the NPC who tells you the bridges are open

I see a whole lot of people are listening to/referring to Florence & the Machine's Shake It Out today and recently. That makes me almost as happy as the song. *beam*

How Games Saved My Life - a tumblr collecting personal stories about videogaming as life-affirming. I know a lot of people who can relate, whether through finding meaning in JRPGs, community in MMOs, or friendship through game fanfic.

I've decided that this year I'm going to attempt Nanowrimo. It's a challenge that I'm finally in the right place to try. I've mentioned before that I've been having trouble feeling creative - having ideas, having anything in my head beyond the mundane - and I've made a few breakthroughs lately. A lot of the motion has been internal, but here's one of the big external pushes, a post from Kristin Cashore:

If "writer's block" refers to the hopeless confusion of not knowing what to write, having an "I don't wanna" feeling, and knowing that if one sits down to write, it's going to be hard and the product isn't going to be very good... well, then OF COURSE I've had that. I've had it for weeks and months at a time. That's not writers block. That's writing. Or more accurately, it's one of the possible states of writing (maybe I should write a post sometime on the multiple states of writing). Welcome to writing! Get used to all those bad feelings and don't let them make your decisions for you. Understand that the only way out of that kind of blockage is through (to paraphrase Robert Frost).

Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I feel that way and assume it's because I'm "not a writer". Technically that's true, since when I feel that way I don't write, but that's because I'm assuming how I feel is true. Realising that a good, professional writer feels like that and works through it by writing is emboldening.

I've also been putting myself in the way of streams of ideas. I recently started following ailelie, whose journal is a collection of snips from works in progress, ideas she's had, and notes on fics she'd like to read or write. I've also been reading the Changeling: The Lost core sourcebook and it's *brilliantly* inspiring - it's full of 'what if's and story seeds that spawn independent 'what if's in my head. I have no intention of taking an idea wholesale from either of these places - it's getting the juices running in my own imagination by permitting them movement, showing them what other people do. I might reread Catherine Valente too; she's one writer whose books I read and then think "you're allowed to write like this? You're allowed to use ideas like this?" And I'm collecting photos that have moods and visuals that spark something in my writing mind. Using photos as prompts works pretty well for me! Same thought with the Tarot cards, which are visually more flexible but limited in number.

Other things: I've been playing the Night Circus, a game from Failbetter Games (makers of Echo Bazaar), which has enchanting textual images. (Want to play? Sign up through me!) It's an 'advert' for a book by the same name - now that's fecking cool, a interactive fiction game specially for your debut novel.

Dreamwidth's getting really active. It's reached 100k personal accounts (over one million accounts total, but that includes a hell of a lot of openids) and the Latest Posts page is speeding up, with lots of slices of life and less of a fandom focus. Woo! It's not LJ, size-wise, but it's becoming its own thing.

There's also cool brainstorming going on here with regard to media posts. Worth peeking in and adding thoughts, though I recommend getting drawn into any 'no! not here!' discussions. This stage is for throwing ideas into the air - shooting them down can wait till later.

Unrelated to any of this: I want to buy a house. More on this soon.

There's a splendid writeup of the issues surrounding Google+ and its strict (though patchy) "real name" policy here: the Google+ Nymwars - Where Identity and Capitalism Collide.

Having read The Wise Man's Fear* while these issues were strong on Twitter and elsewhere, I have naming on my mind. "Naming", the magic of knowing true names of beings and elements, is a presence in the book. And in another way it's a presence in all of these pseudonymity/anonymity discussions: real names, meaningful names, personal secret names. Perhaps Google is trying to gather to itself what it believes are the true names of as many people as it can. But its understanding of the power of names is limited, mechanical, literally legalistic, and it cannot comprehend what it has and is losing.

* do not mention fairy faerie sex. I will cry at you. in lowercase.

Oh, good, synecdochic's put up the first full part of her FFVII fic lullabye for the new world order. What little fan lives in me lives for Final Fantasies, mostly VII and VIII. I lived those games, and D's writing brings me into VII's Midgar until I can smell the mako and metal.

I've been feeling quiet, somewhere between silent and silenced. Work is going pretty well. Life is quiet, aside from the accidental monkey porn at GAZE film festival. (Can I say dar wanted to see it? That would be a lie, but I can say it anyway. Lies!)

I think you all need to see this. If you don't recognise the dancer, I believe I know several people who'd like to live under your Edenic rock.



Let's finish instead with something better. I went on a spree watching Youtube videos of Marina and the Diamonds, a Welsh singer-songwriter whose songs are edged and vulnerable and aggressive and feel familiar and beautiful to me. I liked her cover of a Katy Perry song, Starstruck - I haven't heard the original, on account of trying my hardest to hear as little by Perry as is possible, but Marina's version reminds me of a story in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, about the 'Fair Ladies' - a kind of supernatural seductress, but with a heart and an inability to last long in the modern environment that most desires them. A regretful seductress, maybe; unable to be other than what she is and pushing someone away who won't understand that. And Marina's breaky rough voice is it, is one of them. For me, anyway. I've linked this at a bunch of people and it hasn't resonated for any of them the way it does for me, but it's worth listening for the chance that it will have this effect on you.

And, by the way, I'm not a straight white man pretending to be a queer Irish woman. I'm a small froth of frogspawn that interacts in unusual ways with iDevices and will one day manifest on the moon. Trust me, I'm a blogger. 

In seriousness, the Amina (and Paula Brooks) fakery outings have caused me genuine rage and distress, and that's minute compared to that suffered by people connected to the fakers, or living lives the fakers misrepresented. I take honesty seriously, especially honesty online, and I hope any of you reading this will do your online friends the courtesy of presenting yourself truthfully. I am who I say I am, and there are at least twenty people on DW/LJ/Twitter who have met me in person and can verify my physical existence, including a whole lot of San Francisco people if you trust the word of such souls. 

I remember, though, when I was new to the internet and no one knew me. I hardly knew myself; I just wanted somewhere where I could start to speak and others would respect that - listen, join in, talk of their own lives unrelated to me. I needed to be part of that without another person as an entry visa because I knew no one; had no friends I could trust to show my net presence. Like many of my friends throughout the years, I showed my reality not through meeting other people (though that helped) but through striving for honesty, through acting in accordance with my own changing beliefs (mostly), through talking to people in casual and funny and serious ways - behaving as was natural for me. 

I will not ask anyone to verify themselves to me. It matters to me that people continue to be able to keep their online presence detached from their physical selves. (Or even from their other online selves: I've wanted to do this and occasionally done it, though never for long.) The anonymous blogger has a place, and there's no binary switch for trustworthy/untrustworthy, real/unreal. All I can say is: behave always with the knowledge that those you encounter are worthy of respect, and consider your words, actions and inactions accordingly. 

It's far past my bedtime, but I'm glad I'm still up. I had a discussion/bonding session with friends that made me more sure of myself, more confident in my internal compass's directions on what's right. We reaffirmed each other's humanity.

Somewhat related: I don't care much about being a good person, because I'm generally sure I am. I could offer proof to the contrary, but it's not something I worry about. I do worry about properly expressing myself so that I give a fair showing, and I worry about acting in "correct" ways and about doing things right. I feel that more comfortable raucous conversations like tonight are weights that tilt my mental balance towards relying on that internal compass over propriety.

I’ve been finding it hard to write because I’m typically convinced that my journal entries just aren’t interesting. And interesting is one of those things I think I’ve a duty to be, even if it’s often more an aim than something I accomplish. So, I thought, why don’t I read back through my journal?

I had a lot of objections! I’m always scared to read my own writing. It’s reasonable and intelligent and true at the very moments when I’m putting it down, but get a few moments beyond that and it’s become some representation of Why Me Doing Things Is Bad and I can’t look, I just have to get it out there because once I write an entry, I want to post it and get confirmation of my existence. Comments? Woot, I exist! Interesting comments? Woot, my friends exist!

But it’s not exactly reasonable to avoid reading your own writing if you want to be a writer. And I do, even though all I’ve written in years is these small entries, little notes to people travelling in my part of the online world. But that, no matter how much I try to diminish it, is something. I’ve been writing a journal online for nine years now, and that is an accomplishment if I allow it to be, if I accept that it’s made me more and become a somewhat interesting artifact in and of itself.

There’s another thing. I want my journal to help me to become more of a person. More interesting - more everything. If I don’t go back in time, if I don’t reflect on my reflections, I won’t know where I’ve been, I’ll only know where I vaguely remember myself as having been, and that’s missing out on an important gift a journal gives: a way to dispel the fog memory gains and reremembering creates.

It’s only as effective as the initial writing is honest, though. Or, maybe more importantly, as complete as the initial writing is. I’ve written fewer than 40 entries this year. It’s the 128th day of 2011 now. I’m missing a whole lot of records of living and thinking and experiencing that I could have made in those times when I wasn’t actively living or thinking or experiencing, but pressing refresh repeatedly on two or three different websites. (If I knew exactly how much time I spent refreshing read pages and friends pages and other pages that haven’t been updated I’d feel very foolish when I whimper on a Sunday night about how fast the weeks and weekends go.)

So, forty entries. That’s nothing to read through, I told myself. I started with a post apologising for ending 2010 with a streak of not posting and continued on reading. I experienced none of the horrible shocks of disgust at myself for writing badly that I’d expected. I didn’t manage to reread a certain speech, but I did read the comments to it, and instead of saying “oh, could have been worse” like I’d imagined they did, they were quietly enthusiastic. I smiled and kept reading. I found entries that were painful to read, that I thought at the time communicated little of how I felt, and felt tender toward myself, understanding the pain she was experiencing and feeling compassion. I read on, saw how after January’s self-doubt my mood arced upwards steadily, as I got out and about and did exciting things and even briefly dated someone. That had interspersed the excitement and then sadness of the unsuccessful trip abroad - we *will* make it, Dar. Then came a dip in mood that I set myself to this task in part with hope that I could break through and out from it.

After reading, I felt happy. You know, a lot of the time I have a taskmaster in my mind, chastising me for not doing anything with my life, for resting, for lazing - often it’s justified chastisement, but it’s never truly helpful. It quieted down when it saw all my entries piled up, secure in their own existence and securing mine. I tagged entries as I went, too, and tended my journal, telling it it’s worthwhile, giving it a bit of care I can’t give it if it’s just that thing I waste time on.

Before I read back, I’d decided I’d like to be more thorough about reading back in time. Reread entries from a year previously (two, three, five) each month. Read back over the month when a month ends. I want to start living a little more consciously and I have the tools for that, I’ve been making them for years on end. It’s not enough for me to cower from my past successes and mistakes or treat me-yesterday as a disclaimed stranger. I’ve proven again that I can get strength from looking back at myself and my life. Now to continue to believe this and to live this. I want to have follow-through. I want to treat who I am as worthy. Not who I potentially am, but me, as I am.

It was so hot today that I could smell the insides of cars driving past. Most windows were down and the musty, overheated interiors smelt stronger than fuming petrol. Less pleasant. They smelt the way car sickness feels, muggy headache and rising bile. 

Why did you choose your journal name?

I've used the name 'phoenix' on IRC for years, a short form of my unwieldy LJ name 'phoenixdreaming'. It's a vibrant fierce little name, one I have affection for, but it doesn't say much about me and it's not distinctive. Names are hard. Someone's discussion of journal names the other day had me intrigued and surprised by the amount of symbolism and importance some give to journal names, and I'm sorry that I don't put as much effort into naming. 

I'm very conservative about names because they're such a permanent label and I resist permanent mistakes. They say too much; they provide great opportunities to misstep. If I have to explain a name I'd rather not use it and instead have one meaningless, pleasant and safe. I may be reconsidering this. I'm also intimidated by the upheaval I perceive in changing a name - loss of reputation (good and bad), new image, new associations.

Put like that, I'd rather like to change my name :)

Do you crosspost? Why or why not?

I do! While my activity on LJ has dwindled and my friends page grown quiet, I still have important ties with people there. There have been times when I've considered turning off comments there, just to have them all together, but I prefer my friends to have the option of where to talk if they're honouring me with responses. Besides, my habit of locking entries in the past year has made it too inconvenient to insist comments go on just one site.