I try not to fall into the "I never liked their work anyway" ditch when an artist/creator reveals themself to be a terrible person
BUT
a feeling I do have and will stand by is "While I enjoyed their work overall I did have some gripes that I overlooked out of affection and whimsy, but now that my loyalty is gone and my affection tainted there is nothing holding me back from enumerating my many grievances, to which the revelations of the creator's shittiness may or may not provide a new and infuriating context."
#such a good summation of this actually#because yeah thereâs usually things that were always present#but which were easy to overlook or give the benefit of the doubt#that suddenly become relevant after a revelation about the creator#and itâs really not the same thing as the self-defensive ââI never liked it anywayâ
Once knew a guy from LARP who told a story about when he had first gotten his hands on chainmail and was getting used to wearing it and maintaining mobility and balance with the weight of it (it was heavy stuff). So he started wearing it under his clothes when he was out running errands and stuff to practice for when he had to wear it in mock combat.
Then one night he was coming home late and got mugged by a dude with a knife.
Apparently the look on the dude's face was amazing when he went in to gut the guy for his wallet and found out he was wearing medieval armor under his hoodie.
So, you know. Pretty good argument for wearing it under streetclothes!
Fun story, i talked to two people who worked at a convenience store in the Kingdom of An Tir (SCA medieval society, An Tir's territory is WA, BC, northern ID, and OR, and in the past included AB and SK).
This convenience store was notorious for getting robbed in the evenings one or two times a month, so nobody wanted to work the night shift. The one fellow, he desperately needed a job, but he was also learning how to be a heavy fighter (sword & shield) in the SCA, so he had just finished a chainmail shirt, and asked if he could wear it under his uniform shirt, so long as it didn't show. The manager was just happy that he had someone willing to work nights, and said yeah, sure, so long as it doesn't show.
Guy starts working the night shifts, things are fine, he's getting used to everything, then late one night, a guy in a hoodie comes in, and asks for a pack of cigarettes. Our guy turns to get the pack, and feels a thump on his back. Turning around, scowling, he demands, "Did you just hit me??"
Guy in the hoodie widens his eyes, goes ash-gray, and faints. Clerk can't budge from behind the counter in case this is an attempt to distract and rob. But the guy remains out coold. Confused, our clerk calls the emergency services. EMTs come along and start checking out the patient, who is still out cold on the floor. While they're doing that, one of them comes up to the counter and asks what happened, exactly.
Our man tells the EMT, "Well, he just came in, looked around, came up to the counter and asked for a specific pack of cigarettes, so I turned to get them--"
And he demonstrates by turning his back to the EMT, who suddenly starts shouting, "--Sir! Sir! Are you okay? Don't move!"
Our man feels the EMT groping his upper back, and then the EMT asks,
"What the hell are you WEARING?"
"A chainmail shirt. I have to get used to the weight of it, so I wear it a lot. Why? Is something wrong?"
"You have a KNIFE in your back!"
"Uhh...no, I don't? I mean, I don't feel hurt? He only, like, punched me or something. There's no knife back there--I mean, I'd KNOW if there was a knife back there, right?"
EMT grabs the knife and pushes on his shoulder, yanking it out. "THIS knife! I'm going to need to examine your back!"
So they manage to get him out of his uniform shirt and out of the hauberk and out of the linen shirt under it (because chainmail bites suck, plus it's not nearly as fun as a Brazilian waxjob, because my SCA friend was hairy)...and it turns out he only had a very small scratch from the tip of the knife...which had gotten lodged in the riveted links.
...That was why the guy fainted. He'd stabbed the store clerk, who had turned around angrily, knife still lodged in his back.
Manager was so happy to have hired the guy, as that was the first time in like eight or nine months that the store hadn't been successfully robbed.
[ID: Tweet from AngantĂœr @BasedNorthmathr which says "Chainmail tucked in the trousers. Could be the move". Attached is a selfie from the shoulders down, where the photographer is wearing a black sweatshirt and khaki pants and is pulling up the sweatshirt to show a layer of chainmail tucked into the pants. End ID]
I think I'm gonna start calling it "CBRN ordnance" instead of tear gas, pepper rounds, et al. Just to hammer home the point, y'know. "The cops used teargas against the protestors" You mean the regime deployed proscribed CBRN ordnance in order to pacify the dissident citizens
i do think its really convenient how they name this shit so nonthreateningly. "tear gas" awwww it makes you cry a little haha. wrong. you can go blind.
Having been in the military and personally experienced CS gas, the tears are the *least* objectionable part of the whole business. It burns your lungs, nose, and throat. Over half the guys who came out vomited at least once. The residue stays on your clothes and skin, and a single shower/wash is not enough to get rid of it. It's goddamn awful.
I am so utterly fascinated by âSakiâ, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decadesâ 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 âthe fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheekâ to âthe pussy is completely out on center pageâ 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 âSakiâ donât wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And itâs 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. Itâs because the underwear ran out of places to hide. Iâm obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of âSakiâ, 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 didnât even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I donât 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, âthe one with the big boobsâ, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesnât get lost in the noise. Itâs just that normallyâin like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for exampleânormally 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 youâd go, âWell, this is now untenable.â
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
Itâs like this, okay: thereâs no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. Thereâs a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with âSakiâ is different.
Itâs 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 âleeringâ, 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 itâI canât imagine anyone is making her do thisâbut âSakiâ the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in âSakiâ. 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 âSakiâ, 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 itâs no problem. Itâs 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 âSakiâ, right: itâs just normal that they donât wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. Itâs been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. Itâs just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, itâs in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like whatâs 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 itâs mahjong time now, and weâre playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why Iâm 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??
This was filmed at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which rescues, rehabilitates, and releases orphaned elephants in Kenya (among other conservation efforts). Charity Navigator has given it a 4/4 star rating, and you can make donations here or âadoptâ a baby elephant here.
"Vanderhorst had been under the influence of MDMA and three litres of vodka she had consumed on the night of the offence last September, her lawyer Michael Hill told the court."
The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.
Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?
From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.
âI donât mind characters being trans but I hate that itâs made their whole personality canât it just be that theyâre trans and the narrative doesnât have the call all this attention to it? Just let it be subtly thereâ
Aight hereâs a trans woman whoâs narrative is thematically linked with her transness in a way that enriches both her story, her characterization, and the story around her who doesnât ever mention that sheâs trans (but yâknow she has a trans flag in her room in the background subtly like you asked)
âUhhhh yeah she isnât trans where does it say that sheâs trans and also why would it matter that sheâs trans? Stop projecting yourself onto fictional charactersâ
No matter what you do to make yourself or your work more palatable, the assholes of the world will always make up new reasons to hate. You can't accommodate assholes, because they never wanted to be accommodated, their arguments are just the excuses they're using at the moment to justify being assholes.
