#they're that one XKCD comic

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Reading through my old Woman of Truth stuff, and by far the funniest joke is that for most of Steve's sections of the first episode, there's a lot of fuss being made about this top-of-the-line stealth jet, fresh from Ferris Aircraft, cost the US millions, potentially billions of dollars, full of advanced technology...

...And after Steve crashes it on Themyscira, in the High Council chambers, Io calls it 'horrifically primitive'. 'I mean, it still uses combustion engines, for Hestia's sake! Do they still not have anti-grav?'

[anistarrose]

[ID: an edited XKCD comic. One stick figure tells another: "Online accessibility is second nature to us disabled bloggers, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows closed captioning and one or two trigger tags."

The second figure replies: "And IDs, of course." The first figure concurs: "Of course."

The caption reads: "Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field." End ID.]

Why to write Image Descriptions / Compilation post for ID guides and resources / Guide to tagging for flashing and eyestrain (titles are clickable links)

note: were it not the meme format, I wouldn't actually use the phrase "second nature" here, because learning about accessibility (and unlearning ableist frameworks that don't prioritize accessibility) are still processes, not intuition, even for other disabled folks!

I'm disabled myself, yet I didn't join social media or fandom just automatically knowing these things — which means that no matter where you're starting from, you can learn something that makes a difference too!

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

There's a genre of online art which I call "high effort low effort," the sort of stuff that looks simple but is actually really complex under the hood and next to impossible to replicate.

For example, xkcd, it's just stick figures, "anyone could draw that," but you can tell a Randall Munroe stick figure apart from anyone else's. They have a very distinctive head shape; you always know which direction they're facing and what emotion they're conveying, and if you've ever tried to mimic the style you know that you can never make them look quite right.

Florkofcows, weird lumpy sock puppets, even lower effort than stick figures, right? Wrong! Even when they're copy-and-pasted between panels, no two socks look exactly the same and yet they're all on model. The specifics are so subtle I can't even put them in words, but again, you can always tell a real flork comic from someone trying to copy one.

Mysillycomics, asdfmovie, every youtuber with an avatar that looks like this

(especially history buffs and personal storytimers)

It takes a lot of effort to make something that looks low effort without it feeling low effort. If you actually make something with low effort, it shows. Real low effort art is inconsistent and sloppy, not charming at all. This is a style that has to be crafted over a very long time.

[kedreeva]

Get yourselves one of these bad boys.

I have one, I have had it since college and it's still going. You want to dice an onion? I can dice an entire onion in less than a minute with like zero effort. Garlic, peppers, potatoes, carrots, apples- if it's not a rock and it fits on the pad, this thing can probably dice it. It's got a built in measuring cup on the side. It's dishwasher safe.

Crockpots and pressure cookers have also been saving my life for cooking things that are not boxed or takeout, because while there are complex recipes, there are also 2-3 ingredient recipes with practically no prep, like "crack chicken" is just frozen boneless chicken breasts + powdered ranch, 4-6 hours cook in crock pot, take out and shred into cream cheese, eat on hamburger buns like a better sloppy joe. It's not active Cooking(tm) but it is passive Cooking(tm) which is often easier and just as good in the end.

My parents cooked dinners pretty much all the time but they didn't teach me how (and that's a mixed bag considering I'm pretty sure my dad thinks meat should be leather), so I didn't really start having to learn until college, and my biggest motivation there was cooking for other people since no one else knew how to cook, either.

Feel like a cooking class as a kid, in any of my schools, would have been a lot more useful to every day than some of the stuff they taught me.

I don't think enough people talk about the physical and mental energy it takes to cook when you weren't raised to cook.

It's not as simple as here are the ingredients and here are the steps. Cooking involves multi-tasking, timing, proportions, prepping, improvising, and more. The more complex the dish, the more juggling it requires.

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned obtaining the ingredients and the cleaning afterwards.

All these "healthy" and "save money" and "live better" motivational speeches to get people to cook more, and I'm over here like Cooking is Fucking Stressful and Incredibly Draining Actually.

I was raised a girl, but I'm entirely self-taught because my mom hated cooking and never bothered to teach me. She was convinced I'll just naturally learn on my own after I got married and was forced to cook for my husband and family 🙃

Anyway, I went through a HelloFresh phase several years ago to try to kick-start myself into a groove, but it never really latched on. I think the only thing I learned is the importance of prepping ingredients in advance so that once I'm bouncing around, things are just ready for me to grab.

This isn't to say I don't cook AT ALL EVER. I can make eggs on a skillet just fine. But it's a one-and-done kind of thing. Much like putting together a cold cut sandwich. But that's not Cooking™.

Turns out this past month I randomly got a hyperfixation to Cook™, so here I am facing the bone-tired aftermath of making meals that'll last more than one day.

After three weekends of going through it, here's how I autistically started handling the stress:

Find a recipe I will follow

Envision myself going through the steps and allocate a certain amount of energy to the task

Compile ingredients I need to obtain (or get my partner to obtain)

(If I have to go shopping myself, do it on a separate day from when I have to cook)

Open a Google Doc and copy/paste the recipe into it

Rewrite the recipe steps based on how I imagine I'll be going through them once I'm in motion

Mentally practice the steps

When it's time to cook, go through steps as I've mentally practiced them, with improvisation when real life takes a different turn

(If a lot of prep work is required, such as peeling and cutting potatoes, sit down to do it with a podcast before starting on anything else)

After cooking is complete, throw out any lingering garbage

My partner does the dishes :)

I'm sure it'll get easier the longer I do it, but this is exactly why I'm 34yo and always hated Cooking™ to the point that I budget for delivery and take-out on nearly a daily basis.

Cooking is hard actually.

[nekropsii]

Atomic Ask Bomb 3!!

We got a shorter one this time around! I hope everyone's evening is going well!

Content Warning: Long-ish, Discussions of Ableism + Queerphobia, Weird Cronus Moment™.

Same. I'd read a fanventure about that, I think.

Like, I don't personally believe WV would be allergic to being a mentor or something of a father figure, but I do have to wonder the level to which he was wigged out by the way that Dave and Karkat treat him, because Dave in particular imprints on him in a way that is... Kind of strange.

The later portions of Homestuck really baby WV. It's upsetting.

------

Easy. The actual things wrong with them.

A lot of the discourse surrounding them is fabricated, or has such poor priorities it might as well be fabricated. Most critical conversations about them surrounds things people just made up over the course of years of mythologizing their #Problematicness.

For Example: Most of the discourse surrounding why Horuss had problematic writing had to do with how he was "Bad Otherkin Representation", when the real issue was the fact that Hussie was conflating Being Otherkin with having a Dissociative Disorder, and in turn saying both of them are the exact same level of Fake And Gay for the exact same reason, because to Hussie they were the same thing. To this day, people get startled every time I point out that Horuss is canonically a System despite him bringing it up just as regularly as he does being Therian. Those are totally wack priorities.

------

...That's scary... I don't even have words...

------

LOL. The Lost Weeaboos was a Grade A bit. Thank you Aranea, very cool.

Honestly, I don't even count Cronus as a "facade character", because it's not like he's making any efforts to hide jack shit. It's been... Interesting, watching several people refer to "his facade" lately, when, like... What are they talking about, honestly? He's pretty bold-faced about his whole deal. This isn't really a Dave situation where you could be capable of falling for it when you're younger, because Cronus couldn't be doing a worse job at "hiding" how awful he is. He's not even trying, because he knows he can get away with it. What are the other Alphas gonna do? Leave?

Hope you're having a good time!! The Alpha Trolls may be a Trash Heap, but they are my Trash Heap.

------

There comes a point where it's almost comedic how unaware people are of it... Like, what do you mean you know he's a Horse Therian but not that he's a System? He literally calls himself the Host of a System and talks about Switching. IN THOSE TERMS. He's not even obfuscating it by using some esoteric Troll terminology, he is LITERALLY using the words "Host", "System", and "Switching".

It's painful. I know this is a moment befitting of an XKCD comic, but... Jeez. You'd think these things would both be on the same level of common knowledge, considering how they're traits that are directly related to each other and given equal amounts of screen time, but nope!

Unfortunately, it is a situation where this is relevant. Sad!

------

All characters will become AroSpec and/or ASpec with the help of my Beam Attack.

... Except for Cronus. It's just not funny when it's him. Due to The Themes. It's not fun to headcanon a character as any minority when a huge part of their character is that they pretend to be minorities for Pity Points to eventually cash in for Sex. Ew. Making him literally anything other than Just Cronus plays directly into so many vile Queer stereotypes it's insane. Those are stereotypes that have gotten people actually genuinely killed. Just... Ew. Gross.

------

[gauloiseblue]

Gauloiseblue's Bookmarks

A/N: Since there's no bookmark system like they had in AO3, I decide to make one on this site. Will update the list from time to time.

COD

Price

[The True Me] by @i-am-hungry-24-7 Useless by @syoddeye Lazy Saturday Mornings by @clementine-thedestroyer Price and Beauty Mark by @ohmygraves Growing older with john price. by @obsessivelullabies Growing older with john price; smut. by @obsessivelullabies Ex-husband price, but the “ex” lays on significantly blurred lines now. by @captainfern Ex Husband!Price by @moongreenlight (A/N: you have NO idea what this fic had done to me) The boys all collectively realize that you are the captain’s favourite by @dante-mightdie weird HC by @theycalledhimastar

Gaz

lavender skies by @yeyinde (A/N: Gaz girlie, please read this I'm begging-) I may love Kyle, but I can totally admit when he acts like a total weirdo (he doesn’t, he’s perfect). by @theycalledhimastar

König

Ex-Lover Konig with runaway reader by @diejager Dog Hybrid König by @comfortless Hades!Konig and Persephone!reader by @comfortless Aroura Borealis by @clementine-thedestroyer Underground Fighter!König X Rich!Reader by @melancholic-thing

Soap

Rugby player soap fucks you after a win by @vanderilnde Pushy ass cbf!johnny and benefit pay by @shotmrmiller Valentine Days with Soap by @killerpancakeburger cbf!johnny as the dog he is by @ghouljams

Ghost

soulmate au with ghost but it's the fucking opposite of rainbows and sunshine by @bi-writes

Poly/HC

Fancy (Vampire! Poly! 141 x Plus size! Fem! Reader) by @swordsandholly 141 80’s Arcade AU by @clementine-thedestroyer TF141 and "can I try your drink?" By @syoddeye (A/N: don't @ me) 141 when they need attention by @void-my-warranty TF141 when you gave him hickey when you're drunk by @gloomwitchwrites

The Arcana

Asra's Love by @bahrtofane Teen Asra and puppy love headcanons by @smoke-and-silver Trip adventures with Asra by @smoke-and-silver Arcana and Weddings (fanarts) by @bastart13

Random/Miscellaneous

A/N: I put all of the Ghost Band stuff here bc I'm not officially into the fandom, but they're so irresistible to read hnggg

THEN // if (then) FINAL PART (Ghoap Comic) Roach's puppy eyes Korangi pt. 1 Korangi pt .2 Korangi (sus) pt. 3 Korangi (even more sus) pt. 4 Ghoap food pt. 1 👍👍 Self-care (Ghoap short comic) Capt Price having a cheeky wank (audio) Barry Sloane thirst trap (maybe) Bare chested Barry- Barry ugly ass poems (i'm horny) Barry Sloane seducing clip ASMR Barry talking ASMR Barry (Price) pt. 2 The band Ghost wildin' Ghost band shenanigan: part 1 The Ghouls + Rut Season (HC) Swiss meets red velvet ‘you’ve got to press it on you.’ (Ghost Band HC) Nameless Ghoul NSFW headcanons Swiss relationship and NSFW headcanons .... yeah I'm normal I swear St. Vincent *heart eyes* Miyazaki's Retirement Declarations (chronologically) Hayao Miyazaki's "Inspirational" Quotes The Hand

Web Weave | Poetry

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe] - Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of deceased firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexeivich (transl. Keith Gessen) Robin Wood, “Psychoanalysis of Psycho” | Stoker (2013) dir. Park Chan-wook Stoker (2013) dir. Park Chan-wook and "The Lady of the House of Love" by Angela Carter This Is Me (Stoker 2013) Rice Paddies Home (What Is Home?) Whenever I see you, I remember AM I MAKING YOU FEEL SICK? // DEVOTION THAT EATS YOU ALIVE

[loriache]

Notes on the World Map: Melini

I'm kind of annoyed the complete World Bible doesn't have a version of the World Map with Melini filled in... unless it does and I missed it, but I literally bought it and looked at the relevant pages for this post! Anyway, I think this is the closest we have. I'm looking at this and -- Kahka Brud literally doesn't have a coast anymore. No wonder they're pissed!! Any industry involving the sea, trade, fishing, etc. is basically impossible now - you'd have to get to the coastline on the west side of the continent. That's probably miles!

Speaking of miles... how big is Melini?

This is where I got... really unwell. So first off, let's assume the official Dunmeshi World Map is a Mercator projection. I think the stage cartography in the Dunmeshi universe is at, it's going to be most important that maps are useful for marine navigation. So we can't just drop an approximate scale onto the grid and leave it at that; we have to work out where the equator is.

The way I've done that is via two places that seem like they have a close(ish) real world equivalent - in terms of climate and culture - Utaya and the Island of Wa (Toshiro's home). The Island of Wa is obviously Japan, and I've seen plausible arguments that Utaya is probably a climate/location similar to Nepal.

So, here's the (approximate) location and latitude of those places on a Mercator map of Earth:

If we arbitarily superimpose the two maps, asssuming they're the same size, we can draw a theoretical equator line that puts the two places at the same latitude, though on a different side of the equator. Putting them on the same side as Earth made the equator really low. I feel like that's ... unlikely, so we're going with this.

That puts Melini at a rough latitude of .. ~55? which would, using the same scale as the previous map, make two squares (at that latitude) about 600 miles. Very roughly calculating the size as given on the map based on that, that gives a width of (approximately) 250 miles and a length of 400, coming in at a bit less than 100,000 miles² due to the shape. Probably it's between the sizes of the UK and Aotearoa.

That really helps me visualise what Laios is working with here when I think about post-canon. Though I reckon what I've done here is "Just enough research to really annoy an expert". Sorry if you're that expert. I really don't know much about cartography <3 It's like that xkcd comic:

On distances, as someone who lives in the UK; with a car, you can get almost anywhere in a day if you're prepared to drive until late. But they don't have cars, so getting from one end to the other would take multiple days of travel. It'd take about 7 days to walk the approx "length", 400~ miles (from the top of Scotland to Liverpool) (according to Google Maps) and 2 days cycling, so probably 3-5 days with horses, depending on how you pushed them. That'd vary a bit depending on terrain, of course.

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode

Language lets us talk about things that aren't, strictly speaking, entirely real. Sometimes that's an imaginative object (is a toy sword a real sword? how about Excalibur?). Other times, it's a hypothetical situation (such as "if it rains, we'll cancel the picnic" - but neither the picnic nor the rain have happened yet. And they might never happen. But also they might!). Languages have lots of different ways of talking about different kinds of speculative events, and together they're called the irrealis.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about some of our favourite examples under the irrealis umbrella. We talk about various things that we can mean by "reality", such as how existing fictional concepts, like goblins playing Macbeth, differ from newly-constructed fictions, like our new creature the Frenumblinger. We also talk about hypothetical statements using "if" (including the delightfully-named "biscuit conditionals), and using the "if I were a rich man" (Fiddler on the Roof) to "if I was a rich girl" (Gwen Stefani) continuum to track the evolution of the English subjunctive. Finally, a few of our favourite additional types of irrealis categories: the hortative, used to urge or exhort (let's go!), the optative, to express wishes and hopes (if only...), the dubitative, for when you doubt something, and the desiderative (I wish...).

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

Thank you to everyone who shared Lingthusiasm with a friend or on social media for our seventh anniversary! It was great to see what you love about Lingthusiasm and which episodes you chose to share. We hope you enjoyed the warm fuzzies!

In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we've ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about invented swear words like "frak" and "frell", sweary lexical gaps (why don't we swear with "toe jam!"), and interpreting the nuances of regional swear words like "bloody" in fiction.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

'Irrealis' entry on Wikipedia

'How do you get someone to care about Shakespeare? Two words: Goblin Macbeth' on CBC

xkcd comic 'Conditionals'

'Pedantic about biscuit conditionals' post on Language Log

'The pragmatics of biscuit conditionals' by Michael Franke

Lingthusiasm episode 'This time it gets tense - The grammar of time'

'Realis and Irrealis: Forms and concepts of the grammaticalisation of reality' by Jennifer R. Elliott

'If all the raindrops' on YouTube

'If I Were a Rich Man (song)' entry on Wikipedia

'Rich Girl (Gwen Stefani song)' entry on Wikipedia

'Louchie Lou & Michie One' entry on Wikipedia

'Louchie Lou & Michie One - Rich Girl' on YouTube

'Semi-Toned - Rich Girl (acapella)' on YouTube

'Subjunctive mood' entry on Wikipedia

'Céline Dion - Pour que tu m'aimes encore' on YouTube

WALS entry for 'Feature 73A: The Optative'

Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts - Interview with Sarah Dopierala'

Lingthusiasm episode 'Listen to the imperatives episode'

'Dubitative' entry on Wikipedia

'A grammatical overview of Yolmo (Tibeto-Burman)' entry on WikiJournal of Humanities

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[docholligay]

OKAY! You asked for it ahah.

So this is, as always, a combo of what I think they actually smell like, and then I go looking for those notes, and go by vibes. I have these in mind for all my Blorbot Prime, and most second tier characters as well. I've smelled every one of the perfumes I've put on these ladies, with the exception of one, which will be pretty obvious why when I talk about it.

Minako. So I always think of her as smelling like peaches, which is rough in the perfume world, because, most perfume is made of of what's called absolutes, think of these as like, the building blocks of a perfume, and there is no such thing as a peach absolute. So, I love rose, and there is more than one rose absolute, so this is pretty easy. Peach, you mostly have to go off something that suggests peach to your nose. For a long time I had her in Bitter Peach by Tom Ford, but a couple months ago I smelled:

Oh Ma Biche by Lolita Lempicka and this is the one. It invokes the scent of a bellini, which is perfect because it pulls in that peachiness without being oversweet, because it doesn't have vanilla in the structure of it. It has that vaguely intoxicating, light quality, so it smells more of like what I think of when I think of Mina, that juicy sweetness but it's edged with something you can't quite pin down (and she likes it that way)

Michiru. I will never smell Michiru's perfume because we all know she has a house in paris mix it for her custom. This is a thing that absolutely exists, if you have a great deal of money. I put her in rose and white florals (like jasmine) with a classic and old school musk and vetiver base, maybe with a light dosing of wine lees. I think it would smell very classic or old, depending on your point of view. Don't get me wrong, I do want this perfume. There's two or three I've layered to get an IDEA of it, but I've never found one perfume I think made it up.

Rei as we all know, is in actuality too fucking cheap to buy perfume, and if she wears any at all, it's a dupe, but in my world that's not any fun, so let's pick out what she likes enough to have someone buy her. I see deep, commanding notes for her, I actually think she would wear ~Men's perfume~* some of the time especially when she was convinced she needed to be a Boardroom Broad and I don't think Rei is immune to some fucked up ideas about power and gender ANYWAY. For most times:

Ebene Fume by Tom Ford. I think this choice is a little boring (full disclosure: I own a decant of this perfume and really do love it) in that it's Tom fucking Ford and everyone has heard of it, but I think I'm going a bit xkcd comic on that one, if you know what I mean. But it's smoky and deep and powerful, it's like a men's perfume with softer edge to it. It's also a great night perfume, which is when I think she would mostly wear it, and it doesn't have any sweetness to it, really.

Haruka. Going outside the idea of Michiru having a perfume made for her, which I believe she would, let's talk about what I think she would buy for herself (and also a defense of the perfume I'm about to mention)

Dior Sauvage. This one is so common that even non-perfume people have heard of it. Do you know why? It smells good on almost fucking everyone. There's so much snooty ass disdain for this perfume in the weird world of perfume lovers, but honestly? This and Versace Eros are the two I recommend for folks wanting a masc-leaning perfume. (I also like to wear it, especially when I'm hyperfemme) It just smells good on people. It is so well crafted that it is mass appealing. Whenever we have men going, "What perfume can I buy that women love" they're so annoyed when I say "Dior Sauvage" but whenever I crack out the suit and wear this with it, a woman always asks me what my cologne** is. Haruka would smell amazing in it, and she would get compliments from women, and that would reineforce the behavior.

OKAY WELL SORRY ABOUT ALL THAT

*all perfume is gender neutral if you're not a little bitch about it. Women wearing men's perfume is not super duper uncommon, but men should really throw on a floral sometimes, but of course going toward masculinity is understandable, going toward femininity is weak blah blah blah you're all so fucking boring.

**Cologne is not just "men's perfume" it's a whole other category this post is long enough and I've spent too much time on it already and you are tired of reading it but please know this

[dysaniadisorder]

[ID: An edit of the xkcd expert comic, showing two stick figures talking to each other. Person one says; "Adventure Time lore is second nature to us fans, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Abraham Lincoln rules Mars, and Finn's patricidal revenge phantom limb syndrome." Person two says; "And Jake birth alien Mpreg, of course." Person one replies; "Of course." The caption says; "Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts always overestimate the average persons familiarity with their field." end ID]

i love venture time

[formerheroeswhoquittoolate]

yeah hey damian canonically draws and I'm willing to bet money that has-read-every-book-in-the-manor jason writes, at least for himself/for fun.

so I've entered into my personal canon that occasionally they write little comic strips together.

they're just strips, four panels of a joke (jason is introducing damian to things like calvin and hobbes and foxtrot and tim has joined in with some xkcd and strange planet) but they have fun with it. sometimes they're lightly poking fun at one of their siblings or bruce or the justice league, sometimes they're inside jokes between the two of them.

they kept it quiet, but by now, each of their siblings has one of their strips, carefully tucked away in a drawer or pinned to a bulletin board or, in bruce's case, in a small frame on his desk at wayne enterprises.

[woofgender]

the program i teach in has really small class sizes, which sometimes has hilarious effects. for instance:

this semester, i am teaching a seminar class with just two students. students in this kind of seminar actually develop most of the syllabus together; they're given a lot of help and guidance, but the eventual reading list is based on their interests. this means that the class is often an eclectic mix of different topics, but that's fine—it's never boring!

however. this week, one of the students assigned us the first part of angels in america to read. this is a perfectly fine choice, and the discussion was lively and thoughtful. but both of these kids are sooooooooo deeply heterosexual and i very much did not expect all the questions they had. (usually i have at least a few out queer students in my courses, on account of being so very loudly queer myself.) i spent like 30% of the class backtracking and explaining what i considered fundamentals of gay culture to them, because i read the play and fully assumed that of course everyone is already familiar with, for instance, the assimilation vs liberation debate within queer activist circles. of course the average person already knows about racial dynamics in american gay communities. naturally everyone is aware of why some people (incorrectly) think drag is sexist, right?

i am that xkcd comic about expert blindness, except about being gay

[whining-ylthin]

"Thousand Sons are so arrogant"

I mean

They're just academics-but-fascist-supersoldiers. Academic culture is 100% decent people next to educated fools and the biggest assholes you've met, and even those nice people can be a little stuck up their own ass and obsessed with titles because they operate in a strongly hierarchic structure that is theoretically based on knowledge and merit but can often be gamed through exploitation and favoritism or warped by broader political influence, and they're simultaneously expected to do research, fight snake oil salesmen and educate people on a shoestring budget. Cross it over with the esoteric nature of psykery and Warp study, the high-risk nature of 40K's majicks, the besieged fortress mentality (where constant backlash and hostility towards psykers causes TSons to dig in and double down, ignoring potentially valid concerns out of overblown pride, but also fear that they'll be weaponized against them) and Imperium's fascist obsession with rule of power, and you get an entire army of arrogant scholars flexing their physical and psychic biceps at each other while also desperately trying not to shit themselves from fear of failure and what it entails.

Also, expertise in a field fucks up your perception of non-experts, see also: that one XKCD comic about geologists.

Not defending TSons over this BTW, they can be absolutely obnoxious or stupid, but... yeah, I get them. I get where it comes from. I got that MSc and called it quits. I've seen some petty drama and toxic behavior at my uni. I've seen the PhD course pay. I was the gifted child and uni student with scholarship.

I'm still picking up the pieces.

[satanfemme]

me I guess

[ID: the xkcd comic "average familiarity" meme. in it, two stick figures are talking to each other. the first says, "goth culture is second nature to us goths, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows bloodletting (the vampire song) and one or two bauhaus songs." the second figure says, "and that goth is a music-based subculture of course." the first says, "of course." the comic's caption reads, "even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field." End ID]

[vimbry]

that one xkcd comic about experts overestimating people's knowledge really rings true here. I was compiling that list like, nah, some of these won't get votes. they're too specific, or on the nose, or something. people Know a tmbg song when they see it.

[skysometric]

What Your Favorite Cheese Says About You

with apologies to the classic xkcd comic, What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You

mild cheddar: you're not really into cheese.

american: all cheeses are good, how could you pick just one? you settled on american because it reminds you of the comfy grilled cheese sandwiches of your childhood. you still sleep with stuffed animals. cringe is dead, live free.

shredded mozzarella: you know just enough about cheese to know that you like white cheeses better than yellow cheeses. you've always wanted to try more, but you've never really had the opportunity. maybe because all the other cheeses are so expensive. maybe because your parents don't get the other cheeses. (because they're all so expensive.)

swiss: swiss cheese from the store is just okay, but you're still chasing the high of that one time you had authentic swiss gruyere. you frequently remind all your high school buddies of that one time you scored the winning kick. these are surely unrelated.

sharp cheddar: you like pairing things, which is why you get deep into shipping and fanfictions (not a hard read, considering you're reading this on tumblr dot com). you make charcuterie boards for every holiday and birthday that you possibly can.

pepper jack: variety is the spice of life, which is why you always get pepper jack for that extra kick. you add more seasoning to all of your takeout because it tastes better that way. one time you stole a candy bar just to feel something.

gouda: you are SO sick of all the puns.

muenster: fuck that guy who likes american, you know how to make a REAL grilled cheese. you tell other drivers on the road how they should be driving. you got into king gizz before they were cool.

provolone: you have a mountain of sandwich ingredients at home that you use to make mile-high sandwiches for lunch. you are rarely hungry for dinner, but you are very excited about tomorrow's sandwich.

fresh mozzarella: your favorite pizza is margherita style, and you only get pizza from places that are authentic enough to serve it. you got very mad at the other mozzarella listing because clearly the author hasn't tried REAL mozzarella. don't worry, you can quit clutching your mozzarella pearls now.

brie: you treat cheese like others treat chocolate – savoring the richness of every bite as it melts in your mouth. you have a collection of antique china that you don't ever use because that would make it lose its value.

parmesan: you hate that everyone thinks of those canisters of grated cheese when they think of parmesan. you wish you could show everyone what real parmesan tastes like, but you can barely afford it yourself. you should go start that restaraunt of yours already.

velveeta: is something wrong with you?