Thanks! Good guess, but no connection. My username actually stems from Darren Aronofsky's film; I had first seen it right after going through a particularly negative emotional "flare-up", so to speak, and I immediately identified with many elements of the film. Nina's mother acts very much like my own, plus I felt I could relate to Nina's naivete, perfectionism, egocentrism, and high level of self-criticism (the last two traits are MUCH more pronounced when I'm in the middle of a flare-up). After seeing the film together, my boyfriend and I developed our own lingo: when referring to a flare-up (past, impending, its characteristics, etc.), we call it my "black swan"; when referring to normal me, we call that my "white swan". So you could say that my username is a subtle reminder of which "swan" to always try to be.

...though now that I think about it a little more, one could argue that my flare-ups are black swan events for the people around me (if I understand the idea correctly).

This is how I remember it happening (though 20 minutes of hunting around hasn't provided much evidence for this; then again, I allowed myself much more internet time those days): Cleolinda's snarky Twilight posts on livejournal --> audrey_ii's Jacob/Bella fanfic The Movement of the Earth on livejournal --> Luminosity.

Greetings, everyone. My name is Elizabeth, and I am a young adult female beginning to learn how to think for herself. I stumbled across this website right after reading Alicorn's fanfiction Luminosity in the summer of 2010. Due to some personal issues, life in general, and a dead hard drive, I stopped visiting Less Wrong up until a couple of weeks ago.

I found Less Wrong attractive because of its being a free resource on learning the art of rationality. Borderline Personality Disorder runs in my family, and so my hypothesis is that I personally am drawn to things like LW partly in order to "self-medicate" after years of chaos, unpredictability, and irrationality. Chances are likely that I will be very quiet on this website for several months at least: for one thing, that is my usual modis operandi when learning about and researching a topic; for another, it would seem that I need to thoroughly acquaint myself with the sequences and other such work in order to fully understand and be able to contribute to more recent posts/discussions.