Thursday, January 31, 2013

Lies and anime (or maybe manga I can never tell)

Today I sat in my normal seat on the first day of this class, and my neighbor sat down and, first things first, changed the background of his computer screen to his token manga chick that's been sitting next to me for many months now.

"It's your favorite." He said to me.
"Not the manga-cat chick who flips me off!" The picture is drawn from the ground looking up at this chick rolling dice--the dice rolling hand position is mid-middle-finger-birdie.

He shrugs and then seems kind of offended. He likes his furry comics but I wasn't expecting him to be offended because:

"Rachel. She's a dog, not a cat."
"She's a manga chick with cat ears, though--they're pointy, sticking straight out of her hair like a kitty."
"No, those are dog ears. In fact--she's only part dog, more like three qua-"
"You kidding me? That's a cat-girl, not a dog-girl."
"Let me show you a corgi."

He pulls up a corgi picture with triangle ears, "See how this dog's ears are pointed? Like a husky? Dogs have pointy ears."

"See how that human with cat ears is a human with cat ears anime-ized sort-of and it flips me off?"
"She's a dog, Rachel."

Then I realized something. It dawned on me slowly and horribly.

Everything I knew was a lie.

"So...wait...are you saying that all those cat mangas--all those are...DOG mangas? You mean every cat-girl I've seen is actually a dog-girl? Every furry I've seen on the internet? Every anime show--they're all--DOGS?"

"Mostly, yeah."
"They were dogs this whole time!"
"They're sometimes hamsters, or foxes too..."

He could tell I was upset by this.

"Did you want her to be a cat-girl flipping you off, is that what you wanted?"
"Yes, That is what I wanted."  I decided. "Actually I just want her to stop flipping me off. Also, she's hardly an animal. I mean...they didn't even change her legs or give her a tail or anything."
"That's because she's a half-breed. Well, three-quarters because she married a-"
"All the anime cat-people shows I watched as a little kid were wrong. They were all dogs. All the cats were all dogs."
"All the cats are always all dogs, Rachel." He said.

And then I changed my desktop background to a murky gray plaid. It was the loneliest raincloud of plaid.

"Thats very depressing, Rachel. Here, I'll change mine, too."

and he changed it to another furry chick.

"Dog." He whispered, "She's a dog, too."
"I thought she was a vampire!"
"No, she's a dog."
"But her--those are ears? Those hair-things are ears?"
"And she's got whiskers too."

Then it dawned on me even more slowly and even more horribly.

More lies.

All of this kid's vampires. Maybe every vampire comic he browsed during class when he should've been working. They were DOG ANIMES.

It makes sense now...I remember wondering most of his vampires had tails...I thought they were really long scarves. I can't believe we live in a day where furries turned into lazy blobby manga-esque people with wide elf-ears.

Oh shoot. Those weren't elves!

Some day it's going to step over the line--where these blobby furry-mangas are so lazy that they're basically just people with whiskers. Where they're basically just stick figures "eh just pretend it's a dog 5/18's breed once-removed, OK?" One day it's going to step over the line, and all the art has been all furries. All art. Everywhere. Picasso's guitar blue guy? Dog. Van Gogh's sunflowers? Dog. The Lincoln Memorial? Dog. That walking dude in the crosswalk traffic sign?  Dog.

They are all dogs. All the art was all dogs. All the time.  Everything is dogs.

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