i think the funniest thing to witness as someone who was in supernatural fandom in the early days and hasn't been in many years is the discourse about wincest.

because like. i cannot emphasize enough how wincest in the pre-castiel days was treated as an absolutely bog-standard slash ship.

standard shippy tropes circa 2005-2009, indistinguishable from the way people wrote any other odd-couple ship of the era. the fact that the characters were brothers often didn't come up at all, and if it did it was often just not a big concern. if you weren't into it because of, you know, the incest thing, you were politely considered a little odd, but to each their own. this probably has a lot to do with the fact that until s4 there was literally no one else you could plausibly ship either character with, but it's still unbelievably funny to me to witness the evolution there

How come no one talks about “Generation X” in like memes like didn’t they have a decent amount of Generation Discourse back in the day

Generation X produced an extraordinary amount of high quality/influential media* that either directly portrayed ourselves and our anxieties, or else indirectly articulated how growing up in the crumbling remains of the post-war economic boom influenced our way of thinking. That media’s legacy lives on, and so qualifies for “meme” status.

But our outlook was so depressing for the Boomers (who still firmly held the cultural reins in the 90′s) that at the earliest possible moment, mainstream society turned away from us and was like “Oh look! Here come the TWEENS! We invented a whole new demographic just so that we can focus on the generation that will in another fifteen years be called Millennials! They’re only ten years old but we are counting on them to be less grumpy and nihilistic!”

So we got crunched first by those older then us, then by those younger than us: Millennials now lump Gen X in with Boomers quite a lot, I think because like six Gen X’ers famously got rich off the dot-com boom, and so Millennials think all Gen Xers, like all Boomers, must be rich white able-bodied cishets that had blessings rained down upon them, and things only got tough for everyone in this century. 

But when Gen X came of age we could not have been portrayed as less like Boomers. We were a weird, depressed, hopeless, no-future, unemployed, broke, disaffected gremlin generation before it was cool. And trust me, we weren’t the first.

And while there isn’t a plethora of “jpegs with text on them in impact font” about Generation X on Web 2.0, the concept of a meme is older than that, and every Gen Xer is capable of conversing with any other Gen Xer entirely in quotes from John Hughes movies, Schoolhouse Rock, Clerks, and Beavis & Butthead. (“I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me” was our “Baby Shark.”)

Hope this helps!

*list available on request

fics by @onyxbird which were inspired by OP's posts about this:

https://archiveofourown.org/series/2709841

LOL

“How would someone be able to not read a fic-” that is actually very easy to do

Was fandom just better before AO3 because fics didn’t come with warnings and tags, so people had to actually be mature about interacting online? About what they interacted with?

It used to be ‘I read something i shouldn’t have’

Now its ‘you wrote something you shouldn’t have’

Side-swipe but bear with me–

Triggering.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A concept can scare you, offend you, horrify you, disgust you … and not trigger you. A psychological trigger is stimuli that causes an overwhelming physical/emotional reaction (for me, it’s people screaming at their kids– instant panic attack). When it’s bad, it can kick off deep depressions, panic attacks, self-harm episodes.

As adults, it’s our responsibility to know where our triggers are, avoid them where possible, and know how to deal when they happen. Artists cannot account for every single possible trigger in every single person in the world … and they shouldn’t have to. Take responsibility for your own well-being, and accept that consumption of art is done at one’s own risk.

You keep using that

word. I do not think it means

what you think it means.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Also not for nothing but… there’s a comment section that’s open in most AO3 fics. If you are truly concerned a fic may contain one of your specific squicks or triggers that you absolutely cannot read about, you can try asking before reading. If you ask “hey does this contain X?” and the author is still around, they’ll probably answer to the best of their ability. I know I would, and have done in the past. I’ll spoil anything someone wants, if they ask me. My fics don’t have a “does the dog die” page but I’m happy to answer if the metaphorical dog does or does not die if asked. Maybe some authors won’t respond, or won’t tell, but then just don’t read that fic (which you wouldn’t be doing anyway if you didn’t ask… right?).

Authors may not be able to account for every squick or trigger out there up front - and again, it’s not their responsibility to do that anyway when it comes to their leisure time activity - but fandom IS a community and I think most fanfic authors won’t have a problem helping another member of their fandom stay safe if directly and politely asked for help.

basically in corporate you either have email job or you have excel job. sometimes you have meeting job. sometimes it could be all 3. but thats it

can we stop promoting the idea that nature has to look beautiful to be good?

Thoughts that are mutual between cats and their people:

A little over 8 years ago, a friend of mine, L (name redacted) was hit by her scum-bucket boyfriend.  It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her, but it was the first time he’d hit her in front of her best friend J. (name also redacted.)  J objected to the abuse, you might say she objected violently to the abuse (which is one of the reasons why the names are redacted even if the statute of limitations should be up.)

After scum-bucket had fled the scene, J decided that L needed some more support, so she called every women she knew.  Everyone available showed up to L’s apartment with weapons and booze.  Imagine if you will, around 30 women stuffed into a one-bedroom apartment comforting L and passing around the drinks when someone spots scum-bucket’s car pulling into the parking lot.

It was decided that a few ladies would stay in the apartment with L while the rest of us when downstairs to confront scum-bucket and prevent him from entering the building.

Now all of us ladies at that time happened to belong to the same theater group that specialized in swashbuckling plays, lots of sword fights and the like.  So, when I say we brought weapons, I mean we brought things like broadswords, battleaxes, crossbows, rapiers and like.

So, scum-bucket gets out of his car and starts walking across the parking lot only to spot 25 or so heavily armed women marching out of the building, raising their weapons and charging at him while screeching like furies.

Scum-bucket had a pretty good sense of self-preservation and the sight of us was inspiring.  He ran back to the car and peeled out of the parking light like the hounds of hell were at his heels and I suppose we were.

Anyhow, L never heard from him again.  Eventually, she and J started dating and they’ll have been married for 5 years next September.

vegans making honey a bee labour issue is the funniest thing imaginable because like, you picked the one animal that has already unionised

You literally could not exploit bees if you TRIED

"Oh well if you stop the queen leaving the bees are trapped" wrong, bees can and will swarm without a queen. They will also make new queens if they don't think theirs is good enough

"Bees don't consent to their honey being taken" wrong, bees are actually more than intelligent enough to know we take the honey. They LET us take the honey if they think what we provide in return (shelter, food, protection) is a fair deal.

"Taking honey starves the bees" WRONG AGAIN! Domestic bees overproduce honey. A beekeeper NEVER takes honey the bees would need because then you piss off the bees, and if you piss off the bees you don't have any bees. They stockpile honey for the winter, but because domestic colonies do way better than wild ones they stockpile too much. That's why beekeepers can take out whole frames and then have them filled in no time. Domestic bees actively overproduce because they know humans are going to skim some off the top.

And if they didn't want humans to take it, beekeeping WOULD NOT work.

To keep bees you have to let them fly free. If they can fly free they can leave. Meaning if they don't like what you're doing, they WILL leave.

The whole idea they're basically slaves to the queen is also not true, they can just make a new queen literally whenever, and if they don't like her, they kill her.

There is no way for a beekeeper to exploit their bees. The bees are EMPLOYEES.

Employbees, if you will.

P

I'm probably gonna get yelled at for saying this but sometimes something isn't a real problem in fandom, you just learned a Japanese word describing a general fandom practice and got scared and decided it meant "The Bad Ones" of that practice

Whenever you see someone being like "we don't mind when women enjoy or even create m/m content, we just hate fujoshis" you are being racist. If you mean "I hate the way some female fans treat gay men like fetish objects" then say that, and we can have a conversation based on that, but "fujoshi" is, I cannot stress this enough, just a word for any woman who likes M/M content, for better or worse. It may have started out as a reclaimed insult (by the way, the insult was based on "liking gay shit makes you perverted and sinful," not "please respect the humanity of gay men") but it does not make a distinction between The Good Ones and The Bad Ones. You just decided to No True Scotsman it and that the English word for that should describe The Good Ones and the Japanese word for it should describe The Bad Ones

Same goes for the people I saw just the other day whose discord server explicitly disallowed "Yaoi" but said that M/M content was allowed. What they meant was "M/M content is allowed as long as it isn't pornographic and fetishistic." What they actually said was "M/M content is allowed, but M/M content is strictly forbidden," and expected you to understand that the Japan-Adjacent term has porn/fetish connotations while the English-language term for THE SAME THING refers to the "normal, non-perverted" version.

It'd be like if you used the word "cartoons" to refer to all Family-Friendly animation, regardless of style or country of origin, whether it's Japanese or American or French or whatever, and used the term "anime" to refer to all animated pornography regardless of style or country of origin. There's plenty of animated pornography that isn't Japanese! There's plenty of anime that's not pornographic! But this is the sort of thing you do when you say shit like "obviously women can read stories about gay men, but NO FUJOSHIS"

OP is correct and smart for saying this. this is related to/a subset of how people are about non-fandom foreign words, too, like how people say "Christians worship God (good), Muslims worship Allah (bad and scary)" when gues swh. gu. guess what. gues s w hat Allah mea. guess what the word "Allah" means--!!

The history of corporate propaganda.

I vividly remember attending a training session with a scan from an 1880-something newspaper that said "unions used to be something we needed, but we're past that now." The corporate propaganda hasn't changed in 130+ years.

to all my demotivated girls

dialectic synthesis

"Can I call you" not so fast, first you must answer my riddles three (could this have been a text, what do you want, how long will this take).

A surprisingly helpful bit of social maneuvering I've figured out from trial and error: Throughout your life, you are going to need things from people. Often, it's going to be on a deadline. And when that deadline passes, you generally want to know what's going on. So, you need to ask them.

There are two kinds of people, broadly, in this situation. The Shameless will tell you what the holdup is, with absolutely no regard for if the reason is "good enough". This is actually very helpful, because you get the real reason immediately, and can start working on a solution.

The Ashamed is trickier. People who are Ashamed are people who were often told they were giving excuses when they were trying to explain, and they'll often avoid you until they solve the problem on their own. This causes them and you a lot of stress, and often takes a lot longer to solve.

Long term, the strategy for dealing with people who are Ashamed is to provide a supportive environment where they're comfortable sharing any problems they're having with getting things done. But, there's a way to at least partially short-circuit that:

Provide an explanation for them.

One example might be "Hey Susan, I noticed that I don't have your report yet. Are you busy with other projects?" The readymade explanation signals that you're willing to accept an explanation, which is the big anxiety point.

Sometimes, you still won't get an honest answer- especially if the honest answer isn't "good enough" by the standards of the person who traumatized them. But, I've found that it often at least gets you a lie that lets you give them some slack or work around the problem.

Let's say that Susan has actually completely forgotten that she needed to do the report. She's horrified at herself, and completely unwilling to admit the real problem. But, she can now safely reply with "Sorry Jennifer, I've been swamped, and it got lost in the mix. I can have it to you in two days. Does that work?"

From there, so long as Susan gave an estimate for when she can actually do it, she and Jennifer can hash out a solution.

It's not a perfect solution, but it works astonishingly well for how small of a change it is.