Off the prompt "cuddles."

Have you ever been listening to the radio and suddenly felt like the song was written for you personally for five seconds? When I was putting together this list I found myself realizing how much it says about my psyche and maybe also my generation. Like, I almost wish Imagine or something was on here, it seems loftier than *cough* some of these, but I grew up with Imagine, I never had a paradigm shift on it, it was just always there for me. These? These were really personal moments of impact.

Three song lyrics that meant the world to me:

I was made to believe there's something wrong with me, from Cold War by Janelle Monae

This was the line that made me want to write this entry. I wish I'd heard this years ago. I wish I'd heard it years before she even wrote it. I wish I'd heard it in high school. I don't know if I would have understood it, if I would have had the objectivity to get it, but this was something I struggled with, as a queer girl growing up: the sense that there was something wrong with the way I was, that didn't actually come from something being wrong with me but from something being wrong with society, that society was telling me you don't fit, you're a broken cog but it wasn't true, it was society being a broken machine. It's hard to see it the first time but it's so liberating when you do. If I could send this song back in time a dozen years to tiny me, I would.



I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance

Okay, don't laugh at me, you folks.

I first heard this song--saw the music video, actually--during Lost Year II, The Flunk Out of Every Institution in the State Remix. We'll call it the Geographically Challenged Year. It was bad, but not quite as bad as my Lost Year, and part of the reason was this song.

I have chronic clinical depression. The Lost Year was the year I just went under to it, the Geographically Challenged Year was the year that I could admit--to myself, if no one else--that something was wrong. I burned some bridges figuring that out, but. It was better. A little.

You see, clinical depression is, 95% of the time, invisible to other people. You're tired or you're cranky or in a bad mood or whatever, you should just buck up and get over it. (You can't get over it, it goes on and on.) And it's so ingrained in our culture that the answer to "How are you?" is "I'm fine" at the best or "I'm okay" at the worst. If you say "I'm awesome!" people look at you kind of pityingly, like "I'm so sorry your company is asshats, at least they don't also make you wear flare?" If you say "I'm terrible," you really had better be bleeding to death, and even then, the temptation is to brush it off as "Just a flesh wound." And if anyone has any reason to suspect you're not really okay, that you're just giving the socially acceptable response, the thing to do is in fact to promise, to assure them that you're okay. Even more for women, I think, there's a negative stereotype of a the woman who complains, what a nag, what a hag she is, and no one wants to be that, right?

So for ages and ages I told everyone including myself that I was okay, when I wasn't, because I didn't know how to say anything else. It seems like such a small thing that this song deconstructs but I don't think any more sweeping statement would have had the same impact--if they had said "I'm depressed, my life sucks," well, that would have been the sort of sentiment you can get away with in emo music, right? But "I'm not okay, I promise," takes the thing you're supposed to say, with all its trappings, and says, "That is a social fiction. That is a lie."

Seven years later I can admit to myself when I'm not okay, and sometimes even to other people.



Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears, from The Cool, Cool River by Paul Simon

This is off The Rhythm of the Saints, which may be one of my favorite albums of all time. What this line encapsulates for me is how the creative process comes out of deep emotions--for him, it's music; for me, it's fiction or film. You don't know how many times I've been jarred to realize that I'm putting myself down on paper at the safe distance of a character in a story. Sometimes it's enough, sometimes you can work through your issues at that distance and write something that's interesting to other people and we call that being inspired. And sometimes it's not enough, sometimes putting things at the safe distance of fuel for the creation engine is putting them too far away, sometimes the only way you can actually process is to own it in yourself. Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.

Longtime readers of my journal may recall that I once ran a fic exchange for the Vlad Taltos and Paarfi novels about Dragaera by Steven Brust, and relatedly, an lj community named valabars. I am now attempting to kickstart the community on dreamwidth: valabars; and to get the ficathon fic archived on AO3 (if you wrote fic for that ficathon back in 2005, you can read how to post to the Valabar's collection on AO3 here).

But! This community is not just for the oldtime members who survived my first travesty of an attempt at running a fic exchange! It is also for anyone who thinks they might enjoy participating in a fic exchange for the Dragaera books in the future! Because AO3 automates so much that I might actually make the damn thing annual! If there is interest! I promise to use fewer exclamation points in the future. Really. I'm slightly drunk right now, is my only excuse.

Also, for anyone who wants to talk about the Dragaera books!. I myself just finished reading Iorich. ( spoiler? )

Who's with me?

Testing post by email and post from phone because I am going to be shutting down my usual channels of fannish interaction for a few weeks. I had a fairly nasty scare this weekend with missing an online exam and I may yet have to withdraw from college for the semester, pending how I do on a shitload of extra credit, so I'm trying to put the pedal the metal and ignore you all.

On the plus side I have turned on the ability to txt me from DW (for those of you still on LJ, you can txt me from there too) so if you have any desire to send me brief, cheer-filled messages regarding the relationship dramas of people with wings, or whatever else floats our boats, you know where to find me.

ETA: my email/phone posts will not automatically cross-post to LJ. Also I am generally considering ceasing to cross-post to LJ, so people who wish to follow me on LJ may want to follow the syndicated feed of my DW: jmtorres_dw. This won't allow you to see locked entries but it will allow you to see public entries; most of my entries are public on DW except for those on [whine] and [loki] filters. A more detailed plan for my escape from LJ will be plotted later.

So, anyone want a dreamwidth account? Anyone at all? For any reason? I just got a crapload of codes on fishitarian, where I'll totally be putting cooking stuff when I get around to it, plus I never used up all the ones on my main account, and anyway, who wants an invite? If commenting is a travail, you can email me at juliette dot torres at gmail.

So if you're using a custom footer on cross-posts, you should limit it to 256 characters. At present, the manage account settings will let you save one longer than that, and even remember it for a couple of hours--but after that it will truncate your footer to that length. It has already been logged on Bugzilla so hopefully it'll be fixed soon, but right now, the answer to the hair-tearing "why did my comment link break" question is "because the custom footer can only be 256 characters long, but the site forgot to tell me."

My original plan for dreamwidth:
--crosspost most entries to DW and LJ, slowing tapering off until only big announcements are crossposted to LJ, regular content on DW
--consolidate comments on DW
--leave my LJ habitually locked; open my DW to the public until DW is out of beta

Is the last bit I'm concerned about. I'm considering going back to habitual access-locking before official release. The reason I was going to hold off that long is that DW will deal with certain bugs (openID appearing to be a non-option if anonymous commenting is disabled, unless you're already *signed in* to openID) and, I hope, release certain features (linking openID and regular accounts, if you have both) by the time we come out of beta.

HOWEVER. I don't actually like dealing with people I don't know all that much. So I am considering access-locking all my regular DW content as I do my LJ content.

Please raise your hand if you give a crap either way. Tell me why. (Dear lurkers: this means you too.)