Oh man, that X-Files fanlore.org page is a blast from the past. I forgot all about the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade. That sure was (is?) a thing.

Oh man, that X-Files fanlore.org page is a blast from the past. I forgot all about the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade. That sure was (is?) a thing.

I think we decided downthread that Star Trek gave us the term "slash" and X-Files the term "ship." Not that people weren't shipping ST characters, but they didn't call it that?

Final season: "Look everyone! They're getting together! Hey! Look! Mulder and Scully, together at last! Let's throw a baby in there, what the heck. Look everyone!"
Everyone: *not remotely paying attention*

Farscape is also a great example of how to keep the will-they-won't-they going and have it be compelling rather than annoying. The answer is, apparently, to contrive incredibly outlandish sci-fi scenarios that keep the couple apart, but ground those outlandish sci-fi scenarios in character development and emotional…

Also, why care if there is a name, fan club, and a million websites? Just let people be into what they're into.

Not to harp too much on the "back in the X-Files days" (I've written way too many posts about this already; I apologize to all), but to harp on the back in the X-Files days, that was clearly a case where the writing of the show got increasingly wonky with the main characters' relationship as the series went on. To me,…

If I recall correctly, it wasn't used as a verb as much back then. You'd get "Are you a shipper?" or before a fanfic "Warning: I'm a shipper." You also didn't specify which couple (at least at first), because the term itself was about M&S.

::linguist in:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… ::linguist out::

It goes back to X-Files and back then it referred to a more general opinion about the show, whether you wanted Mulder & Scully to get together or not. The former group of fans were called (relation)shippers and the latter were, I believe, somewhat unfortunately called NoRoMos or something like that.

I'm not even allergic to dogs and I don't want them in my office. Although I don't think I'd quite be as deviously chocolate-scheming about the situation as Amy.

"The only thing the Married participants do that any modern single person doesn’t is get married immediately upon meeting the person identified as a potentially compatible partner."

Was that the episode where the mother who was supposed to be from Philly spoke with a Brooklyn accent the whole time? Philly accent is rhotic, people. ::linguist peeves::

I was assuming that they were going with "Ah yes, Philadelphia, where names of things have 'Penn' in them somewhere, or are named after Ben Franklin*" and then made stuff up from there, some of which was accidentally real places.

Are they still considered "fake hipsters" if they aren't real hipsters but are pretending to be hipsters ironically? Or is that hipster-squared?

"long, sharp needles affixed to the arrowheads, designed to do less damage in the event of an error"

When it started I belive it used to do much more debunking of actual folklore-type urban legends rather than its current service of, "No, it turns out the thing your politically-extreme friend shared on the internet is actually not correct. As always. Sigh."

Welp, now I'm going to be doing that too. Thanks.

Sesame Street's Don't Eat the Pictures kept me out of museums until I was in middle school. That plus the Bert and Ernie sketch where the sarcophagi come to life. Basically I was terrified of statues until I was, like 12.

::considers using that sentence in Linguistics 101 as an example of how we can understand novel sentences we have never heard before::