she was preaching revolution when she talked in her sleep

ninquelote @ 2005-07-17T21:13:00

2005-07-18T03:38:15Z

I think I used to write some pretty damn good rants on the stupidity and pointlessness of condemning people merely for having "weird" or "unusual" beliefs.

Somewhere along the line, I guess I lost that spark, and I can't quite figure out why. Did I let complacency and the nagging fears of "but what if I'm completely wrong?" erode it away?

blows off dust

2005-07-15T06:29:43Z

I'm tired of having to act in ways that always make sure I don't disappoint people who *think* they know who I am. We always seem to keep letting ourselves get put in boxes, even when we think we've learned better.

This applies just as much to people in here as to people outside. Actually, if anything, it applies *more* to people in here.

Checking in...

2004-08-09T05:37:14Z

Hi, this is Shiu, posting in Anthea's journal. ;P I normally respect her desire to have a personal space online and don't generally post in or reply to this at all, but I felt I ought to at least mention that there might not be many posts here for awhile because Anth has gone MIA. This isn't anything to worry about, despite how it may sound-- it's happened to lots of people in our system, to me, to Ruka-- but now that Anth has managed to establish enough of a separate online presence that people might ask about her, I thought one of us at least ought to take the responsibility of dropping people a line about what was going on.

And I won't steal anyone's journal again, I promise. ;P

This just in: Rolling Stone doing serious journalism again.

2004-08-04T07:13:04Z

"Graner, the guard in charge of the tier, entered Juma's cell at 2 a.m., cuffed his hands and feet, and took him to the shower room, where a female interrogator questioned him. After she left, Graner and another man threw pepper in Juma's face, beat him with a chair until it broke and choked him until he thought he was going to die."

And that was one of the milder stories to come out.

I still can't believe people have the audacity to wonder why they hate Americans over there.

ninquelote @ 2004-07-07T02:44:00

2004-07-07T07:53:30Z

Lots of rain tonight, and the past few days. Rain is good.

Shameless plug, I know, but: we've agreed to help Astraea with their jewelry-making business, and it would really help to have some extra cash on hand when we move. Would anyone like a necklace, bracelet, earrings, whatever-- we can get just about any kind of stone you want. (Prices are also negotiable.)

On a completely different tangent, does anyone know what happened with the case in Maine where a town banned an autistic boy from a playground? I haven't seen any followups recently on how the legal case was going.

apropos of nothing

2004-07-06T08:20:29Z

Just a thought:

I wonder how often it occurs to people who hide behind hateful words with "the fact that you get upset means you know I'm really right deep down," that people may, equally validly, get upset because they're being slandered and misrepresented, and the offender is a wilfully clueless jackass who is completely wrong. I don't recall when it was decided that every time someone spat obviously untrue insults to your face and bandied lies around about you, the most natural reaction is to grin and enjoy it, not to get upset. Considering that a great many people online (and off) seem to specialise in being so inflammatory that it takes a superhuman will of effort to not respond to the bait sometimes, no matter how confident you are in your truth-- the worrisome part is that other people's view of you can be swayed by the words of jerks.

And seriously, honestly, if someone has the stupidity to claim that the reason their target gets upset after having bile spewed at them is entirely because they "know it's really true and the truth hurts," they are more fucking delusional than they accuse their targets of being, and far more out of touch with observable reality and the behaviour of people in general, to the extent that one wonders how they ever get along with anyone at all.

chuuu

2004-07-03T05:57:30Z

There are mice in Astraea's house. Again. One of them just ran over my bare foot.

They are kind of cute. I just wish they didn't shit so much.

ninquelote @ 2004-06-19T14:52:00

2004-06-19T22:14:38Z

This is going to be somewhat of a lengthy post, since I've been mentally composing it over the last few days, most of which were spent driving... I considered locking up the comments feature, but the truth is I really want feedback on this-- I'm just scared of opening myself up to more name-calling and rants about how awful I am. But I'm going to do it anyway.

There were some of us, mostly ^Azu, who didn't believe in Otherkin at one point, because based on their experiences with people who identified as same, they had concluded it was a way for people to set themselves up as 'better' and 'not like those scummy humans.' We only changed our opinion on that because of meeting otherkin who weren't dead stuck on the idea of human as a bad thing to be, or defined it solely as a state into which they'd dumped all the most negative qualities of the species, and could admit to sharing flaws in common with humanity-- that it was just the way they were, like ^Ruka being male despite existing in a female body in this world.

I've never disbelieved, at face value, anyone who told me they didn't identify as being human. I haven't liked all of those people, but I have no reason to decide not to believe them just out of spite. The fact is that both they and I are coming from a standpoint of holding beliefs about ourselves that would be decried by most of society as 'crazy' or 'delusional.' I've certainly met lots of multiple systems I didn't like (or only liked a few people), but didn't doubt the validity of their being plural in the first place.

I remember heron61 once talking about positive experiences he'd had at otherkin gatherings, saying that he felt the community was his home and that he seemed to have a better chance of getting along with Otherkin than with people from other sub-cultures on the whole. I wish we could say the same about our encounters with people in the 'Kin community. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that while we've known many wonderful people who happened to be Otherkin, among many things they were, we've had a disproportionate number of run-ins with people who were heavily involved in the community, who could not be persuaded but that all humans were lousy, scummy pieces of shit and would go on about it at any given opportunity, and would go into denial (or just not respond) when you cited examples of humans, individuals or groups, who didn't fit the box.

Maybe we've just had a streak of bad luck. Maybe, despite all the work we like to think we've done in trying to get away from the idea that things are only 'real' if you get hurt, we're still drawn to people who are emotionally abusive and play head games, like moths falling into fire; and will continue to stay on and argue with people who would rather lash out than listen, craving the hurt like a drug because we feel nothing else is 'real' besides pain and anger.

Why do I keep pursuing it? I know I always have the choice to decide that someone is hopelessly closed-minded and give up, as I have done with people before on unrelated issues. The problem is that I crave acceptance from the otherkin community, partly because it seems to me that they're more likely to be able to accept things like non-pathological multiplicity and soulbonding and fiction as truth and be okay with it. Of course there are always the Mokele types of the world, the ones eager to nail down the fence between 'us' and 'the freaks,' but there are certainly multiples who will do the same thing and we've had our share of run-ins with them too. I guess I'm just tired of feeling slapped back, like the one barrier that remains to acceptance between me and the other party is my refusal to agree with them that 'most' humans are 'naturally' scum, and I'm either an exception, or Otherkin and in denial (a backhanded compliment at best), or that, because I am human, they can be my friend but never be able to stop viewing me with some level of contempt. I can't just turn them all out the door on the pretext that they're just coming up with BS because they want to be special, as Azu used to; I have no reason to doubt the validity of their Otherkin identities, in most cases. That's the worst part, in many ways.

I suppose part of the problem is that it often seems people who are 'different,' whether based on species identity, plurality of identity, gender identity, neurological makeup, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else, want to believe that their difference gives them a more objective view of 'normal' society than any other group of 'different' people, or that nonconformity is the exclusive ability of their group, and 'everyone else' (that is, anyone who happens to be straight, human, singlet, NT, Christian, etc, REGARDLESS OF WHAT OTHER 'DIFFERENT' GROUPS THEY MAY FALL INTO) a mindless herd animal. It's the fact that they don't belong to OUR different group which gets them written off. We could certainly give some unflattering opinions about society's idea of 'normal,' based on the categories we fall into (whether as a group or as individual people), but somehow, since most of us are human, the fact of belonging to that majority group, and not all the other minority groups we belong to, is the only thing which matters.

And when we're approaching someone from the position of they as the persecuted, misunderstood minority and you as the majority-- well, we often tend to go to the opposite extreme than many people, giving them judgement over whether we pass muster as a decent person or not. Unfortunately, this often leaves us open to people playing all sorts of upsetting head games with us. They have the power to arbitrarily proclaim us as 'human scum' if we can't agree that, after calling humans everything that's contrary to the personal values I cherish, they aren't 'really' claiming they're better than humans and just different, and my inability to understand that their essentially telling me they can't see me as anything but a herd animal that doesn't know how to do anything other than eat, shit, and fuck (despite my strong environmental feelings, despite my decision to never have children) isn't an insult, and my taking it as one is just another example of how 'humans can't understand.' There is a part of me which knows this is coercive, dual-consciousness-forcing mindfucking, the claim that your behaviour is not what it obviously is, and that the fault is entirely mine. There is another part of me which is so desperate to 'prove myself' that I'll stay in the game trying to convince them I really share all of their values (although I usually get ignored or written off in the end), and the part which feels that as a 'persecuting majority' in this case, I'm somehow wrong even to speak or to claim I am anything besides what they say I am. I get racked with guilt and crawl into my bed trying desperately to not throw up, feeling like I ought to be whipping myself for my 'sins.'

The genuine irony, the sorrow-- the backhanded stab which makes me hide under desks trying desperately not to cry-- is that all the values they claim are exclusively 'theirs' and cannot be possessed by humans, ecological awareness, equality of beings, are my values, all the negative qualities they call the defining characteristics of humans also things I abhor. Yet somehow species in this case is more important than values, and when I try to state otherwise, I open myself up to such arguments as I am obviously Otherkin and in denial, because no human could 'really' believe all these things with true conviction, and if they do believe them, that means they're not human (aka the True Scotsman fallacy). Can't the fact that we both come from a standpoint of being 'different' from the norm in many ways be seen as at least as important a factor in shaping our values as species? Or does it really all have to come down in the end to the question of human versus non?

One of the reasons we got a little cynical about socialising in the multiple community in the first place was because it seemed so many of them wanted to make their difference the defining characteristic of their existence, and to huddle around it as an excuse for not coping with things in their lives, because 'nobody understands what it's like.' (And somehow when they meet a person who -does- understand, their first impulse is not to reach out to them in friendship but to start complaining and unload every unhappiness of their existence on them, apparently in an attempt to get them to join in the griping.) We got tired of being defined by how we were -different.- In the end, the desire to talk about comparatively 'normal' things we liked, like video games and Tolkien and anime, overrode the desire to 'be among others like us' many times. We actually found it sometimes meant more to individual people in our system to have someone understand how 'fiction' could mean so much, than to have them understand that we were plural. Don't get me wrong: we see posing as a singlet as being a necessary evil; it's not something we ENJOY doing. Yes, we want a world where saying we're multiple is no different than saying we're Jewish (or whatever). But we don't write them off as unrehabilatable scum just because they ARE singlets, or go around saying "how can you expect them to understand others when there's only one person in their head."

I just have to think of how much more unhappy our lives would be if we had -no- friends who were singlet or neurotypical, if we had written the possibility of their friendship off in the first place because of a preconceived idea that they 'couldn't understand.' We'd have missed out on a lot of good friends. As for the ones who do understand, we feel we insult them if we call them 'exceptions.' Rather, we see their understanding as an example of the best in humanity, which anyone could potentially achieve; it's just the problem of people being unwilling to undo their comfortable fantasies of The Way Things Are which pose the greatest barrier to acceptance for us. We do not insult our friends, ever; they're our most treasured possessions in this existence; and if we do so even by proxy, we want them to tell us right away.

I'm not asking that anyone change their self-identity as nonhuman, though some people have evidently perceived 'don't say all humans are like this' as equating to 'call yourself a human,' which it is not. I don't want them to, not if that's what they are, no more than ^Ruka could change his gender identity from male, or than we could purge all the otherworld aspects from our system, as some of the 'rational' bowdlerisers of the multiple community would like us to do. I'm just asking for people to change their definition of what human is, not their definition of what they are, so that it allows for me to be seen as a decent person and not a piece of shit. And if changing your idea of what human is poses such a great and looming threat to your self-identification as nonhuman, I have to wonder whether your identity as 'kin was really based on anything tangible in the first place.

ninquelote @ 2004-06-19T00:28:00

2004-06-19T06:33:26Z

Bush commission suggests mandatory mental illness screening for 'consumers of all ages,' including preschool children; calls for a mandatory plan to treat mental illness with expensive patented drugs.

Interesting. So we can apparently only get support for a national health care plan in America these days if it involves being given psychiatric drugs against our will.

Our fun-filled (x_X) day.

2004-06-05T09:03:11Z

We finally took our car down to the mechanic today because it was becoming very obvious the brakes needed work, and because we couldn't stand the air conditioner being broken any more. You do NOT want a car with a broken A/C in a Southern California summer. Also, the shoulder belt in the front seat is broken, which is not exactly the safest thing. So, yeah, it needed some repairs done. (I am seriously considering taking out some manuals on car repair myself.)

First mistake was to take the 91 freeway down there, because we knew the shop was right near the freeway. We try to avoid going on 91 if at all possible because the interchange onto 91 is ALWAYS clogged with traffic unless it's like 3 in the morning. This is not only annoying, but very scary and potentially dangerous, because you will probably end up in a spot where you are at a total standstill with 18-wheelers roaring past you on either side at 60 miles an hour. Even the cars screaming past are scary enough. It's like physics in action-- on the freeway itelf, you have no measure to gauge exactly how much damage a car going at that velocity can cause. Standing still and watching, however, you have enough of an idea to be afraid of how much destructive potential is carried by an object going that fast, even if it were to be 'just' a car that slammed into you. We started panicking in the traffic when a truck went shooting by sounding off its horn-- we were half-into crash position and expecting to be engulfed by a giant fireball if it slammed into the car in front of us. As it happened, I think they must have just been honking at a bad driver or something, because no accident was forthcoming. Looking at the heat rising off the pavement and the mass of one-occupant cars glutting the freeway, though, I couldn't help but find sympathy with the sentiment that the internal combustion engine was an evil invention. >_<

We spent about 20 minutes looking for the shop because traffic was heavy and it wasn't 'just off' the freeway as we had been told. Then had to walk eight blocks in 92-degree heat, having forgotten our hat, so we could catch the bus back home. Halfway through the ride, the seats behind me were occupied by two young men who made me feel really edgy, because you couldn't help but be acutely aware that these were the kind of young males who can only see women as mothers or as whores, and you know what category you fall into, and the whole time you have to listen to them talk loudly, your skin is prickling because you keep thinking they're about to make some derogatory comment about women. (The closest it got was one of them saying that if he was a woman, he'd give his class instructor a blowjob if it meant he could get an automatic A. In retrospect, I almost thought I should have turned around and said "Wow, you like sucking cock that much, huh?" Or asked if he would go down on a female instructor for an automatic A.)

Anyway, the Greasy Things Who Make Ruka Apologize For Their Existence On Behalf Of All Men got off right before our stop, so we just barely got free of them. We caught the shuttle bus home from the university because we didn't feel like walking half a mile in the heat, which had gotten even worse. Turned out the air conditioner on the shuttle bus was broken. x_X Got to look at a cute Asian boy in a tanktop sitting near me, though. Er.

Then we realised on the way home that when we gave our keys to the guy at the shop, we had forgotten to take our apartment key off them. x_x Fortunately, the manager was in her office and we were able to get the spare off of her. Now I'm all paranoid because of stories I've heard about shop employees who have duplicates made of customers' house keys so they can break in. I suppose it's unlikely, but just in case, I'm going to start sleeping with my door locked, I think (since I only have another week in here anyway). At least I have my Big Stick of Thwapping in here with me if anything at all happens.

Thank Eru for air conditioning. If it didn't exist I would have invented it myself (and whatserface who said women don't invent can go sit on a cactus. a pointy one that sticks up).

a tiger when I want love, a snake when I disagree

2004-06-04T14:32:44Z

I was inspired to write this by an essay by Two Courts, who, I must add, say it better than I'm about to, but it inspired me to spin off some thoughts of my own.

Contradictions-- yes, contradictions are innate in sharing a body with others, such that you come off looking like a hypocrite when you pose as a single person: a vegetarian one day, an enthusiastic meat-eater the next; cheerful and bubbly one moment, bitterly sarcastic another; professing dislike of something you just recently claimed to enjoy; turning angrily against someone on one day when you disagree, and the next offering no more outward discontent than chewing a lip in frustration, holding an olive branch and saying you are sure we can find common ground. Moody? Manic-depressive? Eccentric? A hypocrite, a liar, to those who know you only as one person bearing the body's name?

Pick ten people at random, or even ten people who profess alliance to a similar political or religious philosophy-- do you get along with all of them? Are there some you adore, some who begin crawling on your nerves within a matter of seconds? The group as a whole does not come under condemnation for being 'hypocritical,' but people sharing a body are judged by different standards. If an external person finds someone in our group so dislikable, or offensive, that they swear off all contact with us, and decide they want nothing to do with us any more-- is that our error, our sin to take? Should we have tried to make sure that the only frontrunners allowed access to the earth world had near-identical philosophies and temperaments, so that no one would stand out as particularly vitriolic or bothersome, so that we would not make others feel we couldn't be trusted?

But then we would fall under condemnation again; there would be those who would stand to criticize us on the count that we were -too- similar, that we 'weren't different enough' and thus 'faking.' Oh, but if we -are- vastly different, have a wide array of loves and hates between us, then we are 'faking it' too because the extent of our differences means we must be 'caricatures,' or 'naming different parts of our personality!' There is no happy medium, nothing against which at least some people will not rise in protest. The best we can do is to try to minimize discontent from people around us.

So there might be one among us who wants nothing to do with you, one who tolerates you, and one who enjoys your company. Is it then 'not safe' to talk to us because there is that person (or persons) who doesn't want your company, even if they keep to themselves, or stay totally aloof of earthworld affairs? Can the words and actions of the ones who like you be believed, and trusted, and taken at face value? Is it even possible to make the statement that someone in our group doesn't want to talk to you, without feelings getting hurt in the process? Ah, but too often, burned by one member of the group, people external of us will capture us all in the net of 'untrustworthy,' watch us all with a wary and jaundiced eye, with the assumption that the most negative feelings among us are what 'really' represent all of us-- that no one in here can act and reach their own conclusions independently of another's negative opinion.

Too many people have felt free to assume that an opinion expressed by one person could be assumed to represent all of us; if another person backed that opinion, even more so. That therefore, they need not ask "what do you think of this," but assume Azusa or Ruka or Shiu had spoken for the entire group when they gave their opinion on it, or that they had such a dictatorial hold over the rest of us, that we could not be expected to form our own opinions at all. Is the fact that two of us may be completely sincere in totally different viewpoints, an unforgivable hypocrisy in itself, rendering us all untrustable? Is one to be taken and judged as more 'real' than the other? (Ah, but when we ask to be taken as a group of separate individuals, we can give no evidence which satisfies; for we ourselves have mistaken the voices of some of us in here for the voices of others in the past, not realised someone was a separate individual when they were, so can we really be trusted at all?)

A thought...

2004-05-27T09:25:39Z

Do people whose only justification for not believing in something is "I don't need it" or "I don't need to believe in (x) to lead a happy life" realise how bizarre their reasoning is?

I don't disbelieve them when they say they don't technically NEED the existence of such things to lead happy lives. However, it's awfully anthrocentric, for lack of a better word, to assume things exist or don't exist based on human need (and if anything harkens more to fundamentalist ideas that everything on the Earth was put here for human use). Do people consider that maybe, just maybe, these things they say they don't need may exist independently of whether we need them or not, whether they contribute to our happiness in life?

Oh, for instance... my life isn't directly affected by the existence of the planet Pluto. It may be interesting to me; indeed, it may be intriguing to me; but the fact that it exists does not contribute substantially to my happiness in life, give me a reason for living, or bail me out of emotional troubles. It's just there; it existed for aeons before I lived on this world, and will exist for aeons after. It's a force of nature. But I'm not about to decide I disbelieve totally in it, despite having never seen it firsthand, merely on the basis that I don't -need- it in my personal or emotional life. It's there anyway, whether I want it or need it or not. I do have the choice to believe whether or not it has any direct bearing on my daily life (astrology, etc) but that's a thing quite apart from merely saying you believe in its existence, whether or not you get anything out of that belief.

Not all beliefs are held out of need. Many personal beliefs are held merely because they seem to be most consistent with the available evidence.

ninquelote @ 2004-05-23T20:45:00

2004-05-24T03:46:31Z

I was thinking of writing something about Otherkin/Human interaction and how in the end it really comes down to just another version of "we are/they are" mindset, but then I re-found this essay on Two Courts' page, which says everything I had been meaning to and says it better. ^^ It's not anti-otherkin or anti-human, just points out that it's essentially the same thing as a lot of the other divisions people draw up for themselves in society.

"Quite simply, it was a problem that was made worse due to the revival of an Us vs. Them dynamic."

There's also this, which is written from an Otherkin perspective and certainly interesting reading even if you don't agree, about the possible advantages of experiencing life and learning humanity through a vessel that isn't 'you.'

And the only thing I would really add is wishing more people would just slow down and -think- before throwing themselves into issues of intense emotion with verbal guns ready. (Yeah, pot, kettle, hi.)

ninquelote @ 2004-05-23T17:18:00

2004-05-24T00:11:58Z

I want this poster.

aquamarine blue 5

2004-05-20T09:36:44Z

The 'colour of your name' meme that's going around is somewhat puzzling to me. It is very obvious to me that the colour of my (LJ) name is a deep maroonish brown. (my real name, OTOH, is sort of a pinkish red.)

ninquelote @ 2004-05-11T09:48:00

2004-05-11T16:51:33Z

Oh, and additionally, to oloriel and anyone else I may have blabbed about it to: I finally got the faux-parchment and pens I needed so I could start working on my handwritten copy of Akallabêth. Or start working on the draft, rather. Or, um, pretending to start working on it. Actually, right now I'm trying to figure out some way to combat the fact that my letters all slant downhill when I write on unlined paper, and I'm not exactly a master at writing in uncial scripts (I decided finally to go with Uncial based on its resemblance to tengwar).

...I also want a new template for this livejournal. I'm starting to feel somewhat lame looking at the same prefabricated one all the time.

puu. ;_;

2004-05-11T16:42:11Z

They had BETTER come out with a CD of this dammit because I could never get a ticket. (Concert reviewer got one from a scalper from the sounds of it. Ragh.)

ninquelote @ 2004-05-11T01:23:00

2004-05-11T08:22:22Z

Note to self: Do not get large gash in finger on a day when you are planning to do a reasonable amount of cooking, gardening, and housecleaning. Ow.

ninquelote @ 2004-05-09T15:29:00

2004-05-09T23:05:36Z

Sorry for not being around lately o_O I've been -here-, fronting, and certainly having enough thoughts for what I've wanted to post, just never able to get it into words. (Always the problem...) I owe a lot of comments, and a couple emails.

I'm just afraid somehow, maybe irrationally, of disappearing from people's remembrance if I go too long silent. "Now who were you again?"

ninquelote @ 2004-04-21T18:34:00

2004-04-22T01:35:39Z

All Cats are Autistic (According to the DSM-IV criteria, that is.)

(OTOH, if you talk to ^Ruka, he's certain that all, or at least most, cats are multiple. Maybe they're both.)

Though, I might question the idea that cats don't exhibit spontaneous sharing, given the number of little dead furry things that have turned up on our doorstep... Although half the time she was just giving us a look of "What do I do with it now that it's dead?"

The burden of proof

2004-04-21T03:53:55Z

http://www.livejournal.com/community/otakin/746.html

I have some issues of my own with the Otakin group, which I won't get into here but probably in some later post. The fact is, though, that this particular post touched on a lot of things I've been thinking about for a long time.

I tend to be very accepting of 'nonstandard' spiritualities and personal identities-- I'd be a hypocrite elsewise-- and I try to take people at face value unless I see strong and convincing proof that they're trying to get attention or manipulate me or have mistaken something fairly routine for what it isn't (i.e. thinking you're multiple because "I feel like a different person at school than at home").

So if someone says "I'm an elf" and I don't see any of those other factors-- even if they're not the kind of elf I am familiar with, the kind of being I associate with the idea of an elf, I can accept that what they are is something which is considered an elf in some place, at least. If they're not saying "I am an elf because ha ha I'm better than you, silly mortals." If they can accept that I traveled to this body from a different space and time and am now living here sharing it with other people, I can accept that they're an elf on another world, or were in a past life, or what have you (even if I don't believe reincarnation is valid necessarily for everyone). Or not, even: I even try to take at face value people who don't believe -me-, if they seem to have an honest conviction of "this is what I am." I won't disbelieve them just out of spite.

That said, though: there is a huge fricking difference between saying "I come from another world and in this world faeries are like this and I am a faerie," and strolling right into a messageboard for an RPG concerning faeries and stating that one is, in the earthworld even, a real honest-to-god fae of the Unseelie Court and that "you got it all wrong." (No, this is not a hypothetical example.) Just because it goes against virtually everything ever written or told about that particular sort of faerie to even -think- that they'd stroll into some obscure online forum to make idle chatter, or want anything to do with humans at all, in any capacity save perhaps messing around with them, tricking or tormenting them in some way. Even the idea of them being civilised enough to use the Internet is stretching it: they're both wild and dangerous.

Or, to go back to the example used in the original post of Princess Garnet: Yes to the tenth power. I believe that often these are real stories that happened in other realities, although perhaps not quite the way reported in the games, and that yes, there are many variations on each of these realities, but by god, if you're saying you have any version of this person sharing headspace with you, I'm going to demand they ACT like themselves before I acknowledge them as being the genuine item.

Well, example time again. ^We used to know someone-- someone whom Azusa once dated, actually-- who had a version of Sephiroth. Supposedly. I say "supposedly" because in her little warped reality, Sephiroth, Shinra's great warrior who almost brought about the destruction of the world, was always getting kidnapped or disappearing or almost getting killed and having to be 'saved' by said ex-girlfriend and another friend and their characters (and half the time it was their characters who were responsible for Sephiroth going through the Perils of Pauline.) I mean, come on. Come ON. SEPHIROTH. Don't you think he'd at the very LEAST fight back-- that since he was trained as a soldier it would be as instinctive as breath-- and even if someone WAS so all-blasted powerful, at least go down fighting? Couldn't he at least be expected to handle SOME of it on his own, with the six-foot sword and all? And even if he'd decided to be a pacifist (supposedly in ex-girlfriend's mindscape she and Sephiroth were married and he had 'mellowed out' or something), an entire life of being trained as a warrior doesn't just disappear like that. Maybe he's a separate person who vaguely resembles Sephiroth in looks and personality, enough for her to mistake him for same; I could buy that. But I'm damned if I'm going to acknowledge that PERSON, whoever he is, as *being* Sephiroth. (Nor did I buy her crap that he 'just wanted someone to love him,' which, whether it was true or not, merely became an excuse for her to Mary Sue herself into these stories as his one true love.)

In short, if you're going to attempt to convince people that you really are this person from a reality with which others are already familiar, even if it's in the form of 'fiction,' then prove it. It doesn't have to be something you need to go out of your way to do. Just ACT like who you are, and the truth proves itself merely by everyday behavior and reactions. But I'm not going to say you're Sephiroth if you can't do anything except get kidnapped and marry your fangirls. Whether or not he had any autonomy as a person in her head, he certainly wasn't anything that came out of the FF7 world. And I've seen far too many supposed muses and soulbonds who seemed to merely be excuses for their 'hosts' to participate in constant demented sex games ("omg they're always fucking in my head LOLOLOL"), acting nothing like who they were supposed to be, just with names pasted on. And Azusa went through a long time where she felt she couldn't speak up about any of it, and we're just tired of it, frankly.

And yeah. There are some fuzzy grey situations, as there are with anything. I ran into one girl with a SB version of Faramir (also of Aragorn and Boromir) and while both she and he genuinely seemed to believe this was who he was, and there were indeed some ways in which he -did- seem quite like him (book, of course, not movie), he did quite a few things which just ran totally counter to anything I could even remotely see Faramir doing, including having an affair with one of the other LOTR guys-- I think it was Aragorn.

The thing is, even if she and he were convinced he really was Faramir, I honestly feel as if I would be insulting Faramir if I were to accept this person-- whoever he was-- as being a version of him. I really don't know what else to say, other than I'm afraid I can't change how I feel in this regard. There's some essential difference there that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe if I weren't so tired.

Shinies! <3 <3 <3

2004-04-17T22:22:25Z

http://www.livejournal.com/users/camwyn/328358.html?page=1#comments

Though I am still deeply attached to the Very Abridged Akallabeth that ksol1460 and I came up with. Problem is I don't remember where it went in all the IM logs, and also is full of in-jokes.

On the other hand, ^Ruka insists that this needs to be made. (We got volume 2 and 3 of Journey to the West at a used bookstore, but not volume 1, because they didn't have it. So we're stuck halfway into the plot. Enjoying it, but wishing we knew how it started.)

ninquelote @ 2004-04-08T02:59:00

2004-04-08T04:46:46Z

I will not stand for this


Everyone Feels This Pain
Show your support

Maybe someday I'll post our experience of how both abuse by teachers and bullying were allowed to openly go on at a small supposedly elite private school for supposedly intelligent children we once attended. But I'm feeling kind of too cynical now for various reasons to type anything lengthy, so maybe later.

quote ^^

2004-04-03T02:50:30Z

"That said, we hate it when people pull crap about 'the real world,' about what beliefs qualify you as not being in touch with 'the real world' or 'reality'-- well, most of those beliefs are fucking irrelevant to your ability to function in the earth world; the 'reality' being referred to is nothing but social judgements. The REAL real world is about whether you can get along with other physical human beings well enough to find a way to eat and maintain stable relationships and negotiate through all the loops and hurdles and red tape that govern every aspect of modern life. That's all that the real world is." --Shiu

ninquelote @ 2004-04-02T19:34:00

2004-04-02T22:32:38Z

I've been writing a lot lately. Mostly big thud-and-blunder essays trying to make some big moral philosophical point, to spread my views out on the line once and for all. They -are- my views. And it's true I've run into a lot of people and communities lately who need a good stiff dose of the counterpoints they might not have considered, or the facts they may be ignoring. And it's true I want to get a message across to people.

But all the same, somehow, with all the writing... god knows we've had plenty of times where we felt a story was coming through us but not from us; that it was a real story and we were just being shown it and typing it as it came; but as the typists we were also choosing to interpret it in our own way. We had no control over the events which were being shown to us, but we were still able to speak them in our own voice. That's why I almost feel I'm more of a medium than a writer in all of what I've been doing lately.

Oh, I don't mean medium like trying to channel someone's dead aunt or Alexander the Great or whatnot-- I'm channeling, I'm bringing through words that are distinctly not mine and not in my voice, but they're from other people in my system. Does that sound impossible or over-the-top to say you're channeling someone in your own system, especially if that person is perfectly alive and capable of speaking for themselves? I don't know. All I know is that this is the best I can put it into words. That I'm speaking with many voices of people who can't or won't speak for themselves, that they're too afraid, that they think they can't be taken seriously, think speaking through me is the only way they can be heard.

I don't know. All I know is that we ALL know the feeling that no one listens to us or takes us seriously.