Me and You and Us

>>I even put up with a small subset of mindless memes.<<

Used in moderation, I find memes helpful for getting to know people, especially for little details that might not otherwise come up in ordinary blogging. Too much and I get bored, though.

>>I tend to rant - a lot. I figure if people really don't like my language, they don't have to read it.<<

Another place where I favor moderation. I don't like writing by people who mistake "fuck" for a comma, but I also don't like people trying to censor what I say in my own space. I do keep the vulgarity level on the low side because I have friends who are averse to it and I want them to be able to read here -- and I don't use that kind of language in their space.

I rarely rant, because I know that it often turns people off. But when something or someone manages to remove the safety cover and push the red button ... look out. There are very large-caliber weapons under those hatches.

>>At least half of the real people I follow I have met in Real Lfe™. I may even have seen you if you've been at PantheaCon in the recent years (at the DoubleTree) and were on a panel that I attended.<<

Most of my blog-friends are people I know only through cyberspace. I've met some in real life, though, and a few are good facetime friends.

>>The only things I heavily dislike in a blog are drama (it gets old after a while), bigotry (I tend to unfollow), and chronically bad spelling and grammar (I am the typo queen, and tend to be a little aphasic, but I try to fix the errors.)<<

Yeah, those are also on my list of reasons not to read a blog.

That seems to be a very popular blog-metaphor.

Mine here is living room/office. The conversations I have on my blog are similar to the ones had at home with friends, along with work-related stuff.

That makes sense.

>>I also had my old blog from when I was transitioning into visually impaired life, but I'm revamping that into my Comics/art/visual impairment and funny stories blog.<<

I am intrigued by the way that some people manage to combine visual impairment and art. It's a bit counter-intuitive. But when I stop to think about it, some of the most interesting artistic styles come from the way people view the world.

Also, one of my Torn World characters, Rai, is legally blind. He paints, as a hobby. I was not expecting that.

>>Blind artists are not unheard of, and I know of a pretty big group of blind photographers.<<

I've heard that, a few times.

>>Most of my stuff for "Dark-sighted" revolves around my biggest issue, severe and crippling photo-phobia, and going through life being antagonized by light (Also, having no depth perception is fun too), It tends to lean towards the perils of albinism, and dealing with having a pretty invisible disability.<<

I can sympathize.

>>Once I get Dark-sighted back up and running, I'll kick a link your way if you're interested. <<

Yes, please! I'm generally interested in creative endeavors, especially by people I know; but I am quite keen on explorations of different perceptions.

>>And It's awesome that you have that quirk for a disabled character, it's refreshing really to see a portrayal of someone who is not fully blind, but doesn't get the "cure-all" of glasses, who still does something visually oriented.<<

To be precise, Rai has severe myopia and astigmatism, beyond a level of available technology to fix. He can see some detail within about arm's reach, and beyond that everything is just smears of color. He can't see well enough to read, which is a HUGE problem in the Empire. (Literacy is the key to almost everything, while the handling of crippled citizens is half-sensible and half-appalling.) But his color vision is fine; he has a knack for matching and contrast. There's a little bit about his introduction to painting in art class at school, which appears in "Clouds in the Morning" -- that story is about half done, and ellenmillion is working on the other half of it. As an adult, Rai runs a specialty shop with items (mostly luxuries) for vision-impaired people: perfumes, wind chimes, textured fabrics, etc. Once in a while he lets his paintings out of his private floor into the public areas, and it rather annoys him that people keep trying to buy them. (The Empire makes a fairly rigid distinction between "profession" and "hobby" and painting is something Rai does for fun.)

Rai's twin brother Bai also has poor vision, but not as bad; with glasses, Bai can function pretty much normally. That's a major factor in their relationship, and it's all over the earlier stories. One I drafted recently is "The Flight of the Rose-Butterfly," when they were taking music lessons as boys -- that captures the first time Rai turned out to be better at something than Bai.

If I've piqued your interest, Rai's character sheet is here:
http://www.tornworld.net/members/cisdisplay.php?id=21
There are brief mentions of Rai in two of Bai's stories thus far:
"Paper Butterflies: Paper Trail" by ellenmillion
http://www.tornworld.net/storypageview.php?id=114
"Pickled" by Elizabeth Barrette
http://www.tornworld.net/storypageview.php?id=56
Whenever the stories that feature Rai's perspective get posted, I'll announce them on my journal here so that interested readers can view them. The art hobby will probably continue to pop up in other stories, too.

>>A tremendous advantage with LJ is the filtering.<<

Yes, it can be useful.

>>So I can chatter to a general audience,
or limit an entry to people who share a specific interest or concern.
And I assume that other people do that, too.<<

I think the only thing I do along those lines is the "Donors" custom friends group, which I use for locking the donor perk-posts.

That review sounds interesting.

You can always mention the new insights the next time you sit down to such panels.

One of my regrets is that, just as I started blogging, I stopped being able to attend conventions. So I've never had a chance to sit panel for blogging or social networking, or to promote my blog and crowdfunding at a con.

That sounds like a great plan. *sigh* I miss doing panels. I'd be set for cyberfunded creativity, poetry fishbowls, weblit, shared worlds, all kinds of new stuff.