but puts it at the bottom of the list of priorities, and actively tears it down himself for his own benefit. anthy knows all this - but because she still holds onto that love that she had for who he used to be, she stays with him and does his bidding. and that’s what akio wants. he is the coffin, wishing to keep people in their states of despair, conflict, and pain, therefore ensuring that they are compliant and vulnerable to his manipulation. 

at the same time, akio is trapped by the coffin like everyone else. he, like all the other characters, has something that he ought to move on from for his own sake as well as the sake of the people around him: his goal to reclaim his powers as prince dios. akio has failed in this goal every single dueling cycle that happened before the show’s events, and as displayed in the final episode, he definitively fails the one that takes place during the show as well. he can attempt the cycle over and over and over again, redo and tweak and modify the dueling system however many times and in whatever ways he wants - it’s all useless. there is no sword that can break open the rose gate. there is no way to reclaim his powers. they’re gone, that part of his life is over, and if he accepted that fact, it would allow him to move on and heal from what he experienced. but he can’t. at the very end of the series, right before anthy leaves ohtori for good, he’s typing away just as diligently as he ever did and, completely oblivious, tells anthy that he’s rewriting the rules of the rose crest, that he’ll be counting on her again. and i didn’t pick up on this until rewatching the episode, but it really just hits you then how utterly stupid he looks, working so hard and speaking so confidently about the upcoming dueling cycles as if any of them are ever going to matter in the slightest. i love anthy’s response to him too; i love the subtle but at the same time so blatant scorn in her words: “you really don’t know what’s happened, do you?” because once again, throughout all this, akio has learned nothing. he hasn’t realized it’s useless, what he’s trying to do; he hasn’t realized all the effort and pain and anguish he’ll cause in people for yet another dueling cycle will never make any difference. he is unable to come to terms with the reality that he will never have his powers as prince dios back. he refuses to move on. 

akio is the coffin of ohtori, wanting to keep others in stagnation and regret. he’s also trapped by the coffin, incapable of maturing past his own stagnation and regret. and it really, really says something that all of the other major characters of the show, who have been in ohtori for far shorter a time than he has, have been able to make visible strides in their growth. anthy, who is the only one comparable to akio in terms of duration at ohtori, revolutionizes her world and leaves. meanwhile akio, as deluded and self-unaware as he is, hasn’t made a single step of progress in all this time. the only thing he does is call in bewildered desperation after anthy as she finally leaves him behind, still totally clueless as to what has happened. 

tldr; i once saw an author say one of her characters represents inertia, in fact he is inertia. i think that’s a spot-on explanation of akio, at least in terms of what he symbolizes in the story. i want to beat him in the dick with a cactus

i'm such a big fan of laios using being well fed as proof that he's serious. like there's so many techbros & etc who will use not eating breakfast as proof that they're productive & just in general, the idea of being "too busy to eat" is getting more common (which is exactly what toshiro is doing here!) but laios is like. no. i'm so serious about this i'm thinking about what comes next. i'm so serious about this i'm making sure my body can do everything it can when i need it.

the fact that everyone in the party took care of themselves & carefully planned out their route & when they'd take breaks is what made them so successful. they always made sure to understand their limits

all the women saying "im no better than a man" seeing monster fallin's huge bouncing naturals, refusing to be horny is NOT feminist now go JERK OFF to her tits NOW

Halfling Senshi my beloved

diversity loss this trans man is just as much of an emotionally unavailable avoidantly attached brick as any cis guy

call me a smoker the way i suck on fags

Me @ my roommates after episode 17 of Dungeon Meshi

The fight between Laios and Shuro ending with Shuro reminiscing/fantasizing about Falin really did a great job of mirroring what happens in the real world with Autistic Men vs Autistic Women. In my mind, both Laios and Falin are autism coded, and Shuro fights with Laios over how much he hates the autistic traits that Laios has and how annoying he finds them, then immediately goes on to explain he thinks Falin is the most unique woman he's ever met and loves how her mind works. Autistic men are so often thought/depicted of as annoying/cringy/etc while Autistic women are often thought of/depicted as the manic pixie dream girl or the 'not like other girls' girl. It was such an interesting thing to have back to back, cause it really went 'whoa society do think like that so often'.

Valentine girl