MOOP!

I am the most secret¹ introvert you will ever meet.

No seriously. Nevermind that I bounce and bubble and have the extrovert's tendencies to reign² over groups of friends and easily talk to strangers. My introversion does not typically take the form of shyness. What it does take the form of is being worn out by social interactions, and the more numerous the encounters, the faster they just completely fry my brain.

So, spending a day on the computer writing stories and reading blogs while in my room? Perfectly fine. Spending that same day, doing that same thing in the middle of Times Square? Oh gods, do I need to curl up and de-social afterwards. The casual and brief interactions with a thousand strangers are enough to chop away at my ability to deal with other people, piece by piece, until I just want all of you to go away forever please now.

It's not just the number of people I have to deal with that can drain me of my social reserves. It can also be the complexity involved in an encounter or encounters --and as my social reaches its limits, I turn from bright and smiling to impatient, withdrawn, and bitchy⁴.

"So, Sor" I hear my adoring fans say, since I seem to use this particular trope an awful damn lot in my writing -you know, the thing where I imagine you guys asking a question relevant to the topic at hand and then I answer it? Segue! That's what they're called, I use this particular segue an awful lot.

I need to get more clever with my writing.

"So, Sor" I hear my adoring fans say. "Can you better explain that complexity thing to us?"

I'm so glad you guys asked exactly the question I was planning to answer! Funny how often that works out, ya'know?

The complexity of an interaction boils down to a triad of factors: A) how intimate me and the other person are; B) whether there are more than just the two of us in the interaction; and C) how intimate the non-me people in the interaction are with each other.

Generally (but not always), high intimacy levels for: A) means that the interaction takes up less social energy from me, for B) means it takes less social energy if A was low and SIGNIFICANTLY MORE if A was also high, and for C) means it generally takes less. Or in other words, I do best when I am extremely close to only one person at a time in any given situation, or when the other people in the situation already know each other relatively well.

This is possibly one of the least useful traits for someone poly to have, ever. Because, see, if I am extremely close to Foo, and extremely close to Bar, and Foo and Bar have never met each other, and the three of us go out to crepes, I will quietly and quickly run out of energy fretting about them interacting and my interactions with each other and making sure I pay enough attention to each of them and don't pay overmuch attention to the one, and aiee.

This is probably the main reason I suck so bad at threesomes⁵. This is *definitely* the reason why I went marginally insane at Arisia this year, with a little bit of the added disparity where to some people my general insecure fretting that they're enjoying themselves and I'm doing okay by them was an annoyance, and to others it was necessary.

(I hate fucking up the how-much-is-too-much "we okay?" insecurity thing. I am usually better than I was at asking often enough to be relevant without asking so often it's a pain. I think I've sorted it out now)

And of course, intimacy is not limited to romantic relationships --eventually I will introduce Lauren to Veronica, or Alys to Maddie, and those situations will be just as fraught and awkward⁷ as the romantic ones.

The ways to make such group interactions easier on my social capacity are all easy, albeit occasionally impractical. The big simple one is to just have more one-on-one interactions⁹, followed closely by the slightly more complex getting everyone to become friends with everyone else.

So there you have it. Instead of your standard sim bar that turns red when you haven't interacted with people enough¹¹, I have one that turns red when I interact too much¹⁵. So, if I get all awkward and withdrawn around you, it's probably just best to let me get a little space (the span of time it takes me to walk to the bathroom and back can do wonders for a temporary restabilization) and your usual bubbly sorceress will be back in no time.

~Sor
MOOP!

P.S: I handwrote this, and it turned out like seven fucking pages. The things I do for you people!

P.P.S: Where, "you people" equals me.

1: Well, insomuch as anything about me is a secret. I keep very little of myself hidden except my present emotions² and the extent of my insecurities. Well, and my daydreams, but that's more because those are stupid and boring to people who aren't me, rather than any real reason of secrecy.

2: Which is to say, literally what I am feeling at the present. I will happily tell people about the emotions I've had in the general to recent past, but if I am currently in a negative mood, it's unlikely you'll hear of it.

3: Reign is not quite the correct term, but being the "loud bubbly one that everyone else flocks to" is definitely one of those things I do. I blame my mother.

4: And I do *try* to apologize for the bitchiness when it happens, but I am not always mentally able to, I'm sure. In short, this is *why* I get withdrawn when I get oversocialed. So I don't have to be bitchy in the first place.

5: Taken literally, I suspect the phrase "I suck at threesomes" would actually be quite the turn-on for most people. I am not a unicorn⁶, bobspamit!

6: Unicorn = polysnark word for Hot Bi Babe --ie, the pretty girl who will come into you and your SO's life and date you both and never have outside interests and take care of the kids and be your kinky sex-slave, etc, etc.

7: Okay, maybe not *just* as fraught and awkward. It's pretty fucking scary to lock eyes with someone you love truly-deeply-dearly and say "this is foo, who I also love truly-deeply-dearly". I don't need my Beloveds to be the best of friends, but I'd like it if they at least got along⁸.

8: And of course, if someone I'm dating absolutely hates someone else I'm dating -or if is just profoundly uncomfortable around them- I'll take that as the warning sign it is, and act accordingly.

9: One-on-one interactions with people I'm close to tend to be an absolute breeze. If we have a relationship such that curling up in the same room on our separate computers and just being with each other makes sense¹⁰, then I am happy with this relationship indeed.

10: And part of making sense involves the desperation born of long distance -if we don't see each other in person so often that merely lounging feels like a waste, of course we're not going to just sit around, regardless of how intimate we are. I'm looking at you, oh, practically everyone I care about.

11: If you haven't played the Sims, they have eight mood bars¹². The goal of the game is to keep all of them full, or in the green. When they get red, you've got problems!

12: Social, energy (sleep), comfort, hunger, hygiene, bathroom, room (aesthetics), and fun. The fact that I could do that by memory is probably an indication of a misspent youth.

13: Okay, admittedly I have a standard not-interacted with people for too long social bar as well. I probably *also* have mini-bars for the people I like best of all --if I haven't gotten my fix of old so-and-so, I'll get all sad.