DCRC Week #16
Wiggity what's up my fellow book clubbers, today we're taking a look at the ethics of treating artificially made intelligent lifeforms as second class citizens and what the qualifying factors are to determine a being as truly "sentient" and deserving of basic social rights. And by that I mean we're reading PKNA #12: "Second Draft" which is a comic where nothing bad happens!
This post is LOOONG btw.
okay we're just gonna start off our comic as normal and-
WOAH who's this handsome young devil in his little fancy suit??? What's that? Head of Ducklair Industries?..... yeah sure that makes sense I think.
Everett Ducklair 🤢🤢🤢 get a job stay away from him. Also this is a really nice way of saying you had to stop him from being overtaken by insane homicidal tendencies and putting guns in all his inventions btw
Haha woah what was that. Did the fabric of reality just tear for a second there or did my ADHD meds just kick in. Probably just me.
MASTER Donald???..... I don't even think I can write out the jokes I wanna make here they're too inappropriate for this blog sorry. But also what the fuck.
Uno stop mothering maybe I WANT to get frostbite and lose all my fingers
Not to take a sudden side tangent here but is this supposed to be like, a good thing? Don't the other seasons exist for a reason? I always thought fall and winter were meant to be like a cleansing period, they bring balance to the two other hotter seasons. If it's eternally spring, do some plants just never die? Are animals ALWAYS in the breeding season? Today we're going to overanalyze this one concept in an essay where-
OH MY GOD IT'S ODIN wait nevermind hiii Odin hiiiii. what's lookin good cookin. I mean- shit. fuck. shit.
I'm kind of obsessed with the way Odin is drawn in this comic. His whole body is all wiggly like a bendy straw. His stances go crazy.
gayass
Guys ever since I made that post about Odin's outfits and noticed that he's barefoot here it's been haunting me. Like it might just be a coloring error in this panel but also... why'd he take his shoes off. Also sorry for immediately revealing that it's Odin but um uhh I totally don't know who the OTHER cloaked figure is.
girlll you're giving away the game SHUT YOUR MOUTH
TWO Lylas?!?!?!
I'm loving Donald's shock lmao bro is fucking flabberghasted
This picture is so fucking silly bro. Nooo you can't put Odin in jail, he has such a nice suit on :(
Donald getting offended on Uno's behalf, not knowing that Uno is literally sitting right behind him. SURELY he'll figure it out eventually right.
Omg guys it's Geena!!! Remember Geena? From Portrait of the Young Hero? Anyways she has a gun now
Way to go Donald, you showed her basic empathy for like 2 panels and it gave her an actual sense of self value and NOW she thinks she deserves rights 🙄 she's gonna Detroit Become Human up in this bitch
beaming you with my evil lasers. what if he just fucking fried her brains here I think it would've been funny
Oh that's. probably bad.
ohhhh noooo.....
OOOOHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ok so bad news, Geena fucking exploded and her droid rebellion is presumably over. The GOOD news though is that droids are destined to get their rights anyways, just in a less violent manor than in the timeline Geena had started. So... I guess that's a win?
Disappears in a cloud of beautiful sunset smoke... Goodbye Odin 👋
Donald. Please. DONALD.
Okay so there's a LOT to say about this comic (so much that I kept hitting the image limit and having to make edits to my post to make it more concise) but if I could summarize it into one word: damn. Like I'm just kinda sad now.
The whole concept of "do robots deserve to be treated like human beings" is a common argument to explore, we've seen it in all kinds of media before. The ethics that get touched on in this comic are nothing new, but I can't help but find this comic incredibly interesting to read in the year 2024. Maybe in 1997 the idea of robots integrating into our society seemed like a far-off concept, but in present day the ever-growing integration of AI technology really makes this chapter feel a little more close to home.
I mean, it's easy to be like "yeah, well of course the droids deserve to be treated like people." I mean, Lyla and Odin are droids, and we like Lyla and Odin! Odin is literally so lifelike that people don't even KNOW he's a droid. But I can't help but think about how this all ties back to the current ongoing debates surrounding the usage of AI, and specifically AI-made content. Obviously the AI we currently have is nowhere near the level of the characters in this series (chatGPT fucking WISHES it was Uno) but there's really interesting debates to be made here.
What qualifying factors determine whether or not a living being is deserving of the same rights we humans give to ourselves? Is it being biological? I mean, there are literally millions of types of animals on our planet, but we don't even treat them with the same level of respect we give to ourselves. So, is it intelligence? If we were to create a computer with the intelligence level of a living, breathing human person, would they be entitled to basic "human" rights? HELL IF I KNOW.
I love the way this comic handles exploring this topic. Geena isn't WRONG for wanting more, she's wrong in the way she went about it. Going as far as to literally alter the course of spacetime only further complicated things, for her AND for the other droids. Had Geena instead devoted her energy into droid advocacy in the modern day, things may have gone differently. This story isn't the end of droids getting rights, but it is unfortunately the end of Geena.
We ended on a happy note, but overall this story is a pretty melancholic one. Especially that whole "only machines can be rebuilt" like DAMN.
Anyways that's enough media analysis for today, time to take off my smart thinking hat and go back to being generally kinda stupid. I'm not gonna add anything about Angus Tales here at the end because I already hit the image limit lol. Umm shoutout to Angus Fangus for having like 110 parking tickets. Idiot.
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For this rainbow, I finally picked up my professional camera again. The last images stored there tells me that the last time I used it was the 1st of December 2023. Wild. But I picked it up thanks to this pretty rainbow, which was actually a double rainbow. So pretty. This image is made up of three into a panorama shot, and Lightroom was a bit funky with putting them together, so please don't mind the badly processed house in the middle; no, we're not looking at that 😂
For people who want a wall of text status update, it's under the cut.
How are you all doing?
I'm hanging in there. Not active much, but I still haven't gotten myself into deleting my tumblr app. So I still see and get all your notifs, even if I don't reply right away! I'm still taking time off, trying to figure out what I want to do with the blog for the future... I have not written a fanfic in some time now, but I have two finished stories that are ready to be published, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure about a lot of things these days... I've had dark days, written a lot of sad and dark poems (that will go on my sub blog some time in the future), and I've begun to write an original story. It's really fun; about magic, witches and mages; about good and evil and all the gray in between. It will probably bore you, but it's fun to write, even though I don't think anyone would read it except for a few friends (even though this thing might be the longest thing I'll write, turning into either two or three books lol).
Serotonin boost
I get happy when I get notifs with comments and/or reblogs of my stories; it really touches my heart. To be honest, this is why I left/taking time off. I've always felt that interaction was low, and my stupid brain will not let me stop comparing myself to others, so it slowly killed my drive for writing and posting. If no one interacts, what's the point of posting? If no one interacts, what's the point of writing? But I love writing, and it's one of my creative outlets, so I couldn't let that go completely, hence I started writing original stories instead; no ones gonna read them anyway, but I can still play with characters, world building and storytelling. Those are the things I loved about fanfics---and I still do, don't get me wrong. But I feel so discouraged being on here. But I'm happy to know that a few people still care.
The Downfall
This also made it quite hard for me to read; because I felt so unmotivated... I haven't read much this month at all. I tried to read a fanfic this Monday, didn't finish it and haven't picked it up since. Honestly, I've just been watching documentaries because I'm in a (tumblr) slump. I feel drained though; I feel like I've given so much, and I love it. I love making people happy, leaving lovely reviews, and it's as much for myself as it is for making another person happy---but to be honest, it has drained me. I know I shouldn't ask for anything in return, but I feel imbalanced. Like I'm not being filled with much love, if that makes sense? I don't really feel appreciated, but don't get me wrong, I don't feel hated (yeah, I'm so good at being black and white), sorry---I know I sound very pessimistic. But you guess have always been so kind to me, and I love you a lot, and I have a few super lovely mutuals and friends that are lovely internet friends that I adore, so I wanted to be real with all of you. You can hate me for it if you want to. Go ahead.
I don't think I'm going to make a recommend list this month. I haven't really read anything, so it'll be really small. And I don't like the pressure of it anymore... which is why for a long time I've thought about not doing them anymore. Maybe some day I will again in the future. But I'd still love to make rec list on the member's birthdays! And I think this will help me, take some pressure off myself (that I've created myself), so I'll still read and rec, it will just be slower---whenever I feel like it, and not because I have to read to make a monthly rec list. This isn't my job, I'm not getting paid doing all of this, and the amount of time I've been spending on both reading and writing is more than 37+ hours a week, sooo. I have to slow down.
A part of me thinks that I flew too fast, too high and too close to the sun, lol. I'm still gonna be here, you can still send in asks for rec list or whatever you want, all is welcome (except hate, because then I'll simply just delete my blog, my mental health can't take that).
To post, or not to post?
Should I post the two stories that I have? Both of them are for the series Friendcation.
And for the unfinished mermaid stories I still have left, I hope I'll finish them in the future; when, I don't know. Maybe one day I'll feel love for them again, to finish them. I have them all planned out, but like I mentioned before, with low interaction, I'm really not motivated to finish them, even though part of me really want to for the like five people that are so sweet and invested, and always comments and reblogs (you guys know who you are, and I love you so fucking much 🥰).
To all the stories I'll probably never write...
I still have some other unfinished but planned stories, and I'm gonna list them here, just for the hell of it. Don't know if people would have found them interesting anyway, but here goes:
Words on a Page (a Namjoon x reader, idol!au where reader is a fanfiction writer and interviewer for a magazine and has to interview BTS). Author's comment: probably never gonna write it. It has been done before, and it was just a very very silly dream I had.
Songs of The Heart (a Jimin x reader, musician!au where Jimin is a single father and reader moves into the house next to his, hear his lonely songs etc, they meet, talk, very angsty, sad and nostalgic and 'Who' coded). Author's comment: this idea came to me after listening to 'who' and then thinking about Jimin being my next door neighbor, yeah, that's it. Don't know if this will ever get written.
IT Support (a Jimin x reader, office!au where Jimin is your nerdy coworker, but a freak in the sheets, lol). Author's comment: this has honestly been on my list for years, but I never written anything for it, and I probably never will, even though I've made the banner and all.
I do have a few more, but I've already scraped those, and then there's the four mermaid stories to add to the list. I'm probably mostly excited about the mermaid stories, and those would be my priority if I ever get back into writing fanfiction again.
I swear, I'm almost finished...
Okay, this whole thing has gotten incredibly long. Sorry. Before I end this post, I just want to say how happy and grateful I am to each and everyone of you. I've met some incredible nice people on here, some really caring ones. I'll never forget that. And I'll never forget each wonderful and lovely comment, some people have really helped me, motivated me when I felt low, and when I wanted to stop writing a few months back. Thank you. I kept going, and I wish I could keep going for you, making something special, for the special people I met here. I actually really wanted to do requests for you guys in hopes that it would motivate me into writing, but I just don't know. I still want to give so much back to the people who have hyped me up, so I'm going to tag a few of you lovely people--- if you have a request for a story, you're welcome to message me or send me an ask. I don't know if or when I'll write it, but in case I get a bit of motivation, I have some things I could write from, so if you want to, you can send me a request (just keep in mind the story will probably be a one-shot from 10-20k max or maybe shorter, lol, you never know with me). You don't have to send me a request, I simply want to give back to some lovely people. I wish I could hug you.
@letjungcoook7 @honeybloomyyyy @babystarcandyjk97 @minpdrecs @bobathi @allie-is-a-panda @back2bluesidex @gimeow @antisocial-mochi267
These are but just a few of the people that have supported me on there, either by commenting, reblogging, ask, messaging--you name it. I could list many others, and one day I might make a post celebrating all mt lovely mutuals, that means a lot to me. Thank you for interacting; you've (as long with others) helped me when times were tough. Thank you.
I had actually planned to open a "recommend a fic" section/box, but I'm not sure about that. I still have so many fics on my to read list, and right now I don't want to pile more onto it. Might do it in the future, when I've finally made it through my own lists.
Okay, I have to end this post for real now.
I'm still on tumblr, I still have my app. I deleted my discord app on my phone, but I'm still part of the servers I was before, I'm just not active. It's better for me that way right now, because it all got to be too much. I was just reminded of how much of a failure I feel like (no, we're not getting into that not, store it away). But you can always contact me here. I'm lurking sometimes. I look forward to reading in a more leisurely pace and hopefully not feeling pressured to make the rec lists as I did before (even though just for the completionist in me I want to finish them for just this year, lol).
Okay. If you read this far---thank you, I adore you, I love you, you're nice, keep going 💜
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I'm interested in Trigun after seeing your posts/reblogs and I'm wondering: what is the best way to consume such media and where could a person go about finding it? 🥰
oh FUCK yea
TLDR answer: trigun 98 -> badlands rumble -> trigun manga -> trigun stampede. going into why below. (under readmore bc this accidentally got long. again.)
ok well. common consensus is to watch the original anime (referred to as trigun 98 by much of the fandom) bc it has a slower start & lets you get to know the characters a lot more than the new anime (assisted by the 26 episodes length, as opposed to 12). it preserves the Mystery of what Vash's deal is for much longer, & is in general pretty entertaining to watch if you don't know wtf is going on. it's Legally on uh. crunchyroll? i think? tho i watched it here: https://aniwatch.to/trigun-266. just like. normal sketchy site safety, adblock is ur best friend, don't click on things. etc. if this site doesnt work for u then u could always google another.
there's a movie, Badlands Rumble, which is based off the trigun 98 canon, so probably a good place to watch it is right after that. just uh. be mindful that Vash's behavior is a Lil... obnoxious at points lol. but it's still a fun movie overall with plenty of good shit in it, so it's worth watching still. i watched it w/ a friend streaming it so i dont have a link onhand, but u could probs find it thru that same site if u search for it.
NEXT UP is my personal favorite, the manga. theres trigun original and trigun maximum, which is the direct continuation of the original (there was an issue with the publishers and licensing so upon continuing the manga w/ a different publisher, Nightow had to rebrand it. it's otherwise the same manga). i recommend this one next bc it's the most whole of story & goes deeper into things than the original anime, but it's also what the new anime is based on (aka why i recommend this one first). it can get FUCKED UP (they all can really, but trimax Especially) so probably look up a triggers list if u think u might need it. it's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking good tho. genuinely owns my soul. i was a different person after reading it (not rly better or worse, mostly just more insane). there r a few translations online - an old fan translation (DO NOT TOUCH, full of horrid translations and insertions of bigotry that arent in the original), the official Dark Horse translation (an... ok translation, though it has plenty of errors and confusing translations. it's what i first read so it's Okay, but not the best), AND the trigun manga Overhaul project, which u can find on tumblr. this one's the best one bc it's lovingly translated and a LOT more accurately done. i swear things that were so confusing at first are So Clear reading this one. u can find the masterpost Here: https://trigun-manga-overhaul.tumblr.com/post/701392615591034880/trigun-ultimate-overhaul-masterpost-heres-all-the. or just go to their blog @/trigun-manga-overhaul. just trust me on this it's where U wanna read.
an offshoot of it (and what ive been reading today) is an anthology sort of manga, Trigun Multiple Bullets, which is also in that post. it was released as part of the BLR movie release, & the first part is kinda After It? but overall it's just a standalone piece with some side stories. where is this in the manga canon timeline? Who Fuckin Knows. just read it and have fun lol
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST is the most recent anime, Trigun Stampede. this is a CGI remake that aired at the start of this year & caused the trigun renaissance. now a lot of people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to hearing it's CGI, but trust me, this is basically THE BEST application of CGI in anime i've ever really seen. absolutely beautiful. fucking gorgeous. plus with really cool action sequences, and OF COURSE the music is literally one of my favorite anime soundtracks Ever. it's gotten critiques for its pacing, which can be pretty rushed, but they were trying to fit a lot more story in a lot less episodes than the original anime (again, it only has 12 episodes), so keep that in mind. it's not a remake in the traditional sense of redoing the exact same story, so there are changes in the timeline and characters from what's in the original anime or even the manga. one of the biggest things people were unhappy about is the absence of a main character, Milly, who is seemingly replaced by a random man that's not in the other versions, Roberto. Milly will be in season 2 though, as was revealed with the final episode. all in all, it's Kind Of a prequel, though also a remix/reimagining based largely off of the manga's canon over trigun 98. so long as you go into it not expecting it to be Just Like the other versions, it's a really wonderful story in and of itself. it's available on Crunchyroll, which you SHOULD watch there if u have it bc that would give them more money for a season 2 (which is in development). if ur like me tho n dont wanna pay for crunchyroll (it's Specifically a premium-only anime :p), u can watch it where i watched, aka here: https://aniwatch.to/trigun-stampede-18281.
all in all, each version has its strengths and weaknesses, but i've found the best way to go about enjoying All of them is to treat them as their own things. it can be fun to compare them, especially when it comes to things made Different plot or character-wise, but they are separate things. a lot of people who hate one or the other r coming from the angle of expecting one to be just like the other, & are then disappointed (trigun 98 being a Lot sillier at first than trigun stampede, which is a lot more serious sci-fi western in tone).
And Overall. i love them all. so i hope you do too!
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