MOOP!

One of my first lesbian experiences was in the context of playacting homosexual men.

The Maurauders to be exact, from Harry Potter. The timeframe was somewhere after the first movie but before the third --Severus had been revealed to be a beautiful creation¹, but my Remus had not yet appeared onscreen and been nothing like I'd wanted². So we were playing that set, four of us as James and Severus and Sirius and Remus.

It was a long sleepover, curled up in our blankets and just talking quietly. It was role-playing, the sort you do when you're young, dictating your actions to the group, and responding to what each other offers. And because we were young and exploring, what we were doing revolved around love and romance.

There may have been playacting as women as well, pretending to be partners for the Maurauders, but mostly we were just being the men and responding as them. I think I recall Lily being played cruel, to pull James away from her so he could become friends-more with Severus. I as Remus was of course to pull myself towards Sirirus. And as we pulled closer, the actions got less than purely friendly. And at some point, someone explained "well, of course we would kiss then".

And that's all it was. Just cuddling up close against each other, and kissing. It was acting, dammit --the characters would kiss, and so we did, to save them from tragedy otherwise. (I'm not kidding about the tragedy --in a game that couldn't have lasted more than three hours, we had at least two described suicide attempts and maybe a couple attempted murders, all in the name of our Dramatic Love.)

We went to bed eventually, a tangle of people just sleeping. And it wasn't ever wrong to us, that's just the way the game had gone. But still, I think none of us ever mentioned it to our parents later. There are some things you just don't talk about to your parents lest you no longer be able to stay over with Those People again.

(To clarify, I doubt any relevant parental parties would've had a problem with the lesbianism, the roleplaying, or the fact that we were being men. But parents don't want their little girls to grow up too fast, and we were old enough that the experiment mattered, but young enough that maybe it would have scared them.)

No, I don't really have any specific reason to be making this post. Just one of those things that came to mind. And of course to those who knew me at that age, it would be incurably rude to speculate who my fellow players were.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Freshman year of college, after watching Dogma, a group of us declared that Alan Rickman was made of sex. Not sexy. Just pure sex. I've never really changed in this opinion.

2: The movies disappointed me with both the boys I fantasized about from the books. I dreamed of being with Ron, constantly --red hair and gawkish limbs!-- and found Rupert Gint lacking as well. Both actors are talented and lovely, but neither was as beautiful as I wanted as a young and fickle teenager.

This is another one of them sundries/link posts, because I am far too angry to report about Daycamp today. Which means I probably will at some point, but I want to get this done first --not the least so I can clean up this browser window of all the loose tabs, and restart Vera, which she would probably appreciate.

So, some stuff that has caught my eye lately!

*An account of a visit to the nursing home where a Stonewall veteran currently resides, during Pride. It's beautiful, and sad, and while it hurts to think that we cast aside those who set the path, it's nice to realize that the queer¹ community HAS been making progress, even when some days it feels we haven't.

*Drowning does not look like moviedrowning. Dot linked to it on Twitter, and I was entranced, partially because of the whole neck-choking-not breathing neuroses I have, and the fact that they've been a lot on my mind lately, trying to sort out what the specific problems are, and how they work.

*A pretty sweet pdf of how to survive your first con. It's HP cons specific, but most of the information is really useful. I would recommend it if you're for some reason not much of a congoer but would like to be.

*Always check the sources cited --something on Cracked.com was snarking that smarter people have less sex, and linked this study to prove it. I went "But... the venn diagram of "people I know have lots of sex" and "people I know who are smart" actually has a fair bit of overlap.

At any rate, I clicked through, and found that it's the abstract to what sounds like a fascinating study about the fact that intelligent adolescents have less sex. Like...people in the twelve-eighteen year old range. Gonna be honest here, I am smarter than you², enjoy sex more than you³, and when I was 12-18? Shit man, I was about as uninterested in sex as a baby is in politics.

*SMBC illustrates why you should not date a mathematician. I more or less died of lawl. This is one of the comics that I will print out and put in my classroom when I am a teacher, along with half the archive of xkcd⁴.

*Sometimes shirt.woot is meh. Sometimes shirt.woot is weird. Sometimes shirt.woot is forgettable.

And sometimes shirt.woot is so awesome that it sells out of the ten dollar/day price before I can even get to it. I am _seriously_ debating just sucking it up, and paying the extra five dollars for this one.

*And to round us off, Surviving the World⁵ touched on one of my favourite "deep questions" --namely, is sex with a perfect clone of yourself incest or masturbation⁷. And his answer is *excellent*.

What's interesting in your world?

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Queer used here not to intend a slur, but simply a more definitive way of making sure I include EVERYONE who needs to be included, and not just limiting it by the letters I can remember in the general glbtqqaikp alphabet soup. (That's gay lesbian bi trans queer questioning asexual intersex kinky poly, in this case. I'm sure someone more savvy can toss out a couple others I missed.)

2: No, not really. I am smarter than a lot of people, but the people who are my closest friends tend to be smarter than I am. If "fag hag" wasn't such a detestable term, I would totally claim to be a "nerd hag".

3: ...no comment.

4: The non-swearing half.

5: This is seriously one of the best comics on the internet. I adore Dante --among other things, he's the only cartoonist I've yet found that can outrank Randall Munroe on the "webcartoonists I would have a whole lot of awesome sex with given the chance"⁶ list.

6: I almost fixed this to be doing his taxes, which is not a euphemism, but no, I really do just find him immensely shagable. What can I say, I *really* like geeks.

7: This footnote intentionally left blank, save one hell of a cute little smirk.