And what was she, the fairy Melusine?

 I'm back from my summer holidays/bi-annual mental health meltdown, which has left me hideously behind on my friendslist. If you want an explanation of this year, the fact that I finally saw Withnail and I and then went "oh my god, that's the end of my last relationship" and spent large parts of the year asleep would probably do.

Back in the mists of time the lovely recessional wrote this Avatar: The Last Airbender fic for me, as part of the Save Snow's Sanity auction. http://recessional.dreamwidth.org/217813.html 

It has a trigger warning for mental illness, and some other stuff, but it is the Azula who is in my head perfectly, as Marwen is fantastic at writing such things.

I am looking to finish the terrifyingly long arthurian novel this year.

Otherwise, I'm not sure.

How have you guys been?

Dudes,
It is nearly two years since james_is_sorry and I arrived outside seventeen gordon street with a lot of stuff.
And then islandgorilla turned up
And then we realised our lives were clearly being written by Simon Pegg and Jessica Stephenson.

And then the lovely garlicandsapphires came to stay.

And it was legend....
wait for it
(ten bar pause)
darry.

For those who don't know, back then I was a girl, not even sure if James and I were poly yet, we'd only just got engaged and I'd never lived with housemates.
Or outside London. 

The next year was amazing, and deserves to be imortalised in song, and sitcom.

Just to confirm.
I entered a lesbian identified, female identified, newly engaged person who'd had a one night stand for the first time ever, and had just got a job in admin.
I left a married, very poly, man who's view was that "generally, if I like someone more than a certain amount, I'll want to sleep with them"

Arthaus folk, I love you guys. 

This is for you.

 I really hope this isn't appropriative (and do tell me if it is, atrocementheatral ) because I am not French, but it's Bastille day. It's important to me. For the first time in five years I have someone to celebrate it with. I'm happy. 

I have an audition for World Theatre at East 15 tomorrow. I am preparing a speech from Thermidor, on the effects of pretending the Terror was just on the people enforcing it, which should have enough range (I tried doing pieces from "A Number" by Caryl Churchill, but in that play the mood only ever changes between scenes), show some awareness of international theatre, and be from a play about which I know a fair amount. Also, it is not one of Robespierre's speeches, so I'm likely to make some sense.

I also have an interview and a movement audition.

Please, wish me luck or whatever equivalent you have.

Now, I'm off to prepare

I went to confession yesterday. I think it was the first time I'd willingly gone to a catholic sacrament in over two years- confession is the thing that I miss most about being a practising catholic- I never went super regularly, but it's probably the sacrament that means the most to me. And despite my joking, I didn't go because of the rapture, I went because I've been feeling cut off from my deities, and wanted to talk it through with someone.

That was fine. In fact, it was really nice. However, in the couple of minutes I was hanging around the back of the church, I decided to look at the pamphlets at the back of the church- I was hoping to find something about one of the Saints I find important, or contemplative prayer, or even just on Our Favourite Radical Socialist Jew's Unmarried Mother. Instead I found a pamphlet on contraception, and one on Wicca. As I'm interested in the church on paganism and related matters, I decided to look through it. Various things annoyed me a great amount, the emphasis on how Wicca/magic was suspect because it was selfish and about looking for power/influencing the world whereas Christian worship totally isn't, and about how the Wiccan/Pagan relationship with God/Goddess isn't about bettering oneself, but... I couldn't really follow.

And then we got to the goddess thing. Some of it was the stuff above, there were lots of uses of the word "patriarchal" in scare quotes, and then there was that when evangelising Wiccans you had to make very clear that Our Lady was NOT a goddess, and that Catholics don't worship her. And I wanted to insert some kind of paper on the history of Marian cults.

Mary's pretty important to me (as, for that matter, is Joseph). A lot of my family were nuns, including my Granny Mary, who remained very connected with the faith throughout her life. As a kid I did get quite confused about how some christians didn't pray to Mary, and saints, and the differences between prayer. On a certain level, prayers to be prayed for are a great thing (during my darkest depression I could only say the Hail Mary, rather than a "direct" prayer). But the weird fetishisation of Mary's position in Catholicism drives me up the wall. And the idea that it is entirely wrong to worship her.

Anyone got some good links for Marian cults?

 It is yule. I don't have a log (or viennetta) but I do have chocolate, herbal tea and a chance of actually being diagnosed bipolar and autistic. Which is good, as the last thing on my notes was paranoid schizophrenia, which I do not have (who told you that?) and because the obsessive but not dangerous thoughts were getting a bit difficult to handle.

I was manic yesterday, but it calmed after tranquilisers and bed. I was also somewhat manic on Saturday, when I went to my favourite Thai restaurant, and experimented with balancing things. I owegarlicandsapphires and james_is_sorry lunch for that. 

 1. Advice on submitting the novel
2. Advice on medication
3. The rules of the card game Tarot.
4. Alan Garner novels
5. A biography of Stanislawa Pryzsbewska (forgive spelling)
5.2. Carlyle
5.3 A subscription to the London Library.
6. People to read my novel on a Marian Cultist take on the Catholic Church under the Great Anglo Irish empire.
7 A paid account.

 I am twenty one years old, in a country where most batchelors degrees last three years. I left secondary school in 2007. I have repeatedly tried to get a undergraduate qualification in that time, and am now having some success with the Open University. Today/yesterday I spent the day working on my coursework (on how the courage of children is portrayed in Treasure Island and Little Women) and checking the news on the protests and debates. 

I am utterly furious.

Parliament voted for a threefold increase in tuition fees, making the maximum £9,000 per year. Many of the current graduates I know make something around £9000 as their total income. Add to that the proposals to axe the EMA (a weekly means tested payment of £10-30 paid to 16-18 year olds continuing education, in return for full attendance) and the £84 million in cuts to my university, which does open access university education, and is the only way many of their, myself included, have of getting back into the education system, because of work, or family, or illness, or poverty or any of the combined.

Oh, and the repeated violence and intimidation from police. 

Earlier this year I read "Parable of The Talents" by Octavia Butler. The really scary society in that, which I found utterly terrifying and believable, starts with public services being cut, including schools, and replaced by privately funded ones. Butler said she wrote the novel after reading a proposal to ban the children of undocumented immigrants from receiving public education.

You know what I've been told, for years, when I got angry at political issues? That my tone was the problem, or that was just the way things are, that surely I can understand. But I've watched the government my parents voted in to change things betray their voters, and the party I did do the same. I'm still seeing the tired lie that these protests are just a spoilt minority who want a vacation from adulthood for three to four years.

And it makes me glad that so many of the people I know and care about are angry, are betrayed and are fighting back. But it also, really, really scares me. Because the people affected hardest by the cuts are those who are most vulnerable, and that's even more true when it comes to the protests- school students, PWD, pregnant people, being attacked or denied medical attention (I will post later with links, I can't). I haven't been to the protests since the first big one (when I didn't manage to get there owing to anxiety attack) because I am physically ill, have recently had a run in with mental health services and am approaching discharge. I've barely been able to go outside by myself for weeks because of the weather.

I'm going to post this now, and read or watch something. But I wanted to be somewhat articulate on the subject while I could.

I love Sady Doyle to pieces. She published a piece of mine just before Freddie<BONERS>gate at Tiger Beatdown, and she is all kinds of awesome.  I often disagree with her, but fairly regularly she writes a piece that breaks my heart and heals it at the same time

"Ellen Ripley Saved My Life" is one of those pieces. See, that worst month of my life may well be now, and reading something that grasps all the things that succeed and fail in three series that are important to me, was what I needed. I'd forgotten the end to River Tam's story until I read that piece. I'd blanked it out. That possibly says interesting things about my subconscious.

More discussion will be under the cut, because there are some spoilers, admittedly for long since released or finished sequels, but before that a few quotes:

(On River Tam as a Strong Woman Heroine) "To be a woman, and strong, is to be pathologized. Your voice is rendered unlistenable by virtue of its truth. But all of these other women spend a lot of time yelling about how you have to believe them, about how they're! Not! Crazy! And River… well, River's ill."

"There's one version of the story that goes: There is someone out there. Someone good and wise and kind. And when you are in danger, when you need him most, he will always come to save you. It's a good story. But there's another story, too, that I think is important.

Because: What if no one is coming to save you? Sometimes, nobody is coming. And who didn't come to save you, and when? What happened, on the day that you were not saved? That was the day that you saved yourself."

( Whedon, strong women, and saving yourself )

 I am in a writing mood. I would like prompts. I would really like prompts.

I would also very much like access to my own computer, and not to be stuck in London indefinitely. Or for people to arrange to see me.

Things I write are likely to be wintery and sad.