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??
Let's be fair, the Rock is capable of solid line delivery and emotional acting, it's just that he always try stay in his comfort zone of "cool badass action hero" and won't allow his characters to show physical or emotional weakness, limiting his performances.
The Rock has the potential to be a great actor, but his ego is holding him back.
It really pisses me off how grossly culturally ignorant @lonewolf23kâs comment is and how people keep reblogging it uncritically. Dwayne Johnson was THE ONLY A-List Hawaiian actor in Hollywood for over a decade before GoT converted Jason Momoa from a C-lister to an A-lister. He had no choice but to take safe roles that mostly presented him as a Good Role Modelâą. He was THE FACE OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE.
Yâall are really mocking the man who was literally the only token Hawaiian in Hollywood that reached household name status for the entire 2000s for being a victim of typecasting and not taking more career risks?
He has 30x the range of Jason Statham. I thought he did a great job playing socially awkward autism-coded nerd characters in Jumanji (2017) and Central Intelligence (2016). He was admittedly terrible in Black Adam but I blame the direction/the godawful script because even Aldis Hodge was terrible in that movie.
One time I was shopping and found a Chappelle Roan Coloring book and got so excited, and then I opened it up and... it was so ugly. Like it just looked like they put a "line art filter" on some pictures and called it a day. I WAS SO QUIETLY ENRAGED
So I vowed to make my own with black jack and hookers. It's taken awhile and she just keeps having more and more iconic looks that I need to add to the growing library of reference pictures, completely unsorted on my drawing device. But I'm doing it! I'm making it happen! And eventually going to learn book binding so I can just make a few by hand
Hi! I had a question regarding colors and prints on hanfu. In Western society, thereâs an emphasis on making sure childrenâs clothing is gendered (i.e. the âpink aisleâ). Was this a thing with traditional Chinese fashion as well?
Hi! Thanks for the question, and sorry for taking ages to reply! (boy's hanfu photo via ć°ććæ°):
Generally speaking, no -- gendering children's clothing by color was not a thing with traditional Chinese fashion.
Historically in China, color was associated with social class, not gender, as the use of color was influenced by social status and economic ability. Expensive dyes were mostly used by the nobility, while commoners wore colors made from natural dyes.
Common colors for children's clothing - both boys and girls - included red, blue, green, white, beige, and light gray. Red was one of the most popular colors in children's clothing, symbolizing good fortune, happiness, and warding off evil. Blue was commonly worn because its dyes were relatively easy to obtain. Green was often used in everyday clothing and represented youth and vitality. Neutral and light colors were often used for baby swaddling clothes, underwear, and summer clothing. Below - recreations of red, blue, and beige boys' hanfu from the Song (left) & Ming (right) dynasties:
You can see the use of these common colors - red, blue, green, white, beige - in the below paintings from the Song and Ming dynasties. Paintings 1-3 (Song & Ming) each depict an older sister with her younger brother (1/2/3); paintings 4-5 (Song) depict boys at play (1/2); and paintings 6-7 (Ming) depict girls at play (1/2):
Colors that are now considered "for girls" in the West were worn by children of both genders. For example, pink was often referred to as "light scarlet" and was considered a version of red. Red tones (including light scarlet) were often worn by the wealthy and powerful due to the preciousness of the dyes and the complexity of the processing. Therefore, boys of upper-class families would wear pink as a reflection of status. Below - first row: recreations of pink boys' hanfu from the Ming (left) & Song (right) dynasties; second row: paintings of pink girls' hanfu from the Tang dynasty (x):
Purple was also worn by boys of noble/royal families as a reflection of status and privilege, given the expensive cost of purple dye. Below - recreations of purple boys' clothing from the Song (left) & Qing (right) dynasties:
When it came to prints/patterns, boys' clothes were more likely to display dragons and tigers, while girls' clothes were more likely to display phoenixes and butterflies, but most patterns were gender-neutral. For example, the below recreations depict floral patterns on boys' hanfu from the Ming (left) & Song (right) dynasties:
The historical lack of gendered colors and prints allows people recreating children's hanfu to take inspiration from depictions of any gender, as seen below in this adorable recreation of a Tang dynasty boy's hanfu worn by a girl (x):
For more references, please see my childrens hanfu, colors, prints, patterns, motifs, and unisex tags.
hey guys it's time for me to shill for ComicFury again
ever think Man, I want to support artists but I can't afford to be on 60 different Patreons and fifty separate ko-fi subs?
well, you can support ComicFury at Patreon or Kofi instead and through a single donation support the actual hundreds of comic artists hosting there!
ComicFury is one of the only old school webcomic hosting sites still active, with seventeen years of putting its actual community of artists first, including such rarities as a no-ai policy and an active healthy forum with fair and clear moderation.
It's grown a lot in the past year and so needs have grown alongside it, so here I am doing the PBS Style donation drive post, lmao.
Here's Kyo's forum post about it since he's got a fairly concise explanation of what he's hoping to do from here (he didn't ask me to make this post, you can see me on page 4 saying I'll make it unsolicited).
Keep in mind this ask is only if you're in a position to support artists and have been wanting to, but ComicFury has been my comics home for years now and I'd like to see it continue to thrive, especially in the current environment of exploitation, censorship, and other abuse webcomickers have to deal with on other platforms. (because guess what, you can show violence and/or tiddy AND swear all you want on ComicFury as long as you properly rate your comic for it.)
creating Free Webcomic Hosting
Support ComicFury
Obviously Tumblr isn't going to let me blaze this post because it never does, lmao, so reblogs are appreciated!
Secret third option: yes... but no actually, but kinda.
I've had several variations of my birth name all throughout my younger life. It's a unique name that people don't usually spell right by guessing and I don't think it's that hard to pronounce but isn't 100% obvious how to pronounce it just by looking at it. It's also ten letters long. I kept shortening it because I did get bullied, by teachers even (first grade teacher told my parents they had to come up with a nickname because my name was too long for the "name" line on assignments), about my name, it was just too long and spelled weird I guess. At one point in middle school it was a single letter. I hated my full name for a very long time.
And then, as adult, I met Peter S. Beagle while he was out on a movie tour for The Last Unicorn, and he really liked my name. You know there's this thing when you're young where someone says "aww what a pretty name" or "what a beautiful [insert physical trait here] you have" and you don't believe them because they're strangers and they don't know you like that, or it feels they're just saying it to be nice. But that's not what this felt like... this was an author, of a beloved piece of media, who yes we were strangers but in that moment I didn't hate my name, and I didn't really hate it anymore after that either. It didn't feel like he was saying it to be nice, it felt like he was saying it out of genuine awe. And that felt so special, as the child that grew up hating their name because they had been bullied for it.
It feels radical to have changed my mind on my name. Especially after my parents were so sure I was going to change it to something like Raine (and live in a hippie van selling/wearing hemp apparently *deep eye roll*). It feels like I chose it, instead of it being thrust upon me.
I don't know what I would change it to, because nothing is quite as unique as my own name. Not just because it is mine but because I chose it to be mine.
Actually this is an obvious question but itâs not what you might think. Let me explain it to you, Iâve been an opiate addict for a long time and tried many drugs. Drugs that are âuppersâ have the most âobviousâ euphoria. For example if you take adderall/coke/meth/speed/MDMA you will get this shining bright euphoria, self confidence, energy, and other drug-specific feelings (for meth like you are king or for MDMA like you love everyone). However, you owe these drugs back what they delivered to you. After a meth binge, or lots of MDMA use, or staying up all night on coke you will feel like shit. To an extent this aspect is similar to an alcoholic hangover.
On the other hand, for many people who experiment with heroin they are underwhelmed (not including IV usage, but most experimenters rarely ever IV first time). They just feel good, chill, happy, but they feel like this spooky drug âheroinâ hasnât delivered. They are just mellow. Oh obviously it has all been a lie they will think. Heroin isnât spooky, itâs chill. Itâs not addictive like everyone else thinks. It doesnât make you do stupid shit or stay up all day and hallucinate like amphetamines or coke. It doesnât empty your serotonin like MDMA or give you a hangover like alcohol. People tend to just think oh, what a nice drug.
So the next day they wake up and everything is normal. No headache or shitty feelingâjust a slight afterglow of that nice feeling. Oh it was cheap as well! It only cost $10 for a whole night of being high! I thought people said heroin was expensive? And then next weekend comes⊠There are all these drugs I could do but I liked heroin. It didnât fuck me up,âI could still think clearly. No hangover. No feeling like shit later. I still was awake. It just made me happy and content with life. Oh and itâs only $10! Well, I should get some more for the whole weekend. This is great! I will use Heroin on the weekends now!
Now letâs say this person works and has responsibilities. He knows he canât go into work drunk, or on MDMA, or high. So he doesnât. Itâs actually simple. But heroin⊠Well the user might actually find they do better work on heroin. Instead of being sad or grumpy or depressed with his job⊠he is just⊠happy. Mellow. Content. Everything is fine and the world is beautiful. Itâs raining, itâs dark, I woke up at 5:30AM, Iâm commuting in traffic. I would have had a headache, I would have been miserable, I would have wondered how my life took me to this point. This point Iâm at right now. But no, no, everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The rain drops are just falling and in each one I see the reflection of every persons life around me. Humanity is beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus I just found love and peace. Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin makes me who I wish I was. Heroin makes life worth living. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin builds up a tolerance fast. Heroin starts to cost more money. I need heroin to feel normal. I donât love anymore. Now Iâm sick. I canât afford the heroin that I need. How did $10 used to get me high? Now I need $100. That guy that let me try a few lines the first time doesnât actually deal. Oh I need to find a real dealer? This guy is a felon and carries a gunâhe can sell me the drug that lets me find love in the world. No this isnât working, I need to quit.
To answer your question, heroin feels nice. Thatâs all, it just feels very nice. You can make the rest up for yourself. Attach your own half-truths to this drug that will show you the world and for a moment you will feel as clever as Faust.
Edit: Thank you for the kind words. I received help and Iâm doing well now. Luckily I was able to pull up and get help right before I entered the deadly downward spiral. Some of my friends have not done as well. Sorry to steal the limelight from OP
A reply to this from Ifuxdalion
Reading that was more haunting than any anti-drug campaign that Iâve been exposed to. Thanks. A lot.
End of reddit post.
The third image are tags on tumblr. They read #anti-drug campaigns should be run by recovering addicts #cause like #how are you gonna talk honestly about how a drug affects your life if youve never done it #how can you really communicate what it does to your life if you ignore the reasons people do drugs in the first place? #i dont think anyoneâs gonna believe you when you say a drug is bad if you never acknowledge the way the drug makes you feel good #tags
The thing that kills me about this, is that it frankly discusses the general misery and malaise that we put up with in our regular sober lives, and it says straight up that the drug makes it BEARABLE. This is the clearest and most straightforward description of âdrug addiction is not a failure of personal strength and character, it is an attempt to medicate and make survivable the horrifying sociocultural conditions that we are being forced to accept as the normal cost of living.â Itâs the Rat Park drug addiction hypothesis demonstrated in humanity.
Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that âdonât affectâ us and it seriously breaks my heart
[Image description: text from a section titled On Being Endangered: An Afterthought that says:
Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.
We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]
But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?
One thing I really like about Beverly Engel's book It Wasn't Your Fault, which is about PTSD-induced toxic shame, is that quite a bit of it deals with people who haven't broken The Cycle of Abuse (TM) and have gone on to hurt others. That's a really underserved and vulnerable patient population, and statistically, it's also MASSIVE. I don't think I've read a single other self-help type book on PTSD and self-loathing that confronts the possibility that you're exactly as bad as you think you are.
I felt better that it so much as mentioned that children can react to abuse with ungovernable rage. Everybody likes the image of PTSD patients as internalizing everything and becoming doormats, which does happen, and often, but it's not the only narrative. Personally I've always hated my abusers and have always wanted everyone who so much as breathed wrong in my direction from ages 0 to 18 to burn eternally in hell. I *never* thought any of it was my fault and ever since I was a toddler I was willing to make it everybody else's problem, and it's really relieving to read a clinical perspective that acknowledges that abuse victims can act that way too.
It's wild to me that its such a neglected subset of abuse victims. Its really common. When I still lived with my parents and was still subjected to my father every fucking day I would lash out terribly at my mother, to the point when i went to visit them for years afterwards she was afraid I would lash out again. We've worked it out, I'm a much better person when I'm not regularly subjected to mental and emotional abuse, but like, its just so common.
I think it must be, at least partially, because, people hate the imperfect victim. Its easy for so many people to sympathize with someone who never lashed out. Less so for people to sympathize with people who are angry and lash out. Even though its a perfectly sensible reaction to being hurt over and over. I'm sure most people would like to think they would simply never.
I don't think this is the whole reason, but, I think it plays into it.
ok I am fascinated by the results of this poll, because it's clearly not a fandom preference split, and also because it's really fucking funny. so, what do YOU think is the reason for the Star Trek option winning the poll above? Please do reblog!
Why do most people trust a star trek shirt wearer more than a star wars shirt wearer?
star trek shirt = DEFINITELY a nerd; star wars shirt = MAYBE a nerd
star wars is more often referenced/co-opted by awful tech bros (eg Elon Musk)
star trek is more foundationally about building a crosscultural utopia
star trek fans are seen as nicer/more harmless/more helpful than star wars fans
star trek has a more chill/more welcoming online fandom (???)
star trek characters are usually more helpful and selfless than star wars chars
it's a completely different reason, you fool! I will say in tags!
When The Force Awakens teaser trailer first came out, there was a group of Star Wars fans so noisily and virulently racist & sexist that they lost their shit over a two second clip of a black man's face and the centralized presence of a woman character.
In my anecdotal experiences with fans of both properties, as well as having love for both myself, the people I have come across that like Star Wars and have never seen Star Trek are very incel or incel adjacent. Most of the other folks I know like both properties, I do not often come across people that only like Star Trek and are meh on Star Wars.
The Star Wars fans I know focus on the cool factor of it all, which is totally fair, laser sword that goes SWOOSH is genuinely cool, it's not much deeper than that. And for the people that it goes deeper... the way their interests go deeper is in being in roles of power in the systems of Star Wars. Like in the trade federation (juicy capitalism), as a senator in the Republic (delicious politics), as a Jedi master (like being in the clergy but with laser swords that go SWOOSH, but also a cop). The fantasy these folks have is to be within systems, but they don't even acknowledge that.
In comparison to Star Trek fans, yeah some want to be a part of Star Fleet which is its own system that is military (but totally in the name of science and not war guys *wink wink*) BUT I also hear folks talking about what it would be like to live as an every day guy in the series, to say how nice it would be to just exist in that setting. I don't really hear about someone wanting to be an every day guy in the series from Star Wars fans because the setting is not kind to the every day guy. And they don't seem all that eager to investigate why that is.
Tldr a stranger in a Star Trek shirt is more likely to have dreams of just getting to have their little things but in space, maybe, but a stranger in a Star Wars shirt has dreams of having power in systems unkind to the every day little guy.
Why do people who try to get me to watch certain anime leave out the details that actually matter to me in their sales pitch. Would have watched Berserk sooner if someone told me there was a hot devil lady.
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