#this is insane btw i was old enough in 2014 to KNOW HOW TO RESEARCH THINGS I THINK. wait i was 17 whadda hell maybe not actually

[sanchoyo]

today is world donkey day apparently, so I was going to draw a lil doodle of mira with her donkey right. so I go 2 google it (have not googled her specific donkey type, the woolly páramo donkey, since I made her possibly, in like, ..2014?? usually I just type in baby donkey for refs, lmao)

and ive gone down a rabbit hole.

bear with me.

this is going to be a Long One.

there's almost NOTHING abt the 'woolly paramo donkey' on the internet. there's a blogsite from 2011 saying "Another endangered species of donkey is the Woolly Paramo Donkey. It can be found in high elevations of up to 3,000 m altitude and the permanent snow line of about 5,000 meters. It can be found in Colombia." which, I assume in 2014, when making Mira, I googled 'endangered donkeys' and this popped up. And I did not look further. until now.

if you google that passage, or anything related to páramo woollies, they just. don't seem to EXIST???! there's one page that copy and pastes the above paragraph word for word, but it was published in 2015, so. it also just scrubbed info from the aforementioned blog that seems to be run by a rando with no...sources or expertise at all....fabulous. okay. kept digging.

this page cites the pictured donkey as a woolly páramo donkey, except, that is in Ireland. not anywhere near páramo! (and sure, exporting animals is a Thing, but...the caption says its a subspecies of the paramo donkeys???!) (and, for the record, were going with the wiki's definition of paramo here: "A narrower term classifies the páramo according to its regional placement in the northern Andes of South America and adjacent southern Central America.") so we're looking for donkeys around there. more on that later.

but for now, The ENGLISH wikipedia page for Páramo (region) does not include ANYTHING about donkeys. which. if it was an endangered species, wouldn't it be notable?? however, the image the first blog uses...IS on wikipedia, and is cited. as being taken in 2007, possibly one of the earliest pics of said donkey type, and was in Chimborazo, Ecuador which iS IN THE PARAMO ECOSYSTEM OKAY WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE. RIGHT. THERE'S DONKEYS THERE. I knew that from looking up travel iteraries around Columbia's paramo. what I need to know tho is...ARE THEY A SPECIFIC, ENDANGERED SPECIES/SUBSPECIES/ RARE BREED?! ANYTHING???

The guy who's credited with the photo...unless its a case of the same name (which would be a hell of a coincidence, in this case) has scientific papers out about the paramo region! but...I have to request access to them, and most of them are in spanish, and who knows if they mention donkeys at all or the guy just put pics of them on wikipedia to be nice. like, I know donkeys do live there, but it doesn't seem to be a specific species, more like this is 'a woolly donkey of the paramo region' from the translation of the title of the photo. woolly donkeys can be anywhere!

WELL. the wikipedia photo is used on the ITALIAN WIKIPEDIA PAGE FOR PARAMO. and it lacks info which makes me scream. just calling it a 'woolly paramo donkey' and not elaborating is EVIL is it a reg donkey or NOT

looking into woolly donkeys alone, which I KNOW are a thing, this page cites the miniature woolly variation as rare, saying there are only 400-ish in the US. cool, that's a rare breed, if true. different from being an endangered species, though!!! totally different thing!!! and that linked page is from a breeder with no cited sources, and their last news update was...2019.

the smithsonian estimates miniature donkeys in general to at 10,000-20,000, so 400 of those being woolly seems to be..lowballing the amount of woollies? possibly? seems very low...esp for something with high cuteness appeal that would be a hit at fairs, competitions, or petting zoos. but if true thats at least...a rare breed... which is something...

(there are Poitou donkeys, if nothing else, which are confirmed to be a Thing, woolly, and endangered. quite frankly if I was going to change her to any other donkey, this would be it. its not on the red data list, but it is on the FAO endangered list, which is like. close enough yk?)

back to the paramo donkeys specifically. in my desperation, I asked bing's AI to scrub the web for ANYTHING about them. not that AI is always right, but it is Fast. it said "There is no scientific record of a species known as the “Woolly Paramo Donkey” living in high altitudes or near permanent snow." which...yeah. starting to Doubt it's existence. by this point.

just when I thought 'this thang isn't real, oh god I might have to pick a new donkey for Mira.....' I Found it somewhere unexpected.

a blog post about farmville 2. yeah the old facebook game! why is it here???! the game came out in 2012, so it had to be pulling the name from an earlier source, and was not where the blogs were getting their info (and thank god for that) but...even looking into reputable sources for THAT is hard to find??! its not on the farmville 2 wiki (LMAO) there's other species of donkey on the game, but none matching these low res pics that pop up on random cheatcode blogs when I look for possible sources?

both of these images/img descriptions call it the woolly paramo donkey. and seem to be reasonably well rendered, and can be found across a few other farmville 2 blogs/guides... (the first img being a baby, the scond being adult vers) I can't really imagine boomers who play farmville going to the effort to photoshop fake upgrades in 2012 for farmville 2... but its not on the fan wiki, which usually cite their sources. I am not playing farmville 2 to investigate this further, but its WEIRD!!! esp since farmville does have woolly donkeys, and the above are NOT just colorovers of them! where...where was farmville drawing the "woolly paramo donkey" name from.

anyway, enough about farmville it really isnt THAT important but it blows my mind the name woolly paramo donkey slipped into there somehow. how. who. & its supposedly in a game called 'island paradise' but I couldn't find pictures of it. but its got its own wiki fan page as well...??

so, anyway, back to the actual research, here's a map of where the paramo ecosystem is. and a map from 2018 on a reputable government website regarding donkey populations. (most recent study I could find, unfortunately!) there could very well be an endangered or at least rare subspecies/breed of donkey around there! (by the way, there ARE woolly MONKEYS around the area. surely no one with dyslexia like me read monkeys as donkeys and ran with it right. RIGHT.)

but...there's not one listed under the red data list's website under the name paramo or even any woollies. tbf, the red data website is moreso for wild animals, rather than rare domestic breeds). so I thought hm. okay. time to try something else. I checked for endangered south american donkeys in general. narrowed it down by possible countries. I checked every search engine I have bookmarked, including one that searches for scientific articles/books exclusively. I checked the dang wikipedia list of donkeys. (which, by the way? severely lacking info in general)

NOTHING. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE WOOLLY PARAMO DONKEY BREED, EXCEPT CITED ON THOSE RANDOM BLOGS, AND THAT SINGLE WIKIPEDIA PHOTO. unless...the region it would be in would be spanish-speaking.... there MIGHT be websites on it that I can't even read or find because I'm not using the right terms...OOF. I tried a few words for donkey (burro, burra, burrico,) paired with paramo, and I just kept getting a book result. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. not related at all, sadly, just includes a donkey in the story and the word paramo in the title.

I guess u could say the woolly paramo donkey was just a mirage? :) (loud booing)

anyway, all of this to say, the breed is most likely not real, or if they are, not documented online. from what I can tell, it seems to just be that woolly donkeys in general are rare, and while they do live in that area, are not proper endangered animals/species if we want to get hung up on semantics. but I'm not changing it for the comic. having her be a (possibly) fake donkey breed is objectively kind of funny, and it was already mentioned in chapter 1!

unless shirogane has decoy DNAs in the event of a break in and that was one of them. oops, all placebo. her mew power comes from, like, the power of belief or whatever. joke joke joke this is not lore its a joke

whatever. I had fun digging for a while! happy world donkey day. petition for a donkey emoji btw ^_^

#this is insane btw i was old enough in 2014 to KNOW HOW TO RESEARCH THINGS I THINK. wait i was 17 whadda hell maybe not actually #my job now includes actually fact checking things so i am good at it now bc ive had literal training for it but this is obvi for fun #<- said thru grit teeth and bloodshot eyes #sanchoyorambles #tm2 #......kind of #that donkey drawing isnt going to get done. i spent the morning on this. JKHSFKJSHKJ i am going to prioritize doing my daily may drawing #TwT imagine....a donkey drawing #if i actually have time after work.....i can try 2 squeeze it in....

[emprezz48]

Midnight Thoughts Part it’s-about-my-oshimen-graduating-soon-so-I-need-to-let-it-out-somewhere

Haven’t done this ever since Murai Junna grad... and here am I doing another one about Sakai Mei... 

As usual, Imma put the “keep reading” thing after this so you can skip this post and have a nice day (if you want to read this, feel free to waste your time)

Enjoy~

It all started when I watched the first episode of ebi calcio which was aired in late 2014 (but I watched it like really early 2015). It was a danso episode and Mei participated in it and MAI GAWD SHE WAS IKEMEN AS FFFFFF!!! My weakness is danso, so Mei really caught my attention... It wasn’t the first time I heard of her name (I found out about NonMei combi first but I never really paid much attention???) but after watching this episode, I totally could remember her.

2015 was a busy year for me, so I only had time to focus on a few SKE members (with my oshimen being Rena at that time) but months later after Rena graduated (and when I gave up being busy lololol) I started focusing on more and more members, with Mei being one of them. I found out how cool she is, but at the same time really cute and pretty, and quite a chikin XD (and also how she’s a 97 liner like me whaaaaaaat???) and that was the time when I really like NonMei as a pairing and shipped them like a delulu fan I am lol... I really started to like Mei more and more and she became one of my favourite members.

This photo was back in Fuyucon 2015? I stumbled upon this and I asked myself “Oh? Isn’t this Goto Risako? Wow she’s actually so prettyyyyyyy~ I wonder if she’s close to Mei?” I did my research and found out that this two same-aged girls get along pretty well despite being from a different gen and team, Risako appointed Mei as the leader of gorisa children, Mei calling Risako “Gori” despite the seniority, and there are few others cute moments here and there. If wasn’t for this photo, I wouldn’t have gotten soooooo into Risako, the member whom I can relate to the most... 

Also, being a DD then (without me realizing actually) I like a lot of SKE members, like really a lot. I couldn’t just stick to a member or two, pretty much I didn’t have an “oshimen”. But I was really really really following this two, commenting on their SNS, reading their blogs, digging up their older times in SKE, so on and so forth that it led to my decision to support them equally in 2016 (IT WAS ONLY LAST YEAR WTH) It was a gamble tbh. Despite being the youngest in their respective gens, they belong to the old gen of SKE. They’re also underrated as fuck (oh my god don’t get me started talking about Mei especially, wait you know what? I’ll actually get into that soon.) but I still decided to make both my oshimen instead of finding young buds (I DID FOR A WHILE BUT JUNNA...........)

I never felt so happy for an idol before. SSK is something that I have mixed feelings about, but when Mei finally ranked last year, I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I eventually cried. 63rd was a nice rank, and although it was just ONE vote, I was proud to be part of the meiteam (name of her fanbase) that helped her rank in^^ A part of me wished I had more money to spend on votes, but in general I was really happy because Mei was happy. In 2015, she managed to rank in during the preliminary round, but not getting ranked in the actually was really a frustrating moment for her. Getting ranked in SSK is one opportunity to get exposed, and I must say I was glad Mei had quite a number of jobs last year. 

I started to think “Wow, 2016 is really a good year for Mei” and everyone was like “RISE MEIMEI RISE” thinking she’ll continue getting chances to shine. Too bad, what we all thought was WRONG.

16th February, that was when Mei announced her graduation during Team E kouen in order to focus on achieving her dreams in becoming an actress. It’s a dream she had for a long time, and her thoughts of graduation wasn’t a sudden one. She has talked more in her blog (I translated it here) Basically this will be a positive graduation as she’s taking one step ahead in her life. 

To be honest, when she said she has thought of graduating since a year ago, I really didn’t know. All the good stuff happened in 2016 made me didn’t realize that she could leave just anytime. Then again, I can’t say that I wasn’t prepared for this. In fact, a day before her announcement, the list of members being able to participate in P4U event was released, and aside from members who already announced graduation before, Mei’s name was the only one not in the list. I must say, her fans got really scared and worried, and watched kouen the next day in fear. I was in that situation too, but I told myself to just think positively. 

Of course, even with that hint, I still cried. I barely heard what she said after the “I will be graduating from SKE” part that I had to find a clip and re-watch it. I thought to myself “I wonder if my reaction would be worst if I didn’t found out about the P4U thing” but after a while, I realized that I’ll still feel sad no matter what. Yes, I am happy that Mei is starting a new chapter in life, I already told myself I’m still gonna support her and try to follow whatever stuff she gonna do in the future. But Mei being in SKE played an important role in how my wota life went for the past year. I was never SO gachi before. Yes, one year is so short, but in one year, a lot of things can happen. So I think things will change a little for me once April starts.

Ok, if there’s one thing I should be frustrated about, then that’s about the fact that she’s a freaking underrated member. Although I did say that a lot of good things happened in 2016 for Mei, that’s just because for the past years she’s in SKE, there was absolutely nothing for her. I guess it was because she was young or something, but I’ve seen her performances at least way back to 2014, and I must say, she is arguably a really good performer! No matter what she does, she looks cool. Besides that, she’s also a fun person who not only just perform, but also “interacts” and play around with members during kouen. MC, excellent. She’s good at tsukkomi. Despite overall being a good performer, it just gets me sometimes seeing her dance positions during kouen.... It’s always at the back... On top of that, never had a chance to center any unit before!!!!!! This is insane to me tbh... There were so many times I saw chances for her to center a unit (for eg. Ame no Pianist unit during TeTsuna shuffle kouen) BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED!!! I WAS SO DISAPPOINTED LIKE THERE WERE SO MANY CHANCES!!!!!!! Like come on... if we can see bad dancers being put up as center (not pointing on any member btw) then why can’t we see members who are clearly capable to center, not getting a chance? Like seriously, all I wanted was just ONE chance... 

Which is why, when Suuchan started her own Suumelo Senbatsu (or what she name it as Melodies) and appointed Mei as the center, I was on cloud nine. Mei never had such opportunity for the past 6 years, yet her own fellow team member could gave her that spotlight. I could never thank Suuchan enough for this, although sadly, Melodies hasn’t fully formed yet (Suuchan still haven’t announced all the members) so they can’t start any activity. With Mei graduating already, we can never get to see her acting out as the center of the unit... but nevertheless, the title still counts, so I’m really thankful to Suuchan, really.

I may have sounded like I’m complaining a bit too much, but overall, I think Mei had a really really great time in SKE. She definitely learnt a lot in the past 6 years and grow up to be the best she can be. I know she love her fans a lot, she’s nice to everyone, even though she don’t give kami taiou during HS or something. In my case, since I’ve never been to HS, I could see her kindness through her replies in 755 (ok at least back when she often uses it before having twitter) I could be asking something specific, or commenting generic stuff like “have fun during kouen” or “how’s your day?” and she would still reply to them^^ Seriously nice. Like really. Cuz I do know that my japanese grammar is kinda horrible, some sentences sound weird, but she was really nice^^ It maybe ridiculous, but I screenshot all her replies to me, since I’m just an international fan who does not have $$$ and freedom to go to HS .^. SIGHHHHHHHH but anyways, I really treasure those replies as those were our ONLY interactions~ I actually wanted to write a fanletter (like legit write one and send it) but there’s way too much problems in my hand so I regretfully decided to leave it out... 

ANDDDDDDD I should wrap this up since it’s already so long......... 

As I’m typing this, it’s roughly 5:10 AM Japan Time so there’s around 13 hours till her graduation kouen? Obviously gonna watch it, but I’m gonna have to sleep first lol. I don’t know what kind of emotion I should have, but I hope the kouen will run smoothly. I also hope she’ll have fun and have a memorable last kouen, and although it’s weird to say this, I am looking forward to it.

Bye.

#sakai mei #SKE48 #midnight thoughts #i should sleep now #good night #thanks for reading #if you made it this far that is #i think this is a really messy structure #sorry about that #i think i've said all that i want to say #i hope so #but whatever #it doesn't matter this is supposed to be some random midnight though #*thought dammit #ok too much emotion going on #i'm sleeping now #bye