Profile

This has previously been laylah and before that laylah; I'm not entirely comfortable with the name, so I decided to go with something else for my primary journal when I got invited to DW.
...I spent a few days trying to think of something, some single noun or adjective/noun combination that I would feel like answering to, something that was enough of a primary facet to my image of myself, and was failing at it pretty hard, so I wound up with this after briefly flirting with the idea of a "blank slate" theme instead -- what I am is not a tabula rasa, but a lot of information that has meaning even if it...isn't always clear.

I do have a lot of history attached to the name Laylah, though, and am now publishing as Laylah Hunter; original fiction blogging and announcements of available stories will be posted to laylah.

I live in Seattle with two needy cats and one disaffected snake. I write fanfiction, which I will be posting to decyphered. I like to hear myself talk. I am a recovering grad student. I have a post about my subscribing/access habits here.

I have a post about my gender identity here; the tl;dr version is that I am uncomfortable identifying with my anatomy and will be grateful if you can avoid drawing attention to it. I prefer gender-neutral pronouns (sie/hir or zie/zir).

A lot of my posts -- not all, but a lot -- will be about fandom, or about writing, or both. I think about these things pretty often; my degrees are in English, and I did a lot of focus on cultural studies, literary theory, and genre. It's been a few years since I was in school and I don't really consider myself an academic, but I did have a lot of training in reading texts for their underlying assumptions, so if discussion of why people write what they write and what it means is going to get on your nerves...consider yourself warned.

I believe in fiction as deliberate act. I believe in reading and responding to texts as a collaborative process of creation. I believe in resistant reading, and fanwork that addresses problems with the source text. I believe in porn with purpose.

I believe in having a good time, and writing for the love of the source or the characters. I believe that not every work needs to tackle serious issues. I believe that it's possible to tackle serious issues in lighthearted ways. I believe in paradoxes. I believe in play. I believe in moving targets.

I believe I'm going to like it here.

I have an amazon wish list that is often out of date, if you really feel the need for some reason. ._.

Baccano! mood theme was created by kiwikiwi.