Latest Posts by taikonaut-kaskara - Page 2

Elphelt color 4.... save me Elphelt color 4

Skrunkly gremlin girlie

Vector to the Heavens will have a nigga cryin in the club

🍵

Iok Kujan might have usurped the throne of "funniest Gundam char" from Jerid. That nigga did not take one real W the entire series n tried to die for one like 3 times. A true loser. I watched the series in dub so at first I didn't like his voice cause of the weird direction but by the end I could not possibly imagine him sounding any other way

Kissinger.

US bombs dropped on Laos, 1964-1973. [Map published in article: Rosita Boland. "Death from below in the world's most bombed country." The Irish Times. 13 May 2017. Though map first uploaded on Redd/it by Andrew Gloe, as u/AJgloe, 12 September 2016.]

US bombs dropped, 1965-1972. [Map and animation by: Ha Pham. "Vietnam bombing history with data - Part 1." Medium. 4 November 2018.]

Laos. From 1964 to 1975, the US dropped over 2 million tons of bombs, equating to over 250 million bombs/ordinances. By some estimates, this averages as: full plane load of bombs dropped on Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. After the official end of the US military campaigns, US bombs on the ground continued to kill dozens of people every year for decades; the bombs still maim today, as over 80 million unexploded bombs/munitions still remain on the ground in Laos.

Cambodia. Kissinger was architect of the "Secret War", which the US president initially tried to hide from the public. Beginning in 1969, the US dropped over 2 and a half million tons of bombs at over 112,000 sites; over 11,000 sites were bombed indiscriminately. Most estimates suggest that US bombing of Cambodia directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. On 17 March 1969, when the president's office received news of the first bombings in Cambodia, Nixon's chief of staff wrote in his diary: "Historic day K's [Kissinger's] 'Operation Breakfast' finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P [President]." The next day he added: "K's 'Operation Breakfast' a great success. He came beaming in [...]."

I finally finished up w/ Gundam IBO and ended up enjoying it a ton. I have complaints, its definitely a lot more "Anime™️" than what I typically watch as far as tropes go with like the harem ship and stuff but I just really liked the story it was trying to tell and the tragedy of Tekkadan's existence. I actually thought the mobile suit designs were pretty dope but that could be the result of them feeling Armored Core adjacent, and the OST was great. I was worried about season 2 going into things since I had heard complaints about it but I might even like it more than the first, the emphasis on showing the fallout of Tekkadan makes the commentary feel more complete, it was an interesting tidbit of info we got hearing that the group's success at the end of s1 "proved" the efficacy if child soldiers and in a roundabout way made things a lot worse though that specific aspect wasnt super explored. There's a lot I could say in regards to the story's themes and a ton to dissect but im lazy and my impression of the series rn was that it was a great ride. Also it was raw as hell and that's important for me.

mha would have been peak fiction if endeavor was burned alive I think

i think that collective human culture has produced enough media where the protagonists forgive their abusive parents and from now on every abusive parent sublplot should end with their kid killing them with hammers and everyone telling them 'wow it was so cool and awesome of you to kill that bitch with hammers'

One of my favorite manga ended 3 hours ago and I must talk about it

I actually wrote this two days ago and of course, the finale comes out RIGHT when I was about to post lol

On Twitter, I used to maintain a yuri manga recommendation thread to keep track of what I read and recommend my fav works to others. Now that I'm back on Tumblr, a platform that actually allows you to write why you like something, I want to start doing more in-depth recommendations. Starting with this one!

Koroshiya Yametai (I Wanna Quit Being a Hitman!) by Tonoki Sun

Rose is a hitman who dislikes her job, but she has one thing to look forward to: dates with her girlfriend, Benika. However, not wanting to go on dates with a guilty conscious, she always confesses her sins (murder) to a priest in a confessional booth that hides both their faces. The priest, Father Shirafune, happens to be Benika’s actual biological father.

Rose doesn’t know the priest she’s told about all her jobs to is Benika’s father. Benika doesn’t know Rose is a hitman, and is also keeping her queer relationship secret from her religious father. Shirafune is curious about his daughter’s new “boyfriend”, and has no idea the “boyfriend” is the person who keeps confessing murders to him.

The initial chapters of Hitman remind me of Spy x Family, where the comedy and appeal comes from the dramatic irony and near misses of each character trying to keep their own secrets, but the tone is different. There’s definitely lightness and comedy there, but underlying is a story of Rose, a refugee fleeing her war-torn home and being forced to work as a hitman in a rich country who doesn’t care about her people. She’s a pawn for greater political powers, and the story is how she tries to break out of that.

A quick, non-spoiler list of why I like this manga - if any of these appeal to you, I beeeeg you to read this comic:

Really cute loving relationship between the main couple! But also: well-fleshed characters outside the main couple! Father Shirafune is GREAT

Plot is more political than I expected, in what feels like a very grounded, real way. The main plot of the story is about refugees that are discriminated against and mistreated and what happens in a country when that mistreatment reaches a boiling point.

I need to think more about the story to be confident in talking about this outside of surface-level observations, so I desperately want smarter people to read it so I can also see their takes haha

The writing is just GOOD and appeals to me specifically. The plot is fast-paced with no filler. There’s a good balance of comedy, lovely moments between the couple, action where you can see Rose get out of tough situations (more on this in the spoilers), and scheming and double-crossing between various political powers.

I read this comic on Dynasty Scans, translated by Gouma-Den. The site’s tags are usually good for content warnings - the main ones are violence/killing/etc. There isn’t a ton of gore though. I believe the raws are here. I don’t think it’s licensed as of me writing this, but you bet I’m buying it all if/when it is.

I want to ramble more about what I like about it below, but it will contain **spoilers**! All images are from the Dynasty Scans translation.

The precise way action scenes are written

The action scenes are super fun to read. Most of them are about Rose escaping pursuers in clever ways that don’t give out her identity, and focus on the steps she took to prepare for these situations and how she outsmarts her enemies. There is a similar appeal here to detective or heist stories where Rose is put in a tough spot, and you see how her knowledge and wild amount of foresight let her escape.

In general, I like the scenes where characters are thinking to themselves and trying to problem-solve in any manga, and this happens a lot in this manga. One of my favorite scenes is when Rose tries to figure out if Benika’s new friend is another hitman, without tipping off either of them.

I just think this is soooo cool. The story is full of Rose’s cleverness in these kinds of situations that is so fun to read.

The romance

The romance is so sweet. The girls have an adorable meet-cute and throughout the story, you really see why Rose likes Benika- she’s kind and energetic but doesn’t hesitate to give Rose a piece of her mind when needed. Rose clearly loves Benika a lot and is always thinking of her. The characters’ interactions feel cute but realistic, and they’re fleshed out outside of the romance, which makes me like them more as people and root for them more.

But also (huge spoilers ahead, please skip this paragraph if you plan on reading this at all) it’s soooo yuri to have one girl try to make a huge high-stakes emotional sacrifice for the other one while confessing that it’s all for love. And it happens in the latest chapter and I went wild.

The themes the story tackles outside of the romance

This to me is both the most striking part of the story!

The first, smaller thing that stands out is Benika and her hesitance to tell her father about her relationship because she assumes her father is homophobic since he’s clergy. Father Shirafune is not homophobic actually and the two have a good relationship otherwise, but it stands out that this is a consideration Benika has. I feel like a lot of yuri is characterized by being only about romance, not identity or society. Characters will like girls, but not be gay. I don’t think this is a bad thing- it’s a characteristic of the genre and TBH in my head, it’s the difference between yuri and LGBTQ manga. However, that’s why this aspect of the story stood out to me- it serves to show queerness plays a bigger part of Benika’s character and the world, is an important motivator in the story, and is good worldbuilding. It also is important because it adds to the grounded tone of the story- it’d be weird to have a story that is full of politics and religion otherwise but say nothing about the two main characters’ queerness.

Speaking of the politics of the story, the main non-romance plot is about how the unspecified first-world country the story takes place in (probably Japan, even though they never say?) treats refugees. There are multiple chapters about how poorly the refugees are treated, and what will happen to the country if it goes too far unaddressed (and if the country deserves what it gets).

This sequence of panels in one of the latest chapters was really good!

That’s it! The Dynasty translation is nearing the end of the comic (EDIT: It got posted right before posting this LOL that's what I get for being slow) so it’s a great time to catch up! Please read this comic and talk to me about it!!!

I read the first 12 chaps of Koroshiya Yametai (I wanna get fired), its an action yuri manga about an assassin trying to find a way out of her profession after falling in love, in the hopes of living freely with her girlfriend. My first impressions of it are really good, the story is interesting and the political backdrop of the series is pretty cool what with the mistreatment and exploitation of refugees and how it pushes them into dangerous/illegal work. Hoping this stuff continues to get explored cause I find the commentary to be dope. My only big gripe with it rn is the romance's age gap isnt specified cause it could be like, series ruining depending on if the MC is in her mid 20s or not but ig it being a general range means I can interpret it charitably. Outside of that the whole series seems pretty sick so far, also Kojima likes it which is funny to me.

rhyme army rhyme army

working on a new webdev coding project...

edit: not everything is implemented yet, but here's a link if you want to give it a try :) TWEWY Message Generator (eltehh.github.io)

Nagi ended up growing on me significantly throughout the game as I started to pick up in the clashing of philosophy between her and Fret, and looking at her development in general.

I made a whole Twitter thread about this a few months back but I figured that I might as well bring it here as well.

Today I want to take some time to make another NEO TWEWY analysis post on the Identity Crisis sidequest revolving around Eiru and how it actually provides extra insight into Nagi and Fret’s characters.

Basically, the main gist of the sidequest is that Nagi and Fret are debating on how to imprint confidence onto Eiru, who’s suffering with his physical insecurities, and this is where we see the differences with Nagi and Fret's philosophies on life.

Fret's response is to tell Eiru to ignore the haters and even more so, ignore confronting the insecurities; life is better when you don't have to concern yourself with anything or try; don't take anything seriously. Nagi, however, believes that insecurities should be understood and harnessed so that they can ultimately be turned into a strength that can be used as a tool for success; accept your weaknesses and come to terms with them so that you can weaponize your strengths better.

On a surface level, these might read to be the same thing. Fret’s advice can be read positively as "don't let others judge you for something you can't control" and Fret certainly thinks so, hence why he thinks that he and Nagi are on the same page even though she disagrees.

However, when you read between the lines and think about it some more, there are notable implications that Fret's advice is more of a dismissive approach to dealing with emotional struggles as opposed to Nagi's own methodology. It’s no coincidence that Fret used to be a fan of the Eiji "the Prince" Oji in his ennui/apathy phase. The Prince in the original TWEWY was beloved for his “don’t give a damn attitude” and how he expressed that both in person and in his blog “F Everything.” Fret claims to have grown out of it but with certain reveals about his character later on, there are some implications that Fret latched onto the Prince and aspired to his attitude due to his own struggles with feeling genuine and wanting to embracing apathy instead.

However, if you recall in the original game, Neku and Joshua came around and helped the Prince sort out his own issues and in the process, helped him to become more genuine and true to himself in the process. With all of this in mind, you can interpret Fret’s response as him seeing the process of the Prince’s reconciliation with his genuine emotions happening in front of him and didn’t want to confront the possibility of that happening to him as well so he "grows out of it." It also acts as a neat parallel to Neku and his own thing with CAT. Whereas Neku latched onto his misinterpretation of CAT’s words in order to cope with his trauma, Fret turned away from the Prince changing so that he wouldn’t have to deal with his own trauma just yet.

To get back to the quest, if player had decided to choose Fret's philosophy, Eiru ends up doing just that, spinning Fret's stance on the situation into self-motivating positivity. However, there's a element of emotional responsibility lacking in Fret's way of processing struggles in that he doesn't seem to have the awareness to recognize the difference between overcoming adversity and just ignoring it (or maybe he does but refuses to confront that truth). In order for someone to truly not care what other people think, they need to do what Nagi suggested first, which is to find acceptance with their insecurities and build a stronger foundation for their character through that acceptance.

If the player chose Fret's approach to solving Eiru's issue, his dialogue afterwards shows how he feels about not having to face issues head on, with Nagi lamenting that her approach was not used despite being glad that Eiru's mood was visibily improved.

I also really like this moment here for how it subtly foreshadows what caused Fret’s attitude and way of thinking to happen in the first place.

Stuff like this is why I always tend to roll my eyes whenever I hear the claim that "Nagi is mean to Fret for no reason" when moments like these show why she acts the way she does towards him: their philosophies on life are complete polar opposites.

In Nagi’s eyes, Fret acting the way he did screamed to her that he seemingly had no regard for how his attitude and actions towards others made other people feel in service of his own self-interest and she fundamentally cannot get along with other people of that nature, as shown with how she dismisses Motoi entirely off the bat when the crew first meets him because she could tell that there was something off about his attitude. However, once it was revealed that Fret’s attitude was due to him trying to unhealthily cope with his trauma and not because he was seemingly unconcerned for the feelings of others, she’s far more understandable towards him and empathizes with his grief.

That’s when Nagi learns to understand that she does not need to dismiss people right away and that they, like Fret, might be going through struggles of their own and trying to cope with it via other means, even if she doesn’t agree with it at first. Hence the friendship they start up at the end of the convo.

The characters in NEO have a lot of internal flaws they need to work through, some that might not be immediate obvious at first compared to the original, but when you look back at it all, the game goes through a lot of painstaking detail to flesh out their struggles and mindset and aspects like these is what makes the game a joy for me to replay whenever I go back to it.

I am no longer the same person I was one game ago

You'll have to pry MMZ Zero's cyber blicky from my cold dead hands, and I dont plan on dying easily.

Whoever the Mega Man Zero designer who decided to trade Zero's Z-Buster for this dinky-ass, trash-ass, lame-ass, ass-ass gun is, know you are my enemy and I'll hate this choice forever. They were not cooking shit with this.

Nahh I was all hyped for this nigga to show up again n he got fried instantly by Neku who pulled up with naught but a 387 dmg rapid tap pin. Sho Fraudnamimoto not built for this like I thought he was

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.” - A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

This new pinkpantheress is moving mountains. its parting seas.

I love the vibe shift between Uraume reuniting with Sukuna in the anime compared to the manga. At first he was all bewildered like "Uraume??? The fuck?" But in the anime its "Ayyyyeeee whats good Uraume"

how is isis different from hamas?

Gonna make it easy and comprehensible:

ISIS or DA'ISH is a transnational terror organization consisting of Iraqi Baathists, former Syrian rebels or moderates, recruited fighters from all over the world, former US captives in Iraq, and oppressed and disenfranchised Sunnis. Wahhabi in nature, ISIS subscribes to the literalist tradition of Islam. Their religious verdicts are based on the literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, rejecting metaphorical exegesis. They aim to establish a global caliphate, seeking to eliminate anyone who opposses it regardless of religious or ideological differences. They see their cause as a hastening of various Islamic end time prophecies in their interpretation of Islamic eschatology. Like many Salafis, they reject Taqlid, which is to conform to one of the four schools of thought in Sunni Islam. On top of that, they reject religious innovations (Bid'ah), which is the idea that anything introduced to the religion without any religious basis is heresy. Whether it be practical or theological, they deem any Muslim who engage in Bid'ah to be an apostate or heretic. They are notorious for their intolerance of non-Muslims and application of Takfirism (excommunication). Christians had to pay the Jizya (poll tax) in their territories, while in other cases, they were murdered, expelled and had their churches destroyed or converted. They have no tolerance for Shi'a Muslims and will kill them on the spot (see: Speicher Massacre), and will often target them with IEDs or suicide bombers. Non-Muslims, like the Ezidis or Ahlul Haqq, were often subjected to execution whereas their women and children were either married away, converted or used as sex slaves. DAESH is not interested in national liberation, seeing it as a blasphemous innovation. DAESH does not consider Hamas to be Muslims due to struggle for national liberation which is supported by Iran and various Shi'i proxies.

Hamas is a political and military resistance group that consists of Palestinians. After the failures of the Oslo accord, Hamas broke away from PLO and formed their own political party. They either subscribe to the Shafi'i school of thought or some form of Ikhwani Salafism (Salafism as envisioned by the Muslim Brotherhood). They're a semi-governmental power in Gaza and are responsible for upholding the social and civil institutions, such as hospitals, schools and etc. Hamas' specific aim is localized and seeks to destroy the Zionist entity in order to form a one-state solution under an Islamic emirate or Islamic democracy. Their only enemy is Israel and any of its allies. As of the Hamas charter of 2017, they do not have an intolerance for non-Muslims or people of different religious and ideological comportments, as seen by them holding ties with both Shi'a and Socialist militias, such as Hezbollah and the PFLP/DFLP. Hamas is concerned with the national liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians. They are not concerned with global jihadism like ISIS nor do they carry out attacks internationally.

Why is Jay Eazy actually good that Respect Your Elders snippet goes crazy

got roped into no knight november they took my armor and my halberd and all m,y cool livery with the heraldic beasts and they sold my noble steed to arbys and now im just walkin around in the mud kicking rocks or whateveer

Some of yall are more like Beat than u think

Just started on volume 5 of witch hat atelier and all imma say is master Qifrey is my husband fr like I wont hold u I would cook n clean for this nigga like I will be his stay at home wife

i’m completely enamored with these

"The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being."

badweird feelings

Random nameless faceless neo twewy bisexual girl I will never forget u