Introduction / Friending Meme

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is an opportunity to introduce yourself and your blog, as well as meet other people on Dreamwidth. Answer whatever questions you wish and skip anything you don't want to share.  If you don't want to answer questions, you can just post whatever introduction you want.  Are you coming from Cohost?  Find your Cohost friends here with a shorter template.  You may use both if you wish.  


About You
Username:
Your other online venues:
Your approximate location (e.g. city, state, country, and/or bioregion):
Any other important personal details you want to share:

Your Interests and Activities
What languages do you speak?
What are some of your favorite hobbies?
What television shows and movies do you like?
What books or other written fandoms are you into?
What kinds of music do you enjoy? Listening, playing, or both?
Do you have a transformative works statement / blanket statement?
What are some worthy causes you support?
Do you have pets or livestock, and if so, what kinds? Do you watch wildlife?
Do you enjoy gardening or houseplants, and if so, what kinds?
What does your average day look like?

About Your Blog
What is your Dreamwidth blog like?
What is your blog metaphor?
How active is it?
What are your most common topics? (Use Manage Tags and Sort by: usage to find this.)
How do you feel about crossposting?
Is your blog more text-heavy or image-heavy?
Do you paste in or link to a lot of audio or video content?
Do you use recurring posts, and if so, what topics?
Is your blog more personal, professional, topical, or a mix?
Is it all open, all friendslocked, or somewhere in between?
Do you use filters, and if so, what kinds?
What kinds of friends would you like to attract to your blog?
Do you participate in creative bingo, fests, challenges, memes, holiday festivities, or other blogging events? If so, what are some of your favorite ones?
What are your policies on friending and granting access, if any?

Your Blog-reading Habits
How often do you check your friends feed?
About how much time do you spend reading blogs?
How active do you like a blog to be?
What kinds of blogs or topics do you most enjoy reading?
What are some of your favorite individual blogs on Dreamwidth?
What are some of your favorite communities on Dreamwidth?

Currently...
Listening to:
Reading:
Watching:
Playing games:
Wondering about:
Planning for:
Proud of:


Is there anything else you want to share?
 

Comments

[gs_silva]

About Me:
I'm a Gen Xer who's been around the world, in and out of subcultures, had a few adventures, watched a lot of TV and listened to FM radio, and had a lot of thoughts about the world we live in. I'm over the hill now, and my life is winding down.

I have an art degree in nothing useful, and I've spent my life hedging on what kind of art I wanted to make, until finally in the throes of COVID Lockdown I started a graphic novel.

It's called Alien Romance and it's inspired by all the 80's-era schlock where an attractive alien gets stranded on earth and has a romantic subplot with an attractive human while evading capture and/or trying to go home.

Except that mine is stripped of all the allegory and action-movie elements, and it's just about immigrants.

While I work on the graphic novel, I do an almost-daily webcomic with simple (sometimes unfinished) art which picked up where the book leaves off and will hypothetically cover the gap until Book 2. It's hosted on my Patreon, and mirrored here on Dreamwidth. Most of my public posts are Alien Romance, plus bits and thoughts about my real life tacked onto the bottom of many posts. More thoughtful posts about my life are access-only.

What it's like to read my blog:

Of course I want people to read my comic. It says more about me than I say about myself. I love it when my comics inspire personal anecdotes from my readers. Connecting with other humans is part of why we're all here.

I'm very nonjudgmental and can tolerate quite a lot of weirdness. I have deep-seated issues with authority, and that's related to the above. I'm also not on board with the trend of pathologizing everything.

Okay! Back to Alien Romance, my favorite topic of all.

I have characters who cover a wide array of interests:

Cathy, a Frenchwoman who probably has some behavioral/cognitive disabilities, but none of her American friends can tell because she barely speaks English, and now that she's married an American, she seems happy with her new life... though she doesn't seem to have any job skills...

Maurice, the American child of immigrant parents from Vietnam and Russia, a short guy with an outsized heart who was hoping to do great things in life, but instead finds himself unexpectedly married to a woman he can barely understand and a bunch of friends who rely on his support...

Ella, a mostly-asexual kinda-lesbian who just wants to be in charge, but maybe leapt into adulthood too soon. She loves Maurice because he's the first straight man who took 'no' for an answer and she loves Cathy for sticking with her - friendships with other girls are just too hard!

Jon, Ella's older brother, who became a paraplegic mere months before the story started, and now has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. It isn't like it is on TV - chronic pain and complex disabilities hold him back from just being a jolly guy on wheels. And he's the oldest in the group, so he's often coaching his more naïve friends on basic life skills, even when his own skills are slow to return.

Ren, Maurice's childhood friend and current roommate (and Cathy makes three). Ren is a very large, gangly, geeky pre-med student who looks like an athlete but he's not interested in sports. All he wants in life is to be needed. Mental illness haunts him like a ghost, and he knows that if anyone finds out, his dreams will all be smashed. Ren already watched Maurice fail at life, and then pick himself up and kind of try again. What will Ren do to prevent himself from failing too?

Christine, who we unfortunately just lost - not because she's gone, but she got into med school already and moved away. She returns for cameos and phone calls. She came from a strict. conservative Christian family and broke free to pursue a medical career. And she's in love with being in love! And with Ella, no less! It tears her up inside, but she's too busy with her coursework to work on herself.

And our newest character, Fumée the cat! Or Foomie, as Ren calls him. (Ren doesn't speak French.) Foomie is a barn cat who is now a one-eyed barn cat, hiding under the futon in the 4th-floor attic apartment Ren, Cathy, and Maurice all share.

Things about me that are not Alien Romance:

I moved back to the US from China about 3 years ago. Before China, I lived in Vietnam. Those places changed my heart forever, and sometimes I obsess over how much I miss them - especially Vietnam.

I have a little house with a little yard, which I share with my spouse, my kid, my mother with dementia, and one disastrous cat named Typhoon who we found on a street corner in Shanghai and she's ours forever now, for good or ill.

I'm ripping up the lawn and the landscaping, such as it is, to try to replace it with all natives, but I have no budget so it's slow going. I also have chronic illness, so it's even slower going.

I often have an oblique way of discussing the world at large and the happenings in it, and that can be difficult for people to follow, but don't worry about it. If it sounds like I'm talking in code, I learned to talk like that for self-defensive reasons, and the internet these days is not exactly a safe place. My rule of engagement is "be kind, because you'll surely find that if you attack too soon, you'll wish you'd been kind." I think I'm pretty good at following that rule myself, although it's 50% due to mental fatigue.


Additionally, I believe very strongly in reciprocity. If you read my creative works, I'll read yours. If you leave me comments, I'll leave them for you. If you relate to me, I'll find ways to relate to you. If you need a shoulder to cry on, I'll offer mine if I'm able, although I rarely ask for that myself. (I do blow off steam, though. I believe in complaining as a way to lessen my woes.)



Okay! Thus ends my attempt to participate in 3 Weeks of Dreamwidth. Nice to meet you!