Ask me anything meme

[lokifan]

To quote likeadeuce: "while I kind of disagree w/ the premise that this is a PROBLEM, or that journaling sites provide an inadequate opportunity to talk about ourselves, I'm posting anyway."

I wasn't planning to do this one, but I've had fun answering other people's, and also my dad's back for four days and I need some distraction from all the questions about my life plans.

The problem with LJ/DW: We all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

As ever, anon commenting is on and IP logging is off.

Comments

[damerell]

I dunno, I guess I know about as much about you as two relatively distant acquaintances could be expected to.

[lokifan]

:) But that is NOT ENOUGH, you see?

Or something.

I'll ask you a question: what is your icon??

[damerell]

Most of my icons (including that one) are scenes from the classic roguelike game NetHack, which (insert Wikipedia pages here, but the relevant thing is they're top-down games, traditionally of dungeon exploration, that use ASCII graphics to display the map) - they're not depicting real gameplay, but as a sort of self-restriction I generate them all using the in-game cheats not just by editing text. I think of it as if it was film; not a documentary, not just CGI, but shot on location.

That particular one I use a lot, for "brains", and it shows the player (an @) surrounded by a horde of zombies (the Zs, who don't actually eat brains in the game but everyone knows zombies eat brains) and a mind flayer (the h, a beastie that loves to eat brains).

[damerell]

But I guess I'll bite. Top or bottom, or somewhere inbetween?

[lokifan]

Reply fail!

Er. I'm not at all up on the specific definitions (cos I know there's all this conversation about being a top/bottom vs being a dom(me)/sub etc) but bottom. :) Definitely. I love bottoming. I like vulnerability and being taken and subbing and getting fucked. Whereas precisely one human has made me think topping would be hot in a more than once-in-a-blue-moon way.

[damerell]

Excessively frank question fail! I blame BEER on my part. Also, I think I have a half theory about how the slash that people write varies with their position on that axis.

As I understand it, top/bottom is _mostly_ about who is doing or being done unto, but dom/sub is _mostly_ about who you are. If A just gives B a paddling without any particular establishing context, A isn't being a dom. But also people seem to use them pretty interchangeably, so who knows?

FRANK QUESTIONS LEAD TO TMI

[lokifan]

LOL, no worries. (And, interested to hear your theory! I don't think there's much correlation in POV-choice but I think you can see stuff in *how* kinky slash is written. Like, when I or some of my sub friends write from domm/me POVs and they go ON AND ON AND ON about how pretty and sexy and brave and perfect the sub is :) And obvs are totes awesome in-control dom/mes even in their own heads, lol.

V good explanation, btw! And that's how I'd understood it, but I'm so not-up on kink terms that I wasn't sure (especially since slash pople often use them intercheangeably, but slash /= kink despite all the overlap).

I think on balance I'm only slightly more bottom than top. I do like to do as well as be done unto, with bonus points for being told what to do :)

Re: FRANK QUESTIONS LEAD TO TMI

[damerell]

I'm not sure it's fully formed yet, but basically it has to do with how people get the opposite POV slightly wrong, yes (in particular the "awesome in-control" thing when in fact one is generally thinking "help, does she like this, should I go back to the paddle, what do I do next?"). However, I don't read any of your HP slash which is, er, about 90% of what you write, so I haven't actually got that much data yet. :-)

Telling someone what to do is a tricky dynamic, I think...

Re: FRANK QUESTIONS LEAD TO TMI

[lokifan]

To be fair, though, I think that's largely to do with it being porn. Like, sometimes people go for realism, but that's usually in comedy as opposed to stuff that's straight-up aimed at titillation. I mean, my sub!POV stuff doesn't have the specific kinds of uncertainty I would have, at least not usually, for the same reason everyone can deepthroat in smut unless it's virgin!fic.

In one fic, I had dom!Ron try to whip Draco once then give up on it cos he couldn't control it, but that was a characterisation moment - and afterwards he was right back to a particular kind of messed-up domliness.

Re: FRANK QUESTIONS LEAD TO TMI

[damerell]

I don't think it's quite that. It's not realism I'm objecting to the lack of, I don't actually want to read that internal monologue, but even in porn there's a big difference between "this is what I would be thinking if I was an implausibly self-assured top" and "this is what a sub thinks I would be thinking if I was an implausibly self-assured top".