Parsley: A garnish, a vegetable, a username

Hello!

I've come here from Tumblr, where I lurk around and read a lot but rarely post. I was initially going to write an ask to Seebs about something that's been troubling me IRL, but that turned into two Word pages of text due to the complexity of the situation. There was no way I could send that via Tumblr--it would never fit into an ask, I'm not really sure how to use submissions, and I didn't feel that Tumblr was the right place for it either since it involved a number of controversial topics--so I decided to finally take a look at Seebs's forum. I believe, based on a quick look around, that this might be a better place than Tumblr for me to ask complicated life questions.

I guess I should probably say a little about myself since this is an introduction post.

I'm bi, but not fully out IRL. I'm sure I'll write about that and other things at some point in the future when I get tired and ramble. It will happen eventually--I often can't sleep, and I talk too much about personal things when I'm sleep deprived.

My username came to me on a spoon: I was eating homemade veggie soup when I was joining the site. The soup had parsley in it. I got philosophical about parsley, and voila.

I'm also a massive popular culture nerd. I will read or watch pretty much anything that falls within my fields of interest--anime, manga, fantasy books, webcomics, television shows with fantastical elements, etc--even if I don't like the material I'm consuming. This has caused me to develop an almost masochistic affection for bad works, but that doesn't mean I like everything I read. Homestuck is a good example: I spent about a month reading it from the beginning until partway through Act 6 Act 3 so I could be passingly familiar with it, but it's not something I ever found that I enjoyed (mostly because of the pacing). I've been in more of a mood for books right now. I'm currently enjoying both The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (for review) and Voyage of the Basilisk: A Memoir of Lady Trent, the third in a series of fictional memoirs of a natural historian who specializes in the study of dragons (for fun).

That's probably plenty about me.

I look forward to getting to know the people here, and I hope to learn a lot and grow as a person in the process.

 

Hello and welcome and you do seem perfectly suited to here :D

 

Hello Parsley! I'm now hungry for homemade soup with parsley in it ):

Welcome ;D

 

Thank you both for the greetings! c:

 

Hello. Would you care to share your philosophical thoughts on parsley?

 

@littlemissCodeless: Sure! On the last forum I was on I posted everything I wrote in grey text as a constant reminder to myself to look at all sides of an issue and to strive to be respectful to those around me. I was concerned that the grey would be hard to see on this forum due to the background color, so I wanted to give myself something else to meditate on instead. I ended up with a mouth full of parsley while I was thinking (we put way too much of it into the soup), so I started to think about that. Here are some of my thoughts:

Parsley is versatile--it's considered a spice, an herb, a garnish, and a vegetable. I would like to be able to do all of those things--I would like to make posts that could be meals on their own and posts that can add to the posts of others in a variety of ways.

It's a pallet cleanser. I won't always be, but I would like to at least sometimes be able to be refreshing to others and make their day a little better in some small way. This aspect of parsley is also a reminder to myself that it's sometimes better to walk away from an argument when it's clear that neither side is going to budge. My worst arguments have always reached that point because one side or the other or both refused to budge and neither of us would walk away. I would like to get better about learning when things have reached a point where there can be no progress and about letting the argument go when I see that has happened.

Parsley's also high in a vitamin that I need so my blood can clot. Blood is often associated with anger and violence, so the clotting of that could be interpreted as the stoppering of that anger. Parsley, therefore, will also be my reminder to be aware of it if I become overly upset, to calm down if that happens, and to not let myself speak or act in anger.

 

That is the most indepth reason for a forum name I have ever heard. That is fantastic. I just like mushrooms.

Also hello! =D

 

@a tiny mushroom: Hello! c:

Thanks! I tend to overthink things, especially names. Every name I give to anything is given for a reason, simple or complicated. The most difficult part of Pokemon for me was always naming them. It wasn't unusual for me to spend half an hour to an hour on each name. It got to the point where I sometimes dreaded catching more. XD;

 

Oh, me too. This is why so many of my Pokemon have mineral or scientific genus names.

iiiiii'm not predictable

 

How did you choose? Would you look up the minerals or animals they reminded you of and use the names of those?

I prefered names with symbolism or with deep meanings to them. I'd often reference mythology for my symbolism, so those tended to be easier. The ones with deeper meaning were harder. I'd dwell on the Pokemon's appearance, their info, what personality I imagined that particular Pokemon having, their type, any attacks I knew I'd have them use, the IRL things or animals they reminded me of, the impression they gave me, the potential I thought they hand, whether I thought I'd use them or not, what I thought their future would be like, etc and then choose a name that embodied all or some of that. After all that, I'd still usually end up giving them ridiculously simple-sounding names since most of them were destined for a life in the box.

 

Yep, generally, except when I knew said names off the top of my head (on account of I'm a neeeeeeeerd).

 

oh hey, i didn't realize the latest lady trent novel was out!

i would often name my pokemon after words describing them in other languages. it didn't always work so well, and it got exasperating when it didn't.

 

Yes! It came out on the 5th. c:
Edit: Whoops, no. That's when I got my copy. It came out on March 31st.

I did that occasionally with Latin or Romanized Japanese, but I never seemed to have my Latin dictionary handy when I caught something.

My Latin dictionary creeps me out, by the way. There is no escape from its pupil-less gaze.

 

As a wannabe archeologist, those guys have long since stopped impressing me at all.
On the topic of names, for me a name is supposed to designate me, so it has to connect to me somehow. in this case, this is an oldish name i just plain imported. Because I´m bad at coming up with names.

 

I've always stolen names from my attempts at fiction ...

 

@littlemissCodeless: By "those guys" are you referring to the picture on the cover of my Latin dictionary or something else? What kind of archaeology would you like to do?

@Morven: What kinds of fiction do you write? How do you decide which of your characters to name yourself or your Pokemon after?

 

Yes, the picture and those blank eyed plastics in general. I´m studying greaco-roman archeology. (Note that I´m studying it in german and therefore may have misspelled the term in englisch)

 

Pffft. Joining the nerd-naming trend, I'm always awful at picking pseudonyms.

 

@littlemissCodeless: Is there any part of it in particular that interests you especially?

@albedo: I am too, to be honest. I usually default to an older name like LittlemissCodeless mentioned they did, but I'd been meaning to try to come up with a new one. I'm glad inspiration finally struck.

How did you choose your current username?

 

Yep, I used to do that too, but got burned, so I've stopped... The trouble with defaulting to old names is that all of those accounts can then be tied together, though, which is, uh... problematic if you have a googlestalking parent. Or a literal stalker.

Heh, it's a multi-layered personal joke, as usual.

In alchemy, albedo is the washing away of chaos and impurity, the quest for purity and perfection. So that seemed fitting for the forum.

In analytical psychology, by extension from the treatment of nigredo as the 'dark night of the soul', the time when one encounters and faces one's darkest repressed impulses, albedo must be what comes after, and therefore, the rebuilding of the self after self-examination. Again, appropriate.

Jung also equates it with the anima in men and the animus in women. That suggests both gender nonconformity and transness, which amuses me. (I don't take Jung's archetypes totally seriously, he puts WAY too much emphasis on the unconscious imo, but they're interesting. His theory is apparently basically that people repress those personality traits which are considered gender nonconforming, but despite repression they can greatly influence one's personality and behavior.)

And in actual science, albedo is a measure of reflectivity - it's how much sunlight something reflects. It suggests objects like the Moon, which appear to glow but actually are just reflecting back the light they receive from elsewhere. By metaphor, that suggests a person who consumes information, energy, and ideas, and then reflects them back upon the world, perhaps seemingly transformed, rather than creating them from nothing. So it's riffing on... well, a tendency to riff on the ideas of others, and to consume and synthesize data, rather than to create stories or research from nothing.

Also a slightly self-deprecating joke about the insubstantiality of personal identity, about being a mirror that reflects back people's own expectations, because I've historically had trouble with adopting traits or behaviors to please or placate others, rather than remaining the same regardless of the company.

Also, it sounded nice and it ends in an -o, so it's obviously manly!