#salamanderinspace

astroloquacious replied to your post“nottheliterati replied to your post “a deep thought maybe? on...”

Ah, ignore my prior comment then. I do think (queer) people know what demi-bi is, but if it doesn't feel like it fits, it doesn't fit. (Explaining your identity to non-LGBT+ community members or people who don't have at least one close LGBT+ friend.) is a whole 'nother story.)

See, I never heard that one, and it sounds an awful lot like “demi-boy” which is like, a whole separate other thing on a different axis entirely. But like... I mean, it’s not that I never hang out with queers at all, so it’s weird to me that I’ve never heard it ever in all this time and feel like I had to put all that together from scratch.

And sorry, I think I’ve lost some replies in the shuffle of a real busy offline life today, but someone (oh, it was you, LOL hi) pointed out that they don’t know anyone who’s both demi straight-- and i think that’s an important relevant point too, and I’d expand that to be monosexual in general either straight OR gay-- it seems to me like being demisexual tends to also have a super high co-incidence of being bi/pan, because if your model of attraction works that way you’re clearly generally operating on some different level or axis that’s not the “normal” (i.e., the way we have any language at all to describe) way attraction works. And there was definitely an earlier reply or reblog from @salamanderinspace that has by now scrolled off my activities pane where they mentioned having attractions based on totally unusual aspects of experiences, and maybe it’s that ace-spec stuff like this just isn’t examined much?

Oh yes, here’s the reblog. an excerpt:

For a long time I identified as asexual, but I’m not asexual, I’m very much a sexual person and I feel both arousal and attraction… it’s just extremely rare that I genuinely experience those things for PEOPLE.   Much more often I’ll feel attraction around fictional characters or types of art…when Jenny Slate says she’s had sex with the moon, I feel that.  I have sometimes felt aroused by pictures of body parts, but more because they’re pictures than because they’re body parts; I’m feeling more of a connection with the photographer and the story they’re telling than the subject.

[...]

But I think what we need really is actually a whole system of new words which describe - NOT whether you feel attraction, and NOT who you feel it for, but what is the specific attribute or mechanism that causes you to feel attraction/arousal. 

really, though, the whole reblog is so interesting-- and like, yes, yes, that the attraction is not necessarily sexual and shouldn’t be taken to be about sex, it’s more than that and it’s different than that!!

I think it’s a fuckin’ shame that Ace Discourse has taken over to substitute a fucking pointless discussion of Whether Aces Are Queers for a meaningful and fascinating discussion that I think could be super illuminating about the really, really different ways a lot of people experience the spectrum of attraction-- I really think there’s an entire universe of non-allosexual modes of attraction that have nothing to do with, like, gender, classical physical attractiveness, literally anything Hollywood has ever heard of, any of the things that stand for Sexiness in movies, etc.-- there’s just a whole universe of stuff that is super, super normal, but we totally lack any way of discussing it. And since sexual attraction is a thing so intrinsic to a person, it’s basically impossible to understand someone whose modes of it work radically differently than yours.

Like, I genuinely, literally cannot comprehend what it is that like “normal” allosexual straight people experience when they see some boring straight person in a bar and are like “That’s The One”-- It is as incomprehensible to me as, like, calculus. I know calculus exists and is like, a kind of math or something, I think there’s letters in it sometimes, they use it for like spaceships and things, but that’s as much as I could tell you. I know “love at first sight” exists and I totally know there are people who only like, say, brunette chicks with slim thighs, but I can’t really tell you anything more concrete than that and I can’t actually begin to comprehend what it would be like to experience life like that.

So the problem with ID’ing as bi or pan simply because I experience attraction independently of the subject’s physical sex or gender presentation is that it feels very distinct from people who are bi or pan and experience attraction dependent on the subject’s physical sex or gender presentation, if that makes any sense?? It feels like an entirely different thing, not that I couldn’t find common cause with such a person? but i often feel so weirdly alienated by bi memes that are meant to be in-jokey, LOL.

girderednerve replied to your post “a deep thought maybe? on demisexuality”

this is So relatable, i too would like to be able to describe more or less how i feel or approach attraction with some term that doesn't require a three-minute explainer & a vetting process. it feels kind of frustrating that most of the language available here seems designed to describe (/pathologize?) behavior instead of express attitudes & emotions, but what's new, right?

YES. I guess really that’s what I’m objecting to-- I have always, always hated how pathologized it all seems, and how it’s like. You have to have a 3.5x5″ laminated card with 1000 words on each side to explain your gender identity and the pride flag you specifically are entitled to wear (like a clan tartan) (you need a genealogy to show you’ve the right to that one) (like, am i bi through the distaff line if I’ve had oral sex with a woman, can you squeak me in on a technicality even if I’ve been celibate, I paid my dues by almost getting expelled from boarding school for getting discovered naked in bed with a girl, listen I always bought drinks at the drag karaoke night I’m in the system, how does this work) -- ugh.

Like-- all of this is complicated and I shouldn’t be able to boil down the entire essence of what makes me, me, and how I love and who I love and why I love and when, to a simple phrase, but god, it would be nice to have some more nuanced language around some of this, it would be nice to have something to explain this entire spectrum, which is maybe more like a color wheel, which is maybe actually more of a kind of sphere, which is actually maybe a bit more like the branches and roots of a tree, which is really kind of more than a single mind can understand because it’s a part of the whole of the existence of living things on this planet and beyond--

it just hit the news that coronavirus can be suspended in air and passed via respiration, so the wiping down is…helpful, but not entirely preventative

Yes! So I was like, OK, I will be leaving before my coworker arrives, and will not be spending time in a room with other people! and then he fucking showed up early and I wasn’t ready to leave yet. 

Argh. 

And he’s like “we’re both being careful though, it’s fine!” and I really don’t know how to say I don’t think you’re actually being as careful as you think.

I won’t eat or drink anything in a room other people are or have recently been in, and he’s sitting there eating takeout, that other people made, at his desk. Like! OMG.  “I was totally isolated all weekend! The only time I saw another person was to pick up a pizza!”

who made that pizza.

Yeah, I had to keep it to one episode a night because the gore and the slicing of heads and whatnot was Too Much. Also I didn't like Man of Steel as a movie, but I liked HC in it, he was doing a job of work. And I second the Man from UNCLE as a delightful diversion.

From this, I can pretty well guess that he Worked Very Hard in the Superman role. That seems to be his thing, Really Showing Up for whatever it is. It’s endearing. And it goes really well with Geralt’s world-weary cynical taciturn facade that trips all over itself the very instant a person is in Some Kind oF trOuble and he has to HELP. He’s seen it all before, you know, he’s so neutral, he’s-- wait, that grown-ass man who should be able to fend for himself is going to get himself killed! Time to Throw Myself Into It And Get Beat Up And Probably Run Out Of Town!

I’m really not good at binge-watching things, see below for my experience with in fact Man from UNCLE in the midst of a binge. But yes even thus, I don’t think I could handle very much of this in a row. I get it, I get what they’re doing with the slicing and the mutilations and the body horror and whatnot but oh GOd

Actually I’ve sort of been surprised by the tits-- like, there have been some sexy tits now and then but actually mostly the tits have been sort of reasonable?? Like ok it makes some sense for this woman to be naked right now, that is just her body and we’re not particularly lingering on it. What I also thought was quite funny specifically in whatever episode it was that I just watched was to juxtapose Geralt being completely unmoved by the orgy of writhing flesh, with him pretending to make much of spying on Yennefer in the bath when it was funny and flirty. Like, I actually thought that was a good line to illustrate, that he’s only being a lech when it’s funny and the woman arguably has agency about it. 

I dunno, I could see people reacting either way to it, but that’s how it struck me. 

salamanderinspace replied to your post “supercut me”

ive been watch in small doses because i just keep being like... "ugh, this is so violent, this is so macho"

i watch with my husband in the room - when he's making lunch or whatever - and he's like - is there dialogue in this show??? it's just sound effects for solid minutes

Yeah, it’s kind of. It’s a lot. It’s definitely not my usual style. There’s so many wet squelching noises and whatever foley they do for the noise of “blade cutting flesh” that sounds nothing like it (listen I eviscerate things for a living, I know fine well what noise it makes and it is Not That, but it’s probably really good that they’re not more accurate).

 I do feel kind of amusingly free about it, though-- I’m dragging Dude into watching it with me and openly just saying  “I want to watch this whole thing so I can really appreciate the fic because I can smell from here that this is going to have awesome fanfic.”

And i’m not wrong, so far, though I’ve only barely dipped my toes in because honestly with a cast that size and that many years of lore you’re going to miss out on most of it if you just try to dive in. 

s-leary reblogged your post and added:

I would like your version extremely, yes, thank you.

The only other thing I have enjoyed Cavill in half this much was The Man from U.N.C.L.E., in which he played another wryly funny character.

I SAW THAT MOVIE! I completely forgot that I saw that movie because I watched it as part of an enormous binge on the flight from Istanbul to Toronto, and I watched, like... ten movies straight, starting with the hour and a half we spent on the runway with no ventilation, I just plugged in and went for it, and consequently I do not remember Man From U.N.C.L.E. except that it was funny and I quite liked Alicia Vikander and then I got distracted by my own stupidity in watching Atomic Blonde in the censored-for-Turkish-Airlines cut, which was, like. bonehead move, there; they left all the fight scenes and mutilations but cut Sofia Boutella’s love scene with Charlize Theron, of course they did. Doh.

Something about it always makes me think of Winston's journal in 1984.

salamanderinspace replied to your post “aimmyarrowshigh replied to your post “This one is a bit fragmented...”

I wish there was like a tag or a community to find blogs that are just this. Or like, if someone made a "reblog if you post" type thing? I listen to old ladies talk at the gym and it almost feels the same; hearing recipes and meal planning, anecdotes about family, medical stuff.

I haven’t read 1984 in so long, but I think I remember... I’m half-awake so this isn’t gonna be super coherent.

Even the snippets of life, though, it just-- I think “oh I know someone in California and it’s like this there”, or “I know five separate people in Texas who don’t know each other but are all mad about the weather identically” and when I’m making posts I think about that, I try to think about what in my life is universally relatable, and what in my life seems super normal to me but I know isn’t normal other places at all, what’s unique to my situation. It’s partly why I post so much farm stuff, because I know most people don’t get to intimately know where their food comes from, and such. 

My mom is a historical researcher; her favorite haunts are old censuses, probate records, wills, court records, estate inventories. She’s seldom so fortunate as to get someone’s correspondence, but when she does, it’s fabulous. (There was a recent incident where they had three whole file boxes of correspondence from a local businessman who was killed in the Civil War, and as an extra-poignant bonus, the collection had been catalogued by my grandmother shortly before she died, and so as Mom went through reading the letters and such, they all were carefully labeled in her mother’s handwriting. But the horrible thing was that no matter what, the archive could only locate Box 1 and Box 3; Box 2 has been mislaid somewhere profoundly un-findable.) I think about the details she reports on-- an estate inventory listing, for example, that the deceased had possessed eight china plates and twelve wooden ones, and a matching gold and silver pen and pencil set, and seven wooden chairs-- and I think about how much more interesting that is than long lists of battles in wars, and processions of dates of politicians’ terms.

She’s been doing this research about the house my sister lives in, and the family that owned it until 1940. So I can look at the house, and think, there were seven wooden chairs in this entire house. It’s surprisingly vivid.

I don’t know how you could find other blogs like that, though. I think a lot of them would be boring, if they were trying to be like that. The ones I like best aren’t ones that set out to talk about Life Is Like This. They’re just people who are living their lives. And I suppose who are good curators of experience-- but everyone curates their experience for social media, you have to do that-- I’m just less-interested in the ones who curate it for the obvious things (looking wealthier, looking successful, etc) and more-interested in the ones who curate it for the interesting things. But that’s hard to specify and you have to know it when you see it. 

First of all hi 💗

1. what song makes you feel better?

Right now I don’t have a go-to song or album, but I still tend to gravitate to loud and stompy beats from Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. But Mike Shinoda’s solo work has always spoken to me. I love the work he did as Fort Minor for his album The Rising Tied and have loved all of his solo and other projects since then. My vidsongs also usually make me feel better, but those tend to be very different depending on the current project, heee. 4. what flower would you like to be given?

I love flowers but would rather be given a succulent arrangement than a flower or bouquet. I love cacti and dangly succulents, especially, like donkey’s tail or string of pearls, string of dolphins. 12. how are you?

I’m sad, overwhelmed, frustrated, and dysregulating more than I’d like right now. I wish I had better focus. I have good pockets of okay’ness that I’ll enjoy but the anxiety comes back in waves. Fandom is a good buoy for me to cling to but oh gosh, I have been in this liminal stage for awhile now and I want to be done. Need to stay persistent and mindful, intentional in self-care and actions I take to get myself to some more stability. Right now I’m okay and resting, but ooooh, still very tired. 29. morning, afternoon or night?

I used to be a night person but since the pandemic happened, I’ve become a morning person. I can’t sleep through the night anymore without waking up sixteen times so I’m just perennially awake too early regardless of when I go to bed. I find it nice that when I'm in a good routine I can get soooo much done before 9am and still have the whole fucking day to get even more done or to rest and unwind.

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

Unreliable Narrator // Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence // Character Study

lol I don't think i have ever writen a reliable narrator… I’d get bored probably. and I like the canon divergences! going "what if (x)" and then figure out the what… yummy. but idk that I’d say it’s a list that’s very representative of my writing habits? I prefer using tags as like, appetizers, rather than an allergens list, so I don't think a list of my tags could be that accurate of anything...

9. How do you find new fic to read?

I don't read that much fic anymore tbh, bc I have very specific tastes and now I write the things I want to read. but I do scroll down ao3, and I bookmark stuff when the summary makes me go 'interesting' so I have a mountain of things to read… an absolute everest pile for rainy days.

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

hmmm idk probably? but i can't think of anything specific :( sorry

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?