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I thought about doing this 10 Things I Assume You Know meme on the other journal, but then, people know me better on my other journal, I think. Since getting into Aquarium fandom, I've accumulated a lot of folks who have this journal friended who I don't think *do* know me that well, so I thought this might be more interesting for them. I may be overestimating my own interestingness, but hey, I've been enjoying other people's, so.
1. I am a fangirl. This, to me, is less a hobby or an occupation than it is a mindset, and basically it's a polite way of saying I'm obsessive and over-emotional. I'm mostly a fangirl about tv shows, but sometimes about pop music or Broadway musicals or RPGs or theology or history. Mostly television, however. *g* Sometimes my desire to "participate in fandom" is a good marker to how fannish I am about something, but a lot of times not so much: I am almost off-the-charts in my fannishness for Veronica Mars right now, but I don't talk about it much, or have much contact with other fans. It just varies. Mostly being a fangirl, to me, has to do with the fact that I take the object of my devotion personally: I really *care,* I really *want* things for it and from it. Which is why being a fan will break your fucking heart sometimes (the therapy I need for S7 Buffy would cost the GNP of some small countries), and why I get all pissed off when people try to shut me up by saying "It's just a tv show." Bullshit it's just a tv show.
2. I am a slasher. This is also something that I just can't help; it's wired into me somehow, and it means that I view things in a certain way that other people who are natural slashers know immediately what I mean, and is hard to explain to people who aren't. It doesn't mean that I think everyone is gay (although I'm willing to make nearly anyone gay for the sake of a good story), or that I think all relationships are about sex. It means that I am more attuned to and more appreciative of the vibes that go on between same-gendered people than between differently-gendered people, and I zero in on those vibes automatically. The fact that I make them porny so often is just for fun; who doesn't like porn, you know? But basically, I don't ultimately care (in most cases) if these people "are" canonically interested in/involved with each other romantically; I like the Way They Are Together, and I like to tinker around with it and build on it in my head. I know a lot of people who are writers first or fans of a particular show or character first, and who then like to write or read slash; I'm not that. I'm a slasher, in my head, in my bones, and sometimes I feel like writing. Sometimes I even feel like writing things other than slash, and that's a fun vacation. But whatever I'm watching, I internalize the slash first and everything else next.
3. I am queer. I'm bisexual by any logical definition, although I often wander through life thinking of myself as a lesbian. Basically, you know those hipster girls who identify as bisexual and hook up with girls sometimes, but inevitably have boyfriends and not girlfriends and fully expect to marry men when they get older? Yeah, I'm the reverse of that. God knows I could be straight for Kevin Richardson, but it would wear off. Also, I think people who are monosexual are weird, but I try not to judge.
4. I am poly. Like my bisexuality, this is also pretty theoretical, since I'm just long over the slutty phase of my life. But I mean it not just sexually (although I can't imagine putting myself in a relationship where I was *forbidden* to sleep with someone else under any circumstances) -- it's another one of those whole-headspace things. I look at practically everything in both/and terms. I like paradox and multiplicity and open-endedness in everything, because binary bores me, although I'm grateful to it for giving me the internets. So even though I say things like OTP, please know that I wouldn't really have the first idea what that means. I don't really grok "one true" anything.
5. I am a neo-pagan. I was raised in a certain German Protestant culture where it's considered *very very tacky and awful and wrong* to bring up religion in situations that aren't, well, church, so I find myself not talking about religion a lot even now. However, it's a much gianter proportion of my life than people who know me from fandom might think it is. I'm a ritual leader and the main liturgist for my grove; I pray every day; it's just a really major part of the way I make decisions and think about the world and whatnot. I was always religious, even as a kid, hell, even as a *teenager,* and it's sometimes strange to me to sit back and realize how all these people who know *so much* about my ideas about so many things through my fic and my fan discussions have no way at all of knowing that. It's rarely germaine to fandom, and I am a little awkward about bringing it up out of the blue.
6. In spite of all the above, I am dreadfully conventional. I hardly ever strike anyone as odd in any way, and that's the way I prefer it, since I don't think of myself as odd. I mean, intellectually I recognize that I am "out of the mainstream," but I've just always felt like people are all peculiar in their own way, and these are just my chosen peculiarities. Some people get up at three in the morning to hunt deer; I find that odd. It's quantitatively more common than me staying up til three in the morning to read porn about tv shows, but I never saw any fundamental, qualitative difference. I never adopted "freak" as a positive label; I don't feel weird, and I generally prefer not to be treated as if I were. We're all just folks, you know?
7. I had a really happy childhood. I mean, nobody's life was perfect, but I did, I had a lovely childhood. I love my parents, I love where I grew up, high school was not hell for me (I mean, it wasn't *fabulous,* but it was okay), and if I'm totally fucked up, it's not because of that. I write a lot of miserable, depressing fiction, but you know, it's not because I'm one of those people who believe that trauma is the "real" nature of life, so to write "realistically," you have to fuck everybody up. My parents have been married going on 38 years; they love each other. Happy relationships have been known to happen; I write unhappy ones because I think they're fun to write, not because I put some kind of primacy on a worldview that focuses on loneliness and misery. I've had all the sad things happen that other people have, I've gotten my heart broken, whatever. I just inherently think that life is or can be a nice thing and that "happy endings" (though really, what's an ending, in the context of RL?) are perfectly plausible.
8. I have depression issues. I've only really wiped out on it a couple of times in my life, but it's kind of an ongoing thing; sometimes you're farther away, sometimes you're closer. Right now, I can feel myself a lot closer to the brink of genuine depression than I feel comfortable being, but I'm dealing with it as much as possible. I don't experience my depressions as *sadness,* really, not the kind of painful despair that some people describe. I just go really blank and still inside, and I spend a lot of time doing literally nothing at all (although I'll usually look busy; the internet is *awesome* for making yourself look like you're totally busy while you're actually powered down completely). I don't feel much, I don't care about much, and if it gets really bad I won't get out of bed for days. Now that I'm thinking about it, I realize that I wrote "Perimeter" with that as my source material, in a way; that lost, empty way that Ronon goes about his life in that story is a lot how I operate when I'm depressed -- it's just that he has a better reason for it than wonky brain chemistry *g*
9. I'm not that honest a person. I really prize the idea of truth; I think it's a better standard, a more useful and right and worthy way of looking at the world than the subjective idea of "goodness." I try to deal with things in terms of, is this really true? rather than, does this match what I think it should be? However, this is not my natural state. The reason I've always been drawn to characters who are deceptive or disguised or undercover or in some way not what they appear to be is that I think I'm naturally shifty in some way; if I didn't consciously try to guard against it, I would only ever say what I thought people wanted to hear. I read people well, too, so I might be able to pull it off. I like being a writer because it allows me a safe space to get all my lying out of the way. *g* I really do try to have some kind of integrity, to come off as the person that I am as much as possible (if it's ever *really* possible), but it's hard work for me. I don't care what people think of me if they're standing across the street, but if I actually have to interact with anyone, my conflict-avoidant nature kicks in and makes me want to fit myself into whatever they want me to be like, just to make things easy and comfortable for everyone. Also, I think making things up is just more fun, so sometimes I'll do it for no reason -- like, when you get into conversations at the bus stop or whatever? Sometimes I'll make up these really bizarre backstories for myself -- not so bizarre that they're unbelievable, just utterly unlike me. Anyway, I'm not sure this is something that I really do assume you know or should know about me, but it's probably fair warning. *g*
10. I suck with technology. Seriously, I just mastered the concept of "downloading" last year. I never update my webpage because ftp scares me. I adore technology, and yet it makes no sense to me. I just think it's fabulous that there are people it does make sense to.
1. I am a fangirl. This, to me, is less a hobby or an occupation than it is a mindset, and basically it's a polite way of saying I'm obsessive and over-emotional. I'm mostly a fangirl about tv shows, but sometimes about pop music or Broadway musicals or RPGs or theology or history. Mostly television, however. *g* Sometimes my desire to "participate in fandom" is a good marker to how fannish I am about something, but a lot of times not so much: I am almost off-the-charts in my fannishness for Veronica Mars right now, but I don't talk about it much, or have much contact with other fans. It just varies. Mostly being a fangirl, to me, has to do with the fact that I take the object of my devotion personally: I really *care,* I really *want* things for it and from it. Which is why being a fan will break your fucking heart sometimes (the therapy I need for S7 Buffy would cost the GNP of some small countries), and why I get all pissed off when people try to shut me up by saying "It's just a tv show." Bullshit it's just a tv show.
2. I am a slasher. This is also something that I just can't help; it's wired into me somehow, and it means that I view things in a certain way that other people who are natural slashers know immediately what I mean, and is hard to explain to people who aren't. It doesn't mean that I think everyone is gay (although I'm willing to make nearly anyone gay for the sake of a good story), or that I think all relationships are about sex. It means that I am more attuned to and more appreciative of the vibes that go on between same-gendered people than between differently-gendered people, and I zero in on those vibes automatically. The fact that I make them porny so often is just for fun; who doesn't like porn, you know? But basically, I don't ultimately care (in most cases) if these people "are" canonically interested in/involved with each other romantically; I like the Way They Are Together, and I like to tinker around with it and build on it in my head. I know a lot of people who are writers first or fans of a particular show or character first, and who then like to write or read slash; I'm not that. I'm a slasher, in my head, in my bones, and sometimes I feel like writing. Sometimes I even feel like writing things other than slash, and that's a fun vacation. But whatever I'm watching, I internalize the slash first and everything else next.
3. I am queer. I'm bisexual by any logical definition, although I often wander through life thinking of myself as a lesbian. Basically, you know those hipster girls who identify as bisexual and hook up with girls sometimes, but inevitably have boyfriends and not girlfriends and fully expect to marry men when they get older? Yeah, I'm the reverse of that. God knows I could be straight for Kevin Richardson, but it would wear off. Also, I think people who are monosexual are weird, but I try not to judge.
4. I am poly. Like my bisexuality, this is also pretty theoretical, since I'm just long over the slutty phase of my life. But I mean it not just sexually (although I can't imagine putting myself in a relationship where I was *forbidden* to sleep with someone else under any circumstances) -- it's another one of those whole-headspace things. I look at practically everything in both/and terms. I like paradox and multiplicity and open-endedness in everything, because binary bores me, although I'm grateful to it for giving me the internets. So even though I say things like OTP, please know that I wouldn't really have the first idea what that means. I don't really grok "one true" anything.
5. I am a neo-pagan. I was raised in a certain German Protestant culture where it's considered *very very tacky and awful and wrong* to bring up religion in situations that aren't, well, church, so I find myself not talking about religion a lot even now. However, it's a much gianter proportion of my life than people who know me from fandom might think it is. I'm a ritual leader and the main liturgist for my grove; I pray every day; it's just a really major part of the way I make decisions and think about the world and whatnot. I was always religious, even as a kid, hell, even as a *teenager,* and it's sometimes strange to me to sit back and realize how all these people who know *so much* about my ideas about so many things through my fic and my fan discussions have no way at all of knowing that. It's rarely germaine to fandom, and I am a little awkward about bringing it up out of the blue.
6. In spite of all the above, I am dreadfully conventional. I hardly ever strike anyone as odd in any way, and that's the way I prefer it, since I don't think of myself as odd. I mean, intellectually I recognize that I am "out of the mainstream," but I've just always felt like people are all peculiar in their own way, and these are just my chosen peculiarities. Some people get up at three in the morning to hunt deer; I find that odd. It's quantitatively more common than me staying up til three in the morning to read porn about tv shows, but I never saw any fundamental, qualitative difference. I never adopted "freak" as a positive label; I don't feel weird, and I generally prefer not to be treated as if I were. We're all just folks, you know?
7. I had a really happy childhood. I mean, nobody's life was perfect, but I did, I had a lovely childhood. I love my parents, I love where I grew up, high school was not hell for me (I mean, it wasn't *fabulous,* but it was okay), and if I'm totally fucked up, it's not because of that. I write a lot of miserable, depressing fiction, but you know, it's not because I'm one of those people who believe that trauma is the "real" nature of life, so to write "realistically," you have to fuck everybody up. My parents have been married going on 38 years; they love each other. Happy relationships have been known to happen; I write unhappy ones because I think they're fun to write, not because I put some kind of primacy on a worldview that focuses on loneliness and misery. I've had all the sad things happen that other people have, I've gotten my heart broken, whatever. I just inherently think that life is or can be a nice thing and that "happy endings" (though really, what's an ending, in the context of RL?) are perfectly plausible.
8. I have depression issues. I've only really wiped out on it a couple of times in my life, but it's kind of an ongoing thing; sometimes you're farther away, sometimes you're closer. Right now, I can feel myself a lot closer to the brink of genuine depression than I feel comfortable being, but I'm dealing with it as much as possible. I don't experience my depressions as *sadness,* really, not the kind of painful despair that some people describe. I just go really blank and still inside, and I spend a lot of time doing literally nothing at all (although I'll usually look busy; the internet is *awesome* for making yourself look like you're totally busy while you're actually powered down completely). I don't feel much, I don't care about much, and if it gets really bad I won't get out of bed for days. Now that I'm thinking about it, I realize that I wrote "Perimeter" with that as my source material, in a way; that lost, empty way that Ronon goes about his life in that story is a lot how I operate when I'm depressed -- it's just that he has a better reason for it than wonky brain chemistry *g*
9. I'm not that honest a person. I really prize the idea of truth; I think it's a better standard, a more useful and right and worthy way of looking at the world than the subjective idea of "goodness." I try to deal with things in terms of, is this really true? rather than, does this match what I think it should be? However, this is not my natural state. The reason I've always been drawn to characters who are deceptive or disguised or undercover or in some way not what they appear to be is that I think I'm naturally shifty in some way; if I didn't consciously try to guard against it, I would only ever say what I thought people wanted to hear. I read people well, too, so I might be able to pull it off. I like being a writer because it allows me a safe space to get all my lying out of the way. *g* I really do try to have some kind of integrity, to come off as the person that I am as much as possible (if it's ever *really* possible), but it's hard work for me. I don't care what people think of me if they're standing across the street, but if I actually have to interact with anyone, my conflict-avoidant nature kicks in and makes me want to fit myself into whatever they want me to be like, just to make things easy and comfortable for everyone. Also, I think making things up is just more fun, so sometimes I'll do it for no reason -- like, when you get into conversations at the bus stop or whatever? Sometimes I'll make up these really bizarre backstories for myself -- not so bizarre that they're unbelievable, just utterly unlike me. Anyway, I'm not sure this is something that I really do assume you know or should know about me, but it's probably fair warning. *g*
10. I suck with technology. Seriously, I just mastered the concept of "downloading" last year. I never update my webpage because ftp scares me. I adore technology, and yet it makes no sense to me. I just think it's fabulous that there are people it does make sense to.
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Date: 2005-12-11 03:29 pm (UTC)From:Dude, that's my sexuality in a nutshell (except that I'll think "dyke" and not "lesbian", because "lesbian" has some negative associations for me, which is also a reverse of the norm, I guess).
I don't feel much, I don't care about much, and if it gets really bad I won't get out of bed for days.
That sounds like the depression I suffer from, too. I'm planning on making a full post about a supplement I found at health stores soon, called SAMe, which has been amazingly effective for me. I'll post a link in your comments when I get it up, but I wanted to mention it briefly so you could check it out if you're so inclined. It's not something that should be mixed with antidepressants without consulting a doctor, but if you're looking for a mild, homeopathic solution in place of a prescription, like I was, then you should definitely try SAMe.