Yes!

Love this film. I watch it with my friends every New Year’s Eve now.

Is there a Mrs. Fukuyama?

Thanks again for the recommendation and thanks for talking to me about it!

started the show completely cheering for utena to become a prince and by the end i was able to understand that “women does the shitty thing a man does” is not actually a worthy goal

I sort of did the same thing, despite now feeling like I should’ve known better. It forced me to think “if I can turn my brain off for media, in what other areas am I just passively accepting liberal feminist perspectives before being led into a similarly jarring conclusion?”

utena’s mixture of obtuse and opaque symbolism with some blindingly obvious stuff

That’s really the perfect way to put it. And then it blends that approach at times to lead you deeper, like the butterfly/chrysalis/caterpillar/leaf shadowboxes (probably not the most opaque imagery, but it’s the example that comes to mind); by the time it gets to Mikage’s backstory there’s just a hand on the screen pointing to them. I feel like it’d be a really frustrating show to watch if you were committed to a “the curtains are fucking blue” approach alone.

Coming to it much later in life, watching Utena helped me understand my own experience of girlhood. With that late bloomer/second adolescence that queer people of a certain age can experience, my chronology of becoming an adult feels like it’s all over the place. But as I was watching, I could integrate my experiences—from some of my earliest memories to things that happened to me just a few years ago—by superimposing them onto the characters into a somewhat coherent narrative. I guess that’s just a drawn out way of describing catharsis, but…

genuinely life changing

I can’t know for sure, having only just seen it, and I can’t really articulate it yet, but I do feel different already. I’ll need to ruminate on it for a while.

that ending is perfect, imo.

It really is.

I cried a lot at the end, and I’ve been tearing up off and on thinking about it for hours after finishing. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t expect to be so viscerally affected by it.

Wow, they really were… I’m definitely gonna be rewatching Utena… a lot.

Edit: Thank you for Utena posting so hard, this is one of my favorite shows now, and I never would have started it without seeing your recommendations.

I’m on episode 29 of Utena now, and I’m downloading the Unjust Depths epub for when I have more energy to read next week.

Just started Utena today after seeing you recommend it a few times, so I guess I gotta start Unjust Depths soon…

What I thought it’d be like to be trans:

My experience of being trans:

It’s mostly paperwork.

Heh, yum yum yum.

Hung out with one of my partners tonight. Found out they’ve been exploring some gender stuff a bit but insist “I don’t have dysphoria so I’m not trans.” Which, not how that works, but fair, you don’t have to be trans to play with gender. Then I start thinking back through our relationship and I’m like “oh, this is all textbook trans shit… How did I not realize this earlier?!”

And now I’m just like, I guess I gotta pretend I don’t know what’s going on here for however long while they figure stuff out when all I wanna do is laugh maniacally and be like “WELCOME TO THE CLUB”

Of course I would never do that. But like, come on.

Awesome, I’m excited to hear how it goes!

That sounds like a great idea! Pickled beets will probably hold their shape a bit better, and the acidity would be a nice touch.

If you end up trying it, please post a photo and let me know how it is!

Ah, okay. Since you’re into using fruits in a savory way, I’ll share this idea I’ve had for a while (but haven’t tried yet):

Peel some grapes, saving the skins. Soak the peeled grapes in some sort of marinade (salt, vinegar, oil, herbs… could be anything you want, really; although simple is probably better?). Dry the grape skins completely, grind them into a powder along with some salt, msg, citric acid (or whatever seasonings sound good). To serve, wrap each grape in long, thin slices of… something that functions like prosciutto? Avocado could work, chilled roasted beets could be good… Then top with the powder (lots on half the plate or something) and maybe a tiny cheese crisp or some other crispy element for a garnish.

Edit: you could also slice the leftover peeled grapes really thin to use as a garnish in other courses.

You’re welcome!

I’ve used pectinase to dissolve the pith of citrus, and then just broken them up into pearls by hand. There might be a more involved method that breaks less of them, though.

Do you have any ideas for those high-concept appetizers yet?