Reactions to Reactions to The Small Dark Movie Of Your Life

[Lioness]

(And in my case, one of my hang-ups is never quite feeling like I belong, so...I did my usual thing and kept second guessing myself.)

I hereby propose that all of us Deltas, now and to come, hang out and Not Belong together. 

My fandom belongs together because we never quite feel like we belong. 

There's probably a bench for that.

[MadGastronomer]

I second the motion.

[Korvar]

The Not Belonging Together Bench, which needs no cookies, but has all manner of other goods foods and beverages.

[jennygadget]

What do you mean no cookies?  I want my cookies!  also, cake.

[DavidG]

You all belong here. And all of your emotional responses belong here.

I said so.

And since it's my board, what I say goes.

What Bear said, she da boss!

And I just want to add that all the time I'm posting in Reader Brain doesn't mean Friend Brain isn't curled in a corner grieving for his friend. I deliberately put off reading part 3 until two in the morning, because I have family visiting and it would have freaked them out if I burst into tears over 'just' a story. I think all of us are processing in both brains, it just varies from person to person which is foremost right now and which we are able to talk about, if at all.

And I think we all know there is nothing wrong with any of those reactions.

[eschatonic]

What do you mean no cookies?  I want my cookies!  also, cake.

I bring you cookies. Chocolate chip, and also peanut butter which I don't like but apparently everyone else does.

...Is it wrong of me to say that I'm glad it was someone else who accidentally pushed the big red button labelled Do Not Push in the original reaction thread? Cuz that's something I do rather a lot. Never on purpose. I haven't posted much about my own reaction because I'm not sure what it really is. That's not a new thing; I generally don't have good access to my own internal state, and am therefore very bad at anticipating other people's (which is like sign #1 that I might be somewhere on the shallow end of the Aspergers spectrum). So yeah, I do not parse Scandasotan at all. I don't even parse touchy-feely Californian very reliably, and I grew up there.

I had this weird melancholy dream last night involving Chaz and Daphne, although I don't remember anything else about it. So maybe I am more affected by her death than I thought I was.

[glinda_w]

MG: Thank you! If it's a weeknight, I can do it (have one thing I need to do over there, next week if possible, that requires physical presence in the 9-to-5 workday stuff.)

(And I'm an... inexpensive... person to buy drinks for; my limit, unless I'm at home, is one. Of course, a couple of half-drinks of something interesting... *grin* ) (Though, for wakes, it's either Irish Coffee or whiskey, the Irish kind.)

[glinda_w]

Jennygadget: The description was needs no cookies, not has no cookies. A very important difference there. (I'll bring my ginger-lime shortbread...) (Or um maybe not. Have fresh ginger, but no candied ginger. *theatrical sob*)

[tylik]

Hot dish is Scandasotan? Certainly not exclusively...

In world, I was sadly amused by Lau's reaction of going back to the cop shop and packing everything up. It's the kind of thing I would do, especially if I couldn't get at a kitchen. (In an emergency, go calm.* See if anyone else is taking charge. If not, take charge. In holding pattern, go on mundane detail patrol. Dry socks for everyone. Feed everyone in sight. (Not pushylike unless it is a safety concern. Like, say, overtired cold stressed people in the woods, no seriously, eat this thing I am handing you right now with a cup of something hot.) There is nothing so comforting as a kitchen in unsettled times. (Okay, a machine shop is just as comforting, but only if you can do something with it. Meals will almost certainly be useful.) Put stressed people to work if it looks like it will help. Provide shoulder, handkerchiefs, what have you. Stay busy. It's like a textbook example of the tend and befriend hypothesis.

And then at time t, t being a function that increases with emotional intensity of event, find a cave to curl up and whimper in.

Historically, I've most often had people telling me they didn't think I was grieving enough. Fuck 'em.

* I realize that there is often an expectation that asses will be kicked, but that is rarely literally true in my line of work, though it's somewhat more frequent that someone will need to stand up and say "Okay, this is the unpleasant thing that needs to be done." And if so, yo. And if someone needs to be growled at right about then, hey.

[Lioness]

Hot dish is Scandasotan? Certainly not exclusively...

That's part of its power: it is Scandasotan and a lot of other things too.

[Korvar]

Jennygadget: The description was needs no cookies, not has no cookies. A very important difference there.

Correct

[miminnehaha]

Also, something suddenly occurred to me when I read, "When the board went into mostly Reader Brain mode, I felt like I was a little crazy for having a more emotional response since there wasn't as much of that showing up on the board."  I'm Scandosotan, so I've been reading what's been posted and seeing wild outpourings of grief and upset and anger and shock and all sorts of things. 

Which probably isn't visible in anything I posted either, unless other people parse Scandosotan.

Hm.

Yes, Lioness, exactly.  I too saw huge, huge response.  It was very disconcerting for me to see the "wasn't much of that on the boards" thing.  I felt like that's all there was.

Of course, I'm challenged by the fact that my brain does the friend-brain/reader-brain thing in real life: how does that affect this and this and this?  how does it fit into the idea of this grand-scheme-theory or that one?  I was starting to worry about my "insensitivity" a few months ago, but SU gave me good insight then into the way we all experience reactions that don't necessarily communicate their emotional weight.

If we Scandasotans are reeling from this "overwhelming-yet-scant" reactionary dichotomy... what are our delta-kin in the famous-for-their-stiff-upper-lip British contingent thinking?

[nebula]

Also, something suddenly occurred to me when I read, "When the board went into mostly Reader Brain mode, I felt like I was a little crazy for having a more emotional response since there wasn't as much of that showing up on the board."  I'm Scandosotan, so I've been reading what's been posted and seeing wild outpourings of grief and upset and anger and shock and all sorts of things. 

Which probably isn't visible in anything I posted either, unless other people parse Scandosotan.

Hm.

Yes, Lioness, exactly.  I too saw huge, huge response.  It was very disconcerting for me to see the "wasn't much of that on the boards" thing.  I felt like that's all there was.

Of course, I'm challenged by the fact that my brain does the friend-brain/reader-brain thing in real life: how does that affect this and this and this?  how does it fit into the idea of this grand-scheme-theory or that one?  I was starting to worry about my "insensitivity" a few months ago, but SU gave me good insight then into the way we all experience reactions that don't necessarily communicate their emotional weight.

If we Scandasotans are reeling from this "overwhelming-yet-scant" reactionary dichotomy... what are our delta-kin in the famous-for-their-stiff-upper-lip British contingent thinking?

Not speaking for all British people, but just me, I don't have much of a stiff upper lip. I'm a little sad about Daphne's death and I'm sad for the loss to her loved ones. The suddenness of it all and the awfulness of her death has made me tearful.

However, I'm not overwhelmingly sad about it. And that's not because I don't want to/can't share in the grief of others - I have a loss of my own that takes precedence. My grieving belongs to the loss of my Dad and I'm still crying enough over him, 9 months on, to spare too many tears for Daphne.

I have read some of the responses and thought "Interesting - I didn't feel like that about it" but I know that's because my reactions are borne out of my experiences, rather than thinking that others are doing it wrong.

[miminnehaha]

condolences on the loss of your dad, Nebula.

[Lioness]

(And I am way too tired to write how brilliantly the second-order relating-to-it-as-real thing works with Shadow Unit, but oh, I wish I could. Because we're not just believing in the reality of characters. We're believing in characters that we ALSO are believing are fictional characters in a NONEXISTENT televison show, where we have names of actors playing said characters. It's TWO rabbit holes down, not just one.)

This. So much.

This may be a weird comparison, but it reminded me a little bit of how I felt when I got friended on LJ by spiritrover.   I was all totally squee for days and days.  (Yep, technically I had been friended on LJ by some human who was writing an LJ under the name of a piece of hardware that was on the moon. But that's not how it felt.)

I still miss spiritrover.  And this photo of the beautiful cake still undoes me a little when I look at it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21972710@N00/166076702/