So, I just realised something about Simoun. Specifically, the name of the country where the show takes place: Simulacrum Kyuukoku, which is translated as 'Theocracy of Simulacrum', 'Holy Land of Simulacrum', or 'Simulacrum Theocracy'.

What I realised:

In-universe, this is a piece of land (and water, since the capital is on a peninsula in some kind of ( Read more... )

I just read 'The Witches' Tanabata', a side-story set in the Umineko universe, in which Bernkastel, uh...well, see, what she does is she...

Dear God.

HOLY SHIT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT BERNKASTEL IS EVIL. I mean...really, really evil. Jesus Christ. She makes a six-year-old girl who's just lost her family incapable of ever feeling joy again, and then ( Read more... )

When I think about Amy and Rory I am reminded a little of Kara no Kyoukai. Wherein Shiki (a somewhat more sedate Amy-equivalent in this comparison) and Mikiya (a somewhat more twisted Rory) are in love and their relationship is one of the driving forces of the series--in MIkiya's case because Shiki is a beautiful, fascinating, and beautifully and ( Read more... )

You know what I don't like? Fandom feminism debates! Only one kind of them, though!

I am speaking, of course, of the 'splitting' kind (wherein everything a female character does has to be absolutely laudable and progressive and empowering for them to be worth a widow's mite, and the debate becomes about whether or not this character has ever done ( Read more... )

For the past few weeks I've been re-reading C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) for the first time in quite a while. The last time I read these books I was eleven years old and on a plane from Dublin to Newark so I don't remember much. I got through the first two books double-quick but like ( Read more... )

This one

My response:

'Davies's work on Doctor Who and Torchwood is known to some for being overall fairly self-serving. He's definitely evidenced a focus on ratings and market popularity (which has, to be fair, paid off IN SPADES) rather than making long-term fans happy, but he's done it in such a way that he opens himself to accusations of ( Read more... )

I am a white man.

I have never experienced racial animus directed against me.

On some level I feel that I shouldn't even be talking about this, that I have nothing to say, that I can't possibly measure up to the amazing, insightful, thoughtful posts that other people have made. This is because that's what some elements in this society tell me.

'Why do ( Read more... )

I hate the way our society conceptualises sex and gender.

It's as if there are two options for human existence. Well, four, actually, counting transgender and various third genders like the Two-Spirits of North America, the Hijra of India, the Khanith of Oman, or the Sworn Virgins of the Balkans. This limitation of options makes me quite ( Read more... )

( About Torchwood and a certain other fictional conspiracy )

[/Jerry Coleman]

I was thinking. The Doctor and Romana really don't ever stop loving each other, do they?

( Here's how it went. )