I am not engaging with the sentence "I thought we were past this," because that sentence is not my friend and it does not get any cake.
First of all (I hope this comes across right, and I don't mean to pick on miminnehaha, because I'm pretty sure I know what she meant, but), that response made me smile. A lot. Because: YES.
I make you a present of that response, and you can carry it in your pocket and use it when it's useful.
(And I like Miminnehaha, and hope she's not bumming out because of what I said.)
And if I'm inimical to somebody's enjoyment of this place, and this place really really matters to them, you bet I'd rather that I go than that they go.
Secondly, in the hopes that this will help (and praying that it will not do the opposite) I cannot count the number of times over the last week that I wished I had never said anything at all rather than give you any reason to want to leave. So, again: YES.
I figured you and I were on the same page, on that one, and that that was actually part of what made the whole thing trickier for both of us. But besides making it trickier, it's a good foundation: we're united in Wanting This Place To Be A Good Place For Each Other. And I'm not likely to flee at this point, because I'm over my sproing (the most recent posts were an attempt to diagram the sproing, not a repeat of the sproingingness itself) and because bunches of us are talking in all sorts of trying-to-be-useful-and-look-after-each-other ways and bunches of us are talking about The Sad, and because these bunches overlap in place, and all sorts of other reasons, and also I wave hello to the lurkers who read and think and don't post but are still glad other people do post about The Sad and all the other stuff too.
That sentence looks like a ball of yarn after it got into the wrong pocket in the bookbag, but I'm going to leave it there.
This was actually exactly the reason why I was afraid to post in the first place. I was very much not thinking “OMG! how dare they do/don’t do such and such! Don’t they know they should be like me?” In fact, I think the part that had my friends so worried was that I pretty quickly devolved into “Why am I not like everyone else? Why do I never fit in? What the fuck is wrong with me?” I don’t think Jeffy was trying to say that everyone else was doing it wrong and I was doing it right, I think he was trying to tell me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, and that I wasn’t really as different from everyone else, and that I wasn’t going to make people hate me if I did say something that was different from everyone else.
Jeffy's a goodhearted one. (I don't know anybody on the board who's not, actually.) And I treasure many folks who say something different from everybody else. And we've gotten the Not Belonging (Together) Bench out of the whole thing, too, which we've probably needed for a while, and I would be honored to sit next to you on it, if you'd be up for that. (And with the whole lot of you.)
Again, I’m just hoping this helps and I do not meant in any way to diminish your right to how all this has made you feel I and most definitely do NOT mean to suggest that you should stop talking about it.
Is OK. And thanks. And I think I've sufficiently diagrammed the sproing to answer the questions, so that part probably is finished, and yay for that.
And I'm sorry for having gone sproing, and I apologize to folks who got sprayed with sproing-splatter when I did.
oh, and regarding the bit about writers and moats....
It should perhaps be explained that there is a newbie writer in my extended family who has been after my opinion of his writing for a while now (because I am the Reader in the family, and work in a library to boot), and while he is not without talent, let’s just say that I haven’t been entirely certain that engaging with him in that way is healthy for either of us...but that there is also the extra family dynamic of having to explain any refusals to the entire family. There was a bit of a kerfluffle that happened recently - like, less than a month ago - having to do with all this, and so I am a bit extra cautious about crossing that moat myself at the moment. Which would be the thing I was talking about earlier that was making my reactions to all this especially confusing. Because I can't take back having crossed that moat when it comes to SU, even if I wanted to.
I know the PTB are not being cavalier with my feelings, but that other experience is still rather fresh and not completely resolved (and was even less so before my mom and I talked it over tonight) so it’s unfortunately affecting how I’m reacting to all this.
And I really am sorry that I seem to be flailing all over the place and knocking into other people because of it. *facepalm*
You and I are cool by me, if that helps. Thank you for explaining stuff.
(And I offer you an anecdote in return. My partner, the estimable Juan, my Mammal of Luv, long made it a practice never to read the books of anyone he knew socially. That practice was breached when Lois McMaster Bujold, whose books he had read and enjoyed, moved to our town and became part of a writers group I was also in, which sometimes met at our house. One day Juan came home as the group was finishing a rousing discussion of Lois's plotting options in some upcoming books, and Lois turned to him and said, "And what do YOU think ought to happen to Miles next?" He stuck his fingers in his ears, started singing "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" very loudly and ran out of the room. It was hilarious and also we were all going, "oh! poor Juan! oh, dear, this is freaking him out!" which unfortunately made it more hilarious, which probably made it harder for the Juan, poor dear. It all worked out all right in the end, but it's definitely a moat story. Juan later said plaintively, "I had a Plan for dealing with all these writers being around. And you guys Messed With It!")
