Ask me about things.

[silveradept]

Blogging is a very public-facing platform. You get to see what I want you to see, scrutinized, edited, and presented for you. If I so choose, I can present a perfect-seeming life by simply excluding all the parts and pieces where I feel like crap, have done less than my best, or want to just curl up into a ball somewhere and be left alone until I feel human again.

For some people, they put their inner lives behind the access filter. Often by necessity, we find, for the world outside is remarkably cruel to people who talk honestly about themselves and who don't get the privileges of appearing normal and complaining about normal things. There's a lot of trust issues involved when it comes to talking about what's going on in your life.

Thing is, most people get on a blogging platform because they want to talk. And they find the community that gathers around them are the people they want to talk to. (Sometimes even more so than the people in their physical lives.)

...

This is the part where I admit that I have no idea what to talk about. Linklists with commentary, easy. Other issue commentary, pretty easy when it hits the fired-up buttons. So, in the grand traditions of...something, and possibly as a way of trying to do something regularly, I'm opening the floor. Ask me questions. I'll answer them as much as I feel I can.

Comments

[redsnake05]

I'd like to know more about some of your interests. Perhaps start with, say, tigers (I hope an easy one, but tigers are a big topic, you might have complicated thoughts. I know I sometimes do.) Oooh, or your favourite Greek myth.

[silveradept]

Tigers are a bit difficult, as they're the name of the baseball team I grew up with, spending their days fighting for last place...that have now capped off winning their division for the third year in a row. They're also cats, and lovely ones, which are my preferred animal companions, and, were I to be transformed into an anthropomorphic animal, the one I would like to end up as (assuming fire-breathing, wisdom-dispensing large lizards are unavailable). Tigers are part of my history, but only at the fringes as the animal.

My Favorite Greek Myth? Considering how many of them eventually end in a tragedy for the people who are involved in them, it's hard to find a favorite. Maybe the Golden Apple Of Discord.

[sharpeningthebones]

Tell me about something you are passionate about. I want to know what drives you and help you be who you are.

[silveradept]

It took me a while to figure out how this one goes, but one of my great passions is to be bigger or better than just me. I like stories of heroes and superpeople and protagonists, even though I intellectually know that I would probably suck with super-abilities. So much of my life is alternating between "I must become someone who the history books remember forever!" and "I am at best, a cosmic speck of dust, important to no-one." That might explain some of my interest in religious studies, as different belief students orient themselves differently on the scale of "I can affect the universe with my will" down to "The way to achieve enlightenment is not through trying harder."

So I'm passionate about being more than a standard person. I realize I am setting myself up for disappointment, as it is unlikely that I will ever know how I affected someone in heir lives with my interactions. My brain doesn't like me all that much, I think.

[redsixwing]

What interests you on a personal level? I think I've got a decent sense from your link roundups, but what do you wish you'd find an awesome article on that always seems to get left out?

[silveradept]

Knowledge and information interests me on a personal level. (Good choice in professions, right?) But the article that always seems to be missing for me is the one where the people are able to be honest and have frank, accurate discussions with each other about the things that make them unique, whether kinky, fannish, furry, geek, nerd, or whatever. (That even includes the boors, the asshats, and the -ists). Not about someone finding their like-community (although that's important - when I give a response to 3rdofjune, I'll probably touch on that quite a bit), but everyone being able to come together, regardless of their viewpoint, and have a real discussion without fear, prejudice, or violence. I know it bites both ways, though, and so I'm trying to figure out what that would be like for both the subculture and their greatest detractors to be able to freely exchange and examine information and everyone coming out better-informed, even if their decisions don't budge.

[northsky]

Talk to me about your interest in science fiction? I got in a massive discussion with a friend about fantasy novels and I'd love to know enough about science fiction to do the same with it.

[silveradept]

Many of the stories you see in Fantasy literature are the same in science fiction, but you have to shift your tropes so that the magic sword is a laser weapon, the spells run on Unobtanium and are usually housed in some sort of chamber or device, armies are often replaced by navies of space ships, and that the elves and dwarves are...actually, they tend to be elves and dwarves IN SPACE!

Anyway, science fiction and fantasy for me are telling similar sorts of stories, but change their settings and their tropes so that people disgusted by elves will instead enjoy Vulcans. My interest in literature is less about style and setting as it is about characters, so after a few works to understand the ground rules, I can talk about most genres.

[kaberett]

Speculative fiction! :-)

[silveradept]

Ding-ding-ding! A Winner Is You!

[3rdofjune]

I'd like to hear more about this very topic. Blogging as a means of finding community, and your personal experiences with and impressions of that community since starting a Livejournal account.

[silveradept]

My presence on the Internet predates LiveJournal by several years, in various forums gathered around shared interest topics. As with a few things, I started with the blog when someone I knew through a friend gave an invite code back in 2003. Since then, our political differences have proven irreconcilable, but I still subscribe to them because they post interesting sermons and ruminations on being a very involved Christian. I may not agree with what they say, but I think they have the knack for the work.

Anyway, the beginnig list of friends I had started by pulling in people who I already knew from those forums. I have always felt more comfortable in any new situation if there is someone there who I know in some capacity, and blogging was no difference. Since this was before I settled inton linkspam, the early entries were more like a journal - compaints about the weather a lot, I believe, because when your work is exterior painting, thunderstorms tend to wreck your ability to get paid. So that's where it started.

From there, it was mostly a friends-of-friends routine, where people would introduce me to others they found interesting, or occasionally, someone would stop by based on a shared interest and subscribe. I didn't do a whole lot of community involvement, even though that's supposed to be the way to get people involved and finding other blogs to subscribe to. Since I'm not fannish in the sense of squee or fanfic, I generally avoided them. But there were a few communities - Quick News, in particular, plus various links, and a daily dose of politics shows, that made me think that I could do something useful and provide l inks and commentary on things on a regular basis. Note also, college student, which gives us time to do it.

Anyway, now that I had a hook, the recommendations for me started to change, and I met a lot of very interesting people who would regularly link to interesting things, or write essays that were definitely worth linking to. Human aggregation service, go. While I don't have a lot of people specifically saying "this one's for you, Silv", I do tend to vacuum up just about everything other people find interesting or worthy of commentary. I'm probably going to hit a monkeysphere problem soon.

I think after the SUP disaster and the subsequent weirdnesses of LJ are what initially had me jump to Dreamwidth, as a hedge against LJ going completely evil. Once I got here, though, after being shown the Diversity Statement and seeing how the culture was different (hello, actual feminism at work!), I've changed the people I'm looking for in subscriptions. Still people with links, still people with great writing, but now also people who remind me that the world is significantly more diverse than my offline experience suggests, people who can help me remember how to avoid presuppositions about just about everything, about how other people see the world, and people who have shared interests and are okay talking about them in critical ways (even if there's a lot of fanfiction still involved). Dreamwidth is the kind of party I want to be at, to be able to drift between conversations about the Bechdel Test in sitcoms and the experience of a non-human trying to find literature and television that represents them.

It provokes a lot of "is this part of my identity" questions, along with "okay, don't violate Wheaton's Law" cautions, and I can only hope that I'm the kind of person other people want to be around and would consider a friend. Although there's some shyness involved in getting into threads like Love Memes and the Circle Memes, because I still primarily consider myself a person who deals in other people's things, so I don't easily see a reason why someone would want to subscribe, past the curios. (Other comments have repeatedly told me this is not true, and I keep them saved as a reminder when the mental state gets self-destructive.)

So, to sum up, I guess, on the forums, I found people interested in the same thing, on LiveJournal I found a way to aggregate and broadcast, and on Dreamwidth I found a way to broaden my horizons.

[kaberett]

I want to be around! And I am loving reading all of these, even late to the party, and I very much know what you mean about being more comfortable if there are some familiar faces.

[silveradept]

Glad that they're helpful or useful.

Even if it's just one person, it makes things so much easier, if not just for introductions, but also someone there who can say "this is a thing I think you will want to do, have fun." or "etiquette here works like this" so that there aren't the really embarrassing faux pas that makes me want to run away.

[majoline]

(trying to think of questions is hard! not sure I succeeded.)

Is there anything that really interests you that you find doesn't get talked about a lot?

[silveradept]

Sex, despite how much sex gets used in society to talk about so many other things. Rarely, though, do people talk openly and honestly about their sexuality and what turns them on anywhere outside of a carefully selected enclave.

[kaberett]

Hah, do you post-date my post on clubbing, counselling and kink? It's under access-lock in the "Things I've Learned From Counselling" series.

[silveradept]

I probably do post-date it, but I don't have access, so I couldn't see it if I wanted to. It sounds like a hoot, just from the subject matter.

[kaberett]

Facepalm! Access granted.

[silveradept]

A very nice post. What I got out of it, though, was something akin to "Even the carefully selected enclave is sometimes too public." I suspect the was more to it than that, but I'm afraid I have missed it.

[lilacstarprint.livejournal.com]

Do you like Halloween music? Would you like a few suggestions?

http://lelonibunny.blogspot.com/2013/09/80-halloween-songs.html

(Teehee, sorry. Couldn't resist an open floor.)

[silveradept]

Neat, recommendations. I know at least one person who will want that.