Because I am *made of fail*:
I am only now managing to finish the Five Things meme I got tagged with *ages* ago.
Fandom -- *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* *scribbles little hearts*
Fandom brings me joy in the core of my soul. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't hit fandom when I did -- maybe I'd be better. I think it more likely that I would be worse. Because, see, I learned about the fucked-up side of romance secondhand, through stories like Te's and Mary's and Petra's, and when friends came to me with stories about their SOs being creepy I already knew that being the center of somebody's world? Was *dangerous*. I didn't have to learn that from living it.
I learned about privilege -- male, white, class, gender, etc. -- from fandom. The concept of the paper mirror? Fandom.
The idea that you could take stories and rewrite them, own them, bring out the bits of you that you didn't always like and the bits of you that you couldn't shut up and the bits of you that you loved, and have other people show you their secret selves as well?
Fandom.
Adorability -- *goes pink*
I cannot actually talk about this, because I do not comprehend why people say I am adorable.
Found family -- I am one of the lucky ones of my people. I love, respect, and like my birth family. If I could grow up to be *half* as awesome as my mother, I would do both of us proud. If I ever have half of the drive for self-knowledge, that ruthless understanding of your own flaws, that my father has, I will be grateful. If I am ever as comfortable in my own skin as my sister, I will be... *so* much saner in the head, you have no idea.
But what makes me *really* lucky is the family I initially lucked into, and then built. Merfilly. Ilyena_sylph. Darkdanc3r. Thete1. Rubynye. Arionhunter. Lord_Dingsi. Petronelle.
The list can go *on*, and do you have any idea how incredibly amazing that is? How *rare* that is?
My hand to God, there are moments I know I am only still alive because of the family I found online.
Justice -- I am an idealist. I believe in the concept of fairness, of parity, of correcting old wrongs. I believe that that is a *good* thing, that making things Right is something people should aim for. I believe in a universal right and a universal wrong; I believe that someone can be a good person and do awful things, while thinking they are okay, and that does not make whatever they did less awful.
Bread -- The 'real' jobs I have held, in my life, involve bread: I used to work for Panera Bread (pan era = bread time) and now my check is paid by Subway.
I like bread. I like the time involved, and the work, even when all you're doing is taking frozen dough. I like the investment of having to proof it, where you can crouch outside the proofer and watch the bread swell and soften and grow. I like the texture of bread. I like kneading it, shaping it, and knowing that you can't mess much with biscuits or scones because you'll make them tough. I like the differences that adding fruit can make, or adding in millet and flax and cornmeal. I like eating bread, tearing it between my teeth and bearing down and feeling the texture of a good, honest wheat bread. The versatility of bread -- bread can be sweet, or savory, or cheesy, or herbed, and it's all bread. You can make sandwiches with bread, or desserts, or appetizers, or side dishes, or breakfasts.
Bread and milk. Bread and water.
The staff of life.
Slade -- Me and my addiction, kids.
Slade is not actually my favorite. My favorite is Dick. But, well, Dick has *lots* of fans. Dick doesn't need me. Slade needs everybody he can *get*, especially with how much crap he's getting in canon. Plus, well, the corollary of how many fans Dick has is how many stories he's got -- with Slade, there are *tons* of stories to tell. Canon ones, tweak canon a little, and tweak canon a *lot*. Dick's already had so many stories told. Slade? Not so much.
And untold stories will always, always be my fannish kryptonite.
Polyamory -- There are ways in which I do not function as a 'standard' person-shaped being. One of them is that monogamy doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me, if you're taking politics and lines of succession out of the equation (in which case you make them matrilineal, and then we're golden). It doesn't make a huge difference to me who my sweethearts sleep with (as long as nobody's stupid, nobody's getting a sexually transmitted anything, and nobody gets embarrassed.) Why should it?
I know who they love.
South of the Mason-Dixon Line -- For those persons reading this journal who are not from the USA, or those persons who are but didn't pay attention in history class (in which case I eye you askance), the Mason-Dixon Line 101: Started off as a demarcation line for a border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. Since the Missouri Compromise, the Mason-Dixon Line has comprised a pop-culture border between the North and the South.
I am from the Deep South, also called the Lower South or the Cotton States, and not to be confused with the Old South, which are the Southern colonies of the original thirteen colonies. I am *also* from Dixie, which are the eleven Southern states which seceded to form the Confederate States of America. The Old South is not Dixie is not the Deep South, though a state like Georgia would qualify as all three.
I love my home state. I adore it passionately, I defend it protectively, I miss it like breathing. I cannot and ought not ignore the massive, massive problems it had and has, but it's *mine*, and I'm its, and you mock my home at your own risk.
Anglicanism -- I am a member of the Episcopal Church of the(se) United States of America. High-church Old Guard when it comes to the liturgy and music, bleeding-heart social-justice liberal when it comes to theology, especially as it relates to other people. I *love* my church, and sometimes it makes me facepalm, but I have the privilege of viewing the world through the default-Christian lens. One of the things this means is that I shall occasionally yammer about What My Church Did This Time, and one of the *other* things it means is that sometimes I have to take the Christian-lens *off*.
Because I am one White liberal female feminist bisexual polyamorous Episcopalian Southern lower-middle-class working layperson, and that means that I see problems that you don't, because I stand in a different place. It also means you see problems *I* don't, and so every so often I need to move from where I'm standing, because I might be stepping on somebody's feet.
Lack of Knowledge of Pop Culture -- I suppose, really, I deserve this one. Here, have an example: petra: <-- still hung up on when you'd never ever heard Bruce fucking Springsteen EVER
She isn't kidding, either.
Here, have another one: there's this macro that Ilyena showed me from some Pirates of the Caribbean movie with the text, "Tell me more, tell me more/Did you get very far?"
And she was howling with laughter, and I gave her a very politely baffled look, because I didn't understand the joke.
I think the current prevailing theory in the house is that I live under Mt. Cheyenne.
Friendship and Love -- This kind of goes back to the 'found family' bit.
I love my friends. Sometimes this fact gets me in trouble, because I sometimes make friends that are really, really bad for me, and I am truly terrible at cutting ties. However! For the most part, my friends are awesome incarnate, and I am not worthy of their awesome, and so I can merely sit at their feet and go 'yay!' and feed them.
The Wilsons -- Because Slade is not the only one I have an obsessive focus for. And you can't talk about Slade without discussing furious, doomed Grant; you can't know Slade if you don't know gentle, ruthless Joe.
And if you don't know pragmatic, clever, never-let-go-of-anything-*ever* Adeline, you don't know Slade at *all*. (Taking 'til death do us part' a little too seriously, Slade. I do not want to know which of you got that level of *focus* from the other.)
And I love all of them. I do. I want to get Grant hugs and therapy and shake him. I want to sit down with Joe and talk poetry and watch him paint and discuss Sun Tzu. And my crush on Adeline is. Well.
*scribbles little armed hearts*
Soldiers -- Oh *boy* is this ever a narrative kink. Hi, Jason! Hi, Slade! Hi, Wufei! Hi, Heero!
I have a thing for devotion and duty and people breaking themselves in order to do what they think they need to. I have even *more* of a thing for when you can't break the core of you; you are what you have always been. You are only *more* of it.
I have a thing for honor, and courage, and loyalty born out of battle and blood. Very little will cause me to turn into a shrieking mass of appalled horror as quickly as Breaking The Rules Of Combat. You don't *do* that. No, you *don't do that*.
One of the side effects of this fact is that the era of Vietnam protests drives me up the *wall*. You don't *treat* soldiers that way. No. You *don't*. No, you *don't*.
There are wars that shouldn't be fought, and there are ways wars shouldn't be fought, and you *do not* show your horror at atrocities by spitting on people who are coming back from hell.
Chats [ok, sorry about that :P] -- No, you're not.
Chats with Marcelo have this habit of twisting my brain inside-out and upside-down, because he can say one sentence and I see the world in a whole new way. The thing with talking to marcelo is that he has this *gift* -- I say something, and he somehow takes the essence of what I said and gives it back to me in purified form, only scarier and more perfect.
This is not actually a good thing for him, because I keep looking up from books or shows or movies and going 'I want to feed this to Marcelo!' and then half the people I know hide under blankets.
Hope -- No, seriously, I am an *idealist*.
I know how the world works. I know that it is broken, that your dreams are as liable to be crushed, that you will have to swallow them down and taste the grit and blood of knowing your own defeat and smile through it, as they are to come even a little bit true. I know that too many people starve, for want of literal food and metaphorical food. I know that the system is *wrong*; I know people live and die in terror, in pain, and in hate.
I know we poison the good earth we live on, and the air we breathe is toxic, and the food we eat comes to us with greater or lesser degrees of poison built into us.
I know sunrise is beautiful. I know that to look up and to see the stars shining bright and cold and clear, while your breath freezes before you and the air is so cold your lungs sting with it, and you laugh for the sheer stunning beauty of being alive for this second, is a privilege and an honor. I know that to see skyscrapers cutting across the sky, telling God and man that we were *here*, is a beauty so magnificent that it can knock my breath out.
I know that in the midst of pain, and hurt, and fury, there is the seed of something better, and I know that sometimes that seed grows.
I also know that if you say 'This is the way the world works; there is no hope of anything better,' you will, sooner or later, be proven correct. And sometimes I don't much want to be right, and I don't want you to be right, either. It doesn't *have* to work the way it always has. There is always hope.
"With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful."
Fandom -- *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* *scribbles little hearts*
Fandom brings me joy in the core of my soul. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't hit fandom when I did -- maybe I'd be better. I think it more likely that I would be worse. Because, see, I learned about the fucked-up side of romance secondhand, through stories like Te's and Mary's and Petra's, and when friends came to me with stories about their SOs being creepy I already knew that being the center of somebody's world? Was *dangerous*. I didn't have to learn that from living it.
I learned about privilege -- male, white, class, gender, etc. -- from fandom. The concept of the paper mirror? Fandom.
The idea that you could take stories and rewrite them, own them, bring out the bits of you that you didn't always like and the bits of you that you couldn't shut up and the bits of you that you loved, and have other people show you their secret selves as well?
Fandom.
Adorability -- *goes pink*
I cannot actually talk about this, because I do not comprehend why people say I am adorable.
Found family -- I am one of the lucky ones of my people. I love, respect, and like my birth family. If I could grow up to be *half* as awesome as my mother, I would do both of us proud. If I ever have half of the drive for self-knowledge, that ruthless understanding of your own flaws, that my father has, I will be grateful. If I am ever as comfortable in my own skin as my sister, I will be... *so* much saner in the head, you have no idea.
But what makes me *really* lucky is the family I initially lucked into, and then built. Merfilly. Ilyena_sylph. Darkdanc3r. Thete1. Rubynye. Arionhunter. Lord_Dingsi. Petronelle.
The list can go *on*, and do you have any idea how incredibly amazing that is? How *rare* that is?
My hand to God, there are moments I know I am only still alive because of the family I found online.
Justice -- I am an idealist. I believe in the concept of fairness, of parity, of correcting old wrongs. I believe that that is a *good* thing, that making things Right is something people should aim for. I believe in a universal right and a universal wrong; I believe that someone can be a good person and do awful things, while thinking they are okay, and that does not make whatever they did less awful.
Bread -- The 'real' jobs I have held, in my life, involve bread: I used to work for Panera Bread (pan era = bread time) and now my check is paid by Subway.
I like bread. I like the time involved, and the work, even when all you're doing is taking frozen dough. I like the investment of having to proof it, where you can crouch outside the proofer and watch the bread swell and soften and grow. I like the texture of bread. I like kneading it, shaping it, and knowing that you can't mess much with biscuits or scones because you'll make them tough. I like the differences that adding fruit can make, or adding in millet and flax and cornmeal. I like eating bread, tearing it between my teeth and bearing down and feeling the texture of a good, honest wheat bread. The versatility of bread -- bread can be sweet, or savory, or cheesy, or herbed, and it's all bread. You can make sandwiches with bread, or desserts, or appetizers, or side dishes, or breakfasts.
Bread and milk. Bread and water.
The staff of life.
Slade -- Me and my addiction, kids.
Slade is not actually my favorite. My favorite is Dick. But, well, Dick has *lots* of fans. Dick doesn't need me. Slade needs everybody he can *get*, especially with how much crap he's getting in canon. Plus, well, the corollary of how many fans Dick has is how many stories he's got -- with Slade, there are *tons* of stories to tell. Canon ones, tweak canon a little, and tweak canon a *lot*. Dick's already had so many stories told. Slade? Not so much.
And untold stories will always, always be my fannish kryptonite.
Polyamory -- There are ways in which I do not function as a 'standard' person-shaped being. One of them is that monogamy doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me, if you're taking politics and lines of succession out of the equation (in which case you make them matrilineal, and then we're golden). It doesn't make a huge difference to me who my sweethearts sleep with (as long as nobody's stupid, nobody's getting a sexually transmitted anything, and nobody gets embarrassed.) Why should it?
I know who they love.
South of the Mason-Dixon Line -- For those persons reading this journal who are not from the USA, or those persons who are but didn't pay attention in history class (in which case I eye you askance), the Mason-Dixon Line 101: Started off as a demarcation line for a border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. Since the Missouri Compromise, the Mason-Dixon Line has comprised a pop-culture border between the North and the South.
I am from the Deep South, also called the Lower South or the Cotton States, and not to be confused with the Old South, which are the Southern colonies of the original thirteen colonies. I am *also* from Dixie, which are the eleven Southern states which seceded to form the Confederate States of America. The Old South is not Dixie is not the Deep South, though a state like Georgia would qualify as all three.
I love my home state. I adore it passionately, I defend it protectively, I miss it like breathing. I cannot and ought not ignore the massive, massive problems it had and has, but it's *mine*, and I'm its, and you mock my home at your own risk.
Anglicanism -- I am a member of the Episcopal Church of the(se) United States of America. High-church Old Guard when it comes to the liturgy and music, bleeding-heart social-justice liberal when it comes to theology, especially as it relates to other people. I *love* my church, and sometimes it makes me facepalm, but I have the privilege of viewing the world through the default-Christian lens. One of the things this means is that I shall occasionally yammer about What My Church Did This Time, and one of the *other* things it means is that sometimes I have to take the Christian-lens *off*.
Because I am one White liberal female feminist bisexual polyamorous Episcopalian Southern lower-middle-class working layperson, and that means that I see problems that you don't, because I stand in a different place. It also means you see problems *I* don't, and so every so often I need to move from where I'm standing, because I might be stepping on somebody's feet.
Lack of Knowledge of Pop Culture -- I suppose, really, I deserve this one. Here, have an example: petra: <-- still hung up on when you'd never ever heard Bruce fucking Springsteen EVER
She isn't kidding, either.
Here, have another one: there's this macro that Ilyena showed me from some Pirates of the Caribbean movie with the text, "Tell me more, tell me more/Did you get very far?"
And she was howling with laughter, and I gave her a very politely baffled look, because I didn't understand the joke.
I think the current prevailing theory in the house is that I live under Mt. Cheyenne.
Friendship and Love -- This kind of goes back to the 'found family' bit.
I love my friends. Sometimes this fact gets me in trouble, because I sometimes make friends that are really, really bad for me, and I am truly terrible at cutting ties. However! For the most part, my friends are awesome incarnate, and I am not worthy of their awesome, and so I can merely sit at their feet and go 'yay!' and feed them.
The Wilsons -- Because Slade is not the only one I have an obsessive focus for. And you can't talk about Slade without discussing furious, doomed Grant; you can't know Slade if you don't know gentle, ruthless Joe.
And if you don't know pragmatic, clever, never-let-go-of-anything-*ever* Adeline, you don't know Slade at *all*. (Taking 'til death do us part' a little too seriously, Slade. I do not want to know which of you got that level of *focus* from the other.)
And I love all of them. I do. I want to get Grant hugs and therapy and shake him. I want to sit down with Joe and talk poetry and watch him paint and discuss Sun Tzu. And my crush on Adeline is. Well.
*scribbles little armed hearts*
Soldiers -- Oh *boy* is this ever a narrative kink. Hi, Jason! Hi, Slade! Hi, Wufei! Hi, Heero!
I have a thing for devotion and duty and people breaking themselves in order to do what they think they need to. I have even *more* of a thing for when you can't break the core of you; you are what you have always been. You are only *more* of it.
I have a thing for honor, and courage, and loyalty born out of battle and blood. Very little will cause me to turn into a shrieking mass of appalled horror as quickly as Breaking The Rules Of Combat. You don't *do* that. No, you *don't do that*.
One of the side effects of this fact is that the era of Vietnam protests drives me up the *wall*. You don't *treat* soldiers that way. No. You *don't*. No, you *don't*.
There are wars that shouldn't be fought, and there are ways wars shouldn't be fought, and you *do not* show your horror at atrocities by spitting on people who are coming back from hell.
Chats [ok, sorry about that :P] -- No, you're not.
Chats with Marcelo have this habit of twisting my brain inside-out and upside-down, because he can say one sentence and I see the world in a whole new way. The thing with talking to marcelo is that he has this *gift* -- I say something, and he somehow takes the essence of what I said and gives it back to me in purified form, only scarier and more perfect.
This is not actually a good thing for him, because I keep looking up from books or shows or movies and going 'I want to feed this to Marcelo!' and then half the people I know hide under blankets.
Hope -- No, seriously, I am an *idealist*.
I know how the world works. I know that it is broken, that your dreams are as liable to be crushed, that you will have to swallow them down and taste the grit and blood of knowing your own defeat and smile through it, as they are to come even a little bit true. I know that too many people starve, for want of literal food and metaphorical food. I know that the system is *wrong*; I know people live and die in terror, in pain, and in hate.
I know we poison the good earth we live on, and the air we breathe is toxic, and the food we eat comes to us with greater or lesser degrees of poison built into us.
I know sunrise is beautiful. I know that to look up and to see the stars shining bright and cold and clear, while your breath freezes before you and the air is so cold your lungs sting with it, and you laugh for the sheer stunning beauty of being alive for this second, is a privilege and an honor. I know that to see skyscrapers cutting across the sky, telling God and man that we were *here*, is a beauty so magnificent that it can knock my breath out.
I know that in the midst of pain, and hurt, and fury, there is the seed of something better, and I know that sometimes that seed grows.
I also know that if you say 'This is the way the world works; there is no hope of anything better,' you will, sooner or later, be proven correct. And sometimes I don't much want to be right, and I don't want you to be right, either. It doesn't *have* to work the way it always has. There is always hope.
"With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful."