played the game ok boomer at my family party today, ended up explaining to a room of ~20 of my relatives what fanfiction is so they could understand the question, “in fanfiction, what does AU stand for?”. and then the card’s definition of “AU” was wrong so i also had to get into the concept of “canon”.

can u believe. in front of my whole family. a room full of people, aged 3 to 80. all staring at me intently as i explain the difference between an alternate universe and canon divergence. at one point my mom was like “daina i think we get it” and a cousin and two aunts were like “wait no we’re interested please continue” and i had to say to my own mother in front of god and my i am kenough sweatshirt “sorry but unlike you the rest of them DON’T have to listen to me talk about fanfiction on the regular”. my uncle is a retired judge. my one cousin worked for the federal government in a job that was so classified that for years he literally couldn’t legally tell us about ANYTHING he was working on. and today those men sat and patiently listened to me define “coffee shop AU”.

also, not one, not two, but THREE of the answers for the young folks, i knew solely because they were either plot points on stranger things or they were things i found out whilst reading stranger things fanfics. and then i was the only person in our age bracket (10 people, ranging from ages 9 to 42) that knew who anne rice was, and had to explain yet again that the reason i had this knowledge was because… fanfic.

it was surreal. also my aunt, aged 68, may or may not begin attempting to read fanfic now because, according to her, “there are so many stories where there are these small side characters and i’d just KILL to hear their backstory or like what was going through their minds during the main action!” i’m very happy for her. today was wild.