Communication

How it started, versus how it's going...

I grew up in the UK, 30 minutes from Games Workshop's Nottingham headquarters; and my childhood heavily featured their games, miniatures, and routine trips to the local Games Workshop store.

During this time, I developed a particular affection for the work of Jes Goodwin. Initially an artist and sculptor, Jes' work was strongly geometric in nature; and displayed an unusually high degree of consistency (a particularly noteworthy achievement during a period where miniatures were sculpted by hand with ad-hoc tools).

For reference - one of Jes' early sketches of a Space Marine in Mk. VI armor; as featured in the guide that accompanied the very first Space Marine paint set:

I actually had the pleasure of meeting Jes in person at Games Day '94; and one of my treasured possessions is the souvenir program, which he kindly autographed:

During my teenage years, I came to possess a handful of Chaos Champions sculpted by Jes. As was so often the case in those early years, the miniatures had been designed as dual use; combining the sort of medieval aesthetics that would warrant inclusion in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle setting, but also the occasional technological greeble that would justify use in Warhammer: 40,000.

As I generally kept to the latter system, I set about cutting up and remodeling these miniatures, with the aim of making the science-fiction elements more explicit. And I was very happy with the end results, too!... Which makes it all the more unfortunate that these miniatures were lost when I relocated to the US.

Two decades later, and I have taken it upon myself to recreate these miniatures (albeit with the full advantage of the skills I have developed in the interim). The first mini on the chopping block is 021919 from the 1989 Citadel Catalog (frequently referred to by its most obvious physical characteristic, "Nurgle Chaos Champion With Fly Mutation"):

(It feels vaguely sacrilegious, taking a razor saw to what is now technically an antique; but I very much subscribe to the DIY mentality that was so prevalent during the initial Rogue Trader days, and - given that the model originates for the same time period - keeping the old traditions alive seems only appropriate.)

In my original conversion, I removed the haft and blade of the axe; and positioned an old Space Ork plasma cannon over the now unobscured shoulder. I also replaced the sandaled foot and exposed fly-mutated leg with their armored equivalents from a Space Marine Devastator.

This time I around, I opted to angle the right arm, to add a greater sense of movement; and completely reposition the left arm, as if to calling out a target:

(In doing so, I created a great many headaches for myself: the right hand snapped off at the wrist, and had to be repaired. Cutting the left arm free necessitated cutting through the hand; and the pins I inserted into the remains of the palm broke free, requiring JB Weld to resecure.

I cannot underscore the frustration inherent to these two experiences; at the same time, I'm a great believer in the idea that growth as an artist demands taking risks - up to and including potentially ruining one's art.)

The original version of the conversion also featured an extended barrel (fabricated from the Lord Fuegan's firepike, and a handful of random Genestealer claws). However, I wanted to replace this with something a little more appropriate for a follower of the Lord Of Pestilence; which ended up being the better part of a Plague Spewer:

In terms of next steps: I intend to strap a canister of goo-based ammunition to his left side; and continue to add new detailing to hide the various cuts and joins.

Dose three?

It is currently being reported that the federal government will shortly recommend that all two-shot vaccine recipients receive a third booster shot, approximately eight months after their second dose.

(Recommendations on boosting the single-shot vaccines are still being formulated.)

On the one hand: I'll do whatever it is I have to do to ensure the safety of my friends, family, and others; if that means getting a third dose of COVID vaccine, then so be it.

On the other hand: I've detailed previously how the first two doses each triggered a week of vicious flashbacks. (I still don't know why - I'm literally typing this right now with an arm sore from my second round of Gardasil; no major mental upsets.)

So... chances are sometime around the end of the year, the spouse, daughter and I will go round three on shots... And I will have to set aside time for another nervous breakdown.

(There's also a conversation to be had about the wisdom of Americans consuming three doses of vaccine each at a time when much of the world is struggling for adequate supply; although I am currently thinking of this as more an exercise in half of America taking the vaccine doses of the other half to protect themselves from the aforementioned other half that won't take their damn vaccine doses!)

Shuffle Meme - Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

...And finally, the part of the music library that has yet to be tidied up!

Everything Else

Clash Caravan Palace - Live At Le Trianon On my to-do list: catch a live performance from electroswing trailblazers Caravan Palace. (True story: the band was formed when three traditional instrumentalists / DJs were hired to produce the soundtrack to a black and white pornographic film. How French is that?)

Eustonia CoLD SToRAGE - Android Child Legendary for his Amiga and PlayStation soundtracks; Tim Wright also has an exceptional catalog of personal work (including an album that incorporated the moon - the moon! - as a production effect)!

BROKEN HEART 月野うさぎ Desired Desired is a pioneer of the anime-themed future funk scene, and a major tent-pole in the portfolio of Neon City Records. For a fuller sampling of his work, please enjoy this excellent mix by Real Love Music.

Ebough, Delicious DFast - Out Of The System DFast exists somewhere between funk and big beat; as is typified by this stellar contribution to HBC-00004: Field Trip by ½-bit Cheese.

As You Are Garfunkel And Oates - Music Songs Although better known for their hilarious output, the final song of their first album - dedicated to a mutual friend - is a message we all need to hear.

Eer Amak Et Amor've! Keith303 Arguably one of the greatest .mod music files ever made; through the magic of technological manipulation, Keith bends a sine wave into a more than passable imitation of an electric guitar.

Part One Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells At 17, Oldfield composed the entirety of this album; at 19, recorded almost the entire thing single-handedly using analog technology utterly unsuited for the task. (As an illustration: a BBC performance demonstrates the number of musicians required to achieve this feat live.) From a technical standpoint, this album represents one of the greatest accomplishments in modern music history.

Yuki Satellites Mosaik Mosaik's work features a kind of quiet, contemplative beauty; and this - the theme to the demo Channel 5 Sequence, by Haujobb - is no exception.

Activate One Now Subi The mad maestro of 4-channel .mod music. (I was astonished to learn later in life that we grew up just a mile and a half apart!)

Holly Republica - Republica One of the first albums I ever bought. I strongly suspect that if I had been bestowed the luxury of transitioning in my teens, a great deal of my personal style may have ended up modeled on that of Republica frontwoman Saffron.

…And again in the season one Babylon 5 episode, “Infection”:

“You and the rest, you forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!”

That JMS repeated himself virtually verbatim goes to show that this is a message he felt very strongly about (and rightfully so)!

That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:

1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.

2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.

3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.

4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #5

I got my artistic creativity back.

For real.

I was bursting with creativity as a teenager. I wrote, I drew, I painted, I modeled, I designed, I composed. I would be overtaken by these ideas and was compelled to bring them into being.

...Then it went away.

This I ascribed to the usual factors: newfound work and family responsibilities that overtook my time.

Now I posit a different theory: it’s my belief that I have a female-structured brain; and that the operation of certain parts of it require a sufficient provision of estrogen. Suffice to say, by the end of the teenage years, estrogen was in rather short supply and my brain malfunctioned accordingly.

That is no longer an issue; and I find myself once again not only bursting with ideas but more importantly, utterly driven to birth them into the world. The catgirl shirt was one such project; now I’m about to complete a painting (details omitted here, as it’s mildly NSFW).

It’s good to be back!

And you: who never thought to question If this was how things were supposed to be... I convict your conviction. History is contingency, And things could always have been otherwise. (And still might.) And still might will end in time, All you held so perpetual. All you thought was supposed to exist, I only suppose to exist; And may not - One day soon.

Hybrid always excel when it comes to crafting a memorable opening to each album; but even by their standards, Flashpoint is something special. The initial spoken word segment - a poem by author James Scudamore - is particularly evocative; read in a chilling, almost accusatory fashion.

Animal friend #1: Jexer

For the previous six months, I’ve been at the center of a triangle with PTSD on one edge, work stress on another, and transition-related depression on the third (itself a mix of “Why did I wait so long to do this” and “I’m never going to escape the fact that my biological starting point is ‘male’“).

During my first flashback, I instinctively grabbed my (then three) animal friends for support. This became a reoccurring pattern - I would clutch them tightly during each subsequent flashback; hold them at night; and sit them next to me as I worked.

It’s difficult to tease out whether the comfort they bring me is some kind of holdover from childhood (there’s a certain logic in the idea that the trauma I experienced was as a child; therefore the antidote would also come from that era); or if it’s the result of a kind of mythological girlhood (one that never actually took place, and exists purely in my head; a phenomenon that warrants its own post).

Either way, they have been very effective and keeping my anxiety at generally manageable levels during a trying time.

I wanted to talk about one of them in particular: Jexer, my hedgehog friend. He was delivered to me by a crane machine in the Isle Of Wight when I was eight years old; but this suggests that he is some kind of possession, which could not be further from the truth. He’s my friend, and I love him dearly.

(You may notice that he has a blue nose; this is because the original was lost in an incident involving a much loved but at that time, also rather destructive puppy. The new nose was a skilled repair conducted by my dearly missed grandmother.)

Currently he goes everywhere I go. He sits on my lap when I am at my desk, and when I am driving. There is a special compartment in my bag reserved for him when I have to go into places.

I had a little blanket made for him; because he is a British hedgehog, and quite unaccustomed to the extremes of cold weather that pervade the North American continent.

All of this sounds quite insane, of course; but that’s how things are - when life threatens to drown you, no raft is unwelcome.

Identity crisis: addendum

As a follow-up to my earlier post:

I have a friend that lives in Texas. He is eighteen; and was in the process of learning to drive when the pandemic struck. He recently visited the state DMV to renew his learner’s permit; and much to his surprise, was given a full driver’s license instead.

I get it; they are trying to keep the system working under a difficult set of circumstances. All the same, my friend is attempting to continue on with his driving education, for what he holds in legal capability, he lacks in actual practical experience and confidence.

This is what it feels like to become an entirely different gender at 37. I’m legally a woman, but I have no idea what I’m doing.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #6

I’m not really up to speed on Tumblr etiquette yet, but I believe the polite thing to do when dealing with heavy material is to provide a content preface. To that end: this is a kinda heavy. There’s abuse and stuff.

Sooo... PTSD. This is an actual, unexpected side effect of HRT. Let me explain.

I’ve previously touched on the idea that I have a female-structured brain; that certain parts of it require estrogen to function correctly; and that during the pre-HRT portion of my life, these parts operated poorly (or not at all).

A large - and rather nuanced - group of these malfunctions come under the umbrella heading of ‘emotional processing’ (or lack thereof); including the inability to:

Fully feel my emotions,

Understand them,

Connect them to my thoughts,

Communicate them to others;

...And perhaps most importantly, make sense of (and move past) the various negative events that life likes to throw at us.

Once HRT kicked in and supplied the estrogen my brain so desperately craved, all of this changed! I cannot stress what an incredible experience it was to go from zero to full emotional processing capacity virtually overnight.

The next thing I discovered, however - much to my chagrin - was that far from passing through the troughs of life with a stiff upper lip, rather I had simply deferred my response to those events. Now the bill was due.

I relived a lot of grief and anger: at the loss of loved ones; at lines crossed; at years in the wrong body.

One day, I had a disagreement; the matter was settled amicably, but afterwards I felt ill at ease. Without even understanding why, I gathered up my three animal friends and retreated into our walk-in closet; turned out the lights, and just... sobbed. Great, unrelenting torrent of tears. I didn’t understand what was happening; only that I was terrified, and hurting.

After what felt like hours, my wife coaxed me back into the light and to normalcy.

As night approached the following evening, it happened again. And again. And again. Every night, for months on end.

During these episodes, I would experience repetitive, intrusive thoughts for which I had no context. “Please don’t hurt me!”; “Please stop hurting me!”; “Let me go!”; “Why did he hurt me?”

In retrospect, what I have been able to piece together is as follows:

These events were flashbacks. They relate to a trauma that I have no memory of; perhaps because it happened very early on in my life. Based on the intrusive thoughts - and other indicators, such as an intense phobia of forcible restraint and what I believe may have been unconscious efforts on my part to relive the original acts - I believe the trauma was sexual in nature.

HRT kick-started my brain; and the first item on the agenda was - completely unbeknownst to me - processing this forgotten trauma.

For the curious - I’m much better now; my wife and I are no strangers to PTSD symptoms and well-versed when it comes to handling them. Still; I cannot say that when I undertook that first estradiol shot, that I ever imagined it would unearth this particular landmine in my psyche.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

I’ve discussed before that I administer my Estradiol via intramuscular injection; and that sometimes this does not go to plan. This is not the only HRT-related mishap that I have experienced.

The first few months of injections were without issue.

Thereafter, I started to experience increasing amounts of pain with each shot; and in turn, I became more and more reluctant to - you know - actually stick the needle in my leg.

On the fifth go-around, I realized that I was breaking one of the (many) cardinal rules my endocrinology clinic had educated me on: don’t tense up! A tense muscle is a dense muscle; and it takes a lot more effort (and subsequently, discomfort) to push a needle through the tissue. My desire to avoid pain was, ironically, the cause of a great deal of pain!

I learned to relax, and not to hesitate when sticking myself (seriously, it’s like ripping off a Band-Aid - quick and forceful is so much more tolerable than slow and steady)!

I’m not going to pretend that popping the needle in is fun by any stretch; but it’s tolerable. If I have to do this twenty-eight times a year, between now and eternity, to attain True Girl Form... That’s a price I can live with!