helen-louise's journal

Today, I find myself searching for an old livejournal userpic that some people had. It was animated and cycled through six pictures. Every other one was "Tea". It described various situations in which a stereotypical stoic British person would react by offering and drinking a cup of tea. The last one was something along the lines of "City blown up by terrorists? TEA!"

It probably dated from the 7/7/2005 London bombings, which was about a century ago in internet years, which is probably also why I can't find it on any of the journals which I thought had it. Still, if anyone knows what I'm talking about - and even better, if anyone still has the image - please post it for me!

In other news, it has been a decade in internet years since my last post here. I am currently significantly less ill than I have been for several months, but still nowhere near well. My mental health seems to have improved (in January? while housebound?!) but my chronic fatigue continues to be beyond awful. I seem to be having one or two days a week in which getting out of bed even to stagger to my computer desk doesn't seem to be possible. Hopefully somewhat on the mend though.

Also I need to cycle my own DJ userpics, very unhappy with the current selection!

I am once again being terrible at keeping up with Dreamwidth. Last time I was here, I was all "hey, come join me on Discord or Skype, I'll PM you there"... and that lasted about a week. I have good thoughts for all of you, I'm just SO FUCKING TIRED.

Well. It is allegedly Christmas in ten days - OMG I typed "ten years" the first time, and that's how I actually feel :D It is far too late for any Christmas cards that I send to get to anyone remotely on time, but that isn't my purpose for sending them. The purpose is to prove that my imaginary internet friends are real. Therefore they will be physical cards, and you will get them sometime in the next six weeks, when spoons and covid-hit postal services can cope.

Don't worry about the cost. Don't worry about my spoons - I'll send them when I can. Just tell me if you want a card, who I should address it to, and where you live. Offer restricted to people I actually know.



I normally have a question with comments like My address is: "The same as it has been for many years so I'm absolutely positive you have it", but let's just assume that I don't have ANYONE's address to hand right now. All comments are screened so you can include addresses safely.

My health has been slowly breaking down over the past few months, and I don't just mean my mental health.

Just before the coronavirus really kicked in, I went to the US to attend PAX East and visit Grant. The convention itself was great, met several important friends, and hung out with some of the Elder Scrolls Online devs. Again. Given that I work for UESP they already have a pretty good idea who we are.



( Cut for more pictures. )

One of the important friends (Tatanko) drove Grant and I 8 hours across country to State College, PA, where he lives, from whence we hired a car and drove another 2 hours to Grant's grandmother's funeral. Which was fine. His dad was really pleased to see me/us. His mum and brother were a bit more surprised, but I think ultimately glad we made the effort, and I don't really care about anyone else.

Then I got home and had to go straight into isolation, because although I didn't get a letter telling me I had to, I take one of the inhalers on Asthma UK's list of "medications which imply your asthma is bad enough that you should be shielding". So over the past however many weeks since I got home, I have been out of the house 4 times - and 2 of those were for doctor's appointments. I am very lucky to have a Richard because I would have literally starved by now without his loving cooking.

Also... well, this story is long, and needs some privacy.

I did not go to Bicon for various reasons. So why do I have con crud? My throat is as itchy and scratchy as if I'd been snogging a whole load of interesting strangers with all sorts of exciting bacteria living on their tonsils, and I am as tired as if I'd spent the whole weekend partying instead of sleeping. Hmmm.

Fortunately, it doesn't actually seem to be oral thrush from my new inhaler. Pretty sure it's just some sort of viral or bacterial infection.

Though I am curious about how I could have caught a viral or bacterial infection when I have literally not left the house in a week. Richard's been in and out, but he hasn't been unwell for at least several weeks. I suppose he could theoretically be a disease vector without getting ill himself, but it seems unlikely.

We went to see Detective Pikachu last night. I wrote about it on Tumblr, which seems to be the appropriate place for fandom stuff.

It's set in Ryme City, and was filmed in London. You can SEE London under the CGI and it's amazing. But there is also a very important Content Warning for the plot, which can also be read on Dreamwidth.

Frustrating as all hell, because the movie otherwise does diversity very well.

When I am in Rochester with Grant, we go to Community Christian Church which is, in my words, a "hippy church". The first thing you see when you enter the building is a sign saying "Refugees Welcome", and they actually mean it. The minister is a gay man married to his husband, some of the lay people who help with the services are visibly queer, and it's genuinely welcoming. Even though I'm not a Christian, I still feel more at home there than in the UU church we went to once, where people came up to us afterwards and enquired as to whether the service was the strangest thing we'd ever been to. The idea that we might be Unitarians already didn't seem to occur to anyone. (There is a second UU church in Rochester, and I might try it sometime, but I don't feel any particular need to.)

Some people from the church work for a charity which helps children who may have been abused (TW: site talks about child abuse). When they come for assessment, they can choose a plush friend to help them through the process. Apparently they get through 4 to 6 plushies per day, which is a lot of new referrals. One of these people, Bob, died recently and in his honour, the church decided to collect Bears for Bivona because it was alliterative.

When we arrived and saw a giant box of bears (and other soft toys), I decided to go through the box and hug them all. So I did so after the service. When people asked what I was doing, I explained that you can't just buy a teddy bear from a shop, stick it in a collection box, and expect it to be able to help a hurt child. You have to give it some love first. And Rev Steven considered this and decided to put the teddy bears out in church the following week.


(click through for bigger version)

So the bears sat through the church service and were filled with the love of the congregation. They were pointed out during the "share with children" part of the service and each child went to hug one of them. Then the bears were blessed so that they could bring joy to their new owners. If you get the impression that this is not exactly a standard, mainstream sort of church - you'd be right!

Also the sermon featured Banksy art. (Did you realise that Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant?)

( More bear details. )

I finally came up with a chemistry pun to explain how my gender works.

I've felt for a while like the cis/trans binary doesn't work for me. Despite being female assigned at birth, I'm not really cis because some of the time I don't feel female. But nor do I feel like I can call myself trans because I'm happy with my body at other times.

So I'm cis but prone to radical isomerisation.

It works because cis/trans isomerisation is a radical mechanism, but also because "radical" has a meaning in English outside of science.

Gender Census 2019
A survey for everyone who doesn't fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy". Do the survey if that fits you, and pass it on to your friends.

I don't talk about my gender a lot on my journal. I've identified as bigender for - goodness - at least since September 2005, according to this old livejournal post. I explicitly came out and defined it in a footnote to a post in April 2017.

*I am bigender rather than non-binary or genderqueer, so I am female except when I'm not. I have somewhere between a few hours and a few days of raging gender dysphoria per month where my entire body is Wrong, and the (actually bi but scared of women) gay man in the back of my head comes out. And the rest of the time it's just fine and I want to be addressed as "she/her" and recognised as A Female Geek Doing Nerdy Things. The conclusion I've come to is that my social and political gender is female, but my sexual gender is male.

Lately, the raging gender dysphoria has been a lot more than "between a few hours and a few days" per month, and more like literally half the month or more. So I probably should talk about it a bit. ( Read more... )

I wrote a really political story. I don't think it needs any knowledge of Ace Attorney, except perhaps the understanding that yes, this guy really is both a rock star and a prosecutor.

Why the Gavinners Aren't Playing at Pride This Year

Rock star Klavier Gavin is interviewed by his friend Jenny Lizst, a music journalist. She asks him about a rumour that the Gavinners wanted to play at the Los Angeles Pride Festival but were turned down. Klavier answers, but only off-the-record.

Set in 2024, during the Seven Year Gap. Inspired by real-life American and world politics in 2019.

Featuring awesome Gavinners OCs, bisexual erasure, mistrust of the police, young Klavier not understanding his own privilege, and a cheery discussion of how at least half the band would have been killed during the Holocaust. Also much gratuitous German.

(The German has not yet been checked by an actual German speaker so might be wrong.)

I need it!

I need to WORK for my DEGREE because I haven't done any in ages.
But all I feel like doing is working on my story.

Argh!