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Nov. 25th, 2024 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenMore questions!
parauque asked: Why is your name raven?
Because, friend, dear friend, I am a teenage goth deep down in my deep, dark, teenage soul. Back when I actually was a newly-teenage goth making my first LiveJournal, it was 2001, and "raven" was my first choice. Ominous! Goth! Literary! Etc! Perfect.
...it was taken. So I decided I could be a cool lone wolf but only not a wolf I could be a lone raven instead. And that's what my principal LJ was, for all those years: "loneraven", even as I grew up and out from under it. As social media became a thing in other places of the internet, I got a bit of a sense of humour about my teenage goth handle and turned "lone raven" into "single crow" - which is what I usually am, everywhere on the internet including bluesky and AO3 and twitter-as-was. If I have an internet name, that's it. But when I migrated my LJ over to Dreamwidth a few years back it didn't feel right. Instead,raven: as a wee kiss for my teenage goth self, almost a quarter-century later. I like seeing it. hi, dear heart, I'm glad I was you. <3
mssilverstar asked: What, if anything, can you say about maritime anything?
I can say very little about maritime anything, except s80 of the Merchant Shipping Act. I get seasick on small, flat bodies of water.
Oh, wait, the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, how about that! During its drafting and passage, the team of parliamentary counsel and drafting lawyers working on it kept a hand-annotated copy (I say hand-annotated; you could only mark things up by hand back then) that they added it iteratively during the parliamentary proceedings for the Bill. Detailed, beautiful, handwritten. When the Act passed, parliamentary counsel put it carefully away, in case someone in the future might find it useful.
Someone did, a hundred and fifteen years later, when some of my maritime colleagues found it at the back of their legislative nonsense cupboard under a box of Celebrations and some abandoned pairs of shoes, and in so doing won a hard-contested prize for "Most Arcane Item Found In Office Clearout". The National Archives thought it was a lovely object and wondered gently about the century-long delay in providing it. The department sent its apologies for its tardiness in this regard.
longwhitecoats asked: What, if anything, makes you feel gender euphoria?
A good an excuse as any to talk about this, I would say! I am in a new gender place these days. As you and most others reading know, a few years ago I decided I was done with cis womanhood; it had never fit, had never felt right, and while I wasn't moved towards physical transition, I knew I'd want documentary change if possible, and in the meantime please could I be they/them in English.
Quite a few years on I remain reasonably content with that. But it's more complicated, somehow (isn't it always?). I've been having a queer crisis of a sort. I was out as bi from earliest teenagehood; I always knew I liked men and women both. It turns out that it's man and women both. Probably; I mean, there are a lot of men in the world and who knows them all. But the sum of it is, I'm a lesbian. A bi lesbian, I've been saying, with sympathy for past me who hated the term so much but still: accurate. Bi in the sense I have been with men, I still am with one, and this is a bi4bi household, anyway, A's bisexuality is of more recent provenance but does make some of our relationship make sense in retrospect. But I only really feel right under the word lesbian, now. I've been dating a bit, bi women and lesbians both, and all it's done is emphasise it. Lesbians are a tonne of drama and I still want them.
This is a long preamble to: lesbian implies some kind of womanhood, doesn't it? And I find I feel okay with that; even good with it. Perhaps, to go with bi lesbian, I can be a nonbinary lesbian, or a nonbinary woman; I don't know if it matters, but I find it's nice to inhabit womanhood when it feels like I've been away for a while and have chosen it. I am, and have always been, femme; this is something in addition.
Gender euphoria, then, your actual question! I'm in a place where femme is right, but artful femme: chosen femme. So, as is the way for me, that comes out in being even-more-than-usual obsessive about clothes. I got a £20 dress at the the Traidcraft charity warehouse in Hackney - the tags are cut out but I think it's a piece by Urban Renewal, and it's this green floral chiffon overlay thing with full lining, halterneck and sewn-in boning. It fits me like it was made for me. I think the gender euphoria comes from that perfect fit. It's such an incredibly femme confection - chiffon! flowers! - but wearing it doesn't feel like, oh you could be beautiful; you could be a real woman. Its bones follow my bones. It follows the lines of the body I really have. Is that gender euphoria? I don't know, but it feels like it. I'm seeing it a lot with my clothes, recently; typically I don't buy or wear bras, and going to M&S to look at racks and racks of something I'm supposed to like and want, but don't, hasn't sat nicely with me. But I got a couple from Traidcraft and a few off Vinted recently. Measured in centimetres. Pretty, perfect fit. It's the fit, I think, and I think there's also a bit about capitalism in there. These things have not been sold to me in packages and bullshit women's sizing. They're things I went out and found myself and knew they would fit my body because I measured my body in centimetres.
(Also, the Urban Renewal dress is fancy but I've been wearing it styled down with cycling shorts and butch goth boots, and butch-and-femme together is my one-way ticket to gender euphoria but I just mistyped it as "bitch-and-femme" and I think maybe I just found an even quicker route.)
sewn asked What's your experience with (hypo)manic episodes, do you feel them coming on or do you only see it afterwards?
OH FRIEND FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK. When you posted this I hadn't been able to sleep till 4am for four nights in a row, and I just couldn't understand WHY.
God, aren't we funny. All of us. In answer: I don't see them coming, and it always takes me a while to realise they're here, but I do usually spot it before they go away. I have a reasonably traditional type of (hypo)mania - I'm awake, all the time! and I don't wanna eat! and sometimes I want to write a lot of fiction!! (though not always, which is disappointing) and also everyone annoys me! And I always find it vaguely humiliating, but there's that thing we do, when we talk. Where you know what you're thinking, and how it connects to thing 2 and then thing 3, but you never said thing 2 out loud because you're just thinking so quickly, and the person you're with is staring at you funny because from their perspective your brain is skipping from thing to thing with nothing in between. Sigh.
And you also asked: What is your favourite medication, and why is it lamotrigine?? (:D)
Heeeee you're not wrong. Actually, what fucking kills me these days is that cluster has ruined my bipolar control. All that time, carefully establishing my levels, titrating up and down, discovering that, as you say, lovely lovely lamotrigine is the dream, and now--eh. All my bipolar meds are cluster meds too, so they've been fussed with and raised and forgotten about, and who gives a damn about my mental health these days anyway, right? I tend to treat lamotrigine like vitamins at the moment - I know some amount is good, I guess I'll take a couple of tablets today? Is that good? Who knows??
Oh, this may amuse you - I'm still tending manic on 1000g/day of lithium carbonate. WHO DOES THAT. WHOSE BRAIN IS THAT BROKEN. we just don't know. But, no, you're right, lamotrigine is my favourite, it's everyone's favourite, they should build a statue of it, I've no doubt it is still keeping my bipolar under control even now I'm its crazy ex-girlfriend who's mean to it.
parauque asked: Why is your name raven?Because, friend, dear friend, I am a teenage goth deep down in my deep, dark, teenage soul. Back when I actually was a newly-teenage goth making my first LiveJournal, it was 2001, and "raven" was my first choice. Ominous! Goth! Literary! Etc! Perfect.
...it was taken. So I decided I could be a cool lone wolf but only not a wolf I could be a lone raven instead. And that's what my principal LJ was, for all those years: "loneraven", even as I grew up and out from under it. As social media became a thing in other places of the internet, I got a bit of a sense of humour about my teenage goth handle and turned "lone raven" into "single crow" - which is what I usually am, everywhere on the internet including bluesky and AO3 and twitter-as-was. If I have an internet name, that's it. But when I migrated my LJ over to Dreamwidth a few years back it didn't feel right. Instead,
raven: as a wee kiss for my teenage goth self, almost a quarter-century later. I like seeing it. hi, dear heart, I'm glad I was you. <3mssilverstar asked: What, if anything, can you say about maritime anything?I can say very little about maritime anything, except s80 of the Merchant Shipping Act. I get seasick on small, flat bodies of water.
Oh, wait, the Merchant Shipping Act 1906, how about that! During its drafting and passage, the team of parliamentary counsel and drafting lawyers working on it kept a hand-annotated copy (I say hand-annotated; you could only mark things up by hand back then) that they added it iteratively during the parliamentary proceedings for the Bill. Detailed, beautiful, handwritten. When the Act passed, parliamentary counsel put it carefully away, in case someone in the future might find it useful.
Someone did, a hundred and fifteen years later, when some of my maritime colleagues found it at the back of their legislative nonsense cupboard under a box of Celebrations and some abandoned pairs of shoes, and in so doing won a hard-contested prize for "Most Arcane Item Found In Office Clearout". The National Archives thought it was a lovely object and wondered gently about the century-long delay in providing it. The department sent its apologies for its tardiness in this regard.
longwhitecoats asked: What, if anything, makes you feel gender euphoria?A good an excuse as any to talk about this, I would say! I am in a new gender place these days. As you and most others reading know, a few years ago I decided I was done with cis womanhood; it had never fit, had never felt right, and while I wasn't moved towards physical transition, I knew I'd want documentary change if possible, and in the meantime please could I be they/them in English.
Quite a few years on I remain reasonably content with that. But it's more complicated, somehow (isn't it always?). I've been having a queer crisis of a sort. I was out as bi from earliest teenagehood; I always knew I liked men and women both. It turns out that it's man and women both. Probably; I mean, there are a lot of men in the world and who knows them all. But the sum of it is, I'm a lesbian. A bi lesbian, I've been saying, with sympathy for past me who hated the term so much but still: accurate. Bi in the sense I have been with men, I still am with one, and this is a bi4bi household, anyway, A's bisexuality is of more recent provenance but does make some of our relationship make sense in retrospect. But I only really feel right under the word lesbian, now. I've been dating a bit, bi women and lesbians both, and all it's done is emphasise it. Lesbians are a tonne of drama and I still want them.
This is a long preamble to: lesbian implies some kind of womanhood, doesn't it? And I find I feel okay with that; even good with it. Perhaps, to go with bi lesbian, I can be a nonbinary lesbian, or a nonbinary woman; I don't know if it matters, but I find it's nice to inhabit womanhood when it feels like I've been away for a while and have chosen it. I am, and have always been, femme; this is something in addition.
Gender euphoria, then, your actual question! I'm in a place where femme is right, but artful femme: chosen femme. So, as is the way for me, that comes out in being even-more-than-usual obsessive about clothes. I got a £20 dress at the the Traidcraft charity warehouse in Hackney - the tags are cut out but I think it's a piece by Urban Renewal, and it's this green floral chiffon overlay thing with full lining, halterneck and sewn-in boning. It fits me like it was made for me. I think the gender euphoria comes from that perfect fit. It's such an incredibly femme confection - chiffon! flowers! - but wearing it doesn't feel like, oh you could be beautiful; you could be a real woman. Its bones follow my bones. It follows the lines of the body I really have. Is that gender euphoria? I don't know, but it feels like it. I'm seeing it a lot with my clothes, recently; typically I don't buy or wear bras, and going to M&S to look at racks and racks of something I'm supposed to like and want, but don't, hasn't sat nicely with me. But I got a couple from Traidcraft and a few off Vinted recently. Measured in centimetres. Pretty, perfect fit. It's the fit, I think, and I think there's also a bit about capitalism in there. These things have not been sold to me in packages and bullshit women's sizing. They're things I went out and found myself and knew they would fit my body because I measured my body in centimetres.
(Also, the Urban Renewal dress is fancy but I've been wearing it styled down with cycling shorts and butch goth boots, and butch-and-femme together is my one-way ticket to gender euphoria but I just mistyped it as "bitch-and-femme" and I think maybe I just found an even quicker route.)
sewn asked What's your experience with (hypo)manic episodes, do you feel them coming on or do you only see it afterwards?OH FRIEND FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK. When you posted this I hadn't been able to sleep till 4am for four nights in a row, and I just couldn't understand WHY.
God, aren't we funny. All of us. In answer: I don't see them coming, and it always takes me a while to realise they're here, but I do usually spot it before they go away. I have a reasonably traditional type of (hypo)mania - I'm awake, all the time! and I don't wanna eat! and sometimes I want to write a lot of fiction!! (though not always, which is disappointing) and also everyone annoys me! And I always find it vaguely humiliating, but there's that thing we do, when we talk. Where you know what you're thinking, and how it connects to thing 2 and then thing 3, but you never said thing 2 out loud because you're just thinking so quickly, and the person you're with is staring at you funny because from their perspective your brain is skipping from thing to thing with nothing in between. Sigh.
And you also asked: What is your favourite medication, and why is it lamotrigine?? (:D)
Heeeee you're not wrong. Actually, what fucking kills me these days is that cluster has ruined my bipolar control. All that time, carefully establishing my levels, titrating up and down, discovering that, as you say, lovely lovely lamotrigine is the dream, and now--eh. All my bipolar meds are cluster meds too, so they've been fussed with and raised and forgotten about, and who gives a damn about my mental health these days anyway, right? I tend to treat lamotrigine like vitamins at the moment - I know some amount is good, I guess I'll take a couple of tablets today? Is that good? Who knows??
Oh, this may amuse you - I'm still tending manic on 1000g/day of lithium carbonate. WHO DOES THAT. WHOSE BRAIN IS THAT BROKEN. we just don't know. But, no, you're right, lamotrigine is my favourite, it's everyone's favourite, they should build a statue of it, I've no doubt it is still keeping my bipolar under control even now I'm its crazy ex-girlfriend who's mean to it.
no subject
on 2024-11-25 11:32 pm (UTC)I so so hear you on the intersections of gender + sexuality -- I thought I was a lesbian for a while many years ago, then I met my current partner (the first time we dated) and decided I was bi, and all these years later I'm definitely still bi but I think it's that lesbian part of me that my gender comes from, sometimes. Am I nonbinary? Definitely. Do I also consider myself a butch dyke? Definitely.
Often I think about the moment on the massive road trip my partner and I took (the second time we dated) when he was seeing Fun Home and I arrived at the theater to wait for him in the hall, and the usher took a look at my bi pride hair and my cane and went, "Let me just see if there's a seat in the back." And that's how I got to see the song "Ring of Keys" for the first time, which is about a young girl seeing an older butch lesbian with that modern chatelaine, a carabiner full of keys, and feeling something inside herself spring into blossom. I cried. How wonderful that these other queernesses can travel with us and are never lost. <3
no subject
on 2024-11-25 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 12:07 am (UTC)Honestly, I agree with you - it makes me lucky, not the reverse. I wrote a novel in three months earlier this year, which has needed plenty of editing, but the structure was there.
no subject
on 2024-11-26 12:20 am (UTC)Good to have your answers to these very good questions. <3
no subject
on 2024-11-26 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 03:06 pm (UTC)This makes so much sense to me. I've been on T for 20 years and I've had top surgery and I'm tall by afab standards, so marketed-to-women clothes often don't fit me and make me feel unwelcome in them. But I have a couple of dresses that miraculously do fit me, and when I wear them I don't feel like I'm trying and failing to "dress like a woman," I feel like I am nonbinary me wearing clothes I want to wear.
no subject
on 2024-11-26 10:16 pm (UTC)I imagine it's a hell of a trip, transitioning to a different trans identity after so long in your first! I admire you in how you're managing it.
no subject
on 2024-11-27 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-26 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-11-27 02:32 pm (UTC)Anyway - I like learning about others' experiences and seeing where they mirror mine and where they don't. I find my hypomania has changed over the years (and most likely because of, indeed, medication); I miss the creativity I had, but not the regrettable things I did.
My relationship with lamotrigine is clingy and Serious but also flaky - I do take 200 mg of it like a clockwork while still in bed, it's literally my BAE, but then I also take 50 to 100 mg when I... feel like it? When my brain is all sludgy in the afternoons and I want that clearing up effect.
... wearing it doesn't feel like, oh you could be beautiful; you could be a real woman. Its bones follow my bones. It follows the lines of the body I really have.
Oh! This makes so much sense in a gender context. Thank you for writing out your thoughts.