What’s the story of your avatar?

Northern_Soul said:Out of interest because I’m in a chatty mood (and I’m nosey) what’s the story of your avatar?

Why did you choose it?

For me, I’ve historically chosen watercolour women based on “For My Lover Returning To His Wife” — one of my favourite poems by Anne Sexton.

”as for me, I am a watercolour. I wash off.”

https://genius.com/Anne-sexton-for-my-lover-returning-to-his-wife-annotated

I went and read that poem.  Wow.  Incredible.  It's the envy in it predominantly, for me.
And the feeling of second place, obviously.  She isn't so much propping up the wife as much as she is tearing herself down.  Stating what she isn't.  
What a great great read.  

Styxian said:Oddly, I decided to use the dragon avatar for myself again this morning, before reading this forum page.  
This is an interesting question btw!

For me, and probably most of us, online writing is like a "club".  We are accepted into it, with little requirements actually.  But the point being, we feel like we are part of it.  And yet we all maintain an individual identity.  Our writings as a whole IS our identity.  A picture just applies a "finder" so to speak.  
 I am insatiably curious by nature.  I like to know more and more etc.  An actual photo is cool in that it gives that person their unique ID.   There's no guessing.  And yet an avatar is obviously like their banner, to carry into this world of words.  It is part of their poetry here.  It honestly is.  That's a lot of why they chose it.  It isn't random, just like their words aren't.
Photos are not always reality. We all know that by now.  Men sometimes pose as women, and vice versa.  It's part of the package they are selling, so to speak.  But if you read enough of their material, you will get a good idea of what they are about, on the inside.  And that is ultimately the true appeal, isn't it?

I once belonged to an online site that required you to post your actual issued ID (Critical info blocked out).  So no spammers and such could infiltrate.  They still did.  It was a horrible idea, but noble.

I chose this dragon pic because it's cool.  I'm not really a dragon.  Or that cool.  
Well, I have my good moments.  Lol.


Thank you sincerely for this comment. It’s challenged and helped me understand a little bit more why I’ve chosen my current path.

We all have our particular damage, what matters is how we manage it. Mine is that when I was a child I never felt validated in and of myself, but would be told when my guardians became upset with me that I was stupid, useless, disturbed, perverted (for my emerging queer identity), etc. I felt that the fact of my existence wasn’t a fact at all but a needless burden weighing real people down.

Combined with a lot of circumstantial factors (my particular damage), this caused me to seek out self-destructive behaviours that I’m honestly proud of myself for physically surviving.

Your comment has shed a little bit more light on the rather sudden and terrifying changes that I’ve been feeling in my self lately. It’s a process of rediscovery and then healing, of finding who I am so that I can share it more widely. To quote the psychologist Carl Jung, there is no coming to consciousness without pain.

There’s a novella by a horror writer, called “Love is...” and collected in When Darkness Loves Us, about a low-functioning autistic woman who finds herself having to manage her own affairs when her widowed mother dies and leaves her the family farm. With open-hearted community support this woman manages to feel real again and function in society, managing her bills, business, rent, even a sexual relationship. She becomes something more than what other people have tended to think of her as. Until an act of savage and thoughtless cruelty hits the reset button.

...and that’s why my avatar is a pale green chess piece

My avatar [at the time of writing, since changed - it showed my lower face, neck and shoulders with open necked shirt] is a cropped photo of myself from 10 yrs ago, taken sitting at a table outdoors in summer by a Latina neighbour who took a few others of me outside the same building on her smartphone.

The avatar did attract attention, a few years after I joined DUP, from one woman visitor to this site (who didn't go on to be a poet here), who said how arousing she found some of my erotic stuff. She thought I looked 'strong and sexy' and asked (in vain) hoping to 'connect'. After I replied with a candid description of how I viewed my body I heard no more. (This was before I took up my present exercise regime.)

Don't choose a damn pawn.  Be the rook, at least.  Aim high, land high.

"Carl Jung" can kiss my ass, sorry.  You don't beat pain. You overwhelm it with good.  
You make it go sit in a corner and fret about what it coulda been, if it was more a team player.  You live for every ounce of good.  Because when you slow down the inner traumatic thought crap, (we all do it. It isn't personal), you will notice the good, inching it's way towards you.  

You're "gay"?   Guess what, no one in the big world gives a shit.  So welcome yourself to being who you are.  It isn't a huge mole on your nose or anything.  
Embrace who you are going to be today and tomorrow.  The past is what we shove in the corner with pain. They're not present for the festivities of the now.  

Every day, tell yourself that you are incredible.  I mean it.  It isn't silly.  It works.
Who else will consistently remind you, no matter what?   You build you.

Styxian said:Don't choose a damn pawn.  Be the rook, at least.  Aim high, land high.

"Carl Jung" can kiss my ass, sorry.  You don't beat pain. You overwhelm it with good.  
You make it go sit in a corner and fret about what it coulda been, if it was more a team player.  You live for every ounce of good.  Because when you slow down the inner traumatic thought crap, (we all do it. It isn't personal), you will notice the good, inching it's way towards you.  

You're "gay"?   Guess what, no one in the big world gives a shit.  So welcome yourself to being who you are.  It isn't a huge mole on your nose or anything.  
Embrace who you are going to be today and tomorrow.  The past is what we shove in the corner with pain. They're not present for the festivities of the now.  

Every day, tell yourself that you are incredible.  I mean it.  It isn't silly.  It works.
Who else will consistently remind you, no matter what?   You build you.








I understand that you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it, but I tried to slow down my traumatic thought process and shove the past in the past - not thinking anything, just telling myself things - for thirty years, and it nearly killed me. Physically killed me.

As to your comments about no-one caring that I’m gay, firstly, I didn’t say that I was gay. That’s an understandable assumption on your part, but getting angry at me doesn’t resolve anything, including what made you angry in the first place.

Secondly, if it had been the case that no-one cared about my sexuality, I wouldn’t have almost killed myself when I was a fifteen-year-old child, or degraded myself, or did a lot of things that almost led to my death because I wasn’t allowed to just be who I was becoming.

You recently enjoyed one of my poems, Styxian. I’m really glad you did, I got a lot of positivity from what you said just as I’m getting a bit of negativity now. I wouldn’t have been able to write that poem, where I empathise with another person, if I hadn’t been able to feel good about myself.

my avatar is how I saw myself at the time. I do something similar to Casted Ruans sometimes where I will add or take away colour. to be perfectly honest I haven't really paid much attention to it inna bit

lepperochan said:I haven't really paid much attention to it inna bit



I think that’s how you know it’s the right image for you. You go through a process of trying different things until you don’t have to think about it anymore because it’s comfortable. I might pick my own avatar at some point in the future, I might not. I might leave DU for good, stay forever, get hit by a bus, hit someone else with a bus, whatever, but if I force myself to choose something I’ll just feel bad and then choose something else, feel bad, rinse, repeat.

And for what it’s worth, I think your avatar really suits you, lepp!

I'm not angry at all.   So, huh?  What in hell do you see that would make me angry at what you wrote?  None of it is directed towards me.
I don't even know you.  You seem down.  I offer a boost up. Simple humanitarian assistance.
YOU misinterpreted practically everything I wrote.  

And:
"For my emerging queer identity"...  
Oh, it stopped?  My bad.  So basically you like "queer" things but you're not queer?

   Hey, some of my likes are probably quite feminine.  Am I bothered by it?
Nope, I'd be more bothered by not liking something that truly appeals to me.

So, when you imply that you are something (queer identity) we take it at face value that it is so.  Again, no one gives a shit, as in it isn't a big deal, unless you want to hold it over your own head like a dark cloud.  

I myself am a tall, skinny guy who can't say the alphabet in one singular language, without stuttering or slurring like I'm drunk from ten different foreign liquors.
Do I give a shit?  Nope.  Do my friends, co workers, lovers?  Nope.   It isn't all the time, it's just God's reminder that I'm a human and not his best work.  Lol.  It's a glitch.
Does it truly effect my life?  Nope.

Because only I choose what is a weapon against me.  There are none.
And the same as you should be.  

You chose a pawn as your avatar.  I commenced in talking you up to being a rook, at the least.  You see anger in that?  
Don't misinterpret my courage in life and for quality life as anger.  I am very at peace with my world.  
I sincerely hope that you can feel the same about yours.  Today would be great!

I’m actually not down. Sensing anger in your current responses makes me feel a little down, especially after I tried (and perhaps failed) to be kind and honest in response to a comment you made that had a positive effect on me, but I’m feeling a lot better than I did in the past. I’m feeling happier than I ever have, in fact!

Maybe you’re not angry and maybe I shouldn’t have made that assumption, if it annoyed you then I’m genuinely sorry. But from my perspective at least, your phrasing is commonly associated with anger (“who gives a shit?” “No-one gives a shit”), so yes, I made an assumption based on an observation. The way it looked to me, the way I conceptualised it, is that I was telling you “I am in pain” and you were shouting at me. If that was the wrong way to think about it, we live and learn

To clarify a couple of things that I may have miscommunicated, I didn’t “choose a pawn”. I said “chess piece” (I didn’t use the word pawn) in the context of a joke about how intense my commentary was, to lighten the mood. I don’t see myself as a pawn, or a rook, or a king. I see myself as me, and that’s starting to be enough, with the help of openness from people like yourself.

Secondly, I call myself “queer” to relate my particular experience without inviting too many assumptions. By “queer” I just mean “of a sexual identity that isn’t the majority sexual identity”, which could mean any number of the identities that we legally validate.

I hope you’re well too, Styxian. I look forward to reading some of your poetry.

And here I thought Casted was just being lazy, or had a picture pending!

Anywho, my avatar is both myself and not myself; as it is me but with a photoshopped mask on top. A mask based off of the character 'Phanto' from the game Super Mario Advance, with a more yellow tint because yellow to me signifies humour and playfulness. Barely readable around the edge is a warped/elongated version of the 'laughing man's' quote from the 'Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex' anime.

These point to things that I connected with in my formative years. Plus I believe an avatar on the internet best links into the etymology of avatar: that an avatar can be your godly self made manifest. A poncey way of saying the internet allows you to be whatever you want, so a little arts and crafts helps establish an idea and image. A lot like company representation through icons and logos.

The actual image itself frustrates and intrigues enough people to make them click on avatar, only to be greeted by a previous version! Suiting me enough as a somewhat mysterious individual, where things are not always straight forward! Indeed, my avatar fits into the 'Viddax' idea; the super-ego: what I would like to be rather than simply what I am.

Perhaps putting more effort into poetry, than image, would be more fitting!

Sigh…. Come on lads… let’s just get through one thread without a barney, eh? 😊 Shake hands and move on.

Queers rule. Gays rule. Straights rule. Cats on the back of dolphins with tridents rule. Whatever you like is cool.

@Lepp - Yours has changed a lot over the years in different stages I think. I quite like the current one. It’s arty.

@Viddax - I think you’re the only one I can think of that has had the same avatar since the day dot! Good old pumpkin head 😂

I don’t think we’re having a barney, just an interaction I’ve not had a Barney since the purple dinosaur suit started talking to me, even when I wasn’t in it...

(Do Americans say Barney? … See Cockney rhyming slang… you’re welcome. 😜)

That purple dinosaur was terrifying AF tho. No sir. Gave me a cold sweat thinking about waking up and just seeing that purple face. Nayyyyy lad. 😝

Maybe an empty Barney suit would be a good avatar...

What would that represent tho… fear of dinosaurs? Which is kind of a political statement if you think about it 😉