Current mood:	hopeful
Current music:	PJ Harvey
Entry tags:	fandom: battlestar galactica, journalling: dreamwidth-only, mood: oh fandom, personal

I keep trying to write a post about Battlestar Galactica, because I want to talk about it, and how it pains me tremendously but also I can't let it go. I'm trying to work how best to explain the former, and I'm still not sure why the latter is the case. All I can really tell you is that I'm clipping episodes for vidding and I keep crying at random screenshots of characters giving DRADIS readings and other such mundane moments. :/

ANYWAY. Let us move to happier subjects! Hi guys, I'm super excited that there are so many people coming over to Dreamwidth right now. I'm enjoying watching all of this unfold. And while I still don't know where I see myself based long-term, it was nice to have this place as a reassuring background presence when I read things like this. An anti-gay marriage ad has surfaced on the rota of LJ's ads -- Marta, one of the LiveJournal staffers, is to be very much commended for jumping in quickly and directly and sorting it out, but it highlights a basic problem that LJ don't have all that much control, apparently, over the content of their ads. It gives a certain extra bigotry-flavoured spice to checking your flist in the morning, you know?

Okay, that wasn't especially happy either. Take three! I thought maybe I would post some sort of introductory-type thing for anyone that's new around here.

five general points of information:

01. I've been such_heights online for over three years now. I started out in the Remus/Sirius corner of Harry Potter fandom, which was very good to me. I have many happy, nostalgic feelings from hanging over there, and I haven't really left the first true ship of my heart. (There's this one big story I've got left to write, one of these days.) I then moved into Doctor Who and Torchwood, and now I hang out in Merlin fandom quite a lot and also pick up bits of SGA and Leverage and whatever else floats on by.

02. Offline, I'm midway through a philosophy degree. I spend most of my time studying metaphysics and I dabble in things like the political philosophy of feminism and queer studies when I can. Mostly, I get to be a total dork and occasionally I write essays about time travel.

03. Following on: yes, I am gay and female. Thus, fannishly, I enjoy both slash and stories about women being awesome. When the two are combined, I am a very happy camper. The thing I've come to appreciate most about fandom is our collective ability to reclaim and rehabilitate ideas and stories and characters. I like it when fans don't let the writers get us down!

04. I really, really appreciate it when people call me out on my screw-ups and instances where I am a jerk. I'm trying not to let that happen in the first place, but my understanding of and education about other people's experiences is a continuous work in progress.

05. Finally, I'm fully in favour of owning your own reading, especially in fandom where it's all for your own enjoyment in any case. If my cross-posting to DW and LJ is going to bother you, for instance, take me off one list -- maybe both! It's perennial Subscribing/Unsubscribing Amnesty around these parts.

five random facts:

06. I spent my childhood moving around, and I attended primary schools in three countries, which gave me both a very weird personal pop culture whereby I missed things but also picked up stuff none of my peers knew about, and a permanent sense of dislocation. I spent my adolescence in a very pleasant home counties town in the UK, and I never want to do it again. Now I live in a city, and it's much better.

07. I haven't acted in two years, but I used to be a massive drama geek. And look, I don't want to say that my early socialisation experiences created my later identity or anything, but I spent a signification portion of my career at girls' schools in drag. It started when I had to be the man in my Scottish country dancing partnership in primary school and continued on through to me be assigned parts like Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Creon in Antigone -- I win at patriarchs! I really miss acting, but it makes me kind of sad that I'd probably have to play a woman now. The gender bending was fun.

08. These days, I host a radio show. I get to inflict my music tastes on the masses and ever improve my radio voice (I'm told it's very soothing). The combination of this factoid and the one above make me think that really I should get into doing some podfic at some point.

09. Stories are the things I like best in the world. I love the huge variety of formats they can be told in and the diversity of tales that they tell. If I don't feel like a piece of art tells me a story in some way, I find it almost impossible to engage with it. I write, I watch, I vid and I read because I want to hear other people's stories, and I want to tell my own in return.

10. I get really super emotional when I watch things, it's embarrassing. It doesn't even seem to matter if the media at hand is any good -- either I'm totally emotionally uninvested, or I'm crying like a child. There is no interim experience for me! It's really not so surprising that I ended up in fandom, really.

If you would like to introduce yourself here, please do!