I just read it for the first time (absolutely peak) but I’m baffled at the temerity of anyone who read this weekly. I tip my hat to you
Chapter 213 is when the hand starts and Chapter 246 is when the cards are revealed
Don’s famous confrontation with Ginsberg is not the gotcha that people use this template for. Ginsberg was a creative prodigy that Don was extremely jealous of. He rejected Ginsberg’s ad out of pettiness before this scene. Ginsberg was right to confront Don and Don did in fact think of Ginsberg all the time
In the original scene, Peter sees worse with his glasses on. The meme is usually used with the clearer image on the bottom
This was the President's hand before Kaiji discarded the 3-pin and lost the round
I understand why it's a winning hand
4 pairs
1 sequence with Kaiji's discard
3 blank tiles? (A triplet?)
What are the blank tiles (I'm not getting an answer from google or chatgpt--I thought they were "blind tiles" to hide a player's hand but they seem to be part of his winning hand)
Why is this particular hand so absurd? Or "an enigma"? Is it because there's only one possible discard it can with?
So I finally binged Kaiji for the first time (at 1.5x speed admittedly—I love the anime but the pacing is a little brutal for me) and overall thought it was great
Ive heard the Pachinko arc is controversial but I was a huge fan, especially of Ichijou. I like that the arc was kind of a role reversal with him being the “Kaiji” of this arc and trying to thwart each of Kaiji’s maneuvers to cheat
Admittedly the length of the arc was way more than I expected. I was thinking there’d be at least two more games in the season after Cee-Lo. Though I suppose in some ways it built the bog up even more as the demon it was
My main problems with the arc was the climax
It was one miracle too many. It would’ve been far more satisfying if Kaiji won off of Endo’s 10 million. I also think a bounced, final ball would’ve been a more epic finish than the crowding of the third plate that they did
I understand this kind of cheating is par for the course in Kaiji but nobody in the audience seemed to even care once it was obvious the wind jets were in use. There was no hint of a consequence for Ichijou, and I just think the author could’ve come up with something better
But more specifically, after all the effort to beat the bog, there was just something lacking in the moment of defeat. I didn’t feel the emotion, or the elation, or the high of the win like I did after Kaiji beat Tonegawa. I can’t really describe why, but I guess I was just expecting the moment of the win to feel bigger like the end of a big match in a sports anime
Ichijou’s defeat was also very abrupt, and not nearly as satisfying as Otsuki’s earlier in the season
It felt like the author just needed some cheap way for Kaiji to end the season broke. The story was made worse for it, and it would’ve been better if Kaiji just had to use all of his money to save the 45ers or Sakazaki’s boss came to collect and Kaiji needed to pay him off
This is even more cheapened by my earlier point–because they didnt even need Endo’s money, or his initial loan. From the beginning Sakazaki could’ve just stolen all the money they needed from his boss
I would’ve far preferred if Sakazaki didn’t save the day with his extra money because of this. And maybe we have an inner monologue from Endo hinting that he’s going to screw Kaiji over with his deceptive usury, only for Kaiji winning at the end to force Endo change his ways and just burn the contract. But I guess Kaiji is the only character allowed to have morals, which is lame
So I know this arc is controversial, but I think I’m more in the middle where I loved most of it but really hated the ending. It went on for about two episodes too long (once the plates were clogged, it was a matter of time for Kaiji to win and there were still like three episodes to go). I can’t imagine watching this weekly, or even worse, reading it weekly
Around a year ago I broke up with my boyfriend of 4 years, and around March of this year I started having sex with my best friend. We're long distance with him living in LA and me in NY
We first met up on vacation in Spain for a week and it was a dream come true in a lot of ways. We were obviously excited to have sex with each other and we did so pretty much every day. Sex with him is really great and he has a lot more experience than I do, and he's just in general very good at it
I'm the top, and one consistent issue has been that I've never been able to make him cum. I've really tried--I love facesitting and have rimmed him for over an hour, we've had sex for 90 minutes at a time at points, I listen to him and take feedback, and he's just reassured me that it's fine and that it usually takes a lot for him to cum
He would also initiate a lot during this vacation, at one point blowing me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping
He recently lived with me in NY for 40 days and during that entire period we had sex about six times. I also had to initiate all but one time. This is really hard for me because I'm insanely attracted to him and there are so many different sexual experiences I want to try with him, but they're so sparse that we never really get to do them. I've also tried to stop jerking off in general and only bring my sexual energy to people, but I've had to start jerking off again because I was getting to be too horny for him
I've been staying with him in LA for about 2 weeks, and we only had sex once during this time. We finally talked about it and he just said his libido has been really down and that in past relationships he only had sex with his boyfriend about once a week. I'm frankly a little suspicious of this answer given how much we've talked about his sex life when we were friends, and how much more we were having sex in Spain. But I've been trying to not mind-read and just accept people's words, so I'm believing them
He's given me permission to have sex with other people, but I don't really want that. I just want to have sex with him more
I've also told him that we don't need to have sex that often, I just want to feel desired. I want to make out naked more, or do other sexual things that doesn't have to be penetrative or oral sex. He said he would try, but nothing has changed. Usually when I try to initiate something like that, he pulls away from me which is devastating. I also have a pretty big foot fetish and have said that he can just let me smell his feet while I jerk off and he doesn't let me do that either
I guess in general I'm very frustrated because in past relationships I just gave, gave, gave. And whenever someone asks me for something, I did it. Whenever I see an activity makes my partner happy, I want to do it with them. And I never really get it in return, and it seems like that pattern is repeating itself
I leave LA in two days and I'm considering asking if we can have sex one more time, but it just feels kinda humiliating. I feel stuck in a no-win situation where if he has sex with me because he feels obligated to, then it'll make the sex a very negative experience. But if I initiate and get rejected, then it just really hurts...
Aside from the sex, the relationship has been amazing. We have a lot in common, we get to travel to see each other, he's very affectionate and sweet and always wants to hold my hand, or give me some sort of PDA
I feel like at the very least we should be talking about sex again before I go. To me the mismatched libidos is less of an issue than him seeming to be unwilling to come to any compromise about it. So I don't know what to do, because I'm also afraid of shattering this status quo we've built
So even if you haven’t seen Toy Story 5, you’ve probably seen that the villain is an iPad named Lilypad that represents an existential threat to all toys
If your prediction for how this plays out is a mediocre message of how “toys and tech can co-exist!” and “tech is bad sometimes but also good sometimes”, you’d be right. Lilypad ends up being a sympathetic villain who does ultimately have good intentions for Bonnie
While Toy Story 5 has some good things going for it, I found the overall theme of how tech affects children to be a total cop-out. They spend 2/3rds of the movie showing how tech is slowly pushing us to some Wall-E-esque dystopia only to then act like tech can be good because of a few analog tech devices (and let’s be real, these devices are closer to toys than tech anyway)
I know there was never going to be a message about how tech is bad in a Disney movie that wants to sell the Toy Story app to kids as well as Lilypad merch. Also considering toys are sentient in the TS universe, it’d be problematic to have the message be that an entire species of toys is inherently bad
But putting meta marketing reasons aside, and just approaching the story creatively, I would’ve added a twist where Lilypad is just straight-up evil. Like play the first half mostly the same where audiences pretty much expect the sympathetic villain twist, except pull the rug by having her actually be motivated to get Bonnie addicted to her, ruin her individuality, make her less connected to her loved ones, and ultimately profit off of her in the long-term via ads and microtransactions
You could argue that the current version has a more nuanced message, but it doesn’t actually say anything. Maybe an evil Lilypad would come across as some sort of out-of-touch r/phonesarebad propaganda, but it would at least be more committed and honest. And you can still have good tech toys like the toilet toy represented in the movie, but a pure evil toy like Lilypad to balance the message. Then the message becomes more “Not all tech is bad, but a lot of tech does not have your best interest at heart and will hurt you if you don’t know how to use it”
Also after seeing Hoppers, I remembered how refreshing it is to have a villain in a kids movie who’s just EVIL and fucking dies. So I think evil Lilypad would also just be more fun
