An Integrated Person

I've decided to do my best to present myself here as an integrated person. Normally that isn't terribly difficult--I have noticed that most of us tend to show ourselves in our completeness more frequently online than we do in facetime, but I, in my impetuousness, have pimped this blog out to people I know in facetime and not at all online... in short, my family. Which if it isn't awkward already is going to get awkward eventually. (Given my extensive training in avoiding anxiety by getting things over with, it's probably going to happen very soon.) This also isn't a terribly big deal, but given as I live with my parents it's more than a little psychologically jarring to talk about fandom and porn and the brain as a sexual organ because these are my parents, nevermind that I'm twenty-seven. You there, you in your thirties—do you have sexual conversations with your parents?

It's especially ironic given how I occasionally have “remember who you are talking to” moments with my youngest uncle, when one or both of us forget that I am his niece and he is my uncle and we really need to stop sharing, now.

It is also ironic because my mother has walked in on me masturbating. I just thought I'd throw that out there and get everybody nice and uncomfortable, and maybe one day I can say that in public (or type it online) without mentally burying my head in the sand.

So.

Hello, my name is Stephanie. I enjoy long walks on the beach, a good story, other people's awkward conversation, aquariums, and learning from the mistakes of others. I suspend my disbelief (and my perception of canon and established characterization) from a construction crane in the face of good writing and I love me some trashy romance novels, in every possible permutation of gender pairing including a few that are not biologically common. Translation: PORN: I LIKE IT. Typically without pictures, and even with pictures I like what can be arguably defined as “erotica” and colloquially known as “smut.” I read a lot of fanfiction, as I generally do not like to pay for my porn or expend a great deal of effort on finding it.

Let me tell you, fanfiction is nothing but brains wanking onto a page (or computer screen, as it were) and brains wanking is gratification, and gratification is, in essence, porn. By the time you've written Abraham Lincoln into a tutu (or anything else fandom gets up to) you've gone so far into the realm of shameless gratification it no longer matters if there's sex in it or not. And let's not forget that “legitimate” trashy romance novels get pretty damn ridiculous. There is an actual romance right now actually on Amazon, where the heroes turn into dinosaurs, as well as an actual paranormal romance actually stolen from my actual mother's closet involving psychic levitation as a rationale for what would have been, had she been conventionally tied up and hoisted, hardcore (and much less silly) bondage. I remember reading it and being supremely puzzled that this was acceptable material and paddles and safewords were not. (Needless to say, the enthusiastically-powerless heroine in her pyschic, I kid you not, rotisserie-finger-fucking did not have a safeword, and in a different (equally twinky) scene was gagged.) These conventional (calling some of them “original” appears to be stretching it a bit) romances are porn too, which then begs the question of whether or not paying for such things shoves it over into mental prostitution. Would your editor be your pimp, on the basis that the editor is given the thankless task of whipping your writing into shape and you into something vaguely approaching your deadline; or would the marketing department of the publishing company be the pimp, on the basis that they do the “pimping out,” so to speak?

And so I will, when the mood strikes me, discuss my reading, my sexuality, my art, my work (somewhat), my gardening, my aquarium, my pets, my family, my friends, my travels, and my schooling as well as my cooking. Discussing my love life will be a bit more difficult, but discussing my not having one will be really, really easy. ^--^

And if any of my coworkers or superiors should happen to read this, so be it. That said, I'd still prefer not to discuss it around the water cooler. Family, the same goes for you and dinner tables; bringing it up while trapped in a moving car is even worse. At least at the dinner table I can get my grandmother going as a distraction and am armed with flatware.