helen-louise's journal

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 "won" NaNoWriMo in 2012. I didn’t have a novel. I had less than half of a novel. It turned out that the story I needed to write was somewhere around 125k words.

I still haven’t finished it. No time, no energy, no motivation. I got to the part of the story where the main character has PTSD and it was simply too triggering to carry on.

I tried to do NaNoWriMo again in 2015. Didn’t get more than 16k words in. Managed to add one chapter to that novel.

This year, I am not at university for bureaucratic reasons, and I have nothing to do in November other than manage my complex chronic illnesses, play Elder Scrolls Online, spend time with my Bear, talk to my long-distance partners, and write. My aim for the month is to write as much as I can. I’m not going to work on the novel until I’ve written some of the short stories that have been in my head for years.

So far, I have written on two days out of six. I know that I won’t manage 50,000 words. But I would be delighted with 10,000. I am currently working on a short story which I began in December 2012, worked on again in December 2014, and haven’t touched since. Getting that story finished would be great. Getting that story finished and starting another would be awesome. Getting multiple stories finished would be absolutely fantastic.

In the words of Gregor Vorbarra, "Let's see what happens."

I haven't been feeling very successful in my life lately. I came back from Canada and collapsed in a heap of exhaustion and/or depression. No idea which. Possibly both. The thing is, I have an overwhelming feeling that it's depression due to physical health problems rather than my mental health screwing up.

I didn't mention this earlier, but I had my thyroxine dose increased just before I went away. My TSH level was 4.something (I wrote it down, but I've no idea where I put the piece of paper - 4.7, perhaps?). It was high enough to be in the range where even the NHS would advise another test in 6 months if I wasn't already on thyroxine. In this situation it was a clear indicator that my thyroxine dose wasn't high enough any more. Still, I was only on 25 mg, which is nothing.

I have a feeling that when my thyroid is working less awfully, I will feel better in all sorts of ways. Not sleeping for more than 12 hours a day would be nice. I've had a few days where I've slept for 10 hours, woken up, eaten something and taken meds, and then gone back to sleep for another 6 hours. I've had a few more days where I've slept for 4 hours and then woken up wide awake and been entirely unable to get back to sleep.

I have done NOTHING with regards to College work. I have done NO WRITING for pleasure since 6th January, except that today I managed to produce 900 words, of which about 700 are good. I owe BiCon an Access Report and am actually rather grateful that Jennifer has been on my back about it, because it shows that the BiCon team takes access seriously.

I haven't read any books in weeks. I've read some fanfiction online, and also some short fiction by Sarah Monette, who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors. And also this by Elizabeth Bear (which made me cry my eyes out) and this by Marissa Lingen, courtesy of elisem who makes necklaces which people write about.

About all I've done constructively lately is play Animal Crossing: New Leaf. And, this weekend, I took part in the beta of The Elder Scrolls: Online, which was actually about 100 x more fun than it should have been considering it's (a) an MMO with a monthly fee and (b) messing up some of the established Lore of the universe. Today I did a small amount of posting of information to the UESP wiki. But in general, life has been relentlessly awful and exhausting, even though nothing much has happened.

For anyone who's wondering what the characters in my fiction look like, ( look behind the lj-cut )

Yes, Alix is very pale and very girly. He's supposed to be. Although they're both human, they're different races of human within the Elder Scrolls universe. Martin is an Imperial - the dominant race in Cyrodiil, average height and weight, light brown/olive skin, brown or black hair, based on Roman culture. He's also the heir to the throne, but he goes around in the same beaten-up robe that he wore when he was just a priest: partly in rebellion, partly in denial.

Alix is a Breton - short and slender, pale skin, red or brown-haired, part-elven (which is especially apparent from his ears), high degree of magical ability. He wears leather armour most of the time even though he's a mage, because it offers more protection than mages' robes. (As well as causing slightly fewer people to mistake him for being female).

The artist who drew this picture, Memai, tends to draw Breton men as fairly androgynous, which fits Alix very well. Here's her commissions page, if you're interested - very reasonable prices compared to what a lot of fan artists charge!

I love the expressions in their eyes. Alix is all hopeful: "Hi love, I just returned from a mission, would you like to come to bed with me? Now?", and Martin's saying "oh hell, I was concentrating on some work, but now I've forgotten what I was doing and ... oh!". Hehehe.

So I had the choice of three different End of the World barnights/birthday drinkies/Christmas drinkies parties tonight, at three different pubs in central London. And instead I am at home ragingly ill with a cold. Probably caught from going to see The Wildhearts on Monday and freezing my tits off on the way home (despite a pair of leggings, a pair of jeans over the top, legwarmers over those, thick winter boots, a mesh top, two t-shirts, a thick hoody, a big winter's coat, a scarf, hat, and gloves - and then borrowing one of Richard's hoodies as a blanket!).

It's the sort of relatively low-level infection that, if I were otherwise healthy, I probably wouldn't be bothered by at all. As it is, it's enough to turn me from "coping" to "non-functional". Sigh. Haven't been able to get my blood test done because too ill to leave the house. Have to do that next week.

In other news, I finally like the story that I've been writing with Someone who can make themselves known if they want to. It doesn't suck anywhere near as much as it did last night, since he fixed the bits that weren't working and just generally improved the dialogue and characterisation. I made a couple of minor corrections today, as soon as my brain was working, and yeah. It's done.

( Mildly NSFW, though not very. )

Update: Eeee! Someone on the Skyrim Kink Meme specifically requested me to write her Not Porn! Snuggly friendship fic between my two characters before they were lovers! Eeee! I'm famous! :D

Hmm. I've caught myself overusing a word, and I'm not sure how to avoid it. Have a snippet from my current work in progress:

Despite wanting to be respectful, I couldn't let that comment slide. "So worried that you didn't even see that he was injured?"

"What?" gasped Jauffre. "Injured? Is he all right?"

"He lost quite a bit of blood, but he should be fine in the morning." I didn't add "No thanks to you". That would have been childish.

"I didn't even notice..." The monk was now quite concerned. Unwilling to torment an elderly man, even one who irritated me,...

Yes, I have somehow used the word "even" three times in a very short passage.

Are there any synonyms for "even" in this context? I did look in a thesaurus, but couldn't find anything... since I'm not even sure (ho ho) what part of speech "even" is in this context. Is it the adverb meaning "not merely this but also"? I think it is, but the synonyms given for that are all useless: indeed, nay, truly, verily, yea.

Any ideas? Go ahead and rip the passage to shreds, I'll try not to be upset. This is only the first draft anyway and I'm not hugely married to these words yet.

Brilliant. I have perverted my copy of OpenOffice with my Dubious Fanfic. Now when I type the word "but", it merrily suggests "buttocks".

I haven't been writing in my journal because I've been writing (crappy) fiction instead. Apparently, I entirely lack the spoons to write coherently about my life, or to be social with friends; but I can write coherent fanfic. Go figure. I miss being extroverted whenever I flip into introversion, since it's so alien to my "normal" state, but it rarely lasts more than a few months.

Hardly anyone has apparently read my last dose of crappy fiction, so here is a link to the livejournal post that explains it. Don't worry about not being familiar with the universe, I've written it in such a way that it should be obvious who the good guys and bad guys are, and why exactly Martin spends the whole game desperately needing A Nice Cup Of Tea and A Cuddle. None of which he gets, by the way. Just more and more books.

If you're not into even vaguely erotic fiction, or if you are but are traumatised by reading it when it's been written by someone you know, or if the canon trauma and dubcon would be upsetting, then you have an excuse. I just can't believe that applies to all the people who still read my livejournal except for 3.

Still rather unwell in the head. Have been to the doctor, who suggested increasing the dose of venlafaxine very slightly, and taking a "drowsy" antidepressant to help with the sleep problems. I'm not sure if it's helping, but I do seem to have slept slightly better the past couple of days.

( Rudery )

I'm reading bad fanfic. Currently laughing my arse off at the following phrase that appears in each of the first 8 chapters...

THIS IS A YAIO which means… BOY/BOY. May also have girl/girl buy most likely not.

A YAIO!

I know some people have spelling difficulties and/or typing difficulties for whatever reason - but surely, surely you'd use a spellchecker and/or get a friend to read over a story before posting it to a fanfiction site? Wouldn't you? Especially the most important words, like characters' names and Japanese terminology... I can only assume she was writing the story on a Sony Vaio and got confused.

Mind you, it's not as bad as the story I read a few minutes ago that was written by someone who has "a BS in English, with minors in Professional Writing and Art", who didn't know the difference between accept & except, insure & ensure, and other such primary school howlers...

Any minute now I'm going to stop this and do something more useful (like feed myself or clean the kitchen), but the horror is too compelling.

Here is some deliberate horror, from weepingcock. Of course, not even vaguely safe for work.

I also recommend the past week or so's Questionable Content (read from 1786 to 1793), and then read Marigold's horrible fanfic for yourselves. Argh! (Though I genuinely approve of "Let's get married, because wizards believe in Equal Rights and anybody can marry anybody else").

Things that are made of win: excellent curry last night.

Things that are made of lose: the delicious curry disagreed with my digestive system and I've spent the past 20 hours ( with digestive TMI )

I suspect stealth dairy. Bah.

So this post isn't entirely about my intestines, I shall mention that clawfoot is doing a project and needs people to write extremely short stories. That will be orders of magnitude more pleasant!