Phelanw0lf

1985. He/they/siya. Filipino. Tabletop gaming enabler. Thoughts on RPGs, wargames, miniatures, politics and Filipiniana. Former writer for Tom's Guide and Xbox Outsider, volunteer for Gamers & Gaming Meets PH

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite things in urban fantasy literature is when an author clearly likes the idea of wizard boarding school drama, but wants to avoid getting any Harry Potter stink on them and tries to accomplish that by simply bluntly inverting all the stuff they regard as problematic, and in so doing independently reinvents the X-Men.

[wearemercs]

Study by Krenz

[r4zberry]

medieval knight or something

[existennialmemes]

"I asked ChatGPT" you did silicon valley divination is what you did. Look at it, it's hallucinating worse than the tea leaves.

[existennialmemes]

Honestly it's extremely on brand that the tech bros reinvented divination just to make it worse.

[eisenkrahe]

[askrobouteguilliman40k]

There is one mechwarrior mech I want, because of the lore.

A Marauder.

Why?

The Black Marauder, the almost elderich mech, found in an abandon Shrine, works better at night, brain washed those in close proximity to it.... And according to a drunk pirate, has to many teeth and eyes in the dark.

It's pilot does not refer to himself, he says "We" when talking about him or the mech.

Now sadly, this is supernatural stuff.... Which is not canon, which makes me sad. Mechwarrior could use some space magic, I mean, the major telecoms corp made a zombie virus and dress like wizards.

[agbpaints]

Nah I prefer the approach Marauder takes that leaves it ambiguous. IMO the Dark One isn't cool because it's supernatural, it's cool because it's a ghost story. The edges of the setting being a bunch of messy unconfirmed question marks, conspiracies, and legends is fun

[pain-in-the-bass-blog]

My personal opinion is that there's no reason it couldn't be true...but not because of supernatural stuff. We know lostek era experiments could be absolutely out there, I think I remember a campaign involving an AI basically zombifying a Capellan planet?

What if the Black Marauder is some escaped testbed for something? Some rogue AI, or maybe a human-machine interface gone horribly wrong, or nanomachines, or something. Sweet man-made horrors beyond my comprehension.

[agbpaints]

You're both remembering Necromo Nightmare. The Broken (the AI) is not directly responsible for the zombie virus (which is of the 28 days later viral madness variety), it's just Also There.

But yes. Black Kevin Langstrom is a matter of historical record in setting so there is some kernel of truth. There's absolutely a skeptical reading where a young and stressed pilot exposed to prototype interface tech has a psychotic break and then reinvents himself as a savvy monster with an element of supernatural power to survive on the superstitious criminal outskirts of the periphery. It could also be something actually malevolent from beyond human comprehension. The marauder walking without a pilot is explainable with mundane tech. The reoccurring theme of pilots vanishing from their mechs without a struggle and leaving behind the neurohelmet? Less so.

[ryuuka-balaen]

I mean. unexplainable space magic around mechs is a pretty established thing, the easiest example being the phantom mech ability shown by Morgan Kell

[shittysawtraps]

can i be a big hater about something unrelated for a second

[shittysawtraps]

ok awesome

so i have finished a psychological thriller novel, and have begun the process of doing research so i can prepare to query agents. now, my novel has some pretty intense triggers in it, so i am aware it’s a bit of a hard sell– that being said, many agents have a “do not send me your novel if it has these things” list, so that’s what I’m looking for so i don’t accidentally trigger someone.

so i’m going down this list, and i find this agent. their “do not send me” list includes the following: non-consent/sexual violence, age gaps, teacher/student relationships, stalkers, cheating, everyone dies at the end, miscarriage/pregnancy, and abuse masked as love.

okay, cool! everyone has different tolerances for stuff, and it’s perfectly reasonable to not want to be involved with a story that has stuff you’re uncomfortable with. not the agent for me, but good on them for defining their boundaries.

but then i scroll back up and they’re requesting for gothic horror.

excuse me?????????

gothic horror without pregnancy or miscarriage? gothic horror without cheating? without stalking? gothic horror without major character deaths? GOTHIC HORROR WITHOUT ABUSE BEING FRAMED AS LOVE AND THE INTERROGATION OF THAT DYNAMIC?????

HEY CAN I GET A GOTHIC HORROR WITH NOTHING???

THAT’S JUST A STORY ABOUT A BIG HOUSE

[dummy-dot-exe]

Circe Akira Slide!! by Monkey Jon@Monkey_Jon007

[allottavabassa]

Sometimes a family is you, your kohai, her estranged sister, your homeroom teacher, and King Arthur

[phelanw0lf]

WIP Hassassin's Creed-style Ayyar (Infinity, Corvus Belli). Fun piece to work on. Lot of small bits to clean up but she's mostly there.

[santapau]

New Secret Knots comic, "The River". I hope you like it!

The Secret Knots comics are made possible by my patrons. Check out my pledge tiers if you'd like to be one of them.

[timemachineyeah]

Spirit Animal is racist.

Patronus was invented by a transphobe.

I think it’s time we all suck it up and say what we mean: fursona.

[xxlovelynovaxx-deactivated20241]

I know this is a jokey post (rip OPs notes) but a fursona is typically an animal REPRESENTATION of YOURSELF, not an external animal that is strongly meaningful to you and your life/journey.

I've seen daemon and familiar proposed, but to keep in line with the cursedness of the original post, may I suggest: spiritual tamagotchi

[timemachineyeah]

do you have any idea how refreshing it is to see a correction/suggestion to this post that actually understands the assignment

[valeriehalla]

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????

[purseownervolatile]

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??

[lexiiii-vt]

Like this, mostly.

[tonights-episode]

[doubleca5t]

The boobs thing is arguably even funnier

[lexiiii-vt]

I have an important update to this saga:

In chapter 299, the main character unleashes a special attack (???), and immediately after, her boobs DEFLATE BACK DOWN TO A REASONABLE SIZE

And then later in the match, she has to use another special move

And now she's completely flat-chested

In Saki, magical mahjongg power is literally stored in the boobs, which in my opinion is the best possible explanation for all this.

[landofwindandskyscrapers]

Important updates!!!

[realfroghoursninetofive]

New science from the saki panties and boobs post

[ingridverse]

[diaryofandnwoman]

[beyoursledgehammer]

2022

Nicholas Galanin

Native American (Tlingit/Unangax̂), born 1979

Full title: Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum)

[qqchurch]

[phelanw0lf]

Six inspecting my terrain layout for Five Parsecs from Home and watching math rocks go click clack.

[enki2]