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That’s a lot of fox

  • He/Him

doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

Whenever someone uses the word 'yiff' I have to remind myself I was friends with the two people whose private sex joke eventually mutated into standard fandom terminology... like staring into a fireplace and realizing you were there when humans discovered fire


jaidamack
@jaidamack

Despite everything that's going on in the world, it's still kind of amazing how the internet connects us. One of my favourite things is to wonder who might have been the first person to say a certain thing, or to coin a turn of phrase that takes off and 'escapes containment' and becomes ubiquitous. It's a neat little realization that someone was always the first to say something goofy we take as bedrock, and sometimes - when the stars align and the servers are up - you get to find out who or where that might have been.

I just think that's Neat.


CERESUltra
@CERESUltra

For those not familiar with this little parable, I'll post it here, because it's short:

In a stable that stands almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and gray beard, lying amid the odor of the animals, humbly tries to will himself into death, much as a man might will himself to sleep. The day, obedient to vast and secret laws, slowly shifts about and mingles the shadows in the lowly place; outside lie plowed fields, a ditch clogged with dead leaves, and the faint track of a wolf in the black clay where the line of woods begins. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten.

The bells for orisons awaken him. Bells are now one of evening’s customs in the kingdoms of England, but as a boy the man has seen the face of Woden, the sacred horror and the exultation, the clumsy wooden idol laden with Roman coins and ponderous vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he will be dead, and with him, the last eyewitness images of pagan rites will perish, never to be seen again. The world will be a little poorer when this Saxon man is dead.

Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies may make us stop in wonder—and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies with every man’s or woman’s death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as theosophists have suggested. In the course of time there was one day that closed the last eyes that had looked on Christ; the Battle of Junin and the love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonia Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? [This translation by Andrew Hurley, Jorge Luis Borges was argentinian and work was almost entirely in spanish]

This one sits with me deeply, obviously, wondering about what each of us might be the last witness of.

What Jaida and Doc are on about here is its complement, a first witness instead of a last one. Sure, in the parable, someone takes memories with him. He hears church bells for the order that rendered his to the endless ocean of the past, but who was the first to ring a bell for prayer? Who was the first to sacrifice to that old man's hoary god? Every rite, every ritual, every tradition or social standard or turn of phrase had some sort of first moment, before it spread and in some cases took the world. We keep track of these moments with inventions, with scientific leaps forward, but how often did the social moments of discovery get recorded?

But as Jaida points out, that's the glory of this interconnected world we live in. Not only do turns of phrase or goofy names or slang spread like wildfire, it happens so fast that what feels like deep knowledge is still Very Much In Living Memory, and there's a good chance you can meet someone who was there for the original.

Someday, those people will pass on, too. Just as those were here for the last moments of a memory pass on, so will we all, and so will those who bore witness to first births, acts of speech that changed how we all spoke.

Does that scare some people? Most, I think. I'm no exception, certainly, but in a backwards sort of way it makes me glad we're here for it at all. Life is an infinite game of chance, and the lucky little moments we catch a glimpse of, even second hand, are the greatest joy.


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in reply to @doctorwednesday's post:

I mean, there's not a lot to it? There was this somewhat influential group of northern California furries that I was on the periphery of. Cinnamon played a wolf and was a top; Centaur played a fox and was a bottom; 'yiff' was this fox noise that Centaur the character would make in anxious anticipation of being topped. It got to be an inside joke in the local scene, and 'yiff' came to be used as a synonym of 'fuck'. Later, some time after it had escaped into the fandom at large, it took on a noun form as well, 'yiff' = sex. And that's it!

knowing full well that "yiff" is horny made-up nonsense that foxes do not actually do, i have nonetheless adopted it for my foxgirl OC to scream when she cums

knowing that somebody i know was there when it was borne upon the world just makes it all that extra special

twelve years ago, at a local bar, i was being introduced to someone sitting on the back of an armchair, feet upon the armrests. i whispered to my now partner "do not say yiff to that man". we can only wonder what would have happened if i'd said yiff a little louder.

in reply to @CERESUltra's post: