escritoireazul | Entries tagged with me: about

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Yes, I am still answering questions from and taking questions at that Ask Me Anything from December 2018.

First, an update. Back in August, I wrote about my love for whatever vehicle I'm currently driving because the open road means freedom and adventure and etc. At the time, I mentioned the car I've loved most out of all my non-bike vehicles, the Charger. The Charger is now gone, replaced with the Charger. Silver Charger was more than 10 years old at this point and starting to need some work, and I made the terrible decision to test drive a much newer one and, well, now I have a black Charger. That I love even more than the silver one. I'm ridiculous.

karanguni asked: Favourite ritual that you do for yourself!

Whenever I get home from work, no matter what time it is (and that time is almost always a lot earlier now than when I worked at Wolfram & Hart, thank god), I do the following: stand in the entranceway petting the dog who is leaping for joy. Leave my rings in the ring dish and my keys in the key cup that I have by the door. Leave shoes and other outerwear in the corner of the entranceway (where our coat rack has been joined by several additional hooks due to my many many many many coats and scarves, along with a scarf organizer because many scarves, and dog's leashes and harness). Let dog into the backyard while I take down the gate that keeps her out of the kitchen and living room. Get fresh ice water. Take dog and ice water back to the bedroom where I will change out of my work clothes and then cuddle with the dog on the bed for a good ten to twenty minutes. Sometimes I read while I pet her. Sometimes I finish the podcast episode I listened to on the way home. Sometimes I just bask in dark and silence. It's a wonderful time.

The other daily ritual is my writing. I sit down and write every day, almost always between 8 and 10 p.m. Music, movie, ASMR videos of typing and no talking, nothing at all, that can change, but I always have my laptop, ice water, and the dog asleep somewhere between the other end of the couch and pressed right up against my thigh.

A third favorite ritual (I don't follow instructions well, clearly) is the Friday night drive home from work. I don't do it as often in the winter, because it's always dark when I leave and the right time of day for a lot of deer activity, but during the rest of the year, I almost always take the backroads home from work, twisty narrow two-lane roads that have sharp curves and lots of shadows and fields for miles and miles. Usually this involves the windows down and the music up. Hard, angry, loud music. I love it.

As always, still taking questions, too: Ask Me Anything.

marginaliana asked: What's your favorite physical, non-living object? So, no pets or people, but it could be anything else out there in the world.

Damn, pulling no punches here. I'm struggling with this one. Saying, for example, books feels like cheating not only because that is clearly more than one physical object but also because, in their own way, they're kind of alive. They're full of characters and worlds and one of the big reasons I read is to fall into that for awhile. Physical copies of movies, video games, tv shows -- the same. Similarly, it feels like cheating to say the ocean, mostly because it really feels like a living thing. Not just the lifeforms within it (GIANT OCTOPUS, COME BE MY FRIEND), but the ocean itself, the movement and the danger and the beauty.

Other things fall the same way: My studio? Not just one thing but the combination of everything it in, including the art I've created, which lives in its own way, and the instruments and recording devices are all tied to the nontangible things I make with them, that's what makes them important. My octopus collection or my Stitch collection or my carefully curated collection of Funko Pops? I can't choose just one. Sex toys come and sex toys go. Same with clothes.

But then I realized duh, my favorite physical, non-living object is always the vehicle I'm currently driving. Everything else is wonderful, I love the majority of things I own, but my vehicle is the thing I would miss most if I had to give it up.

I love to drive. I love it. I grew up on the road with my dad each summer when he was a long-haul truck driver. We lived out on a farm up until I was around 10, and so we drove any time we needed to go to a bookstore or a church or the optometrist or to visit family, etc. I got my license the second I could, I'd rather road trip than travel any other way. The thing I do to calm down from heartbreak or rage or fear, the thing I do to work out plot points and come up with new stories and figure out wording, the thing I do to layout a strong argument for work projects, the thing I do to explore and talk to people and spend time with myself and hang out with the dog and and and and: I drive hard, windows down and music up.

I love to drive into sunrise and into sunset even as the light burns my eyes. I love crosscountry in the darkness, just me and truckers on the highway, the stars bright overhead between towns. I love driving down state highways with cornfields green and golden and terrifying on either side. I love driving down narrow gravel roads made even tighter by the tree branches stretched out overhead, the bushes scraping the sides of the car.

I love to ride my motorcycle on the curviest roads, leaning into it. I love hot days when riding through tree shadows is noticeably cooler for that glorious moment. I love wind against my cheeks and drying my lips, the heat of the pipes nearly too much against my legs, the weight of the bike beneath me. I love riding in a pack, all those engines loud. I love riding alone, making my own way through the world.

It is freedom and emotional regulation and hope and more.

So that's it: My favorite physical, non-living object is whatever vehicle I drive. Currently, that's a Dodge Charger. (My beloved bike needs serious work, so it's not on the road this summer.) I've loved every vehicle I've ever owned even though some were better than others, and enjoyed pretty much every borrowed or rental car I've ever used, but I love the Charger most of all.

Ask Me Anything post here.

slashmarks asked: How do you find and choose the books you read?

So many ways. Earlier this year, I finally started a spreadsheet that tracks what book was recommended, where it was recommended, who recommended it, and what they said about it. Outside of that, I have GoodReads books marked want to read, multiple wishlists on bookstore sites, scraps of paper shoved into planners, notebooks with lists, note files on my phone, private posts on Livejournal and Dreamwidth with lists, and so many other ways. The spreadsheet is helping me keep them in one place, sort of.

(I do this with other media, too.)

These books mostly come from:

+ friends telling me directly to read something
+ people on my reading lists posting about what they're reading and me being interested
+ books appearing on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books sales lists
+ seeing a book on social media somewhere (including anon memes)
+ themed reading lists
+ books people read in school that I never read
+ YouTube
+ wandering a bookstore or library (including online)
+ freebies

I also have certain books that come from other places: authors I love, my friends' books, books for projects (e.g., 80s and 90s nostalgic fiction), books given to me for review, things like that.

How do I choose what to read next? I wish I had a process! There's always so much to read and so little time.

(Things What I Read While Traveling Last Week: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, The Game You Played by Anni Taylor, Winter Study by Nevada Barr, Rolling in the Deep and Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, Dark Alchemy by Laura Bickle, and The Lost Sun by Tessa Gratton.)

Yes, I am still answering these, just very slowly. (Still taking questions, too! Ask Me Anything)

st_aurafina asked: I have often wondered where your username is from? Is there an escritoire involved?

More or less, actually! Lo these many years ago, my main desk with a glass and metal piece that I adored. (I don't have a desk now except at work. Instead, I have a giant table for art and I write on a tv stand.) The only problem with it was the lack of storage, so I kept finding old pieces with tiny little drawers and shelves and things and building them around the desk until it was a corner of modern glass and metal and old-fashioned everything else. It was great.

The glass had a bit of a blue tint and blue is my favorite color, but escritoireblue didn't sound right.

I miss writing at a blue desk. Someday, perhaps I will go back.

Anyway, I had slowly been splitting my fannish work off into its own space at the time and decided it needed a consistent username of its own. Since all the work I did for it was created at my desk and I am shit at naming things, including (especially) myself, this is what I ended up with. I wouldn't change it for the world at this point.

questionoftheday asks: Do you sleep in silence, or do you have to have background noise? Is there a reason for this? How about light? Does it have to be pitch black, or do you need at least a sliver of light to sleep?

My answer:

I have insomnia a lot of the time, but when I do sleep, I can sleep through noise or light. Normally I have a fan running, though not blowing on me most of the year, because I get cold easily, but that's more because I like the sound of the fan than anything. (And as I live now, J can't sleep without a fan, so it's a good thing noise like that doesn't bother me.)

When I'm in hotels on my own, I'll usually fall asleep with the t.v. on, because it's such a strange thing for me. (We don't have cable at home nor a t.v. in the bedroom.) I'll shut it off at some point, though.

I sleep best in a dark room that is cool enough I can sleep under a heavy comforter, but it can't be too cold, because if my feet are cold, I can't get to sleep, yet I hate wearing socks to bed (and in general). (I never wore socks to bed at all until I lived in Michigan and then, despite how warm I kept my apartment, sometimes I needed it. I still sometimes do so in winter, but it is a rare, rare thing.)

J likes to fall asleep to stand-up comedy. It doesn't keep me awake as a noise, but I do sometimes get caught up listening to it as an actual thing I want to stay awake for rather than background noise, so I have to be careful not to get caught up in it. (Much like getting caught up in a story I'm reading.)

Unrelated, I haven't talked about Yuletide as much as I normally do, mostly because I have been fighting a depression crash over the past few months and have been left feeling flat. I got my story done, I wrote one treat, and I'm trying to finish another. Compared to the years when I wrote 10 stories, this could be disheartening, but (a) I've been writing longer stories for my assignments the past few years and (b) I was frantically trying to finish the first draft of a novel before the end of the year (which I did), and that took far more of December than I expected, time which normally would have spent on Yuletide.

I love the assignment I wrote, though, and I think the recipient will enjoy it.

Saw this and couldn't resist answering.

questionoftheday: What was the dumbest, most embarrassing injury you ever obtained?

I'm not actually embarrassed by it, but it does make for a funny story. I did marching band in high school and undergrad, specifically color guard for most of those years. One time in high school I was showing off some big tosses in my yard, lost the rifle in the sun, and stepped backward to safety -- except I had apparently also angled the toss back and promptly took a rifle butt between the eyes.

It's the only time I had to have stitches (that I remember; I had surgeries when I was still an infant), and I still have a faint scar from it between my eyes. (By far the least noticeable of my facial scars, but I'll talk about the others another time.) And I get a lot of mileage from the story.

I still have the rifle, too. The blood-stained tape is long gone.

Questions taken over here, comments screened.

alesse_irena asked: What's a fic you wish existed but you've never seen?

So many. So, so many. But currently, I have a desperate craving for a long, plotty, tropey Criminal Minds case fic with a snarky, slow-burn Garcia/Alvez and all the chosen family feelings I have for the team showing up everywhere. Some of my favorite tropes include trapped in a cabin (or other places, basically forced proximity), fake dating/undercover dating, friends to lovers, snark = flirting, and, god, I just love tropes. Requirements: no villanizing Morgan or Lisa (oh my god, I see so, so much of this when I go looking for fic, including Morgan having used Garcia the whole time and their friendship not being real, which NOPE hard disagree), no Garcia freaking out over her weight or beauty or size or whatever, snark that is fun but not cruel, and an ensemble cast because I love the current team dynamics so much.

What? I'm not asking for a lot. Really, that looks totally simple, right? RIGHT?

(I have considered writing one myself, but (a) I'm not great at the snarky, flirtatious dialog it needs, and (b) I probably couldn't do it justice in less than 50k, and that many words really needs to go to some of the other projects I already have underway. Plus (c) writing it is not the same as reading it.)

If you have any recommendations, I'll take them!

Realized last night that there is a part of my Yuletide canon that I didn't know about and now I have to consume it before I finish my assignment. Still have time, but this is cutting it a little close for me to discovering things in a canon I thought I knew well!

rachelmanija asked: What's your very favorite book that contains werewolves?

ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS.

I think Stephen King's novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, is probably my favorite werewolf book, if I had to choose just one. It has a lot of things I love about werewolf stories: interesting lore (particularly around how the werewolf became a werewolf), monthly full moons around holidays as the base of the scenes (even though the holidays and full moons wouldn't really align like that, I love it enough that bending it to fit is perfect, and King flat out admits he did it), people unsuccessfully hunting monsters (the movie adaptation, Silver Bullet, has a great scene about this part), and a werewolf that is both somewhat sympathetic and still monstrous.

Couple of short stories that I love which are available free online:

The Moon and Other Beasts I Keep With Me by Danny Lore

The author said this on their site: It asks the same question that we ask ourselves as QPOC on a daily basis–when we are so othered that no one will believe that our experiences are authentic, where does that leave us?

This story is so damn good.

The Nasty at Bellua by Danny Lore (and NightLight: THe Black Horror Podcast did an amazing performance of this The Nasty at Bellua)

WEREWOLVES! IN! SPACE! It's creepy and dark and wonderful.

The Cage by A.M. Dellamonica

Identical twins, murdered sisters, interesting werewolf worldbuilding, terrible werewolf hunters, delightful queer romance, HUGE SECRETS -- it's great.

Last year, I read the Debra Doyle and James Macdonald werewolf series, Bad Blood, for the first time, and I fell in love with it. It's about Val Sherwood, a teen girl who becomes a werewolf accidentally and who has amazing adventures and fights for her friends and struggles to stay alive as people she loves are dying. By the third book, the worldbuilding gets weird, but I still love it.

A sampling of other books/series from my werewolf collection: Werewolf Marines by Lia Silver (heh), Goosebumps werewolf books (possibly all of them), Howl by Katy Lipscomb (a coloring and art book), the Raised By Wolves series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Bitten by Moonlight by Catherine Lundoff, Granite Lake Wolves series by Vivian Arend, Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn, Leather, Denim & Silver: Legends of the Monster Hunter, and Wolfen by William Strieber (deeply creepy book; less creepy but still fun movie).

I'm loving this when I see other people do it, so here goes: ask me a question, I'll give you an answer. I can't think of anything too personal off the top of my head, but I'll lock some answers, like I do with most personal topics.

Comments screened. Let me know if you don't want your name associated with the question when I respond. I'm pretty sure anonymous commenting is on, but I will double-check that after I post this.

People moving (sometimes back) to Dreamwidth and

snickfic's friending meme made me think it's time for a public About Me post.

First, I have a post linking to a bunch of master lists and locked about me posts.

Second, here's a short About Me post. Longer ones are locked, but I give access to pretty much everyone who requests it. (Oh, this is a good time for a quick note about how I use Dreamwidth: I follow people who seem interesting, pop in and out sporadically, and am most active here around Trick or Treat and Yuletide. Access policy already described. I also have a blanket permission policy for fanworks: Please feel free to translate, record podfic, make art for, create works inspired by, or otherwise transform any of my fic. I'd love a link to your piece, just so I can take a look, if possible. You can reach me via email at escritoireazul@gmail.com.)

I'm broadly fannish, have written fic in 72 fandoms (see my profile for a list and how I break down some fandoms), and participate each year in Trick or Treat and Yuletide. (I'm considering adding Chocolate Box to that as well.) I also talk (under lock) about a recapping project I do under a pseud.

I'm a light-skinned biracial woman in my 30s, queer, bipolar, and very liberal. I live in an extremely conservative part of an already red state, so that's fun. I live with my partner, J, and my dog, who has a number of ridiculous nicknames around here. I tend to lock details about my personal life, and I sort of vaguely keep this account separate from my professional account, so I appreciate you not linking them (or the recapping pseud) if you know about them all.

I'm involved in a couple podcast projects, one as the pseud one in a professional capacity, so when I link to them, that'll be locked, too. Sometimes I attend conventions. Sometimes I travel. I'm very close to most of my family and have a tight group of friends from fandom, grad school, and my family. I write and make art.

Questions? Ask away.

Sometimes I'm around to see something and want to talk about it. Today is that day.

questionoftheday: What is your aesthetic?

Apparently, it is red. Awhile back, I moved into a new office and started putting out various things. A couple weeks in, one of my coworkers came in with some questions and made an off-hand comment about how much I must love the color red.

Me: I ... actually don't like the color red.

But I was wearing a red shirt, and there are red decorations on one of my shelves (little carved owls from a project I did last year with a designer), and the box with my business cards is floral and bright red (pretty enough that I leave it out instead of in a drawer), and a bunch of the reference books I have are red (they were all gifts) and ...

I don't like red. I don't hate it, but I've never much liked it. It's an angry color, and I'm angry enough on my own. My favorite color is blue, particularly teals and midnight blues, and when I wear them, I am more settled and in control.

I am angry all the time, and apparently, over the past five years, have been filling my wardrobe with red to reflect that. I am angry, and I am smart, and I am sharp, and at work, I do not need to be softer or gentler or kinder or settled. I can rage and still be in control.

My mom's favorite color was red. She was gentle (and sometimes painfully meek, though she'd brought herself out of that for the most part by the time I was growing up) and kind and good. I think, though, that a part of her was also always angry. The part she used to teach me that I could do anything and be anything, that I could be big and loud and angry and smart, that I could intimidate people just by existing and that was okay. Mom struggled a lot with how to deal with a bunch of queer kids, and non-Christian kids, and liberal kids, but she loved us and pushed us and supported us.

Mom's birthday would have been this Saturday and the anniversary of her death next Friday. I'll wear red.

Aesthetic in summary: jeans, casual dresses (eshakti all the way), reds and oranges for work, blues and blacks at home, leggings and knock-off Chucks under dresses and cotton and jean skirts, wrestling t-shirts and old, torn up jeans for studio time (at home or at the pottery studio), bright red lips and usually no other make-up, wildly curly hair.