I am goober-free, full of whisky, and trying to sew while slightly buzzed. AMA!

[bladespark]

Ask me any question you'd like, about my personal life, about my art, about my writing, whatever.

I don't mind "intrusive" questions. I don't mind silly questions. I don't mind any sort of questions.

I do reserve the right to answer questions confusingly, though. :D

All questions answered. All answers guaranteed true. No answers guaranteed to be the one you wanted/expected.

Please ask me something!

Comments

[sylvanwitch]

If you could live in a self-created parallel universe, what would that universe be like?

[bladespark]

Hmmm. It's tempting to just say "Like the Culture", because of the fictional universes out there, that's the one I genuinely would go to given the chance, at least as long as I could take my husband and kid. (A series of novels by Ian M. Banks, if you don't know it.)

Essentially, I would like a world where concepts of gender diversity and non-binary-ness are so ancient, so common, so ingrained, that nobody thinks twice about any mode of gender expression. Where you might have sub-groups and local communities that create norms, but where it's just understood as a given by everyone that those are local norms, not "the facts" of human reality. The details beyond that I'm not fussy about. Culture-level tech where sex changes or even species changes are trivial would be nice, but the societal problems bother me much more deeply than the physical ones, when it comes to "being myself" in the world I live in now.

[sylvanwitch]

You're the second person in two days to mention Iain M. Banks, so I'm going to check out the Culture series. It sounds cool!

Like you, I'd like to live in a world in which who I am doesn't matter, which is to say, how I consider myself in terms of gender and where I like to put my private parts are not only not anyone else's business but also no one's business because no one *cares* (because it's ancient history and no one thinks twice about it). It staggers me the amount of time some people waste being outraged over things that are absolutely none of their business and, furthermore, have NO--zero--impact on their own lives. What's worse is the pervasive sense of entitlement that they have not only a personal stake in who I am/what I do but also that they are Missioned by God to Do Something About It.

Seriously?

*sighs*

Sorry, I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here. All of this is to say that the world you're describing here sounds lovely.

[bladespark]

I should note that while the Culture itself is a very positive and uplifting sort of concept, Banks tends to write about it mostly by writing people who are *not* part of it encountering it, and those people tend to have horrible, awful, grinding, maybe-even-triggering nasty things going on in their lives. The Culture is utopian, but Banks Culture books are dark, dark, dark, dark, and some of them more or less end "And then everybody died horribly", so, you know, heads up if you don't like books that feature awful people doing awful things and people who may not even be "good" people as protagonists and so on.

[adafrog]

What's your favorite animal?

[bladespark]

Felines in general, housecats in specific! Though if I get to include fictional ones, dragons!

[adafrog]

Kitties and dragons!

[bladespark]

Or kitty-dragons.

[chalcedony_starlings]

OvOvOvO

*caution indicated*

*defense floof*

[adafrog]

eee!

[chalcedony_starlings]

*yawwwwwn*

*sprawwwwwl*

*flooooof*

*headtilt*

*vaguely question-like stare*

[bladespark]

Mrrrrow?

[chalcedony_starlings]

*sets locale to Feline*

*imitation granular synthesis mrrrowwww, possibly with undertones of the surreal and dissonant meow mix*

[bladespark]

*falls over giggling*

[chalcedony_starlings]

*mew! mew!*

[adafrog]

lolol Love it all.

[thewayne]

I like to say "I can answer any question! Accuracy and relevancy of answer may vary wildly."

[silveradept]

What's it like, being you?

[bladespark]

Given I've written literal novels attempting to encapsulate just one aspect of this, I'm not sure it's an answerable question in this format!

[silveradept]

That makes sense, yes.

I could try scoping it down to "what is the collective dynamic between you and the people you trust with more than friendship?" and see if that renders anything suitable.

[bladespark]

Hmmm. I don't think there's any one thing I can really label my dynamic with people I'm close to, because it's such a varied thing.

It's often hard for me to draw precise lines between "friendship" and "more than friendship" as well. Being polyamorous and being totally down with casual kink and certain casual sexual things as well blurs all that. There's quite a lot of territory lying between JJ, (with whom I share every single thought that runs through my head, and who I only don't perform certain kinks with because of his general disinterest in them) and somebody who I'd say is strictly platonic such as yourself. There are people in there I'm friends with and talk about kink and sex a lot with, people who are occasional online-only erotic RP partners, people who blur into closeness I'd normally label with "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" except we only really talk once a month, and somebody I generally *do* label with "girlfriend" even though we've only met in person once.

Each of those situations has its own dynamic, and some of them are even specifically with some of my "others", which adds additional unique dynamics, though that's also gotten more blurry since Aidan and Stephanie have become more and more of the same thing, as I've felt less need or desire to mark out a specifically feminine space for myself. But a few of those relationships are complicated by very definitely having different relationships with myself-as-Aidan, and Yin, and Oni, who both sometimes like to socialize a bit.

I perpetually mark "it's complicated" on the relationship tickybox of life. :3

The dynamic, whatever it is, is ever-shifting. It tends, also, to be something of a mirror. Because I'm in a situation where I'm very free and open towards kink, sex, etc. it's often entirely the other party who sets the boundaries around such things. To me any person I trust in the first place is a potential intimate partner, assuming any of our interests or tastes match up. So people who approach me on a more romantic or kink or such axis tend to have that returned, while people who keep it very strictly platonic tend to have *that* returned.

Obviously that's not completely universal, and I won't (can't really!) try to be a perfect mirror for whatever somebody else feels towards me, but honestly, the only times I can recall ending up in a position of rejection, it was because of a situation of less than full trust. Either romantic-from-the-start partners that I never got to the trust place at all with, or friends I've liked long term but know I can't entirely rely on who've had a stab at becoming more than friends and got turned down. All my current friendship situations I feel I'm relatively closely mirroring anybody I do have that trust with.

[silveradept]

That gives me an idea of the space and its fluidity, thank you. Different with different people is normal, for whatever definition we want to use for that.