Title: The Game of God, 8/16
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 4
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: You can't win a war for humanity by sacrificing all of your own.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and scynneh for beta services, with advice from Tkodami and MollyC.
Story summary from a comment by Infie.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

AO3 Links for Down to Agincourt:
Series: Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World
Book 2: It's the Stars That Lie
Book 3: A Thousand Lights in Space

AO3 Links for The Game of God:
All
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8

Title: The Game of God, 6/16
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 4
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: You can't win a war for humanity by sacrificing all of your own.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and scynneh for beta services, with advice from Tkodami and MollyC.
Story summary from a comment by Infie.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

AO3 Links for Down to Agincourt:
Series: Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World
Book 2: It's the Stars That Lie
Book 3: A Thousand Lights in Space

AO3 Links for The Game of God:
All
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

Title: The Game of God, 5/16
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 4
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: You can't win a war for humanity by sacrificing all of your own.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and scynneh for beta services, with advice from Tkodami and MollyC.
Story summary from a comment by Infie.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

AO3 Links for Down to Agincourt:
Series: Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World
Book 2: It's the Stars That Lie
Book 3: A Thousand Lights in Space

AO3 Links for The Game of God:
All
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

Title: The Game of God, 3/16
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 4
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: You can't win a war for humanity by sacrificing all of your own.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and scynneh for beta services, with advice from Tkodami and MollyC.
Story summary from a comment by Infie.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

AO3 Links for Down to Agincourt:
Series: Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World
Book 2: It's the Stars That Lie
Book 3: A Thousand Lights in Space

AO3 Links for The Game of God:
All
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

Request from Child:

Firefly fandom - Any recs for Mal/Simon fic? Especially longer? No, I don't know how this happened, either, but since Derek left Teen Wolf he's been kind of despondent.

Title: The Game of God, 1/16
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 4
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: You can't win a war for humanity by sacrificing all of your own.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and obscureraison for beta services, with advice from TKodami and MollyC.
Story summary from a comment by Infie.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

AO3 Links for Down to Agincourt:
Series: Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World
Book 2: It's the Stars That Lie
Book 3: A Thousand Lights in Space

AO3 Links for The Game of God:
All
Chapter 1

Millennia ago, there was a woman who in a hut labored for a night and a day; in the end, into her arms was given the fruit of her labor, and on beholding him, she said (so I’m told), “With God’s help, I’ve made a son.”

What she said second isn’t recorded by history, but eighteen years ago, as I beheld my son (quite ugly, to be honest), the first thing I said was “Is he always going to look like that” but the second (or so I remember, I was very goddamn high for a while after that) came after–-much like I’m sure it did to Eve–-where she took stock of the world in which her son lived (hut, cow, whatever) and said, “Yeah, no. We can do better than this.”

It wasn’t fit for him, this world, but to make him fit for it would be a degradation of what he was and all he could be. So for eighteen years, I made him fit to be exactly who he was, is, and wanted to be, so he would be able to change it.

Five years ago, my son came out to me, and upon such a revelation, the first thing I said, “It’s midnight, you have school tomorrow, what the hell are you doing on AIM?” Also something like, “I love you, I loved you before I met you, now go to bed or you’re grounded” (dude, five years ago and around midnight, do I look like a wizard)? Then I thought–as did Eve and the me who thought her child looked like an extra from Coneheads becuse she was so very stoned (and seriously, he really did)–as I beheld the world again, “Yeah, no. You gotta be better than this.”

Like every mother in the world, when my son leaves my sight, I know he’s at risk of being harassed, threatened, assaulted, or killed because this world has that.

Some mothers carry this burden as well; our child is at risk for being harassed, threatened, assaulted, or killed simply for being who they are.

You see, the world into which I bore my son, the one he would have to live in, was one in which legal provision had to be made to place him in protected class, not for what he’s done but for what he is. Because murder of my gay son would not be given the same weight in the courts as one who was straight; because my son was in a class of people who would be deliberately and systematically sought out for harassement, threat, assault, and murder, crimes committed against him because of who he is are classified as hate crimes.

Some mothers have carried this additional weight from the moment they first felt their children move within them, before they even first saw their face or heard their first cry; that’s forever. I’ve only carried it for five years, but it feels like so much longer.

This year, my son turned eighteen, and my work isn’t done, but my right to ground him is pretty much at an end (he doesn’t know that; don’t tell him; he thinks it’s twenty-one, like drinking). In January, by right of birth in this country, he could vote, be drafted to join the army, to be deciding voice in the course of his life, but he wasn’t guaranteed the rights I was given, denied them not by age or sex, but sexuality. The law of the country would not allow him to marry the partner of his choice, adopt a child, be protected against workplace discrimination, the list goes on.

On June 26, 2015, my son is still a protected class, at risk of being the target of hate crimes; he can be harassed, threatened, assaulted, even killed, for being gay. He can still face discrimination in the workplace, and the legal adoption of a child is sketchy, but I have hope that last part may not be for long; however, one thing changed.

He turned eighteen in January, and six months later, the Supreme Court confirmed a right he should have had then; in the country of his birth, he cannot be denied the right to marry the partner of his choice. No one–not individuals or states–can take that away.

So said Justice Kennedy: it is so ordered.

Reference:
Supreme Court rules in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage
The Decision

So the Rain

Well, it hasn't rained in a few days, so there's that. The entire backyard is all visibly soaked dirt, and I won't talk about the patio because it's beyond words. Last week we had a lot of people out of the office literally due to rain, and this week (and next) being the graduation for most of the state, it's been--well, wetly triumphant, maybe?

So More Things

So you may not know that guinea pigs have entered my life. Apparently, this has been a thing for a while, I just didn't know.

Let me explain.

They weren't mine, I want that clear. My youngest sister purchased them some number of years greater than two and less than five ago, and they came to her as small and are now super-sized guinea hogs, if you will. They were given a standard cage and toys and being low maintenance and fucking hateful--they make my former rabbit warren look loving and kind--we all just sort of existed in a detente where we moved them around as needed and fed them while they pretended we didn't exist or attacked whoever was foolish enough to try to keep their cage clean and them healthy, because they're malicious.

Here's where this gets weird.

At some point in the last eighteen months--and I can't tell you how or when, it just happened--I began buying all their food, snacks, and litter, feeding and bathing them (bathing. them.) and had been for quite a while because my sister isn't actually anywhere near them (ie, no longer lives here) and somehow, I...took over, like some kind of unholy geas and I don't know how or why.

I'm bathing them. Let me clarify this, because this is where I'm convinced I pissed off a sorcerer or a wizard and this is actually a curse.

I actually get a giant towel and Child (to distract them from going for my throat), grab each one and put them in a box (with minimal bloodshed), carry them to the bathroom, fill a tub--my bathtub--with water (not too warm, not too cold, I test this) until it reaches just their bellies and set them in there to swim and glare at them hatefully before shampooing them one by one, risking my fingers, or at least bits of them, because guinea pigs can't be fucked to do the minimum amount of work to keep themselves clean no matter how often I clean out their truly nightmarish cage and if they weren't bathed, they'd be quite literally made of fur and their own excretions. Then I rinse them, check their fur for issues--risking so much finger-flesh--towel-dry their ungrateful asses (now with shiny fur), and take them back to their fresh cage where they immediately create more filth to wallow in while I return to my bathtub and stare in horror at what I have to clean up (and that shit is deliberate, and I do mean shit. What is wrong with them?).

A couple of times a month, I do this.

I'm doing this of my own free will, and I honestly can't tell you why because I hate them, they hate me, and it makes no sense and I can't emphasize this enough, I can't work out when this started. However, I had a revelation this week while miserably cleaning out their hideous cage and resenting the fuck out of anything with fur; I don't have to live like this, this is bullshit.

Time to deal.

I hate them but at this point it can't be denied they're mine--once you carry the scars of their tiny teeth, someone is owned and it's not gonna be me--so they're going to live to a standard by which my rabbits once lived, because no pet of mine (fuck my life, I have guinea pigs) is going to look like their owner isn't creepily overinvested in their lifestyle and living accommodations.

Midwest Interactive Guinea Habitat Plus - that's eight to nine square fucking feet lined with PVC canvas containing a ramp, a care area, and is recommended by veterinarians. I'm throwing out everything they're using now; their resentful little asses are gonna experience a lifestyle upgrade. They are getting a new grass house, a grass ball, new chewtoys, a new feeder, and fuck my life, I went shopping for absorbent pads used on people beds for those who need such things for night accidents to line this sucker with and I also got them treats and snacks because reasons. I googled guinea pig food type for the most nutritious and evaluating if it would be in their best interests to start them on a Central Market and Whole Foods diet of overpriced organic vegetables and greens.

You know what guinea pigs do? They wallow. That's it. They lay there, resenting the effort it takes them to eat their own food because that requires movement. They bore the cat. You can't get lower than the cat thinking you aren't even worth watching hungrily. They're like furry rocks made of hate and a lack of motivation. They are a literal rebuttal of the theory of evolution, because selection should have wiped them out and yet, here they are, alive and forcing me to re-evaluate how trustworthy science really is.

It gets worse.

While shopping I learned; guinea pigs are neglected as hell when it comes to fun pet shit. Hamsters and ferrets, mice and rats, toys and pipes and hammocks and awesome playscapes, but guinea pigs? Do they get giant-ass playscapes I'd like in human-size? Nope. Do they get tubular extravaganzas? No. I admit, furry hate-rocks wouldn't use them, but that's not the point; this should be equal opportunity and guinea pigs are getting the short end of the stick here.

...I hate them, they loathe me, they are furry hate rocks who I genuinely think would kill me if they were less fucking lazy, but on their behalf I've been hating the entire pet industry and googling PVC piping to see if it comes in transparent so I can build them a playscape so as not to be inferior to fucking hamsters that they'll never use because they are furry rocks of hate. And I gotta bathe them tomorrow because the cage should be here when I get home from work and they are gonna go into their new home clean and this isn't happening, it can't be.

Wizard curse, it's gotta be.

So last week and this weekend were--terrible, to be honest. Mostly the weekend, actually; the week was fine, but an emergency release went out at work and I was validating one portion when they brought up the system (there was a PDF of the entire nightmare) and when my time came (late, I expected) it failed (that, we didn't).

Finally by Monday it was up, but working Saturday and Sunday even from home is just freaking stressful when it's something like this. And I do take it personally; it's like, why, app, do you hate me? I may or may not have said that out loud over several days until Monday, when the failure fixed itself (no one can figure out what the hell; we just go with it).

Three things made this weekend and week not suck balls:
1.) downtoagincourt - there is a tumblr about my fic series! FUCK YES I READ IT ALL LIKE FORTY TIMES AND FAVORITED EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Also, an amazing review here by bert-and-ernie-are-gay that I indeed do re-read. Like a lot.

I have no idea about the etiquette of reblogging really literate (more literate than the series, to be honest) reviews of your fic. Can you do that?

2.) Two tumblr uses liveblogged some of their reactions while reading. This is one of them.

Fireintheimpala here:

Gah, nonstop agony thanks to Down to Agincourt…maybe I should live blog my read of it for cathartic release…

*ahem*

Day 1,231: the destiel glacier is reported to have advanced 1.52 millimeters in the south. Scientists are being dispatched to test for possible measurement errors.

Day 3,456: the scientist have returned and bring with them exciting reports of moderate precipitation! Will this add to the mass of the glacier? Stay tuned.

Day 7,278: tragic news from the glacial front: a scientist has been killed! Though the surface of the glacier is by all measurable accounts benign–inert even!–inexplicable emissions of angst have increased. Eruption danger: Orange.

And here:

Down to Agincourt update.

Day 10,000 or so: I should have taken a break for smut, fluff, or single chapter episode codas 3,000 days ago. Now it’s too late. Now I can’t imagine these characters progressing to any sort of self awareness for at least, oh, 50 more years.

It's funny because it's true.

3.) I bought six inch heels and learned to walk in them.

My Relationship With Heels

I'm a switcher; I go through phases of wanting nothing but ballet flats or low mary sues, with various exceptions in various heels; my work encouraged it, especially when I was at the ombudsman's office where no denim allowed at all and business casual was barely casual. When I became a QC Analyst, however, the dress code was "not naked" and never again having only one pair of jeans because all my clothes income was for button ups, slacks, and skirts. Generally I devote myself to Black Widow and Batman t-shirts, hoodies, jeans, and semi-regular showering (and flats, comfy ones). I'm QC; there are very low expectations in our dress sense. Then I got a promotion (WHEE ME), and for no reason (I can't explain this), I kind of went crazy and bought dresses and tops to wear with jeans (or tights) and dragged out all my heeled sandals to gloat over (I. Don't. Know. But I now own five dresses, three pairs of skinny jeans (one glittery: GLITTERY) and two very pretty new work-appropriate sleeveless tops and adorable cardigan sweaters to wear with them.)

Which leads to the next part.

Last year, I decided to start training myself up again with heels without ending up with feet that will hate me all my life due to the purchase of a three and a half inch pair of kick-ass sandals that were viciously on sale (chunky heel, utterly gorgeous), a pair of wedges, and a cruel Fry's sale on adorable brown suede sandals. The chunky three and a half inch sandals took work, but seriously, they're adorable and had decent ankle support, and successfully did not die in them.

Last month, I saw a pair of stiletto booties and said "I'm getting me some of that."

And I also said, "And not kill myself wearing them." That part is important.

Luichiny Women's Hi N Low Boot, Size 10. Two inch platform, four inch shaft, so effective four inch elevation for my heel. They also look fucking amazing, not gonna lie, but they are not walking out clubbing shoes (my sandals, oddly enough, are).

Here's the thing; they are also my first real experience (other than at Vividcon) wearing stiletto heels and not chuck or wedges (and then I was also drunk, they were thigh-high boots, and Vividcon means miracles occurred when I jogged up and down the stairs).

Balance wasn't a problem--I'd been wearing my sandals once a week for a month to get used to the shift in my center of balance, fix my posture, and automatically align myself on top of my heels instead of the balls of my feet--but learning to walk was very new. Chunk, even with sandals, do generally allow a lot of leeway as long as my posture is correct; stilettos, I found, require perfect or nothing.

(Chunk with no platform also (gently) trained me out of one problem I have due to being a sprinter in high school and never getting over it; my weight when walking in shoes at all unless I'm thinking about it comes down on the outer ball of my foot, not the inner, around the fourth and fifth toe, and my heel doesn't come down often (almost never) when I'm walking fast, which I usually do. In flats and barefoot I still do it (and can afford to), but when I hit about two inches in a heel or any boot, I have to adjust and that takes practice to remember to do before killing myself. I still have to think about it when walking or yes, I will topple over like the saddest bowling pin in history and die or something.)

The nice thing with these boots is, they fit close; if you're not exactly a nine and a half (low end) or ten, though, the 10 will not fit (go to 11). I had to wear trouser socks to get my feet in and adjust, but they were literally a perfect fit, skin close but not painful or pinching other than foot adjustment time while walking until they shaped to the balls of my feet correctly. They also have fantastic ankle support, which I didn't realize would be so important but should have, since the entire strength of walking in them was keeping my ankle straight (and not trying to go up on my toes; it's almost impossible at this height, which helps).

After checking numerous websites on walking in heels, and trying many things to help the process of not dying (while being six fucking three in those things and gleefully staring over everyone's heads at work because I can do that), here is what I learned.

1.) Leaning backward does help like a lot. Centering my entire weight on my heel isn't really enough; without the backward lean, I pitched forward.

2.) Wearing them improves my posture one hundred thousand percent just on the strength of not wanting to topple over. Not just a straight back either; shoulders back, head up, stomach in, chest up, and I can feel the second I go out of alignment and fix it (because otherwise, death by heels).

This actually bleeds over to when I don't wear heels; I'm a slumper and sloucher and training myself out of that is almost impossible without sufficient motivation (ie, death by heels). The last two months have definitely helped in that much; I've noticed I don't slouch automatically (now it's by preference, really), and more importantly, I am aware of when my posture is bad because I know how it feels when it's good.

3.) Walking and staying alive I've mastered, but walking gracefully is still hit or miss and I usually stumble (sometimes literally) into doing it right (ie, the sweet spot). It's harder than I thought, but once I hit it, I'm fine for the rest of the day. I know it's a matter of how I'm shifting my center of balance and weight to the ball of my foot and using the heel only for balance, but it's not something I can do consciously yet. It's not a stride issue, either; long or short, something clicks and boom, I have the walk. Or it doesn't and I'm just terrifyingly tall and no one can stand against me. No one.

4.) Everything is much lower when one is six-three (I love those shoes), including people. I will not say that made me mad with power, but I won't deny it, either.

Fortunately, my job and how television portrays it (Quality control, aka program testing) isn't a subject for television because generally one hour drama doesn't focus on the minutia of a company building a program step by step because come on, that can be a multi-year process.

....with one exception.

I once ran across the dramatization of the dev process (montage-like) on TV and watched because it's kind of soothing to watch developers suffering (they're like a floor away from me and I've had a bad week, okay?) until we got back to real time and I promptly lost my mind.

A Summary of the Horror:
They're like "almost there after weeks of (montage) work, oh noes there's a null character mcguffin plot reason thing must get it out like right now tonight no waiting!" or something like that, how do you even know this you just finished the last line and haven't compiled it...hold up, where are the design docs, I haven't seen any since this started, how are they--and they're all scanning the source code--scanning a million lines of source code with their eyes ON SINGLE MONITOR WHY, not even using a search algorithm--who does that, what kind of fucking IDE are you using, why don't you have color enabled to make this easier, wait, that looks like microsoft notepad with the background painted black-- "OH FOUND IT FIXING IT NOW" wait, no, did you erase something and then hit enter that's a new line, but go back, problem, the mcguffin wouldn't be in there, that's in a class file, why are you--hold up, what language is this-- "Okay, compiling now!" holy shit did you just-- "Almost done!" wait, what, no, you can't do that, you don't fly edit your code (that did like magic or word processing, they weren't clear) have you ever heard of debug or like-- "Okay, done, send it--" IN TEN SECONDS REAL TIME THAT WASN'T A MONTAGE "--to whothefuckever we can start distribution like next week awesome going to hawaii!" WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU DIDN'T EVEN RUN IT-- "Everyone go on vacation now bye!" NO NO YOU UNIT TEST SYSTEM TEST USER ACCEPTANCE LAST HAS TO CHECK FOR MEMORY LEAKS AND LOAD AT LEAST RUN SOME AUTOMATED SCRIPTS WHAT ARE YOU DOING DID YOU EVEN CHECK TO SEE IF IT EVER WORKED IN A REAL-TIME ENVIRONMENT BECAUSE YOU MACHINES ARE SET TO IDEAL CONDITIONS NOT THE WILDS OF PRODUCTION--

I'll spare you the rest--they say when the trauma becomes too much, the memory's blocked so sanity can be retained--but one thing's really just bothering me here.

In this ultra-tech, totally pro too many coffee cups suspiciously unstained and without chips or being shattered against the wall and no crumpled up design documents because the analysts are sadistic fucks and will give you three contradictory rules and don't understand how to use Visio or the concept of driver flow...all the super-cool computers only had one monitor each.

I get it now.

This is about a desperate dev team torpedoing the project due to hideous working conditions, inadequate equipment, lack of support personnel, and no design documents because they were set up to fail by an evil CEO who wanted to cut corners and get rid of the entire dev department to bring in an alien design team from Mars (who secretly plan to conquer the world because even aliens wouldn't agree to this nightmare unless they had another motive entirely) and now it all makes sense!

( this is totally what happens next )

Scenes from Agincourt, Chapter 5: Path of Angels by Tkodami - I never stop being amazed at her interpretations of key scenes, and this one, the memory of Cas meeting the goddess in the church, is breathtaking.

...in prep for Avengers 2, which Child and I are going to watch on the thirtieth. He's now six feet tall and can squish anyone who gets in our way. Sure, I already reserved our seats, but that's just for fun.

Technically, I may not need it, but whatever, it's Marvel Time: I am watching all the Iron Mans, Thors, Captain Americas, and Avengers, but not Black Widow because hey, they haven't made her a movie. And Agents of Shield, because it exists.
( season one spoilers I guess? )
( brief contextual digression )
( Back to Other People )

Yes, that was indeed a lot of words.

Okay, I gotta ask: is there any May/Skye fic anyone would recommend? Gen/friendship or romantic or a slow burn starting with the first and going to the second by preference. I have no idea why it appeals to me, but it really, really does.

Things that are both weird and true: three quarters of my skillsets and knowledge base are quite literally pleasant side effects. There is quite literally nothing--and I do mean nothing--I learned by saying "I'd like to learn x, it sounds cool." I start with "I really need this; how do I make it happen?"

At work, people are generally wondering what the hell, because three quarters of the time I'm just the vaguely there employee who hates mornings and generally doesn't make extra work for anyone. In other words, functional, forgettable, and whatever. I don't mind, trust me; it helps, lets put it that way.

Then there's the other one quarter.

( yeah, and about that )

So yes, I've been super quiet, other than posting fic, for--well, months. I can honestly state a massive amount of it was my entire life was either work, editing and posting fic, and the rest my new nephew and my son, who turned eighteen in January and comes home today from a spring break class trip to Europe (Amsterdam, Paris, Valenciennes, Brussels, Istanbul, and Bursa (for skiing, hilarity) and graduates in May.

However, I got a new computer, which is--as everyone here knows--is a very important event in one's life, and kind of unexpected. My shift key on my laptop Sherlock broke--the laptop on its fifth year and just got refurbished because I was really attached. At the same time--this wouldn't be a problem, I've can fix that--Child decided it was time to tell me he really wanted a laptop and specifically, mine. So I got a new one.

You know how sometimes you only realize you've had a blank space in your heart only when it's filled? Yeah, that's Prince Hal 9000 (named for the creator of "Down to Agincourt's" name and author of the poem Harry Takes the Field about Henry V. When I first named my laptop Harry, bratfarrar was like "Harry was called Prince Hal in his youth" and I'm like "And now we have a smashup of Shakespeare's Henry V and 2001: A Space Odyssey and this is destiny.")

You probably don't care, but much like anyone with a new, beloved child, Prince Hal specs:
Name: Prince Hal 9000
Model: Alienware 17 R2
Processor: i7 4710HQ
RAM: 16GB DDR3L
Drives: Two bays, one for up to four SSD M.2 and one 2.5 for anything. Mine is 256 SSD, 1 T 5400 RPM SATA 6Gb/s, upgradeable to 512 on SSD and the limits of current technology on the second.
Display: 17.3 FHD inch ten-point touchscreen (God, it's magic).
OS: Windows 8.1, which I still like less than Windows 7 but unsurprisingly works much, much, much better with a touchscreen. It also helps that I got the Stardock for my desktop, where all my common links are stored and can avoid the Metro screen (though I adapted that for non-frequent use). It helps a lot that I can swipe out of it when I accidentally end up there; that really does make all the difference.
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 4GB GDDR5
USB: 4 USB 3.0, one with powershare, and holy shit talk about fast data transfer on the 3.0
Other: HDMI 1.4, Mini-Display port, card reader, graphics amplifier port, two audio ports retaskable for microphone, mic headsets, external speakers, etc
Notes: It also has lights everywhere, and I can color them all. And nine extra random keys I can hotkey by keystroke or macro. God.

Yes, I bought a ridic overpowered gaming computer to write fanfic and code in my free time. I wish I could say this was an impulse buy, but it wasn't. I spent the better part of January doing every configuration possible before picking this one. And waiting for alienware to send out random discount codes (they did, thank God). Also, my mom's tablet stopped working, so she absconded with Castiel, my tablet, which means my laptop is my primary source of all things and now accompanies me to work.

( and that's when things got complicated )
( pros and cons of the Alienware 17 )
( more about computers )
( a historical digression to that time I almost set myself on fire for a netbook )
( back on topic, whatever that was )
( pretty sure this is creepy but I could be wrong )
( creepy done, back on topic--anyone remember what that was? )

I don't know what to say.

So BestBuy.com's new improved system broke my ability to login to Best Buy and refuses to send me email to reset my password or validate my account. Literally, they can't send to jenn@thegateway email; it doesn't get to me. It sounds weird, right? Even when a phone rep tries to do it. I can get email from Best Buy, from customer support, and from Unboxed, but not an email to reset my password or validate my account. I am a weird unicorn of non-functionality and maybe a curse is involved due to that chain letter I didn't forward circa 2000? Could be.

I was wrong.

Phone rep told me to register on Best Buy Unboxed forum to ask for help, which is possibly the single weirdest way a corporation has ever told me to deal with a tech problem. And I found this:

One, two, three, four, five and that's random sampling going back to June.

I'm trying to work out how on earth this happened and the closest thing I can come up with is database corruption, and this is where it gets interesting.

I spent last night--because my life is a set of weird coincidences--helping svmadelyn with a project that required command line installation from an image into Ubuntu and nearly had a nervous breakdown (of joy, this is fun for me, not gonna lie) trying to make the outgoing email protocol work. Several ours and rebuilds later, I did a simple google search--don't say it--and read the obvious goddamn solution that was so freaking obvious I started laughing, because I'd skipped it on my mental checklist of things going wrong because it was so simple. And it worked, I released all the failed jobs and did some cleaning and then sat back and contemplated how I managed to make something so simple into four hours of rebuilds.

Hence, I feel my high tech ground on email issues is cut away from me. And I still can't login to best buy.

There was a moral here, I swear.

Scenes from Down to Agincourt, Chapter 4: A Very Hippo Chapter, Part Three by tkodami - In which the Victorian era discovered "Journey to the--" and hippos started at you with come-hither eyes.

...seriously. That last hippo is just, IDEK. Because TKodami is the most awesome ever.

Also, read her Author Notes on the art, which just makes it all that much more amazing.

Rather than be relegated to the dust-bins of history, as many older pieces of unpopular literature are (there are scads (scads!) of Arthuriana that we do our best to forget exist), Journey experienced a brief--though disastrous--heyday in Victorian London during the height of Egyptian Revival. [...]

De Profundis by MollyC, SPN, gen - a fantastic and very spare and unsettling look at the moment when Castiel met Dean in Hell before his resurrection. She says it's inspired by Down to Agincourt, but I think it stands just fine on its own.

Scenes from Down to Agincourt, Chapter 2: Journey to (the Great Swamp) by tkodami - first of set of four detailing out Cas's guilty hate-reading of pretentious poetry written by Greek students in Demotic Egyptian. READ THE AUTHOR NOTES. For reading them almost caused asphyxia via coffee of some people who unwisely read them at work.

I just want to say, as a Texan, we already had Rick Perry. Ebola is just salt in the wound here.

In related news:

I have never spent so much time having to fact check people on ebola and google on my phone what it does, is, and how you get it. I have never spent time fact checking anyone, to be honest--generally, listening to other people be paranoid or wrong is an enjoyable hobby and one that requires minimal effort on my part, that being "staying awake", which gotta admit can be hard. Yet I do it, because not only is it bad information and wrong information, even when it's right conversation is drifting dangerously close to "And Obama will use this to take my guns so I cant' shoot ebola when it shows up" or so I assume; I'm telling you, it's getting very weird.

I get this is a horrible disease, I do. And I get that people are afraid, which makes sense: see "horrible disease". However, I'm also lazy; I don't get having to expend effort in feeling terror before we're at minimum out of single digits for the entire US. I don't even get out of bed for a tornado warning unless something achieves three feet levitation in my vicinity. How do people have this kind of energy?

Between Wikipedia's wealth of information on the cat genome, Cracked teaching me about the pros and cons of being a pickpocket or running Afghanistan as military governor, and trying to decide if I really need to go to the bathroom now (standing up?) or can wait (no standing up!) it's like--dude. You could right now be finding out all the forms aphasia can take and how many cities in India have a population greater than 1 million. And you are spending it on a disease in single digit numbers in the US. *

You could be on reddit reading in nosleep and realizing far, far too late what a terrible idea that was, but at least your irrational fear would be of cameras and eyedroppers--seriously, that was creepy.

This has been a message from me, as it's been a very long week.

* this applies to US citizens only, especially those on talk radio who really, desperately need naps or possibly muzzles.

For I am an aunt again!

My middle sister and her husband welcome M, an 11 lb, 8 oz, 22 inch boy (no, you read that right), delivered in the most common epidural way and holy shit, that's a lot of baby.

( because seriously )

...that, by the way, is over one and a half Child at birth weight.

Heaviest baby ever born: 15.5 lbs, by Caesarean

Duolingo added Danish, Dutch, and Irish to the beta language list for English speakers (for non-English speakers, there are others as well). As Irish sounded interesting, I decided to test it and see what happened.

Here's what I learned:

1.) Spanish infiltrates English speakers in Texas like you have no idea.

I didn't have any idea how much until I began on Irish and failed so utterly when in Spanish I did the first ten sections in like, a day, including repeats when I inexplicably didn't get full hearts in every lesson and I was anal about that. I'd go back and redo ones just to get full hearts and sulk if I missed something. Yes, I do that. Even the most rampant English-only speaker living in a border state cannot help but absorb the principles of the language at least in basic vocabulary.

(Interesting note: you're more likely to pick up a lot of it if you're lower/working class than middle class, due to migrant and undocumented immigrant labor. My dad wouldn't admit it to save his life, but he understood more Spanish than I did since he worked construction and I heard him talking to his coworkers, so come on. My mom didn't pick up much as a caseworker because she worked in a small town, but when I was a clerk and then a caseworker in Austin, my Spanish went high conversational within six months, and I could interview in it fairly well when needed.)

I tested this in French and Portuguese as well: French I can get two sections without noticeable effort (letter combinations start hurting me here), Portuguese three or four (Portuguese sounds to me like Spanish spoken at the back of the throat, and that's the part that throws me off). Irish--three repetitions for one lesson (One. Lesson) to get full hearts and honest to God I sweated through it.

2.) Irish is really different.

Yes, all languages are different, but this is a different-different for me as a primary English speaker and my language familiarity. If you dropped me in Mexico, I could likely fairly quickly get myself food, lodging, a bathroom, and directions to anywhere, and could make some very sketchy jokes with my new friends and probably carry on a fair conversation about my life and times (you'd be surprised how much you know when that's your only language option). If you dropped me in Finland, I could do the same but less conversation and more profanity because my host brother and boyfriend were good about teaching me that. My French would fail, no lie, because French, but I could eventually work out what I needed to say.

In Ireland, should I be without English speakers, Ithim úll, I eat an apple. Ithim an úll, I eat the apple. And I know the 't' will be silent. So I'm good for describing my action with the apple. That's it, and I'm currently I'm on the fourth section. Unless I happen to have a pad of paper and I can totally write out my drink choices sú úll and sú oráiste, apple or orange juice and uisce, water. Go me. I can't say any of them to save my life.

My first cousin is a linguist and polyglot, but all hers are the Romance languages, though she has a working understanding of a few others. If I remember correctly, her waterloos were (forgive generalities), South Asian (specifically I think it was Chinese that threw her off the most, but I can't be more specific). She adapted, but that was where she hit her first serious wall on comprehension, and as this is a woman who was trilingual before she began college and finished her degree in two years, yeah.

If I'm right--and I'm pretty sure I am--mine is anything that uses the alphabet I know in ways I don't understand (goddamn phonics). I still have the entire Cyrillic alphabet effectively memorized and never had a problem reading or understanding Russian at the level that Irish is bothering me. My roommate in college was Syrian-American and was bilingual in Arabic and English, and I never had a problem with what she taught me--this shape makes this sound and those sounds make this word, I could read it later and recognize the word without a major hiccup. (I can't do it now, but at one time I could say several truly indecent things and ask for a beer or water.)

It's like French (fucking French): those letter combinations that don't sound like I think they should (I wrote an essay about me and French) why do you hate me? I blame this on phonics.

3.) Retention is a problem written.

Not Irish to English; that I nail every time. English to Irish is giving me problems, which makes sense. Ithim, itheann, I eat, (he or she) eats isn't hard to recognize. In fact, none of the verb conjugations are hard to recognize and translate, it's just remembering the root and adding the conjugation is because of the slim/broad rule.

This is where I discover I don't like things that are too regular too soon (blame English, we don't do regular, we do exceptions). I don't trust last root vowel matching to get the ending, and I go through, not kidding, a three point series of questions to myself before I finally accept yes, this is a regular freaking verb why are you doing this to yourself? I don't know, but I still have to stop and go okay ith has a 'i' therefore slim ending 'eann' Itheann move on now after point one "what ending goes here, it can't be that simple" and "no, really, it can't be that simple".

This is the 'to eat' verb, for goodness sake. This is how I get an apple in Ireland.

4.) Retention is a huge problem listening.

This is where my phonics training fails until I internalize the letter combination pronunciations (this will take a while, I don't do well at this in my native tongue for fuck's sake)(for which we can blame English stealing all the words)(why didn't English steal more Irish?????????????????).

The secondary problem with this is that this is in beta, and while all the oral uses a real human voice--which is fantastic for clarity, btw, you can easily hear and repeat what they're saying, no problem at all--not all the oral parts are added yet, as this is, again, in beta. So sometimes, you get the word leabhar but not the pronunciation for maybe several questions after that (or a different lesson). Hint: for an English speaker, it sounds nothing like it looks, except that it definitely starts with an 'l' and ends with an 'r'. Uisce, no matter how many times I hear it--and I listened to the same sentence with it in there about a dozen times straight--will not register when I hear it again. Unless it's a sentence about drinking and then I know if it starts with a 'b' it's milk, an 'f' is wine, and the other one is uisce.

5.) My reading retention is shockingly good.

This shouldn't surprise me, but it always throws me a little to realize how textual I really am. And that has been a problem; I can pretty much force-pass the lessons on guesswork on the strength of translating Irish to English and slide by the rest with short-term memorization, but finishing with four hearts every time means I have to pass every question both written and oral and the difference is painfully obvious on how long I spend listening to the same sentence over and over until I can work out the words by more than first letter and context guessing (which also works). Or slowly, painfully pushing English to Irish. And honestly, retention of the sounds has to be a priority, which is annoying me. I'm used to flying through basics and I keep going back to re-run all the early lessons before I start a new one to retain the sounds correctly.

Why I like the beta languages innovations:

The Irish language has portals (this was not there for the other English to X courses) and when you start a new section, there are notes relevant to the lessons below, not limited to the explanation of the slender/broad conjugations, a complete list of pronouns, and some very useful grammar and terminology. I read it, did the lessons several times, read it, did the lessons, and slowly it came together but far better than if it left me on my own (Spanish I don't need it; Irish oh God yes, please). It's super useful once you accept in your heart that no, those letters will not sound like that and live with it.

I wish--desperately--that US schools did more foreign language training, though I do get historically why we didn't and why it's become a thing only recently to start pushing it earlier (Child's school starts in primary, I think).

I will say this: I reward myself with Spanish lessons and boy, I feel smart then. Four hearts, listening, speaking, reading, writing, watch me get all the hearts. Several times, even.

So anyone else try the other beta languages yet? I'm curious about Dutch and Danish. Also, if anyone else ends up in Irish, tell me! Especially how you nailed uisce. Seriously, this is haunting me Why won't it stick?

You know, this isn't right I'm sure, but a thought exercise on why in the movie Splash in the eighties, Madison met a woman who told her one, Annie Hall was so passe and two, her daughter was so lucky because she was anorexic started this. believe it. or. not.

( ruben, gout, mcdonalds, sugar, and the working woman in time and space: a reflection on the meaning of organ meats in the western hemisphere above the equator is that too vague? also, wal-mart. and thematic not-trees )

Okay, I can count on one hand the number of Henry V fanfics I've read in my life, literally. However, this one is a sonnet, which I can count on one finger because holy shit, a sonnet:

Harry Takes the Field by bratfarrar - Henry V - Harry's thoughts before Agincourt and what was before him.

The funny thing is, when I first saw in it in her LJ, I didn't really read she wrote it (because I was just skimming my flist and came back to read it) and after reading it thought, ohh, I like this, I want to use that line for my title--as I needed one for this series--and then read back and realized she wrote it and felt oh so foolish and also holy shit a sonnet. About the spiritual successor of the Black Prince himself and the hero of Agincourt. (First cousin once removed if I remember my Edward III's and Philippa's extensive family tree; that was a lot of sons there.)

(College taught me via the brute force method to appreciate poetry; having to read and write an analysis of one three times a week teaches you to either loathe anything that could rhyme (or rhythm) or love it and if it's the written word, love will win if I kill myself doing it.)

Agincourt is hugely romantic; it's got everything: terrible odds, a single brave shining warrior, do or die, and knowing the history now, a (probably) insane French king, his (possibly) manipulative wife (the reason why Henry VI of England was crazypants depending on if you believe which historian on the relative sanity of Catherine de Valois), and all of English history riding on a single battle fought by a very young king who was truly the only one who believed that he could win.

(I have a very similar reaction to reading about Waterloo, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and Joan of Arc's entire life.)

Me and Shakespeare have a very complicated relationship: I used to think he was hugely overrated and annoying and it hurts me in various ways to admit now he's not and it actually makes me enraged when anyone says that about him now because wtf it's Shakespeare!!!, which is so lowering you have no idea. It's just masochistic and annoying to feel so conflicted about your own love story with a dead guy, and a little uncomfortable, too.

(Beside the point. It's almost time for my yearly Shakespeare play and I still have no idea which one to throw myself at. I'm thinking Othello at this point; it's nice and obvious and I know the plot so why not? I've been putting it off for some reason, I think Richard III keeps upsetting me.)

Child's slowly growing rage at Teen Wolf for Derek's man-(wolf-?)pain is possibly the best thing about the show I don't watch. I don't need to, honestly; once a week, come the apocalypse, Child drops down disconsolately on the patio swing to talk about his epic feelings about Derek and Stiles and how they're being epically abused by $whoever.

One of the (hilarious) advantages of growing up fannish is he's on a good balance of way too invested and overenthusiastic (entertainment forever) but cynical as hell because he's been through All the Ship Wars Ever by proxy, so everything is old news as far as he's concerned.

And then there's this (semi-verbatim, this was weird):

Child: it's like the Ray wars, mom.
(note: using mom is always, always a warning sign.)
Me: ....sterek is like the Ray Wars? Wait, how?
Child: Yeah, it's like--
Me: I wasn't in the Ray Wars. We started watching way after the Ray Wars.
Me: Hold on, were you even born then? Potty trained? Able to argue with me?
Child: ...what does that have to do with it?

I'm sorry, I didn't find out how Sterek is just like the Ray Wars, I'll get on that, but seriously? To be fair to him, he was around during my ranting John Sheppard days, so yeah, that might have helped form his sensibilities.

Other random conversation (this is partially verbatim, because wow, that was a bad moment):

Child: you have any ideas for a name? I need a new one.
Me: Those are personal, but--wait. Why do you need a new one?
Child: Reasons.
Me: What did you do?
Child: Nothing.
Me: You know I can check tumblr, right?
Child: Not that one.
Me: The secret one I'm not supposed to know about?
Child: ....no, it's--nevermind.
Me: It's not xxxxxxx one, is it?
Child: Stop breaking into my computer.
Me: Lock your screen once in a while.

(note: he actually didn't do anything, he just gets bored with consistency. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed. Also, his password security is getting much better. Who says invasion of adolescent privacy has no practical benefits?)

I wonder what it's like to be the teenage fanson of a fanparent. Knowing fanparent is out there somewhere, anywhere, separated from you by three degrees of tumblr or less at all times, hideously aware of her hovering presence and getting recced 'oomg did you read this!1!!!!' written by her or her bffs (this happens), and horribly, horribly aware she could show up in your fandom at any moment and may do it just to fuck with her fankid because why not?

I feel like I've been waiting for him to hit this level of self-awareness and horror all my life.

Dear Fanparents,

This is so much fun, you have no idea.

-seperis