I am back!

In case you are reading this on a feed and you can’t tell who posted it, this is Elizabeth from the blog formerly known as Shades of Gray.

Henceforth, this blog will be called Prismatic Entanglements. The domain has changed to prismaticentanglements.com. My blog-related email address has also changed to prismatic [dot] entanglements, still at gmail.com.

Gray doesn’t suit me much anymore. I no longer identify as gray-ace, and there have been several confusions over the years with people choosing the same name as my admittedly uncreative old moniker (the most irksome of which, of course, has been a frightening work that originated as Twilight fanfiction). Had I known that this blog would last so many years, I would have put a little more thought into naming it.

The other day, I saw the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. It filled the entire sky unbroken, with such distinct colors that even the broad band of violet, so often subsumed in the backdrop of clouds, stood out against the darkness behind it. There’s probably a metaphor in that. I wanted to pick a new name that would evoke that sense of color and light, and nothing fit better than a prism. The way that it refracts, bending and splitting light to show its constituent spectrum—that’s the sort of thing I aim to do with cultural assumptions. I want my experiences to serve as a sort of prism for my readers, so that they might come away from it understanding something that they didn’t before.

Plus, it’s a totally nonspiritual, non-religious metaphor. Rather than referencing the rainbow itself, I would rather reference the reason behind its wondrous appearance.

Searching for a second word was much harder, but I had this image in my mind of an intricately spun web of connections, each strand intersecting, inextricable from the rest. They all vibrate together in the breeze. The web is sticky and strong, so much stronger than the delicate filaments would seem, and the spider is good at repairing it, but the struggling of one can still be felt throughout.

My focus is widening. Asexuality is not my whole life—not even remotely. In fact, these days it’s something that I don’t (usually) have much cause to stress about in my day-to-day life, since I’ve been partnered to someone for the past five years who not only doesn’t mind it but actually tells me she’s glad that I’m ace. Maybe I’ll get her to write a guest post.

I don’t promise to write with any particular frequency. I’m still working on things behind the scenes here, and that will take considerable time. But at least I’m working on making this a space that I feel comfortable writing in again.

I have a backlog of 85 comments stuck in moderation, and I will go through them at some point, so please be patient. If you emailed me during my hiatus, I’m sorry that I didn’t get around to responding. I don’t intend to spend that much time catching up, since frankly, I doubt my response would be relevant anymore.

Please post any really awesome links or news that I should know about from the past few years!