Dominura is great too! By far the most sympathetic and downright compelling borderline paedophile who does what could be considered human experiments on her colleagues in anything I’ve seen to date. Which should be an overly narrow superlative but is sadly not.
Anne Hathaway dressed as a dashing young man.
ANNE HATHAWAY DRESSED AS A DASHING YOUNG MAN.
…why hello, everything attractive ever. Except random dude. Go away, random dude.
All I ever wanted, maybe.
Japanese woman in traditional garments, 1940s
This is actually almost exactly how Makioka Yukiko looks in my head.
But what even would a second season be about?
The Eternal Maidens floating through space and time being adorable?
Or the possible second war looming in the background at the end of the last episode?
The new priestesses from Plumbum now that all the Sybilla from the original series had to pick a gender?
Dominura and Rimone time travelling and— Oh wait yeah I’d watch the shit out of that never mind!
I would watch and love it if it existed but I don’t actually want it, if that makes any sense. I feel like, even though there’s obviously a lot more to be done in these people’s lives and in their world, within the story that’s being told the ending we got was pretty definitive.
To-day I finished The Prague Cemetery, the recent Umberto Eco novel that I think is probably best-known for the controversy provoked by its depiction of anti-Semitism and where those kinds of thoughts (racist, religiously intolerant, misogynistic) can come from, which was for many people simply far too there for comfort. With the main character in this infornographic historical horror show Eco apparently wanted to create the most thoroughly despicable villain protagonist in recent memory, and I think it’s fair to say that this went horribly right. Captain Simonini (who is at least one of the novel’s three narrator voices) begins the book by explaining his ‘reasons’ for hating, in no particular order, Jews, Germans, Italians, French (it should be noted that he is an Italian resident in France), Catholics, Masons, and women. He ends it by writing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the Okhrana, and in one climactic scene (beware! Major spoiler ahead!) murders a woman whom he thinks had drugged-up sex with him at a Black Mass that he had her go to because she is Jewish and there is a minuscule chance that he might ‘father a Jew’. This is actually only in the running for the most disgustingly venal murder he commits. He also admires the Versaillais’s actions in the invasion of the Paris Commune. About his only redeeming feature is his taste in food, and it took me months to read the book even though it’s not particularly long or difficult just because of how disgusting it felt to be inside his head.
This is, however, the entire point of the book, and I think it’s missing said point entirely to think that Eco meant it to be in any way otherwise (hence to think that Eco himself holds any of the views presented; Eco has written extensively on politics and culture and it is clear that he does not). Certainly, however, an argument can be had about whether or not this is an effective or aesthetically valuable way of writing, especially since Eco covered a lot of the same territory back in the eighties with the decidedly non-villain protagonist (though still not exactly a hero) Jacopo Belbo. I’m not sure on this point. I appreciated it as a literary exercise but I don’t know how the success of that exercise translates to greatness as a novel.
I found myself growing fond of the minor character Bergamaschi, because out of all of the important players he is the only one whom I would consider good. Not good in the sense that he’s above criticism; he’s a reactionary priest with racist tendencies, though not nearly as bad as Simonini’s. He’s more like Kazami Tatsuya in Utena: A normally flawed and prejudiced person passed over for the normality and relative well-meaningness of his flaws and prejudices by a sweep of history that’s presented as moving in a much more malign and maddened direction (a direction which we and the author, in the benefit of hindsight, know as the history of the twentieth century).
Wow…
…am…am I to intimate from this that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, of all organizations, has effectively ceased to or is in the process of effectively ceasing to understand the difference between a discipline and a dogma? Is…is that seriously what’s going on here?
suburban/urban transition BOO HOO :(
5/Suburban sky
god I’d do anything to live in 1
5, but I’ve seen 7 and 3 not sure about one. If only
I live in 3. It is utterly beautiful.
Most of the year 5, but within easy distance of 3 and would be 3 except for the fact that it’s a university campus. 6 or so, unfortunately, during the summer months.
I grew up in 3 and as God is my witness I’ll live as much of my adult life in 3 as humanly possible. It really is incredible.
I’ve lived in 3 my whole life. I think it’d be a bit creepy to live in anything higher than that.
What happened to all the even numbers?
Not creepy to me so much as profoundly spiritually discomforting and oppressive, but yeah.
The Bortle Scale does have even numbers, they’re just not depicted in this image for whatever reason.
suburban/urban transition BOO HOO :(
5/Suburban sky
god I’d do anything to live in 1
5, but I’ve seen 7 and 3 not sure about one. If only
I live in 3. It is utterly beautiful.
Most of the year 5, but within easy distance of 3 and would be 3 except for the fact that it’s a university campus. 6 or so, unfortunately, during the summer months.
I grew up in 3 and as God is my witness I’ll live as much of my adult life in 3 as humanly possible. It really is incredible.
