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Some headcanons about PT and film they enjoy:

Joker: Sundance type, documentary—esp. nature or space ones, soft spot for classic Hong Kong movies because his parents watch them.

Morgana: Detective Columbo, old 007 movies (pre Daniel Craig), most action movies

Ryuji: Fast and Furious, anything fast-paced and popular but can also stand romance. Would watch stupid rom-coms with his mom if she asks. Only person in PT who can stand Oscar movies. More of a Marvel man than DC. One Piece, Tokyo Revengers

Ann: Like Ryuji, fast-paced action films, 007, Jessica Chastain, action movies with hot female protagonist. Would watch romance with Shiho.

Yusuke: A24, Dario Argento, Akira Kurosawa, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, would’ve watched Lars Von Trier if only his films weren’t all rated R, shares some passion for practical effects with Guillermo Del Toro, kaiju stuff, would probably like John Wick

Makoto: Kamen Rider movie, Sylvanian Families

Futaba: classic tokusatsu, Fate series movies (except Heaven’s Feel), most anime movies, Doraemon, kaiju stuff, American animation, yes she can stand Disney

Haru: Studio Ghibli, British romance movies, John Wick

Kasumi: Japanese romance and drama, Disney

Akechi: Claims to absolutely hate romance but watches Wong Kar Wai films because his mom used to like them, anti Batman (Christopher Nolan or not), soft spot for Featherman but doesn’t keep up with all tokusatsu, probably empathizes with Lars von Trier protagonists, Hirokazu Koreeda films trigger him.

Now, I must admit that some of the choices are heavily influenced by my taste.

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ooooh man i adore eeaao and it made me so happy to see those references. akechi being so flustered and wondering what it means…. it’s so good hehe. but I also have so many questions now, like in your mind did akira know what he was getting into or was he absolutely caught off guard in the theater? do u think he went to see it with any other friends, maybe ann or futaba, or yusuke who I could definitely being an A24 fan? are there any other moments or lines u think Particularly stuck with him?? hope you don’t mind all these questions haha, i just saw it and my mind was flooded with thoughts and excitement. hope you’re having a great day!

Hmm I think Joker probably didn't go to a theater but watched it on streaming alone lol

I think he'd appreciate seeing Michelle Yeoh because he'd recognize her from some older classics that his parents would have watched.

He's more of a documentary person than a fiction person in my mind, so I don't think he'd have had too emotional of a moment during the movie though he'd appreciate the craft. In my mind, his favorite films would be documentary films like The Silence of Others or nature/space documentaries though he isn't picky and would enjoy watching any genre with his friends.

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Something I wrote some time ago.

Witch of Mercury honest thoughts (you know it’s about to be spicy so cautions for the faint hearted)

Overall, I don’t know if I liked Witch of Mercury very much.

It had some decent characters, and the designs were nice and cute though I don’t know if I liked the mecha designs too much as I’m more for chonky mecha like Zaku. Aerial is nice, but if I’m buying a pla, I’m definitely going for Zeta or 00 Gundam.

People made a big deal out of this series having a female protagonist in a lesbian relationship, and I want to let people enjoy what they enjoy, but I personally didn’t find the whole business too convincing. One thing is that the Gundam franchise has always had multifaceted female characters. Of course, one might argue that as great as those characters were, they weren’t “the protagonist,” but I don’t know if Suletta was the protagonist that the female fans of the franchise dreamed of. The awkward, dorky charms can only get her so far. I know they tried to show that despite her dorkiness, she’s fucked up due to her terrible mother, but I don’t know if that really hit home for me. I mean, for me growing up, the awkward teenage protagonist with fucked up parents was Shinji. And Shinji just feels like he’s been presented better.

Suletta and Miorine are cute together, but they’re cute in a way that an OC couple might be cute. You feel like you’re fondly watching over your two friend’s DND OC’s (from a campaign that you’re not a part of) together. You don’t know the whole shbang between those two, but since your friends are so happy about the ship, you congratulate them. I found it extremely difficult to feel any chemistry between the two throughout the whole series. Suletta obsesses over Miorine like a baby duckling to its imprinted parent, but Miorine—at least throughout most of the series—either seemed like she was trying to use Suletta to get out of her crappy engagement situation or someone who wanted best for her friend who’s been through parental abuse. If you think about how blatant the chemistry is between Byleth(F) and Edelgard in FE3H, I think you could see how Witch of Mercury sort of missed on that regard.

The characters being in school in my opinion felt very “NOT” Gundam. And I’m not just being a curmudgeon here. For a long time, the Gundam series—though there have been some black sheep—has had a distinct antiwar message. There are multiple passages where characters lament the fact that children are fighting wars. Teenagers getting on mobile suits have not been a good thing. So the whole school and weird duel thing put me off. You could argue that the whole thing is a commentary on how the military conglomerates in this world are using weapons of mass destruction as entertainment, but the series doesn’t really show that. There’s very little if any reflection on the implications of making children fight each other using mobile suits.

The way the series tries to create and resolve the conflict felt very uncomfortable as well. It’s clear that the “Spacians” and the “Earthians” are in colonizer-colony relationship. We can clearly see that the spacians are using their economic and military power to basically exploit the people of Earth. Yet how the series tries to resolve the conflict is very lukewarm in my opinion. The part where Miorine tries to peacefully manage things with the victims of colonialism almost felt insulting.

The character designs are cute and charming, but sometimes it feels like some characters—especially female characters—are too busy “being pretty” to act. This might be an issue of taste, but I tend to like it more when an anime isn’t afraid of making pretty characters ugly in a moment of intense emotions.

I don’t hate the series btw. Just a little underwhelmed.

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As someone who works in a tax office, your most recent comic has made me realize things I never could have about the oh so dreadful tax season. I never thought I would see taxes center a Shuake topic either lol!

On another note: after thinking about it more, I would like to believe they would file their seasonal taxes under "Married but filing separately" simply to compete over gets the higher tax refund every year.

BTW, love the art and comics. They strike a chord with me everytime I see you upload.

Hahaha I never imagined I'd be drawing shuake comics about... taxes either lol

It would be funny if they compete over tax refunds. But in my mind, both of them look like they'd be freelancers of some sort. Would they ever get tax refunds? In my personal experience, it's harder for freelancers and business owners to get tax refunds. You're more likely to owe taxes than the other way around. Or maybe it's time for me to hire someone to help me with my taxes :(

Anyway, thanks for showing love for my comics :D

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Goro needs some googly eyes in his life.

Also, I hope you survived your tax season. Mine hasn’t begun yet and no shuake is going to make it any better.

Short shuake crack about… taxes.

Happy tax season guys. :P This is where my humor sense is lol

For context, if you’re doing taxes with someone, you’ve gone all the way. There’s flirting, dating, marriage, everything else in between, and then there’s doing taxes together. It’s a whole another level of relationship.

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Short shuake crack about… taxes.

Happy tax season guys. :P This is where my humor sense is lol

For context, if you’re doing taxes with someone, you’ve gone all the way. There’s flirting, dating, marriage, everything else in between, and then there’s doing taxes together. It’s a whole another level of relationship.

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I’m still alive…

Trying to work on a self-indulgent shuake comic while juggling life stuff.

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I’ve played Persona Tactica and lemme describe my thoughts by reblogging this.

“A word of advice. Just. Take. The seat. You keep leaving the seat open for anyone to take. That’s why you keep having this god problem.”

But like honestly

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have you tried asking tenshi shop if they can get the merch? iirc theyre good with physical releases

The website says they’re not based in Tokyo though??? :( The collab events are only available in four locations in Tokyo so… If I can’t find anyone I think Id just hang around Mercari haha

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Here’s another bump just in case anyone’s interested!

I mainly use the story feature btw.

I made a doodle insta where I want to talk about Tolkien and shuake and whatever that interests me and super quick doodles (so basically Twitter except my Twitter account is dead and I have no wish to revive it) though the most likely scenario is that it would be left desolate like all my other social media accounts.

It’s open for now but I might private it later on.

Also if anyone’s interested, here’s my main insta account:

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I made a doodle insta where I want to talk about Tolkien and shuake and whatever that interests me and super quick doodles (so basically Twitter except my Twitter account is dead and I have no wish to revive it) though the most likely scenario is that it would be left desolate like all my other social media accounts.

It’s open for now but I might private it later on.

Also if anyone’s interested, here’s my main insta account:

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I’m dealing with some unexpected curveballs in life. So probably not as many comics as before for a while :(

Here’s my little loot though.

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Not trying to nuke this place, just looking for some place where I can post rough sketches and shittalk

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ChatGPT fans are abolutely techno-spiritual, you are correct. A vague sense of destiny has always pervaded the AI community, and recently they have fallen victim to grifters and tech gurus who have played that up to get investment, because they have financial interest in convincing everyone that AI is the future, and also that what we have now is AI. (It's not. What we have is a series of data-crunching tools, nothing intelligent, just like you said). The podcast Behind the Bastards had a recent episode or two about how culty and weird these AI goons have become. It's worth a listen imo

Yes! I do feel like the recent surge of stupid genAI models is partly due to the fact that we're reaching the end of Q1 for this year. This is usually the time when companies whip up bs (the recent video generators, game generators, etc.) to beg investors to pour in more money for them.

The AI community is def culty. I feel like a lot of tech spaces can get culty but are not called out as much because it consists mostly of men. NFTs and crypto, for example, were reasonably called out as MLMs for young men. I've seen some interviews on Youtube where these really young guys fresh out of college talked about how they actually went into debt by joining various crypto/nft discord communities and pouring in their money.

I'd better check out that podcast if I can haha

Thanks for the recommendation.

I also found this article from Rollingstone earlier this year interesting. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-companies-advocates-cult-1234954528/

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One thing that struck me as interesting recently is the almost unreasonable trust people have for ChatGPT.

Recently, I ran across a Youtube video where the creator was talking about how she asked ChatGPT this and that and how convenient it was. This was strange to me as a simple Google search is able to do the same thing.

For example, this is what I get when I search a question "Is Rigel hotter than Betelgeuse?" Google tells me that indeed Rigel is hotter than Betelgeuse. It also tells me that the info comes from the New Mexico State University website which I'd say is pretty trustworthy. So I don't see how using ChatGPT to ask such questions is easier or faster.

But there is a difference--that difference being that with ChatGPT, you're being "told" the information. Basically, you feel more catered to. When you use Google search, you feel like you're foraging for information. When you use ChatGPT, you feel like you have an assistant. There is a feeling of having something mysteriously intelligent answering your question for you.

I've also seen people who post delighted screenshots of ChatGPT telling them something they wanted to hear whether it's a snarky remark about their ex-boyfriend or a smart-ish commentary on sexism. People are free to find enjoyment in anything as long as it doesn't hurt other people, but what I found so interesting was how happy these people were that it was ChatGPT that told them this or that. It's one thing to feel happy and encouraged by a specific engineer you admire saying that she wishes for a future where more women enter STEM, but why does it matter if a machine-learning algorithm spews out a sentence--probably synthesized from millions of words it scraped from people who said something similar--that you like? How is it more meaningful than, say, a fortune you randomly drew?

Here's fortune that I drew. It's from Kanda Shrine if I remember correctly. It says I'm very lucky moneywise. My friend made fun of me saying that the fortune was correct because I didn't find any merch I wanted on that day which meant I spent much less than I planned to. Anyway, ChatGPT saying whatever means no more to me than a random fortune I can buy from a shrine. I'd even say it means less than a fortune from a shrine since a shrine at least has some cultural significance. Also, it might mean something for spiritual people (Perhaps ChatGPT fans are techno-spiritual?)

My conclusion is that we shouldn't let techbros fool us into thinking that these algorithmic tools are intelligent in any capacity. The language surrounding these tools treat them as though they're independent, intelligent entities which they're not. I know a lot of my followers--you Tolkien fans--are passionate about language, so you'd know what I'm talking about. Language is a powerful tool. Right now, it's being used to mask the theft and lies of these tech capitalists. But we shouldn't let ourselves be fooled.

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Okay, so this is more insulting than I thought. The 404 Media article is from Feb 27 2024, but this suggests that Tumblr has been selling our data to AI companies behind our backs for a while already without ever notifying us properly. Also, look at how the option is worded. Why not just say "Don't sell my data"? To be fair, as slimy as tech bros are, I'm even surprised that they did mention AI when they could've just called it "data research" or something.

It's even worse when you think about the fact that these days, most people use Tumblr on mobile. But in the mobile app, you have to go to "Visibility" to reach this option, so they are indeed hiding away this option. You also can't force them to destroy the data they already scraped off your blog.

btw, 404 Media article states that Tumblr not only took public data but some protected data as well. In other words, they took content that users clearly wanted to remain private. If this isn't a gross breach of privacy, I don't know what is.

there is an option to turn permissions for the AI thing off in your blog settings, but yeah. it sucks that its happening at all

There should be an option to turn the shit ON not off. Basically, if the bs is not opt-in, it doesn’t mean anything. It should not be up to the users to dig through Tumblr’s terrible UI to find that one little option.

Also, per article, they already handed over the data from 2013 to 2023 which is disgusting.

It’s also very creepy. I use my Tumblr for comics and silly talk, but a lot of people (including minors) also used it for sharing personal stories. It’s beyond creepy that these tech bros are taking personal stories of teenagers to be monetized.

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there is an option to turn permissions for the AI thing off in your blog settings, but yeah. it sucks that its happening at all

There should be an option to turn the shit ON not off. Basically, if the bs is not opt-in, it doesn’t mean anything. It should not be up to the users to dig through Tumblr’s terrible UI to find that one little option.

Also, per article, they already handed over the data from 2013 to 2023 which is disgusting.

It’s also very creepy. I use my Tumblr for comics and silly talk, but a lot of people (including minors) also used it for sharing personal stories. It’s beyond creepy that these tech bros are taking personal stories of teenagers to be monetized.