I realize Mdme. Guillotine is one of the gods of the online left, but she is a god of murder and cruelty that delights in that. Of course, that is why she is so popular- like Trump, she gives you permission to be your worst self, and in fact says your worst self is your best self.
Fun fact: the guillotine in France became such a symbol of state tyranny, repression of public will, arbitrary punishment, and general cruelty afterwards that during the 1871 Paris Uprising, the Communards symbolically burned them in public!
Fun fact: so many people were executed by guillotine on a given day during the height of the Reign of Terror, for reasons such as "being Christian", "Refusing to hand over the family cow to extortionists", or "not knowing the new National Anthem by heart" that it literally formed a pool of blood!
Fun fact- the overwhelming majority of people executed by guillotine during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror were French peasants who were killed *en masse* as a result of political power-plays between factions of the Revolutionary Government.
Like, and I mean this very genuinely, I think that me being on Bluesky while hating much of the experience is more a symptom of me having brain problems than anything else.
It's like the "lie flat" generation in China or the "Satori generation" in Japan, only it's about the Internet and unlike employment it's a lot easier to just cut off social media.
Someone smarter than me could probably write an essay about the idea of the Attention Economy, how constant dooming is an attempt to maximize attention, and the constant overstimulation is making people just check out of the public internet in a way that's like "quitting the rat race".
Anyways, I basically have a nerve-twitch from how "dystopian" and "Kafkaesque" are now used to describe anything bad that happens ever, including shit that happened during (insert era people are painting as the halcyon Before Times).
Or platforms like Tiktok, where there's basically no voices at all thanks to the ephemerality of it.
It makes being online an exhausting and miserable experience, and it's little shock to me that younger people are increasingly not going out into the public internet and sticking to things like group chats based on IRL knowledge and gated Discords.
This site is a reflection of the broad problem in miniature- the online marketplace chooses loud, obnoxious doomer voices who suck up all the oxygen and actively punishes positivity until voices who want to be more positive (me included) just kind of give up.
Yeah, every single instance of the "We need to make X appealing to people again instead of dystopian kafkaesque neoliberal late-stage capitalism" is that there is a massive and profitable cottage industry in spreading constant doom and panic and that industry aggressively protects itself.
that sounds fucking insane and awesome, TBH.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're getting some legit money instead of having to hawk their doujins at conventions, but... it's a pretty big swerve to go from that to "fluffy GL slice-of-life/romance stuff".
I opened up the first chapter, saw the artstyle, and got flashbanged with "I have seen this artstyle primarily associated with hardcore size-difference reverse-rape monstergirl porn with more fingers/tentacles going up a guy's asshole than a geriatric clinic."
- There is a current manga, recently started and fairly obscure, that is a very cute yuri romance series about a tall girl and a taller alien girl who end up in an arranged marriage.
The mangaka of this series is a *grade-A gold-star fucking FREAK.*
(Like, seriously, if you've read *Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei* and *Joshiraku* it's *really* hard to believe these were series he worked on *at the same time*.)
I can't remember if he put a pissing-yourself joke into *Joshiraku* (he'd definitely sanded some of his edges off for that series), but I remember he did in SZS, and now I am cursed with the knowledge that was him stealth working a fetish in.
Yes, he has drawn what I will loosely call "porn". It's every bit as weird, philosophical, and slightly off-putting as *Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei*, and I believe was produced under a pen name around the same time.
- This one's a deep cut, and anybody who knows this series probably knows that, but: Koji "Bastard" Kumeta, legendary creator of offbeat comedy manga known for his very distinct illustrative style, has an *oromashi* (wetting yourself) kink.
Some other examples:
- *Please Don't Bully Me, Nagatoro!* is literally just adapted from the mangaka's humiliation/verbal-abuse fetish comics, with those elements toned down to be palatable to a broader marker (seriously, that guy is a *massive* M).
I will not get into the specifics, partially because it's not something I'm into and I mostly know about it secondhand, so all I'll say is- if you ever got a sketchy vibe from that series, you were correct to get a sketchy vibe from it.
It's nothing abnormal- plenty of Western illustrators got their start drawing porno comics (or weird commissions, these days) and then transitioned into "real work". But it's a hell of a thing when you can connect the two.
It's why I frown deeply at *Kobayashi's Dragon Maid*.
One of the weirdest experiences you can have as a manga fan is seeing a new series get published and be like "Wow, I know this illustrator! From that weird doujin I read three years ago!"
It's one of those things where you just... kind of pretend you don't see a little bit.
A black and white cat with two brushes on his head
A black and white cat enjoying a head massage with two brushes, eyes closed
A black and white cat getting his face squished by two brushes
A black and white cat receiving a head massage with two brushes from above
Uni is enjoying his head massage :3
If you wish to continue to pick nuts and be irritating, I'm not going to indulge it- of course my model is imperfect, all models are imperfect.
Spain, if you really want to pick nuts, consists of multiple nations- however, I would say that they have been fairly successful in creating a new national identity (being Spanish) out of those that existed before. Even Catalans generally do not think of themselves as Catalan-not-Spanish.
By November it will be a monolithic structure that stretches out to encompass parts of the surrounding neighborhood.
I predict that we're going to see the ballroom get bigger and bigger as Trump's health fades, and little to no progress will actually be made because the designs will be constantly changed to assuage Trump's ego and moods.
..."Dear Maria, Count Me In" by All Time Low?
...Well, most of the other bands are obscure genres of metal or just classical performance groups, so I guess it's the best of a bad lot.
