"it's not that deep" not yet but I've got a shovel and fan theories and digging makes great exercise!

"its's not that deep" it WASN'T but babe im delighted to report the Fandom has come together to mine a cavern system

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Why Dems Keep Screwing Up Media Efforts

This is a very good article, that is worth your time.

Cas saved Dean and Dean saved Cas and they kept saving each other until Cas saved Dean one last time by killing himself but then Dean killed himself anyway lol hashtag love wins loses wins loses wins AND loses

It's rare that I appreciate an advertising campaign but this is 100/10.

There are too many Holmeses so a few didn't make it in but as my mum would say C'est la vie

Dangit forgot to tag my co conspirators @amypihcs and @i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end

@224bbaker are you proud of him

wait LMAO

Groundhog Day (1993) - Impressions, praise, and what fanfics writers can learn about writing time-loops from the OG time-loop film

Last night, I rewatched the "original" time-loop film, Groundhog Day (1993), and I couldn't help but admire the writing.

Though time loops have become a stock trope, especially in fanfic, there's a reason "Groundhog Day" is widely credited with launching the popularity of the trope in the first place because it is fun, fresh, and (at the time) original.

Yet while Groundhog Day is often credited as the inspiration for time-loop stories both silly and serious (like Supernatural's "Mystery Spot" episode, or Tom Cruise's "The Day After Tomorrow") when going back to the original, I noticed a few of its best beats are very rarely replicated in subsequent inspired works, and that's a bit of a shame, because a lot of those beats are what made the time loop story so fresh in the first place.

Things like:

The "Fuck Around" Stage

After discovering he's stuck in a time loop, Bill Murray's character Phil does something I have rarely seen any other subsequent time loop story doing - he fucks around and has fun with it.

even on its own merits its such a dumb and dishonest argument to take the notoriously stagnant japan as the comparison when countries like china and vietnam have ~15x their gdp in the same timeframe

Sam found a spell in Golden Time that he used to bring back Eileen. We find out three episodes later in The Trap that the spell was planted by Chuck so that he could give Sam something to lose to make him lose hope, to completely break his spirit.

Dean and Castiel go on a wild goose chase to Purgatory the same episode, looking for a Leviathan blossom for the spell to trap Chuck. but we find out in 17-Unity that there never was any way to trap him, the spell was something Chuck made up for the story. Continuity errors be damned, the only logical conclusion is that he wanted Dean and Castiel go to purgatory.

Chuck wanted Dean and Castiel in Purgatory, where Dean feels his emotions purely and can express himself. Dean prays to Castiel (which Jensen called Dean's confession) then goes to tell Castiel something. If Dean told Cas he loved him, Castiel would have gone to the empty, completely breaking Dean's spirit in a perfect same-episode-parallel to Eileen and Sam.

But he didn't. He didn't because Castiel stopped him.

Castiel broke the narrative, Castiel broke Chuck's narrative, again. And that is why Chuck is so completely pissed at Castiel in Unity.

DIY Chinese penis euphemisms ft. Jingsu

Let’s make some penises in Chinese.

Because there are relatively few characters in Chinese (around 20k in a modern dictionary) compared to the number of words in other languages (100k+ in English), most characters carry many meanings. This leads to ambiguities if writing were to be fully composed from single-character words, which is why most words in modern Chinese are compounded from two or more characters, and the meaning is synthesized from the individual meanings. Here are some penis-relevant suffixes, in no particular order:

-物 thing

-器 organ/instrument

-根 root

-茎 stalk

-棒 stick

-柱 pillar

-具 implement

-刃 blade (ouch)

You’ll notice that these are all, well, things. This is one typical pattern for making a Chinese compound word: the second character describes the physicality in some way while the first describes an attribute (characters are flexible and can be either prefix or suffix depending on context). Here are some penis-relevant prefixes:

巨- huge (the opposite would be 微 for tiny, but it’s hard to find micropenises in erotica)

硬- hard

阴- yin

阳- yang

性- sex

那- that

玉- jade

肉- meat

凶- violent

男- male

Now we can create our own penis euphemism by mashing any two together. Here are some real quotes from explicit Jingsu fanfic (translations are kept literal here, but I almost always translate every euphemism to cock because it’s the English term I hate the least):

阳具 = yang implement

凶刃 = violent blade

性器 = sex organ

肉棒 = meat stick

那物 = that thing

The anatomical term for the penis is 阴茎 = yin stalk, the word that is the closest equivalent of penis. But why is the penis both a yin stalk and yang implement? Glad you asked. Yang is associated with the male and yin with the female, but the very concept of yin-yang is that there’s yin in yang and yang in yin (think of the symbol itself). The penis is a yin part because the privates are the most yin on the body. So you can think of it as either the thing of a yang being, or the yin thing on a yang being—the wonderful duality of the male member.

As you might expect, not all of the possible combinations are actually in use. Like, 阴棒 = yin stick isn’t a thing. Why not? I don’t know, it just isn’t. If you used it in context, readers would understand you mean penis and probably puzzle a bit over why you didn’t use the more common names.

Some of the combinations also mean other things. 凶器 = violent instrument actually means murder weapon in ordinary use. Can it be a penis euphemism during rough sex? Yes, but most of the time it means the real weapon. 那根 = that root is tricky because 根 is a classifier word (a similar concept to measure words in English) for long stick-like objects in addition to its meaning of root, so 那根 is almost always used in conjunction with other words, like that phallic [thing], as opposed to a penis on its own, which would probably be confusing to read. But when the character preceding 根 is something else, like 男- male, then it’s not being used in the classifier context, and 男根 = male root is indeed a penis.

Now that we’ve gotten the explanations out of the way, I searched through the corpus of Chinese Jingsu fics on my computer (around 1000+ fics) to look for all possible combinations of the prefixes and suffixes listed above, tossing out the compound words that don’t mean penis in context, to see what the most popular penises are. Behold the Jingsu compound penis matrix:

Congratulations to our winner, sex organ, and the distant runner-up, that thing. In contrast, the anatomical yin stalk is not very popular, kind of like how penis is not used as frequently as other terms in English erotica.

Okay, so now you have the power to create all kinds of penises. But what’s the correct penis to use in a particular situation? Jingsu smut is, of course, mostly ancient erotica (unless it’s a modern AU), so the tendency is to go for the more literary and euphemistic, and the way to do that is to be less physically descriptive. That thing is definitely more suited for delicate company than meat stick (though some authors happily use meat stick in their ancient settings anyways), and jade/yin/yang penises are also more literary. 玉茎 = jade stalk is, in fact, the traditional Chinese medicine term for the penis and also a literary term, in use for well over a thousand years.

Some more penises

It would be way oversimplifying things to say we’re done now when there are many more methods to form words and penises in Chinese besides our simple algorithm. Let’s first discuss some concepts with English analogs:

A lot of ancient cultures associated chickens with the male member, and we have cock in English. In Chinese, children call penises 小鸡鸡 = little chicken, kind of the equivalent of weewee. You would definitely not use it in a sexy story.

In English you could say he pushed himself inside, and you could say that in Chinese too, with 自己 = self. A relatively euphemistic term.

There’s also little [person’s name], so 小长苏 = xiao-Changsu and 小景琰 = xiao-Jingyan exist. And yes, so does 小小殊 = xiao-xiao-Shu, Lin Shu’s penis. This might be my least favorite one. These are not generally euphemisms you’d see in more…well-regarded erotica.

Okay, now onto the more uniquely Chinese penises. We have some more euphemistic ones:

那话儿 = those words, actually meaning that which we can’t speak of, and penis. 话儿 on its own just means words and remarks in general, but once you add that in the beginning, it becomes a whole other thing (though it can still mean those words in non-erotic contexts). This is one of the euphemisms found in the infamous erotic Ming Dynasty novel 金瓶梅 (Jīn Píng Méi), The Plum in the Golden Vase, so it has a storied history, though it isn’t used much in Jingsu smut at all. 不文之物 = uncivilized thing is also along these lines (之 here is a literary possessive particle). You can also put all kinds of adjectives before 之物 for a more customized penis.

Speaking of adjectives, one thing about Chinese very different from English is that parts of speech are fluid, especially in Classical Chinese where many characters are basically any part of speech. 火热 is fire + hot, but it can be both an adjective, fiery hot, that you stick in front of a penis, or a noun, fiery heat, that acts as a penis itself. So 火热之物, fiery hot thing, is a penis, and here’s an example where just fiery heat is the penis:

We also have words with standard definitions that mean something else in erotica:

尘根 = dust root, which is actually a term in Buddhism that means one of the human senses rooting you to the mortal realm, often referred to as the realm of ephemeral dust (尘世). This is a creative allusion, because what else is a penis but a root that traps you in carnal desire and prevents you from reaching nirvana? Of course, whether it’s appropriate for use depends on whether you want to bring up mortality and the illusion of desire when your characters are getting it on. 孽根 = sinful root, or the more fun translation, root of evil, is also along these lines.

命根 = life root, meaning the source of vitality or reason for living, which is obviously the penis. This one does refer to penis in ordinary use as well, often humorously.

欲望 = desire. Very popular in erotica, not in the dictionary as a penis, and may confuse a first-time fic reader why an abstract concept is being shoved places.

分身 = split body, or where the body parts (and what you do with it to another body). Its usual meaning is to find time to do something else, and this meaning is only for erotica.

At this point, I should say that some of these may have been invented for erotica to get around censorship. The coined words often evolve to become part of the vocabulary of the in-group over time, such that even when there’s no need to censor, people instinctively use the vocabulary to signal, whether subconsciously or consciously, that they’re in the know.

Of course, just because a euphemism is popular, or of proper ancient lineage, doesn’t mean it will be subjectively to your taste. Jade stalk burns my eyes despite being a classic literary term, which probably says more about my Chinese than anything else; someone who’s really internalized this term and isn’t still on the literal level of understanding probably doesn’t mind it at all. Honestly, my original intention was to giggle a bit at all the euphemisms, but now that I’ve stared at them for a while, they all seem…okay to me (except xiao-xiao-Shu, that one can die). Not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

A bonus last one very relevant to Jingsu, 龙根 = dragon root, just for His Majesty’s penis.

Here’s a penis alignment chart that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a summary of our findings:

What if I don’t want to make penises?

As you’ve seen so far, Chinese is very good for euphemisms, and you can write the dirtiest smut without mentioning any parts once.

My favorite Jingsu sex euphemism is easily 梅开二度, literally plum blossoms bloom for the second time, which is an idiom meaning reaching the pinnacle again. It’s frequently used to describe a footballer scoring the second goal in a single match, someone finding new love after a failed relationship, or yes, orgasming for the second time in one night. But in the Jingsu context, it can also be literally read as…Mei Changsu “opens” for the second time.

I would write another post on euphemisms for other body parts and sex in general (including the inexplicably many sex puns in NiF canon names), but this euphemism is clearly the pinnacle, and I will not reach it again.

titanic Boat perfec t size for put billionaire in to n\ap! inside very Soft and Comfort baby sleep soundly put billiionaire in Titanic Boat. Put Billionaire In Titanic Boat. no problems ever in tittanic boat because good Shape and Support for billionaire neck weak of big billionaire head. Atitanic Boat yes a place for a billionaire put billionaire in titanic boat can trust titanic for giveing good love to billionaire. friend titanic

I'm curious because I'm pretty sure I'm an outlier (my mom's a librarian so we went very often when I was younger) but I want to know if that's true.

honestly, i think this is 100% legit and security should either not use your personal number or should deal with the consequences.

Hey Americans! If you buy things from overseas, as of August 22 you probably don’t anymore.

Most foreign postal services have paused shipping of packages under $800 to the USA. You will hear that it’s “because of tariffs,” but that’s not exactly true.

It’s because the US:

Many countries require people to pay tariffs when they receive a package. That’s fine. But you have to give people a way to pay the damn tariff. And there isn’t a way to do so. Apparently there isn’t even a PLAN for a way to do so.

So: if you have been buying from Etsy or eBay or a little shop overseas, if you subscribe to a foreign magazine, if you are an immigrant and you buy food from home via mail, now you will need to fly there and bring it home. Of course, the people who can afford that are also the ones responsible for this dumb policy.

I live outside the US. This is impacting businesses owned by my friends. This is impacting me, increasing the cost of sending items to friends and family (via courier or DHL now) . This sending-stoppage is a sensible global response to this badly thought out tariff imposition. This sucks.

Pulling this out of tags from @thesepossessedbylight:

You are both right and wrong.

It’s Kafkaesque. “Sure, you can ship it! We aren’t stopping you! We just won’t give your customers any way to pay the fee and you’ll incur a fiscal penalty when they don’t!”

Thanks for the clarification, @tafkarfanfic ! This puts into perspective a LOT of the confusion I’m hearing from businesses in my country, who seem frankly totally baffled about what they’re meant to be doing to get our goods into the US.

The usual shitshow of incompetence (whether deliberate or not) we've come to expect from this government. Right up there with the constantly shifting numbers.

idk much about kafka (despite having read the metamorphosis) but this is straight out of catch-22 for sure.

thanks for letting me hang out on here even though i dont have a favorite mounting goats song

I think about this a lot.

may I add also “butt dial” vs “booty call” vs “bottom text”

Hand job vs manual labor

one of my fears is that i'll be 7 hours down my dash reblogging things not knowing that, like, the end of the world is happening. everyone is posting shit like FUCK THE MARTIANS HAVE TOUCHED DOWN IN LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA meanwhile i'm like here's a picture of snoopy :-)

if EYE were a tv writer in the year 2009. and i wanted to give one of my leading men a male siren but I wanted to make SURE it didn’t read as gay. in an episode where the siren otherwise exclusively uses sexual attraction to pull victims. well. i might very well have the siren say how what my leading man truly wants is a better younger brother, and so that’s the role he chose to play. but if i wanted anyone to believe that. well. i might actually write the siren and my leading man interacting like brothers. instead of. you know. flirting.