Connections

[elaby]

Because everything, in the end, comes back to Utena.

I was reading "Charles Augustus Milverton" yesterday, like you do, and this quote of Holmes's struck me:

"I have said that he is the worst man in London [referring to Milverton], and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian who in hot blood bludgeons his mate with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?"

Replace "already swollen money-bags" with "personal power trip" and you have my argument as to why, in the great scheme of things, Touga* is a much worse person than Saionji. While of course I would never say that hitting someone outside of a self-defense situation is okay, I think it's considerably less horrible to lose it and lash out than to purposefully, methodically go about breaking someone's psyche.

I love when I can find points of congruency like this :3 ILU, my fandoms.


*And Akio, of course, but he's on a different level than Touga... who is, admittedly, on a different level than Saionji, but they're closer in scale to one another than Touga and Akio are.

Comments

[materia-indigo.livejournal.com]

I always thought Saionji was a more sympathetic character than Touga. This feels confirmed in the movie when Saionji is seen riding in a car with Anthy's other friends toward the end, encouraging her to reach the end of the world, (and Touga is not).

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Yes! Very true :) I think he is too. I came across a lot of Saionji-hate in the fandom when I first ventured in, but I think it's a "OMG he hits his girlfriend!" thing (which, obviously, is awful) but when compared to the other people O_O

[coastal-spirit.livejournal.com]

You're SO right about this. I never thought that Saionji was a "bad" person; just a person who couldn't seem to control himself. (And even that's debatable if you consider that the only person that he attacked was someone who was definitely giving out "hurt me" vibes. You know what I mean.) Touga, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing; and did much more harm (to many more people) on the whole.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

I do know what you mean n________n

Knowing exactly what you're doing, I think, carries a lot of weight on my badness meter. Doing bad things is bad, but meaning to and not meaning to temper the badness.