in_the_blue | Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name? (Reply)

Here, a giant wave of hello to people who've recently joined me at this corner of LJ. Welcome, welcome. I'm taking this opportunity to let you know what you're in for by being here.

First of all, every day is friending or defriending day. I am not the sort of emo character who tracks people down when they friend or defriend demanding answers, so please do as you please at any time. The political correctness associated with the whole concept of "friending" rather than following or reading is one I struggle with on LJ from time to time, but I do tend to narrow my list of those I follow because interests change and life gets overwhelming. The people whose journals I friend back are those with whom I have things in common, or have known forever, or know and love from this side of the computer monitor, although I will check out everyone's journal and will always gladly pay attention to anything in your journal you bring to my attention here. Bottom line: if you're not interested in what you see here, my feelings won't get hurt! I promise. ~~Unless you are one of my minions in which case we are surgically joined at the hip and you have to stay.~~

So what will you see here? Fandom meta: analyzing characters and shows and books and movies is one of my favorite pastimes. I don't really review them, per se, but I will give you my thoughts on them in great depth. I tend to go in phases with heavy concentration on specific series. These days you're most likely to find discussion on Battlestar Galactica, Dragon Age: Origins, Cowboy Bebop (my old standby, my first love, my favorite), Last Exile, and I'm still looking for someone who's watching Boardwalk Empire (anyone?). I might still talk about Lost too, but mostly I have Unpopular Fandom Opinions™ about it these days so if you're looking for a raving Sawyer/Juliet fangirl who believes in soulmates, leave now and close the door behind you. And seeing as how Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is mere weeks away, I might dip back into those waters too.

Another thing you'll find in nauseatingly great detail is attention to roleplay. I'm maintainer of both

outpost_12 and

ididwhatwithwho and a six-plus-year member of

milliways_bar. I talk about characters in canon versus characters in roleplay. I talk about RP scenarios and plots and plans and while I try to keep community-specific talk filtered appropriately, sometimes I just get so damn excited about things I'm working on or writing that the veil tatters and words leak out. Sorry 'bout that. You can see a list of my roleplay characters in my profile if you're interested, or I can just tell you who they are: Spike and Gren and Vicious from Cowboy Bebop; Sam from Battlestar Galactica; Sawyer and Sun and Desmond from Lost; Alex from Last Exile; Howl from Howl's Moving Castle; Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere; Vincent and Reno from Final Fantasy VII; Sirius and Charlie and Bill from Harry Potter; Zevran and Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins; Willy Silver from War for the Oaks; Hero from Y: The Last Man; Mugen from Samurai Champloo; Claire from Baccano!. I think that's it. More will pop up at random, I'm sure. I'm... uh... not as crazy as this makes me sound. Only a small percentage of these characters are actually active at the moment.

Writing. In addition to

100wordstories, I also co-mod

ineedmyfics, an off-season fanfic exchange. I participate in Yuletide so you'll see references to that. I ask for prompts and love to write. I write original fiction as well as fanfiction, but I can guarantee you that the fanfic I write is almost always RP-related. It's one of my method-actingy ways of developing characters. You may or may not see my original work here; I'm on the fence about it. I will pimp other peoples' writing when I like it. I have an account at Archive of Our Own where my favorite of my own derivative works has a home. I love comments on my work, both compliments and critiques as long as the critiques are constructive. I leave feedback on almost everything I read. I leave links to my favorite things. But I won't pretend to be what I'm not, so I don't call this a "writer's blog" and I won't give anyone advice on how to be a better writer, unless they ask for editing advice (I was a professional technical editor and I know how to keep things clean and crisp).

Massage therapy and professionalism: I'm a ten-year licensed therapeutic massage therapist by day, and I will and do talk about the ethics of touch and about the art and skill of communication. Sometimes I will launch right into stories about it, but I'm required to maintain client-therapist confidentiality and can't and won't discuss any one case in identifying detail.

I also do memes from time to time. Wax poetic about my favorite poets and authors and musicians (I have pretty eclectic taste in music). I do my best to answer all comments to my journal, and I'm the same with my blog as I am with writing: I love the feedback. I like knowing that people have been here and said hi, or just acknowledge that they've read. What I won't do is spam anyone or embed a ton of Youtube videos or include links to any site with viruses. I will never single out a public complaint about any one person, name names, leave mean and hurtful anonymous comments. I don't do anon secrets communities because I believe if something's worth saying, it's worth saying publicly so I'll attach my name to it. Also, anything personal about my family is always locked. But there's not so very much about me that I feel the need to hide any more. ~~Not since the stalker went away.~~

And that's about it. If I left anything out, I'm sure