I actually just realized that I got around this when working through similar issues between profiles and games, as seen line 13 from profiles/models.py:
gamesessions = models.ForeignKey('westmarches_games.GameSession', on_delete=models.PROTECT, null=True, blank=True)
I forgot that I had done this to get around the same problem when I first encountered it between profile and game apps. I assume anyone reading will spot that and wonder why it’s OK there but not in games or helpers.py. The answer is that I didn’t like it then either, I just felt like I needed to keep making progress so I used what works. Now I’m at the point where I want to try and address it across the board by reorganizing or refactoring with a pattern that I can follow to avoid having this come up repeatedly. I’ve been counciled that it’s not such a big deal to use the string represenation in the model relationship definitions or to import the needed functions within helpers.py. It just feels like a hacky workaround to me, and one that will make my life harder in the future when this code needs to be maintained