Time brings all things to pass. There are no second chances. There's only this moment and the next, where everything you want will collide with everything standing in your way. Purpose and meaning are not to be found in the laws of nature. It is our job to create them. As we journey into the vast emptiness of the universe and seek fellowship among the stars. We are the architects of the future. This is our empire.
What if All Might actually stuck around to go into a bit more depth as to why he told Midoriya no on that rooftop? This continued until my mind decided he wasn't saying no anymore. â Sludge Villain Incident, Yagi Toshinori | All Might-centric, What-If, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence â Midoriya Izuku & Yagi Toshinori | All Might
One time when my dad was in the hospital they were testing his orientation to time and place and said "Okay and what year is it?" and he said "1995" (he had dementia). And the doctor and I unconsciously exchanged a Look because it was in fact uhhh 2024 đ and dad saw that and so when the next doctor did the test a few hours later he said "uhhhh...nineteen...nintetyyyy.......seven...???" and I was like okay, well, that IS closer, you do have to give him that
#he still knew immediately who I was which was deeply funny to me bc I was 7-8 years old in 1997 #"yes that is my daughter who was apparently born in her 20s"
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??
When I visited The Faroe Islands a year ago the best story my friend/guide told me was about The Criminal. And by that I mean they had One Criminal.
Sure they had more minor criminals who did a bit of stealing and stuff but the islands were such a tight knit community people didnât really do crimes because the social cost of being caught were too big.
Except this one guy who had schizophrenia. People werenât afraid of him because he had never hurt anyone before until one random day he shot a politician with a harpoon.
The politician survived and the man went to prison where he did his time and for years after that whenever important people would visit the islands the police didnât waste money on following them around, instead they sent one police officer to hang out with the harpoon guy for the day.
since there is such an "english speakers who don't even try to pronounce a foreign mame correctly" epidemic, native english speakers often try to overcorrect and end up thinking they have a moral imperative to pronounce every foreign name correctly at all times. so i'm gonna hold your hand and look into your eyss as i say this: you can't. you can't pronounce every sound in a language you don't speak. and that's fine. it happens to the rest of us too. we won't be mad so long as you try your best.
âI did some research to pronounce this name correctlyâ = đ great! even if the pronunciation was still off (and learning to pronounce a foreign language correctly takes a lot of practice) people generally appreciate it when someone goes the extra mile for accuracy, and honestly, languages are cool
âIâm probably not saying that correctlyâ/âsorry for my pronunciationâ = đ understandable! foreign languages often have sounds that arenât used in English and learning to correctly pronounce unfamiliar phonemes is genuinely difficult even with help
âlol Iâm not even gonna TRY to pronounce that đâ = đ THIS is the problem, if treats languages other than English like they are inherently âweirdâ or âoverly complicatedâ just because you arenât familiar with them
âOne thousand apologies for my butchering of this beautiful effervescent tongue, I will now flagellate myself as punishment for my crimesâ = đ chill
OP: My brush control practice for Chinese shufa/calligraphy (cr仄ćè”)
(Cnetizens: There is no single fixed grip for calligraphy brushes. The so-called standard grip only exists to help beginners get used to handling a calligraphy brush â itâs not mandatory for everyone. In theory, as long as your calligraphy turns out well, you can hold the brush however feels right.)
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it