This is a static copy of In the Rose Garden, which existed as the center of the western Utena fandom for years. Enjoy. :)
I've noticed your tag changes after every 10 posts. At what point does this stop and you can choose a custom one?
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Choose? Hah. You don't get to choose a custom title. You earn it, with blood, sweat, and tears, like one of the great heroes of old.
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And eventually you become a constellation!
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Atropos wrote:
Choose? Hah. You don't get to choose a custom title. You earn it, with blood, sweat, and tears, like one of the great heroes of old.
You just wanted an excuse to post didn't you?
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There are tons of normal titles, enough that hopefully you won't get bored, but you get a custom title at the whim of the mods. Sometimes, as Atropos says, you earn it: onsenmark is Spambane because of outstanding service in filing spam reports, Ragnarok is Caption Captor because he ran away with pretty much every caption contest we ran back in the day, etc. Other times people just get titles because a mod was in a mood. (Ask OnlyInThisLight why she is the king of all ducks.) And there are plenty of longtime members who, for whatever reason, don't have a custom title (yet), and we love them too.
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Are Flourishing Verderer and Covert Diarist custom titles?
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Nope! Those are part of a series of titles that are modeled on the titles of SKU episodes (Wakaba Hath Flourished Verdantly and Nanami-sama Secret Diary, respectively). There's one for every episode, ending with Someday Shiner, the highest of the normal titles.
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Shouldn't the next one logically be "Eschatological Adolescent"?
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Well, only if you view the movie as a continuation of the series, or it's symbolic culmination. And that matter's far from a consensus. I mean, theoretically, we could throw in the titles for the manga volumes, but seeing as the series is much more prominent, it wouldn't make much sense to start with them, and it would be a bit disappointing to go back to fairly simple titles after working one's way through the whole series.
Personally, I think "Someday Shiner" is satisfying end to the progression, from a purely aesthetic consideration.
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That depends on whether you think the movie happened before the show, after the show, or in a different continuity entirely, doesn't it? I'm in the "different continuity" camp, so if you like, you can think about the parallel universe where IRG has only one title and it's Eschatological Adolescent. (Plus we already have Eternal Eschatologist. )
ETA: Also, what Kita said.
Last edited by satyreyes (12-03-2015 01:29:07 PM)
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satyreyes wrote:
Nope! Those are part of a series of titles that are modeled on the titles of SKU episodes (Wakaba Hath Flourished Verdantly and Nanami-sama Secret Diary, respectively). There's one for every episode, ending with Someday Shiner, the highest of the normal titles.
Interesting. I looked up the episode titles on Wikipedia and the Wakaba one seems to be actually called "Wakaba Flourishing" which personally sounds a lot less sillier than "Wakaba Hath Flourished Verdantly"
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Oh, for sure. Wakaba Hath Flourished Verdantly is a translation dating back to the fanslations a long time ago. Both translations have merit. Wakaba Flourishing sounds a lot more natural -- but that's actually the problem. If I have my facts straight, the verb "flourish" in the title is 繁る, an archaic way of writing the modern version of the same word, 茂る; it's not a spelling used in modern Japanese. (If I don't have my facts straight, I know Dallbun or someone else will correct me straightaway. ) So the translator, not unreasonably, decided that the thing to do was to translate the title into archaic English. The more natural solution is also reasonable. Translation is an art, not a science.
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