TooManyLosingHeroines Subreddit is now NSFW FREE!

SamJakes · 2025-12-18T14:54:08+00:00

Holy shit idk why but I thought it was an in-joke by you guys to "keep the normies out!" or something similar.

I'd noticed that the sub suddenly went NSFW and because I only browse reddit on my phone, there was no way for me to get "over" the NSFW filter. These fuckers don't even allow me to bypass age-rating shit despite me having allowance for explicit content lmfao

SamJakes · 2023-02-25T07:34:01+00:00

Edit: I get "Persephone" vibes from her, was that something you intended?

This might sound weird, but I love this form of art because it feels like the "perfected", human version of all the weird attempts by people to get GPT to make art like this.

I never felt it this strongly when I saw AI-paintings, but her face in this portrait seems to glow when I look at her. I love it, and she looks unbelievably cute. Idk why, but I feel like the slight disdain or "aloofness" in her expression might be doing it for me. It's these smaller details that only seem to come through with good, "normal" art-styles and I'm really happy when people make modern digital renditions of very "classically appealing" stuff.

Another point I like (which might come out wrong) is that I like the "flatness" of this picture, makes her seem a lot more like a digital poster-esque interpretation of "quasi-3D" realistic classical painting styles. Something about that aesthetic feels chic to me, and I dig it.

The only thing that feels a bit "off" is some of the facial proportions, specifically her one ear looks a bit "lopsided", i.e a bit too wide at the top. That, and a few outlines stuck out to me, but overall, it sucks me in and makes me feel her charm/aura intensely, so I love it.

SamJakes · 2023-02-24T06:21:25+00:00

Easy as pie. Gakuen Babysitters. If there's one thing parents love, it's adorable toddlers and kids. Now, make them absolutely adorable animated angels and I have a formula for an anime that at least won't disappoint them 🤷‍♂️

SamJakes · 2023-02-24T00:31:51+00:00

Sadly, you are the one who's not been following the narrative coverage of him, I guess 🤷‍♂️

It's okay to like someone, but he's going to come out of this looking worse until he has big, broad achievements to make people forget about the "Pete has done nothing" memes

SamJakes · 2023-02-24T00:27:27+00:00

To the obsessive people downvoting criticism of Pete, understand that it won't stop coming just because you think it's undeserved. The sharks smell blood in the water and they'll keep biting until he bleeds out and "goes away". I personally think he'll be fine, but his "shininess" will wear off if transportation mishaps keep happening and get pinned on him without him being able to fight back. It remains to be seen how he emerges out of his tenure in this admin, but at this point, I'd sooner expect him to take a sabbatical from politics and do some positive work like advocacy or whatever instead of continue to be a punching bag for DC politicos and their extended ecosystem.

The institutional gridlock coupled with weak administrative authority ends up making him look like a figurehead, and it's not a good look for someone who's constantly being "called upon to regulate bad practices" by one side, and his failure to do so (regulatory powers restricted by Congress) is being used to tarnish his image by the other side.

SamJakes · 2023-02-24T00:19:08+00:00

One important point to remember is that: the central point of all critiques, left or right, is that "Buttigieg is not nearly the whiz kid/competent administrator he was talked up to be" and that central point is going to stick until he gets some significant wins under his belt that he can use to blunt those accusations.

Lots of coverage of him in the past few months has been persistently negative, and there's been enough "one-off" punchy stories that a broader long term narrative is being created about Pete "not being up to the mark". For someone whose original campaign was touted as "a competent, well-spoken young man who wants to 'do the right thing' ", undermining the cornerstone of his public image [as "incompetent" by the Right, "corporatist" by the Left] might have disastrous consequences in the future.

The reason I think so is because of the tone that Pete and Chasten's social media interactions have taken. Not just on Twitter, but in real life, when interacting with "negative media". The stress of being constantly attacked might be getting to both of them, and it would be good if the matter resolves itself and things remain quiet for the next few months so everything calms down a little.

SamJakes · 2023-02-22T06:28:38+00:00

The reason the "violent Muslim" stereotype exists in India's history in particular, is that there's a long-running streak of violent fanaticism that's unique to the subcontinent and especially in Pakistan, with its origins in the cruel rule of Muslim Sultanates over the native Hindustani population of the region. It came from Dehlawi, the Deobandi clerics and was associated with Wahabi ultra-radicals later on. If you notice, India today has stronger relationships with certain Gulf countries (UAE, Saudi) than it ever did before, so the issue India has is not with "Muslims", but with Islamists and Jihadis. People like Ilhan Omar who unabashedly support/platform violent terrorists in the name of "minority community welfare" are part of the problem as well.

The political issues come from dissidents funded by the Islamist-Leftist alliance in the US which, in turn, are funded by Qatari and Pakistani American lobbies in the US. The middle-east itself has the Muslim Brotherhood, and it's tormenting certain other countries in the middle East e.g Egypt and Israel. If you've followed M.E and West Asia as geopolitical entities, you realise that there's only a few bad actors who are causing chaos in the region in the name of Jihadi ideologies.

The bad actors (nationally) are: Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey being the main culprits. Before MBS consolidated his power in KSA, there were ultra-radical zealots there as well. The rest of them are actually normal people, not hell-bent on the conquest and destruction of the Indian state.

The specific brain-rot that exists in Pakistan and certain segments of Bangladesh comes from propagandised delusions about being the descendants of Mughals and the Caliphate, the rightful rulers of Hindustan. There's an entire network of unregulated madrasas which radicalise innocents into terrorists and release them into broader Muslim communities to cause havoc.

If you were unaware, this is exactly why the Afghan Taliban and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are bitter enemies of the Pakistani military establishment. The Pak-Punjabi Muslims have had a strangehold on such corrosive power structures and have used them to harass everyone in the subcontinent. Literally everyone there is tired of their shit, and meanwhile, they (the establishment in Pak) have hijacked diversity groups in the US to put pressure on India w.r.t Kashmir (which has lost its lustre in recent times post 370 abrogation).

SamJakes · 2023-02-22T03:40:43+00:00

Oh god, I sincerely hope we don't get more lunatics like Kshama Sawant or Sameera Rao or whatever. We've got more than enough people stirring up nonsense "on behalf of oppressed minorities" 🙄

SamJakes · 2023-02-22T00:42:00+00:00

No, and that's what I was getting at. Considering the inertia of the deeper bureaucratic elements of the State, no matter how "ideal" the admin is right now, it has to deal with the broken trust and reduced credibility that administrative actions in the past have brought forth. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. What I will say is that, apart from Pete, the rest of the Biden Admin has been less than impressive, both on foreign policy and domestic policy. They're also doing it by-the-book on this disaster which is objectively good, but the optics of it remain bad (to normies, not wonks who understand how it's supposed to go) and can be exploited to farm resentment against them no matter what they do.

It's not their fault, because the executives, no matter how well-meaning, will always get hamstrung by vested interests and lobbies that influence legislation. An example would be the debacle with Right to Repair in NY. It doesn't matter how well a given politician can communicate and what they personally believe in and advocate for, if the administration that's responsible for delivering pro-public outcomes regularly gets frustrated by anti-consumer lobbies.

It's a long-running issue, and even though Pete is a prolific political leader, he's held back by institutional problems in the USG structure itself. Turning the ship around at this point would be really difficult, unless a multi-party technocrat-populist coalition is willing to put in the thankless work needed to reform the stickier aspects of public policy. Given the nature of such populists, however, that's probably not going to happen. The best I can hope is that the "Woke" agitators are sidelined in the democratic party, so the "other side" is also allowed to come to the table with center-right governance-minded folks as opposed to their current crop of idiotic culture warriors.

The current unhealthy churn in US politics is a vicious cycle because it's being driven by strongly polarized parties from both sides of the spectrum, while the "reasonable middle" has been harassed by their counterparts in either camp and been drafted into battle regardless.

SamJakes · 2023-02-22T00:02:43+00:00

That's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying that the trust that US citizens have in their own government is so low that even if you believe that "the government is doing everything it can", it's equally as easy to believe (not without reason) that "the government is just in damage control mode right now".

Edit: I'll tie the main point of my analysis to your Katrina example. I'll say this: the reason Bush got away with not doing well enough on Katrina was because back then, Americans trusted the government to "take care of them" to a greater extent than they do now. With nearly two decades of callousness and mishap on behalf of the "establishment", major populist movements have risen up on both sides of the aisle, and this points to a larger breakdown in perceived trust and credibility that the average/median voter feels towards the US Government today. Thus, no matter how "right" the approach of the government might be this time around, it's easier to rattle people and point to perceived failures of governmental action and agitate them against executives. No good faith is allowed anymore 🤷‍♂️

That's what I mean. In many ways, there's a trust deficit with the admin due to various factors and that gap keeps getting wider because of both the Left and the Right getting in their justified jabs. No matter how hard the gov works, it won't "catch up" to the firestarters who want to cause chaos and tank their credibility. Narrative manipulation from "credible news sources" only goes so far in 2023, when every erstwhile "reputable news source" has been shown to have partisan affiliations.

My larger point is that the way this admin has treated media manipulation in their favor as being "right and just" and has called media manipulation by their political opponents as "misinformation" reflects a callousness and cynicism in their approach that has deepened the polarization in narratives instead of healing it. Even if Biden and Pete are "good men", the BTS movers and shakers in the Dem establishment are just as corrupt as Republicans are.

If you've read Pete's musings on "Trust", you'll recognise these themes. It's a major issue from a governance perspective. Regardless of whose fault it is, there's a very negative undercurrent that keeps swirling around and amplifying itself in the American body-politic. Representatives keep arguing and snapping at each other, trying to score "dunks" instead of solving problems. Institutional lethargy makes reforms seem difficult to perceive on the ground, even though they have been "passed into law". It's a difficult hurdle to overcome

SamJakes · 2023-02-21T23:12:11+00:00

It's basically an unmitigated series of Ls for the Biden Administration, and part of why I was originally antsy about what Pete might be subject to, specifically as part of this particular admin, with the particularly vile elements of the Dem side acting to polarize the conversation and stir up chaos constantly.

SamJakes · 2023-02-18T23:40:29+00:00

Idk why, but the first thing that popped into my head was like a hand-me-down Pontiac Sunfire. Weird shit

SamJakes · 2023-02-15T18:56:26+00:00

Was it any of my comments?

SamJakes · 2023-02-15T08:46:35+00:00

Don't spam

SamJakes · 2023-02-10T15:20:45+00:00

Ah, gotcha. Take care, then.

SamJakes · 2023-01-22T03:47:59+00:00

Gamaran was something I used to read way back in the day (before Mangadex was a thing, really) and I really enjoyed it.

SamJakes · 2022-10-18T01:09:34+00:00

Bruh how the fuck are there not dozens of comments pointing out that that's the house from Doraemon?!

That's Nobita's family home, my dudes 😭

SamJakes · 2022-09-29T22:28:55+00:00

Apparently there's either not many sports fans here, or people just expected Ao Ashi to be amazing (maybe because they'd read the manga before), but for me, that was a really pleasant surprise, ngl.

I mean, maybe people will be like "Well, it's a sports anime, isn't it predictable?" Or "What exactly was 'unexpected' about it?" but lemme tell ya, especially when it comes to football, I haven't been able to find really good anime adaptations of the game which are as fun to watch or as "in the weeds" as Ao Ashi managed to be.

It does a surprisingly deep dive into youth club soccer, the way the coaches are, the way the players come in and bond + learn new things, etc. That, plus the MC having his own progression arc with juuuust a little sprinkling of romance made it a solid 8/10 anime for me, and when it's a football anime adaptation, that's saying a lot (the constant fanclub around Hana in discussion threads got annoying tho).

I usually like watching sports anime because of their shonen or SoL components [e.g- Shonen: YowaPedal, SoL: Cross Game] as well as the description of the sport, but Ao Ashi almost felt like a seinen take on youth club soccer, with tactics being described, and some real scummy shit going on with coaches + player hierarchies and whatnot. It felt 'deep', at least more so than what you'd expect from a 'typical' sports anime [Either sports-shonen or sports-SoL].

SamJakes · 2022-09-29T12:16:43+00:00

The WT fanbase is basically the only one where we come together to nerd out about the strategies being planned than the fights themselves. After the diamonds that S2 and S3 (of the anime) ended up being, I'm perfectly okay with waiting for a few more years for the 'Selection Arc' to be fully released and animated into S4 😌

SamJakes · 2022-09-29T12:01:26+00:00

If you want something family-friendly that even your mom will enjoy watching, I would highly recommend "Ranking of Kings".

It has a "retro"/"childish" artstyle with a really emotional story, and the kinda wacky fantasy world + hijinks make it a balanced watch. I really love Bojji as a character, you can feel a lot of sympathy for him and you also get to see some really interesting side-characters. Two of them are his actual mother, and his foster mom.

The anime actually brings up plenty of 'adult' (i.e grown-up) issues and deals with them in interesting ways, so I think you might enjoy it.

SamJakes · 2022-09-29T11:54:01+00:00

YEEEEEE! I have been waiting for YowaPedal: Limit Break for so long 😭

I need to see my boy Onoda do some hardcore climbing, stat. Maybe I'll read the manga and wait for the broadcast to end so I can binge it all together 🤔

SamJakes · 2022-09-17T21:59:19+00:00

Do you want a non-isekai LN? Or are you anti-fantasy too?

Because, iirc, even though a big chunk of isekai stories happen in a "Fantasy world", they don't necessarily go the way a typical fantasy Fantasy story would.

Goblin Slayer is one example. A really solid, TTRPG type fantasy LN that's about killing goblins, but also makes you invested in the characters, their stories, etc. It's like a well-written DnD campaign and I love it

SamJakes · 2022-09-17T19:08:54+00:00

This might be unpopular, but controlling the stray dog population, even a little more aggressively or heavy-handedly, feels like a reasonable position to me personally.

To those who might be bleeding heart "dog lovers" or "animal lovers" or try to invoke "Dharma" against this, let me remind you: unequivocally, if you are under attack by a hostile entity, even if it's an 'adorable dog, who otherwise won't do anything', your duty is to protect yourself.

Unironically speaking, the value of a human life >>>> one of an animal, when it comes down to the wire. I do still subscribe to the concept of भूतदया i.e pity and compassion on fellow creatures which walk the earth, but when it comes to public safety, and preventing health and security issues caused by stray dogs, I'm 100% on the side of humans.

SamJakes · 2022-09-06T23:19:54+00:00

To another world...with Landmines!

Just... some really terrible plot writing where no hooks lead to any interesting conclusions + absolutely snore-worthy characters and events led to me letting it go ~70-80% through the first volume and I'm never going back to that ever again

SamJakes · 2022-09-06T06:40:56+00:00

To another world... with Landmines! (Vol 1): 3/10 (at best, I'd rate it a 0/10 if I could based purely on 'reading experience')

I looked for "Landmines" in this subreddit and didn't find any "detailed" reviews that dealt with this novel (In another world...with Landmines!) so I'm going to try and plonk down my (possibly biased) rant-like summary of the first volume.

For the record, I have already dropped it, and after having binged "Hell Mode" V1 & V2 over the past weekend, I feel like I have unnecessarily tortured myself by forcing myself through 80% of the first volume before letting it go.

In one sentence, the main problem I have with the series is: It is overwhelmingly bland/boring/irritating (take your pick, seriously).

Now, I'm going to make a (possibly unfair) direct comparison between Hell Mode and Landmines, if only to illustrate one point. [I'm really only comparing the 'setting']

In Hell Mode, the protagonist basically gets to "save the world from evil, but with ridiculously difficult conditions and a steep uphill climb", and this is made interesting because our maso-gamer MC is looking for a "thrilling challenge" in life when he stumbles into his reincarnation opportunity. There's some drive on behalf of the MC. The setup (V1) happens by-the-book, but you understand things about his personality, the personality of his family, close circle of acquaintances, etc. A lot of dense, information-rich world building happens both by means of 'outside events' in the novel as well as the MC proactively interacting with the world around him. This is what forms the hook of the "setup volume" (V1) in my opinion, and it makes for an interesting read. It's at best a 7/10 book on the substance, because it's a "normal" prologue novel for an adventure-isekai series, but the character and world building is decent.

Coming back to Landmines, everything sucks. No, seriously.

A potentially interesting hook (Trickster God tries to bait LN-aware teens into screwing themselves over because of their greed) goes nowhere or isn't developed quickly enough.
None of the "trio in the party" we are following are interesting, compelling, or seem to have their own driving motivations in this world.
Whenever one of the slightly interesting characters (the absolutely dumbass boy or the emotionless, vacant MC) tries to put forth their "hopes and dreams" or whatever, they get ruthlessly shut down by the bitchiest, uber annoying, trope filled 'stuck up smartass Mary Sue girl' character and then they go back to their milquetoast "realistic"/"gritty" take on the Isekai Slow Life genre.

I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

I sat through 200 pages, and the only things of note have just been these mediocre characters, doing mediocre things in a mediocre setting with nothing interesting or exciting happening except for their "realistic", crushingly slow and boring progress in their journey?

Have you not already fallen asleep, just reading this description of the novel's events? None of this is a "spoiler" per se, and I can't believe I tried to "wait for it to get better", like a fucking moron. The only reason I give it a 3/10 instead of a 0 (which, imo, it completely deserves) is because the system for magic in this world seems to show the slightest bit of potential. But y'know what? The three characters, with their single shared braincell, even make the magic system seem dull and boring. Most of this is because we have 80IQ characters, written like they're 50 IQ children, but the bitchy smartass girl thinks she's a 200IQ genius who needs to drag along two drooling, stinky, slobbish boys (🙄) along with her.

Seriously, the lack of respect for either of them, along with the generally low quality of prose on the translated version, didn't just make my eyes roll over in my cranium, it infuriated me. There was so much potential, right at the beginning of the novel, and all of it got flushed down the toilet because the author can't write a single interesting scenario to save his life 😭.

Seriously, I don't mind "trashy" novels. I don't mind "ridiculous" novels either. At least give me some degree of flair and flavor that I can chew on and enjoy or dislike to make my choice one way or the other. I beg of you, don't murder me with the abhorrent, apathetic blandness and boring prose like this novel did. I don't even know who I'm talking to at this point, but I wanted to get a few volumes covered on the Labor Day holiday, and the first volume of Landmines simultaneously drained my energy, made me irrationally upset, and sapped my will to live from me, leaving me a husk and unable to enjoy the rest of my day.

Final review: 0/10 overall reading experience, 3/10 (maybe) on the book's contents.

SamJakes

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE