sciatrix | (no subject)

I (and

ursula) am soliciting topic suggestions for a post-a-day in January meme. Here's her suggestions page and mine.(I am working off about four hours of sleep thanks to a helpful dog, so I am going to be taking a couple of days to write things up. nrgh.)

rydra_wong is recruiting tips and books that a doctor-to-be should read, ideally to improve their prowess as a practicing physician. Current target is general practice, but mental health books and bonus stuff for neuroatypical folks is a big plus.

jadislefeu has an enticing list of recent poetry. I like poetry, so I'm pleased to see it.

via

kabarett, a PhD-specific form of 2048 that has had me laughing in painful recognition over the course of this week.

wanderingnork found out about the Great Emu Bubble in Texas, which has apparently resulted in feral Texan emu flocks. Amazing.

franzeska is thinking about bisexuality, fandom, and bi culture.

runpunkrun is also doing weekly roundups, although theirs are on Saturdays. I'm pleased to be doing mine mid-week--the more people do them at different times of the week, the less likely we all are to get Super Overwhelmed.

Relatedly--apparently the kids are calling slash something else now?!? My, I feel old.

From Metafilter, Jonestown victims have a lesson to teach us, so I listened. That lesson has an awful lot to do with race and who gets remembered--and forgotten--when we tell the narrative of tragedy.

What's glitter, anyway?

What is glitter? The simplest answer is one that will leave you slightly unsatisfied, but at least with your confidence in comprehending basic physical properties intact. Glitter is made from glitter. Big glitter begets smaller glitter; smaller glitter gets everywhere, all glitter is impossible to remove; now never ask this question again.

Ah, but if you, like an impertinent child seeking a logistical timetable of Santa Claus’ nocturnal intercontinental journey, demand a more detailed definition — a word of warning: The path to enlightenment is littered with trade secrets, vapors, aluminum ingots, C.I.A. levels of obfuscation, the invisible regions of the visible spectrum, a unit of measurement expressed as “10-6 m” and also New Jersey.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

thank you for glitter especially!

I was delighted when I found it!

Just left a comment to this effect on the linked post, but I have always found "slash" to be a confusing word. First of all, is "femslash" a subset of "slash," or are they two separate categories where "slash" means "m/m"? Then, can you "slash" canonically queer same-sex characters? Can you "slash" characters who are canonically in a relationship with one another? Or is it only for canonically straight or presumed-straight characters where the fanfic writer is doing the queering? I entered fandom late (when I was 30), but it's never felt like an intuitively meaningful word to me in the way it apparently does for lots of people. No idea if the shift away from it has anything to do with that, though!

Disclaimer: talking out of my ass, based on personal and anecdotal observations over the years.

From what I understand, "slash" originates from the literal slash in the name/name convention of indicating pairings. Which in turn originated from Star Trek fanzines and Kirk/Spock, which is why it still mostly only means m/m pairings. I'm guessing femslash arose organically because that's how our society operates (male is default, add female prefix to indicate otherwise) and probably femslash fans wanted a more specific term to aid in searching for f/f pairings only.

Because both terms evolved when people still mostly regarded gender as binary, and when fandom/fanfiction was so firmly underground and regarded as unacceptable in mainstream pop culture, they don't really encompass all the nuances of queerness that you're talking about with the questions you raise. Which is probably why, as far as my personal fandom experience goes, they've really receded in popular usage. They're kind of legacy terms, because now it's all just put together under the general umbrella of "shipping" - because people are less likely to regard non-cis-het pairings as weird or other, they don't need specialized terms for them anymore.

Yes, it makes sense to me to think of them as legacy terms. Which I suppose is just a more respectful way of articulating what that original poster on Tumblr was saying when they called them "seriously out of date." (Not that rhetorical framing isn't legitimately important.)

via kabarett, a PhD-specific form of 2048 that has had me laughing in painful recognition over the course of this week.

Wait. Wait. Is it supposed to do that?

I MEAN. In the game, apparently; as I told

kaberett at the time, in real life learned helplessness in the face of looking around and finding yourself in a committed partnership is... not ideal while trying to finish the damn PhD.

At least, I hope to god that's true.

That is a dynamite of an introduction to the glitter piece, and thank you for sharing it.

omg the game...the fact that you get either "idea" or "garbage" is the best