ithillia

 || Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 




Comparing Darman and Niner's way to navigate through the wildernes with traditional ways. :3 Why do I find this so incredibly sexy??? 

  || Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 

I honestly want Darman being swarmed by the gdans this fucking terrifying experience, your honour. 

My favorite things from today's KOTOR gaming session was that ultimately I'm trying to do a Light Side gameplay so no matter how I like Canderous Ordo and HK-47 as my active companions, in the end I choose Bastila instead of Canderous for the Tatooine mission, you know, having a motivation to balance out the dark side options.

Now i met this Tanis guy, the sod his wife tried to assassinate him with his own droids for cheating. Basically the droids were rigged to explode if Tanis leaves the area of the droids, so he is out there doomed for dehydration in the dunes.

HK-47: Let the meatbag explode, master.
Yeah, I kinda expected that.

Bastila: I'm with the wife on this one. I say we leave him.

BASTILA YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MY MORAL ANCHOR!!! XDDD

BONUS HK-47 about the Tuskens: 
Translation: He requires proof of good faith. We must make a contribution to his people that shows we are not a threat. Shall I blast him now, master?

I love this game and I love my chaotic found family. 

 || Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 

One of my favorite joke in RepComm is how the Omega Squad is having a one-sided beef with the procurement regarding armor colors and overall how the Omega Squad is acquiring their full black armor. Especially love how Niner is fussing internally about the assholes in the procurement, that they didn't think about this this, but then he thinks OK OK OK, bashing the superiors is OFF-LIMITS, THOUGHT-CRIME, ORDERS ARE ORDERS. 

And then they reunite with Fi and Atin and apparently they had the same exact thought regarding their armors. :DDD 

|| Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 

Niner took out his datapad and calculated his position. There was no GPS he could lock in to without the Neimoidians detecting him, but he could at least use dead reckoning based on the sprayer’s last position, matching features on the landscape to his chart. It was old-fashioned soldiering. He liked it. He had to be able to do the business when the tech wasn’t there, even if that meant using nothing but a Trandoshan blade.

If you stab someone in the heart, they can still run. I once saw a man run a hundred meters like that, screaming as well. Go for the neck, like this. Sergeant Skirata had taught them a lot about knives. Put a bit of weight behind it, son.

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

Murder Papa teaching his little murderlings how to kill. 

Yeah, I know I should write some kind of conclusion but overall I am just a mad scientist watching blorbos doing stuff behind a glass wall and taking notes. I find their emotional reactions fascinating. 

I love everything about this. Niner's grief and anger and how the it was Darman's fault turns into Darman simply cannot be dead until they find him. I love this fiery sergeant. It really reminds me of a certain another sergeant. :3

The Handmaid's Tale has everything I love in fiction. Post-apocalyptic dystopia, dictatorial regime, religious terror, and animalistic manifestations of human nature where you question everything that can make a person human.

I remember I started watching this series in 2023 and stopped somewhere at the beginning of the fourth season, although this is usually common for me when I want to grind down a series in one sitting, and now I wanted to take a break between anime and movies, so I decided to start over series again. I haven't been able to read the book, so I have no idea how much it differs, so I can't make comparisons, so my posts will only be about the series.

The story takes place primarily in an alternate universe, United States, more precisely in the already renamed Gilead, and we can see it from the point of view of Handmaid named June (Offred), who - and many other women like her - is used as breeding cattle. Of course, this is much better presented in the propaganda of the universe: People have poisoned the environment with chemicals, spread immorality, and abort their children on their own, so God cursed humanity with a plague that sterilized both men and women to teach them a lesson and lead them back to the right path. For this reason, God has given the remaining fertile women the sacred mission of sleeping with the master of the house in the presence of his wife within the boundaries of a ceremony, so that a child may be born from this holy intimacy.

Now, what does this look like in reality? The Republic of Gilead, the fundamentalist theocracy and dictatorship, where a caste system has emerged, and at the top there are the Commanders (military and religious leaders) who rape the Handmaidens in the presence and help of their Wives; if the Handmaid succeeds in conceiving child, the Wife takes the child as her own, and the Handmaid is transferred to another family with a perfect recommendation. If they are dissatisfied with her services, the Handmaid goes to the Colonies to clean up nuclear waste. It's a brilliant demonstration of when women are exalted for their reproductive abilities, but it's really about nothing more than dehumanization.

Of course, the Handmaids don't serve out of their own pious sense of duty. Women who were deemed sinful based their previous lives before the establishment of the system (children born out of marriage, extramarital relationships, homosexual relationships, abortions, etc.) become Handmaidens, but because they are fertile, they are gathered into a re-education camps, where the Aunts - responsible for education and morality - physically and mentally beat the propaganda into their head, and then they are assigned to families to give birth to children. Again, a another very sick but sadly existing depiction where women are actively and gladly contributing for upholding the system because they believe what they do is right.  

In the first episode, we saw another caste, the Marthas, a social caste of lower-ranking women who do housechores for families, and they also briefly introduced the caste of lower-ranking men, who can gain a higher status if the Commander they serve under grant them a wife (fffffuuuuck this fundemaentalis mormon shit...)

Actually, we got a very impressive picture of how Offred lives her everyday life - the girls are not allowed to use their own names, so they are made to take the name of the master of the house - and while she is doing her duty, she also has to help with the housework, but she cannot leave the house alone; She has to go to the store with another Handmaid, which makes their social life more lively (from the outside), but is really used to spy on each other and keep each other on their toes.

Two scenes were very striking for me. After the rape, Mrs. Waterford cried. Well, not because she felt so sorry for the poor Handmaid, she doesn't give two shit about Offred. In my interpretation, even if she has the status of a Wife, even if she has the highest rank a woman can reach, it doesn't worth shit. She is just as worthless as a woman as the ones she despises in this society, and she knows this very well.

The other scene is Salvaging, which is a very nice name for Public Execution. This is also a psychological warfare, where the Handmaids are rounded up and the men who violate the Handmaids are executed by them, especially that such crimes are highlighted like raping a Handmaide, raping a pregnant Handmaid and causing miscarriage. The family is not named who suffered this tragedy, so this event is not about grief and support, and we can ask whether the accusation is fabricated (after all, we are talking about a dictatorship) or true. But whether it's real or not, it doesn't matter. What matters is that if Aunt says that girls have to execute this man, then girls will execute this man. And so they did. This is how fascists rallies their subjects. Through extreme emotions, not facts. And rape and hurting children or mothers is ALWAYS a touchy subjects, no matter what spectrum of the political scale you are on. 

Just like Mrs. Waterford's crying scene was not about feeling sorry for the violence, but self-pity and anger for herself, the girls did not attack the man because they felt sorry for that girl or her miscarried child. These girls were angry. They are angry, oppressed, and constantly terrified. And that was the only legal way to take out all this frustration on someone who potentially deserved it on paper: a rapist. a child killer. a lawbreaker. a man. Anyone could have knelt before them, the result would have been the same. And I think that's what makes this scene so powerful. It was simply brilliant. So many angry women on the screen. 

And actually there is a third scene too. That's a bit personal actually. Where Janine's prosecution and blamed for being tortured, making her responsible for her torturers scooping out her eye for being bratty. Aunt Lydia used this typical trick I remember from my own active religious days: whatever obstacles happening, whatever bad things are happening with you, it's because God is testing you and God is teaching you a lesson. If you make a mistake, if you misbehave and bad things happening to you, it's on you and solely on you. There are no evil people, only people with not enough faith. 

Even if I didn't remember the plot of the series that much, the characters stayed with me all along and that is very rare when I'm watching a live action show. And what powerful characters they are!!! June, Mrs. Waterford. Moira. Emily. Janine. Aunt Lydia. I loved them all. 

I don't know if I'm going to write about every episode, but I definitely wanted to mention this series and I hope to be able to finish it this time.

 || Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 


Kast Fulier is resembling more and more to Qui-Gon Jinn, and with it someone who is more in tune with the Life Force, just like Qui-Gon. Someone who can't stay away from the earthly things, and can't avert his eyes from suffering and always doing things outside of the Order's wishes or jurisdiction. 

Maybe Kast Fulier wasn't a good master to Etain, but on grander scale, he was a good man. But more often than not, these kind of heroes with golden hearts often disregard those they already have responsibility over. 

  || Republic Commando: Hard Contact || 2004 || Book series || Military, Sci-Fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes || 

Niner is already so invested in Jusik, omg. ._.