Meme-ish thing

[bladespark]

From sewn

1. Comment on this entry saying Rhubarb!, and I'll pick three things from you profile interests. If you don't have any listed, link your intro post or tags, and I'll choose three of your fandoms or other interests you've mentioned.

2. Make a post in your journal or comment here and talk about the words or phrases I picked!

My answers to their picks:

plushes

I've always liked plushes/stuffed animals. Low-key collected them as a child and teen, and I still have all my favorites from then, save a few from my earliest years which were loved to death or destructively played with. (I did not fully grasp that fake fur, when cut, doesn't grow back, and once I did, I found it hard to care sometimes, so I destroyed a fair number of toys sorta-on-purpose. I could be a Toy Story villain.)

I never expected my job to be sewing them, as younger me thought I hated sewing. Turns out I hated sewing on a machine and hated sewing dumbass dresses. Give me hand-sewing animals all day and I'm happy.

Steven Universe

When it first came out it seemed like everyone I follow on every website had gone nuts for this weird thing? Then I watched it and saw why! I have not actually watched the last few episodes, life rather happened and I haven't watched any shows...all this year, really? And not much last. But I still love the not-even-hiding-it queerness and the amazing characterization and the willingness to tackle problems that are very real life problems, even if they're tackled with gemstone aliens and fusing people together. It's not a fanficcing universe for me (It feels too tightly wrapped, there aren't a lot of strands I want to pick out and "what if" at?) but I like it anyway.

Valdemar

Oh boy. I could talk a lot about this!

So I grew up suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper sheltered. I recall, and this was in the mid-80s, having a kid at school ask me if I was gay, and I said yes, because I was happy!

Reading Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books in my teens was quite literally the way I found out that men could love other men. Though when I first read the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, I initially figured that this guy-romance thing was as fantastical as the magic and the talking horses. Nevertheless, reading about a gay hero who had a genuinely sweet (if a bit odd?) love story was a large part of what primed me to feel positively about queer people when I finally met some in real life, and what lead to my eventually realizing that the LDS church, which when I was young I swear just wanted to sweep gayness under the rug and pretend it didn't even exist, was starting to get weirdly obsessed with some kind of strange gay panic. I think without those books I might well have been swept along more with the "but they're scaryevil, the gayagenda, destroying families!" nonsense. Instead my brain just went "Oh, that's a real thing, like Vanyel? Man, he was so cool, and his love story was so tragic and sweet and... Wait, why would anybody be upset about that? Even if it's a sin, these people love each other, why are we trying to force them not to?"

It still took me an embarrassingly long time to realize how queer I myself was. Maybe if there had been any books about transness in my teens, I'd have twigged to that sooner!

Now, if anybody else wants to comment and have me pick some topics for them, feel free!

Comments

[hitokage]

Rhubarb!

... I think I may need to find my copies of the Last Herald-Mage to give it another read again. It's been awhile and I haven't been reading as much as I'd like but then also what is time for reading A Book? XD

[bladespark]

It's always worth re-reading the good Lackey. Even the mediocre Lackey is never *bad*, really. She's an astonishingly consistent writer, and a huge influence on my own style.

eclectic paganism
bones
yarn crafts

[alexcat]

Rhubarb!

I think the book that made me realize that men could be lovers was The Persian Boy - I was 12 or so... in the early seventies. Bless my dear mother who let me read anything I wanted. I'm sure that's what made me a crazy liberal woman(which is quite an accomplishment for where I live).

[bladespark]

My parents let me read whatever I want too, but it wasn't deliberate, it was just a combination of how they generally focused way more attention on my "troubled" younger brother, and seemed to assume that if the library had it, it was okay, even when 11 year old me was getting things in the adult section!

classic rock
elves
watching old TV shows

[batrachian]

Rhubarb

...no longer resembles a word. Why are brains.

[bladespark]

Semantic satiation! If you don't know about it, google it. It's a nifty brain thing.

Frogs
Thrift stores
Warcraft

[sewn]

I did not fully grasp that fake fur, when cut, doesn't grow back

Oh I feel this. My dearest toy from childhood (who is sitting on a shelf where I can see him as I type this) has a torn bellybutton because I bit a part of it off, truly like some toy-eating monster.

I haven't read the Valdemar books, because they didn't come out here, so I think I missed the sweet spot. But for some reason I love reading conversations about them, because they seem special for so many people. Everything I've learned about Vanyel sounds like I would have loved him and his tragic story.

I don't remember the first time I found a positive representation of gay relationships, but I still remember the first piece of media on trans people that I saw. It was a Danish mini-documentary, aimed at kids, about a preteen trans girl, just living her life with her supportive parents. I'm glad my little (cis) self got to see that early on.

[bladespark]

I'm really glad that increasingly there's more and more queer media all over out there. Some of it is...not great, but hey, the straights and cis peeps get their horrible stuff, guess we can do that too!

[greghousesgf]

rhubarb

[bladespark]

arthur conan-doyle
david bowie
oscar wilde

(Apparently I want to hear you opine about creators!)

[greghousesgf]

I absolutely love all three of them. There were all incredibly talented and I've been a big fan since I was a kid (yes, I started reading Oscar Wilde when I was a kid).
I own all the Sherlock Holmes books and a lot of the books that were written about the original books. I've seen many, many movie and TV versions of them (including some very obscure ones)and the Jeremy Brett ones are my favorites.
I have all David Bowie's albums from the 70's (I think that was his best musical period) and I've watched the Ziggy Stardust concert film lots of times and even done a few of his songs in karaoke.
I own the complete works of Oscar Wilde, he is one of my favorite authors ever. He is in some ways very much a product of the Victorian art world and at the same time so much of what he wrote rings true today.
I only wish I could express my fondness for these creators a little more articulately.

[skytintedwater]

Rhubarb!

I've avoided Mercedes Lackey's book for years for a reason I can no longer remember. Perhaps I should try again.

[bladespark]

awkward realistic sex (Sorry, that is a tag I can't resist!)
claymore
the addams family

I mean, Lackey is a decently competent churning the fantasy out writer. I wouldn't call her amazing, she's my Pringles author. Not gourmet, but there's a whole stack of them, and they're fun to pop. She wouldn't be special, except she dared to do openly queer (and also interestingly kinky and furry!) things when that was not terribly common.

[erulissedances]

Rhubarb!

I adore the Valdemar series, I think I've read them all and have almost all of them in my bookshelf in my personal library. I should read them again, but I'm always behind on my reading list and reading like mad just to keep up with new releases by authors I adore.

I wish sexuality had been more open and discussed when I was young, but I'm quite a bit older than you and sex was repressed and pushed behind doors as much as possible. DH still can't get his head around the gradation of sexual beings - he thinks in terms of black and white, no shades of brown or grey. I feel for him, but I have several trans friends and a lot of gay/lesbian friends, so he either understands or not. Not my problem. *sigh*

I have no idea what, if anything, you'll pull out of my profile. Hack away!

- Erulisse (one L)

[bladespark]

I feel like I'm more regressive than my age, just because my family was so very small-town, religious, and parochial, you know? I'm sure lots of kids in the 80s got very broad educations, but I didn't.

beadwork, hard rock, sewing

[erulissedances]

Oh, that's going to make for a nice challenge. I'll answer the three, but I think I'll write a little something to tie them together.

- Erulisse (one L)

[silveradept]

Plushes are way cute (and there should be more of them for everyone), Steven Universe is a really good show, but I never read a lot of Valdemar, excepting the series with Kethry and eventually her granddaughter.

Also, strawberty-rhubarb.

[bladespark]

Tarma and Kethry are interesting to me! They were obviously originally nothing to do with Valdemar, and then got incorporated in, which I feel made the whole series take a fascinating turn, because suddenly "classic" magic had to exist in the universe, not just mind-magic, and Lackey had to explain why Valdemar had only mind-magic, and I feel that actually lead to developing Vanyel and a lot of other things that turned into quite excellent stories! They're also great characters, but Warrl is of course my favorite, because I have to identify with the non-humans. :D

1000 blank white cards (I am curious!)
discordianism
pot pies

[silveradept]

Glad that I ended up choosing a good set, then. I think I might get more out of Tarma, Kethry, and Keorwyn if I went back and read it again, but there's also the strong possibility that the Suck Fairy invaded compared to what little I remember of it.

As it turns out, 1000 blank white cards and discordianism are somewhat related, so if there's another thing you wanted me to talk about, you could add that, but if you like the three you have, then we'll work on that.

[bladespark]

No, that's fine, because I am curious now about the connection!

[matsushima]

I think it's so cool that you sew plushies! I started learning to (machine) sew and then life happened and I haven't had as much chance to practice, but I really want to in 2021!

Oh, and I love Steven Universe. I'm way behind, but it was so important to see all of that queerness in a kids' show, even if I am 15-20+ years older than the intended audience.

(Rhubarb!)

[bladespark]

Yay! Machine sewing isn't necessarily hard, but I just love the complete control of doing it by hand. Probably some kind of ADD/OCD borderline thing?

amigurumi
microhistories
resin casting


OMG, I've been picking these based on stuff I share an interest and want to see takes on, and stuff I'm curious about and want to know. I could pick like half your interests in those categories!