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qwgramblings · 8 years

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The Age of Mindfulness

Today I found a half-size water bottle. I bought it because my full-size water bottles (one green, one purple) are too heavy for me to carry in my satchel, because it was only a dollar fifty, and because it was green and purple. This bottle also just happened to have the coolest spin-up twist top, at which point I stood in front of the heater for a few moments just twisting the top open and…

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#ACT #adulthood #anxiety #autism spectrum #chronic pain #depression #disability #family #mental illness #non-fiction #psychology: a user&039;s guide #soul development #stim toys #stimming

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Know Me for a Little: The Heroic Protagonist

I’ve been trying to articulate, for a friend, the problem I’m finding in the depiction of a protagonist who does not appear, some sixty thousand words in, to be on the path of personal change. This is a vague accusation to be levelling. I’d be heartbroken, though, if someone told me that, after sixty thousand words, my characters still read as the same people they were at the beginning of the…

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#anxiety #autism spectrum #character #creativity #disability #mental illness #narrative oppression #non-fiction #writing #writing on writing

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Not Only the Label

Before I came back to writing and posting it here (for me a profoundly terrifying thing) I was considering whether or not I should just build a new website from scratch. I’ve got a lot more .org experience now, thanks to my work on the Twilight School website, and I would definitely have fun building my own self-hosted blog where the CMS allows me more control over certain elements and I’m not…

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#anxiety #autism spectrum #chronic pain #creativity #depression #disability #gender #genderlessness #genderqueer #intersectionality #mental illness #narrative oppression #non-binary #non-fiction #organisation: twilight school #pansexuality #queer #writing on writing

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Experience Atypical: Sound

I dread customers who inquire about our Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I’d sooner deal with ignorant customers who look at my body and decide that I don’t know anything because girls don’t game. I’d sooner tell the teenage boys on the computers to stop using “gay” as a slur for the five millionth time. I’d sooner scrub the toilet, wipe down the keyboards and sweep the floor, even after the day a…

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#autism spectrum #communication #disability #game shop how-to #gaming #geek philosophy as it were #magic the gathering #non-fiction #sensory processing #work

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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All The Puzzle Pieces, Please

I have a roller bag/trolley. It’s a battered railway-issue bag I’ve had for a little over a year, and it goes almost everywhere I go. People comment on it as though it’s funny: they can’t imagine why I need to take it everywhere. I consider it an accessibility aid for anything that involves leaving the house. I have things I need to take everywhere with me. My wrist and thumb splints, because my…

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#anxiety #autism spectrum #chronic pain #depression #disability #gender #genderlessness #genderqueer #intersectionality #mental illness #non-binary #non-fiction #queer

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Silence in Mimicry

The knock sounds just as Klirran places her brush and comb on the bed, careful not to touch the rough outer blanket, in a line beside her soap, washcloth and toothbrush. She scowls, glances at the washstand—the soda is right there and it’ll take an instant to grab it and finish the line—but the second knock is louder, followed immediately by a third. Impatience. Not Inmera, since the Cloisters…

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#autism spectrum #autistic characters #creativity #fiction #freedom in self-expression #homophobia #language #narrative oppression #non-fiction #queer #soul development #writing #writing on writing

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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A Dialogue in Good Faith

I haven’t said it here, yet – there are a great many things I’m yet to speak about here on the matter of finding my way back to myself – but I started freelance work this year designing event flyers and administrating the Twilight School website. The Twilight School, run by Bruno Lettieri (of Rotunda fame, one of the most amazing and generous people that ever lived) is the community outreach…

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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The Agency of Hardwiring

A friend sent me this article on the correlation between transgender identities and autism spectrum disorders. (Please read on before clicking.) I don’t ever want to say that being trans is an autistic thing – although it happens that all the trans people I know are also autistic, which is a bias most likely explained by the habit of like-minded people flocking together – but when I look at the…

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#anxiety #autism spectrum #chronic pain #depression #empathy #gender #genderlessness #genderqueer #mental illness #non-binary #non-fiction #queer #soul development

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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A Philosophy of Natural Movement, Part 1

This is a long multi-part essay on the experience of being autistic, the process of gaining the label, and the nightmare (especially the last two years, especially especially the last nine months) it’s been being an undiagnosed autistic person being treated for depression, anxiety and chronic pain in the Australian healthcare system. So, of course, I’m going to start with my ongoing love affair…

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#anxiety #autism spectrum #chronic pain #depression #family #love #mental illness #neurotypical #non-fiction #soul development

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Life lesson #128: snark doesn’t pay

Me in the car to the relatives: “The copy-writing part of this job is basically taking on-theme articles the client likes and rewriting them, but it's all the super obvious stuff everybody already knows.”

Me after a pause: “Oh my god, it's the literary version of A Current Affair.”

On the one hand, I'm working on a series of stories where the main character snarks on ACA every chance ney gets to the extent where everyone else snarks on nem for snarking.

On the other hand ... money. Can't eat without it. Can't pay for my Office subscription and domain registration without it. Can't play Magic without it.

(Yes, those are my priorities. Especially when Wizards announces Eternal Masters. Not that I have any intention of drafting it, because I can’t justify buying the boosters, but all the singles I’m hoping they’ll reprint, singles that I want to get my hands on for Commander? Yes, please.)

I have a lot more respect for those journalists, now. That might have to be something my character too will learn once ney's faced with ... well, the real world. Mostly because it’ll be hilarious to have nir go through that same moment of glorious realisation.

Forgive me, though, but I'm never going to stop despising Tracey Grimshaw.

In positive news, somebody is finally paying me to write, and something about people paying me to do stuff makes it easier for me to do the things I’m not being paid to do. Possibly a thing called self-esteem?

(Julia, if you ever read this, you are allowed to laugh at me.)

#work #life lessons #writing on writing #MtG #even when I'm not writing about MtG I'm writing about MtG #the writing life

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qwgramblings · 8 years

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Shadows, oh yes

Dear Wizards of the Coast,

You are officially forgiven for the fact that you returned us to Zendikar with no sight or sound of my beloved Token-Producing-Artifact-Bad-Arse-Ancient-Kor-Lady-Who-Is-Totally-THE-Stoneforge-Mystic Planeswalker Nahiri and the peculiar absence of my appreciated good-and-evil-and-terribly-pragmatic-all-at-once vampire-vampire Planeswalker Sorin Markov.

(Nahiri is like the Kor Elspeth. Of course I love her. Especially since she’s, y’know, alive. Hopefully. Although if Daxos gets to be one of the Returned ... well, I can hope, right? Without pointing out the fact that a not-all-that-interesting dude Legendary gets to be Returned while our lady of amazing, already one of a minority of female Planeswalkers, kicks her heels in Erebos’s clutches?)

Although there is a SERIOUS expectation that Shadows over Innistrad gives me another awesome Sorin. (I win, albeit casual, games with Seige Rhinos and Anafenzas and Managorger Hydras and the two Den Protectors I can afford. Sorin, Solemn Visitor just makes it more fun to be me. Sorin and Liliana, Defiant Necromancer - and I wouldn’t have two of her, let alone any, save for the fact I pulled both - just make it really fun.) I mean, it’s supposed to answer the question of where the fuck Sorin and Nahiri (or at least one of them) got to, right? Right? It’s not going to be mostly about Liliana and Garruk and the Chain Veil? It’s not going to have Jace rock up, be smug and annoying and mind-rapey, and help Lili and/or do something about Garruk? (Because Lili does not need a man to save her.) And what’s with the blood-dipped feather in the teaser trailer? Is something attacking angels? Is it thematically related to the Duel Deck? WHAT?

(Because if a dude needs to do something about anything that’s going on, as opposed to any number of capable lady Planeswalkers, well, at least Sorin is an interesting morally-ambiguous arsehole. Not to mention the fact that Innistrad is his baby plane. Jace just makes me hope for his immediate death via pissed-off dragon Planeswalker.)

Okay, you’re not forgiven until I know we don’t get stuck with more Jace. Because he’s bad enough being an arrogant snot in Zendikar. I just want to see Ugin disembowel him, seriously.

Love,

A feminist queer genderless crazy geek who likes vampires and despises Jace and whose current profession involves wholeheartedly convincing people to give their time and money to your enterprise.

P.S. More queer characters, please. Queer lady Legendaries. What if Odric has a trans boy/man apprentice or something? Please? Please?

Seriously, I’ve been upset ever since I got into Magic that I wasn’t playing during Innistrad block, because the flavour is just ... damn. Delicious. Amazing. Everything I ever wanted in a fantasy narrative. Gothic vampires and werewolves that smack of the gloriousness of Stoker et al without the Twilight! So this makes me so fucking happy I’m going to go into work on Friday and shriek at people. I just have to wait until April!

(And Chris is probably going to be deafened on Thursday. Sorry, Chris. It’s Innistrad.)

And as much as I wanted the Freyalise Commander deck I bought for myself at PAX (so fucking awesome! PAX WAS SO FUCKING AWESOME and I only saw about five percent of it on account of working there, but just getting photos with Chris at the Magic photo booth and buying dice at Q Workshop was fun) for people to give to me at Christmas in order to use it as a base for a green/black elf tribal Glissa the Traitor deck (because there’s some B and B/G ORI cards I want to use, not to mention Rhys the Exiled and other enemy-colour elf cards) I’m rather regretting it after seeing the tiny spoilers of the white/black and black/green C15 decks. Even though I’ve been dying to go elf tribal. I might have to save up. It’s not as though I’m not preferring Commander these days (and trying to convince my friends to go Commander with me) so...

(People have been telling me to buy my own presents this year. So I pre-ordered the BFZ Fat Pack back when it was still available for five seconds before selling out, and now I’m getting Freyalise. This should be fun. Although there’s something wrong with their production and distribution when the Wizards staff at PAX tell me I’m lucky for getting my hands on the Fat Pack. And they need to stop promoting the non-full-art Zendikar lands in the Gift Box as rare...)

So if there’s anyone local who wants to go to PAX with me next year, let me know. (Julia? Come on, you know you want to.) I want to spend a day just going around and playing all the indie demo board/card games. And buying more dice. Q Workshop had gorgeous oversized spindown D20s for $5 and I so should’ve bought more than one...

#MtG #except I am writing about MtG #wizards of the coast #pax australia #shadows over innistrad #q workshop #i am a man-hating feminist queer #welcome to the vorthos life #geek who doesn't get people who aren't in it for the flavour

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qwgramblings · 9 years

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Wanted: an audience

Before I begin, a tangent. Last time I got wordy, you may remember, I wrote about geek feminism. Or feminist geekism. Either way. Three weeks after writing that post, I went to the Sunday pre-release event for Battle for Zendikar (the latest Magic the Gathering release). As I was early, as the shop was quiet, and as I’d almost finished my current creation on the way up, I got out my…

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qwgramblings · 9 years

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YES.

This will be the shortest post I ever write: We have a new Prime Minister. No more Tony Abbott. No more fucking homophobic, misogynistic Tony Abbott! Now, Malcolm Turnbull, walk your talk with regards marriage equality (because you have been recorded as making sensible, rational comments on the subject) and I might even stop despising everything the Liberals stand for. No, I’m never going to…

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#Australia #i am a man-hating feminist queer #politics #queer

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qwgramblings · 9 years

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Your geeky, my geeky, girl geeky

This is long. Also, as of time of posting, Wizards’ website is down for maintenance, so links may or may not work. You may or may not know that I have two major fandoms. (I like a great many books and most things that are European melodic metal, but they’re not fandoms for me; most of the time I don’t discover that Eluveitie or Dark Tranquillity released their new album until six months after the…

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#anxiety #dolls #geek lady things #geek philosophy as it were #gender #genderlessness #i am a man-hating feminist queer #magic the gathering #monster high #narrative oppression #non-fiction #queer #queer ladies #welcome to the vorthos life #writing

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qwgramblings · 9 years

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Attention: Melbournians

For any Melbournian (Australia) public transport users (a la yours truly), I'm asking you to please be patient for the upcoming stop work/industrial action (Friday August 21). Yes, it's really inconvenient (and as I start work at 2 PM, you bet I'm inconvenienced) but this is the culmination of months and months of Metro screwing around its workforce, and that isn't making it into the media coverage. It's not about pay rises (which is all the mainstream media mentions); it's about the appropriate training and treatment of drivers, the provision of appropriate work conditions and a non-hostile workplace, and the union has been left no other choice (after months and months of Metro delaying negotiations).

(I'd say more but I need to be careful with details.)

Given Metro's treatment of customers - shortening scheduled services on the fly, skipping stations, delays, cancellations, lack of information, manipulating line start/end locations so that trains appear to be running to timetable - I think its really important that we stand behind the union, whose members aren't the ones who make the decisions about shoddy service, and who are taking action in order to protest most of the things that piss us off as customers and impact our safety as passengers. Don’t we want our drivers, who are responsible for our arriving safely, as well trained as possible?

So please, please, don't hate on the drivers and the station staff. Don't hate on the union that's trying to protect them. Acknowledge that this situation is shit, because it is, but it’s a whole lot more than pay rises that’s driving the union to take such desperate action.

Hate on Metro who pushed the union to action that's going to earn them the hatred of customers and the Victorian government.

And hate on our incredibly biased media who isn't telling the whole story.

(I wish I could give more details, truly, but I can't even say why I can't without running into potential problems.)

#australian things

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qwgramblings · 9 years

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Today I...

(TW: references to suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety)

I’m going to try and do the whole psychological self-improvement thing by keeping record of all the good/hard/scary accomplishment things I do. I know half those things are ridiculous to anyone who’s not trying to recover from severe anxiety, but I also know that they’re very real and big to those who are, and I’ve gained the most from the people I know who are honest and real about themselves, so I want to get back to being that person. Cool?

I’m still struggling with looking at comments/commenting. Quite frankly, it’s amazing that I’ve been able to post this much at all given that I’m so damn terrified of it. I’m trying; please be patient with me.

So. Today I...

- Realised that I’m really, really, really tired of feeling so helpless and overwhelmed by everything. I have no control over my family life, my job situation, society, what other people say and do and the ongoing, utterly-depressing fact of being a genderless person in a binary, gendered world, and that’s disheartening, and there’s so little I can do about any of it right now ... but if I can write a blog post or two, that’s something I can do, and that’s everything right now. Even if writing scares me.

- Discovered that anger is surprisingly motivating. I’ve spent so long feeling sad that it’s a strange thing to feel angry.

- Had a major panic attack because I misspelled one fucking word when I was in that shouldn’t be-writing state of half-conscious from being sick but furious at the same time. (I have been so sick this week. It’s been awful. But I’ve also done more scary-to-me things this week. It’s been weird.)

- Survived that major panic attack by telling myself that am allowed to be fucking imperfect, damn it, and just because I can’t do a thing perfectly doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it, especially when it’s not fucking being done. Because half of what’s kept me alive this past six months is all the things I need that other people aren’t doing. The reason I didn’t go from planning suicide to attempting it was the realisation that there are still no books on my bookshelf about people like me, and when I felt so alone and sad the thing I wanted more in the world was to pick up a book with a hero like me and know that hero would be okay. That has to happen. Even if I’m flakey and anxious and panicky and have the barest minimum possible self-esteem a creative needs to create. Because who else is going to do it?

- Felt good, just for a moment, that people liked my weird-arse story. Because I really like writing weird-arse stories that fuck with tropes and expectations and have the equivalent of sad choose-your-own endings.

- Had another major panic attack just logging into Tumblr because I feel like I let people down /am an awful person if I’m not online responding to things/liking things/being sociable. Which makes it even harder to do something that triggers my anxiety anyway. The tiny logical part of my brain says that people don’t hate me (I mean, Julia pretty much proves it by her existence alone, because she is awesome and amazing and remembers my pronouns) but that part is more often drowned out by the anxious mess that is the rest of me.

- Survived the second attack and logged onto Tumblr.

- Told Mum that her oh, I don’t want to miss a few shows on TV comment after I told her we’re not watching Channel 9 any more was selfish (seriously, just get Dad to download them for you). You tell me that you’re offended and insulted by those Marriage Alliance ads? You tell me that you want to support me? Good. Then help me do something about it. It’s not like it’s even hard, is it? I’m the one who’s going to try and find the courage to write emails, of which you approved; I’m just asking you to not watch something.

(And then I rolled my eyes because exactly an hour I asked Mum to, y’know, support your queer spawn by not watching Channel 9 because they air offensive advertisements denigrating my right for equality, she’s watching Friends on Gem. Thanks, Mum.)

- Started crying while writing this, because this was really hard, too.

And now I’m going to go, relax, and figure out if I should put the two Liliana, Heretic Healers/Defiant Necromancers I got at pre-release in my new elf deck or my old Mardu (I finally went Mardu for Alesha) deck. I know they don’t work in my mid-range Abzan shell - not enough of my creatures dying to trigger her, if I’m playing right, and I can’t afford her +2 when I need all the cards I have. But I’m chump-blocking with elves all the time (bring out Elvish Mystics, tap for mana, play better elves, chump-block with the Mystic, flip Lili) and playing multiple cards per turn, so they could work - I’d have no cards in hand to lose. Of course, I was going for Nissa and ended up with two Lilis, so I probably need to build an actual deck around her as opposed to just hoping she’ll work in an elf shell. (I can’t afford a pair of Nissas right now. Sigh.) Or go back to what I really love at the moment - commander. Anyone play? I’m very casual, and right now my commanders are Anafenza the Foremost (+1/+1 counters on all the things) and Kemba, Kha Regent (a somewhat-improved white C14 deck that’s still mostly about angels and equipment and Nahiri). But I really want to make a deck that’s all about tokens and artifacts and equipment, and an angel tribal deck...

(Magic, in case it’s not obvious, is kind of my escape right now. And my job, but it gets me out of the shitty situation I’m in, if only for a while.)

#MtG #even when I'm not writing about MtG I'm writing about MtG #commander #standard #writing #writing on writing #self-kindness #TW: suicidal ideation #tw: depression #tw: anxiety #self-development #gender #queerness #queer activism #tw: mental illness #mental illness recovery

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