Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

A couple of unrelated things had me thinking about, and missing, roadnotes. First was a conversation yesterday, at dim sum, with Elizabeth (who is not on DW) and a couple of people I don't know well (I think ron_newman was one of them), which went from "we all look so similar on 8 1/2 by 11 paper") to me telling Elizabeth that I understood people confusing the two of us on paper, but the weird thing was that they did so in person. Velma and I were sisters by choice, and looked as much alike as any two women of similar age and different ethnic backgrounds; nonetheless, even people who knew us intimately occasionally referred to us by each other's names. (This is the first time I can recall someone responding to my shorthand of "she was a few inches taller than me, and black" by asking if our hair had been the same color, though it'snot actually an unreasonable question.) That led to a brief discussion of missing her, and other people Elizabeth misses, and someone saying that these days when he sees an obituary he checks whether the person is around his own age. (I deliberately lightened the conversation by mentioning the family photo my mother recently sent me a copy of, taken at my grandfather's 96th birthday party.)

(ETA, something I was reminded of by a friend's post about her family: Elizabeth said that one difference between me and Velma was that Velma was a lot scarier/more dangerous. And some of that was deliberate acting: she once posted a Facebook status of "no heads on pikes this week." And some of that impression may have been that white people are likely to read a tall Black woman with a shaved head as dangerous. I don't think people read me as a threat, but as knowing what I'm doing in a way that means I get asked for directions by endless strangers, but have never been mugged. And when I had my pocket picked on a crowded train, I grabbed the guy's wrist and shouted "Where's my wallet?" without stopping to think about whether that was a good idea. (He dropped it, I recovered it, he got off the train, and then I held onto a pole and shook a little.)

And this morning, I saw that seanan_mcguire had posted another episode of her "Velveteen versus..." series about a superhero, called Velveteen, real name Velma Martinez. That's not a coincidence: elisem pointed me to these after Velma died, because Seanan had known her, and named the character after her partly to cheer her up. Early in this story, the Princess observes that Velma could have used a fairy godmother, but she's the wrong age to do that for her. And I thought "yes, she could" and felt sad in a slightly different way than the "I miss her" sadness of mourning.

My girlfriend says I swagger.

She also says it's attractive, so that's fine.

I asked cattitude, who said he wouldn't call it that, but he knows what she means.