I just coded all night.
> Spankins! [Afterword]

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!

Essays
Personality + Relationship + Narrative + Miscellany + Music

Context
Introduction + Characters + Reference + Submission

Go Home
Analysis of Utena + Empty Movement

Akio is no rapist, he is just an opportunist that makes his home a school full of emotionally compromised teenagers. This frame is actually pulled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art archives.
I considered making this a time gif that would occasionally flash Dios as having a ponytail. Then I got lazy.
I know this layout is sort of a spoiler, but so was the closing of the first season, so suck it.
This is far and away the most complex layout I have coded, and I know it does not look like it.
So are they waltzing or foxtrotting or what?
Because according to Ikuhara, if it were Akio, they would be doing the lambada.
These swords ended up looking like the crosses in Evangelion. I left it on purpose because hellz yeah.
I wanted this layout to look like a fairy tale. It ended up looking like a French textile exhibit. Oops.
Polly want some C4? Sorry, coding and Colbert do not mix.
It is March. It is snowing. It is Canada.
You know what is an awesome idea? Coding on your rag. That is smart.