sorcyress | Entries tagged with cryptic

Today has been pretty good, actually!

This is especially good because somewhere in the last night/this morning phase I felt _extremely_ con-crashy, worse than I have in ages and ages. Tired was some of it (you could probably have guessed from my con-report that I didn't sleep much at YTS) but also just like...being in community and having little responsibility beyond "lead songs, sing songs other people lead, draw pictures" is really good, and being not in that space kinda sucks.

We're having a weird week at school --Friday is a day off, because *some* people can get their religious holidays off without being scrutinized by HR¹. And then Tues and Weds is MCAS test days, and so the schedule is all funny with half-days for students and test proctoring and etc. I hope that I will do a bunch of grading, since I have a higher-than-average amount of prep time this week, but realistically I will settle for just spending that time reading books.

But because of how weird the schedule is, I set my classes up very carefully and in a way that put all the prep work frontloaded to this morning. Luckily, it was a surprisingly easy prep --Geometry could do the activity I made last year, and Algebra could do the assessment prepared by a different teacher, and neither actually needed that much modification from me. Now every Algebra class this week will just be supervising that little project, and for the few Geometry students I see (they are mostly in a grade which is testing and so are exempt from class) they can just work on their chromebooks and I can politely pretend not to see they're also on their phones.

After school was a union meeting that I only half paid attention to (looking at staffing decisions for next year's contract negotiations) and then Clayton-work-bestie and I walked home together and chatted about some Work Goss. He's having a tough time, but I was pleased to be able to help him out.

Then Elishka stopped by for a bit to drop off the next Murderbot and a little dice present they had gotten for me at PAX. It was good time pies to get to see them and chat a little bit about our respective too-busy-aah lives. A few minutes of video games, and then pack up my bag for tomorrow and head out to Austin's for the evening, a thing I have not done in _ages_ --he's pretty consistently just been coming to my place for like...the last five years (since until he and Bee bought their new house, I tended to live closer to his workplace than he did). I'm excited for it, and it was nice to walk over while reading.

I hope the rest of the week manages to have good things in it, and accomplishing things. For me and you both. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Yes this is a real life subtweet, but I'm not gonna give you details in a public entry, ask me offline.

So, Livejournal has had a truly massive password breach, from 2014. If you had a livejournal before that, it is now possible to obtain a file that has all the passwords, in plaintext, with the usernames and emails they are associated with. More information at Squirrelitude's excellent post.

( Rambling about identities below the cut )

***

As far as you know, I only have one dreamwidth. It does, after all, make the difference between access and reading so much better.

But it's nice to know that the option could be there again.

~Sor
MOOP!

PostScript: Consider this to be me explicitly revoking consent for you to intentionally go and try and find any of my journals or identities using this breach. Do not do that, I will not think better of you if I find out, and if you feel inclined to do something like that, I can find better friends to spend time on.

1: Which I'm not telling you because it was also the secret hack to finding "all" of someone else's journals, and that's that person's business.

2: Do you know the name of the only voice channel on my Discord server? Of course you don't! It's set with permissions such that I am the only person allowed in there! Why? Because I am crazy³, and the ways in which I manage that are sometimes very strange.

3: I use this non-pejoratively, but it is the correct word. Sometimes my brain works very very poorly, or oddly, and I am driven to do things that likely don't make sense to anyone else, but I can feel some sense of ritual around them that makes it work for me. Anyways, it's named for the place I go when I cry during bells, and that's enough said about that.

4: Melody, my new little machine, has version 4.0 sitting on her desktop, just quietly available should I need it. Keladry was 3.0, Vera was 2.1, Seren was 2.0, and Dmitri Alexander II had the first BehindtheWalls file, started in February of 2005 because things were _much_ and even if I wasn't posting in my journal, I still needed to write.

...holy fuck, I've been using the term "Behind the Walls" for literally half my life now. Dang. That is...a lot.

Spent close to an hour getting my AnimalCrossing house _really_ in order, and now it is way past my bedtime, but I do feel oddly like that was a productive work which made me happy. Also my house is _fucking baller_ honestly! I have all six rooms done up to some extent or another and there are books scattered everywhere and insecty things, and I made an actual kitchen, and my bedroom has a double-long bathtub because why the fuck not, and there's a playroom and the *fantastic* rave room downstairs (which looks so great with the lights and I desperately need to get every other colour of them!)

Also jesus, my classroom upstairs just makes me so overwhelmingly happy every time I look at it. I don't know how I'm possibly gonna cram more bookshelves in there once I need to put up more insect models!

And I've now put my chemistry set into what once was the insect room, and that room is just dirt and fire and chemistry and a small handful of bugs and I *really* like it!

Also, now nearly every room has good time walling and flooring going on! I'm gonna keep buying more of them (slightly addictive) but I am so pleased with *that* aspect of it all as well!

Yeah, I'm happy. It was a good day today!

***

Other things that were good:

*Finished all my lessons for the week, even though I didn't wanna. Must do a lot of grading this week to catch up, Ought to reach out to damn near all my students as well, just to try and check in before said grading.

*Had *seven* separate meetings today, jesus shit. Calculus (one student), Algebra (one student), NEST (the English-learner teacher team), Self-Care Meeting (with NEST), therapy (one therapist, one very rambly patient), Office Hours (one student), Secret SCDthing Planning Meeting. I was on zoom/gmeet for six fucking hours today, and that is too many. At least Tuesday is usually my worstday for this, and next week should be oh yeah...differently bad, since I've got queermeeting next Tuesday for like two hours between NEST and office hours. Sigh.

*Ezri fed me good foods and also I washed some dishes at some point, which is A Good.

*At therapy, Jenn and I worked out a potential strategy thing to help me with the instinct to play dumb phone games all the time. We will see if it works!

*Secret SCDthing Planning meeting went _much_ better than it could've and I am really excited and also I feel really good about having had an idea and having had time to work on the idea with other people and make the idea much better. Dear self: Other people are useful and helpful and you do not have to do everything alone. The "dumbass" at the end of that sentence is heavily implied.

Okay, I love you, bye bye!

~Sor
MOOP!

The really significantly good thing from today was getting to go see Hadestown! This was extra important to do now, after it was nominated for its fourteen Tonys but before it won any of 'em and therefore became _really expensive and hard to get tickets to_. Having now seen it once, I really think I may do the KChen¹ thing and buy a small block of tickets waaaaaay the fuck out in advance, then take whoever wants to go to NYC with me to go see it in exchange for them paying me back. This is a good plan! This is a terrifying plan.

( This is where I say possibly spoilery things about Hadestown, all of which are positive because I liked it very much. )

Yeah, I think that's all. Really top-notch show! If you get the chance, definitely take it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This is how I saw Hamilton! In an October, KChen emailed me to say "I bought tickets, would you like to pay me back for one of them?" and then I made my way to the city in April and did indeed pay him back and it was a fantastic show.

2: I'm sorry friends, but despite my endlessly TMI nature, some stories really are too personal for me to tell publicly, or largely at all.

I am allowed to want things that aren't fair.

Really.

I'm not entitled to them, oh certainly not, but I am allowed to want anything and everything I want. And I'm allowed to say that, and see if I can get it, and make compromises, and work through things, because that is what mature adults do when they have desires. They take steps to see those desires through, be that to fulfillment or closure.

I am allowed to want things that restrict others' choices. I am allowed to ask them to let their choices be restricted. They are allowed to say no, and if they do, it means I get to learn how to deal with it. I like learning how to deal with things, it makes me feel strong.

And I am allowed to want anything and everything I want, no matter how dirty or terrible or unfair or cruel or indulgent or useless. Wanting is not bad. Actions are changeable, feelings are not, and desire is every bit as much a feeling as hatred or sadness or guilt.

(Sometimes I find myself repeating in my writing and need to change the words to be less the same. Sometimes I find myself repeating because repetition is ritual and saying the words over and over and *over* again sometimes makes it easier to hear them.

And so despite the fact that I know asking for restriction is not fair, and something I find horrific asked of me, I am still allowed to want it. I can cry because I feel betrayed, cry because I am jealous, cry for any number of fucked up fractured reasons (because I am a fucked up fractured person and know that I'm just very good at hiding it) but I cannot cry because I feel wrong for wanting.

Desire is not wrong.

And so it is written and so it shall be cast.

Crossposts: http://kdsorceress.livejournal.com/634545.html

((Was meant to be posted before the con-report. Stupid faulty crossposting.))

There's a whole weekend to talk about at some point. There's a lot of sub-essays from the weekend to get into. There's issues to be written down and slowly sorted.

But I just had a sharp reminder that I communicate best in the written word. You can tell me anything you want, and I will appreciate the sound, and sometimes it will be all that I need. But writing things down? That makes them real.

"Planning"
"2-6 months"

Sometimes everything changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it means I'm growing up, or something equally nonsensical.

And it doesn't matter how many times he said the words, or something like them, over the course of the last week. They weren't real until he wrote them down. Remember that about me.

~Sor
MOOP!

Crossposts: http://kdsorceress.livejournal.com/620043.html

There's a whole weekend to talk about at some point. There's a lot of sub-essays from the weekend to get into. There's issues to be written down and slowly sorted.

But I just had a sharp reminder that I communicate best in the written word. You can tell me anything you want, and I will appreciate the sound, and sometimes it will be all that I need. But writing things down? That makes them real.

"Planning"
"2-6 months"

Sometimes everything changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it means I'm growing up, or something equally nonsensical.

And it doesn't matter how many times he said the words, or something like them, over the course of the last week. They weren't real until he wrote them down. Remember that about me.

~Sor
MOOP!

There is a Marilyn Monroe quote that I found some months back. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it's been rattling around in my head ever since, resonating and finding bits of me to latch onto. It may currently be one of the most important pieces of relationship advice I have in my personal arsenal.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”

It just rings so spectacularly true for me. I am, if we're being perfectly honest here, a bit of a mess mentally. I'm s-l-o-w-l-y getting better at it. But it's agonizing to me sometimes how much time it takes to iron out all the negative wrinkles from a practised brain, how difficult it is to turn wounds into scars into solid self again. I am, unequivocally, not there yet, not with any of the various fractures and fuck-ups my brain tries to do to me. If you're going to make a serious commitment to me --be it lover, friend, moirail¹, or something else entirely-- you're going to have to deal with the fact that sometimes I will stop working in any sane or functional way, and it would be nice of you to help me fix that.²

But you know what?

I'm so worth it.

I am intelligent enough to hold my own in nearly any conversation. I am reasonably quick-witted and *always* eloquent --I think very hard about my words before I say them, and tend to use them precisely. I am hyper consent-oriented, and enough of an activist to accept and defend pretty much anyone until they prove themselves asinine. I have the need to create like most people need breathing, and I don't typically care the delivery method as long as I'm making SOMEthing. I'm fiercely loyal to my friends and lovers, and will defend other people far more intensely than I'd ever defend myself. I'm impatient enough to be an excellent leader in a group ("we're doing this now!") and charismatic enough to keep people from resenting that. And I am _awesome_ in bed, and if you don't believe me, I'll get some letters of reference and they will be the most fawning things you ever did read³

If you can't handle me at my worst, if you won't handle me at my worst, aren't willing to put up with the gender dysphoria and the rape triggers and the daddy issues and the imperfection stress and the fear of commitment and the strong and sour fear of people leaving me...if you just aren't interested in interacting with me when I'm not in the right frame of mind, and everything seems broken or lost or numb...

...then you will never get to see me shine.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Uh. It's a term from Homestuck. The translation I operate under is sortof a "super close friendship where one member of the pairing is responsible for/good at calming the other member down when they get worked up and are going into angrysmashrar mode." I have a two-way moirailship with Ria, because both of us are good at negating the other's ANGRYSMASHRARness. Also, because Ria is the bestest person of all persons, pretty much all of the time. 'Rails before pails forever^1a.

1a: No, I'm not going to talk about pails or buckets in this public journal. What sort of uncouth troll do you take me for?^1b

1b: Look, if you want to keep up with all the things I reference, you are just going to have to read more webcomics. start here. It is 4000+ pages long and ridiculously complicated, enjoy!

2: I, of course, do not expect you to fix that. Nor will I likely ask you to help me fix that (especially not explicitly) unless I am _way_ way way way more fractured than normal, and in very particular ways. If I'm panic attacking, for instance, I almost never tell people, and certainly not directly.

3: Except that I date smartalecky folk, who'd likely take this as a "let's take her ego down a notch" challenge. In all seriousness, I have no idea how I rate on the general sexings scale, but I'm enthusiastic, creative and clever, have a fair bit of practise and am very focused on Making People Happy. This seems to work well for me.

As an aside, a long time ago, someone told me "I really don't understand what your host of boyfriends see in you". I replied, truthfully, that I didn't either.

I still don't know what people see in me. But you know what? Every once in a while, I recognize that I am a potent individual, with all the power that implies. I can tell what my boys see in me --it's the same things I see in myself when I'm having a good day. And trust me, I have enough of the good days to know, deep down in the part of yourself that makes or breaks your self-image, that I am a wicked pissah individual, the likes of which most people just can't keep up with.

What do my boyfriends see in me? They see me. And that's absolutely enough.

Crossposts: http://kdsorceress.livejournal.com/611577.html

Cryptic:

Yes, of course the logical thing to do when I tell you I am not always good at accepting gifts is to give me something so perfectly tailored on so many levels that it makes me stop breathing for a moment.

AlsoCryptic:

Yeah, so, I guess I _really have to work on that_ then, don't I? Fck. In a good way. In an overwhelmed way. The prospect of success is terrifying.

NotCryptic:

Um, go write me porn? Seriously, like practically no one has written anything this year, and it's heartbreaking. Except for that one person who wrote me more than a dozen, which is totally awesome and to be encouraged, but holy crap I don't want to post more stories from one person than everybody else combined, that is just silly.

So yeah.

~Sor
MOOP!

( It's a little over a thousand words. Some of them are exceedingly important to me. )

~Sor
MOOP!

Sometimes you find lines, but don't have the essay to put them into.

I feel rather like it might be arriving in Oz just to find the emerald city to be made of cardboard and paint.

((And sometimes you have lines and the essay to put them into is not so good as to be worth the trouble of posting it))

~Sor
MOOP!

Okay, I'm at that point where I have sixty tabs open across seven browser windows, and that really means that I need to make a link post and get on with my life. So here, have some sundries!

*Boston folk, in last Saturday's flooding, Taza Chocolatier got hit hard. They are trying to convince people to buy their stock so they have money for repairs. Buy some chocolate for a worthy cause!!

*Also Boston Folk, today at seven PM there is going to be a recess in Davis Square. Bring your jump ropes and four square balls, and believe me, I would be there in a heartbeat if I was a few hundred miles north and east of here.

*Improv Everywhere's newest stunt: Recreating the beginning of "Star Wars: A New Hope" on the Subways!

*I'll be honest here: I really quite want this foldable bicycle. It's a neat design, and I emphatically want to have a bike to tool around with up in Boston, to the point where I'm gonna need to find a way to get mine up there *some*how. So yeah.

*"But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning." (A hilarious review of that terribly unrealistic show on the History Channel --"World War II" (I mean, could you *get* more melodramatic?). Read the comments. Sporfle warning.)

*I will unfortunately not be able to post this Girls With Slingshots guest strip by Erika Moen in my future classrooms, but I want to so badly!

*Locked posts, so no links, but I'd like to extend appreciation to

chickenhat for "LESS COWBELL!" and to

ncarraway for giving an earworm trigger warning when he mentioned GaGa's Bad Romance.

*

ms_hecubus continues to keep a fairly funny blog (seriously, I should make the list of people who's journals are fun to read even if you don't know them¹), this time ranting about how "Every time I use a plastic bag, the terrorists win". (And hopefully she will not mind me linking her, as I was impolite and didn't ask permission this time)

*Oh, and her followup letter to Sears.

*Speaking of Racheline (You do read the footnotes when they come up, and not at the end, right?), she went to a conference recently, and made this post about secrets and exile that talks about coming out about various things. ( And then I babble about this a lot more, because I find it important )

*Oh look, another

ms_hecubus post, this time Sensibly pointing out that boobies are both sexual and practical items, and to try and define them as one hundred percent one or the other is useless

*

yagathai came up with a fantastic new portmanteau: Voluntarting. Please go use in a sentence.

*Look! It is A map of the creative process!!

*So, I follow the

davis_square community because I like knowing what's going on in my world --signal to noise is high enough to keep me coming back. Most of the posts seem to get between zero and fifty comments or so. So when I see one that gets _253_, I pay some small attention.

It is, of course, a post on how to have good bicycle/car relations.

I love my hippie city and miss it dearly.

*Mel Gibson Rant Quotes Presented by Kittens. I don't even know how to react to this. Trigger warning: severely abusive misogynistic language.

*Animation showing all the nuclear bombs that have gone off from 1945 to 1998, including test sites and the like. Long, but neat.

*Want respect for bicycles as transport? Use them that way!

*

ratatosk talks about a recent court decision saying that the FCC's current indecency policy is unconstitutionally vague. Go censorship fighting!

And that seems to be everything. Now I can go clear the two hundred or so items out of my RSS reader. WOO!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Also on that list is:

rm, who writes about dancing and fandom and gender and the whole racism-misogony-homophobia-god-society-sucks-thing and doesn't really take shit, and writes just *fantastic* stories about a life that seems very much to be a part of a different world and time sometimes.

kittikattie, who writes about video games and American Girl dolls and ponies and art and the whole society sucks thing and takes even less shit than Rach and has a constantly amusing slice of life journal thing going on with lots of pictures of interesting stuff and is the one who coined the phrase "black day"² which I use sometimes.

And ShadowCaptain would be if he hadn't left elljay for the evil that is Facebook, and Ms_Hecubus like I said, and there are almost certainly other people who have interesting and entertaining journals, in case you need more to read, which I doubt. Dan4th and Heptadecagram, when they post. Others. Whatever, maybe I'll make this into a post of sorts sometime.

2: Black Day: A day in which you put on your gothy best, because sometimes it is nice to be all black-clad and take-no-shit. She always has one on the fourteenth of February, as well as two or three others across the year, mine show up sporadically, but seem to be reoccurring on the fourth of July.

3: In watching Clueless the other day, I remarked that "only to a sixteen year old would "and you're a virgin who can't drive" be seen as such a slur".

I have apparently determined that listening to "Between"¹ on endless repeat is fun and a good idea! Doubly frustrating, because I was doing this a couple weeks ago, too --I don't like being in the same gloomspace twice in a month. I thought I had snapped out of this one already.

***

Went into my multivariate calc exam fully expecting to fail. Sat down to maybe scrawl some notes down for a study sheet, and realized that I hadn't actually learned anything all semester. It felt a bit like those stereotypical dreams² where you didn't know you had a test and so didn't study, except without the waking up part. Quite awful.

Luckily, I was able to pummel my memory into at least writing down something for every part of every problem, and I do think I had some idea of what I was doing on a few of them. I did manage to correctly remember what cross-product multiplication of vectors was, so, yay me I guess.

But yeah. Things I learned this semester: Parameterization. WoooooooooooowhydoIsuckatmath?

***

I am supposed to be packing right now, as today I move the rest of my stuff out and start on my grand gallivanting adventure that I really just *have* to get some e-mails out about. First though, I think I need to find somewhere in Porter Exchange to scavenge breakfast from. So yes, breakfast, then go home and throw everything into boxes, then commit seppuku, then...wait, spellcheck recognizes seppuku? I am astonished, I was just throwing that in to check if anyone was paying attention.

...today is one of those whiny days where I really want attention. I'm going to have to snap my mind out of that before I get annoying, since I'm painfully aware of the fact that me being all *cling, paw, paw, paw* at people is in fact, not charming.

(Today is also one of those whiny days where I somewhat want to hide forever. I'll see how well I can manage that once I've finished packing.)

***

Rackle is really really cool, and said some good words to me last night that I should reread at some point and remember.

***

(Calling Olsen, calling Memphis, I am calling, can you hear this?)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: By Vienna Teng. Good song, great waltz, really honestly kinda depressing as hell when you listen to the lyrics. Multiple depressing ways to look at it, too. It's *brilliant* or something. The fact that it's invaded my world for the moment might be a bad sign, not really sure. I think I prefer to sort out the problems that it expresses rather than collapse under the weight of them. Wooooo, cryptic!

2: I don't remember if I mentioned it when xkcd brought it up, but I don't have stereotypical dreams. I have only rarely dreamt myself naked, and never had my teeth fall out. I've never flown (though I would fall for a while, but not endless falling --just a ten-twenty foot drop half sliding alongside a wall). My dream tropes involve getting uncomfortably groped by people I'm supposed to be platonically fond of. Oh, and food. I have good food dreams unfairly often.

A bunch of years ago, I had a summer where multiple people admitted to being into me, which was both awesome and more than a bit "what?" But the end result was that I made a comment-screened post on the subject, asking "why?!"

((Sometimes I am unabashed in my need for ego-boosting))

A couple weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a friend in which they mentioned "I have no idea what boys see in you"¹. Because I am the queen of insidiously low self-esteem, my response was the highly rational and very helpful "I don't know either."

It triggered thought though, and so I've spent spare brainwaves from the last few weeks trying to sort out just what it is exactly that makes me That Girl. It remains a very true observation that I am --people, especially boys, like me. I can't help this, nor do I particularly want to, really.

The callous and to my mind logical first thought of "they like me because I put out" is presumably untrue, since as far as I can tell, nothing about my public persona indicates that I do so for strangers, and it's not like I have sex particularly indiscriminately, or really, much at all. Everyone I've shared a bed with over the last four years was a friend first, which means that they liked me *before* we got naked. Furthermore, I have male friends who would probably be quite willing to get sexy with me, but we specifically haven't, and they still find me worth hanging out with. So, whatever it is, it's not the sex thing.

The theory that I've been working on that I feel has the most weight to it is closely related to an essay that was posted on Polyamorous Misanthrope, and brought to my attention by Gabity-Gabe. The essay is about a boy who is extremely well liked by women, and posits that the reason he is so well-liked is because he genuinely enjoys the company of and platonic interaction with women. He doesn't just talk to women in the hopes of pussy, but because of the actual person around it.

Pretty much my whole life, I have had close male friends, often more so than female ones. This is because I really quite like males. I could not tell you what particular quality that leads me to enjoy male company more than female, but there must be some reason that makes it easier for me to make friends with other boys² than with other girls². I really do honestly enjoy the company of males, even when I'm not expecting to sleep with them.

This idea is strengthened by a theory I've had for a good long time now --namely, that someone being attracted to you is a *deeply* attractive trait. So, using that, we get the idea that my enjoying the company of males is something that they enjoy, and makes them more likely to enjoy the company of me.

Going even deeper with the above thought, we reach the idea that I am, for whatever degree of intensity or intimacy, attracted to a noticeable percentage of humanity. I fall just a little bit in love every other time I get on the subway. While I have definite physical types I prefer, none of them matter in the presence of an honest smile. If you're reading these words, I am probably attracted to you, at least a little bit, because you are human and alive and I find that absolutely fascinating. Humanity is beautiful, and each individual uniquely so.³

I've got a few other ideas as to what it is my boys see in me as well (and I haven't even engaged in the highly scientific response of just asking them and seeing if there are any common patterns) but I think that the fact that I really like boys, for who they are, is a pretty good start.

And now I open it up to you guys. What is it that people see in That Person that makes them so bloody attractive? Why do certain people just attract everyone and manage to get all the dates?

And sure, let's be egotistical here. What is it about me specifically that's just so damn attractive? Because I *still* don't see it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This made sense in context
2: My mind *insisted* that this wording was correct, and I can't really say I disagree with it.
3: Man, I am such a hippie some days. But it's true!

Every once in a while, something will happen in my private life, that I don't feel would be kind to share in the public journal, usually because it involves someone else, but occasionally just because I do have my own life (kinda) and a right to at least a little bit of privacy.

Of course, it being me, I immediately want to get the input of the world at large, for virtually everything that ever happens ever. Breaking up with Blue Canary is a prime example of this --the day it happened, I made a filtered post, to some of the people I was closer to at that point, and I didn't bother to tell anyone else until a few weeks later.

So yes. Something kindof completely unexpectedly sweet and mature and wonderful just happened, and I'm not gonna give you more details than that, nyah nyah. There is a reason I have a cryptic tag on here.

((Man, if you could tag twitter entries though, that would get waaaay more milage than over here. I use twitter as my immediate "THIS IS MY MOOD" all the time, which leads to a lot of crypticness.))

Semirelatedly, I'll never understand why I find it so awesome when people act like sane adults. I was clearly brought up by society to be cynical and emo or something, because it throws me for a loop when I *don't* get abused by the world sometimes. So yay?

*smiles like a ninny*

~Sor
MOOP!

I spent the weekend in New York City with

thorog and his girl, Rose. Insert appropriate They Might Be Giants song here.

We...basically had a sinfully good time of things. Saturday, we arrived and went to Surreal Estate, which is the house/commune

muzikmaker21 and roughly fifty other hippies live in. We got the grand tour, and learned far too many names --I think I picked up that prettyboy is Quin(t?), and I met an adorably charming girl called Meg, an aussie named Hannah, and a different adorably charming girl called Emma, who was totally flattered when I accidentally called her Meg. We also went and got really good pizza from the sustainable pizza place across the street from Surreal Estate, where Nathen works.

Eventually, we wandered off to Times Square, where we stood in an abysmally long TKTS line¹ and spent much time debating what show to try and see². We were this close to going and seeing ROCK OF AGES³, but there was not seats together, so we decided we'd rather sit in the same place, and see Avenue Q.

After TKTS, we hit up Toys R Us, where we acquired a Brenton/

gyrik_22⁴, and bunches of candy. We did not acquire a dinosaur, because it wouldn't fit in my purse, or a stick pony, even though I was tempted. Also, LEGO PIRATES ARE HAPPENING AGAIN! Just so you all know.

Dinner wound up being at a bar a couple blocks up from Times Square (Daltons? I think Daltons) which was good food, very nice to Rose and her pepper-allergy, and did not try to card us when we walked in, which would've resulted in me being kicked out⁵. So they get points! From there to AveQ, which was fairly enjoyable, and pretty much targeted exactly at the four of us --the girl halfway through her undergrad, the girl in the middle of her graduate degree, the boy just out of college and trying to make a living in the big city, and the boy trying to get a doctorate. Musicals written for twenty-somethings are fun!

Wandered for a while in search of ice cream, settled for Jamba Juice at the Port Authority, at least in part because they had bathrooms. Headed back to Surreal Estate, where we learned that drunk hippies really really like delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies⁶. Tho and Rose did their own thing for a bit, and I went out on one of the roofs with Nathen and Meg to chill. Oh, and in case I haven't made it clear enough yet, Surreal Estate is very *very* awesome. I may go ahead and take my ten day trial period sometime, were I a New York kind of girl. ((They give you ten days before they figure you've moved in, and should therefore pay rent or teach dancing or give backrubs or something. They are a very chill commune.))

We slept. [I am debating this sentence, someone remind me to ask Tho if I can post it.] Sunday morning we woke up, got dressed, and danced salsa and swing in the common room. Eventually, we managed to wander out for bagels, which were delicious, and thrift storing, which was really quite fun --Nathen managed to find a tie that said "viagra" on it repeatedly, and I got a gorgeous summery dress --doubly good, since it was a billion degrees out, and I had previously been wearing black jeans.

We left Surreal Estate and headed to The Strand, where we again met up with Brenton. I'm not entirely sure what happened between 1:30 and 4, but I think it involved a lot of books, and possibly Forbidden Planet. From there, we walked many many blocks to a tiny little macaroon shop Tho had found out about using the power of the INTERNET! and then a pasta shop for dinner, and a quick look around Macys while waiting for the bus home.

Ended out the trip by sitting on the sidewalk in a light rain, chatting and snuggling. Long, overly hot, ride home with some absolutely smashing conversation, and then to bed, to bed.

...or in my case, to Vera, in order to chat with people and make sure none of you has exploded while I was gone.

And that was my weekend! Origins in three days! Aiee, I've got to pack >.<

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Dear mom, you lied, it's not under the Marriot Marquee anymore. It is in fact, smack in the middle of Times Square
2: NTS: Write "Phantom of Chicago Q...OF AGES!"
3: \m/
4: Okay, yeah, there's a reason I couldn't remember your screenname, Dragon. It is a complicated name, that I'm not totally positive I can pronounce.
5: Not that we ordered any boozahol anyways. But they do sometimes card at the door, and being as I was the only under-21 in the group, it would've been annoying as all hell.
6: Brenton made 'em for us because he's a gentleman or somesuch. They were fekken' delicious, and did not last very long at all.

I'm not strong. But sometimes? I'm strong enough.

S
MOOP!

If I try to change the subject, that's because I don't want to talk about it.

One of my coping mechanisms --hell, my most used coping mechanism-- is to write. One line posts, quick rants, strings of curses...whatever. I fire it out, and a lot of the time, I don't bother to proofread or think much about it.

This is what twitter is for, after all. Letting people know the mood of that particular instant.

That particular instant. Moods don't last, and I've had more than a few awkward conversations because I let the walls down too low one night and hadn't found a way to hide that fact the following day.

The second most used coping mechanism is to mask. To find so many distractions, splatter myself across the internet, talk to so many people at once that I can't help but put on a happy face and pretend everything's alright. If I pretend enough, it can't help but become real.

However, masking takes a little bit of energy. It's a fragile goddamn process, and while I'm working on it, it's very very delicate. Trying to undistract me, pointing me back to whatever caused me to need to mask in the first place Just Doesn't Help.

So, why am I crying/upset/frustrated/hiding/etc? Because I'm in this shithole of suburbia. Because I'm sleeping alone at night. Because it's been x days since I've seen him or him and it doesn't fucking matter what number x is, it's too fucking high. Because I'm too introverted for this household, and I can't always have people nearby, and without people, I have to be by myself. Because when I'm by myself, I have to deal with myself, and in case my wildly zaphodic ego wasn't enough of a hint, I do not always or even often get along with who I really am.

Because I hate it here, and I can't escape. There *isn't* an escape here. I can go play on mein Das Nonstop-Programm¹ or climb my tree or do any one of another million things that will unthrill my mother and result in annoyed phone messages.

Because I hate it in my head, and without distraction, I *really* can't escape. Let me find my fucking distractions, okay? Or seriously, GTFO, because it doesn't help. Star-hugs-star only works so well, and it's really just well enough.

No. I don't want to talk about it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Very obscure reference. Don't feel like explaining, figure out a way to search my journal or something, as I'm relatively sure I've reff'd it before.

Oh hey, I never posted this. It seems pretty readable, so have an essay that's been lying around on my desktop for a couple weeks. I think I wrote it just post-NEFFA or so.

So, I don't shave my legs.

(I don't shave my armpits either, but it's a little easier to hide that --I can wear t-shirts all summer. There is weather where pants *really* aren't an option.)

I've never shaved --never really seen the point. My general feeling about it is that the only thing it really accomplishes is boy attraction, and therefore falls into the same category of "completely fucking useless" as wearing make-up does. When I was of an age to learn how and get into the habit, I was also of an age where boys were useless and relationships impossible. For just post-pubescent Sorcyress, boy chasing was the furthest thing from my mind.

As I've gotten older, actually accepted that maybe this relationship idea is not all bad all the time, and started to (on occasion) do things specifically to attract boys^{1, 2}, I've still never bothered to shave my legs. Between the feministy stance and the much larger "I am lazy and a little bit of a perfectionist and I don't want to waste my time doing that to the degree I'd want to" stance, I've just never gotten around to it.

This would not be a problem, were I not a little bit self conscious of my hairy self. Okay, a lot self conscious. I try really quite hard to love my body just the way it is, but as with the stomach thing (mine is round, not flat), I live in a society that has made it very very clear that my body is NOT PERFECT and I should therefore try to fix it.

This is obviously bullshit. The clearest reason I can see for having a societally perfect body is so I can catch myself a man. Maybe if I get to a point where I can't rattle off without thinking the names of ten guys³ who would happily have sloppy make-outs with me I'll shave and start binge-dieting like it's going out of style⁶, but in the meantime, I think I can live comfortably with my really quite awesomely hot body just as it is.

Now, almost a year ago, something in my attitudes changed. Prior to this, I tended to wear a lot of tights, a lot of pants, yes, all summer long. Tank tops would only be worn with an open button-up shirt over them. Society couldn't make me take a razor to skin⁷, but it could at least make me hide the fact that I didn't.

So, a year ago, I was driving somewhere with my friend Jim. It was recockulously hot out, because it was summer in Maryland, and I was wearing shorts. At one point in the conversation, he commented, and I gave my usual "I am lazy and a feminist and therefore don't bother" answer. His response? Totally without mocking "You go girl."

My brain clicked into place, and more or less all was right with the world. That was about the point of my life where I started actively trying to be better about loving my body like it deserves. I've stopped wearing tights when I know damn well they'll be too warm, short skirts are even less the enemy than before, and while I'm still a little bit self conscious wandering out in the world, I'm getting better and better at just not giving a shit.

I don't get in people's faces about it. I don't rail against my smooth-legged friends. ((Hell, when given the invitation, I will happily run my hands up and down my roommates just shaven legs --all of the niceness without any of the itching or stubble the next day!)) I don't even usually bring it up. I just wear short skirts and bare legs and let people decide for themselves whether that's terrible. If people can't be friends with me just because I don't match that idea of normalcy, well, I don't really want them to stick around to find all the other deviant behaviours I indulge in.

I still can't look in the mirror every day and think I'm gorgeous. Hell, half the time I can't even manage seeing "pretty". But I'm getting a lot better at looking in the mirror and seeing myself, exactly as I'm meant to be, and not someone uncomfortable in her own skin.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I feel that this is about the point in the essay where I should say I'm only using boys because I am too lazy to constantly write out "folk who like girls" I have no problems with being ogled by members of any gender --at least not when I'm in ogleable mode. It's a weird little exhibitionist line, and would probably take another essay to explain.

2: And I still don't often do things specifically to attract people. Rocky Horror and *some* conventions are the only exceptions, and only to a small extent.

3: This is not an exaggeration, and I've thought of at least two more since I said that. And these are just the folk I *know* want sloppy make-outs --I'll be damned if I can ever remember or keep track of how many of you want to take me home and do naughty things with me.⁴

4: ...or to me, but that's a different post, and one I don't feel like putting here. Suffice to say, I think that sloppy make-outs⁵ should have all parties as active participants. More fun like that.

5: This is a euphanism.

6: Or, you know, I'll just get over it and be happily single. Shock, horror, all that.

7: And that's another thing. Razor blade. Can kill people. Scraping against skin. How the *fuck* is this considered normal for *anyone*?

((That being said, I do have maybe a slight preference for clean shaven men. But I've had perfectly nice kissies with boys with beards before, so really, shaven status is totally up to them. Unless they try to grow a pornstache. I do not give kissies to boys with pornstaches.))

So, this weekend I went to NEFFA. YAY! I decided to go the entire time without Vera. YA...oh, wait, BOO!

But! Before going, I set up my phone to receive twitter messages, from mom and the people who were gonna be at NEFFA, and more importantly, set it up so I could update my twitter from anywhere I got phone service.

Tweets are in italics, and ( under the cut )

So yes. NEFFA this year felt largely more like a convention than a dance event, but I'm pretty okay with that. I spent several hours doing multiple kinds of dance --I got to do a bit of swing with a really talented lead --he led me through a couple jumps and dips, which was rad.

Volunteering went reasonably well, if dull. Dancing was not enough but quite good what there was. People were utterly amazing --I should really make a point of talking to SpringIsWrath more often, as he is wonderful, plus keeping up with Jesse (known also as Boy-I-Kissed-At-Flurry) and

ncarraway.

Soyes! That was my weekend. More posting on more things eventually.

~Sor
MOOP!

POSTSCRIPT: My twitter is here, if you want to actually follow it. Let me know offlist who you are, so I can follow you back!

1: I like boys in skirts, oh yes I do.

2: Tall. Painfully skinny. Long hair. I don't find everyone who fits this trope attractive, and there are certainly other tropes I go for hard (my height, something like twenty or thirty pounds more of curves than I have, dark hair, female -oh yum!) but both my dating track record and my eyecandy track record reeeeally like the gangly ones.

3: Pets, with the capital letter, are different from pets, without. The capital letter denotes ownership of some sort --it's very not my kink, but not to the level where I'd call it an antikink⁴ or anything. I find it a fascinating power dynamic, from both sides.

4: I feel that the most acceptable word for the opposite of a kink is a squick. But the word squick (and its original meaning)...well...squicks me, so I try not to use it. I'm working on finding a better word, expect post on this later.

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Katarina Whimsy

May 2025

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MOOP!

The Rantings of a Terminal Optimist

Entries tagged with cryptic

Monday Monday

Hack alert

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A'ight? Alright.

Note to Self

Planning the rest of my life

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If there's anything more important than my ego around here...

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A Milestone and a Manifesto.

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Frustrating things:

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I feel this needs to be said every once in a while

On Hair, and loving my body

My weekend!

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May 2025

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