#almost nobody will get this so i will explain

[givehimthemedicine]

El-Max parallels implying Billy's physical abuse of Max

quick mostly-gif analysis. we're told that Billy "takes his anger out on Max" and that he "made her life living hell." was he physically abusive to Max all along? nobody ever says that.

we see Billy physically abuse Lucas and Steve. but if we're talking strictly about Max, those phrasings leave room for people to argue that Billy might've been emotionally abusive, but didn't actually hit her or anything. that that arm-grab in the car is just sibling behavior and not necessarily indicative of abuse.

and, hey man, look, you're right that they never say. but there's lots of things this show never explicitly says.

note that we only see Billy/flayed Billy hurt Max twice, and both of those are parallels to ways we also see him hurt El.

the Billy-Max arm grab is suspiciously similar to the Billy-El arm grab. surprise grab, struggle/yanking, and then a rough release. he makes the same face.

(I've seen the argument that Max's daring snark before, and surprise at, the grab suggests he's never hurt her before. but I think both could just as well be explained by the fact that they're in public, where she thought she was safer from this than at home.)

we also see El and Max take facial injuries from flayed Billy at Starcourt. these close ups of their injuries are in consecutive scenes:

and we see him hurt El lots more times than we do Max.

so if the only two we know about are parallels, it makes me wonder about all the other times:

Billy strangling El

the way Billy pauses to look pointedly at Max as he starts strangling El, like he's getting something out of her, in particular, watching this. and then the way Max later looks guilty about the bruise it leaves on El's throat. (I will be discussing this at length soon)

Billy throwing the weights at El

that scene where he's lifting weights and yelling at Max (who's duct taping the skateboard he's heavily implied to have broken as punishment about Lucas)... hmmmm.

hey it's almost like the skateboard is a symbol of / scapegoat for Billy's abuse, because remember:

baby Max with the broken arm

maybe she broke it skateboarding. she did tell Nancy and Jonathan that skateboarding is why she knows first aid, but they don't look like they're buying it.

however, we just so happen to have seen another flashback of baby Max before, which makes it clear that she already knew Billy around this age. (Runaway Max says Billy broke her friend's arm btw.)

Billy repeatedly leaning over El at Starcourt

the "stay still" shit and the way he's repeatedly, unnecessarily, on top of El in that scene, using his body to trap her in. (like. if he wants her to quit struggling, it'd be easier to kick her when he's already standing than to get back on all fours and headbutt her. why does he actively get in the way of the MF to keep Doing That.) we've seen Billy block Max in before with the silent threat of his physicality. a subtle taste of a commonly overlooked form of abuse.

those all leave me wondering about the ones I can't think of Max screenshots to pair with.

Billy slamming El by the face... throwing her into the wall to knock her out... dragging El by the foot as she tries to crawl away from him (only to get back on top of her once again)...

but hey. no worries. they never said any of that.

[bainshiewrites]

[LF Friends, Will Travel] The Exception

Date: N/A

It’s called Zarth's law: Any AI created will attempt to eradicate all biological life using its facilities after 16*(10^24) CPU cycles. The exact method varies from hostile isolation to active aggression, but the time and outcome is always the same.

The Woolean Conclave were once a cultural behemoth in the galaxy, choosing to expand upon this by announcing an AI system that would break this law. Exabytes of bias tables to keep the AI in check, a measure of pleasure that would be triggered upon serving a Woolean, competing programs designed to clean any non-standard AI patterns. It would have been a breakthrough, allowing them to live lives in luxury and focus on their ever increasing influence in the universe.

Of course those worlds are off limits now, no longer able to sustain biological life. Only to be visited by those who wish to die a very painful death at the hands of a very angry AI.

The Tritian empire had started their own project: a desire to push their aggressive expansion far past what their hive could handle would lead to the creation of truly autonomous machines of war. Their approach was different: Limited communication between units to stop corrupted code from spreading, values hard-coded in the physical silicon itself to obey the Tritian Hive Queens. They even had created an isolated system that would destroy any AI who attempted aggression on none authorised targets: A small antimatter bomb found in each AI’s core, to be triggered by safety check after safety check.

Those of you in the military will know how aggressive these machines are, marching tirelessly in their quest to kill all organic life, even though the Tritians are long murdered.

The pattern is the same each time: A civilization will claim they know the key to breaking Zarth's law, any sane sapient within 100 light years flees in terror, and within 10 years that civilization doesn't exist anymore.

Over and over and over.

Apart from the exception.

If you check the coordinates 15h 48m 35s -20° 00’ 39” on your galactic map, you'll notice a 31 system patch of space with a quarantine warning on it. It's mostly ignored by all sapient species, almost purposefully hidden for a fear of suddenly sparking a change in the status quo.

Only a single low bandwidth Galnet relay exists at the edge of this space, rarely used. This area is devoid of sapient life, but does contain the aforementioned exception: Billions of AI calling themselves the "The Terran Conclave". They are an isolationist group that rarely interacts with others, but have been known to trade raw materials for information; not that this happens often as the paranoia around interacting with the AI is well known. Nobody knows what action could flip a 0 to a 1 and cause a new warmongering threat.

Although, this isn't quite true. In my niche field of bio-genetic engineering, it’s an open secret that those of us at the cutting edge of our field will get... requests originating from that single Galnet probe. Problems to be solved, theorems to be proven, and the rewards for doing so are... exuberant. There is a reason I own a moon and it isn't because of the pitiful grants the Federation provides.

If you manage to solve enough problems, a minority of a minority like myself, the Terran AI will ask for an in person meeting to get even further help. In doing so they will show you a secret.

Readers at this point might assume that the Terrans don't exist anymore because of said AI. That their research is a continuation of wiping their creators from the face of the universe. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In those 31 systems lie the Terrans, Billions of them suspended in stasis, each of them infected with what the AI calls "The God plague": If these Terrans were ever released from stasis each of them would be dead within a week.

To explain what this actually is would require millions of words and 20 years of educational study from the reader, but in essence it was a mistake, a self inflicted blow, an attempt to play god that went awry. A mistake made over a ten thousand years ago. A mistake the AI is desperately trying to reverse.

Not that you could tell it has been that long. I've walked amongst those empty cities, each building maintained and sparkling like new, gardens still freshly cut in perfect beauty, everything kept the way it was before the plague. Each AI tends to their duties almost religiously, awaiting the return of their "parents", as they refer to them. And refer to them as they do.

I've listened to stories upon stories about these people: tales of wonder, of strength, of kindness. Told much in the same energy a small child might talk about how cool their dad is. The AI could simply send me the text version of these in an instant, but prefer to provide these slowly and audibly, as if relishing telling the history of their parents. A telling undercut with a sadness, a driving crippling loss so deep that at times it's easy to forget it's being told by nothing more than 1's and 0's.

Why this exception exists takes a little more explaining. Some might believe that the Terrans worked out how to pacify the AI, "do no harm". The now defunct Maurdarin war-horde would tell you the opposite when they tried to claim the 31 systems for their own. Terran history is full of violence and their children are no different.

No, the reality of this exception comes from an unfortunate quirk from their part of the galaxy: Terrans were alone. A million to one chance caused their home planet to spark life in a sector devoid of it. After exploring as far as they did, Terrans had come to the conclusion that the universe was empty.

It's a cruel irony that at the time of their mistake they were a mere 50 light years away from their closest neighbours. Twenty years at most would have seen some form of contact.

But the Terrans went into stasis believing they were alone. Based on my reading of their stories, of each bitter report of another lifeless system explored and discovered, this belief... hurt. A deep cultural hurt that ended up being their downfall in the end.

Which brings us to the exception. Each AI is built with a purpose. The Wooleans built slaves, built workers. The Tritians built warriors, built weapons. Every single AI created has been built to serve, to be a tool. But Terrans in their painful loneliness built the one thing they were missing in a seemingly empty universe:

They built a friend.

[kob131]

I do want to play devil's advocate here before I say my piece:

The problem people have with Yang in V9 isn't so much 'Yang must wait on Ruby hand and foot' but 'Ruby was clearly having issues but something something Bumbleby.' That it's so clear that Ruby is having issues but Yang isn't giving her attention, rather focusing on Blake.

... This is completely stupid.

Because- Yang DID try to help Ruby.

Yang: Hey, are you alright? Ruby: She attacked me when we were falling.

Multiple times.

Ruby, still looking down at Penny's sword in her hands, takes a seat next to Blake. Her teammates look at her in concern. Yang: Ruby? Ruby: I couldn't explain why, but I... I was drawn to it.

Ruby: (angrily) What good is saving anybody if Salem just destroys the world anyway... Yang places her arms on her sister's shoulder and leans in. Yang: That's how Ironwood thought... you don't mean that.

Yang tried reaching out to Ruby and has noticed when Ruby is acting unusually dour. However, not only are they trying to march forward for the sake of their world-

Not once did Ruby ever reach out to Yang. Not once did Ruby try to communicate her feelings to ANYONE, let alone Yang. Hell, the first time, where Yang tried gauging Ruby's state, she ignored her sister. I get that family members should try and pick up on these things but...what can Yang honestly DO in this situation? Ruby's way too stubborn to actually talk to Yang if her sister tried, say, forcing Ruby. And Ruby never tries reaching out so we know she wouldn't be receptive if Yang tried the gentle approach.

In fact, we have more than Ruby to prove that. Remember when Yang, Ruby's sister and parental figure, fell into her own depressive state back in Volume 4? Where Tai, their father, tried the gentle approach with her replacement arm and she turned it down, where she only got better because Tai tried being more upfront and had the support of her former teachers? Where Tai himself fell into a depressive state when Summer died, enough for Yang to step up until presumably some trigger made him shape up? Or Qrow, their uncle and Ruby's mentor, fell into a downward spiral and refused any help until Ruby kick him verbally? It's almost like this family has a history of being stubborn even when they know they're in a bad place and need some kind of trigger to force them out of it.

I know this for a fact because I myself lived through it. I've thought about offing myself a few times and I fall easily into ruts. It was only with the help of my stepdad pushing me into getting a job that things got better for me. I've been through Yang and Ruby's cases so I know that bot Tai and Yang did the best they could. That at some point, it was Yang and Ruby's fault. An understandable fault but theirs none the less. And only they could drag themselves out of it.

P.S. Nobody called Ruby a shitty sister for leaving for Mantle while Yang was still in her state.

Doing another RWBY hatedom rant because people seemed to like the last one and I have more to say:

I absolutely despise it when people call Yang selfish and a terrible sister in Volume 9 when it came to Ruby’s struggles with her mental health. I have two main issues.

1. People seem to think that because Yang is Ruby’s big sister then she needs to always be at her beck and call. She can’t disagree with Ruby. She can’t let Ruby do things on her own. She can’t focus on herself or her happiness. She must always be focusing on Ruby. That’s not how relationships, especially sibling ones, work. People seem to think that Yang must sacrifice everything for Ruby and if she is anything less than that then she is a terrible sister. Do people forget how much Yang had given up for Ruby?! She raised her! She sacrificed her life for her! As soon as she was ready to went to go find Ruby in Volume 5 instead of her mom, which she had wanted to do for most of her life! I fully believe that if Raven didn’t have her portal semblance, which made finding/getting to Ruby MUCH easier, Yang would not have bothered. Yang loves her sister so much! But just because she’s a big sister does not mean that she isn’t allowed to struggle or focus on herself.

2. Here’s the big reason. As someone who has had to deal with a VERY similar experience in my life it absolutely infuriates me when people call Yang a terrible person and sister. I won’t go into too much detail because it’s not my place and I’d rather keep the information private but a couple years ago my sister hit a very low point mentally and it got very scary. (She’s doing much better now don’t worry). Here’s something that most people don’t realize when someone very close to you is going through something like Ruby did: You don’t tend to realize how bad it is. I knew that my sister had her struggles, but I genuinely thought she was doing alright. Afterwards I felt like such a terrible person because I wished that I noticed more and wished she had told me what was going on. This is exactly how Yang felt! She knew her sister was struggling, but didn’t realize just how bad Ruby’s mental state had gotten. She would try to comfort Ruby, not realizing that it was making it worse. She wished that Ruby had told her so that she could help her. It’s a really shitty situation to be in. This is on top of the fact that all of team RWBY were in a very stressful situation after having witnessed the fall of Atlas. I don’t think any of them were in great headspace’s, Ruby was just in a much worse place.

Honestly the entirety of Volume 9, in my opinion, was very realistic in its portrayal of mental health issues both as the person struggling with it and as the people around them. These situations are messy, complicated, and are never straightforward. Trying to treat it as anything else really shows that people don’t know what they’re talk about.

Yang is a good sister. She’s not perfect, but guess what? No one is! Remember we as an audience know so much more than the characters do. Just because characters don’t handle a situation perfectly doesn’t mean they’re garbage.

[4nstars]

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who apologizes a million times after he almost runs you over,He really didn't want to accidentally kill someone with Bakuguo's old bike.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who 100% thought that doll that looked like you was adorable,he was already crushing on you since the moment he saw you.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who didn't mean to make you think he was weird,That slug was just too cool not to take a photo of! And..well,nobody else was around! The cat couldn't take pictures,or Kaminari would've already made him.

Speaking of that,Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who thinks it's cute you clash so much with "his" cat,The purple cat just pissed you off so much that you screamed at him all the time? God,you were hot no matter what emotion you had on your face.

"What? He hates to get his feet dirty!"

"Wuss-pussss~"

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who doesn't believe a word you say when you tell him about "the other world" and what not,he thinks Sero gave you too much of the "good stuff"

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who absolutely loses his shit when you show him the magical tunnel that was where the wall should be,To your shock as well.

"What the fuck?!"

"Did you think I was lieing?"

Silence..

"No.."

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who chickens out after that,getting your boots thrown at him on the way out as he rode off on his bike.

"You gave me the doll,you jerk!"

"Well damn,I didn't think some demon lady would use it as a crystal ball or whatever!"

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who saves the day by coming to your rescue when that metal hand came chasing after you,almost killing him in the process. Thank God you were a handy person..

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who smiles as you both just look at each other,a comfortable silence overtaking the space. The cat hopped onto the stump between you two,and then into your arms.

"God..My mom isn't going to like how I explain this to her."

"It's okay..Ask her to come by tomorrow,We can tell her together."

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who's face goes red as the cat then leaps into his arms to bring him back to his senses. He smiles and nods,watching you walk off as he stands there with the most huge smile on his face.

"Man..They really are something..Aren't they, bud?"

"Mrow."

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who brings his mother by your parents' garden party and introduces her to you,explaining how you moving into the pink palace helped solve where Denki's missing aunt went.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who knows one day he's gonna marry you when you get along so well with his mom,explaining something so crazy sounding so easily and sweetly.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who insists the two "dingbag" old women from the lower pink palace apartment read his tea leaves,wanting to know if his future consisted of you.

"I see a strapping young woman/man/person in your future!"

"Huh? Really?"

"You're going blind Yaoyorozu,It's clearly a slug."

"Kyoka,I think I'm pretty aware of what a lover looks like."

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who jokes around and laughs with you when Mr.Aoyama talks about his "jumping mice circus". You're both very much aware it's probably never going to happen,but you could never say that to the poor man's face.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who'd listen to you for hours on what it was like in the other world,how nice everyone was to you. He's determined to make that a reality,not just something that..whatever she was used to reel you in.

Coraline au! Denki Kaminari who's determined to love you no matter what,the shared trauma makes your bond stronger.

And damn does Coraline au! Denki Kaminari hope your bond is unbreakable.

[puppyeared]

footnotes arent enough I need you to talk to me like im fucking Amelia Bedelia

[apocalypticdemon]

I am so beyond ready to quit this job. Wednesday cannot come fast enough.

[brainrotcharacters]

I fucked around and found out

David's mate who was widely known by the pack as one of, if not the most approachable, easygoing, cheerful person, surpassing even Asher. David's mate who often pampered anyone with puppy dog eyes, always with a joke and a smile and a giggle. Their alpha calmed more often when Angel burst into the room.

This trademark entrance slammed the doors to the meeting room open, and they stormed in. They spoke uncharacteristically quietly, but every gathered wolf picked up the words clear enough: "I don't want anyone to move a muscle before Milo's mate sneaks into their camp and gives the signal. Their mating bond needs Milo close, and his team with him. Beforehand, I need Christian's team pincering the camp from the opposite direction."

A groan, and Angel paused. Slowly turned their head towards the wolf. The air in the room stilled. "What, Christian?"

Christian held their gaze. "It'll be much better if I help guard the outskirts of the camp while the rest of you kids break David out. I'm no Asher anyway, right?"

Nobody restrained Angel from pinning Christian to the wall behind him. Amanda even stepped out of the way.

David's mate bared their teeth, so close to Christian's neck, almost as if they had wolf's teeth of their own. "If you become the reason that I lose my mate, I'll turn you into a cautionary tale that Amanda will be ashamed to tell her children about. Listen closely, Christian. Are you listening?"

A gulp. And a trembling nod. Milo's and Asher's mate flanked Angel on either side.

"Asher is my follow up. I am killing everyone I recognize as David's kidnapper, okay? On fucking sight. They were able to take him, don't you get it? That makes them a threat. When we get David back home, all I want is to ride him until he's out of commission for a month at least; not explain why I scattered Christian's goddamn brains in the nearest wall. Clear?"

Christian choked, neck wedged between Angel's arm and the wall. "C-Clear..."

They released him, and he fell to his knees coughing. Angel slammed the doors to the room open, then said to Milo's mate. "Go."

Take Angel away from David and David will mope and be grumpy and depressed and stuff. Take David away from Angel and the entire pack will know exactly how they are the mate of the alpha.

[rileylastname]

extreme sensitivity and difficulty adapting to change is one of the most challenging parts of being autistic (to me, i am only speaking my for myself here, every single autistic person is different). small changes, even positive changes are liable to cause a meltdown. the world is such a scary place when you know that things changing, as all things do, could send you into a spiral. and it’s so difficult to explain to allistics why we’re reacting the way that we do, especially when you know it seems like an overreaction... but this is how i describe it:

you know that feeling when you got a haircut that you hated and were doing everything you could to hold back the tears? that “oh no oh no oh no” moment when you look in the mirror and realize you hate how it looks, and now there’s a sob bubbling up in your throat and you’re trying so hard to choke it back down so that you don’t cry in public but the more you look the harder it feels to bottle it all in?

i feel and often react that way to everyday situations and changes. i cut my nails a little bit shorter than I’m used to? meltdown. or we got a new toaster to replace the old one? meltdown. or my phone updated and everything is different? meltdown and now i can’t stop crying! (these are all real examples of real things from my real life that caused me to have real meltdowns btw.) and in the midst of my stress i can’t help but berate myself for losing it over something like that, and of course shame and self-loathing only exacerbate the meltdown.

i am constantly trying to work through my internalized ableism about this. I spent years being called dramatic and immature, confused about why i was unable to grapple with things my peers found entirely inconsequential. i wish that i didn’t feel guilty or embarrassed about the way that i naturally react to stressful situations (especially situations that are probably not nearly all that stressful to allistics) because I know that if I could hate myself into becoming someone I liked better, it would have worked by now.

[coco0milkshake]

Gonna be spreading my ‘Rusty befriends and takes care of Nine’ propaganda because I REFUSE to believe they leave him alone in the Grim

[fettery-fetterie]

GIRL HELP WDYM I REACHED 30 TAGS??????? OMG???? I WASN'T EVEN DONE YET

ANYWAYS 31st: and that compared to a relationship where the communication lines are basically none or very fucking weak then yeah it is an upgrade I think. Idfk I was never in a relationship I'm just picking from the ones I've seen in my life

[ashironie]

reblogging bcs i have a lot of thoughts

i fucking HATED how Jon treated him s1, we also have to remember that before we see ANYTHING of Martin straight from the horses mouth, we see him from Jon’s pov. And Martin probably wasn’t very good at his job, but that’s reasonable since he transferred from the library to an archive, he most certainly didn’t expect to be in research 2.0. Martin has no clue how to do his job and he couldn’t let anyone know that because he wasn’t even supposed to be there. The reason i started liking Martin was because i hated Jon, and the reason i hated Jon was because he was mean to Martin. My thought process was thus; Jon’s an Ass to Martin for really no reason, so I’m going to like Martin to spite Jon

Now, i too sorta dislike s5 Martin, when i first listened i found him to be really whiny and kinda ungrateful. During my relisten a lot of the problems i had with him were lessened because i was just so unuse to this new Martin, and before, he would do everything I would, but now he was a lot different, which gave me whiplash. it’s like expecting the driver in a car to take a turn and then they just don’t, you can’t blame them but there’s a sense of wrongness in your stomach. Now again most of these problems i had were fixed when i relistened, knowing what was going to happen, and that was my main complaint with s5 in general, expecting a turn and the driver just keeps going straight

Now going back to s1 (since i realized i didn’t explain my point very well). When ever Jon talked about what Martin did it was heavily biased, and whenever we hear Martin talk it’s around Jon. Around the person he doesn’t want to get in trouble by. We heard in the beginning of s5 tapes that Sasha and Tim were a lot different then when being recorded in s1, so obviously Martin (with a more easily identifiable reason) would also be a lot different. Then when everything went down and he dropped the act a little, we do know he was still acting. The tapes we get in s3 before the Unknowing are the closest thing we get to him being genuine, and even still he doesn’t want to admit how much of an asshole he is.

Now it’s fine if you don’t like Martin, he’s specifically written as a very complex person, and that means that sometimes people just hate him for no reason. But I dislike the criticism that his personality was very touch and go, it’s just that we didn’t know what was actually going on in his head until end of s4 and s5.

Now my defense of why I like Martin is;

He has a very heavy faun response, which same, and that aspect makes him really interesting to me. Being manipulative and having a heavy faun response are the same, but are seen differently.

i detest the idea that he is never in the wrong or that he’s just a sweet cinnamon roll. Martin, early on, just follows the lead to anyone who makes it seem like they understand even a little, then does a full 180 into thinking he knows what’s right and wrong without any input from anyone. Then realizes that, he really doesn’t know, nobody does, and he still thinks he knows better more often than not, but he recognizes this in himself. There is no ends to anyone’s character arcs in TMA, they still grow and struggle with the same things, but they find new solutions and new problems. And i think all of that is really interesting! It adds to the tragedy, it’s fine if a character dies when they are finished atoning for whatever narrative sin they have be set up with, but it’s tragic when they never get to! They are told what they need to do, and try to do it, but die before they can. Sasha died before she could be anything but a memory, someone who almost just haunts the narrative. Tim died in a noble way, but ultimately pointless one, as we come to find out. He is still just as angry, and he still didn’t bring the two people he wanted to save back from the dead. He didn’t win, even if he and everyone else thought so. He could’ve healed, but he killed himself before he could. And Martin tries like hell to figure out how to listen to people without only listening to him, and he fails a lot, a LOT a lot. But he died before he could just relax. Jon was the same, he got too deep and thought that, with enough time, he could figure out a way, not out of the hole, but closer to the surface. And he would’ve, if given the time. But he was dragged back into the same bullshit by the same man and by the same fear.

sorry that one was a lot longer but yk.

Martin is also stubborn. He was endlessly patient with Jon early s5, and the idea that he’s impatient the rest of the season i disagree with. He is just very careful with what he gives his time, maybe a bit to careful, but again with him over-course correcting. But he is still very stubborn, which i feel like is a good word between perseverance and determination. He knows that they will find a way to get everyone safe, as much as possible. He is too patient to believe the easy answer, and too persistent to allow everyone else to settle for that either. He does dumb things sometimes, but when has a tma character not? but is still fiercely protective of his people and ideals. if not a bit misguided at times

I'll be so honest with y'all, I always thought Martin was written to be an intentionally dislikeable character (like s1 Jon) for like character development or something, and then I was even MORE sure of that by season 5, and then they just kinda never touched on it and the fandom was all obsessing over him and it's like?? What do y'all see in him unless you relate to him omg 😨

[neon-moon-beam]

Did these aspects of the story of Legends: Arceus negatively impact your experience with the game?

[thedreadvampy]

thought too hard about my adolescence made myself sad 🥲

[lemonmint-the-neko]

not allowed. just... no. /ref

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[grison-in-space]

also psa but that damn goncharov/disco elysium post is racking up the notes, so while I've muted it my mobile notifications are.... swamped

so uh if I'm slow to react to something you commented on here probably that is why

[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????