I have to say my internet impression of her was trounced by the real thing.
I've known dolphin for a while, so I know that she has many facets to her personality, but the image that most often comes to mind when I summon dolphin's essence into my mind's eye is of her looking so relaxed and comfy and introverted just laying there in her bed with her webcam, half the time with little snowflakes falling or laughing at some goofy joke I make. As far as her writing goes, the most distinct bit of it is her imagery-rich rants about beauty and injustice and the search for some truth in humanity.
So with these factors in mind, I actually had considered her IEI for some time now; I just didn't have enough direct interaction with her to see her true self shine through in IRL mode, because she's generally very quiet while on cam. My best friend is an Se-SEE, and I just didn't see anything remotely like his touchy Fi boundaries or crazy Se antics and flailing; I saw quiet, romantic, and introspective, and had no solid RL-esque impressions to contradict this.
Enter five days ago. I drive my very patient girlfriend 3 hours to the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Washington to meet up with Amanda at this town in the middle of the fucking desert that can only be the evolved form of one of those one-road towns you see in Clint Eastwood flicks. We meet up outside a Barnes and Noble. She is more...formal than I had anticipated; for a second she reminds me a bit of Kim, and I had to do a double take, lol. We hug, go inside to pee, and then pack into her car to find somewhere to eat. I don't really think about it and go to sit in the front seat, and dolphin suggests that my girlfriend sit up there with her. I feel like a dope but realize that it makes sense because we would be kind of excluding her. derp...
Dolphin is a very casual driver. She has a Marla Singer-esque carefree jadedness; she pulled out in front of someone while crossing traffic, not in a dangerous way but I felt a little indignation because it was the kind of thing that would have pissed me off if it happened to me, but I had to laugh at the fact that she barely looked twice to know she would be fine and didn't think much of cutting it close. I'll do the same thing but I kind of speed up and get out of the way, which is unnecessary because the other driver is already probably going to slow down, but I guess it feels a little more...ingenuous to me that way. Plus it gives the grannies something to point their finger at and go "GODDAMN KIDS." Like that scene in scarface: "You need people like me;" etc. Dolphin doesn't give a fuck, lol.
When we were sitting at the restaurant, dolphin was always the first to notice the waiter, possibly because he came from behind me half the time, but I just noticed that she was always very responsive and aware. She knew he was going to ask her to order first, and she just went right for it; it wasn't entitlement, just kind of...moving things along. We were getting tacos a la carte so she ordered for all of us.
So we ate and went back to Barnes and Nobles because while we were in line for monies for weeds, tarot cards came up somehow and dolphin expressed interest in a reading. I love reading tarot cards because I have a way of doing them that is kind of different but that I sort of want to spread because it's not only less "WOOOOO THE MYSTICAL TAROT" bullshit and more honest about the methods in a way that increases the likelihood of their being useful and providing real insight, but is also really awesome because it gives people more space to talk about themselves and inject their own lives into the cards instead of just having their fucking palm read. I like to use the cards as a kind of advanced Rorschach test. We read dolphin's cards and it turns out she's a hustler but needs to get laid. But it's ok because she's got the king of wands in her future, which, well, speaks for itself. We had a very natural feedback going about her interpretations of the cards; sometimes we had to go back and forth a bit to find terms that made sense to us both, but the actual exchange of ideas was very easy and we understood each other pretty easily.
My overall impression of dolphin is that she is MUCH more outgoing in real life than she is on the forum. She is quick to react and fun to be around. She is also somewhat more conservative in her self-expression, IMO, and doesn't always "come out" when called for like a Beta, but I could tell that we connected on the same perceptual level; we saw things in generally the same light, even if in different terms. I can easily see her as a Gamma, she has a rough-and-tumble streak to her but is more conservative at heart, not in an instinctually coy way that would make me think Alpha or Delta, but more like she would simply tire of antics; the crazier things she does seem to be when she gets a bit...swept up by her Beta friends :P and I'm sure she will be less coax-able as she gets older, but will always want at least a little bit of thrill in her life. I think SEE-Fi is a perfect typing for her, which is all the more solidified in my mind by the fact that it was a typing that I couldn't really take seriously until I met her.
FEAST

