I thought waifu connoted waifishness in some way.
I suspect that anime waifus are overwhelmingly drawn as under-aged ingenue submissive hotties in skimpy dress.
Who are the perfect “wife” for basement dwelling overweight vid-gaming US-based 30-something failures to launch.
IOW wife == waif == wife. Equals victim. A match made in heaven. For one half of the couple.
Pretty serendipitous for a loan word.
It is pronounced “why-fu” and has nothing to do with “waifs”. It’s basically the English word “wife” portrayed in katakana (the Japanese language form used frequently to portray foreign loanwords, like “Kurisumasu” for Christmas).
The average “waifu” probably has physical proportions very much the opposite of what we’d consider to be a “waif”.
Yes and no; some of them look like 10-year old girls who were given hormones to mature them.
Yes, the “Loli” phenomenon is common in anime fandom as well. It’s just that the prominence of waifus who are… prominent… should dispel the idea that the term has to do with “waifs”.
(And for anyone who doesn’t know what “Loli” means, it is short for “Lolita”, which should be all that needs to be said about it.)
Would the iconic waifu not be Dr. Krieger’s holographic bride from Archer?
Pretty sure they were going for irony by making that character very much on the nose.
Damn I miss Archer.
Also, I worry that if we continue this topic, Elon might actually show up and join in.
NO. Waifu is literally a loan word in Japanese that they took from the English word ‘wife’. The problem is the Japanese language doesn’t end on hard consonant sounds; a Japanese speaker trying to pronounce the word ‘wife’ would pronounce it wee-feh, not ‘wife’. “Waifu” is composed of three characters, ワイフ.
It’s also why a lot of bilingual Japanese speakers who haven’t attained fluency in English will continue to add a vowel sound at the end of English words; ending a word on a hard consonant just feels ‘wrong’.
Good example of this using anime girls: Lui is fluent in English and knows the proper English pronunciation of English words. Miko doesn’t, and pronounces them as if they were Japanese words, tah-keh rather than take, and hee-deh rather than ‘hide’
ETA: The same way that, for example, the Japanese (loan word) for beer is bīru (ビール), pronounced bee-roo. The ‘proper’ English pronunciation of what has become the everyday Japanese word for beer is just difficult for native speakers to do the ‘proper’ English pronunciation of it.
This goes to show there is a lot of pop culture out there and you can make it to your mid’50s and have never heard of, apparently, a lot of it.
Hey Elon:
Yub nub, motherfucker.
Off the top of my head I know that “yub nub” is “freedom” in the Ewok language. I’m that nerdy.
William Wallace would have yelled “yub nub” into battle if he was an Ewok.
Cancel Space X. Nationalize Starlink. Deport Musk.
I’m enjoying a large helping of schadenfreude watching the hundreds of millions Elon spent on the Texas races come to naught.
At least the area where his Starbase company is located strongly supported his candidates ohhh…
What do you mean “cancel” SpaceX? It’s not a government program it’s a corporation.
As in cancel government contracts with Space X.
Since none of those things is going to happen, there’s no point in being pedantic over hyperbole.
I’ll be pedantic. There are multiple meanings to the word “cancel”, and we absolutely can cancel SpaceX. You weren’t wrong @BlankSlate.
Really it’s Elon who should be cancelled though.
There’s no point in deporting Musk. He can rule the world from wherever he’s sitting.
Except from a supermax for his role in DOGE. That’s the crime of the century and he is no doubt guilty.
I’m surprised he hasn’t created a villain’s lair on some volcanic island.