Written by Giovanna and Yasha. 
While working on these, I noticed a few parallels among the characters that I thought should be noted somewhere, and since no one's going to read the afterword anyway, I figure I'll do it here. The comparisons can best be done in pairs.
Miki and Ruka
share a common moral issue with spanking, or in a wider sense, any
form of sexual play that involves roughhousing. While the girl was
all for it, Miki simply wasn't, and no force in the world would have
changed his mind. His blunt scenario parodies this; there was no situation,
woman, or reason why Miki would spank someone. He wouldn't do it because
he was asked nor because it turned him on, and he would certainly
never do it because he's blown a fuse. He wouldn't even do anything
reminiscent of the act. While Ruka's not beyond slapping a girl's
ass, Miki would be horrified at such a prospect. He'd be embarrassed
at the sexuality of it and disgusted at the itemization of women that
the act would, to his perceptions, portray.
As she
walked through the crowds of students, the girl caught a glimpse of
blue. Miki. Grinning wickedly, she called out, "Hi, Miki!" and waved.
Miki froze,
his eyes wide, and then slowly began to edge away, never taking his
eyes off her.
Still grinning,
the girl began to walk toward her first period class. "Damn," she
said wonderingly. "He probably thinks I'm gonna eat him."
Ruka didn't
exactly spank the girl, at least not by the same definition followed
by the other scenarios. The scenario used allowed for more to be said
about him than a blanket 'no', but Ruka would not throw a girl over
his knee and spank her. To him it would be distasteful, and underneath
Miki's innocence, you would find they share this objection. It would
break their moral code to hit a woman, no matter what she thought
of the prospect. You don't hit women. This is so hardwired into their
understanding of male/female associations that there's absolutely
no room for compromise. Even if she's a willing party, the act by
nature insinuates an absence of consent that Miki and Ruka can't ignore.
This is much of the appeal for those who enjoy it, but for Miki and
Ruka, spanking is no different from domestic abuse. Assuming they
could understand why anyone would want it, they would reject it because
of what it means to them. In fact, they would probably lose a lot
of respect for the woman as well, finding the act degrading and the
idea that the woman would ask for it herself offensive.
Would
you like to learn to fence?" Ruka asked, his arm warm around her shoulders.
"Me?" she asked,
shocked. "I could never do that. I'm too—"
"It might help
with that," he said quietly, drawing her closer. "You just need to
be more aware of what you're doing. Listen, meet me outside the fencing
hall after last period. No one will be around, and I'll have all the
equipment you'll need." He smiled. "You might enjoy it."
The bell rang,
and she glanced around the rapidly thinning crowd in the hall. "All
right. I have to go, or I'll be late."
Ruka leaned
down, kissing her cheek. "I'll see you after school." Saionji and
Touga share both the same moral objection to violence against women
and deep-seated control issues. This is a fatal combination, and when
the two issues meet they do so head-on, causing them both to collapse.
Despite his behavior, Saionji doesn't believe hitting women is an
appropriate thing to do. Upbringing and an intense need to feel noticed
and respected tend to override his moral integrity to a degree, but
never so much that it disappears and he acts without guilt. Touga,
whose morals are to say the least in short supply, does adhere at
least superficially to the basic laws of chivalry. Though it could
possibly be coaxed out of him by a kinky partner, he doesn't take
kindly to the idea of spanking, and if prompted to cite his reasons
for feeling that way, his speech would be very similar in merit to
one given by Miki or Ruka. Of course, that would be the excuse he
gives. Essentially, Touga's 'morals' are less a code of ethics and
more a basic set of rules for impressing women and getting laid. Still,
the fact stands that Saionji and Touga are, in the moral sense, every
bit as averse to spanking as Miki and Ruka.
She
at Saionji out of the corner of her eye as they walked down the hall
from his dorm. The distance between them wasn't of her making, but
it was still there, his guilt and shame still separating them. She
knew what he remembered, and she couldn't find a way to make that
memory go away.
Feeling sick
at heart, she paused, knowing that his silence and his closed-off
expression wouldn't go away unless she did something about them. He
stopped, looking back at her, and she saw another flash of the shame
in his eyes—he couldn't hide it from her. "Kyouichi…" she murmured,
unsure of what she was trying to say. He just looked at her, but she
seemed to see him turning cold inside to protect himself from whatever
she would say.
Suddenly she
felt herself smile a little. "Let's not go to class today. Let's go
somewhere else, just you and me. I'd rather be outside with you on
a beautiful day like this than locked up in a stuffy old classroom."
She saw the
uncertainty in his eyes, just a flash, and for a moment, it seemed
like he would reject her. But then, his expression softened, and he
said, "Where do you want to go?"
The difference
lies predominantly in control issues. Miki's simply incapable of fury,
he would curl into a ball under such pressure, and Ruka's too easygoing
to get such a rise out of him. With control issues comes the inevitable
possibility that control will fail, and that's why Touga and Saionji
have such violent reactions. A control issue is a dangerous thing—that
it exists at all makes the person dealing with it much more vulnerable
to snapping. An individual without one will invariably have an easier
time controlling their anger. This is no surprise coming from Saionji,
whose fuse is so short he spends half the series in this condition.
Touga's a harder case, because it's never shown, but his persona is
fragile, and if you know how, you can set him off just as easily.
Blinking
groggily, the girl looked at the bedside table. The clock said 10:03.
"Touga."
"Hmmm?"
"We're late
for school."
He sighed,
and then pulled her closer, his hand stroking the skin of her throat.
"Does it matter?" he asked, slowly opening one eye to look down at
her.
"You're supposed
to set an example, Seitokaicho, " she teased.
"I am setting
an example," he said, and then did something with his other hand that
made her gasp.
"I see," she
purred.
Though they
both deal with this, the root of their issue is not shared. Saionji
houses a control issue born of his lack of it—he's always flying
off the handle and he can't seem to get a grip on his behavior. He
(correctly) feels he should be able to control himself, and his frustration
when he can't builds up into a control issue. Touga's control issue
is almost exactly the opposite. He has, as best you can tell by the
series, a flawless track record controlling his fury in bad situations.
That's not a common thing for anybody, and to Touga it's just more
of what makes him so great. Conclusively, he must never, ever lose
his control. That would be unbecoming of him, and it's simply not
a Touga thing to do. Insisting so absolutely that he must not lose
control is, in large part, exactly why he did.
Thus far, moral
integrity has played a seminal part in the cast's behavior. All that
stops here, because Akio and Mikage treat morals the same way a child
treats the vegetables on their plate: they discard them. As for control
issues, Mikage is too laid back to have any, and the only control
issues Akio have relate to his dominance over others, and so they
don't factor in here.
She glanced
back to where Mikage was buttoning the collar of his shirt, her hand
on the doorknob. "Goodbye," she said.
"I'll see you
this evening," he replied.
She opened
the door, smiling to herself at the thought of what might happen tonight.
Since Akio
and Mikage don't view spanking as a moral violation or a lapse of
control on their part, they would never think to use it in anger.
Touga and Saionji acknowledged a violation taboo in the act that made
it appropriate for wrath, and while Akio and Mikage are certainly
capable of seeing how this would apply to their victim, they don't
make the connection for themselves. It would be far down on the list
of reactions to have under pressure, and really, if the goal is to
hurt someone, Akio and Mikage would find spanking much too ineffective
when their internal resources are so finely tuned to destroying others.
One could go so far as to say they would find the idea laughable;
it's crude, like using an axe when the weapon they prefer is a scalpel.
Their personalities
account for this entirely, but it seems a strange coincidence that
the two most sexually liberal characters are also the two oldest.
Mikage is by smallest estimation in his forties, and for using 'decades'
to describe how long it's been since he's seen Mamiya, he's probably
much older. Akio's age can't even be estimated, except that he's certainly
lived long enough to see and do it all, and if Mikage's experimenting
in these scenarios, Akio's revisiting an old acquaintance. The influence
of age on the way people view sex is evident. As time passes, you
see more, and as you're desensitized to sexuality, you find fewer
things taboo and so you can experiment freely. For Mikage, this is
hardly a factor at all. He's always been more experimental than inhibited,
and the only factors with any weight in his adventurousness are awareness
and access. If you'd explained spanking as sex to him when he was
ten, he would have understood it fully and still not seen the 'problem'
with it. It's hard to imagine sex being a word to which Dios knew
the definition, so Akio's early days likely involved the process of
overcoming Dios' moral inhibition. Age is a factor here because by
the series, he's so completely finished this task that there's nothing
left for him to find sexually taboo.
The girl
glanced up as the bell rang, finishing the last of the notes she was
writing and closing her notebook. She felt drained today, tired, but
somehow relaxed. Of course. She was out of his presence. Wondering
whether she should go see him tonight, she stood up and walked toward
the door.
It was bright
outside, the halls packed with students going to lunch, and the sunlight
and the noise bothered her. She would rather have been alone, but
there was always the chance that…
Well, that
she might see him around the school. She couldn't act any differently
toward him, and he couldn't notice her, but she did like to see him
when his attention wasn't focused on her. Walking down the hall, she
glanced idly upward.
A familiar
silhouette was in one of the windows, looking down on her. Her cheeks
heated, and she looked quickly away, walking faster.
This day seemed
like it would never end. But did she really want it to?
Sexual taboo
is, fundamentally, what this whole project is all about. We narrowed
it down to one act to make the contrasts clearer, and because it was
just more fun that way, but from this vantage point much can be deduced
concerning the characters. How they behaved in this situation speaks
volumes for how they would behave in others—where moral integrity,
control, and curiosity matter here, they would matter elsewhere. This
was superficially about spanking, but underneath that it was about
how the cast reacts to sex when it ventures beyond the accepted norm
and into the taboo. Hopefully, it's answered a few questions none
of you thought to ask, and if it raised more, then you're probably
of adequate sullied mind to enjoy Revolutionary Girl Utena for the raucous orgy it really
is. Cheers!
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