One UFO less!
Nov. 9th, 2022 06:46 pmBut today I actually finished something! A hat made with reflective yarn, which I intend to wear at the stables to be more visible on winter evenings.

There have been some things happening in my life lately that I don't yet feel up to talking about. So instead I'll talk about the video being posted around facebook and other places, where a pediatrician claims that letting trans children receive puberty blockers is tantamount to child abuse.
I have very strong opinions about this. Namely, that those claims are a crock of bullshit. So when a net friend posted and asked about it, I ended up writing a fairly long screed about it. Here it is, somewhat amended to work as a blog post instead of a facebook comment.In Februari 2000, cdybedahl and I became a couple. We
ssaid from the first that we'd try to take things slow and
wouldn't even discuss marriage until we'd been together for at
least a year.
This year was up the day before the first day of Redemption, a fan convention for fans of Blake's 7 and Babylon 5. Calle and I went to England a couple of days early, to spend our 1-year anniversary in London. And having been together for a year, and still not only being in love but also liking and loving eachother (not necessarily the same thing!), we decided that getting married was definitely on the cards. We went out, looked for rings but didn't find any (we did see some that were bronze, from around the 5th century if I recall correctly, but they didn't fit well and it would be hard to get matching wedding rings). So we settled for having a nice dinner and the next day we went and bought plain gold bands at the first jeweller's shop we found, and then we got on the train to go to Redemption.
Calle had been a fan of both B7 and B5 for longer than I had, and knew a lot of people there. Nine years earlier, in November of 1992, he'd started a mailinglist on the Lysator systems, and a lot of list (or Lyst, as it was called) members were at the convention. I'd joined the list, but I never wrote much - still, people were nice and welcoming and we had a good time at the convention. And there was a bit of overlap with Terry Pratchett fandom, where I knew far more people, so I wasn't completely out of the loop.
Calle and I got to hold an interview with Tanith Lee, which was great fun, and we spent an evening with her, her husband and Damien London, who'd planed the Centauri Regent in Babylon 5, and who told us lots of stories from Hollywood. Those are my best memories from that convention.
We came home, and we had work and life and stuff, and didn't have the time to go to conventions, but kept on the mailing list, and kept more or less in touch with some people via Livejournal, later Dreamwidth, and Facebook for those that were there. And time passed. This year it'ss 25 years since the Lyst got started. And some people thought it'd be nice to meet - and Calle and I felt that a bit of time off would be nice, so we took Friday and Monday off and yesterday we travelled to London.
Today, we met at a pub at King's Cross, with about 10 or 12 other fandom members. I felt a bit insecure at first, because I hadn't seen these people in 15 years and I was never that active on the Lyst. But somehow when we all started chatting, it felt just like it had back at that convention - that these are my sort of people, that we could just slip back into fandom and friendliness and have a good time, even though we hadn't spoken in years.
We stayed for over four hours, and only split up because some people had a few hours travel to get back home, and others (such as myself) got very tired from being sociable even with people we like and enjoy hanging out with.
All this is just to get to this conclusion: B7 fans are nice, and I miss being a part of fandom, and I had a great time today. That is all.
And then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and started writing a follow-up, and now I'm 17.800 words into the story and on chapter 12. I do know where it's heading, but it's a bit harder to get time to write now I'm back at work, with a new client, and also well enough to go riding again. But the train rides to and from work are prime writing time.
So that's the kind of fun I'm having right now - thinking up jokes for Nanny Ogg to tell Our Heroes. It's a lot of fun, actually.
Today I got another glimpse of brilliance, this time from Carolyn Hax. A young woman asks how to handle her relationship with her boyfriend, who is apparently perfect in every way except that he uses her past sexual relationships to bludgeon her into doing things she's not comfortable with. In the midst of advice (which is a more sensitively phrased version of "run, fast and far, and hope never to see him again"), there was this paragraph:
When I read “he loves to throw things in my face” exactly one sentence after, “I’ve never had a better friend in the world,” I just want to cry for how low you’ve set your friendship bar.
I wish I'd understood this when I was much younger. I had friends as well as "lovers" who hurt me so badly, and I couldn't untangle my desire for them to be good from the fact that they actually weren't any good.
I often like Carolyn Hax. This time I love her a little. And the woman who asked - I love her a lot, and wish I could just download all the stuff I've had 20 more years than her to learn, so she wouldn't have to go at it the hard way. Which, when at their best, Captain Awkward and Carolyn Hax are trying to do, and that is why I go back and read their stuff.