Left my old account during the Great Porn Ban Exodus five years ago. Back because Twitter shredded my mental health into so much string cheese and now some dumb billionaire is burning it to the ground. Profile pic is of my FFXIV OC. You WILL get tired of me talking about her.
I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
Someone at an old job asked why I wanted to write up the meeting minutes for our team and I said 'i wanna control the narrative' and they were like 'what' and I pointed out that no one was gonna remember what we said in six months and so my interpretation of the meeting would dictate the assumed reality of what happened
"none of you ever send corrections when I offer the draft so y'all have consented to my version"
"we don't read that shit"
"you must trust me implicitly to create our shared reality that's so sweet"
That's how several coworkers decided I was a supervillain and how I learned several coworkers didn't understand record keeping as like a CONCEPT
A funny little thought occurred to Allie as she lay on her wife's lap. She reached up to stroke her face and just said, "My father would have hated you both."
Rhea was taken aback by this random statement, but then laughed. "Ah yes, very romantic, darling."
"Eh it all evens out," said Beloch as he buried himself in Rhea's hair. "I'm pretty sure your mother hates me, Starlight."
"Oh Drusilla does not hate you, love," said Rhea.
"Oh no she does," countered Allie. "I think that woman hates everyone."
Rhea paused for a moment, remembering who she was defending, and laughed. "Okay you got me there."
In an era where over sensitive, whiny 15 year olds are complaining that depicting something is the same as endorsing it, and cowardly, spineless creatives and corporations kowtowing to their every angry tweet, reading the unapologetically vulgar, unpleasant, brutal, and vicious Punisher MAX by Garth Ennis has been a breath of fresh air lmao
ya know, spending the past two months doing nothing but working on my actual novel that I plan to sell for money was all well and good, but now that I've hit 50k words on it, I think I shall instead work on what I REALLY love
Rhea is immediately pulled into a double hug by her husband and wife. And after this, they go home to tell Yashu that she's going to be a big sister soon.
*sends this ask the same way one plants a big black cartoon bomb with a long, lit fuse, runs behind a corner with an army helmet on, and asks from afar* so how do you feel about the current trend of sanding down problematic traits in characters? Particularly *zips over to add another bomb* baldur's gate 3 :3?
listen you have heard more than enough of my opinions on this particular topic HOWEVER I know when I have neither played nor researched enough about a video game to fully give my thoughts on it as an example.
but what I will point to is my Dragon Age post from earlier today again and say even louder for the people in the back:
I think video games and RPGs specifically should let you sell your companions back into slavery if you want to and that other companions should approve of that act. you should be able to murder a child's mother for a blood magic ritual only to then sell that child's soul off to a demon for the rest of his life. obviously im not saying you SHOULD make these choices or that they should be options in real life, but but this isnt real life and I do think video games SHOULD provide them to you and give you genuine reasons to consider them (either via consequences, rewards, or plot based time constraints). the DA2 companions regularly threatened to kill each other and you, but Veilguard companions simply never had any issues with their differences that weren't politely talked out and the worst they feel about you is just no longer being romance-able if you choose one plot point over another. make fantasy dark and messy again and COMMIT TO IT or so help me god im going to have to do it myself.
i mean im already doing it myself but that's not the point
also yeah i know "video games should let you sell people into slavery" is a fucking crazy take to put out there with the state of bad faith literacy right now but i do mean that shit, i think video games should make you face deeply questionable moral choices like that more often and even when there's an easy "good" option you should think about what it would take for you to make that choice. what would it take for you to break. how much money, what level of threat of violence against you or someone you love, where do your morals break down under pressure.
cause frankly if you don't know where your morals break, if you only engage with morality by assuming you would only ever take the good guy option, you're gonna really hurt somebody some day and you're not even gonna notice
Allie had to be away from her family to help Wuk Lamat with the rite. Maybe it was because she saw herself in the young upstart, maybe she simply can never say no to an adventure - especially when Q'ihnn is the one pitching it. Whatever her reasons, she regretted it almost immediately upon stepping on that boat.
Fortunately Beloch and Rhea were there as soon as it was over, bringing their beautiful, perfect children along with them. And just like that, Allie was complete again.
I think more people should play Dragon Age 2 and actually engage with the more "problematic" content in it in a philosophical manner cause the game is actually kinda wild by current censorship standards for something that came out only 15 years ago
like you can sell one of your companions back into slavery. and one of your other companions approves of this action - the same companion that spends the entire game fighting for the rights and freedoms of his own marginalized group btw. fucking fascinating character work right there
this is not an addition to be snappy at comments made on this post specifically BUT I did want to highlight that part of why I made this post is because in this particular instance so often I see people say things along the line of "I don't think [insert character] would have/should have responded to this situation like [x]" often followed up with an assumption it's only like that for gameplay reasons
but I think this gives way too much space to dismiss how they DID react. hold my hand for a moment and consider with me: why do we think they did act that way? how might they have rationalized this situation? what factors could have contributed to that rationalization? what does this tell us about that character, their priorities, and their experiences?
The many, myriad hypocrisies of Anders is one of the most fascinating parts of dragon age 2's narrative, and I wish they were treated as such instead of glossed over because uwu sad boi
It's nice getting a quiet moment to finally catch up, especially somewhere as pretty as Rhea's tea garden. Until the weather changes and sends them running, of course, but that has its own simple joys <3
(and you can come visit that tea garden on Crystal Malboro, the Goblet, ward 30, plot 3 if you'd like! there's a message book there in the yard if you wanna say hi!)
Normally Allie likes standing out in the rain, brooding JRPG protag that she is. But there's a time and place for it, and wifey and hubbie time is not it.
A voice that followed me throughout my childhood. From keeping me up to date on the latest progress of The Clone Wars, to ensuring Foster's Home didn't collapse in on itself, and of course, making sure three little superheroes were brought up right.
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we'll have to legit tell everyone we can't have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it's gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone's gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can't save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn't have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which "lefties" actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
this kind of childish thinking, and it is childish, is why the left always loses.
Everyone will not "just". Everyone will never "just". If your plan hinges on everyone going along with your plan, even under threat of force, then you do not have a plan. Everyone has never "just" in the history of the human race, and they sure as fuck ain't gonna start now.
I want leftism to succeed. I do. But the situation we're in is a genie that isn't going back in the bottle. There ain't nothing in those century old theory books that has the answer for 2026 capitalism.
just a little touch on how Allie was doing on her lonesome in Dawntrail to start the week, I promise they'll actually be together for the rest of the week aha
It wasn't as if Allie expected to LOVE being away from her family to help with the rite of succession, but even she was surprised at just how miserable not hearing Beloch's stories or Rhea's wit, or Yashu's latest adorable antic would leave her.
germansingergirl
pixelskylines
origamiaround
gummygunk
dededos
izzy806
