This poll got better response that I expected please keep voting, so for that 1 person so far who voted for more details.
The point is to get all the posts tagged with at least one of the tracked tags and reblog them to single blog.
Here's more or less how it will work (I'm open for suggestions)
Get all the posts from all tracked tags in given timeframe
Get unique posts - so posts with both tracked_tag_1 and tracked_tag_2 will be reblogged only once
Add archival date tags - right now the format would be [date], so for example for post made on 2023-02-31 > [2023], [2023-02], [2023-02-31]; that will allow to browse posts made on specific day, specific month, and specific year.
Copy the tags from original post - in effort to preserve extra content/warning tags, like mermaid!AU, or dragons, or flashing lights, etc. Those won't get the [].
Reblog
How often will it be run?
Everyday, but it will collect posts older than a week - or more, definitely not less. This is to encourage people to keep using the /tagged or /search options on Tumblr, because, as I've mentioned, Tumblr API DOES NOT return all the posts visible on web.
As in, when I've checked #trigunbookclub, API was missing like first 5 posts. And it's like that by design. The difference is due to Tumblr not actually using the API to display posts. I'm looking into alternatives, one looks good so far, hopefully it won't annoy Tumblr just as much as Tumblr annoys me, I don't want to get banned (again, suggestions are welcome).
It's also to give users time to modify/delete their post. And if you end up following the archival blog, you'll get to see the posts again.
Which tags will be tracked?
So far the list is: #trigun, #trigun maximum, #trigun stampede, #trimax, #tristamp, #trigunbookclub
I'll keep the list on pinned post on archival blog (together with most of what I've written here).
If you have any suggestions, go ahead and send me an ask/DM.
What if I don't want my posts reblogged?
Bot will ignore posts with tags: #delete later, #private, #do not reblog.
It can also be set up to ignore specific blogs.
If a post was already reblogged, let me know and I'll delete it.
Will you also filter out nasty tags like plantce-
No.
I want my posts reblogged, but they're often skipped
Let me know, we will see about getting them straight from your blog instead.
Will you start archiving from the newest posts or from the oldest?
Honestly I want to start from oldest, to try and keep the order of posting since you can't filter by multiple tags, so if someone wants to filter all #trimax posts, they will still get them in some chronological order, but I'm probably going to do a poll for that too. But-
For example, #trigun stampede has 4400 pages as of today, let's count 10 posts per page (there's less). I can reblog 250 posts per day (if I'm not mistaken), that's 25 pages. That's 176 days to get up to date just with #trigun stampede.
Yeah, poll it is.
When will it start?
I need to cleanup the code, and add some tests, but I should be able to start next week, IF I don't get any votes against.
What if I have more questions?
Hit me up, my askbox and DMs are open.
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Hello! Honoring the call for a global strike, from now (24/01/2024) until the end of this week (6AM Monday 29/01/2024, Hanoi/Jakarta time (GMT+7)) I am offering one full-body sketch of any character you want for every e-sim you donate.
All you need to do is:
go to gazaesims.com
follow the instruction there and donate an e-sim of any plan
screenshot the confirmation of your purchase and donation
send the screenshots to me via either email (
[email protected]) or Tumblr DM, along with the character you want a sketch of and any references you have on hand.
Standard commission/request guideline applied. I'll run streams in the next four days (and perhaps after as well) on Youtube doing these sketches live - those will be announced on this blog as they happen.
I'm not currently affiliated with the Cartoonist Cooperative or any other artists doing the same drive, but if my art's not what you're looking for, definitely give the Coop's site as well as the e-sim tag on Tumblr a look! And if you're not looking for sketch commissions from me or art commission in general at the moment, I encourage you to donate an e-sim anyway if possible.
Thank you for your work and support - I can't wait to draw your character!
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One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.
(Buckle in. This is a long one.)
In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.
As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.
Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.
This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.
I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.
But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.
So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.
But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.
But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.
It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.
He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)
So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.
But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.
(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)
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Hello!! I followed you for your absolutely amazing Twisted Wonderland comics (thank you for making them, by the way-) but I saw you posting about something called Ride Kamens? I haven’t heard of it before, what’s it about? Or if that’s a bit much to ask, where could I find more info about it? It seems right up my alley 👀
Thank you!
thank you! :> :> :> (this is also for the other anon who asked about where to find it, I am honored to be infecting the world spreading interest in this silly game)
Ride Kamens is still doing prerelease marketing and isn't out yet; it's set for "early summer 2024", so a bit yet to go! similar to Twst, it's a mobile game about anime boys loosely based on an existing franchise (Kamen Rider), although it seems like it's going to be more standalone/won't require familiarity with Rider going in.
the (very) basic premise is that your player character has just taken over their late father's role as a secret agent, supporting the city's superheroes by running a secret base disguised as a cafe (plus you have a personal butler for some reason) (the reason is because it's amazing). you also have to help the heroes regain their lost memories, and it looks like it'll have a bit of a route/choice aspect there (not romance, just different endings to the character episodes depending on what you do). the details are kinda hard to tell at this point but the characters seem like a really fun bunch; there's definitely big "idiots with emotional problems" energy which I am extremely into.
all the official info is in Japanese only at the moment, but here's the website and the ride_kamens twitter! (though the twitter is sort of overtaken by posts about the AnimeJapan exhibit right now, whoops.) and I believe some people are already planning on doing translations for it too? lots to look forward to! :D
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happy father's day i'm thinking about this outis line again
I always thought it was a bit out of pocket considering this isn't too long after the events of Canto III, even with how Outis was being harsher this Canto.
But I then I remembered that Outis' son is the same age as Sinclair.
Her son, who thinks that she died in the Smoke War (the in universe equivalent to the Trojan War as depicted in the Iliad and the Odyssey) because she hasn't been home in years. Her son who cannot cry out to her. And her son, who is currently in much the same position as Sinclair regarding his self-perception and ability to fight, as Telemachus refers to himself as "a weakling knowing nothing of valor" (Book 2 of the Odyssey, line number and exact wording depend on translation).
I think this line reflects more on Outis and her anxieties about her family thinking that she's dead, as well as a reference to Telemachus experiencing his own journey to manhood, much like Sinclair.
I think there's also things to be said for the parallels between Sinclair and Telemachus, even just the ones imagined by Outis. Hell's Chicken had her showing a very paternal worry over his diet (raise your hand if your dad has ever said you'll be short forever if you don't eat right). Overall, even though Sinclair and Telemachus only share the bones of a coming of age narrative, Outis is seeing connections there because she misses her family.
As with this one. Again, she's showing her hand more than she means to. Though she's talking to Dongrang, I think she's also talking to herself. Trying to reassure herself that home will always be waiting. Dongrang, however, decides not to return, but to pursue glory no matter who he hurts in the process. The Odyssey also contrasts the pursuit of glory with the desire to return home. Odysseus has to choose humility in order to return.
Outis has been keeping up a careful persona around us, but it's slipping. Her desire to return home is seeping through even as she tries to assert herself by clinging to the glory from a war that's long since ended.
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