I always assumed Taco Bell just made you want to visit Canada and try one of our equally subpar cheap “Mexican” chains. (We have Taco Bell now, there is no escape.)
Decidedly Orthogonal
Aside from TacoTime and Lonestar(-ish) do we have other mexi-ish chains?
Hilzabub
There’s Taco Boyz on the east coast. They have …
oh, only 4 locations. Maybe be patient.
elebenty
Taco Johns was big in IL for a while. (Their spicy flat tater tot rounds [Potato Ole] were an undergrad staple in the 80s.)
I mean, Joyce has already realised that her expectations of her relationship with Dorothy is based on her relationship with Becky, which she now knows was a relationship with a closeted gay girl who secretly fancied her, so I don’t see discovering she’s written Julia and Doris that way coming as a huge shock once she’s thought about it.
Which isn’t to say she’s not, just that this isn’t really evidence?
Eh, if she wrote the way those characters interact based even partly off of any of a variety of fictional characters that were queerbait it doesn’t have to be repressed queerness, just a matter of not knowing the significance of the tropes she was using. Also, it should be noted that “flirting” does not have to have anything to do with romantic or sexual desires, although the word does tend to have that connotation, the action itself is just a mode of communication that relies more on banter and humor with the intention of being liked and having fun. I flirt with my friends all the time, and I’m not attracted to most of them, and the feeling is mutual (we’ve discussed it), we just enjoy the act of flirting and tend to play off each other very well.
I should note, however that I am a straight guy (somewhere between a 0 and a 1 on the kinsey scale), so I am not fully informed about “queerbaiting” and am not entirely sure my understanding of the term is accurate. If I am understanding it correctly, doesn’t it require intent? Like, I am unsure how it is the author’s fault if they didn’t intend for characters to be read as queer and the audience is mad that they aren’t, especially since chemistry is not exclusive to romantic relationships (frankly, this is an issue I have with shipping in general, because male/female pairs can also be perfectly platonic, no reason to force them to get romantically/sexually involved just because they have strong chemistry, and it seems kinda toxic to me when a character has a canonical orientation but fans scream homophobia/queerbaiting/promoting a gay/straight agenda/whatever when their preferred ship doesn’t sail due to incompatible orientations, or, heck, even if their orientations are compatible but the writer(s) decide said characters are better off platonic for whatever reason, irrespective of “chemistry”).
Again, not saying it isn’t queerbaiting (largely because I’m not sure I fully understand what the term is supposed to mean) or even that Joyce can’t be some flavor of queer, just that A, at this point it seems like a bit of a leap to assume Joyce isn’t straight based off this single data point (and I am not aware of other data points, as even through the whole learning about sexuality and questioning her faith stuff she still maintained her interest in men and didn’t seem to display any interest in women), and B, it feels kinda shitty to accuse creators of bigotry because they ship different characters than the fans do.
They were nothing if not pioneers. And also homophobes. Probably misogynists, while we’re at it.
Nobonesforever
Oh absolutely misogynists how many women got killed off for pathos? Like all of em? Horribly?
Delicious Taffy
I’ve seen one episode past Season 9, and that’s the Scooby-Doo! crossover from Season 13. Daphne and Velma make it out alive, if that counts?
alongcameaspider
Its been a while, didn’t the series start by killing off two female characters pretty much back to back?
Delicious Taffy
I’m almost certain that’s Episode 1. Momchester and Girlfriend.
Nobonesforever
Lmao yeah the beginning of the series hinges on the brutal murder of Mary Winchester and then Sam’s girlfriend…. Winnifred? Idk
Regalli
Fun fact, Hugo-winning author Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series was conceived out of spite for how Jo Harvelle’s story ended. Many pretty blonde monster-hunting ladies, not dying for twelve books strong.
Regalli
(Well, okay, it is entirely possible that the as-yet-unreleased twelfth book kills off someone, but we’ll see.)
Delicious Taffy
The name’s familiar. Not sure where from, but a new book series to read is always welcome.
Thag Simmons
Seanan wrote the foreword for DOA Book 10, so that could be where you heard about the name?
Seanan, um. Wrote Ghost Spider (for Marvel). Wrote the Mira Grant Newsflesh books (Mira is a very thin and public pseudonym). Is an (extremely prolific and talented) filker (and in fact some of the characters in Incryptid first appeared publicaly in her songs; some drifted a bit since then before the first Incryptid novel was published, though).
I guess those are some places you could have heard of her?
Delicious Taffy
Ah, there we go. Got a TPB of some of her Ghost Spider stuff on the ol’ comics shelf.
Regalli
She’s also been nominated for Best Series Hugo for either Incryptid or her other big series, October Daye, like, at LEAST the last three years running. I expect her to continue to be alternating them on the ballot until she wins. The volume of October Daye stuff apparently nearly broke the reading packet this year (since voters are provided copies of all the nominated material with their Worldcon membership, including full series for Best Series including associated things like short stories… and there is A LOT of October Daye.)
thejeff
I haven’t read any of Incryptid, but I’ve read some of her comics and one of the Wayward Children books, which was quite good. Set in a home for the children who come back from faerie and other magical lands and can’t adapt back to mundane life.
davidbreslin101
Those are the ones I’ve read: “Every Heart a Doorway” and two of its sequels. “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” and “Beneath the Sugar Sky.” I liked them a lot.
JediMB
Okay, I started following Seanan McGuire on Twitter a while back in the hopes that there’ll eventually be news about more Ghost-Spider, only to find out that she’s also into Magic: The Gathering (as she started kinda hyper-focusing on that ahead of her contribution to the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt story getting published).
Now, I’m already tempted to pick up her Alien: Echo YA novel despite my Inability To Just Pick Up And Read A Book, but if I succeed with that I guess I’m going give Incryptid a try as well.
Pilgrim
What about Sparrow Hill Road? Rose Marshal starts out the book dead. Being dead is her superpower.
That’s a great Seanan McGuire starter book, BTW. Self contained chapters and a really brilliant synthesis of the vanishing prom date/vanishing hitchhiker urban legends.
Regalli
I chose not to count Rose, Mary, or for that matter Fran Brown and Enid Healy who heavily feature in the short fiction focusing on past members of the family (even though they both do in fact eventually die in the short fiction, and both deaths heavily impact the rest of the family) because all of them died WELL before the present day of the main series. We meet Mary and Rose when they’re already ghosts, and as the great- and great-great grandmothers of the current generation, Fran and Enid’s deaths would be kind of expected by this point in the main novels even if monster hunting didn’t seriously reduce life expectancy.
In the current generation, the family has had remarkably good luck surviving thusfar (though with that threatened war with the Covenant looming, who knows,) pretty dang good luck with allies surviving, and who knows, maybe Alice will find her husband alive in whatever hell dimension a parasitic supernatural force keeps its captives next book. And come back to utter chaos, but things have been steadily escalating since Chaos Choreography so, sorry about that Alice, the Cuckoos decided to start armageddon while you were gone and shit kinda got fucked.
RedCat
I looked into Seanan McGuire, and now I know what to give to my sister for christmas! (if I can hunt down the books, they are apparently hard to get in Germany)
Regalli
Incidentally, I am glad to have shown up early enough today to have started a conversation about one of my favorite authors. 😀
Bryy
There is that rumor that some exec tried to push Misha Collins to get his wife to get a C-Section so he could get back to work.
Be nice if there was a similar show that didn’t chop up queer people and stuff ’em in the refrigerator, tbh. Just some handsome folks goin’ on a cross-country road trip, stabbin’ Satans and whatnot.
Unlike the CW this newspaper is run by a competent, asuumedly out, queer, lady so I’d hope that queerbaiting intentional or not would be noted and advised against much like it is right now to avoid bullshit like Supernatural from happening. Which is one of many reasons it’s good to have queer people and other minority groups given more positions of power.
True. Another reason is so we can finally take over media like we’ve been promised we were for the last decade. And then we can turn the Jetsons into an adoptive found-family story about explicitly trans/nb/lesbian cyborgs, the way God intended. (I’m like 80% joking. I think.)
Sirksome
I’d watch that. A more inclusive Jetsons reboot really playing on the possibilities of what a family of the future looks like sounds really cool. No reason Judy Jetson couldn’t be a trans fem cyborg! Maybe Elroy is ace and/or nonbinary cause in the year 3000 gender doesn’t mean shit and the human race can be propigated through test tubes.
Delicious Taffy
Honestly the longer I sit on the idea, the more I warm up to it. Fuck it, is there a Nerd Term for optimistic, light-hearted cyberpunk? That’s what we need.
Discussion (269) - “Endgame”
Ana Chronistic
*Walky slams comics on desk*
“No one else with NICE GIRLY PARTS has applied, so”
ThunderNight
time for the return of Walkette
Needfuldoer
But the anomaly’s all the way up in Canada…
Doctor_Who
Walky actually completely forgot about Daisy, the last panel is just Taco Bell having its usual effect.
Delicious Taffy
Providing quick energy, thus enabling a short sprint?
Doctor_Who
…Sure, that’s why their tagline was Make a run for the border.
Delicious Taffy
I think that’s just weird racism on their part.
Shadowydreamer
I always assumed Taco Bell just made you want to visit Canada and try one of our equally subpar cheap “Mexican” chains. (We have Taco Bell now, there is no escape.)
Decidedly Orthogonal
Aside from TacoTime and Lonestar(-ish) do we have other mexi-ish chains?
Hilzabub
There’s Taco Boyz on the east coast. They have …
oh, only 4 locations. Maybe be patient.
elebenty
Taco Johns was big in IL for a while. (Their spicy flat tater tot rounds [Potato Ole] were an undergrad staple in the 80s.)
butts
for once, it’s not just Daisy being horny
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Yet.
Needfuldoer
Oh my.
Rainhat
She has more than one note? cool!
RedCat
The horny is on the down-low today.
Rose by Any Other Name
I mean, yeah. Queerbating is a problem in media.
**gives several otherwise excellent shows a glare for queerbating their audience**
The only solution is for Julia and Doris to have amazingly hot naked sex at some point. I really don’t see any other possible resolution.
Beck
she can feel the overwhelming straight energy coming off of joyce and isn’t even trying.
alongcameaspider
I wonder if this is the start of Joyce realizing she may not be entirely straight
Regalli
I think she can still repress it for quite a while longer.
Then again, given what she said about Doris and Julia earlier…
Nobonesforever
If I’ve learned anything it’s that Christians are MASTERS at self repression
A Red Balloon
Honest doubt accounted for, I guess this DOES explain how Becky would be able to last this long after multiple times hurting herself in confusion.
Nobonesforever
When it doubt just bottle that shit up!
A Red Balloon
Try doing that at high altitudes!
Nobonesforever
Hmm airplanes do make great places for dramatic reveals, what with the being trapped in an aluminum can thousands of feet above sea level
A Red Balloon
Mountains work too!
And also balloon rides!
Nobonesforever
U can’t trick me I’m not getting in that basket you’ve got there I’ve seen the films
Pilgrim
Don’t forget the “lash out at anyone who actually is living the life you secretly want” part.
Needfuldoer
They just have a neat friendship.
Dara
I certainly hope so.
Delicious Taffy
We can only hope. Or wishfully think. Is there a meaningful distinction?
Rose by Any Other Name
That would be fun. I imagine it would lead to some wonderful dramatic tension.
alongcameaspider
Depending on whether or not Becky really got over Joyce not reciprocating her feelings it could cause some not pretty fireworks
Rose by Any Other Name
“Did I stutter?”
— the Breakfast Club, 1985
Bryy
Welp. So it’s Dorothy, huh.
Amós Batista
oh god, yes
Daibhid C
I mean, Joyce has already realised that her expectations of her relationship with Dorothy is based on her relationship with Becky, which she now knows was a relationship with a closeted gay girl who secretly fancied her, so I don’t see discovering she’s written Julia and Doris that way coming as a huge shock once she’s thought about it.
Which isn’t to say she’s not, just that this isn’t really evidence?
Psychie
Eh, if she wrote the way those characters interact based even partly off of any of a variety of fictional characters that were queerbait it doesn’t have to be repressed queerness, just a matter of not knowing the significance of the tropes she was using. Also, it should be noted that “flirting” does not have to have anything to do with romantic or sexual desires, although the word does tend to have that connotation, the action itself is just a mode of communication that relies more on banter and humor with the intention of being liked and having fun. I flirt with my friends all the time, and I’m not attracted to most of them, and the feeling is mutual (we’ve discussed it), we just enjoy the act of flirting and tend to play off each other very well.
I should note, however that I am a straight guy (somewhere between a 0 and a 1 on the kinsey scale), so I am not fully informed about “queerbaiting” and am not entirely sure my understanding of the term is accurate. If I am understanding it correctly, doesn’t it require intent? Like, I am unsure how it is the author’s fault if they didn’t intend for characters to be read as queer and the audience is mad that they aren’t, especially since chemistry is not exclusive to romantic relationships (frankly, this is an issue I have with shipping in general, because male/female pairs can also be perfectly platonic, no reason to force them to get romantically/sexually involved just because they have strong chemistry, and it seems kinda toxic to me when a character has a canonical orientation but fans scream homophobia/queerbaiting/promoting a gay/straight agenda/whatever when their preferred ship doesn’t sail due to incompatible orientations, or, heck, even if their orientations are compatible but the writer(s) decide said characters are better off platonic for whatever reason, irrespective of “chemistry”).
Again, not saying it isn’t queerbaiting (largely because I’m not sure I fully understand what the term is supposed to mean) or even that Joyce can’t be some flavor of queer, just that A, at this point it seems like a bit of a leap to assume Joyce isn’t straight based off this single data point (and I am not aware of other data points, as even through the whole learning about sexuality and questioning her faith stuff she still maintained her interest in men and didn’t seem to display any interest in women), and B, it feels kinda shitty to accuse creators of bigotry because they ship different characters than the fans do.
Mr. Random
This is the most dramatic thing that has ever happened to Walky.
In.
His.
Life.
…. what kidnapping?
Regalli
He refuses to be traumatized, dammit!
(It’s not working.)
Pan
Walk runny walk… No wait
justin8448
Hehe. I LOL’d.
carl320
Walky rennt!
ThunderNight
run like your comic depends on it
Delicious Taffy
Let’s be honest, Daisy, queerbaiting isn’t exactly a franchise-killer. I mean, Supernatural got 15 seasons off the back of it.
Nobonesforever
RIP supernatural u really did push the boundaries of how homophobic u could bury your gays on network television
Delicious Taffy
They were nothing if not pioneers. And also homophobes. Probably misogynists, while we’re at it.
Nobonesforever
Oh absolutely misogynists how many women got killed off for pathos? Like all of em? Horribly?
Delicious Taffy
I’ve seen one episode past Season 9, and that’s the Scooby-Doo! crossover from Season 13. Daphne and Velma make it out alive, if that counts?
alongcameaspider
Its been a while, didn’t the series start by killing off two female characters pretty much back to back?
Delicious Taffy
I’m almost certain that’s Episode 1. Momchester and Girlfriend.
Nobonesforever
Lmao yeah the beginning of the series hinges on the brutal murder of Mary Winchester and then Sam’s girlfriend…. Winnifred? Idk
Regalli
Fun fact, Hugo-winning author Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series was conceived out of spite for how Jo Harvelle’s story ended. Many pretty blonde monster-hunting ladies, not dying for twelve books strong.
Regalli
(Well, okay, it is entirely possible that the as-yet-unreleased twelfth book kills off someone, but we’ll see.)
Delicious Taffy
The name’s familiar. Not sure where from, but a new book series to read is always welcome.
Thag Simmons
Seanan wrote the foreword for DOA Book 10, so that could be where you heard about the name?
Joshua Kronengold
Seanan, um. Wrote Ghost Spider (for Marvel). Wrote the Mira Grant Newsflesh books (Mira is a very thin and public pseudonym). Is an (extremely prolific and talented) filker (and in fact some of the characters in Incryptid first appeared publicaly in her songs; some drifted a bit since then before the first Incryptid novel was published, though).
I guess those are some places you could have heard of her?
Delicious Taffy
Ah, there we go. Got a TPB of some of her Ghost Spider stuff on the ol’ comics shelf.
Regalli
She’s also been nominated for Best Series Hugo for either Incryptid or her other big series, October Daye, like, at LEAST the last three years running. I expect her to continue to be alternating them on the ballot until she wins. The volume of October Daye stuff apparently nearly broke the reading packet this year (since voters are provided copies of all the nominated material with their Worldcon membership, including full series for Best Series including associated things like short stories… and there is A LOT of October Daye.)
thejeff
I haven’t read any of Incryptid, but I’ve read some of her comics and one of the Wayward Children books, which was quite good. Set in a home for the children who come back from faerie and other magical lands and can’t adapt back to mundane life.
davidbreslin101
Those are the ones I’ve read: “Every Heart a Doorway” and two of its sequels. “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” and “Beneath the Sugar Sky.” I liked them a lot.
JediMB
Okay, I started following Seanan McGuire on Twitter a while back in the hopes that there’ll eventually be news about more Ghost-Spider, only to find out that she’s also into Magic: The Gathering (as she started kinda hyper-focusing on that ahead of her contribution to the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt story getting published).
Now, I’m already tempted to pick up her Alien: Echo YA novel despite my Inability To Just Pick Up And Read A Book, but if I succeed with that I guess I’m going give Incryptid a try as well.
Pilgrim
What about Sparrow Hill Road? Rose Marshal starts out the book dead. Being dead is her superpower.
That’s a great Seanan McGuire starter book, BTW. Self contained chapters and a really brilliant synthesis of the vanishing prom date/vanishing hitchhiker urban legends.
Regalli
I chose not to count Rose, Mary, or for that matter Fran Brown and Enid Healy who heavily feature in the short fiction focusing on past members of the family (even though they both do in fact eventually die in the short fiction, and both deaths heavily impact the rest of the family) because all of them died WELL before the present day of the main series. We meet Mary and Rose when they’re already ghosts, and as the great- and great-great grandmothers of the current generation, Fran and Enid’s deaths would be kind of expected by this point in the main novels even if monster hunting didn’t seriously reduce life expectancy.
In the current generation, the family has had remarkably good luck surviving thusfar (though with that threatened war with the Covenant looming, who knows,) pretty dang good luck with allies surviving, and who knows, maybe Alice will find her husband alive in whatever hell dimension a parasitic supernatural force keeps its captives next book. And come back to utter chaos, but things have been steadily escalating since Chaos Choreography so, sorry about that Alice, the Cuckoos decided to start armageddon while you were gone and shit kinda got fucked.
RedCat
I looked into Seanan McGuire, and now I know what to give to my sister for christmas! (if I can hunt down the books, they are apparently hard to get in Germany)
Regalli
Incidentally, I am glad to have shown up early enough today to have started a conversation about one of my favorite authors. 😀
Bryy
There is that rumor that some exec tried to push Misha Collins to get his wife to get a C-Section so he could get back to work.
Delicious Taffy
Yeah, sounds plausible.
Thag Simmons
RIP to a weird and bad one
Delicious Taffy
Be nice if there was a similar show that didn’t chop up queer people and stuff ’em in the refrigerator, tbh. Just some handsome folks goin’ on a cross-country road trip, stabbin’ Satans and whatnot.
Sirksome
Unlike the CW this newspaper is run by a competent, asuumedly out, queer, lady so I’d hope that queerbaiting intentional or not would be noted and advised against much like it is right now to avoid bullshit like Supernatural from happening. Which is one of many reasons it’s good to have queer people and other minority groups given more positions of power.
Delicious Taffy
True. Another reason is so we can finally take over media like we’ve been promised we were for the last decade. And then we can turn the Jetsons into an adoptive found-family story about explicitly trans/nb/lesbian cyborgs, the way God intended. (I’m like 80% joking. I think.)
Sirksome
I’d watch that. A more inclusive Jetsons reboot really playing on the possibilities of what a family of the future looks like sounds really cool. No reason Judy Jetson couldn’t be a trans fem cyborg! Maybe Elroy is ace and/or nonbinary cause in the year 3000 gender doesn’t mean shit and the human race can be propigated through test tubes.
Delicious Taffy
Honestly the longer I sit on the idea, the more I warm up to it. Fuck it, is there a Nerd Term for optimistic, light-hearted cyberpunk? That’s what we need.