(no subject)

[wolffyluna]

I gave plasma for the first time on Saturday! It was... an experience. I'd been warned that I might end up cold, which while true, was not as dramatic as it sounded, but I was not warned about quite how passive aggressive the machine was. Or the fact that if your blood flow got too slow it would stop completely until a nurse came back over to tell it things were fine. Which meant if your flow was slow, things got slowed down even more. Which is not ideal. (And, more pettily, meant that I finished up just after the volunteer who makes the milkshakes had left, so no post donation milkshake for me :(.) (I will admit that 70% of why I go to the further away blood bank is because it has the most nurses, so even with my inconvenient veins I still have a shot. The other 30% is the possibility of a milkshake.)

I also get to go back to the lab soon! I have been Officially Declared Okay To Go To The Lab. So that's nice. Even if I would rather be a blanket lump.

I haven't been reading many novels, and I should really work on that. Most of the time I spent reading novels is either on the bus, or while waiting for class to start and I'm not doing either of those things. So, gotta find some other time to do it. Especially because I do not think I am actually reading less, just reading different. And while spending time reading about the Socktopus Wank* and the Saga of the Banned Together Bingo** is not the worst way to spend my time... reading novels and such would probably be better.

*Lightning summary of the Socktopus Wank: there is a set of about eight accounts that sign up to a lot of fanfic exchanges that many people think are all run by one person. They have also annoyed some people by consistently giving 'meh' gifts, and having do not wants that are often rail-road-y or logic puzzles. At one point, statistical analysis got involved, which was possibly one of the more ?beautiful? things to come out of this situation.

**Lightning summary of the Banned Together Bingo Saga: there was a fandom bingo where the squares were drawn from a list of reasons books have been banned. They did not cull or reword any items on this list. Predictable consequences ensued, leading the the bingo going on hiatus and the mods deleting all the bingo cards (which is kind of a slap in the face to people who actually wanted to do the bingo even after the event ended, and annoyed even the people who liked the bingo.)

Comments

[lb_lee]

...I am so intrigued and yet perplexed by Socktopus Wank. Is it like, one person giving gifts to their socks or what?

[wolffyluna]

The suspected socks pretty much never write for each other (and at least some people would be less annoyed if they did.) One of the first pieces of circumstantial evidence that these accounts where likely run by one person is that they never wrote things for each other, even though they had vary similar tastes and requested the same things quite often. And it's not like sock accounts never end up writing for each other, and it's not like accounts run by definitely different people never end up not matching to each other for whatever reason, but it's a pattern.

The best guess for why the Socktopus has so many accounts and signs up so much is because they want people to write the things they like. Which is fine! It's just the Socktopus is picky and heavy handed about getting what they want, and they also tend to consistently write very 'meh' gifts in return.

This is of course, assuming that the Socktopus is real and there is just one person running all the accounts which might not be the case.

[lb_lee]

This is so weirdly fascinating to me. I dunno, it's just... so petty and also kinda harmlessly annoying, like the equivalent of that gnat you can never get out of your face, and in this bullshit time, apparently that's what I need these days.

That said, what a jerk is Socktopus, if indeed there IS a Socktopus! (Insert "I AM SOCKTOPUS" scene from Spartacus.)

--Mori

[wolffyluna]

It's like the perfect storm in a teacup. A teacup storm that also somehow ended up involving statistical analysis, so you can almost argue you are learning while rubber necking!

[lb_lee]

...if further developments occur, kindly keep me apprised. I am deeply invested in the Socktopus Saga.

[wolffyluna]

There has been further developments in the saga of the Socktopus!

A few weeks ago, the Rare Male Slash Exchange had a new account called 'soarc' sign up just before sign up closed. There was much sturm and drang about this, because what if this was another socktopus tentacle, signing up at the very end so people couldn't change what they were offering to avoid them? Someone else got very upset that sign ups ended exactly when they were scheduled too, because oh noes, no way to avoid this new account!, which people widely thought was a little silly.

Skip ahead two weeks, till now, when Rare Male Slash Exchange had it's fics revealed. It was noticed that soarc had a weird amount of gifts. Like, way more than you would expect a new account with a bare bones sign up to have. And all these gifts were weirdly similar, and had a lot of socktopus tells.

So it appears that someone (possibly the mod?) set up an account as Socktopus Fic containment, and there was general merriment and excited popcorning about this development. (A containment account makes a certain amount of sense, beyond a 'how could you annoy the Socktopus without being too much of a dick?' thing. A lot of people ask not to be matched to Socktopus accounts, and they are so well known for making ungood gifts that mods try and assign an extra person to make something for anyone the Socktopus gets assigned to. So a containment account means there is no 'real' person to have to double assign, and it means that the Socktopus will match to *someone*.) But yeah.

[lb_lee]

Okay, so just to make sure I understand this: socktopus now has a... a sock SPONGE devoted entirely to soaking up the socktopus byproducts?

This is getting soap opera complex!

--Mori

[wolffyluna]

Looks like it! It's been complex for awhile, but new twists and turns keep happening!

[lb_lee]

When this saga ends, I want there to be a full write-up, I'm only getting little bits and pieces but it's still fascinating.

--Mori