Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

God I wish those were available in the US, I would buy nothing else

 

bonus pickles from last month (please also admire my fantastic bedhead)

 

Very very similar design to one of our supermarket store brands, so pings as Extremely Normal (Thrifty) to this Australian

 

Our generics have more like STUFF on but looks like a generic to me. Quite normal.

 

Yeah just looks like store brand to me

 

I'm currently attempting to clear out my bookshelf by rereading all the books on it and seeing which ones are worth keeping. Got to the Nightside series, and am keeping it - anyone else read it? If you haven't and you liked the Dresden Files, you'll probably like Nightside.

 

Someone in my high school was so hype about No Brand that she made a custom t-shirt of them and started a whole fad about it that lasted a year or two. So many yellow shirts with very simple labels. So many.

 

I like the no name concept and design, but I definitely pick out “no name” immediately as the brand. It looks fancier than store brand to me, because store brand couldn’t get away with that. (I’m American.)

 

Not really sure where to link it but...My boyfriend linked me this really neat article about the feelings of gay men in Japan about BL and fujoshi and whether or not gay men read BL. The article is summarized in this twitter thread and has translations of some of the answers Ryu-san, chief editor of Barazoku, gave on the matter. There's also a link to the original article itself if you want to read that. It's all in Japanese though so like. There is that barrier. Still for those who can though it's neat.

 

Could I ask a quick favour, that someone who can read japanese give a basic rundown on the consensus opinion? Because knowing there's a thing where the people who are actually likely to be most affected by stuff give their opinions on something I at least somewhat like but I have no way of knowing whether they're positive or negative because I don't speak the language makes me sort of anxious

 

the twitter thread is in English. Consensus seems to be mostly in favour, with some neutral and some older dudes having some bad associations.

 

Oh gosh, I can read a bit, but definitely not enough on a phone, and I’m not sure the nuance, which is the whole point, would survive.

The title is something like, “Evolving BL culture— Fujoshi uncertainty: use these hints to eliminate ‘prejudice’” but it’s headline grammar so it’s awful. I thiiiiink it’s two separate declarations with a conjunction, emphasis on the first, a slight bit of weaseling on the second. I’m not really that familiar with news grammar tbh. I think “fujioshi haze/confusion” has been phrased as a noun for stylistic reasons. I guess the grammatical ambiguity fits the hazy situation. A savvy reader would probably already know what they meant. There’s a comma after the conjunction, which seems like rather a lot of emphasis but might be normal for all I know. The bit about the hints omits the verb, again for stylistic reasons but it also kinda doesn’t actually say exactly what it intends to imply about these hints. I’m assuming it’s making a helpful suggestion, not actually trying to order anyone to engage with their prejudice elimination hints. I’d think the quotes around “prejudice” probably imply that this is a phrase that has come up a lot that people are expected to identify with specific discourse, or possibly that they’re about to quote someone who will use this word as a touchstone. There really isn’t much to be gained by including the verb for what exactly to do with the hints unless the article plans to go in a surprising direction, which seems like bad news reporting. We can intuit. So, there is fujoshi confusion, BUT you can use these hints for getting rid of the thing called prejudice.

And that’s why the English-language twitter thread is definitely a better bet than me. All that and we’ve only done the title.

Honestly, I think that people who can’t even read the article are not the target audience that gay Japanese men might be hoping to reach with this piece. If there’s a problem with fujoshi, which the twitter summary seems to indicate there mostly isn’t these days as long as people treat each other with basic human respect, then it probably can’t be addressed by people who aren’t Japanese or directly interacting with a Japanese community in more than a passing way. Being called “fujoshi” or applying the label to yourself in an English language context does not implicate you in Japanese cultural issues that also invoke the term.

 

Twitter meme to find your drag queen name is grandmother's first name + last dessert or sweet thing you ate last so

Mine is Violet Viennese

I love it

 

Finally, I will have firsthand context for Lindsay Ellis's assorted Phantom #Content.

 

Evelyn Reeses! (Or Evy, if you wanna use the nickname she goes by...)

 

you know, i don't think i'll start going by either Norma or Katherine Ice Cream Cone

 

Mint chocolate chip doesn't really go with any name in my family.

 

Minty might work as a drag queen name, though!

 

Patricia Cocoa for me. not too bad but I think I like Spud the Kid better, which I decided a while ago would be my drag name in the alternate universe where I do that

 

Virginia Caramel Cream???
Alternatively, Virginia Vanilla