This page is a remix of Sai's "About me (a detailed rundown)", mainly. I'm date-ranging the uppermost sections, and starting this page on . I think it'd be neat if the others try making similar pages; we'll see about that.
I think language skills are shared across the system. We speak differently, and I'll touch on that, but we're all fluent in English. We are learning French and our skill there probably counts how many years later you're reading this, but we should be able to understand basic interpersonal communication and information, if you're patient and maybe give us a dictionary. It's been years since we seriously spoke toki pona, but we can pick it up again at a moment's notice.
I value being expressive and to the point, and I find it easiest to communicate if you value those things, too, or at least see how I do. I can keep track of a lot of things at once, including directions in a conversation, but I may depend on aids to do that (ex. paper or digital notekeeping). This takes me time - not a lot, but some. Please be patient: I care about the time you're giving me, and I use aids because they help me make better use of your time, even when it looks like I'm going slower than I could.
I try to be patient in return. This isn't easy for me - I want things to get done, I want to communicate. I find it challenging when I can't tell if others are carrying even any intention when they talk to me. I may ask you why you want to know something from me. This is never confrontational: I am asking so I can tailor my response for you. I won't be upset and will do my best if you don't have an answer ready for that, but it helps if you know why you're asking before you ask. ("Just out of curiosity!" is fine, if not especially directional.)
I consider myself an open book, and as long as I have the time and social energy (neither of these is a given), I'm happy to tell what I think, feel, or know about anything, including myself and including you. I trust that if you're asking, you want my honest answer. I try not to speak out of line and I'll tell you if I don't feel I have the experience or perspective to talk confidently about something; please respect if I can't give you an answer then and there, even if you think it's a subject I "should" be plenty aware of.
I make an effort to ask the questions that would tell me something important in a conversation, and I try to check my assumptions out loud. Sometimes I ask questions that you'd think I would already have picked up on. I'm not questioning your integrity, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you right.
Still, my point-of-view is limited and I probably won't approach any subject the same way you will. I trust that you'll try to bring up the things you think are important. If this is something you struggle with, I can periodically ask, but I'd prefer if you tell me in advance so that I know to do that. I try my best to listen to every angle I hear and learn about, but if you feel like I'm leaving something behind, please let me know.
I care greatly about your feelings when we're talking: I don't want you to feel spoken over, or like only my opinion matters, or that I can't understand the way that you feel. However, I'm also kind of an emotional dunce. I have a hard time picking up on typical communicative signals, and I tend to see things in a way that keeps individual feelings-trees from poking out of the forest. I try to pay attention and especially to ask questions, because I know this is an interpersonal weakness, but at the end of the day I need you to tell me if I cross an emotional boundary. The odds are overwhelmingly high I didn't realize it.
Please be patient and honest when I ask questions about your feelings: I'm never being facetious and I depend on your answers to help guide me. Please also understand if I give you a straight answer like, "Okay," instead of showing how what you say "hits me" on my face. I've trained myself to control how I express myself, and most of the time that means I look reserved or taciturn, or else like an incredulous jackass. It doesn't mean I don't care - I just don't convey the way I do using the same facial expressions and voice tones you might be used to.
I mainly use she/her or feminine pronouns, but I enjoy they/them pronouns if we know each other, too.
I don't understand my gender as well as I understand most of my experience, and I try not to worry about it. I usually fail at that.
I don't identify with "female" or "woman" much, if at all. Other labels ("trans", "agender", "non-binary") don't fare much better. I figure I identify with a butch lesbian experience on some level, but I don't know if that's at the core, or if it just describes how I relate. I thought "...to other women" as I said that, and I hope the contradiction gives a sense to how I can hardly tell myself what's going on inside me, let alone explain it to you.
The people I relate the most to aren't human. The humans I relate the most to are at least a little bit weird.
I don't consider the connection I have with an animal species to hold the same prominence in my life as it does for Whisper, for example. But if I won't just up and tell you "I'm like sheep - but not quite", it kind of suggests I'm subconsciously trying to get away from something not so tenuous after all...
I like summer. (Frankly, I'm the first person in the system to not swear the season off entirely.) The others insist that this has something to do with being therian. I don't think they're wrong, but... really...?
I at least feel that there's something to be said about my fictional-comic name analogue being the species she is.
Although I'm sheep and that's what's begrudgingly buried somewhere around my heart, I usually express more like cattle. My preferred clothes are brown tones and red and have a leather-ish aesthetic. I don't literally wear a cowbell but I usually feel like I do, and that's more to do with animal feelings than Maggie feelings.
The only way my gender has ever come close to "making sense" is to take myself as a cow, probably born and raised (and one day slaughtered), but treated as a freak for having bull horns. Find my way by spiffing myself up just right, putting on the perfect outfit and the prettiest face, when I can't hide the damn horns, and won't act like I'm a gender I'm not.
It's a work in progress. I'm writing about it here.
We've moved around the country a lot and it makes finding a sense of permanent position... well, impossible. In some ways this makes it hard to nurture a particular bond with much of anything around me. But right now we live in a place where most nature is near and most people are far, and this has been so for most of our life - just in different places.
I think most relations exist both in an instant and over time. There's an immediacy that you lose as soon as you fit it to a trend (no matter how short), but all your impact and legacy exist after each moment. You affect how a place will be tomorrow and a hundred years from now. And often, your presence over the last year is what has the greatest impact today.
That's one of the reasons it's hard to ground myself as a resident in nature. In other levels of existence, too, but especially nature, where a distance of five kilometers feels like an entire universe away. Without stability, without the confidence I'll be here in a week, how do I bring myself to do make myself present, today and tomorrow too?
I want to try. I feel I owe it because I could never live, could never be at all, without the land I am on, and all the things that make it what it is.
But mainly, in nature, I exist as a passive thing. A sheep. I don't think this... has to be an imbalance. A problem. I think it might be alright to just take the world in, to find strength and respite in it. If there are times when I can't find those things anywhere else - then nature, steadfast, is something I depend on. No matter where I find myself. Maybe that's all that nature needs from me.
Summer is my favorite season because it is warm, and because every part of nature feels alive at once. It's the season of growing. The evenings are long and beautiful and dusk and dawn are at the right times. I feel like it's made for me. I feel like summer forces me to reckon with the fact that I can't run for a hundred hours at once no matter how much I think I need to, and... it's gentle about that. I have to admit that I'm done before the sun starts to set. And when I do, there's still sunlight. I get time to settle down before I watch the evening sky. I can go on a walk and breathe fresh summer air and it's good.
Animals mostly terrify me. I'm not especially comfortable with domestic dogs (except our own) and I worry about being in the wilderness alone because I'm scared of bears and smaller beasts. I don't think this is a fair judgement, but I don't know how to begin to shake it. Still, I enjoy walking. It's the main time I get to experience nature alongside the others and I like hearing their perspective on the world around us. I feel connected with them through the time we spend together, doing nothing except moving our body and experiencing nature.
I love grassy plains and hills. The forest is where we live, and where we've always lived, and it's most Whisper's element of all. But when we travel I see the rolling fields and I feel at home, even though it's not my home. There are a few places that are closer and give me the same impression, and I try to take that feeling in when I hear it.
There is a garden slowly growing behind our house, as there usually has been. I don't tend it because I'm not its tender, and because I'm scared of becoming part of it. Not out of worry for obligation or capacity, I just... don't want to leave it behind. Though I must, one day.