Most Based Comments

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔘🔘🔘

That has never ever been stated. Genjutsu works on ANYONE. Even itachi and sasuke. It's a matter of SKILL in genjutsu that determines if you're not affected by one. Not by just having a dojutsu. It's why Danzo can still gett affected even though he has shishui's eyes. Why sasuke and itachi can still affect each other with genjutsu as well, even though they will quickly see through it.Izanami doesn't need help from another person. What are you talking about?Bro there's so much wrong in your post, I don't know where to start. (1)

Genjutsus can work on another sharingan depending on the strength of the users, but the rinnegan has the ability to negate all visual genjutsus.It is stated when madara does the infinite tsukuyomi (probably the strongest genjutsu ever) but sasuke doesnt get affected by it, and black zetsu says something along the lines of: "his rinnegan... can even negate this technique". So if the rinnegan can negate the effects of the infinite tsukuyomi it can surely resist any of itachis genjutsus. (-4)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔘🔘🔘

Wtf are you on. The whole shinden shows how itachi played obito.And please tell me how obito wasnt threatened when flowing teen itachi after getting dewth threats or admitted in his inner monologue he would die. No the closest was when a kid threatened him and followed his ultimatum while admittong he cant kill him and if he would even find out he isnt madara and thete isnt w secret about his " immortality " he would.be dead already lmaoAnd again kishimoto himself stated itachi is the strongest in akatsuki in thr authors note.Itachi >teen itachi >/= om obitoCanon shinden, manga facts and atate dby KISHIMOTO himself.You , nah bro its not true, source: trust my headcanon Obito snd madara fanboys are thr most delusional clowns. You literally atgue against a clear statement by kishimoto himself lmao (3)

And the canon manga shows how Obito played Itachi like a fiddle. The manga is the primary source of canon.Post the page in question. (-4)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔘🔘🔘

Pain wins in any case:Genjutsus dont work on painAmaterasu has counters from 2 of 6 pains, and they can help the rest.Itachi has not large amounts of chakra and cant mantain susanoo for long.Izanami needs help from another person so he cant do it.Pain can always use chibaku tensei and thats a KO for itachi. (4)

1: Genjutsu does work on Pein, as shown with Jiraiya's Frog Song genjutsu.4: Izanami only needs a set of events to happen multiple times to set up. (-3)

Angriest Comments

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

Not a single person in Naruto fights to lose. Except maybe hiding, cause that's also his wincon. (-1)

.... Are you reading with your eyes closed? People fight for different reasons. Abilities have drawbacks.Gai can fight Kisame and want to kill him, but not go to 7 gate or 8 gate because it will hurt him significantly or kill him.In character - Means they fight how they would in manga. Some people don't go straight to their strongest attack and abilities. Eg Orochimaru - They fight based on how pressured they are.Others do.This is a KNOWN vs debate condition - https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/1srxxd/questionwhat_exactly_does_bloodlusted_mean/Arguing that Gai would go 7 and 8 gate immediately , Literally at the START of any fight, is stupid and no incharacter for his personality. The fact that you don't know this and are arguing this point so adamantly, I have no idea why you're in a powerscaling community reddit. (5)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

I literally just linked you the manga scans of it growing to protect against attacks. In the manga Itachi doesn't move in any capacity. He just slices the hydra. You are watching the anime, which isn't canon. Go look at the thread I just linked and get back to me (0)

There is a difference between it can and it does. Basically like any susanno armor or chakra cloak, Itachi can modify the shield to cover different parts of himself, as in the manga, his sides. Can, but it's probably not automatic given that Itachi has to manifest it with his Susanno and how it began relatively small. He has to consciously grow and control it. The ability to change the shape or defense properties of a shield doesn't take away the fact it isn't an 360 degree aura. It's still a shield. An ethereal and stretchy shield, but a shield nonetheless. But let's assume Itachi starts the fight with some perfect 360 yata aura shield that he extends through his chakra/will to cover his entire body, including the ground beneath him. He's invulnerable to physical and chakra attacks, though it remains unseen what percent of an attack the shield nullifies, absorbs, or reflects. He used the blade to kill the hydra snake/orochimaru so the shield didn't send the snake repelling back whe... (2)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡

I don't think Itachi beats Pain, mainly due to matchup advantage but I don't think that Idea is that ridiculous really...“Like... Pain had a pretty long fight against a sannin and even ends up praising him and says that Jiraiya could've killed him if he had intel. 14 year old Itachi beat a sannin by looking at him once.”Pain was nerfed in his own village not to mention you're trying to use ABC logic.Pain was running away from a version 2 Jinchuriki. Edo Itachi was actively coaching Killer Bee (Perfect Jinchuriki) to make sure he doesn't get folded instantly when he fights Itachi.Pain had Naruto beat beforehand and wasn't allowed to kill him. Bee didn't need itachi's help he broke out of his genjutsu and kept him on the defensive. (1)

Biggest Lolcow: /u/hi-polymer5

Score: 🐮🐮🐮🔘🔘

Number of comments: 6

Average angriness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘

Maximum angriness: 😡😡🔘🔘🔘

Minimum angriness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘

NEW: Subscribe to /h/miners to see untapped drama veins, ripe for mining!

autodrama: automating away the jobs of dramautists. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion

>A day of the life of a DEI program manager

>11:00 am - Wake up. Early birds are racist.

>11:30 am - Attend a sync up meeting. Standup is not inclusive. Everyone needs to come up with 5 words to remove from our dictionary.

>12:00 pm - Have lunch at a black-female-owned Chinese restaurant. Scold the owner for cultural appropriation.

>1:00 pm - Meet with one of my program sponsors. Discuss what protest we need to fund next.

>2:00 pm - Check internal Slack messages and mark those who used non inclusive language

>3:00 pm - Have s*x with a queer peer

>4:00 pm - Go back home. Work is racist

>10:00 pm - Attack random people online

Ted, 62, Austin TX

Career/Personal

• Retail Manager

  • $21 an hour, at least 40 hours a week

  • time and a half overtime

  • Around $3000 a month

  • No benefits, he's on his wife's

• Wife makes around $3500 a month

• "retail management is not my endgame"

• Spent 14 years working for Texas "Commission on State Emergency Communications"

  • Got a Master's degree because of this?

• Went to Art school at some point

• Went through a bankruptcy 6 years ago

  • All of this debt has accrued since bankrupcy

• Wife has probably the same number of credit cards timestamp

• He has $17'000 saved for retirement

Financials

• "Why is there so little invested?" timestamp

  • Boomer ramblings and deflection

• Self-scored - 5/10 timestamp

• 150k or so left on his mortgage

• Credit Card 1 (CreditOne) ($811) timestamp

  • $20 in new purchases, $20 in interest

  • Paid $75 on this

  • Minimum payment 30

  • Why Spend on his card?

    • "Our expenses are higher than our income"

• Credit Card 2 (Apple) (2115) timestamp

  • Minimum payment 67

  • $41 in interest accrued

  • Puts his life insurance payments on his card?

• Credit Card 3 (Discover) ($4196) timestamp

  • $69.50 in new purchases

  • Made a $100 payment, also made $100 purchase?

  • Minimum payment $84

  • $57 in interest

  • Lots of mobile games micro-transactions on this card (company called "Zynga")

    • "I was able to quit smoking, and drinking, but I can't quit this"

• Credit Card 4 (eBay) ($1'487) timestamp

  • Made a $75 payment

  • Minimum payment of $30

• Credit Card 5 (Lowes) ($535) timestamp

  • Made $50 in payments

  • $12 in interest accrued

  • $30 minimum

• Credit Card 6 (JC Penny) ($1'591) timestamp

  • Made 75 in payments

  • $40 in interest charged

  • $57 minimum payment

• Credit Card 7 (Venmo) ($753) timestamp

  • $30 minimum payment

  • $102 in new purchases, made $30 in payments

  • $15 in interest

  • Eating out and microtransactions on this card

• Credit Card 8 (Walgreens) ($441) timestamp

  • "I think that's the one that started it all, they had this display when you walk into the store"

  • $29 minimum payment

  • $12 in interest

• Credit Card 9 (Verizon) ($1'290) timestamp

  • He wanted to take advantage of the discount on the phone bill using the card to pay for it

  • $48 Minimum payment

  • $34 interest accrued

  • Made a $100 payment

• Credit Card 10 (Upgrade) ($1'272) timestamp

  • $72 minimum monthly payment

• Credit Card 11 (Upgrade) ($9'260) timestamp

  • Thinks he has two Upgrades because traveling?

  • $126 interest accrued

  • $474 minimum monthly payment

  • "Uhhh I I uh I run a non-profit"

  • "Some of these now that I think about it might have been expenses"

  • "Performing Arts Venue" - He's the president (doesn't get paid)

• Credit Card 12 (Sitco) ($378) timestamp

  • $29 minimum payment

  • $10 in interest

• Credit Card 13 (Chevron) ($128) timestamp

  • $29 minimum payment

  • $71 in purchases

  • 50 in payments

  • $2 in interest accrued

  • More mobile payments on this one

  • Playing "Empires and Puzzles" and a couple others

• Credit Card 14 (Ally) ($228) timestamp

  • $28 balance

• Credit Card 15 (Amazon) ($580) timestamp

  • $29 minimum payment

  • $14 interest

  • $50 payment made

• Credit Card 16 (At Home) ($45) timestamp

  • "Why wouldn't you just pay off $45?!"

• Credit Card 17 (Alta) ($0) timestamp

• Synchrony ($656) timestamp

  • $30 minimum payment

  • Made a $50 payment

  • Made $12 in purchases

    • It was Starbucks

  • $14 in interest accrued

• Credit Card 18 (didn't catch name) ($28) timestamp

  • 28 minimum payment

  • 70 cents in interest

• Credit Card 19 (NFL) ($1'474) timestamp

  • $39 in interest charged

  • Made $43 in purchases

  • $54 minimum payment

  • More in-app purchases

• Credit Card 20 (MGM) ($242) timestamp

  • "We went to Vegas"

  • $5 interest accrued

• Student Loans ($229'000) timestamp

  • he's in forbearance, doesn't know why, Caleb can't figure out why

  • 7.6% interest, 17'000 a year in interest if they ever start back up

  • "Yeah, I'll never pay that off"

    • "You're right"

  • "That servicing company is under investigation or something, it's in the news"

  • "Well it doesn't matter much I'll be dead before that's paid off... so I don't even consider that a debt"

• Mortgage ($122'205)

  • 3.8%

  • $1'268 monthly payment

• Synchrony Bank is where most of his cards are from timestamp

  • 

• Car

  • Doesn't have one, wife has a car, not paid for, newish because of a car accident that wrecked their old one

  • Used to have two

  • Both worked at home but he got laid off then when to retail

• Checking Account timestamp

  • 3'240 + 8'111 - 10'094 -> 1'259

  • Lots of eating out

  • A $100 Verizon payment here, not using the Verizon card since it's maxed out ]

  • More microtransactions

  • "That's how I pay my daughter, we give her money to help her live" timestamp

    • She's finishing up her undergrad

    • Boomer gets testy when question about this

• Wife debts itemized timestamp

  • Not even going to try writing these out, 28 different ones

$906 in interest is accruing a month (not counting Student Loans)

Should he consider bankruptcy? timestamp

• Total $379'000 ($122k of that is the mortgage), includes the student loans

Income/Spending Pie Chart timestamp

giving phil a boost to his self-esteem 15:41

Sing to me, O Jinxthinker, of that man of many troubles, DSP, skilled in all ways of contending, who wandered far after he helped sack the gaming industry. Sing through me, and tell the story of his suffering, his trials and adventures, and his bloody homecoming

• He's basically been sexualizing female adult women all day

• 2 elder males 40s-50s buzzed his door to enter the apartment building but he didn't let them in. They possibly parked their cars in a specific spot to hide them from Mr. Thinker. They knocked on some doors including Jinxthinker's "fricked up" neighbor and a downstairs person's door after which he heard some enteries and exiteries. Later Jinxthinker went to the store like a bravery style man for energy drinks. 0:20

• His stated goal is now to raise DarkSydePhil's self esteem and mental fortitude. This will be done by singing Phil a song from the soundtrack for the TV show Victorious. It's a good jinxshow, and Victoria Justice signed Jinxthinker's CD once. Sings "Make it Shine" which he describes as a Hitler esque victory march (2:50-5:50). Interjects "fascination like fascism" while singing. 1:45

• Applauses his singing and begins to rant about why the "P-dophile Preservation Society" hates Phil- he has the prestige, power, money, luxury mansion, fast cars, and women as a heterosexual. 5:50

• Jinxthinker's ideal women are adults heavily into cigarettes, tattoos, and video games.

• He challenges anyone in the world to best of 9 him in any game including Elden Ring. He goes on to lay out no bullshit rules only pro rules. 7:00

• Spontaneously joins back into the song that's playing in the background. Victoria Justice needs to be more famous and shit. 7:50

• We look at AI gens again. No blue aliens today.

• Jesus was murdered at the age Jinxthinker is now. Conicidence?

• DSP needs to get his shit together and start a porn site with his wife 10:00

• Jinxthinker used to be anti-Phil because he used to be racist and shit, until he realized like why, right? He gave that up for negros and DSP. He was only racist because of peer pressure. 10:45

• Phil's Enemies include: P-dophile Cute twink Forums, the Fricking Forums, Andrew Anglin. Talks about Phil besting Muhammad in a UFC fight. 12:10

• Motivational speech for Phil. Includes a bit where he turns his head 90 degrees to the right and points at a wall calling it bro and telling it that we need to round up and kill our enemies (you will know them because they watch anime) 13:45

• Known anime enjoyers/dens of anime: Osama Bin Laden, Andrew Anglin, P-do Farms, Reddit, Pedorama. They pretend to hate eachother like it's the WWE 14:50

• DSP stands in support of John Calvin

Here's a picture of jinxsister's cat taking a drive

!jinxthinkers Do you have a dog style cat?

Outside of the sub echochambers, the normal consensus appears to be that the show vastly failed to capture any of the magic or uniqueness of the books.

"I don't agree with this person about this particular show, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with being easily entertained. What a weird choice of insult."

WRONG WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!!

Respecting people who has the objective bad opinion about media is allowing Foids to ruin your stuff and hobbies!!!!!!!!!!!11111

Cucksoy tries to support his opinion with RIGHT-think reviews!

Replies with "average redditor" to people saying this is creepy

plz post if you have any more of these

Niru is a very famous MapleStory streamer who became the first person to ever reach 299 lvl. Ever since then a huge amount of people in the community have been watching his streams and waiting for him to get to lvl 300, even the devs were watching him. In his final stream, he managed to get 299 99.99% and immediately logged off the game and started shit-talking the devs right in front of 20k viewers on Twitch

What's even funnier is the fact that the official Maplestory account on Twitter had already made a tweet congratulating him

https://twitter.com/MapleStory/status/1783562860108316936

The devs even promoted the stream through in-game banner but when he started ranting the banner instantly disappeared

🚨BREAKING: At 7am, @Princeton students launched their Gaza Solidarity encampment on the McCosh Courtyard. They join thousands of students across the world in demanding that Princeton divest from Israel, and that Israel end its genocidal campaign—immediately. pic.twitter.com/mYyO2b1ibs

— Writers Against the War on Gaza (@wawog_now) April 25, 2024

RDrama exclusive: I headed down to the protest, kinda quiet this morning. Israeli counter-protestors have now shown up with "bring them back" signs. Mostly old jewish ladies, sort of abortion clinic vibes. Lots of cops, as well as what appears to be a news cam getting set up. No more terrorist flags unfortunately but hopefully the counterprotestors will farm some sneed.

Police got there almost instantly lmao, no wonder there aren't nearly as many hobos over here as in NYC

A couple grad students arrested and kicked out for the protest

Some greasy guitar-playing hippie flying hezbollah flag on the lawn

Indians mourn the loss of one of their own at the school after she got evicted for being an idiot

Unfortunately the subreddit is not particularly active

reposted because i am r-slurred and cant figure out links

Based on the above image

!kino !fellas

Top Drama

Relative Drama (takes into account the size of the subreddit)

autodrama: returning jobs to dramautists. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion

So, tomorrow will see @HumzaYousaf stepping down and @neilcgray being the SNP choice to replace him. You heard it here first!

— Murdo Fraser (@murdo_fraser) April 25, 2024

!britbongs

Or maybe not

/r/Scotland seem to have completely turned on the SNP at this point

https://old.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1cdf3yi/humza_yousaf_is_not_considering_his_position/?sort=controversial

For context the National is the paper for Scottish independence fanatics

He probably won't have much of a choice in the matter though

https://old.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1ccpvcm/scottish_tories_to_lodge_noconfidence_vote_in/?sort=controversial

Humza just essentially kicked the Greens out of Scottish government too so I'm sure they'll all be super keen to keep him in power

https://old.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1ccvlxz/yousafs_fate_hangs_on_single_msp_as_greens_will/?sort=controversial

The MSP who he's relying on left the party due to their policies too

https://twitter.com/WestminsterPup/status/1783802919915048963

lol

Update: he's now grovelling to the Greens to try and get them back on side

!redscarepod !chuds

Never have I seen so many governments and powerful institutions bend at the knee for Israel to silence overwhelming public support for Palestine

its literally illegal to question certain things in many countries, that should be all a person with critical thinking needs to know

Don't worry, soon enough the government will start planting Nazi flags, Trump flags, and flat Earther nonsense in the protests to demonize you. There will be marches by some folks in matching clothes who arrive in the back of a U-Haul.

THIS TIME THE DEATH SQUADS WILL BE REAL GUISE TRUST ME

Get out and talk to real people. There is not overwhelming support for Palestine in the US. Americans identify more with the cops than the fat enby protesters. Not a judgment call - just reality.

this party pooper ruining things

You are getting it backwards, really. >Israel has no power, they exist because America wants them to. They're a useful regional power and ally against Iran. If the US stopped supporting them they wouldn't exist. Criticism of Israel and zionism gets shut down so fast because its criticism of US imperialism. Zionism is just a convenient cover.

2020 Lockdowns had nothing to do with Covid, and everything to do with expanding. the bounds of governmental control, surveillance, and propaganda (I'm not saying Covid wasn't real, I'm saying it's not why we had "Lockdowbs" shutting down schools, hospitals (yes, hospitals), and other vital services leading to overall more death, comorbidities, and mental health issues---which we are ABSOLUTELY still in the wake of and will be for a while, check Sweden against it's comparable neighbors.

That is to say, a LOT of this, has ZERO to do with neither Israel NOR Gaza, and everything to do with power-grabs & power-moved which can serve as a guise for being "about Israel" or "about Gaza" or about "maintaining civility" "peace" "safety", etc.

Remember the phrase "Abundance of caution" in 2020? There are so many games being played at so many levels. That's why the gravitation towards conspiracy feels so strong.

Noooooooo you're gonna heckin start a Fire

I saw a reddit post about how dangerous lithium cells are, therefor this is dangerous

Remember, fellow redditors, electricity isn't science that anyone can look up and understand, it's scary black magic.

Thank you @pushkardhami for turning Pavitra Ganga into Goa Beach. Such things are now happening in #Rishikesh & soon it will become Mini Bangkok. https://t.co/5nbB86FfZK pic.twitter.com/VnOtRkWPXM

— Himalayan Hindu (@himalayanhindu) April 26, 2024

Why not both?

Mayos

No mlecchas in punya dham

They bring drugs, they do raves. And some I assume are good people.

The thousand-year-old practice of batok will live on, in Buscalan and around the world, thanks to the descendants whom Apo Whang-Od has been training and inspiring.

The remote village of Buscalan, home of the famed last mambabatok of her generation, has never been this accessible. Sure, you still need to endure the 12 hour-body-numbing drive from Manila with its city gridlock to the winding mountain roads of the Cordilleras, swerving around landslide debris and oncoming trucks in dangerously foggy conditions. But the dirt path from the turnoff in the municipality of Tinglayan, Kalinga—clearly marked by a sign that proclaims Welcome! Whang-Od Buscalan Tattoo Village—is now paved over, reducing hike time by over an hour. What's left is a strenuous climb through the rice terraces that a reasonably fit person can conquer in 40 minutes.

Modern conveniences haven't completely transformed Buscalan, yet. There is still no cell signal, and only a scant number of residents have WiFi. But steel has long replaced the traditional cogon roofing of the homes, and wooden huts have made way for crowded, concrete structures.

The woman who has been around to witness all these changes is also the one largely responsible for them. Apo Whang-Od, the sprightly centenarian also known as Maria Oggay, has been hand-tapping tattoos on skin since she was a teenager. It was only within the last 15 years or so that her clientele—and her renown–exploded beyond the Cordillera region, with thousands of visitors coming from all over the world, all seeking the exquisite pain of the soot-stained thorn.

According to lore and to interviews conducted by tattoo anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak, Whang- Od was 16 when she began her career as a tattooist under her father's mentorship. The first and only female mambabatok of her time, Whang-Od would travel to far and neighboring villages, summoned by host communities to imprint the sacred symbols of their ancestors on individuals who have crossed or about to cross a threshold in their lives.

For men, this meant being minted as a headhunting warrior. A bikking, a chest tattoo with patterns that crawled up the shoulders and down the arms, could take days to finish and would cost a large pig or several kilos of rice. Women were tattooed for different reasons, primarily for fertility and beautification. The tattooed elder women of Kalinga often say that when they die, they can't take their beads and gold with them to the afterlife. They only have the markings on their body.

Whang-Od has tattooed more women than warriors, as headhunting was banned by the Americans in the early 1900s. The image of the Kalingas as bloodthirsty savages was perpetrated by the colonial ethnologic photographer Dean Worcester, who in 1912 published photographs of Cordilleran tribes in National Geographic, describing them as both exotic and terrifying in an attempt to justify American control of Northern Luzon, or what he called “No Man's Land.” But reality was more nuanced. Headhunting, as practiced, was a part of ritual warfare that had spiritual implications. Cultural tattoo practitioner Lane Wilcken explains in the book Filipino Tattoos: Ancient to Modern (2010) that headhunting functioned to restore the balance and justice between communities in conflict. The marking of the warrior was thus a ceremonial and sacred activity, done in several stages over almost two years.

In those days, unmarked women were considered imperfect, undesirable. One of the most enduring ullalim, a form of epic poetry that is chanted by the village bard, is the story of the warrior hero Banna who falls in love with the beautiful Lagunnawa. In the pre-colonial tale, their tattooed bodies are celebrated as badges of honor, wealth, beauty, and bravery.

When the American Catholic missionaries came and built schools in Kalinga, village girls were made to cover their arms with long sleeves. Being tattooed became a point of shame when women ventured to the city, and eventually fewer girls from the succeeding generation continued the tradition as Western concepts of beauty and respectability began to permeate the culture.

“Traditional tattooing is seen as archaic and painful by the younger generations of the tribe,” wrote Kalinga elder and former NCIP official Natividad Sugguiyao in the intro to photographer Jake Verzosa's The Last Tattooed Women of Kalinga (2014). “Though the practice has completely ceased, it remains vital that it should never be forgotten.”

The practice may have died out among the Kalinga, but outside forces have again exerted their influence, this time in helping revive the practice of batok and transforming it into something of a hybrid artform. In 2007, Dr. Lars Krutak spent two weeks in Buscalan filming the Philippine segment of his Discovery Channel series Tattoo Hunter. There he met Whang-Od, who was nearly 90 at the time and still working the rice fields every day.

Mambabatok can only pass on their craft within their bloodlines, and Whang-Od never had any children of her own. Grace Palicas, her 10-year-old grandniece, was chosen to be her apprentice, though initially a reluctant one.

“I was the first child to learn how to tattoo. I just observed what she did,” Grace, now 26, tells us. “When I left for college in 2015, Elyang was next to learn so that she could help Apo when so many tourists were coming.”

We are at Grace's house, where she and her 23-year-old cousin Elyang Wigan have been tapping ink into the limbs of a handful of visitors who arrived in Buscalan that morning. Afterward, the newly inked will walk a few houses down to where Whang-Od holds court to get her signature three-dot signoff, the only tattoo she does nowadays. Getting the dots, which takes all of five minutes to complete, has been described as more painful than the larger pieces done by the lighter hands of Whang-Od's protégés. But what is pain, or the risk of a small infection, when you've made it all the way here to see the living legend in the flesh?

We find Whang-Od by her house, sitting on a low footstool on the dirt floor, preparing her tools to dot a client on his arm. She is dressed in her usual “accidental hipster grandma” style, wearing a puffy bomber over track pants and a paisley bandana around her forehead. The outer walls of Oggay's home are covered with tour group-sponsored tarps of her likeness, a reminder of the transactional, touristy nature of this exchange. We are, after all, neither warriors nor Butbut maidens ready for marriage. It is an honor for outsiders like us to be given these sacred markings, one we do not deserve.

When she finishes with the client, it is the Vogue team's turn to get tatted. First is Sela Gonzales, the photographer's assistant and the only one of us who could communicate with her in Ilocano (Whang-Od doesn't speak Tagalog or English). An aide procures an unused gisi, a bamboo stick with a thorn attached to one end, while Whang-Od traces the pattern on Sela's arm using a length of grass dipped in the soot and charcoal mixture. Holding the inked gisi in her left hand, she uses a larger stick to whack it with her right hand, driving it over a hundred times per minute into the flesh until the three dots are filled and oozing with blood and ink. She dabs at them with a wet wipe before deciding to go over the freshly wounded spots again for good measure. Aray.

“When visitors come from far away,” Whang Od says in the Butbut language, “I will give them the tatak Buscalan, tatak Kalinga for as long as my eyes can see.”

In the fall of 2022, Grace spent several weeks in France, where her husband is from, and where she was invited as a guest tattoo artist at a few different tattoo studios. Grace is the first Buscalan native to bring batok to the West. Her clean, symmetrical black lines are impressive; patterns of scorpions, centipedes, snakes, and rice bundles come together to form a large tapestry running down the length of an arm or leg. One of her clients, a hand poke tattoo artist from Brooklyn, commented on Instagram that it was truly her most meaningful tattoo experience. A Philippine indigenous practice that was on the verge of being lost to history is being inscribed on new skin. The stories of the Butbut people and their beliefs will continue to be passed along through the vector of a thorn, plucked from a tree grown in Kalinga soil.

Traditionally, ceremonial rituals accompanied the tattooing, and they ranged from the chanting of an ullalim or the sacrificing of a chicken. These days, the performance of rituals is altogether left out of the tattoo session, although Grace says that they can be done if requested, especially upon the completion of a large, multi-day tattoo. For non-natives, the tattoos are pretty much divorced from their ancestral context, chosen from the same limited menu of designs offered to everyone. In the end, we assign our own meanings to them, reading the symbols through the lens of an individual and not the community.

I was relatively uninformed when I got my first Kalinga tattoo a year before. If you asked one of the mambabatok there what a particular design meant, you'd get a vague answer that was some combination of “guidance, strength, and protection.” I had chosen the crab/traveler partly because I associated it with my family and partly because I had read somewhere that it was one of the original Kalinga patterns, compared to the sun/moon motifs, which were new-generation designs by Whang-Od and Grace. Later I learned that the crab design with its pincers/fishhooks is associated with the Filipino deity Lumauig. A few scholars have noted that Lumauig bears a striking resemblance to the Polynesian trickster Maui. As you probably know, Maui possesses a magical fishhook. I regarded my tattoo with a new appreciation of the deep intertextual history behind its simple lines.

Emily Oggay, a relative of Apo, tattooed the crab on my thigh. It was virtually painless. She joked that her taps are like tik-tik-tik while Apo's taps are TOK-TOK-TOK, miming a heavy hammer. Like Grace and Elyang, she is part of the new generation of mambabatok—and there are surprisingly many, mostly girls and women. I counted at least 18 Gen Zers who had picked up the craft through observation and practicing on themselves and each other. Many of them started in 2018 after seeing the tourism boom and the long lines of travelers waiting all day for a session with Apo. At its peak, Buscalan hosted over 400 visitors a day. Tour groups by the van loads were hauled to the mountain, some guaranteeing a meeting with Whang-Od, like she was a whale shark to be sighted. Homestays were crammed to the brim, with strangers sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. Even if Whang-Od were to perform the full ritual for all her visitors, there wouldn't be enough chickens to sacrifice.

“Before, farming was our livelihood. We would only eat kamote. You can see how tourism changed Buscalan when visitors started coming,” Grace says, translating what Apo was saying. She describes how they started to eat a variety of food, and how locals took new jobs as tour guides and homestay operators. “We also learned how to speak English and Tagalog because of the visitors.”

This all came to a grinding halt during the pandemic when Buscalan was completely closed to visitors for two years. Villagers had no choice but to return to farming. Grace adds that “it was also good because we were able to rest a bit.” But when I first went up in July 2021, Whang-Od was not at home resting. She had absconded to the village in the neighboring mountain where restrictions were laxer. She wanted to keep tattooing.

I had found Whang-Od, gangster as ever, hanging out by a giant golden statue of herself, under whose outstretched arms and bare breasts I received my three dots.

Jake Verzosa recalls the time he first got a tattoo from Whang-Od. The year was 2009, and he paid for his markings in brown sugar and posporo. “When Whang-Od started getting tired after tattooing for a few hours, Grace would take over,” he tells me. Indeed, the cuff on his arm starts off a bit crooked. Grace would have been 13 at the time, but “her lines were very clean.” Growing up in Tuguegarao, Jake would see the tattooed elders near his school and would often hear stories about Buscalan. It was not an easy trek to make, and at the time it was mostly foreigners who happened upon the village. Jake would spend three years completing his portrait series of the women elders of Kalinga. His iconic black-and white image of Whang-Od, which has been exhibited all over the world, can be found in various permutations all over Buscalan.

Whang-Od's face is also plastered on all kinds of merch from t-shirts to coffee packaging, and that's just in Buscalan. I don't know if it's because of her guilelessness and genuine desire to share her culture, but she has been at the center of several incidents that have been called out as exploitative, with a few requiring the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples to step in as the gatekeepers of indigenous intellectual property rights.

At a webinar that discussed these issues, social anthropologist Dr. Analyn Salvador-Amores noted that what was once a place-based ritual has been transformed into a commercialized practice. “Culture is an increasingly prized commodity, aggressively appropriated by other entities,” she said. “Instead of asking who owns culture, we should ask how we can promote respectful treatment of native culture and indigenous forms of self-expression within mass societies.”

Whang-Od, who turned 106 in February, is the oldest living mambabatok but certainly not the last. The three dots representing Apo, Grace, and Elyang are also ellipses, signifying an open-endedness and a continuation that extends beyond its origins. In the US, practitioners like Lane Wilcken and Natalia Roxas advocate for the ceremonial tradition of batok, and they have helped and healed many Filipino Americans seeking to connect with their heritage by wearing the symbols of their ancestors. Elsewhere in the Philippines, Bukidnon tattoo practitioner Piper Abas is reviving the art of traditional Visayan and Mindanao tattooing, or patik. More Filipinos choosing to get an indigenous tattoo, one that carries with it a long history, can be seen as a step toward decolonizing aesthetics, reclaiming our bodies, and reconnecting with our roots, our selves.

Culture survives through representation, not appropriation. The crab on my leg, like the freshly pricked trifecta of tattoos by the OG and her two main disciples on photographer Artu Nepomuceno's arm, may not be the inheritance from our own blood ancestors. But we are now indelibly inked and linked to the last Philippine tribe that has managed to hold on to its tattooing heritage amid colonial erasure in the rest of the archipelago. And we carry these markings with us forward into the world, allowing ourselves the gifts of guidance, strength, and protection that we didn't realize we needed.

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