#acts of nerdery

[thevalleyisjolly]

One of my favourite DoctorDonna headcanons comes from none other than David Tennant himself saying across various (separate) interviews that the Doctor is asexual and that the Metacrisis Doctor fucks, thereby implying that what the Metacrisis Doctor got from Donna is, among other things, one heart, the ability to deliver snappy comebacks, and horniness.

[bookgeekgrrl]

the slowest-climbing chart-topper ever

the oldest living person to score a No. 1 song in America

the longest gap between career chart-toppers

the Hot 100’s first-ever septuagenarian chart-topper, but with a song she recorded at age 13

[rottenbrainstuff]

It’s absolutely hilarious to me that there’s still fresh discourse going on about anime dubs vs subs

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Omae: Complexity of Self-Expression and Intimacy with the Japanese “You”

(Update: I have written a follow-up to this post wherein I exhaustively examine Katsuki's "you" pronoun usage, including every time he uses omae. Please be sure to read both posts! :D)

The anime adaption of chapter 322 is rapidly approaching, so I wanna talk about something really interesting: as far as I can tell, Izuku is the only person Katsuki has ever used the pronoun omae (おまえ) towards in-canon. Furthermore, he has only used omae towards Izuku on three occasions.

The first time is after Deku vs. Kacchan 2 in chapter 120.

The second time is right after his apology in chapter 322. (Katsuki actually uses omae four times in a row in this scene.)

(We'll get to the third time later, just you wait.)

Why does Katsuki address Izuku differently in these scenes? To answer this, we’re gonna commit some language nerdery.

First, let’s be real about the fact that Japanese pronouns can be complicated. There are a ton of them. You learn the common uses—like you could say that, broadly, omae tends to be used by guys for their friends and romantic partners. But the reality is that in a high-context language like Japanese, pronouns can come across wildly differently depending on who uses it, to whom, with what tone, and in what context.

It is difficult to generalize real-life usage, so to be clear, I am talking about MHA as a piece of media. I could try to tell you that omae is rude but also friendly but also condescending but also comedic but also confrontational but also affectionate—and so on, but that wouldn’t help you understand what Katsuki’s omae to Izuku means and why it feels significant.

The thing is, Izuku and Katsuki can each say omae and mean completely different things, because their normal way of speaking tells us how to interpret their words.

When Izuku speaks, he is polite and considerate. He uses the boyish first-person pronoun boku (僕). In Japanese, avoiding second-person pronouns is the polite thing to do; you use the person’s surname and an appropriate suffix instead, and this is the tactic Izuku uses to address others. When he does say “you,” it is usually the familiar kimi (君) towards Katsuki.

We see Izuku use omae in only a few circumstances: he uses it towards himself during inner monologues when he is trying to figure out what to do or compel himself to act, and he uses it when he faces All For One.

Both of these involve what I think of as “tough talk”—Izuku talks tough to himself to push past his fears and be a hero. With AFO, he is talking to a villain, someone he has to defeat. From someone like Izuku who speaks with such politeness and humility, omae reads as aggressive and confrontational.

Katsuki, on the other hand, is always aggressive and confrontational. He uses the masculine, somewhat boastful first-person pronoun ore (俺) and the second-person pronoun temee (てめえ) towards just about everybody. Temee is an extremely rude, combative word; Japanese descriptions usually point out that it reads like fightin’ words—it’s what you’d call an opponent, someone you are confronting, challenging, or belittling. As mentioned, you’re supposed to avoid “you” words to be polite, so the fact that Katsuki whips out temee constantly and makes up insulting nicknames instead of using anybody’s real name is just like, damn, dude!

Unlike Izuku, Katsuki sounds like he is challenging everyone all the time. This means that, coming from him, omae actually seems gentler.

After Deku vs. Kacchan 2, he opens his sentence with omae, and Izuku looks startled by this.

They just had a huge, emotional fistfight, and Katsuki… isn’t addressing him as an opponent, like he always has before. For once, he is addressing Izuku not as his enemy, but his equal.

This scene is the first time Katsuki properly grapples with the truth of their mutual weaknesses and comes to an understanding about it. It leaves him frustrated and unsure, but he walks away seeing himself and Izuku as being on the same side.

Because he takes All Might's words to heart: they are two halves of what makes a hero. They need to learn from each other and push each other to truly reach their best—as rivals, not enemies.

In chapter 322, Katsuki talks Izuku through how he felt about him all these years. He goes over all the things he's had to face to see how wrong he was, to see his own weakness and Izuku's strength. The whole time, he uses the "you" word he always has: temee.

But when it comes time to tell Izuku his true feelings, he calls Izuku by his given name, apologizes, and then right away he says this:

This is a direct call-back to the core question that Katsuki posed to Izuku during Deku vs. Kacchan 2: "Is my way of admiring All Might wrong?"

The second half to that question has always been, implicitly, "Does that mean yours is right?"

Here, Katsuki acknowledges Izuku fully as All Might's successor and affirms that Izuku's path is not wrong, using omae to tell him so. And then he uses it three more times to convince Izuku to come back with them and fight together, "because saving people is how we win."

To me, omae in this scene comes across with such softness. He's speaking with more humility than we've ever seen, both in what he's conveying and his word choice. (There is a whole other conversation to be had about Katsuki's word choice for "I'm sorry," but that is for a different time.)

This omae is not just a sign that he sees Izuku as his equal, it's expressing care for him. Katsuki sacrificed his life for Izuku, telling him, "Stop trying to win this on your own." He is trying so hard to make Izuku understand: Come back, I was wrong. Come back, I care about you.

Which brings us to the third time Katsuki uses omae: chapter 362.

That's right, the infamous "Can I still catch up to you?" / "Can I still reach you?" line uses omae.

Here's the thing that's unique about this omae: it's in Katsuki's head. This is internal monologue; he isn't talking out loud to Izuku, he isn't trying to convey something to him face-to-face, he is just thinking about Izuku.

The word choice isn't for anyone else's benefit or any external purpose: this is just how Katsuki sees him.

I can't overstate how soft, vulnerable, and sincere this moment is for Katsuki. And what gets me about him thinking of Izuku as omae is, it makes me wonder, "How long has he thought of Izuku this way?"

When did Izuku stop being temee in his head?

Changing how you address someone is a big deal in Japanese. Whether it's a name or suffix change (Deku -> Izuku) or a pronoun change (temee -> omae), it represents a significant shift in the emotional dynamics of a relationship.

It crops up a lot in media as a dramatic moment of intimacy, sometimes even being a part of love confessions. This heightened drama is exactly what we see with Katsuki's apology when he calls him Izuku.

Katsuki addresses only Izuku with his given name and omae, and in the whole run of the series, he only uses omae in a few select instances. I would argue that this is really important, subtle character writing.

Looking at the scenes, at least to me, each omae reads as progressively more honest and intimate. Each time Katsuki uses it, he is reaching for Izuku. Each time, it means more.

[vidavalor]

Odegra and The Language of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu

Let's decode Disco Tony's hilarious work presentation. On the known history of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu under the cut.

Right, so, a few of you have requested word nerdery on the Odegra scene so here we go... For a refresher, here's the dialogue with the wordplay-significant bits that we'll look at bolded:

Crowley: So, thanks to three computer hacks, selected bribery, and me moving some markers across a field one night, the M25 London Orbital Motorway, which was supposed to look like this, will, when it opens in 1986, actually look like this [shows a terrible picture of, more or less, the same thing lol] and represent the dread sigil 'Odegra' in the language of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu. 'Odegra' means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds.' Can I hear a wahoo?

[Some of the demons have enough energy to half-boo; most just continue to sit there looking miserable. Of all of them, only Beez looks like they might be getting how bullshit this all is and, either way, they still have no idea what Crowley is actually saying and really couldn't care less.]

Crowley: Once it's built, the millions of motorists who grumble their way around it are going to be like water on a prayer wheel grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil that will encircle the whole of London. [Hastur raises his hand with a question.] Yes, Duke Hastur?

Hastur: What's a computer?

---

A lot of the humor of the scene comes from the fact that, unlike the demons, we know that a word as short as 'Odegra' cannot possibly mean something as long as 'Hail The Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'... and 'Odegra' isn't a word familiar to many of us in the first place, adding to the feeling that Crowley is b.s.-ing the demons. The scene ending with Hastur asking for a definition of 'computer'-- basically, the first word Crowley said in what we see of the presentation lol-- exists as the punchline to the presentation and the scene as a whole, showing us that Crowley is correct in believing that there is no one in the room who can really tell that he's playing them.

Still, we know that language is a big thing on Good Omens (and that's an understatement) and Crowley is saying something... so, can we use the rules of Ineffable Husbands Speak that we've been looking at to figure out what, exactly, Crowley might be saying? Seems we can and, as you'll see, when we do, it becomes apparent very quickly that this presentation to Hell about the highway that Crowley describes as a demonically evil masterpiece exhibiting reverence to Satan and all things satanic is actually about Aziraphale and their world together and Crowley is getting a kick out of watching that fly over the heads of his audience. Crowley definitely performed this presentation for Aziraphale at some point, though (maybe rehearsed it a la Aziraphale's magic show?). Aziraphale enjoyed it a great deal more than the demons of Hell did, since it was written to amuse him.

Odegra: Odegra, a word that doesn't exactly exist in this form... but that Crowley didn't entirely make up either. Professional midwife that he is, Crowley used rules of human language to birth it into existence from a pre-existing word. If odegra did exist (and, honestly, Crowley using it and it being in Good Omens means it now does exist in both his and our worlds), it would be derived from the only word like it that does exist-- the Polish odegrac. What's hilarious is that odegrac means... to get one over on someone (not kidding lol)... as well as: to put on a performance and to play act a role.

So, the word Crowley is claiming means something in an ancient human language that doesn't exist is actually a word he made up that is of a word that does exist... and that word means to fool someone, to put on a performance, and to act a part. That is both how Crowley performs "demonicness"-- with the Odegra scene itself a perfect example-- and also how Crowley and Aziraphale behave performatively together in public to fool Heaven and Hell and hide their relationship.

Additionally, performance and act are words that can be, on another level, sexually euphemistic, and Crowley and Aziraphale both use act in that way in the Chateauneuf-de-Pape scene of The Blitz, Part 2. It somehow gets even better, though, because hiding their relationship is not the only reason why they have a secret language. Another way Odegra can also be defined gets into that and that's when we take into account how their wordplay is big on the words contained within words-- something used not just in their language but in the show itself, beginning with, as we've looked at in other metas, its opening shot of the word 'war' within the word 'warning'.

Odegra contains ode and gra. An ode is a lyrical poem and a poem is wordplay. Odes are specifically written in tribute to someone or something. That is what they're doing when they use their secret birdsong and why they use it when alone in addition to in public; its born both out of the need to be able to speak to one another in a coded way when they might be overheard and out of flirtation and combines the two. One of the most famous odes in existence is Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," which is also a word that we have seen that they use as shorthand for their language and for how they feel about each other.

As for the gra part of Odegra? It's a Polish word for game (as in, to play a game... like, say, a wordplay game.) But, also...

...gra is an Irish word for love.

Odegra, in Ineffable Husbands Speak, actually means secret love language.

Some demons torture and murder-- Crowley hijacks plans for Freeways of Love out of transportation-related innuendo amusement, remakes them into a soppy apple-heart-looking thing for his boyfriend, and passes them off as an evil work assignment, ok? 😂

The M25 in image forms "the dread (a subtle suggestion for the demons in there *snicker*) sigil Odegra in the language of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu" aka Nightingale Speak/Odegra/Whatever They Actually Call It, if they call it anything at all... what we've been calling Ineffable Husbands Speak. For why Crowley is jokingly referring to their secret language in this way, let's start with Mu...

If, in the GO universe, dinosaurs basically don't exist and The Earth is only a little over 6,000 years old, it's doubtful that there's anything to the Lost Continent of Atlantis, sometimes referred to as Mu or Lemuria. Crowley would know, since he's been on Earth since The Beginning and, since he's trolling the demons with this presentation, he's likely pretending that Mu existed, knowing that the demons won't know the difference.

When referring to The Lost Continent idea, Mu comes from Lemuria, which is what the theorized continent was named because it derived as a way of trying to explain fossils of lemurs that were found in spots people didn't think fit with what they knew of history at the time. All of this was discredited scientifically prior to when Crowley is making the presentation but Lemuria is popular with occultists. It sounded satanic to reference it in the presentation, which is probably how Crowley arrived at using it-- but it seems he really did for the demonicness on the surface but for its other meaning on a hidden language level. Mu/Lemuria/Atlantis is not the only definition of Mu and it's really the other one that Crowley is referencing. The Ancient Mu to whom Crowley is really referring is him and Aziraphale-- extremely old beings with a fondness for the other Mu-- the Greek letter that became what we now call today the letter M.

Mu evolved from the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph meaning water and, then, the Phoenician word for water. Anything related to water/the sea/fish, etc.., as we've looked at before, is a sexual metaphor and related to orgasm in Ineffable Husbands Speak, rooted in Aziraphale using oysters euphemistically to ask Crowley to bed for the first time in ancient Rome. The ancient Greeks eventually turned Mu into the letter M, which Crowley and Aziraphale use often and with a lot of intentionality as a word that has existed in basically all languages since the beginning of time: mmm, the sound of human pleasure and satiation, as we looked at in the Crowley & Plosives meta. The Ancient Mu = Crowley and Aziraphale, who are really old, longtime sailors together on The Sea of Mmm.🐟

[An aside but M is also the name of James Bond's boss. Crowley is a big Bond fan and, we speculate, was likely an allied spy during WW2 so maybe there's something in here as well to add to the idea that Crowley influenced Bond a bit.]

Mu has had different pronunciations but the most common one is homophonic for moo, which is the sound of the milk-producing cow. I don't think further detail is really needed on that one...

Mu can also be pronounced at times like the French moue, which comes from an early meaning of lips and evolved into meaning someone pouting. Crowley busts out a moue a lot-- sometimes genuinely, sometimes in jest.

Finally, mu is the Greek root of the word for something Crowley and Aziraphale both enjoy (and both like to speak about euphemistically at times): music.

The Dark Priesthood bit is pure blasphemy. Crowley and Aziraphale are, technically, members of opposing religious orders. Aziraphale is an angel of God, which is more or less akin to a human priest, while Crowley is, technically, a dark priest/diabolical minister. Religious trauma and conflicts for days aside, they're both more pagans of the good times, as Irish God Hozier would call it, with a yen for equating the sexual with the spiritual in their wordplay.

In S2, we have a parallel to the Odegra scene and others like it with entries shown to us in a publication of Hell--'Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings Who Walk the Earth'-- in which Crowley and Aziraphale wrote each other spicy love letters in their language and published them under the noses of Heaven & Hell without anyone ever catching on. In those entries, they both refer to each other using different religious terms (guru, different ancient gods, a particularly 'hot priest' turn through the etymology of bishop...). There's also, of course, that priests in many religions take a vow of celibacy, which then makes it more amusing to refer to themselves as a priesthood in wordplay referring to themselves as lovers.

Etymologically, the word priest comes from the Greek presbyteros, which means elder/old/venerable so, like their use of ancient, it's also something of a play on how they are quite literally older than dirt and also that they've been a thing for awhile now.

In addition to signifying a group, a hood is also both clothing that shields one from the rain and what we call the canopy covering of a car.

Crowley is making it sound in his presentation to the demons that Odegra means something evil and demonic in an ancient language of satanic priests when, really, it's a word he made up for his and Aziraphale's spicy and romantic little language and they're not devil-worshippers but devout members of The Church of The Vavoom.

The Dark Priesthood... Dark is a fun word by their rules because it's a word they could probably say a lot in public since it sounds all demonic but we have seen that their language is built, in part, around words within other words and also uses a lot of French so Dark = Dark and D'Ark. It actually refers to The Ark or is Of The Ark, which we can take as a reference to the events of The Flood. Since The Flood is referenced in S2 in the Job minisode and keeps coming up in other places (and since we've seen precious little of it so far), it's potentially another hint that all that rain-sheltering canopy vavooming Crowley was going on about in S2 was he and Aziraphale during The Flood and that we might see that in S3.

It sounds like if one of them says dark, they're actually referencing-- at least, in part-- The Vavoom kiss. Like Crowley was, on one level of what he said, in 1941:

In the book, the Odegra stuff is the same but for the word dark-- it's The Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu instead. The word black is also in their wordplay in the show, though, and shows up in the same scene in 1941 as Crowley saying "shades of... dark grey." The word black contains the word lac, the substance secreted by an insect that is used as shellac. Lac is also the French word for lake. One of you asked me to word out The Blitz, Part 2's Chateauneuf-de-Pape scene so we can talk more about how Crowley uses black in that scene in that meta down the line. We're actually not yet done with Odegra, though, because...

Odegra also can be pronounced like "Eau de grah." Eau is French for water-- so, it would be "water of grah"/"grah water" when mixing French in. Grah is a fascinatingly Good Omens-y word... In German, it's a variant word for gray. In Slovenian? It means pea. (Frozen peas!) In Croatian? Beans and bean soup. Peas and beans are both seeds, which occur a lot in their speak and are going to be their own meta at some point, since quite a few of you want me to write about the 'Seeds of Destruction' scene in S1. In Hindi and Nepali, it means planet-- akin to world...

The especially damn one, though, is that, in Albanian, grah means *both* to rattle and to roar. Serpents rattle. Lions roar. Crowley is both. Rather hilariously, he even roared as a lion once while shapeshifted into a snake which.... isn't quite to what this wordplay would be referring lol... but it adds additional humor to that scene.

So you say, Crowley... Anyway, lastly, in Sanskrit, grah also means: to seize, to take, and to hold. Mmm...

Hail The Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds:

Hail: Besides hailing someone in the worshipful way Crowley suggests here, there's hail-- hard rain. Within hail: hai, a kind of keelboat and also the word for shark in several languages (Finnish and Estonian, among them) and ail, homophone: ale aka alcohol. You also used to (pre-Uber/Lyft, etc.)-- and can often still-- hail transportation, like a cab... an extra funny pun since it's used during Crowley's M25 presentation.

Great: The original meanings (some of which obviously still exist now) were big, massive, thick, and coarse. Rooted in ghreu, which meant to rub and to grind.

Great: Contains gre and eat. Gre, in Welsh, means all of these: a stud of horses, a flock and a herd. So, there's the horses, ducks, birds and other animals that show up in their speak and the show itself. In the Old French, gre meant pleasure and goodwill and, in Middle English, it meant kindness, understanding and satisfaction. It's also connected to the word gray in Old Scottish Gaelic. The eat bit is self-evident-- a nod to all the food used euphemistically in their speak (and the real food they do enjoy together as well.)

Crowley also uses great in summary of he and Aziraphale in S2 when he dryly tells Maggie how much he and Aziraphale talk-- but uses their language, which she obviously doesn't understand, to do so because, honestly, Maggie telling Crowley that he doesn't know how communicate in a relationship is about the same thing as it would be if Muriel sat him down and said he needed to listen to them when it comes to their superior knowledge of sexual innuendo. It's ridiculous. ("I say something brilliant and he says something unintentionally funny back. It's great." Rill = a stream; tent = canopy, etc..)

The Great Beast... Beast: Contains be, homophone: bee, and east. Bees, as we learned in S2, are angels. Aziraphale is Crowley's angel and The Angel of the Eastern Gate, whose desk is in the Eastern part of the compass bookshop, which is also the direction of the arrow being pointed by the bookshop's Cupid sculpture in S1. The Great Beast = Aziraphale.

"The beast with two backs" has also been euphemistic for sex since the 1500s and was immortalized by Shakespeare in Othello... and, by that, we mean was probably immortalized by Crowley in Othello lol... A beast has also long been a flirty thing to call someone who uses lewd and lascivious language.

GIF by aftermath-meme

Devourer of Worlds:

Devourer: We know what this is lol but just to fine print it here... Devour comes from the Latin devolare, meaning both to swallow down and to accept eagerly. Earliest forms contain the same meanings we have today for the word: to entirely consume; to eat ravenously.

By the early 1600s, devour evolved to also mean to take in hungrily with the eyes. I suppose here is where it might be funny to also point out that both ravenous and swallow are words that are also related to birds.

World: Often relates to the state of existence of human beings. Sometimes used in religious settings by humans to differentiate between the secular world and Earth versus Heaven and the world of the afterlife-- the "worldly affairs" of Earth. Can sometimes refer to the celestial-- "other worlds." The universe is another name for the world-- a system of created things, one started by Crowley and Aziraphale themselves. Also: homophonic for whirled: a swirling of something-- usually, of a mind or of water, like a whirlpool.

A world, though, can just be a person's own life and the people in it, and a romantic way of referring to your partner. You could, for instance, toast the world of the planet you just helped save and also be toasting one another-- your own, mutual, private world-- at the same time, as many of us suspect was the case here:

Crowley also says that the motorists, as they "grumble" along the highway will be "like water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil that will encircle the whole of London." There is a bit of wordplay in here as well.

Grumble: Means to complain in a low voice but also originally had the additional meaning of the word within it that evolved into a separate word-- to rumble, as in to make a low, rumbling sound or murmur. While these hypothetical motorists are rumbling their way around The Freeway of Love, they're doing so like water on a prayer wheel.

Crowley knows that not a soul in the room knows what a Tibetan prayer wheel is or what it is meant to do. It just sounds like stuff the demons would think is an appropriately evil way to feel. The other part of the joke is that the term prayer wheel is actually misleading and a mistranslation of the Tibetan. Mantras, not prayers, are put on paper inside the wheel (which is cylindrical, not really even round-wheel-shaped, though it does go around) while a mantra or two is usually printed on the outside of the wheel. It's more about visualization than prayer-- which goes with how this flashback scene is tied to Crowley literally visualizing and willing himself and the burning Bentley through the M25 ring of fire.

It's the height of irony because the idea is that anytime someone turns a prayer wheel and focuses on the positive energy they are generating from doing so and thinking on or saying the mantras it contains, they're actually sending out positive energy to everyone around them. Crowley is giving a presentation in which he's claiming that these motorists on the M25 would be spreading negative energy because they'd be stuck in an exercise as pointless as spinning a prayer wheel when, in actuality, he's thinking about how the grumps in Hell could use some prayer wheels being spun in their direction.

On an euphemistic level, though, Crowley, is in his happy place being metaphorical water on a metaphorical prayer wheel. More sexuality-as-spirituality blasphemy at play with that and also a nod to how a lot of how he and Aziraphale are living is closer in line with Buddhist teachings than with other religions. S2 highlights that a bit, showing both Crowley and Aziraphale employing mudras (both inside and outside of performing miracles) and the lotus flower mandala rug they have on the floor to cover up The Heavenly Zoom of Discorporation, etc...

These motorists will be grinding out (does not need further explanation lol, other than to point out that you also grind seeds/pulses and coffee)...

...an endless fog (fog in a sense of headspace with relation to sex; etymology ties to damp, in a possible nod to the 597 AD scene; endless potentially hinting loosely at edging, which is in another 32 scenes more directly so not really a reach; also: endless, in the sense of viewing how they are and feel as eternal...)

...of low-grade evil (original definition of evil pertained to "sin" and still does-- "low-grade evil" would be akin to mild "sin"; grade repeats gra and also contains ade: as in, a drink made of fruit, like lemonade. Homophones: aid and aide-- so, care and support)...

....that will encircle the whole (both whole, as in: all of, and hole, as in: yeah, I'm pretty sure ya got this one...)...

...of London. London is wordplay, you ask? Oh, yes, seems to be. It's also in 'Demon's Guide...' as well, likely because...

London: contains lon and don. A don, among other things, is the formal Spanish title for a gentleman. Lon is an Irish word for blackbird and a Norwegian one for a gently-flowing creek. (Yes, they are that specific in the definition on the water movement.) The word London as a whole comes from the Proto-Celtic Londinjon, meaning: place that floods and, for a little ocean-themed destructive sexual metaphor fun, the Proto-Indo-European lendh, meaning: to sink.

So that endless fog of low-grade evil will be encircling the whole of London forevermore, thanks to Crowley's demonic design of the M25 orbital motorway. After all of that, it's clear to see why Crowley dryly thought that a wahoo (a positive yay! response but, also, a kind of fish... so, an orgasm) was in order. Some jolly good wordplay, that. Instead, at the end of Crowley's presentation, Hastur asks a question:

"What's a computer?"

In fairness to Hastur, while computers had existed for awhile by the 1970s, they weren't in everyone's houses yet and he didn't get up to Earth that often. (Good on him, actually, for even asking a question in the first place, when most of them didn't.) While the joke exists to highlight the fact that none of the demons got a single lick of what Crowley just said because Hastur's back with a question on what was only about the fourth word of many that Crowley said, there's also that it highlights that Hastur and the other demons lack the language ability to work out, through language comprehension and/or context, what a computer might be. They can't compute what a computer could be, basically.

Crowley and Aziraphale have been on Earth since the start and have been a part of the evolution of language. They understand how it's a living thing. They know the relationships between root words, which many of us also do just instinctively from living, speaking and reading and they do on a level of being walking, talking etymological dictionaries. The angels and demons technically speak all the languages of the world but, because they don't live in that world, they don't really understand language... and they are definitely miles away from Crowley and Aziraphale's capability of playing with it to the point of having created their own language out of the languages of the world.

Hastur's question is the meta joke of the scene and so we're going to finish up here by looking at it, too, even though it's not part of Crowley's wordplay. Ironically for Hastur, the word computer comes from the Latin putare which means, quite literally, to think, as well as to prune, in a way that means to filter and discern information. The 'com' part of it related to the Latin cum, meaning with and together.

What's funny about the question from a Crowley and Aziraphale's language speak perspective is that the reason why Aziraphale must have lost it laughing when Crowley told him what question Hastur asked is because their approach to the word would be to compute it by taking it apart and remaking it into also having a different layer of meaning within their language.

The first bit of com and its connection to cum and to come is something they already use all over the place, for obvious reasons. As for the rest of it... puter, depending on accent, can pronounced as puta, which is derogatory Spanish slang for a woman who has many sexual encounters and/or is a sex worker.

To compute to Crowley and Aziraphale would mean to think and discern, sure, but in Ineffable Husbands Speak, could be used to mean spending some quality time with a fellow seamstress.

So Hastur, who didn't understand much of anything in Crowley's presentation, asked for the everyday English definition of the one word in it that Crowley wasn't using in his sea of wordplay... but which, when used in Ineffable Husbands Speak, would ironically be defined as a short version of exactly what Crowley was on about for the entire presentation.

And this is probably why if you asked Aziraphale in Crowley's presence if he was ever going to get a new computer, he'd likely tell you he prefers to stick with his classic, first gen apple. It's the only one that's ever truly been great.

[fangirleaconmigo]

Hey folks and friends! Guess who is kinda sort back? ME!

As you probably know from my downstream posts, my sister had a major health crisis and I moved her and her cats in with me and my dogs, and there was a major operation then chemo.

It has been a little over six months and I have been just...I don't know how to even describe my state of mind, especially during the weeks I actively thought she was dying. Just. I was fucked. Let's just say that.

But the good news is, she was declared cancer free last week (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE) and we are trying to put our lives back together as a family, and I am trying to put my mental health back together.

A big part of my mental health is the act of nerdery. Book analysis. Writing. Creativity. It's a hugely important outlet for me.

So if you missed me or my writing at all, just know I missed being here even more.

To anyone who commented on my posts about her or sent me messages or asks, thank you so so so much for your kindness. It mattered to see that humanity and goodness still exists on the internet.

I'm gently wading back in.

I hope you are all well. And we will see if people are still interested in my witcher content. I went through the tag, and I don't know many of the creators now, and the folks I follow have seemed to mostly moved on to other fandoms.

So I'll be finding more folks to follow and boost (not to worry, I don't unfollow mutuals for leaving my fandom. We're buds now). But if you have any blogs to recommend lemme know.

See you around my friends! Oh, and I'm gonna start working through my asks and inbox tomorrow.

xoxo

[gamerwoman3d]

My crush dressed up as Johnny Cage from the 96 film and acted like my biggest fan while I was singing for our friend's 90s themed birthday party, and it was awesome. He sang along, did some Johnny Cage specific moves, did some cute things with a pair of mirrored sunglasses 👓 🕶 😎 It was super cute and super sexy to me -- Lucky a friend caught some of it on camera! ⚠️ Gif warning Below⚠️

I'm still kinda recovering from the adrenaline rush. Weeks before the party, I told him Mortal Kombat was my favorite film as a kid and that I wanted to marry everyone in that film just like a giant nerd 🤓 only for him to come to the party he knew I'd be at cosplaying as the hero from my favorite film, purposefully looking and acting like the guy he knew I wanted to marry. I loved every minute of it!

I also didn't show how much I really loved it because his girlfriend was there too :-p Keeping quiet and not just squeeing my lungs out about it sucked, like being excited over Kombat nerdery is such a core aspect of my personality that supressing that part of myself was honestly just... so incredibly exhausting. And the worst part is he maybe thinks I wasn't impressed when I was ABSOLUTELY elated and smitten. I gotta tell him how awesome it was. At home after the party I was in bed all wiggling and giddy and kicking my feet texting my friends about what happened 🙃

I doubt that he secretly reads this blog but if so lemme just say to him that I'm sorry that I gotta curb my enthusiasm so much in front of your girlfriend and please just keep being friends with me anyway because you're awesome and I love you 😍 💖

[I may have told him I wanted to be Sonya but I can't remember.]

[theothin]

Thinking more about these comments, the comparison to Happiness Charge brings another character to mind:

Seiji has quite a similar role in Happiness Charge as Satoru currently has in Wonderful: a friend of the protagonists who learns about them being Precures and acts as a mundane confidant to them, and also has an interest in the main character.

What makes this interesting is that later on, Seiji gets mind-controlled and spends a period of time as a villain. Could this be the case for Satoru as well?

Whether or not Satoru and Daifuku end up becoming Cures, I think this is likely. Wonderful has gone unusually long without the main characters meeting an actual villain, so as the villains change their tactics for the second half of the season, it makes sense for them to assimilate a pair of established characters, to have more of a connection to earlier events. It also seems very likely for Daifuku to get some sort of powers, including a human form, whether or not that involves becoming a Cure. It would also be quite interesting to see Satoru's animal nerdery turned destructive.

This would fit established patterns for Wonderful's antagonists, as so far the fights have already focused on breaking mind control of otherwise friendly characters, while approaching the matter in a new way. And while this could take the place of Satoru and Daifuku getting actual Cure status, it also could act as a lead-in to them becoming Cures that requires working for it in a way distinct from the Mayu-Yuki pair. That would also present a reason for the ending sequence to be cagier about it than Soaring Sky's was with Cure Majesty.

[firespirited]

Hackers 1995:

The computer nerdery is terrible (do watch Halt and Catch Fire if you want a history of computers) however the film does start out with social engineering and blind folder browsing using common passwords before it devolves into throwing viruses at a private server to 'overload' it.

The costuming is impeccable early 90s : well-off rebellious girl in rip curl, genderbending grunge, stretch tees for your futuristic cool guys.

Missing the heap of badly rigged computer junk that makes the room overheat and puts wires everywhere. Also missing in action : scraggly facial hair, terrible posture, the huge levels of racism and homophobia (yep, even coded into the programs).

You all were wrong about Matthew Lilliard as Cereal Killer being transfem... that was gangly white boy with postpunk swag in the 90s. There's a cartoon-cat-girl wearing phone hacker in high-waisted-trousers, leopard print and dancer's body language right there. Wild how the codes changed in the mid 90s, like how Barbie's Ken was sporty and bold then seemingly overnight he was gay if he wore a dash of colour with his suit.

The story and pacing weren't bad, the bad guy had period accurate pickup artist clothes and general vibe. The stakes weren't too silly.

It definitely has the pre-2001 optimism that permeated the web before the patriot act and y2k bug conspiracies. I miss that, a sweet spot between cyberpunk, cheap geek jokes and the hackers-as-villains trend.

It's just fun. Lilliard gets the best comedic lines, Miller is doe eyed and baby faced, Jolie gets to kick off her streak of strong female leads with an adorable pixie cut and lots of sporty ocean blues. Nikon appears late, Phreak and Joey are in jail half the movie so they get less attention which is a shame, I really liked their characters.

Highly recommend watching with the pause and rewind button to look at background costume and set designs for the club. Pretty camp, getting camper with time. The type of film to rewatch with company and quote at eachother.

This film was tailor-made for teen me: it would have landed perfectly: the music is spot on, the tech, the fashion, the sense of community and fun.

[coldresolve]

maybe a stupid question: where is the line between violence and torture? as someone who writes a lot of intense action, when would a line be crossed between “this is portraying torture as revenge as a good thing” and “a character is doing an action scene for revenge-motivated reasons”? Are there a lot of similarities between torture and action, too many for a clear cut line to be drawn?

also I really appreciate how much research you put into your blog, the stuff about perpetuators experiencing ptsd is really useful and gave me a lot of perspective for my writing!

bruh thats not a stupid question by far, its actually so deep in the nerdery you made me write it on my list of topics i wanna dive into on dark-audit lmao

where is the line between violence and torture?

the definition of torture and especially the definition of violence are up for constant debate. both vary in broadness both legally and philosophically, and either way there is in fact no clear line between one and the other.

gonna go the lazy route and give you some wikipedia screenshots for now, but like i said both definitions are rabbit holes. theres an entire wiki page just about the definition of torture, and that's just the quicknotes, so yknow

you can follow the source list on any of these articles if you wanna get nerdy with it, then follow citations in those sources if you wanna go extremely turbo-nerdy with it. personal thoughts + the other questions:

afaik, torture is always violence - the question is just how far you can go with violence before it veers into torture. if you go with the UN's definition, which limits torture to something only state officials are capable of doing, then police brutality is torture, but a serial killer ripping out someone's fingernails in a basement isn't. and even if you go with amnesty's much broader definition, there's a lot of stuff hinging on the choice of words

generally, it seems to me that the term 'violence' has more to do with the action performed (threat of or actual exertion of physical force or power) but also sometimes needs the intention to 'cause harm', at the very least, while torture is mostly about the intention itself, not just on the victim but also on spectators (torture as a crime deterrance, for example).

when would a line be crossed between “this is portraying torture as revenge as a good thing” and “a character is doing an action scene for revenge-motivated reasons”?

im not sure i understand the question, mainly cause i don't know what you mean by the last bit in quotes. but if your character uses torture as a form of revenge, ie. something akin to corporal punishment, portraying that as a moral good would justify the use of torture, no? theres a whole lot of 'torture is okay if the good guy does it' in the action/thriller genres. im not a fan of it, it's apologism

Are there a lot of similarities between torture and action, too many for a clear cut line to be drawn?

torture is an act. action is a fictional genre. i don't really know how you want me to compare the two ?

[thenaturalfriends]

Series 18 Cast Reveal Thoughts

Overall: this series is going to bring the chaos and the nerdery and I am PSYCHED for it.

Cast in descending order of excitement:

ROSIE. MOTHERFUCKING. JONES. She is going to eat Alex alive. She is going to eat GREG alive. If Rose makes it through the entire series without a) getting Alex naked or b) calling herself daddy I will eat my hat. Rosie Jones, second coming of Rhod Gilbert. I cannot wait to see what metaphorical javelin she throws through which metaphorical caravan.

Andy Zaltzman is extremely, extremely likeable and quick-witted and fun. Thanks to @tellthemeerkatsitsfine for introducing me to good Zaltzman starter content. If you, like me, don't know him, just know that:

- he used to have a double act with John Oliver

- he has a long-running political comedy podcast called the Bugle which currently heavily features Nish

- he is a cricket commentator and statistician.

If that combination of funny and smart and profoundly nerdy doesn't scream Ideal TM Contestant, I don't know what does.

Babatunde Aleshe seems fun, high energy and competitive from podcasts. Strong potential to be the series try hard, and I love try hards.

Emma Sidi used to live with Rose Matafeo. That's all I've got.

Jack Dee was Alex's long time dream contestant, but he is also who my dad is most excited about and my dad has Entirely Incorrect Taskmaster Opinions. As a result of dad's endorsement, expecting some basic old white dude vibes here, but happy enough to be proven wrong.

[thegeminisage]

sigh. tng update time. tuesday we did "sarek" and last night i sadly watched "menage a troi" on my own.

sarek: the fact that they mentioned his "son's wedding" once near the beginning and never clarified distracted me for the entire episode until i could google it. and google gave me no answers except to say that he married saavik in some semi-canonical novel. i hate that because saavik was his student (i guess aos had him right after all...) and also because of whatever horrible and weird thing they had going on in search for spock. WHICH BY THE WAY BROKE PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED CANON don't get me started

anyway, aside from that, this episode fucking ruled

i love the concept of vulcan dementia just being vulcan emotionalism. i wonder if it's genetic. i wonder if spock would've gotten it had he lived longer. i kind of wish spock had been the one following sarek around containing his emotions even though i wouldn't wish that fate on him cuz then i would've gotten to see him :(

less thrilled about the new wife. they could have had someone else play amanda if her real actress wasn't available (and she wasn't dead, i checked). if people live for like 150 years in the future there simply wasn't long enough for her to die and for sarek to have gotten remarried, especially if vulcans bond for life (which i guess was implied in some interpretations of amok time but not canonized).

actually, if sarek had once been bonded to someone as spock was to t'pring, how did HE wind up with a human wife...did he get remarried so quickly because of pon farr or does that wind down as vulcans get older...so many questions which will never be answered

anyway, i loved the sudden bursts of anger, it was so fun. uh except for beverly hitting her kid but it wasnt Her so we can move past it. especially thrilled with riker and picard almost getting into it

SAREK CRYING? ok king. i wish we had gotten to see spock cry and not in that deleted tmp scene

i loved picard's nerdery of him also. that makes the mind meld very fun. the rituals are literally intricate. also, "we shall always have the best parts of each other inside of us" i HOPE THATS TRUE FOR SPOCK AND KIRK AND BONES. i read an excerpt from a novel. well. i don't want to talk about it

anyway, picard calling out to spock and amanda...maybe i did well up a little at the mention of spock's name. who can say!!!!!

menage a troi: SSSSSSSSSSSIGH

ok, so i grabbed this one by myself because the summary looked bad and we're trying to finish s3 before chr*stmas fucks up all our social plans. no matter how bad the summary was, the actual episode was WORSE

i have three good things to say about this episode actually. the first was that i like that deanna yelled at her mom again, although this time i know better than to expect it to stick. the second was that i LOOOOVED deanna and riker's little date outfits. extremely charming. and finally i loved when lwaxana handed riker that horrible looking vegetable and he ate it with only mild reluctance. king is literally down to clown.

the rest of this ep was garbage. i know we didn't actually see any sex happen but i feel like they implied pretty heavily that the ferengi fucked her, possibly even multiple times. and like it's funny! ha ha ha look at the crazy situations this eccentric lady gets into! ha ha ha look at her and deanna having to run around naked!

somehow, this was the worst lwaxana episode yet. idk why i actually expected them to do a little better in s3. like, if i was gene roddenberry and they did this to my WIFE on MY SHOW. but you can put even odds on it being his idea or him getting off to it. his horrible little fetish fuel.

cherry on top was lwaxana's self-sacrifice at the end where she stays behind to let deanna escape sex slavery or whatever. which one felt like a classic narcissist parent thing and two wasn't even real - it was an excuse for picard to do badly-acted poetry on the bridge to pretend to be her jealous lover to get them to let her go. and then after all that she goes right back to sexually harassing HIM. because it's funny! ha ha ha!

anyway, it's a shame they had wes's little arc as the b plot of this episode because it was fine and feels important continuity wise, and yet every list on earth will rightfully suggest this episode get skipped because it fucking sucks.

tonight, the last two episodes of season 3 - "transfigurations" and "best of both worlds part i." i already know picard gets BORGED in the finale because i've known that since i was a baby and i am WAITING!!! they fucjing blue balled me in the first borg ep and i am MORE than ready for some brainwashed cyborg action. palette cleanser after lwaxana troi episodes.

[corpsebrigadier]

Important Guide to Final Fantasy Tactics Era Ivalician Monarchs

This is actually important to exactly an audience of me, but I just want to set down this down because I long for it to escape my convoluted fanfictioning notes and live in the world. I worked so very hard on this nerdery that does not matter and I think I've figured out how this game's history works... maybe?

Denamunda (Denamda) II -> Starts the Fifty Years War by decreeing he has a claim on the Ordallian throne, ostensibly to help liberate the formerly independent territory of Zelmonia. Valowa (Varoi) VI (king of Ordallia and Denamunda's first cousin once removed... I think?) is not a fan. Fifty Years later, everyone seems to have forgotten that Ivalice was the aggressor and talks about Cid and Balbanes (Barbaneth) fighting the good fight against those dastardly Ordallian invaders.

Denamunda III -> Much like the mysterious Order of the Western Sky, he's only sort of implied to exist... maybe. Might not be real. If he was, he was possibly either not king or was king for like two hot seconds because Denamunda IV is recorded as Denamunda II's successor.

Denamunda IV -> Ivalice's Henry V. Good at war and generally considered cool. Fought off the Romandans who were actually invading (whose king is some sort of something cousin of his some amount of times removed... I think?). The time of his reign is almost sort of calculable if you play weird math games. He could not have been reigning less than seven years prior to game, given that Ruvelia (Louveria) was made queen by the act of marrying his son Omdoria (Ondoria) III. Could not have been reigning too far before game as he names Zalbag (Zalbaag) Savior of Ivalice, and Zalbag, being 28, probably wasn't saving Ivalice below a certain age (although he apparently would have had to have saved it by the age of 21 at the latest). Dies after he's done with the Romandans possibly owing to some sort of poison. Supposedly Ovelia's dad but nobody really brings it up.

Omdoria III -> Ivalice's Henry VI. Bad at war and at ruling and at not being controlled by his evil wife who is Ivalice's Margaret of Anjou. Sickly and also bad at staying alive. Has some poisonable children. Adopts the not-poisoned Ovelia before the not-poisoned Orinas (Orinus) is born and is apparently also bad at declaring who is heir apparent and who is heir presumptive. Dies such that all his shitty cousins (or second cousins idk) start the Lion War.

Ovelia/Orinas??? -> Who is the monarch: a sad teenager or a dumb little baby? Who knows? Let's have a war about it. Technically Orinas has the better claim. Even if he is a bastard (as Vormav (Folmarv) indicates), Ruvelia is still descended from Denamunda II and Orinas has some royal blood, unlike his sister/aunt who is a fake princess who is fake. However, he is also probably barely toilet trained and is too lazy to even show up in the game. Not great king material.

Delita I -> Much like nobody can sort out who is heir apparent and who is heir presumptive, Ivalice just has a loophole where you can marry the reigning monarch and become the king regnant and not the prince consort. Furthermore, even after the reigning monarch you marry dies, you get to keep the throne instead of having it revert to the dumb little baby in Romanda who should be the next claimant. Who knew?

[wandaluvstacos]

THE ONLY SECONDS THAT MATTER

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE IS UP!

Genre: Contemporary Romance Rating: 18+

Includes: Extensive horse nerdery + cowboys, mxm romance (1 trans + 1 cis), some discussion child abuse, some instances of trans/homophobia (it is rural Oklahoma, y'all), depression, occasional sex scene (but it’s a slow burn for sure)

Victor Ortiz-Bennett had some reservations about moving to Oklahoma, but his late aunt willed him a 70-acre horse farm, and he decides to fulfill his dream of running and operating his own training facility. Victor’s been around the reining horse show circuit for a while, and he’s ready to settle down, travel less, and spend more time with the horses he loves and away from the people he can do without. That is, until he picks up a horse at an auction with a bucking problem he can’t fix, and he has to take her to the one guy who can ride anything– Johnny Stearns, a retired professional rodeo rider.

Johnny Stearns is loud, chatty, eccentric, and fears nothing, exactly Victor’s opposite. However, Victor finds himself sinking into an odd friendship with this new foul-mouthed cowboy without a filter, diving deeper into the mess that is Johnny’s life until there’s no way to extract himself from it. Johnny may talk a tough game, but there’s more to him than he’ll let most people see. Victor knows getting in too deep will mean a rough ride, but if there’s anything Johnny’s taught him, it’s how to stay in the saddle.

Excerpt:

Victor had to think about it a minute, because that part of his life felt so far away, and it almost felt like someone else had lived it. He’d never really been a woman—just himself living in a body that people perceived as female. At the time he hadn’t known that though, or at least he hadn’t had the words to understand it.

“I miss being trusted by women,” Victor said after a short silence. “Now I can tell they hold back around me. They don’t want to be perceived as being too friendly, in fear I’ll hit on them. Which really sucks, because pretty much all my friends growing up were girls. Once women started seeing me as a man, they stopped being as nice.”

“What about men? Did your relationship with them change?”

“Of course. Men stopped being as nice to me, too. Though I am shocked by how comfortable men are naked around each other. The first time I went into a men’s locker room this group of guys were all naked and slapping each others butts’ with towels. I have no clue how straight men can be so homophobic and then act like that in private.”

Johnny snickered. “The complexity of man.”

“It is great not to get hit on random middle-aged men at the grocery store anymore. I get to be invisible. Which some men complain about, but I’m fine with it. If you spend your formative teenage years getting objectified by divorced dads, you’re kinda over it forever. Though maybe it is a little bit of a shame, because I’m now at the age that I’m horny for divorced dads.”

Johnny laughed. “I don’t meet that criteria.”

“You’re in the demographic.”

Johnny sighed and slumped slightly in the passenger seat. “I was invisible to women until I started doing well in rodeo. I didn’t even have that much money, but I guess the notoriety gets you points.”

“Confidence, too, probably. The better you are at something, the more confident you act.”

Johnny nodded. “Makes sense. I had no self-esteem until my 20’s. Hell, it still ain’t much, especially after I had to retire.”

Victor reached across the median and rested a hand on Johnny’s thigh. “That’s surprisingly self-aware.”

“I think about things sometimes.” Johnny sounded serious, but when Victor glanced at him, he had that goofy ass grin on his face. It always made Victor’s chest clench, especially now that the sun was at a perfect angle to light a rim along his profile. No one would ever call Johnny classically handsome, but to Victor he was beautiful, even with his crooked teeth and rodeo scars and the crow’s feet that the sun had baked into the corner of each eye when he beamed. If Victor weren’t driving on a highway, he might have pulled over and kissed him. Instead he just squeezed his leg and smiled.

[look-mom-percys-on-the-tv]

okay looking back I have Thoughts on the boat ride.

spoilers under the cut for the lightning thief book, and pjo s1e5

honestly negative tone, focusing on a specific character

we missed out on A) Annabeth explaining the gods being cheaters B) Annabeth explaining how the trap works C)Annabeth saving Percy with her intellect by telling him when to jump

are we seeing a theme here?

Percy was still definitely right when he said Annabeth was better than him at quest, but this episode had way less of Annabeth showing off her problem solving and sharp mind than the previous three, ESPECIALLY considering that the chapter is based on is, like, ALL Annabeth!

We don't even get her arachnophobia!

the arachnophobia is, like, extremely relevant, so I think it might be folded into the zebra truck convo, which is originally where the "Grover was Thalia's protector" thing cane up in the book? since it is needed for the Lotus scene, as well as because spiders are part of what caused her to run away.

The thing is, though, that that scene is the first time I'm the book we see her "freeze up" and Percy have to handle something for her. If the show was going to show Annabeth's vulnerable side from the get-go, why not let her DO SOMETHING in the episode?

Even if Annabeth had the same monologue to Hepheastus, why not have his little flute schtick be a 'too late' thing because she'd solved it? And have him still realize how he had been acting!

between Echidna and this, Annabeth hasn't known a myth based on hints alone since Medusa, which is certainly A Choice.

honestly I should probably do a seperate post on why it matters who knows what myth, but in this episode it just made Annabeth look off her game.

I truly don't understand all these choices, like they make some sense individually but just change too much all together, so I will definitely try and figure out why.

HOWEVER

I do appreciate the vague effort made towards nerdery

and between this whole episode's Annabeth vibe and her seeing the Fates, I super believe that SHE will be the one to figure out who the Thief is.

Especially with how she was acting in the scene with the motorcycle and how suspicious she was, I'd wager that in the very likely event that Grover is wrong about the Thief, that Annabeth will be definitely able to piece together the right story when the time comes. and we're all gonna cry.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Something I'm not proud of: How pleased it makes me when comedians I like flatter their audience by saying we must be smart if we're listening to them.

I recently watched Stewart Lee's Alternative Comedy Experience, and I thought they sometimes went unnecessarily far into pretentious territory, not with any of the comedy itself, but with the way they talked about its place in the world. There was much talk about how this stuff wouldn't go over well at a normal Friday or Saturday night at a comedy club, in a way that's sort of ostensibly self-deprecating, but actually they're pretty much saying "my comedy is too smart for most audiences". I listen to it and think, oh come on, this is very good but it would be funny to almost anyone. But then I think of all the time I spent in comedy clubs pre-pandemic (which is a fair amount of time, since my brother does stand-up and I used to go see him a lot, his act is... decidedly not the sort of thing that would be on a Stewart Lee show), and I realized that actually, it would be pretty outside the norm if Josie Long got up at my local comedy club and did ten minutes on socialism between sets. So maybe it is fair that the comedians on that TV show cast themselves as not very palpable to a mainstream comedy club crowd.

Anyway, when they did that thing on Lee’s TV show in which they sort of made fun of themselves for being niche but were really sort of backhandedly bragging about being smart, they were also sort of making fun of their audience for being nerds but really sort of backhandedly calling us smart. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that a bit. Any part of me that enjoyed that even a bit is genuinely among my least favourite parts of myself, an indulgence in smugness that’s a true guilty pleasure and really it’s not a large part of me, and in my defense, I got a lot of shit for nerdery in school and therefore have the right to enjoy this now. That defense would make me feel better if it weren't also the defense of every nerd-identified insufferable asshole I've ever met.

What made me think of this is that I just heard Nish Kumar call me a criminal. Specifically, he called his fans "a pack of criminals", by saying he knows that being outside Britain will not stop anyone from finding his stuff that's only officially available in Britain, because the sort of person who's into his comedy is also the sort of person who’s good at illicitly finding media. I've heard him say things like that a number of times before, and every time, I do feel a bit pleased with myself. Like, yeah, Nish, you're right, you know me. Stewart Lee also has a bit on a DVD show about how it's less lucrative to be a smart comedian like him because his audience is full of people who are smart enough to pirate media, and Michael McIntyre doesn't have this problem. Which... yes, okay, I know, you're a comedian during the 2010s, you all fucking hate Michael McIntyre. No one has ever fully explained to me why he’s the worst thing in the world, but I’m not interested enough in the sort of thing he does to listen to any of his stuff and find out. But yes, Stewart Lee, you are probably smarter than Michael McIntyre.

Streaming and downloading media is a common practice that doesn't require any special level of intelligence, and that means it’s very silly that comedians flattering their audiences by complimenting our skills in that area does work on me a bit. I think I just like being part of the team - Team Pack of Criminals for Nish Kumar.

If I ever feel too pleased with myself for being into highbrow intelligent comedy, I can always remember the guilty pleasures I have besides the occasional indulgence in smugness, which is that sometimes I like to get drunk and watch Roast Battle UK and outtakes from Frankie Boyle-era Mock the Week (the outtakes being where they leave out that show’s occasional forays into intellectual merit, and just show Frankie finding contexts for the word “cunt” that make it even more offensive than it is on its own) and lately, old clips of late-night Edinburgh shows in which comedians do things like rap battle at each other (I make no apologies for how pleased I was to first find that bit of comedy history and I posted about it a lot at the time, the bit that makes it a guilty pleasure is how much fun I find re-watching that stuff while drunk). Oh, and Amstell-era Never Mind the Buzzcocks - it's been a while since I've gone back to that but that was a big one for a while in terms of bad shows I like to re-watch while drunk. I think I might just like watching people be assholes to each other, which makes me absolutely no better than people who are into reality TV shows. Sorry to let you down, Stewart Lee. Though to be fair, Stewart, you were on one episode of Amstell-era Buzzcocks, so you’re not that above it all either.