@NiveusLepus That groan was audible and my dogs are wondering what is wrong. 100pts
@NiveusLepus Have I asked you about "Watership Down"?
@jasod You have not. ^_^
@NiveusLepus Did that inform any of your writing?
@jasod Some yes. Richard Adams was an og xenofiction specialist and Watership Down is dear to me.
My mentor is a less well known author named Phil Geusz who also wrote with animals as mains.
I've found a lot of inspiration in xenofiction, because it mirrors my own experience and my own journey. I've always been, and always known I am an "other" all the way back to my first coherent memory.
@NiveusLepus That had to be tough with your origins...
@jasod My childhood was not an easy one, but I did try to conform, and that made it worse.
There were going to beat and bully me no matter what I did, but the younger me didn't know that yet.
It took me a long time to learn that I didn't need to earn the acceptance of my peers or those around me to be valid.
Time in the church did not help.
That is one of the reasons that I just decided to stop hiding even though some might think me crazy or very odd.
@NiveusLepus That was how I found metal music, horror movies and the likes. It was the only place I fit and those were the people who accepted my neuro-spiciness.
@jasod I was very shocked to find at 18 that I was not the only one out there. It truly blew my mind.
That was the first time I had a stable net connection.
It was a radical sea change for me, because I was able to escape the censorship of my small town upbringing as well. Suddenly I could learn all I wanted about things like Buddhism, and Absurdism, on top of the Otherkin, therian, and furry communities.
@NiveusLepus It opened the doors of so many texts! And so many communities. CoSo reminds me of the early days of the Internet or even BBSs.
@jasod Me too. I remember the forums, I actually ran one with a friend named Backburn, way back in the day.
Those times ended up being among the hardest I've lived through. There was some pretty heavy religious trauma in those years, and a lot of pain, but it was the net community that I had back then more than anything that helped me survive it.
@NiveusLepus Mine was a local in Albuquerque. Wizards Realm.
@jasod I am so glad you found a place to be you . ^_^
I wonder if anyone here ever was on Tfcentral way back in the day?
@NiveusLepus @thedisasterautist I don't remember them. My earliest were with a Commodore group called Scoopex I think?
@jasod @thedisasterautist Oh Rad! We were a very small niche forum back in the day
@NiveusLepus @jasod: I was first on CompuServe and Prodigy. I did dial-in to a local BBS on weekends, though. It was run by the local Radio Shack because the owner was a geek. We had joke, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Dune, and of course comuter forums up. It was awesome.
@thedisasterautist @NiveusLepus I think the advantage was I didn't have to perform for the world, just my clan. I have found some of that. I belong to an Astromech builders bbs, but it is all online. No dial up needed. But I mostly just felt cut off from that social experience until CoSo.
@jasod @NiveusLepus: The BBS community was so small back in the late '70s and the early- to mid-'80s that we were kinda a little clan, and it was all dial-up until maybe 1999-ish, at least in my area, from home anyway. Also, if you had no local number, you were SOL.
I'm still friends with a few people, mostly in/from my old hometown from those days. None of us met much IRL until we were old enough to drive. LOL
@jasod Probably because they keep seeing it coming. ;)