How much longer 'til your luck runs out?

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Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:

Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.

Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.

The sando gender spectrum I osmoted this weekend according to a specific type of dude:

1. Roast beef is the most masculine of sandwiches. The only sandwich it is permissible to ask for by name (we did not have roast beef as an option).

2. Ham is an acceptable substitute for roast beef. There appears to be some controversy, however, over the bread options; we only had two, croissant or ancient grains roll (gluten free). Croissant is considered slightly more manly than ancient grains UNLESS you are under 20 in which case "ancient grain" sounds badass.

3. Turkey is okay, obviously not ham but if you don't like ham it's an option as long as you don't show enthusiasm for it. Definitely has to have mayo however. Mustard is a bit much. (Initial field research indicates mayo is the manliest of condiments but we have not introduced barbecue sauce into the study yet.)

4. Chicken salad is woman food. Absolutely not acceptable unless you announce loudly that it's for your wife or that she's making you for your health.

5. Vegetarian wraps require a recoil reaction or a sheepish "oh, no, no, what meats do you have?" protest. We had the veggie wraps off to one side so vegetarians could get to them more easily, and guys would come up to the wrap boxes because there was no crowd/line, then I'd say "that's veggie wraps" and they'd stagger back.

To be clear, most of the people of all genders at the event were totally fine, this was a small and specific set of guys -- mostly older dudes and (unsurprisingly) their young sons or grandsons. Maybe 20-30 people out of the 400+ attendees. But it really was both sad and a little funny to watch them unnecessarily assert their manhood using deli meat to me, a guy in a floral shirt with neon blue hair handing out box lunches at a charity event. My indifference to your masculinity is so vast it has its own international calling code, fellas.

Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.

We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:

The Italian.

For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.

The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, "We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie," and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.

I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I'm going to call it "I'd Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns."

i find this very interesting

I would like to submit additional data for your groundbreaking study. The deli nearest me has some sandwiches named after four private schools in the area. The boys school: roast beef. The two girls schools: vegetarian (different veggies, color coded to the school colors). The co-ed school, turkey.

I feel....I feel so peer-reviewed. Independent replication of results!

After talking to several men in Norway the one we have come to find as the manliest sandwich meat is dry curred ham

I am going to admit right now I'm fascinated to know how fish sandwiches are viewed in Norway. Also if I'm not mistaken you all have stupendous sausages-in-buns there, but that might touch off the next level of sandwich discourse: gendered debate over whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

When you say "even in canon this character is acting OOC" do you mean it as in "this character's canon dropped the ball on internal consistency with them" or do you mean "this character I normally relate to made a decision that I wouldn't have made" or do you mean "this character isn't acting like the fanon we developed by rotating them in our heads for 67295 combined hours away from the source material"?

Another drawing of Wei Wuxian from Mo Dao zu Shi because I’m obsessed😩

Normalize this response

Sometimes being the mum who exists in fandom spaces leads to awkward, even concerning, conversations. Such as the one which happened this morning. The mum of my daughter's best mate asked me if one of their mutual friends had sent her a specific message. This message was a link to a fic on ao3, if this had been a G rated fic this conversation would not have happened. It was not G rated. It was an E rated fic. Our kids aren't even 12 yet. As it happens, both of our kids have their internet access heavily locked down and monitored. They have phones because of how their school manages homework. The mutual friend, however, is not so monitored. Or she wasn't, given what her mum found she's about to be. This kid had found a fandom, joined it, and found it chock full of antis. The fic had been sent to her by one of them as an example of the sort of terrible people out there who need to be harassed and attacked because they wrote a smutty story.

Someone thought it was appropriate to send written porn to an 11 year old to encourage her to attack the author.

This resulted in a very awkward conversation where I had to explain to multiple horrified parents the anti culture that is becoming so prevalent. The fact that there are adults who use that purity message to groom kids. The way they escalate and how it bleeds into real life. One parent told me she'd wondered why her 14 year old was suddenly concerned about the two year age gap between her parents. The more I explained, the more absolutely ludicrous it sounded and the more baffled these poor mums looked. More than once I was told "but the characters aren't real, it's really weird but it isn't hurting anyone". Which is the point. The fictional situation isn't hurting anyone. The person who sent porn to an 11 year old is.

Was the person who sent it the author? Doubtful, that thing was tagged in the extreme. Was the person who sent it an adult? Almost certainly. The parent who's child received the original message has found more concerning stuff and gone to the police, but from the language the person doing the sending was in the US. We aren't. Did my daughter receive it? No, she isn't interested in that fandom and therefore wouldn't have bothered with it. Is this the fault of the author? No, they didn't send the link, they didn't ask to be harassed, they wrote a story and put it on ao3, the website created in response to rampant censorship and designed to allow for all kinds of fiction. Is this the fault of the parents? Partially, they should have been looking at their daughter's internet use and clocked what was happening sooner. Is this the fault of the child? No, she's 11, she didn't know better.

This has been a difficult day. Multiple parents have had their eyes opened to parts of fandom culture they had no idea existed. And the thing of it is, they aren't concerned about the why of anti rhetoric. They don't care about the adults writing about teens or rape or incest or torture or any of the rest, because they looked at the clearly tagged and rated fics and figured that it worked the same as a warning on any streaming service. They only cared because some utterly vile individual decided to expose their child to something this girl might not have looked at for years.

Proshippers did not cause what I have spent afternoon helping several sets of parents navigate. Antis did. Normally I'm fairly quiet about the whole debate because I just want to get on with my life and share my experiences. Today I got dragged into that mess in my every day life and the adults in the equation didn't react the way Antis like to think they would. They didn't condemn the author. They condemned the anti who shared the work with a preteen.

When your character tells you a thing and you, the author, are like, “No, you’re shitting me,” and the character’s all, “I absolutely am not,” and you realize that every single seed needed to grow that thing WAS ALREADY PLANTED IN THE STORY.

I’d like to lie and say I’m being deliberately clever when people notice things in my writing but honestly I’m just as much along for the ride as everyone else.

I remember reading about this guy when I was researching about the early weeb fandom in the US. Like the article says he was one of the main organizers in the 1980s NYC anime fandom and iirc AMVs were directly inspired by the legendary Daicon III opening animation and Kaposztas’ desire to make similar music video style anime-mashup shorts but obviously didn’t have access to an animation team so he did the next best thing and used his video editing skills (I wouldn’t be surprised if he was an early fansubber)

I discussed this on the Twitter as well - in the early 2000′s AMV’s were the peak of ‘intense’ fandom in Anime, they were the highlight event of cons, people learned about shows from them, memes were born from them, etc. Its niche but Kaposztas is an innovator who played a role in building a slice of culture, its a real achievement.

Also love that the Kotaku article just puts the Evangelion/Tribute Mash-up AMV in at the end just because why not, that video dominates, definitely watch it.

i am actually insufferable once I get comfortable with someone

Be My Friend and gain access to top hits such as

What a beautiful thing to be someone a friend feels safe to be vulnerable with

how dare you turn my self-deprecating midnight rambles into a hopecore positive post

Get hoped

i love every single little aspect of shakarian (obviously), but to me the real kicker is that they both mutually didn't realize they had feelings for each other until it was half jokingly verbalized that they should become fuck buddies, at which point they both become the galaxy's most awkward lovestruck idiots that have never known the touch of another person.

Andrew Garfield on consent and privacy

Source

teetotailer

first incidence of good writing advice i've seen in 10+ years on this platform and it's in the notes of a mustelid wreaking absolute havoc in a german grocery store

spice for life 

✨🌸 i didn’t mean to make it sad but well it’s mdzs

Puritanism is getting worse around the globe and conservatives and fascists will absolutely be first going harder against porn, then use that against queer people. You HAVE to realise this and oppose anti porn measures and laws, be in solidarity with sex workers, and listen to them when they call this shit out. It's going to be vitally important.

Reminder that keeping porn legal means that pornstars have legal protections that they will lose if porn is made illegal. Reminder that keeping porn legal means there are legal standards that can be put in place and enforced which results in better safety for all who are involved in porn's creation.

Reminder that porn will never stop being a thing. It just won't. If it's made illegal, then it will continue to be created and distributed - its just that it will now be done under the table, and with no safety regulations or protections for anyone.

Yes, the hard-right's ultimate plan is to use porn as a gateway from which to attack queer people, but even if that wasn't their plan, you should want to protect the legality of porn anyway.

Keeping porn legal means that the chances of sexual assault on those who work in the industry are reduced, and means that victims of assault are able to pursue legal action against their attackers. Keeping porn legal means that human trafficking is decreased, and it gives victims of human trafficking a legally supported escape route that would be lost if porn were made illegal.

Keeping porn legal means that anyone who is involved in making it - regardless of whether theyre making it simply because they want to, or because they're financially desperate -- is granted a measure of protection that they otherwise would not be. People love to raise the "but porn is made by desperate people who sell their body to survive," but a) some people make porn because they like it, and b) someone who is desperate enough to sell their body will do so regardless of whether it's legal or not. But when it's legal, that desperate person has far more protections and is less likely to be taken advantage of than when it's illegal.

Keeping porn legal protects people. Making it illegal will harm people. It's that simple.

"But it's demeaning!"

That's a you problem. No, really - it's your opinion is that sex work is demeaning, but I've had some really demeaning jobs that were legal and "proper". Just because a job involves sex doesn't mean it has less value than being a salesperson, or an accountant.

To quote the great John Waters.

A cloisonne vase, Meiji period (late 19th century) worked in various thicknesses of silver wire and coloured cloisonné enamels on a dark blue ground with butterflies, copper and silver mounts