Merry-go-round...broke down...

Places: The Carousel

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on the carousel of time

We can't return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round In the circle game.

i stub the cigarette on the steps of the opera house, under the gaze of Molière and Cornielle, under the glare of the angels. maybe i was born to be a visitor. maybe we were born to find these quiet moments and watch the world as it goes around us, as i sit beside the carousel and inside it. outside the theatre and inside it.

carousel

felt like touching this up and colouring it

really i just wanted to add the thought bubble 🦑

we need simon, lori, and sajan back. kon & his smallville crew are representation for gay teenagers in small towns who go hang out together at walmart because what else is there to do in your small town. we need them back

Other times he sneaks out to ride the other rides (he did not enjoy thunder mountain).

Utena’s Caged Intelligence

Something of a continuation of this.

TL;DR Ohtori, like pretty much every school, was not designed for those with developing intelligence (like middle schoolers) to be able to grow and flourish.

So I’ve gone over a little bit of the initial curiosity of Utena and how that diminished, but I wanted to address some topics I might have missed because I mainly focused on Utena’s logic.

When I say logic, I mean her matter of fact/overtly blunt manner of problem solving. She forces her way through problems headstrong, making her solutions equate to the dumb joke stereotype. She sees things in a straight line in a world that is determined to pave only curved roads. Her logic makes her the biggest moron in a world of the illogical. This can actually be seen in Miki as well. Miki is an artist at heart, but doesn’t think he can express himself that way because of the “feminine” nature he’s been taught the language of art is. Miki tries to translate his artistic thoughts into logical dialog, and because of his inability to correlate his mind and voice it makes him one of the easiest characters to manipulate; he’ll mimic what those around him says-especially after an emotional moment-because that must be how a regular “logical” speaker would act.

Utena is similar to a degree, she’s just in no way self aware. Less frantic than Miki, but easier to condition once you can tug Utena’s logic away from her own and onto someone else’s (Akio’s).

Utena is not allowed to come to her own conclusions. Akio or Anthy or whatever student council member has been enlisted are all quick to put her in situations that derive her of exploring other options. It becomes that the best way to solve her problems is to go along with the duels (to the point that she challenges Touga to a duel purely for herself and her own issues, because that’s how problems are solved at Ohtori).

I think the best way to dumb this thought process down is to think that everyone is playing a game. Utena plays by the book and is a naturally very skilled player, others will have mind games or better items to try to gain an upper hand; but then there are players like Touga, Akio, and Anthy who have cheats enabled, but Utena is unable to realize this.

Lastly, the point that can slip people’s mind is that Utena is 14 and the people pulling the strings are all older than her/more experienced. Akio is in his twenties or thirties(not even counting that he might be a magical immortal deity), Touga is both an upper classmen but someone who appears to be living the most ‘adult’ lifestyle of all the underage duelists (the mindest for them is very much sex=maturity/power), and Anthy’s bread and butter is preparing sacrifices for her brother(as well as being a maybe immortal witch).

Her age is Utena’s greatest detriment in the game she’s playing. The only characters that get manipulated as much as she does are Miki and Nanami (Nanami especially) and they are the youngest of the duelists. Yet there are the scant few times it gives her strength, such as her duel with Wakaba (but even then, this duel gave Akio that firm line in the sand he would need to eliminate to further bring Utena under his control).

A school is supposed to be where you go to grow your logical intelligence, while being placed in an environment meant to grow your social intelligence. Ohtori, under Akio’s direction, does not comply to this standard: they value the independence of the students. Something that sounds good, until you remember that these are kids still in need of support, support Akio is glad to provide as he frames himself as the only truly mature and reliable presence in these children’s lives.

music box ballerina Jane Doe <33

he is certified now

this was meant to be a 10 minute doodle tops after i finished the code for the wiki page but. um. autism took hold of me i guess. this took 2 n a half hours and listening to 3 full albums. alts under the cut if u so wish....

theyre transparent. click on them

photos in ice's study; pete 'maverick' mitchell, summer 89'

Merry Go Round

The merry go round at the Largo Central Park in Largo, Florida.

📸 flickr

“And the following night in Boston, Armand was in the dining room of the Copley when Daniel came in. Daniel’s dinner was already ordered. Please sit down. Did Daniel know that Interview with the Vampire was in the bookstores?”

Was doing some research about what the Copley would have looked like when Armand ordered the entire menu and found this:

Assuming the Copley refers to the Fairmont Copley Plaza (which it must, all of the old articles I can find refer to it as just The Copley), the dining room was dominated by a rotating merry go round bar until 1978. The merry go round would finish a rotation once every hour, and you could eat dinner and sip cocktails while it went around.

There were even postcards of it that you could mail home:

(postcard circa 1930s)

By the time Daniel and Armand visited the decor had been updated, and looked something closer to this:

(this photo is from the 1960′s, surely by the 70′s it was even tackier)

So just imagine the surrealism of Daniel downing glass after glass of wine and having Armand have to help his drunk ass down off this thing, all while he goes through an emotional crisis over finding Armand hot when he laughs.

It’s no wonder they ended up together, Daniel is the only person wild enough to decide to go to dinner alone in the kind of bizarre place Armand would be attracted to.

smallville recap seasons 1-7. half of all characters who have ever appeared on the show are obsessed with clark. the other half are obsessed with lana. lex in particular is so obsessed with clark he becomes obsessed with lana by proxy causing all three of them to go completely batshit crazy insane about it. clark and lana are mutually obsessed with each other and make it everybody else's problem for 7 years. and it slaps!