Stained Glass Wings

Yes, I have all those things in the air at once. Yes, some of them are sharp. Yes, that's meant to be on fire. Oooh, you like the Faberge egg too ? Don't go changing the gravity on me now...

I live in Montreal with my beloved papersky (but no longer with my stepson zorinth, who has moved out as of September 2009); also about two-thirds of my books, and my trusty 486 laptop, Ariel. [ Update, November 2005: Ariel now semi-retired. New laptop is called Umbriel. ] [ Update April 2006: Umbriel essentially unusable for writing due to floppy-drive failure. New laptop is called Wren. Umbriel remains my Civ machine though. ] [ Further update: as of late summer 2007 and obtaining a copy of Civ Chronicles, this last is no longer the case, as I am now converted to the way of Civ III, should anyone care. ] I work on the exciting interface between computers and biology, a job out of the science fiction I was reading when I was twelve. I write; nothing published as yet, but hope is a virtue.

The cognomen comes from wanting an angelic name that did not have any unintended weight or connotations in Hebrew; to my knowledge, there are no Latin-alphabet representations of Hebrew that use "y" as a vowel, so that should be pretty safe. Updated default pic, at papersky's strong encouragement, is Edward Gibbon with purple hair and a gratuitous Goodies reference, and not, in fact, me.

Rysmiel is also a character in one of my works in progress; context should suffice to distinguish.

NOTE: If you already know who I am, can you please not out either my name or my biological sex ? Thank you. [ Policy update March 2004: comments doing this will be deleted immediately without discussion. ] If you want to refer to me and absolutely need a pronoun, I prefer "them" to neologisms such as "zie".

"And I believe
that we'll conceive
to make in Hell for us a Heaven,
a brave new world,
a promised land,
a fortitude of hearts and minds.
Until the day this kingdom's mine
I'll turn the darkness into light,
I'll guide the blind,
My will be done,
Until the day I hear my kingdom has been won."
- "Kingdom", VNV Nation

"I am but mad north-northwest,
When the wind's in the south I can tell
A hawk from a handbag."
"A handbag !!?!"
-- from The Importance Of Being Hamlet

I think "friends list" is a lousy name; I have friends who are not on my list, and I read several people whom it would feel uncomfortably presumptuous to call friends. I refuse to skim [ edit Jan 2006: unless you happen to be talking about eye surgery, which squicks me ], I will not add anyone unless I'm sure I wish to read all of what they write, and I have a finite amount of time of which I am close to the limit. I make very few friends-locked posts, so you're not missing anything of significance. [ Update summer 2014: now all friends-locked all the time. Because hope is a virtue, and so is advance management of consequences of successes hoped for. ]

I may remove people from that list
a) for reasons of time becoming more limited, in which case volume posted will probably be the main determinant;
b) in the event that I get savagely depressed, I may stop reading people who are also depressed; negative feedback can be really dangerous for me.

All of which actions are circumstance-dependant and will be reversed when the adverse circumstance goes away. If you have issues with this, they're your responsibility.

[ Oh, and one further picky addendum, if your default usericon is an animation and big enough to slow loading my friends page, that will disincline me to add you to that page. ]

I write here mostly for my own sake and to keep up with many people I know from many different circles; new people are always welcome, I'm not actively trawling the medium for new friends, but letting them happen as and when they naturally do. If you have issues with expecting that to happen in certain ways, such as automatically being added to my list if you add me to yours, those again will be your responsibility. I'm present as me, not as anyone else's expectation of what I should be.

[ Addendum to that last, March 2005; the bit of my brain that does tactical analysis and the bit that does morality are quite separate. This is a useful thing for writing fiction about stuff I would not actually do. However, if you surprise me with a hypothetical question to which either could apply, there's no predicting which one will get it. ]

Also also; I play with icons a lot. If I GIP and get a negative or mostly bored response, I'm liable to delete the icon and the post. Other than that I do not delete.

Fair warning: I'm not a tame rysmiel.