salinea: Two woman dancing together "dance with me" (dance with me)
Most of those are Yuletide fics; but perhaps not all. So yeah I finally finished reading all the Yuletide fics I meant to read this year - four months late! - but on the plus I'm pretty sure it's the first year I actually manage doing that instead of letting the last fics trail into forgettingness.

norse mythology, marvel comics, the administration, death gate, book of the raksura, cyteen, amber, left hand of darkness, lion in winter, princess tutu, mad men,vorkosigan, revolutionary girl utena, dc comics  )
salinea: (smug)
1. Failed to go to epitanime this week end after all. Woke up too late I guess. x_x Only now am I suddenly regretting it a little bit. Oh well, not like I had any money to spend.

2. Watched Thor on friday (finally was showing on 2D at my nearby theater). Liked it overall. You know, there's still no Thor-related recs on my list of comics to be read. Just saying :3

3. Posted the ficlets in answer to everyone who prompted:

Title: Taunting
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon / X
Characters/Pairings: Seishirou/Subaru, Fuuma
Length: 328 words

Title: Rebel girl
Fandom: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Characters/Pairings: Juri
Length: 370 words

Title: Learn from the feet of the master
Fandom: Black Lagoon
Characters/Pairings: Balalaika/Revy
Length: 496 words

They're not great, but they're wri~ting, first since 2008, yay! Wouldn't mind getting more prompts, really :3

4. [profile] comicstore_news is missing an editor in case you have too much free time and feels like doing something selfless for fandom (it's good for finding good fanart on tumblr, if i say so).
salinea: (Default)
I kind of wanted to make one for a while ^_^

Revolution by Amazon Mandy
My favourite Utena vid, it uses both movie and series footage for a dizzying, electrifying evocation of the theme of revolution in a somewhat meta way as well as fitting to the series, and is also a great dance / fight vid. It's only a little bit spoilery and it's gorgeous.

Tra~la~la by Gret
My favourite amongst the funny Utena AMVs, it's a hilarious take on some of the most sexual themes, motifs and symbols of Utena, and Akio/Touga's relationship and their sexy bodies in particular. Not very spoilery.

Embers by [livejournal.com profile] alicemeichi
Fun story about the Utena amv fandom, there is no less than 3 fanvids set to Evanescence songs which are actually extremely good and very fitting to the vid. It's sort of ironic I guess?
Anyway this is one is (IMHO) the best one of the three (also the easier one to link to ;_;), and is a summary of the complicated relationship between Juri and Shiori. It's simply visually stunning and really captures the violence of their feelings. Somewhat spoilery.

Sex, Lies & Roses by VegettoEX & MeriC
An awesome portray of Akio through his relationship with Utena. Very cleverly made. Very spoilery.

To Hell and Back by Amazon Mandy
This vid is basically an epic, orchestral summary of the whole Utena series, mostly concentrating on Utena and Anthy (and Utena/Anthy) of course. VERY spoilery

Novae Final by WUNETTI Production
WUNETTI Production has made a lot of great Utena vids , and this one in particular is the fourth of a series which I'd recommend entirely really (though perhaps not in sequence because that's a lot of VAST in one time). What this one vid does is simply sumerising the series finale set to another epic orchestral tune, and it does so magnificantly. VERY spoilery, it goes without saying.

(for the people here who still don't know about Utena : here's my introduction post to the series)
salinea: (Default)
I had promised... I forget if it was [livejournal.com profile] misstopia or [livejournal.com profile] haremstress, or both, a big rec post about SKU at some point; so there it is!

Revolutionary Girl Utena, aka Shoujo Kakumei Utena or SKU for short, is a series from the mid-nineties. It exists in both manga and anime form; and there also was an animated movie adaption made in 1999; but i mostly want to talk about the animated series which is, IMHO, the best and more interesting form the story takes. It was directed by Ikuhara, which at that point was mostly known for working a lot on Sailor Moon; and comports 39 episodes organised in 4 narrative arcs of unequal size.



The Story

Tenjou Utena is a 14 year old girl enrolled at the Ohtori Academy. When she was a young child and after just losing her parents, she remembers meeting a Prince who saved her and gave her a ring to remember him by. She was so impressed by him that she decided to herself become a Prince as well as cherishing the ring in the hope of meeting him again. Thus motivated, Utena grows up as an impressively athletic girl who values noble qualities and straightforwardness; and she always wears a male uniform in high school to the annoyance of her teacher and to the boosting of her popularity amongst other girls.
One day, in order to defend her best friend who just got her heart broken by a jerk, she ends up involved in a duel against a member of the Student School on a very weird duel arena that exists in the Forest behind the school and under an upside down castle floating in the sky. It just so happens that every members of the Student Council wear the exact same ring that was given to her by her Prince, which marks them as Duellists in an elaborate game organised by a mysterious letters writer naming themselves The End of the World where the Victor receive a young girl, Himemiya Anthy, as their Bride for as long as they keep winning; and has a shot at winning the vaguely defined Power to Revolutionise the World. By the way, the current Victor needs not bring a sword to the duel, they can just magically bring forth the Sword of Dios from inside the body of Anthy. Because Anthy is cruelly abused by her initial Victor, and appears to submit to it meekly as per the rules of the game, Utena ends up participating in those games in order to protect her as, one by one, each member of the Student Council challenge her.

Pics and lengthy review )
salinea: (Default)
Back when I first finished watching Utena and joined the utena usenet group, I wrote a short essay on some of the themes in Utena. Anyway at some point I decided I wanted to repost such things on my journal so I searched back for it, but when I reread it it looked all horribly vague and badly written, so I ended up rewriting it entirely and it thus became much, much longer. Some of the stuff on this essay are of the painfully obvious variety, and some are me reaching a bit. It's definitely written for an audience of people who have watched the series and is quite spoilery. Anyway I hope you guys will like it. If someone feels like correcting my bad English, I won't resent it and will be quite thankful instead.


Utena's Revolution or la Fin de l'Ancien Régime Romantique

One of SKU's most fascinating feminist critique is the study of the role of power and inequity in human relationships – especially but not only romance between men and women – and the harms it cause to people. Some of it is explored through the core political concept of Princehood and Revolution.

tl, dr on SKU )
salinea: (Default)
So, there's my Utena FST made entirely of Tori Amos songs.

I blame all of you who encouraged me instead of discouraging me :p

Files under the cut, in rar archives, uploaded with mediafire and in two parts. (if anything in that pauses someone a problem, tell me and I'll see what I can do to make it easier to get).

Girl Disappearing )

Yes, I do like feedback.

Utena

16 Dec 2008 01:27 am
salinea: (Default)
Finished my re-watch of Revolutionary Girl Utena.
It's still a wonderful anime and one of my favourite, and I've still got way too many people on my flist who haven't watched it. Come on people, Feminism! Surrealism! Deconstructed fairy tales! Lesbian subtext and text! Gay subtext and text! Sex! Incest! Genderfuck! Mindfuck! Symbolism! Psychology!

not particulary important babble )

And I meant to review Otogi Zoushi but right now my eyes freaking hurt, and they've been hurting on and off since this morning I think I'll them away from my computer screen for now x_x
salinea: (Default)
Two days ago my parents visited and dropped a new furniture (I don't know how to call it, it's mostly decorative with some cupboards too) for my flat and my dad dumped a couple of GOs of blues, jazz, and oldies rock on my harddrive; and then I was bullied into rearranging my book shelves to a result which I admit is a bit neater.

Fun fact now that I can see the books on my shelves better : seems like on most English books cover the title tilts left to right (that is to say the bottom is on the right); whereas on most French books the text is tilted right to left. Funny, no? There's a couple of exceptions, of course, but that's how the big majority goes. I wonder if there's some obscure cultural reasons...

Among the music from my dad, there were some Joan Baez (gorgeous stuff) and a song called Donna Donna, and when I listened to it, I totally cracked up. DAMN YOU ANIME FOR WASTING MY ENJOYMENT OF GOOD MUSIC! Already I can't listen to Carmen without snickering softly to the bemusement of anyone around thanks to Prince Tutu, and now Utena slays my enjoyment of folk XDD
ETA: Having looked up the history of the song on the wikipedia I find the song usage in Utena kinda creepy now O_o

Ficbits

22 Apr 2008 05:19 pm
salinea: (Default)
Bits of writing done for memes, which I liked enough to post at my writing journal - so you may have seen them before.

Title: Gardening conversation
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon/X – Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Characters/Pairings: Anthy, Seishirou
Length: 307 words
Notes: Done for [livejournal.com profile] keelieinblack for the crossover conversation meme


Title: Lucky boy
Fandom: Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Characters/Pairings: Anthy
Length: 89 words
Notes: done for [livejournal.com profile] sakanagi, headcanon meme.


Title: How Miki lost his virginity
Fandom: Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Characters/Pairings: Touga/Miki, implied Kozue/Miki
Length: 84 words
Notes: done for [livejournal.com profile] bitterfig, virginity loss meme


Title: Three facts about Seishirou
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon/X
Characters/Pairings: Seishirou, Setsuka, Subaru
Length: 328 words
Notes: Started for [livejournal.com profile] bitterfig, added another bit for [livejournal.com profile] a_white_rain, then reworked somewhat into this form.

Drabbles

3 Sep 2007 04:05 pm
salinea: (Default)
The first three drabbles from my drabble prompt request from here

Ganymede
Utena, Touga/Akio, 400 words

Excellence
Harry Potter, Percy/Hermione, 280 words

Lies
A Song of Ice and Fire, Sandor/Sansa, 100 words

Whee! This is being fun ^_^
salinea: (Default)
I have a new layout, yay! [livejournal.com profile] etrangere[livejournal.com profile] etrangere[livejournal.com profile] etrangere
Thanks to the delicious [livejournal.com profile] catiechue who gifted it to me. Doesn't she rock? ♥ ♥ &heart;

I'll be away from Thursday to Friday, a-convention going, discussing SF/F. Expect much (tired) squees when I get back.

Before I go, I still meant to pimp the hell away of In the Rose Garden is a new forum for the Fine Fleure of the Utena fandom. Shoujo Kakumei Utena fans over here, I know you are many, so hasten away there. There's discussions, both silly and deep, AMV recs, caption lines contests, fanfic links, and debate as to whether or not Akio and Touga had sex (everyone agree that they did) and many other things. So what are you waiting exactly?
salinea: (Default)
Happy birthday [livejournal.com profile] stanayitnuh ! ♥

Sometimes Fandom really does puzzle me. But, I've been recced at [livejournal.com profile] quibbler_report and [livejournal.com profile] hogwarts_today so very much yay of the OMGBBQ-jumping-up-and-down kind.And let's not whine about the lack of comments.

Otherwise, having lots of fun discussing Remus' character here. Where I also started that Slytherins were not selfish :D

I know I tend to have a much darker interpretation of Remus than most people, and I probably go a bit too far with it, but I do think that a lot of people go overboard in the other direction (lots of fanon!Remus annoy me ^^)

Actually I could spend some time sporking fun at fanon!Remus in many ways (Saint!Lupin who is ever so good and kind and sacrificing; Bookish!Lupin who's shy and the smartest kid of his class regardless that James and Sirius were canonically just as smart or smarter; Alpha Wolf!Lupin with the super sense of smell to detect lies and horniness and who likes to bite his SO to mark his dominance - this one is more amusing than annoying - and so on ^^)

It's not of course that I think that Remus is an evil character. He has many qualities. He shows kindness to Harry and Neville, he's a very good teacher, he's courageous and selfless enough to fight in the Order despite how much the WW treats him badly.
But I do think he's got lots of failings, and I find that his failings make him much more interesting. And most of them are about how he deals with other people.

In many ways Remus reminds me of Anthy Himemiya from Shoujo Kakumei Utena, which I know is a weird parallel to make, but here.
spoilers for Utena )

On another subject altogether, funny link about Pluto's demission as a planet (awww, poor Pluto XD)

ETA: Last, LJ seems to be very irregular about sending me mail notification of comments. I do receive most notifications, but if I check, I can see there's a few comments for which I've never received any. And it's been a few weeks now and I receive not late notification either, so it's starting to piss me off.
salinea: (Default)
Errr,

first sorry for not having posted more, or even comment more, lately.
I've bought many books, and read a few. I'm still currently in Quicksilver. I'm also re-reading Mary Gentle's Book of Ash. I also bought a book many times reccomanded by [livejournal.com profile] jydan : Sabriel. Will post about all of these at some point.

I've also got myself Fruit Basket volume 16, and Holy fucking cow, Tohru's father is HOT. Oh well, that's just yet another too sexy for his own good character added from this serie. Damnit, that screws all my hierarchies of favourite characters *grumbles*

Watching much Utena with a friend. Which I blame for the fact I wrote an Utena triple-drabble :
Fandom : Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Length : 300 words
Characters/Pairings : Anthy, Dios, Akio, Utena. But mostly Anthy.

Swords

That's all for today.

Oh, yeah, my 100 icons upgrade has died away and I don't wish to lengthen it. I meant to do a poll for which icons I should keep, so tell me which ones do you think are more adequate for me and you like best among the ones uploaded at the moment so I'll decide myself ^_^

Metaphore

2 Dec 2005 12:19 am
salinea: (Default)
If Ohtori was a Arthurian legends...

spoilers for Utena )
salinea: (Default)
Downloading 39 episodes of a serie is way too fucking slow. In one month and a half I'm only at 36% of getting the whole of the Utena serie and it frustrates me extremely. Can't go all over and it and analyse it properly until I can watch it again, and fully.

[livejournal.com profile] coffee_and_ink compared the Utena ending to the FMA one. Of course I'd rather she had compared it to Buffy.

Obvious similarities between the two series : the reversal of gender roles, feminism, overuse of symbolism and metaphores. But Utena in general is I think more extreme, more indepth and more... well revolutionary ^_^ Though they both have the great advantage of managing to apply feminism to more than relationships between men and women.

Utena is in a way very political. Or more accurately, it talks very acutely about power as it is in every parts of human interactions, even those that could seem very innocent, and suggest a political outlook on it. We're talking about a serie where two keys words are "Prince" and "Revolution", doesn't this strike people as strange ? Those are antithesis.

Especially when you remember that Utena makes obvious references to the very old shoujo "Roses of Versaille" which was during the French revolution. I wonder if there's some essay around that explores this topic. If not I'd like to do one... grrr why is that download so slow ?

BtVS and Utena ending, with spoilers )
salinea: (Default)
I was gone for the week end to Tour to see Maya again, and we had a wonderful time. I got to meet Casey, who's one of Maya's friend and an adorable girl, and we watched Utena season 1 and 3 (in one week end... talk about symbolism overload @_@) which I loved, to hang around, go clubbing (sorta) and do much silly fangirl things. It was a riot.

I had a dream in which I had posted a new fanfic for Tokyo Babylon, and I was all excited because, whee ! at last my groove was coming back and I was enthousiasmed for the fandom anew ! And then I woke up just when i was going to check on my reviews ;_;

Back to school, I'm slowly getting back in the track of things and getting over my attack of anxiety and unability to do anything. Hopefully this time, it will last and i won't relapse after, you know, three weeks.

About Utena )

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