Smartanian Blog

The Tragic State of Yore

I'm here, my friends, to talk about a word. Three words, in fact. Words that, through the advancement of Internet culture and people too lazy to type out entire words, are being used with increasing error and ineptness. Three simple, unassuming words, colour coded for greater simplicity:

You're

Your

Yore

This was a google image result for the word "your". This lady looks very serious, as people should when discussing grammar.

Like their counterparts Their, They're and There, Your, You're and Yore are increasingly misunderstood, misused,
and abused by drooling mouth-breathers with a grade 3 education. The misuse and lack of understanding afforded these three words is a sure sign that our society is in a downward spiral toward extinction. How can a species be expected to survive when it can't master or understand its own languages? Global warming and climate change are not our biggest threats. The biggest threat to humanity is the fact that most of us these days are too lazy to attempt to grasp the basic tools we use to communicate with one another. Most of us cannot spell and worse, cannot comprehend what we're reading. But what would you expect from a culture that places more emphasis on the whiteness of teeth than literacy? (I speak with an English bias here, though I'm sure other languages are suffering these same issues. The Internet is without borders, after all).

Nothing affects me on a deep, emotional level more than the misuse of these words. I quit playing World of Warcraft because I was starting to leave out apostrophes in my online communication (though the clincher was the day a random player asked me why I used capitalization and punctuation. It was then that I realized I was not among friends). There is no greater failure for a grammar Nazi.

Let's begin by properly introducing these three little words. After all, some of you readers may be mouth-breathers with a grade 3 education. If you suffer from some kind of learning disability or dyslexia you are, of course, exempt from my insults, but not if you've (a handy contraction of "you have" ) merely self-diagnosed yourself with a trendy learning disability because you're lazy. So, one more time, TO BE EXEMPT FROM MY INSULTS, YOU MUST HAVE BEEN LEGITIMATELY DIAGNOSED WITH A LEARNING DISABILITY.

Please note how "you're" was used in the preceding sentence before we continue.

YOU'RE

This is the word most people mean when they let fly with a "your" or "yore". The difficulty with this word stems from the fact that 99% of native English speakers can't master the use of the apostrophe. Granted, it's a pesky little devil, but it's easily understood if you take a minute or two to think about it. However, apostrophes are another rant entirely and are, as a self-important "academic" once said, beyond the scope of this "paper".

What you need to remember about "YOU'RE" is that the apostrophe is not indicating possession, which it prefers to do most of the time. In this case, it's (hah) indicating that two words have been broken down to form one. The two words in question are "YOU ARE". Contractions like this are widely used throughout the English language, including but not limited to: "you've" (you have), "don't" (do not), "can't" (can not), "you'll" (you will), "it's" (it is) and so on.

But before I digress, let's (let us) try that in simpler terms:

YOU ARE

YOUARE

YOU'RE

So, we use this handy little word to indicate that someone is possessive of a certain state of existing. Here are a few examples:

"You're smelly"

"You're looking good today!"

"You're a mouth breather with a 3rd grade education".

Nothing is more painful to a grammar Nazi like me than seeing this word abused, as follows:

"Your smelly!"

"Your looking good today"

"Your a mouth breather with a 3rd grade education" (this one, however, would get points for unintentional irony).

In online games like World of Warcraft, you can be threatened with account suspension for using the word "you're" properly.

Now that we've covered "you're", let's move on to its cousin, "YOUR".

Your is very often mistakenly used in place of You're, but what far too few people seem to realize is that the two are not bloody goddamned interchangeable. Your is a possessive word, skulking around without an apostrophe. That apostrophe was stolen by "you're".

These people look genuinely scary, but at least they used the word "your" correctly.

Here are a few examples of how to properly use this word:

"Hey, is that your car?"

"I banged your girlfriend!"

"Now you can enlarge your penis to 10x its normal size! Click here!"

Remember, folks: an apostrophe before an s, in most cases, indicates possession
(Fred's cat, Bob's truck), but can also, as mentioned above, indicate that two words have been shortened and stuck together. And since I've mentioned apostrophes again, I might as well take this opportunity to shout to the world that APOSTROPHES DO NOT INDICATE MULTIPLES. If I see one more misplaced apostrophe on a restaurant menu (appetizer's! Entree's!), billboard (huge sale's on now!) or other place where it should not be, I am going to get out a gun and shoot people until they get it right.

Have you got that?

Good.

Let's move on to the bastard third cousin, Yore.

Yore is a word that really only gets used if you're describing things that happened a really long time ago. It has no place in most conversations that take place on the Internet, especially since most of the Internet's users don't know what it really means anyway. Most people, when using this word, actually mean "you're" or "your". However, while one can almost understand getting the previous two mixed up (if you're extremely lazy), how anyone can pick the word "yore" (meaning, literally, "a long time ago") out of the stratosphere and think they're using it correctly is just mind boggling. Face it, nothing is more genuinely terrifying than a sentence like this: "lol, I liked yore utube video lolz!"

Fortunately or unfortunately, when people get stupid enough to start using "yore" as a pronoun, they're usually pretty close to substituting "ur", which only indicates that there is no hope for humanity whatsoever.

The rule for "yore" is this: If it shows up in simple conversation, you are (you're) probably using it wrong.

Let's go over this one more time in a more simplified form, and large colourful letters.

You're = a contraction of "you are"

Your = pronoun: the possessive form of "you" ("belonging to you")

Yore = obsolete; old; of long ago (if you're someone that gets these three words confused on a regular basis, your best bet is to leave "yore" out of your vocabulary entirely).

I feel better now that I've vomited out just over a thousand words on these poor mistreated objects of the English language. I predict that approximately 12 people will read and comprehend it, and they will all be people who knewhow to use them beforehand. Therefore, this has really all been futile, but at least I feel better.

Things I Don't Understand

I was originally going to make a long post devoted entirely to how I don't understand the appeal of Harry Potter porn. All in all, I suppose it's a worthy enough topic to rant about at length on the internet. After all, far more inane things have been ranted about on the internet; I'm hardly going to open up a black hole of inanity. Sadly, though, I couldn't find a way to make it worthy of an entire post without coming across like a pretentious windbag. I could almost picture myself waving my cane and purse and yelling about Jesus and sin and how we're all going to hell. And since I'm an atheist, well, that just won't do.
Instead, I am going to make this post about all of the little things I don't understand in life. Beginning with, of course, Harry Potter Porn (TM?).

A note to would-be givers of unsolicited advice: these are rhetorical questions, exaggerated for the purpose of humour. I don't really want answers. Thanks.

This picture horrifies me.

Things I Don't Understand, #1: Harry Potter Porn
I don't understand the enormous internet-wide obsession with pornography featuring the Harry Potter characters. Whether it be Harry doing Draco, Harry doing Snape, Snape doing Lupin, Hermione doing Professor Trelawney, Hermione doing Harry, Hermione doing Ron (there is surprisingly little of this) Professor McGonogall doing Dumbledore, or Harry, Lupin and Sirius Black impregnating Professor Snape with triplets. Harry Potter is a book aimed at kids. For that very small reason alone, it fails to ignite any sort of sexual feelings in me. Much in the same way that the Teletubbies do not. I have never thought about Harry having sex with Draco. I have never thought about Harry having sex with Professor Snape. I've thought about Hermione kissing Ron, but only because that happened in the books and so I was forced to think about it. I've never thought about Harry having sex with Hermione. I have never, ever thought it would be really neat to make a whole fanfic archive of stories about Professor Snape becoming pregnant. When I see fan art of Harry potter masturbating, I want to kill myself. Does this make me abnormal?

MPREG: Not so sexy now, is it?

Things I Don't Understand, #2: MPREG
I don't understand Male Pregnancy fan art, fan fiction, or anything of the like. And I even have to admit to a certain fascination with pregnancy, being a married person of the female persuasion who may, one day, produce a child (much to the horror of the majority of the world). After all, I'm interested to know things like, OH GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS IT GOING TO DO TO MY BODY but even so, I have never, ever fantasized about a man becoming pregnant. Maybe it's because I have not yet had a child, and so have not experienced the supposed resentment towards men that results from squeezing a watermelon out of one's nostril, as it were? Perhaps, had I done my part to enlarge the human population, I would want to fantasize about men becoming pregnant as a kind of revenge. This is honestly the only, only reason I can think of for anyone wanting to emasculate a male character to the point where he has to gestate and then push a baby out his ass, or the vagina some evil wizard has suddenly bestowed upon him. Really, why do people write this shit? And why are so many of them young women in their 20s? The only real reason I can guess, beyond some kind of buried desire for revenge against men (for dumping them, perhaps?), is a desire to appear cool by being extreme. Which, as you know, also accounts for 99.999999% of gay fan fiction written by teenage girls whose only real exposure to gay culture is Manga and that one character on Buffy.

Things I Don't Understand, #3: Sonic The Hedgehog Porn

How does anyone look at this?



and think about this?

Go on. Google "Sonic the Hedgehog". You will find porn in the first page of image results. What the fuck is wrong with people?

Things I don't Understand #4: Why do people stare at me when I'm jogging?

Why do people stare at me when I go for a run in the morning? Have they never seen anyone exercising before? Am I actually naked? Is there something on my face? WHAT THE HELL IS IT, PEOPLE?


Things I Don't Understand, #5: The Appeal of America's Next Top Model
This show is everything I hate in a TV show. First and foremost, it is a reality TV show, which automatically takes 50 points off any other redeeming qualities it might have. It's a shallow show with shallow people, and features contestants whose collective IQs amount to about 15. And I'm talking at the start of the season when there are 13 contestants. It's a show where the skinniest girl I HAVE EVER FUCKING SEEN is eliminated because the judges think she's fat. Its contestants are often catty and selfish,overconfident in their very limited abilities and with absolutely no concept of respecting one's competition. This is a show where one of the contestants thought an elephant was a descendant of the dinosaurs. It's the coffee-grind filled runoff in the bottom of television's garbage can.
So why the hell can't I stop watching it?



Things I don't Understand, #6: Wal Mart
It's not that I don't understand Wal-Mart. It's a big store that sells cheap things. Sometimes, I buy cheap things there; usually stuff like coat hangers and cat litter. But most of the time, I try to avoid it, despite the fact that I live across the street from one. Most people say they do not shop at Wal-Mart, but they do anyway. These are likely the same people who claim they do not eat at McDonald's, but if all of those people were telling the truth, then McDonald's would be out of business. Anyway, this is not what I don't understand. What I don't understand is exactly how most people immediately lose all sense of intelligence and respect for fellow man once they enter a Wal-Mart.

It's true. I cut across the Wal-Mart parking lot on most days to go for a run on a nearby trail. I can cut across the parking lot of the grocery store beside it without fearing for my life, but as soon as I near the Wal-Mart, all hell breaks loose. People forget that they're supposed to stop at crosswalks. They park in clearly marked "no parking" areas. They back out of parking spots without looking. They block entire lanes of traffic waiting for a car to leave a parking spot because they're too lazy to drive a little farther and walk an extra 20 feet to the store.
Once inside the store, it gets worse. One more or less needs mirrors on all sides to be prepared for the coming onslaught. People walk right into you in the main aisles. They push shopping carts out of adjoining aisles, right into whoever is unlucky enough to be there at the time. If you are walking down the aisle carrying an armful of stuff because you couldn't find a cart, basket or a service person anywhere in a 50 mile radius, they do not get out of your way and will sometimes even bump into you as they stare, eyes glazed over, at the flashing displays of cheap electronics made in Latvia. They bring their brood of 7 snotty-nosed, dirty children and attempt to discipline them loudly and ineffectively in the Toy section. They forget how to form proper lines at the cash register and often drop objects made of glass, usually because they are carrying an armload of breakable objects, since they couldn't find a cart, basket or service person to help them.
On the rare occasions that I do go into Wal-Mart, I find myself becoming so irritable that it's probably fortunate I do not own any firearms.
This one, though, I think I can explain. I attribute it to some kind alien mind control device. It explains the whole Wal-Mart thing perfectly. It is slowly destroying our brain cells, making us dumber and dumber until we are unable to defend ourselves against the inevitable alien invasion. People park closer to the store because the aliens want us all to be fat and out of shape, and unable to run when the time eventually comes. People bring large groups of children because the alien mind control devices encourage them to breed more, to produce more stupid people, who return to the Wal-Mart again and again until their minds are soft, pliable, and ready to do the bidding of the Alien Ruler, Zalblorg The All Knowing (known on earth as Sam Walton). In fact, we can probably blame all the other strange things in the world on Wal-Mart. Harry Potter Porn, MPreg, people who stare, America's Next Top Model, Sonic the Hedgehog Porn, and the weird, gigantic spaces this blog editor inserts in my HTML - all a result of Wal-Mart's brain-cell killing alien mind control rays.
Save the Earth from Alien rule. Don't shop at Wal-Mart.

~Fin

Smartania: Anti-Yaoi?

It’s no great secret that we at Smartania dislike fandoms. This dislike was not born out of a sense of superiority so much as disgust. It’s hard to enjoy something when there’s someone spouting nonsensical intellectual wank over perceived gender discrimination towards a fictional character while someone else demands attention and praise for the twenty-first chapter in their ongoing MPREG epic. Idiots ruin it for everyone. Fangirls, it’s true, can be especially annoying. With the possible exception of the Potter fandom (it scares us!), anime fangirls take the cake, the bakery, and the entire confection business. You just cannot move around in most anime fandoms without skidding across some kind of fangirl insanity. So, if you accused us of not liking anime fangirls, well we’d probably object at the generalization, but you’d be more correct than not. Assuming that a dislike of moronic fangirls also means that we’re anti-yaoi, and thusly anti-gay, is not correct.

It’s never occurred to me that anyone would think that we’re anti-yaoi. Sure, we make a point of mentioning dislike of incest and underage pairings in more than one hacked fic, but I guess there’s people out there that have misconstrued those comments.

Case in point, I received a request to join the forums, along with a suggestion that I read a little number on adultff.net that the sender said summed up how he/she felt about fangirls and yaoi. You can read that fic here. I wasn’t sure why anyone thought that I’d respond favorably to the story in question. Poor writing and poor punctuation aside, the story offered up the notion that gay sex was an unfavorable act and those that enjoyed reading or watching such relationships were some kind of social moron.

But their main weapon of the utmost pretention is their obsession with gay man sex. Also known as yaoi. A cry for attention so utterly devoid of any rhyme or reason.

I’m the first one to tell you that there is a lot of hideous yaoi fanfic on the Internet. Poor pairings, poor writing, and a general lack of knowledge about human anatomy are all very easy to find in yaoi fanfic. But, it’s also easy to find in heterosexual fanfic. Pointing out that there’s a lot of bad homosexual fanfic is just excluding that there’s an equal amount bad fanfic in general. M/F pairings are hardly sacrosanct.

On the subject of pairings, I will again say that I personally dislike child/adult pairings – even if the child in question is magically so many years old. I also don’t care for incest, mpreg, or character pairings that are so inconceivable as to be A/U x 10⁸⁵. Of those, incest, while the most morally objectionable, is the one that could be done well in a purely icky sort of way, but never, ever is. Most of the incest that I’ve encountered in fanfiction is romantic, without cause or concern for how living such relationship would really affect a person or just blatant screwing because someone thought it’d be really darn hot to see Malfoy Sr. pop Malfoy Jr. a couple of times in the back door. Incest is a tricky topic to deal with while writing. It has its own social and moral issues. Fanfic doesn’t seem to get that. Mpreg? It’s just stupid. I don’t get the fascination with emasculating a male character to that degree. No matter how insanely, flaming gay a man is, he’s not a woman. Treating him as such and making ass babies isn’t romantic or sweet; it’s just silly. My dislike of outlandish character pairings is the simplest to understand– it’s not entertaining if it’s unbelievable. I can bend a lot, but there are just some combinations that are too strange. But, all of that can be said about non-yaoi fic as well. I’ve come across heterosexual incest and dislike it as much. I’ve read fic where a man is impregnated by a female or by some sort of alien rape/magic trauma while remaining heterosexual and so on.

It’s bad fanfic that smells, not yaoi. Hell, give me pretty guys kissing. Kamui and Fuma? I’m there. Kira and Athrun? I’m stealing Red’s doujinshi when he’s not looking. Jack Harkness and … well, anyone? Down with it. If the pairing works and the story is written well, I don’t object. In fact, I’ll probably be happy. I do like it when the guys kiss.

Yaoi itself isn’t ruining fandom. Stupid fangirls suck the fun out of a fandom. Poorly written fic sucks the fun out of a fandom. Ironic that the story sent to me seems to have both. The author of the story clearly thinks that homosexuality is wrong.

…labor over pictures of two men (who have more than adequate female partners) engaged in acts so lewd, so heartbreakingly wrong, it defies the laws of physics.

I think perhaps that the author should spend a little more time proofreading and revising and a little less time being a homophobic git. How does being lewd defy the laws of physics? How does something being heartbreakingly wrong defy it as well? Furthermore, how does homosexual sex defy the laws of physics? And why does anyone care? Is the yaoi so much more offensive than the M/F fic? Hardly. But, if you read the author’s description for her other fic here, you’ll see references to the author’s favorite pairings. Which leads me to believe that, somewhere, a conversation like this happened:

OMG! Some bitch just posted a fanfic with Man A having sex with Man B!
That’s so gross and stupid! Man A is totally in love with Girl A! Yaoi is stupid!
I know! How wants to have a penis in their butt? EWWWWIE!
I can’t believe that anyone would post that. It’s worse than Man A having sex with Girl D, even!

That’s really what I get out of that fic. Now, I ask you, is that the sort of thing you’d send me in the hopes of ingratiating yourself? I dislike the sentiment a great deal and would be happy if it and the author were just a joke created to rile people up. I’d much rather have reacted to nothing, but? There are those people out there who think that all of the kissing, loving, and screwing should be done by members of the opposite sex. Only, we’re not those people. Do we have to post it on the site that gay is okay? Honestly, I really, really thought that you could figure that out from a casual read through of Smartania. At the very least, I would have figured no one would have assumed that we’d care one way or the other.

But, if anyone else is confused, if anyone else thinks that hacking a couple of really awful GokuXSanzo fics means that Smartania supports any sort of anti-yaoi trend, let me just say it again. We like guys with other guys. As a personal preference, the prettier, the better.


* Edit: Links fixed

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