Bitchin

I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.

Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!

On its face, it's a crude comedy anime about, well, an anime cat girl with a crippling nicotine addiction. However, under the slapstick, it's got undercurrents which point towards other matters of social commentary.

It not-so subtly shows how drug addiction is a coping mechanism but also fucking ruins your life and makes you a seemingly inconsiderate asshole towards those around you.

But also: it much more subtly points to how these coping mechanisms are more likely to be used within communities that are already under higher degrees of societal pressure with very few avenues for social advancement.

Because it would appear that cat girls are in fact a great allegorical representation of the experience of societal marginalization, while not directly representing any individual real world group.

The anime cat girls are not specifically trans women, or immigrants, or a racial minority, or anything else- they're cat girls.

But they ARE shown on screen to all have low income apartments. They are shown to be offered worse jobs and menial labor positions. They are called specific terms that sound a lot like slurs. The police treat them differently. The neighborhoods they dominate appear to have negative stigma attached to them. The girls that are socially respected by non-cat girls are the ones who seem to play the most to respectability politics, and even then they just get patronizingly regarded as "one of the *good ones*."

But on top of how they are broadly disadvantaged and disparaged, they are also simultaneously fetishized.

earlier this week Twitter user ppuccin0 tweeted about a fashion article that advised against tops with large floral patterns, saying the wearer was in danger of looking like a "ロマンティックおばさん," or a "romantic auntie." the tweet went viral with many agreeing that a "romantic auntie" sounded like a very nice thing to aspire to be, and some even posted illustrations or photos tagged with the trend

illustration by Toyota Yuu (author of Cherry Magic)

illustration by 141shkw/Sora Midori (author of Beautiful Curse)

photos by Takinami Yukari (author of Motokare Mania and Watashi-tachi wa Mutsuu Ren'ai ga Shitai or "We Want A Painless Romance")

illustration by m:m (mangaka of Matataki no End Roll)

illustration by ooinuai (mangaka of Onikui Kitan)

illustration by ma2 (mangaka of The Reason We Fall In Love)

BONUS:

A Gabv1el flavored fic, inspired by INKKEBAB’s work!

Art/screenshot by @inkkebab :]

"um people have definitely mentioned that out loud before lol you are young and therefore stupid and entitled and though i'm not saying it i'm also implying that you (trans woman) are being overly sensitive and nitpicking and nobody cares lmao"

One of my service learning classes involved work at a local homeless community center, helping people write resumes and cleaning bathrooms.

Our instructor told us to expect to see the bathrooms trashed a lot–like you will clean the bathroom and immediately someone will wreck it.

And it’s not because they disrespect your work or don’t value having access to clean bathrooms or whatever, but because of control.

When you feel like you have no control over your life or your environment, your brain is going to want to assert control however it can.

Which results in trashed bathrooms.  It’s control exercised over the one small part of your environment that you still have the power to affect.

I see kids on tumblr using the language of social justice as cudgels on people who actually do care about and listen to them

or holding the creators within their communities to an impossibly high standard that they never apply to mainstream media properties.

I just see trashed bathrooms. ‘These are the people my voice will reach,’ they rationalize, ‘so these are the people I’ll hurt.’