So, with all the new invites going out, I suppose it's time to do this properly.

A year Two Ten years after open beta, this is still my general introduction! So I guess it's time to start keeping it up to date.admit I will never keep it up to date. Most of this is about 2009-me with whom I sometimes disagree! You've been warned.

Hi, all! I go by Melannen here on DW, and on most other places around the 'net. I'm also active on LibraryThing. I have an AO3 account at melannen that I keep more-or-less up to date, where I'm also usually a volunteer, a nearlymostly-empty DeviantArt account, a livejournal (melannen) that's been mostly derelict since Strikethrough, and a tumblr (melannen) that's been mostly derelict since That Man was elected president.

I'm a geek, a fan, and a slasher, and proud and open about all three. My interests and enthusiasm are wide; if it's geeky, fannish, or slashy, I probably know at least the basics, and even odds have read fanfiction about it. I'm a fannish butterfly, read pretty much everything, and sometimes even watch or read canon. I love characters and relationships and kinky sex scenes as much as the next fangirl, especially if they are poly or involve enemies-to-lovers or both, but what really draws me in to a fandom is the worldbuilding: the setting, the mytharc, the special physics, the backstory, the references, the way its narrative causality functions, the tiny details that can be fit together into a whole 'nother story. Even in RPS fandoms. I'm completely incapable of resisting a crossover. I have a getting less severe embarrassment squick. In a bewildering variety of fandoms, I've been known to perpetrate: fanmeta, fanfic, fanart, recs lists, fanmixes, javascript toys, on the very occasional best-forgotten occasion, fanvids, and even more direly, filk; but nine times out of ten, I plan something out in my head and then go read more fic instead of actually making it.

I'm sporadically involved in local politics; I mess around with all different kinds of crafts; I try to keep up to date with various sciences and social sciences, history and current events; I am a naturalist at heart and like exploring the land I live on, on foot when possible; I collect books and also other things, mostly by going to second-hand shops and flea markets; I enjoy overanalysing things; I love to learn and hope never to stop. I volunteer for OTW but in the most low-effort way imaginable.

I am one of those odd geeks who is far better at in-person interaction than online; throw me into a conversation or behind a podium, and I go on autopilot (and go and go, as anyone who's met me at in-person fan gatherings can probably attest.) Give me time to think and rethink, and I overthink, get shy, and freeze up. Which is the long way of saying that I don't leave nearly as many comments as I think I ought to, and I'm especially bad about posting feedback for fic. Silence on my part is always about my fear of socializing, not about anything you've done. I love internet communication in principle, I'm just not very good at it. (Far better at internets than telephones though! Wow do I loathe telephones.) I do read almost everything that comes through my reading pages, whether I comment on it or not.

As for who the physical me is - People who first meet me in RL call me Sally. I'm young; white; American; college-educated; of no particular sexuality, but 'asexual' is probably as close as you'll get pretty secure as an asexual aromantic these days; an occasionally active but not devout member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America; a loyal Democrat, and so far left-wing I am a member of the IWW. I'm precisely average height and weight, with wavy brown hair, eyes of no particular color, hairy legs, and a tendency to wear vaguely period clothing, eyeglasses, interesting hats, and dyke boots. I live in Maryland. My real-life circle is almost as geeky as my DW one, but centered on slightly different axes (sometimes we throw them at things). I've wanted to be a writer since I was six, and I'm obsessed with Story. I like long walks on the beach, extremely dark chocolate, good books, hot baths, falling asleep in sunbeams, and brooding over my hoard.

I work at a public library, surprising absolutely nobody who knew me growing up.

Now for the important part, my circle policy: I read a lot of people, and I'm planning to use DW's possibilities as an excuse to read even more. I never turn down new readers, or comments of any kind, and if you add me to your circle, I'll probably at least check out your journal to see what we have in common. But I rarely lock anything, so from now on I'm probably going to just grant access on an as-needed basis, unless something changes. I'm working under the assumption that most validated openIDs are just waiting for DW accounts, so I'm probably not going to be adding them back for the time being, either. And I promise not to take your circle changes personally, and hope you'll do the same for me.

So I just watched Leverage. (It was an accident! It's only half a season, it's totally possible to accidentally watch half a season. And we'll leave off the vast amount of frustration involved in figuring out how to get the TNT streaming video to work. And in finding the list of episodes in original intended order. It was completely and totally an accident¹.)

And the most interesting thing about this experience is: when I saw the first shot of the team, I was *completely* wrong about which character was which - I thought Nate was Eliot, Eliot was Alec, Alec was Nate, Sophie was Parker and Parker was Sophie.

This is interesting because I had just read through most of brown_betty's Leverage recs list, so you'd think I'd know which of the characters was black and which had long hair and which was freaky-pale blond and which was a brunette. But no. I had it not only wrong, but pretty much backward. (For the record, best as I can reconstruct: I thought Hardison looked vaguely like Justin Long, Eliot was the stocky, buttoned-up type, Parker looked like a grown-up River, and Sophie vaguely like Cordelia, only shorter, grown-up and more authentically blonde. Nate was just this shadowy, Tracer Bullet-like figure off in a corner somewhere. Yeah, I was a BIT WRONG. Oh, and Sterling was young and lanky.)

This could be just me. I am also the person who managed to get through two entire Harry Potter books thinking Malfoy had dark hair and remained convinced that Director Skinner was black even after watching several episodes of the X-Files with him in them, including the one where he's wearing nothing but Y-fronts. And I know that in my own writing, fan and otherwise, there tends to be almost no physical description of characters at all, unless I make a special effort to put it in. But I went back and re-read some of the same fic, and no, there really wasn't anything I was missing.

I was thinking about this especially in light of zvi's recent post about skin color in fic, which interestingly managed to be inspired by a Leverage fic and *still* not spoil me for the skin color of the characters. Obviously, what I was noticing isn't just race, but is there a tendency for fic writers of a certain style and feel to simply leave out all the character description, or to leave out certain kinds? Is it something I manage to self-select for when I'm just starting a fandom? (I went back to that recs list and pulled out a couple more stories, and a couple of them would have made it very clear who was who.)

Anyway, Leverage is amazing and fun. ( More first reaction to Leverage under the cut )

...also, Leverage didn't hit the embarassment squick once, even though it seemed like the sort of show that would. I think it's because they're all so completely in control so much of the time, and I trust the characters and the narrative to take care of it, whatever it is.


¹ Why it was Leverage I accidentally watched when I have Merlin, Torchwood, a bunch of Doctor Who and Stargate and Bones and House, and Highlander and Due South and Naruto all queued up to watch? When I was little, turning the TV on was a privilege you only got when everything else was taken care of. So now I'm a grown-up, it seems to work the same way: I can only watch shows two ways, either as a major treat to get when I've accomplished a lot, or by accident. All those other shows have been built up into something major. So I watched Leverage by accident instead.