Badfungi - Wasting Time

trigun98 dealing me the mortal blow of Silly Times followed by Heartbreak

though the implications of the changes are really interesting. i just finished episode 6, Lost July, so I got to see 98's version of events. in the manga, we get the detail that One Hundred Thousand people were caught in the explosion

100,000 people dead in an instant. he killed them, straight up. He Killed Them. the manga never shies away from this fact.

in the anime, they establish that it was One Million people caught up in it, but he didn't kill them. somehow, he absolutely destroyed everything, but No One Died.

though one million people stuck without shelter or resources eventually led to a similar result. lots of people died. but the key thing is that not EVERYONE died. in the manga, the only way people didnt die was if they just were lucky enough to be out of the city at the time. everyone in the city was obliterated.

i'm also fascinated by their decision to give him a wider span of amnesia. in the manga, he doesn't remember july, but it's a localized amnesia. he has no idea what caused the explosion, doesnt remember even Being in july, just remembers waking up in it. but he remembers the stuff preceding it, enough to know in painful detail every one of the 150 years he's been alive.

in the anime, if he doesn't remember anything prior to july aside from his "early childhood", what exactly does he think happened in the time since? does he Know he's over a hundred years old? which on that matter, when exactly did July happen in the anime? because in the manga, it starts up 6 years after & then spans to 10 years after (by the end of trimax), but in the anime we see this woman who was three years old back then, but is Presumably at least 18, probably over 20 years old. for simplicity's sake, maybe we could say she's ~23, aka it's been 20 years.

6 years to 20 years passed. that's an interesting time difference to set. it's a succinct way of letting the viewers know that Things Are Not Normal with him. earlier in the episode she says he's got no known age, which he doesnt try to contest, but the viewers could just assume that's the general confusion of his identity with the public's knowledge. we've seen Time After Time that a lot of people have no idea who he even is, up to and including confusion about what he even Looks like.

but then we see he looks the same between now and when this woman was a small child. some twenty years passed, and yet he looks the same.

adding in the moment of communication between him and the plant, calming her down... which ON THAT NOTE, earlier in the episode where he's up on the stand & he pours a drink for her and says "You were just tired, weren't you?" it was so Unexpectedly sweet. a moment of connection that would probably gain confusion for someone who doesnt know, but i had to literally pause it bc i was just. floored. by how sweet it was. we are sorely lacking direct interaction between Vash and the plants for most of the manga, so i really appreciated seeing him treat her with that kind of compassion. so, so sweet...

this episode also has me wondering what they're going to do for the next arc, since they Already had him do the Calm The Plant Down thing and Also had the reference of someone wanting revenge for July. will Neon still want revenge for July too? it would feel a little redundant though, so are they going to do something different?

i'm just gonna have to find out later :P probably tomorrow lol

i’m losing my mind

*slaps trigun manga volumes* this bad boy can fit so many horrors in it

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…

reminder that being against ai also means being against character.ai and not using character.ai and not interacting with character.ai

i've never talked to chatgpt i've never talked to character.ai i have no interest in talking to a chatbot even if it's fun or based on my comfort character. if we want companies to stop using ai we need to tell them we aren't going to interact with it - so don't.

don't talk to robots. full stop.

Francophone magazine ATOM is going to release in its 27th edition an interview of The Summer Hikaru Died's author Mokumokuren, and I was wondering if there was any interest in a (n amateur) translation (EDIT: that I'd make) or if anyone else was already planning to do it!

I'm super new to the fandom so I don't know if you guys are super active on Twitter or Discord or something. If you have any info about someone already on the project, feel free to share!

In the meantime, enjoy the gorgeous preview visuals:

Was this necessary? No. Am I going nuts waiting for my male Vash wig to arrive so I did this to scratch the itch? Yes. I don’t even know if I can pull a male Vash off, but I wanted to try this doing more of my femme Vash in the meantime.

Beautiful Vash art by @hollycircling!

hi

Doodles