whoever the story needs me to be (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fullupwithfire) wrote2019-07-09 12:00 am
fullupwithfire) wrote2019-07-09 12:00 am
Miles and piles of you
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sunshine_challenge's second challenge invites people to ramble about their fannish identity. Fandom and identity are two topics I can ramble on for ages, so let's see how long this gets! I'll start with a couple of the questions provided, but I may run off course at some point.What does your username mean? How is it pronounced? What is your default icon about?
My user name is full up with fire -- multiple words, which almost every username I've had in memory has been, because I tend not to twinge with single-word ones. It's a Brenna Twohy poem quote, as is my header/subheader, specifically from the last part of I Know It's a Little Late via her tumblr (tw for suicidal ideation and depression at the link):
This year, I am full up with fire—
do not mistake this for burning;
This year, Lazarus reborn in me;
This year, I am not sorry,
This year, I am made entirely of teeth.
(It is not in any of her books to date, because the version of the poem in Forgive Me My Salt cut the last part out. I love the poem no matter what, but I am really attached to that end bit. I have a habit of doing this with Brenna Twohy poetry specifically, for some reason -- the revised version of YNAB is very pretty and all, but nothing will ever strike the same chord in me that "tomorrow is coming, & tomorrow needs sponges, & god, what a fucking miracle it is, the way we go on" did.)
(I did mention I was gonna ramble, right?)
My default icon is a very pretty stock icon from
pretty_pixels that seemed fitting to the name and that's... about as specific as the reason is. I like it a lot! And I could go on about fire and the way that it pops up as a symbol in a lot of things, and especially songs, that I find aspirational, but also, it's just pretty and fitting. I will likely change it eventually if I change my layout colors a lot, because I like my default icon to look nice with my journal, but for right now I'm pretty good with it all.I've had this journal since I moved into my new apartment in September last year, so some people may remember me as balsamandash as well, which is a username I still like and use some places, but I wanted a change to go along with major life changes. (That one comes from a Dessa lyric -- I'm building a body from balsam and ash.) I tend to switch journals fairly regularly, because I like having the fresh start.
I've also wandered away from using one username everywhere, because I kind of like having the spread of things, so I'm also ifimightchime on AO3 and some other places (another Dessa lyric -- it's all just bells, sometimes I ring myself to see if i might chime). (And occasionally inkexplosions on game sites like Flight Rising -- which is a quote from a David Levithan book, ink explosions of thought.)
What's your origin story? Is it fannish?
Incredibly so. I'm going to try and avoid giving my whole life story here, but: fandom has been involved in my life for a long, long time. You could say fandom was always involved in my life, given my mother has stories about taking me to Star Trek cons as an infant/toddler. I wrote Greek myth fanfiction at 9/10 for homeschool creative writing assignments.
I got into fandom properly at 12, via Harry Potter, when I was depressed and pretty lonely, and made some great friends online. Then those friends introduced me to NaNo, and through that I met friends offline, and we strengthened our bonds by getting into fandoms together, getting excited about the fandoms we shared, writing fic, roleplaying, getting into new fandoms and throwing them at each other, and altogether nesting in fandom. I wouldn't have my best friend if I hadn't built up the guts to talk to her mostly because I saw the Les Mis button on her backpack, and I wouldn't have Bast if I hadn't made other friends through roleplay who brought us into the same circles, so I really owe a hell of a lot to fandom. (And NaNo. NaNo pretty much gave me the two most important people in my life that are not my relatives.)
Tell us anything else you want to share publicly that would help people know how to interact with you. Preferred pronouns? Do you have a first language other than English?
I put a lot of this in my intro post, but for people dipping in from the comm, I'm NB and use they/them pronouns. (Sometimes I consider trying others out - and sometimes I wish there was less of a stigma around going by 'it' pronouns - but I've never really found anything that fit.) English is my first and only language.
The main thing that I think is worth noting for interaction is that I am mentally ill, I have chronic pain issues, and neither of them are being treated right now. (And, based on both years upon years of research and consideration and it running in my family, I am very likely on the autistic spectrum.) I run out of energy on a regular basis, and sometimes it takes me a long time to reply to things, or I just never get around to it, and I really appreciate patience with things like that. Also, sometimes I overexplain, or underexplain, or just ramble tangentially because something sparked a thought and I wanted to get it out -- doubly so when we're talking about fannish stuff. I'm sorry if it's the first or second, and I'm more than happy to ramble at each other in the last case (that's really how some of my best conversations go, on and offline). (You may notice that I will often end my comments by either apologizing for rambling or asking if I've made sense, because I habitually feel bad for the first and am never 100% sure on the later.)
(Despite my claiming I ramble too much, I am... also kind of trying to get better about rambling in my own space, especially on fannish topics. Because I like gleeing and squealing about things I enjoy and putting lots of thought down about things, and I've been bad about actually sharing that for a long time. It's a weird push-pull, and we're gonna see how it goes. Sometimes I mention that I'm not talking about a thing because I feel like I have to ask permission before I do talk, and that's a roundabout way of doing so. I am in no way demanding people indulge me but rather getting it out there -- if I mention a thing in passing and you're interested, I will probably talk at length if you ask even the simplest question.)
(I should probably put that in my intro, honestly.)
What does "fannish identity" mean to you?
"Identity" as a concept and topic is complicated to me, for a whole load of reasons I am not gonna unload here, because a lot of them are tied up in brainweasels and things-that-may-be-trauma-who-knows. "Fannish identity" is easier and it's comfortable to me, in a way outside-of-fandom stuff is not. I know who I am as a fan -- multi-fannish, multi-shipping, character fan who is probably really easy to pin down to people who pay attention, reccer at heart if not always in practice, vid enthusiast, podfic admirer, and would-be meta-writer if only my attention span was longer.
I mean, I had a tagline ready, okay, I got this down. (It was "long-time fannish butterfly and inveterate multishipper" for a good while, but fannish butterfly implies that I pick up and drop fandoms, which I don't really, so now it's morphing into "hoarding fandoms like the dragon I am".)
So: fannish identity means comfort. It means a fallback. It means a thing my brain can default to while things are uncomfortable to try and distract me, whether that's a bad brain spell, a bad pain day, or a day of work that feels like it will never end. It means an easy common ground to reach for with interesting people. It means classifications, labels, and notes I can put on myself that are easier to come to because they're not important, and that nobody cares about me changing if I need to, because they're not important, but that can make it easier to find the ones that are. (I am in fact a Ravenclaw.) It means a creative outlet that never stops giving one way or another, and an easy place to find, if not always a home, than a place to rest my brain for a little while.
Does that even answer the question? Does that even make sense outside my own head? Should I have just listed off some fandoms and not tried to get Deep? Who knows? But I've rambled for more than a thousand words now, so if you've learned nothing else, you've learned there's nothing I can't stretch out when I'm in the right mood!
Not a question, but copying this bit as well:
If you are comfortable, this could also be a good time to invite questions from your circle for you to answer on your pages.
If there are still things you'd be interested in letting me babble about, feel free to ask anything you've got! (I'm also gonna dig into responding to that meme where you give me three things and I babble soon, so that's also an option if you've got topics.
And if you're still here, you... get a cookie. Or a pair of cat pictures if you prefer, since I can actually give those! Here's Vaska, and here's Persephone.
kitties!
I want the English language to just formally adopt a new set of pronouns. But it needs to come from grammar nerds in academia for it to stick. I've seen people invent their own, but then they are all contradictory and the spelling and pronunciation isn't consistent. And when it comes from the perspective of someone identifying as non-binary there's a lot of that "special snowflake" stigma. What if you're non-binary and shy? Having a label that makes you stand out is super awkward.
So I'd like to see it pushed from the perspective of the language just needing a singular pronoun for a person of any gender. I think non-grammar-nerds are mostly okay with they/them, but that loses the singular and also just makes the grammar weird because you end up conjugating the verbs as if it's a plural subject.
I personally like zee/zeir/theirs/zem. Everything rhymes with existing pronouns which would make it easier to conjugage the appropriate verbs. She runs. He runs. Zee runs. They run.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but to the people who don't think we need non-gendered pronouns, think about sentences like "when the new manager is hired, he should plan to spend his first week reviewing the files" and "when the new kindergarten teacher is hired, she should begin setting up her classroom." So many biases creep in with subtle wording changes like that. And that's where I'd like to see non-gender pronouns first get used, in hiring descriptions and training manuals and all those places where you're not supposed to descriminate based on gender and yet people will refer to certain professions as "he" or "she" based on old stereotypes which only serves to perpetuate the stereotypes.
I suspect I'll have to give up my dream of a new singular pronoun and just accept that "they" will become increasingly used for both singular and plural.
no subject
Hi from a fellow hoarder fan! Fandom as a place to rest sounds perfectly understandable to me. It's certainly a home away from home for me too.
no subject
no subject
Re: kitties!
I don't even have much I can add but I am super on the same page with this. At least there is they, which is better than nothing, but having something like that would be amazing.
(I double-take a little at 'zee' specifically but that's from waaaaay too many years playing Fallen London. XD And it does sound good alongside what we have already!)
no subject
no subject
And also, yay dragons with hoards.
Re: kitties!
They annoys me when it leads to confusion about how many people are involved, but that's probably just me being old and stuck in my ways. The only person I know who uses they pronouns face-to-face is often with their brother. Their mother and I had this really circular arguement one day because "We have to stop by the school to pick up my offspring because they stayed late for drama club." And I kept insisting that they wouldn't fit in the car because we had too much stuff in the backseat. "They'll totally fit." "No, they won't fit. They won't even be able to get their seat belts on with all the stuff back there."
We literally didn't figure out the miscommunication until we picked up one teenager and I was like, "Where's your brother?" and it turned out the brother was never involved in this scenario at all. It doesn't help that they also object to the non-gendered "kid" designation because they think they're too old for that, because if my friend had said "my kid" instead of "my offspring" I wouldn't have assumed plural.
I've also seen xe/xeir/xeirs/xem proposed, but there seems to be disagreement on how they are pronounced. Either exactly the same as with a 'z' or you get the people who actually pronounce the 'ex' which is super awkward.
We need a popular novel series to come out using one of the systems for it to go mainstream. People won't do it out of respect for other human beings, but they'll do it for the aliens or elves or whatever the next trendy thing is.