#break the world's shell

[eve-is-obsessulated]

so upsetting that Anthy Himemiya is one of the best characters of all time and you genuinely cannot explain or discuss why without the context of the entire anime. pisses me off

[storyinmypocket]

I think if utena and supernatural were to mix, some sort of antimatter would be a by product.

Then I have six words for you: Dean Winchester is the Rose Bride. You're welcome.

[lesbiape]

apocalypse thoughts fresh from the snout

when i first figured it out that “apocalypse” originally referred to a revelation of hidden knowledge (literally “uncovering”) rather than the end of the world, it threw me for a bit, because the word in my mind had already been colored in with permanent ink. the connotations had been built and set in stone. there was famineplaguewardeath growing like moss over it, and images of crumbling monuments, continents of desert and rust, and meteors filling the sky shared neural pathways with those used when i said the word in my head. it’s phonetically the perfect word for the end times. what is this new stranger, eschatology? the end of the world isn’t some literary science, it’s the fucking apocalypse. and the apocalypse isn’t gnosis or ecstasy, it’s the fucking end of the world.

but isn’t it, though? the day of judgment in christianity and islam (idk abt judaism, to my eternal shame, i’ve come across it in some reading but the reading was for a class on jesus by a christian scholar so who knows) isn’t the end of everything with black blankness inheriting it. it’s the destruction of what is to prepare fertile ground for what will be, must be. must be, because it’s preordained by the highest authority, by nature itself. it’s a natural process, it’s a growing pain. furthermore, what comes next is nothing less than god’s kingdom, where/when all things are as they should naturally be. all people are faithful and all things are known. the old, flawed world is succeeded by the new, perfect world. when this is considered with the idea of god/god’s will being the only reality, with all of creation being distant from it or of a different, inferior nature from the mortal point of view, then the new age of god becomes the “true” world.

so the apocalypse, insofar as it is the end of the world, is the end of the false world and emergence of the true world. truth, by definition, is not something created, because it is independent and its own proof; all else exists in relation to it. conceptually i mean--you can create a fact by making something so that was not so, like you can create “this cat is shaved” by shaving a cat, but you can’t create the essential reality of things, the natural order. the natural order, the truth, creates you. it always is, always was and always will be. the false world, on the other hand, is a creation--whether of god, or of misguided humans. this paragraph was kinda weird i think but i promise it’s relevant

the world we live in is the false world. this is the world we see, experience, interact with, take as reality. the “true” world is not a distant event on the farthest horizon, but an immanent reality, because the truth is independent and always existing. you can picture this as a sheet laid over a table (but with cool runic glyphs glowing magically in various colors carved into the table bc we’re talking about the fucking apocalypse); we walk around on the sheet, but it’s the table that’s holding us up. the end of the world--this world, the false world--comes when the sheet is pulled out from under us, revealing--uncovering!!--the true world beneath.

the thing is, this analogy isn’t totally appropriate, however well it works as a diagram, because the change of worlds is a complete and utter transformation, from the literal ground up, of reality as we know it. utena refers to it as a revolution, and for good reason. we’re changing the laws of nature, abolishing euclidean geometry, all your loved ones are withering away and flames are devouring your childhood home, you’re being dragged behind the four horses across a landscape of irradiated dust and nuclear smog, the earth is bucking like a bull beneath you and the mountains are being blown away like so much fluff. this is what it means when the truth is revealed and falsehoods dissolved: your world is transformed. your sins are presented to you, magnified, since merely an atom’s weight is all that is required for god to hold you accountable. whatever your religion or worldview was, it was wrong in some way; no matter how agnostic you were, some idea you held as truth--any and all such ideas--will be revealed for the projected castles in the sky that they really were. “uncovering” really is the perfect word for the end of the world

thanks for reading, i love yall. and for the record, eschaton really is a cool word, i haven’t been giving it enough credit

[takebacktheyuri]

I remembered being born innocent, and feeling almost completely innocent when I was (myself.)  I remembered being slowly broken into pieces.  How many acts of violence have been forgotten forever? 

it’s uncomfortable when people love you but can’t really touch you.  It’s normal to be given life only to learn suffering.  It happens every day.

If you can remember the time before, do you think it can be recovered?

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

This is a completely self-indulgent and rather incoherent ramble out of nowhere and definitely not what I’m supposed to be doing right now, but I was just fiddling around with some writing from a Pearlrose thing (please act surprised) and I reached this bit:

“I might have thought things like that before, I won’t deny it. I wanted to be a hero, a saviour,” Rose began quietly, “but I’d like to think I’ve come a long way since then. Just as you have.”

and this might not make as much sense without the whole scene and previous conflict in question but I was suddenly punched in the face with Utena/Anthy feelings so hard, I mean the emotional resolution I was basically setting up was in large part

I’ve generally recently been getting really intense Utena/Anthy vibes from Pearlrose, and I think not just because of my own predilection for well-intentioned Pearls’ Rights Activist Rebel Rose Quartz who wants to Save Pearl, with a ton to (un)learn and a lot of Utena flavouring. But I am so into the revolutionary girlfriends and breaking out of shells and assigned roles, fighting against insidious ingrained things just as much as outside ones, and messed up power dynamics and the whole thing being really hard and taking a long time and having many ups and downs but? they love each other a lot? I actually imagine Pearl and Rose settled on Earth and Utena and Anthy finally escaped into the outside world in some very similar ways, so I’ve built up a whole mental link between just think about the life you’ll have together after the war and someday together we’ll shine that hurts me every time.

And I also love how I... fell for it? Kinda? Members of the Crewniverse keep bringing up Utena as a major influence and have from the start, they keep drawing Utena crossover art and Gems (but mostly Pearl) in Duelist uniforms, the show is drowning in the shoujo rosepetal aesthetic and Pearl has entire magical sky arena swordfighting duels that recreate Utena scenes shot-for-shot and she’s going about the “knight” thing in ways that bring to mind Utena’s whole “prince” deal and I’m just sitting here going. Wow. I bet in the long bygone era of Steven the Swordfighter none of us expected that she’d turn out to be the Rose Bride.

[da-at-ass]

'You want to say that we identify ourselves with the person who is but a mere caricature of our deeper self?' Exactly. Our self-concept... 'In other words, the idea that we make of ourselves...' Yes, our ego. It doesn't matter the name that we give to this agent of alienation; it is never more than a pale copy, and approximation of our essential self. We identify ourselves with this double that is as erratic as it is illusory. And suddenly, the 'original' appears. War begins to take back the place that belongs to him. The limited 'me' then feels persecuted, in danger of death, and rightly so. For the 'original' will, in the end, dissolve the double. And as much as humans identify with the double, we must understand that the frightening invader is nothing but ourselves, our own deeper self. Nothing belongs to us; everything belongs to the 'original.' Our only chance is that the Other arises and eliminates us. We do not suffer from this murder, but we will take part. It acts as a sacred sacrifice in which we give ourselves entirely to the master, without anguish.

Gilles Farcet and Alejandro Jodorowsky, respectively, in “Psychomagic”