dime_liora | Etiquette and Introductions

So. Hello.

I've been told if I'm longing for reviews and criticism then I should post fanfiction on here as well. Since I am, like most authors, fond of alcohol and reviews I thought what can it hurt?

Also, I've always wanted to try one of these. I've spent years fascinated by the idea of being anonymous and open all at the same time. It's easy to go into a firefight if you're Superman was my personal philosophy, but I never really tried it. So here I am, do what you will.

As an introduction I am female, closer to thirty than twenty, and a graduate student at a large school. I write fiction and I'm irish, which makes me a storyteller to some and a consummate liar to others. At this very moment I am supposed to be reading about Reader Response Criticism, but there's only so much Stanley Fish one person can reasonably ingest before insanity becomes less of a joke and more of a hindrance to collecting grades that will never impress anyone outside of my C.V. I like to stargaze and read. I prefer Coke , and will actively choose water at a restaurant if told Coke is unavailable. I'm relatively boring to strangers and actively engaging with friends. I have a trail near my home, and I like to cross large distances five times a week in an attempt to combat the cumulative effects of years of vice-ridden behavior. I wear jeans. All the time. The same two pairs. I learned comma usage and sentence structure in a German class, and as a result I use comma splices with psychotic abandon. Consequently I love ee cummings.

My research focus is Cultural Studies, and that's helpful because I'm surrounded by 20th Century Americanists who are being told they'll never get a job. If you're in that field of study I'm sorry that wasn't funny. If it makes you feel any better Louis Menand says I won't find a job either, but he works for Harvard so what does he know?

I'm a table-top gamer, I have multiple tattoos, I don't know how to introduce myself.

What follows this will be my horrible attempt at capturing characters better handled by their original authors, and that is the best I can do. I'll tell you a story, and it may or may not explain what's happening right now. When I was fourteen I started a novel. I got pretty far, although at this point in time I can't tell you if it was any good or not. I imagine it wasn't. My father is a brilliant man. He's also a soulless drunk. To punish me for fleeing in the middle of the night he erased the hard drive containing all hundred and something pages of my first attempt at a long piece of unique fiction. In the kind of reaction that only makes sense to the very young and injured I decided to never try writing again. Fast-forward to more than ten and less than twenty years later and here I am attempting to once again work on something that is uniquely mine. But it turns out writing is not capturing lightning in a bottle so much as exercising muscles that can easily atrophy. What you see here is my slow Rocky montage towards fighting strength. Even if what comes at the end of the cheesy 80's music is terrible I will hold my arms up and do an embarrassingly bad end-zone dance to prove that I am capable of running up stairs. Or snowy hills. Pick your Rocky movie they all had montages.

So enjoy, or don't, and criticize, or don't, but remember this. I could have picked a better analogy than a Rocky montage.

Good Night,
Di Meliora