HI! Y'all can call me Ham, I'm mostly a lurker but maybe if you wanna see something that isn't just a reblog take a look at these? I mainly write for the DPxDC space but I've been thinking about writing some soely Dc and DP content? Jury's still out on if I'll make it tho.
My Ao3 is here! I go by the same name if you wanna say hi. :)
The Fics:
Tim Drake's I.E.F (Invisible Eldritch Friend) [Ao3 here]
[Chapter 1] Getting shot isn't the best way to start a friendship, but at least nobody died, right?
[Chapter 2] Going in alone wasn't his best idea, but maybe he wasn't alone?
[Chapter 3] Galaxies on the brain, Dick wallows in the pain
[Chapter 4] Jason here, with some bonding on multiple levels!
At work, I have a coworker so scared of being in the building by herself that it seems like she might quit.
Then thereâs me that has ran to the front of the building because I misheard a different coworker, thought someone was trying to break in, and made the split second decision that they were going to have to get through me to do it. I have also told the buildingâs resident ghost to fuck off a time or 2 while I was alone (Fred the ghost has a bad habit of moving things).
I am so utterly fascinated by âSakiâ, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decadesâ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from âthe fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheekâ to âthe pussy is completely out on center pageâ over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in âSakiâ donât wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And itâs still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. Itâs because the underwear ran out of places to hide. Iâm obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of âSakiâ, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didnât even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I donât know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, âthe one with the big boobsâ, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesnât get lost in the noise. Itâs just that normallyâin like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for exampleânormally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and youâd go, âWell, this is now untenable.â
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
Itâs like this, okay: thereâs no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. Thereâs a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with âSakiâ is different.
Itâs hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as âleeringâ, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into itâI canât imagine anyone is making her do thisâbut âSakiâ the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in âSakiâ. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of âSakiâ, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so itâs no problem. Itâs so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of âSakiâ, right: itâs just normal that they donât wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. Itâs been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. Itâs just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, itâs in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like whatâs the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because itâs mahjong time now, and weâre playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why Iâm so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
Water doesnât compress very much, so once it hit itâs terminal velocity, it was basically a solid ball, not a liquid. This is why you can use water to cut things if you have a high enough pressurized jet of it.
was expecting to reblog this with a tongue-in-cheek reply to the many people saying "this didn't fix me :(" but somehow not a single person in the notes is disagreeing. everyone's just nodding their heads thoughtfully bc yeah that's how you deal with the Foreboding Sense Of Doom, that's good protocol
yeah the 2020s have been difficult but at least we have the consolation that a single season of modern tv now takes 5 years to make and lasts about 16 seconds
if I ever tell you âlmk what you think if you read/play/watch it!â I am firmly inviting you to send me a play by play minute by minute cataloguing of your thoughts about The Thing
i was thinking this morning about how i categorize fanfic authors that i enjoy like AKC breeds and decided to share my rubric with you:
the specialist: this author has a favorite kink or trope and has written 80% of the content in that tag. you know exactly what youâre getting. they have A Brandâąïž. no matter what other traits they display, dedicated rare pair authors belong here.
the chocolate box: essentially the exact opposite. this author will try anything once. they have 80+ works in the fandom with no discernible pattern. the shortest one is 268 words and the longest is well over 100k. this breed of author may or may not be related to:
the renaissance fan: theyâve written three things in your fandom: your favorite fic, your notp, and a bizarre crossover with a show youâve never heard of. you hit âexpand fandoms listâ on their author page and have to scroll down twice to reach the bottom. whenever you curse the fact that you canât legally commission fic writers, this is the author youâre thinking about.
the horn dog: theyâre here for one thing and one thing only. if someoneâs dick is not in another characterâs mouth within 500 words, they apologize for it in the authorâs notes. they have one (1) g-rated fic.
the rookie: this writer is usually young, new to fandom, or just got a beta-reader for the first time. their fics are a little all over the place, quality-wise, but youâre excited whenever their name pops up because their unique voice gets stronger every time. you feel a personal investment in their development, like youâre an old man reading the local high school sports page and saying âthis kidâs the one to watch.â
the live streamer: the most prolific author in the fandom. their works are all over the front page when you sort by kudos. you have no idea how they generate this much work, and have seriously wondered if they have access to an extra-dimensional time portal. their stories are usually un-betaâd and the characterization varies wildly, but their best works are inspired and youâve read them 30 times.
the cryptid: this one comes out of nowhere every two years, drops the best fanfic youâve ever read, and disappears. fifteen months after you left a three paragraph comment about how they changed your life, you get a message in your inbox that just says âthanks.â
the novelist: we talk about âfiling off the serial numbersâ when someone reworks their most popular story to pitch it as an original novel; this author somehow does the reverse. their fics are excellent, usually long-reaching multi-chapter AUs that have almost nothing to do with the on-screen characters except their names. iâd like to extend my personal thanks to this breed of author because itâs the closest i get to reading an actual book.
the reunion tour: this author wrote some of the most popular works in the fandom, but either moved on to k-pop or burned out when canon took a turn for the worse. they put out one new thing a year, often an old draft thatâs been haunting them from under the floorboards. their last six authorâs notes all say they never thought theyâd write this pairing again and âthis will probably be the last time.â
hi!! sorry if you've been asked this question before, but as someone who wants to be a lawyer, how do you deal with defending people that morally you really don't agree with? thanks!
I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because itâs both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.
Itâs just not really about that. My job isnât about defending the idea of hurting someone else. Itâs about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. Itâs about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And itâs about stuff thatâs normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.
Yeah, itâs hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or theyâre cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.
Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking momâs car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dadâs house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. Itâs just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.
I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesnât do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. Iâm here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.
So yeah, sometimes itâs hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: Iâm not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When thatâs not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they donât get to just Do What They Want.
The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I donât see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and itâs far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but itâs invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.
When I get blood on my hands, itâs because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. Iâm okay with it.
Also: people donât ask doctors how they can stand to treat bad people. Why ask me?
#i find people have such an inherent misunderstanding of the roles of defense attorneys (understandably but still)#in that most people i talk to seem to be envisioning me personally defending the right of people to commit crimes or that like. Crime Is#Good Actually#âyeah this person did X but they should never face any consequences ever please and thank you judgeâ#(and people think this would WORK??? a different tangent on a lack of legal education and cop shows being awful etc)#meanwhile i am simply protecting peopleâs rights. yes even those peopleâs#idk i could write my own post but op Gets It and also a prosecutor just filed the DUMBEST motion ive ever seen and i need to respond to that#instead lmao (via @anixit26)
The number of people who respond to my post about how even the guiltiest person in the world deserves rights with "but not [crime I think makes you undeserving of rights]!" is truly insane. People really truly think that being accused of a crime makes you irredeemably evil and protecting the rights of those accused means you are also evil.
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
#excuse me but are you telling me that the Apollo pic is made with the help of the SUN and the Artemis one with the help of the MOON??? #that's actually so poetic i want to cry
@gorandomshesaid wait i need to sit with this one. wait.
Tomatoes are not native to Afroeurasia and generally wouldnât have been available on that continent before the Colombian exchange. When we refer to medieval peasants weâre usually referring to the poor of Europe and west Asia between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what we now call the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. A time before the so-called age of exploration and colonization brought food such as tomatoes, maize, and potatoes to Afroeurasia and domesticated animals such as pigs and chickens to the Americas. European cuisine of the poor and rich alike before the Colombian exchange would still have been tasty with their wide selection of game meat, herbs, vegetables, and grains, but tomatoes would not have been available to them and thatâs why I want to give a medieval peasant a plate of Italian-American style spaghetti with marinara sauce just like dad used to make
wait so. italy? i guess itâs not called afroeurasitaly, butâŠso âitalianâ food used to not have tomatoes? until they came from the americas? and they they what, decided âhey letâs just rebuild our national identity around these tasty christmas tree ornamentsâ? centuries of italy were lasagna-free and iâm just supposed to accept this
They had lasagna. It just didnât look like what we think of lasagna today. It was more like layers of flat noodles with spices and cheese on a plate that you ate with your hands rather than a baked dish.
If you look at ancient Roman food thereâs certain things weâd recognize as âItalianâ like olive oil or fermented fish sauce or cheese but the flavor profile is completely different and pasta isnât anywhere to be found. They also had herbs and spices that have since become unpopular or even gone extinct.
A lot of things we view as unmovable and unchanging about certain cultureâs cuisines are incredibly recent developments. Modern Indian cuisine for example can be traced back to a singular guy in the 16th century. And these days lard is considered to be integral to making tamales but that wasnât used until the Spanish brought over pigs and cows.
Food culture is something that can change very rapidly. Sometimes within a single generation. People generally use what they have available and whatâs available can change at a momentâs notice.
This feels like watching a clown get questioned by the crowd before they pull out a history textbook and proceed to whack the audience repeatedly with it
