dira | (no subject)

1. I have a

iulia. That is probably the single most important fact about me. She's the other half of my everything. We met when I was thirteen and she was fourteen, about the second week of our freshman year of high school, and we pretty much taught each other how to be human beings. I have always felt she had a lot more work to do in that department, but we really kind of shaped each other into the people we became as adults: I literally do not know who I would be without her.

2. My first fandom, to which Iulia introduced me about five minutes after we met, was The X-Files. The first episode I watched was the rerun of "Anasazi" the week before season 3 premiered, and I was bewildered but instantly hooked. Iulia lent me video tapes so I could catch up on the first two seasons, which I did in shockingly short order. In retrospect I have no idea how I got the TV and VCR to myself enough to watch that much TV in two or three weeks, but somehow I did.

3. I first read fanfic with Iulia at my side in a cubicle farm on the army base where my dad works. The base sponsored a program called "Explorers" which was meant to introduce kids to technology and the exciting world of computers, probably for some totally wholesome and educational purpose; I remember there was a community service aspect that Iulia and I flaked out on ever participating in. But in actuality it boiled down to them turning us loose on their high-speed internet connection once a week and not particularly supervising anything we did, so: X-Files fanfic from the Gossamer Archive.

4. My other first fandom, and the next most profound formative experience of my life after Iulia, was the Lois McMaster Bujold Mailing List. I started reading the Vorkosigan books, which were more or less my introduction to science fiction, when I was twelve. When I got to high school they were, along with Watership Down and Stranger in a Strange Land, the main contribution from my side of the ongoing media exchange that has been our friendship (hers, along with the X-Files, consisted of Red Dwarf and Microserfs). I got on the List when I was fourteen or fifteen and spent the next five years starting the majority of my conversations with "There was this discussion on The List..."

Yes, you could hear the capitals.

5. I first read slash because Mamadeb was a Listie and mentioned that she wrote it. I had encountered slash in X-Files fanfic mainly as non-con setup for Mulder/Scully h/c or unexpected threesomes with Skinner, neither of which really left me thinking much of slash as a thing of its own. When I went to check out mamadeb's writing, I found she'd written fanfic of that show, The Sentinel, which I had watched sometimes. I'd had a lot of feelings I couldn't articulate about Jim and Blair, so I read a Sentinel PWP.

6. My reaction to the first slash I read on purpose was, "Huh. There's a lube step in the sex."

7. I quit writing fic, or reading much of it, in my sophomore year of high school so I could focus on writing my novel and also because trying to keep canon-compliant with the X-Files was an exercise in intense frustration.

8. The summer after our sophomore year of college, Iulia and I studied abroad for a summer term in Oxford. It was the best summer of my life, and I still miss Oxford and store brand custard creams from Sainsbury's.

9. That summer also included one of the unhappiest nights of my life, when my dorm room got burgled. I was sobbing and hysterical not because of my stuff, or because of the invasion of my space, neither of which I really cared about very much intrinsically, but because the loss of my laptop meant the loss of my writing, including the aforementioned novel I'd been working on since I was twelve.

10. Having my laptop stolen when I was nineteen was hands-down the best thing that's ever happened to me as a writer.

11. I got into fandom again that fall, when I was drifting and aimless and still not recovered from the trauma writing-wise, and

thelionforreal--who I already knew was a popslasher--started squeeing at me about Helen's Guerillas, and then said it would be easier for me to read than to explain. I was a goner.

12. A year later Iulia and I got into Buffy and I was literally doodling Spike's name in the margins of my notebooks during my college classes. Spike Spike Spike.

13. I spent three years in Due South fandom and wrote a lot of words of F/K fanfic but I cannot, and never could, watch the Kowalski episodes of Due South without wanting to claw my face off from embarrassment squick. I cannot handle late-seasons Fraser. It took me six months, once I had gotten into the fandom, to actually watch all the Kowalski episodes.

I wrote a lot of fic in those six months. A lot. /o\

14. I have written a really really lot of fic in the last eleven years. 1,945,647 words of fic, according to the AO3. I shall have to think about what to do to celebrate 2 million.

15. I used to think I was an effortlessly happy and totally mentally healthy person. That was who I was: I was the one who was okay.

16. About six months ago I finally recognized that I have been escaping into stories--other people's and my own--since before I can remember, and that the thing I have been escaping from is a constant, mind-bending drumbeat of otherwise uncontrollable anxiety. This was briefly really upsetting and then I realized that, you know, if my coping mechanism worked well enough for me to mostly not notice my anxiety for thirty years, it's probably fine. And now in those formerly-bewildering moments when I'm not effortlessly happy, at least I can do the right things to deal with it on purpose instead of waiting until I stumble into them in the dark.

17. I was raised Catholic, and detached from the Church in a long slow stumbling process that began when I was about seven and didn't end until I was twenty. I spent thirteen years being really unhappy but still determined that I was, and ought to be, Catholic, because being Catholic taught me that 1) the Church is right and you are wrong and 2) unhappiness means you aren't trying hard enough and it's your own fault. It wasn't until I realized that I could separate from the church on the grounds of disapproving of its treament of LGBT people (if I didn't want to give the Boy Scouts money, why should I call myself Catholic? was the actual lightbulb moment) that I actually made the break.

18. I'm now an atheist--not so much because I decided after ceasing to be Catholic that I wouldn't believe in God, but because I recognized that I never had, nor in an afterlife, and somehow those things had never actually been dealbreakers while I still felt obliged to be Catholic. They were just things I wasn't working hard enough at. I go to my local UU church when I feel the need to spend a Sunday morning sitting in rows of like-minded people and singing the sorts of songs one sings in a church; I like to describe myself as religious but not spiritual.

19. I have written fic about characters with the same names as all four of my brothers and my dad. I would say I'm really good at compartmentalizing but really I just ... don't connect them at all in the first place? The one has nothing to do with the other in my head.

20. Relatedly, I don't automatically visualize things when people say them, or when I read them, or when I write them. I think almost exclusively in words, which probably is related to my shitty spatial skills but saves me from being viscerally grossed out or otherwise upset by things I read or hear. It does make it a bit hard to remember to describe things that are not dialogue when writing, but I believe I'm getting the hang of it.

1. Intro and a recent picture
2. 20 facts about you
3. Your favorite quote
4. What are you afraid of?
5. 10 songs you love right now
6. Your 5 senses right now
7. Your pet hates
8. What's in your handbag?
9. What are your worst habits?
10. What's your best physical feature?
11. List 15 of your favorite things
12. What's inside your fridge?
13. What is your earliest memory?
14. If you won the lottery...
15. Timeline of your day
16. What's at the top of your bucket list?
17. What is your most proud moment?
18. The meaning behind your blog name
19. What do you collect?
20. A difficult time in your life
21. Your 10 favorite foods
22. The best thing to happen this year
23. Your dream job
24. Your favorite childhood book
25. Your 5 favorite blogs
26. An old photo of you
27. Post your favorite recipe
28. What are you looking forward to?
29. Where have you travelled?
30. What's in your makeup bag?
31. Why do you blog?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This was interesting to read! I am glad to know more about you.

Thanks!

::hugs:: You have always been the best of all possible Diras. <3

I just used to be a little more... feral.

::grins:: Didn't we all? As long as you've never presented your epic romance to an actor which features 'his' character's prolonged torture and rape I feel like you're golden.

♥ ♥ ♥

♥

Thank you for sharing things about yourself like that! ♥

You're welcome! I do, um, like talking about myself. *g*

Two frickin' million words! Go you!

(I should do this meme. I feel like all I have to say these days is work work cats work, so I just end up not posting.)

So close! I can't decide how to celebrate, though. *g*

(I would love it if you did!)

Thanks for sharing!

A few random responses:

re 16: I think that sometimes the phrase "coping strategy" gets given a lot of negative weight that it really shouldn't have. I mean, having a coping strategy is good! Obviously some strategies are better -- more successful, more functional, more fun-- than others, but I have long felt that "growing up" doesn't mean getting over our shit nearly so much as it means learning to manage it better, and having a coping strategy that works for you is excellent.

re 18: "religious but not spiritual," hee.

re 19 and 20: I have occasionally realized only after the fact that two people (or characters, or whatever) have the same name. The names were spelled differently, so although of course I knew they sounded the same, I didn't really connect them in my head! If they're not spelled the same, they're not the same, says my text-obsessed brain.

Yeah, part of the thought process that got me to the point of being okay having a coping mechanism is--Iulia's husband B is a therapist in training, and works a lot with people who have phobias and anxiety disorders, so I have a pretty strong layperson's knowledge of cognitive behavioral therapy. So when I thought about getting some kind of treatment for anxiety, I realized that what I would want a therapist to give me would be... cognitive strategies for addressing my anxiety, which I already have. *g*

I have another friend who self-identifies as "religious but not spiritual"! (

hermionesviolin, although she also identifies as a Christian--she is very involved in church but not really in individual spiritual practice)

*waves hi*

hi!

This was really fun to read!

It was pretty fun to write, too. :)