STOP! Stop It Now!

 

I was just watching a video on the making of the story of Helm Hammerhand. Who is Helm Hammerhand? He was one the the King of Rohan. His story is in a short appendices mention written by JRR Tolkein.

He had two sons and a daughter, who remained unnamed until some clueless bitch named her Hera (a very unrohirrim name) and made her a girl boss.

Phoebe Gittins, a creditless gimp, decided she wanted to make this barely mentioned, not at all named female, a resistance leader because of course she did. This is what you do when you have no intellect or imagination of your own and fanfic your way to mediocrity.

The daughter was the impetus for the war because Freca, the fat youth wanting her, couldn't handle her father, the King of Rohan saying no. She played no other part. SHE WAS A PLOT DEVICE.

Hollywood, please stop this. Absolutely nobody, but your self-induced stupid inhabitants believes a one hundred pound girl could take on a fully armored warrior and win. Wanna know a secret? Not even in Japan where they have ninjas are there stories like this.

Stop doing this. Stop taking the works of your intellectual betters and ruining them because you cannot create anything different, anything your own. Everything you produce is just a second-hand reproduction of what someone else has already done. You're has-beens that never were.

Knowing Your Role

 As you all know, I like to game and I love MMOs, especially. In Final Fantasy XIV, I started out as a healer... Conjurer turns into White Mage at level 30 and I've loved and hated the role so much in the years I've been playing it. I picked up Astrologian and Scholar along the road and love so much about all of my healers. I can't play Sage because frankly, my understanding of Greek and Square Enix's understanding are on alternate ends of what words mean. Frankly, I have a very low opinion of the job because you start at level 70. Every job should be learned from the floor up. 

You'd understand this if you're ever locked into a low level roulette dungeon with someone who simply can't work with what they never learned to cast. I'm relearning Astro because they are about to overturn it. While I took a break they broke the job and frankly, made it unplayable for me. I loved my Astro.

I've worked at getting all of my jobs to 90 and getting their armor and Manderville weapons since Dawntrail begins, for me, June 28th. I wanted to be ready to play as I've heard the mobs are much harder in this expansion, so... be be prepared. My crafters are all ready to make new stuff. I'm stoked.

For the past few weeks I've been complaining about people not knowing what they're doing in dungeons, not knowing how to play their class, and frankly, just not doing anything constructive and then noping out when called on their shit.

I thought it was just me until I saw several YouTubers complaining about the same thing. several had noted that they are being called into dungeons that are already in progress because the healer noped out. Myself, I've seen them just disappear after the first pull while leveling up my DPS folk. In one case, a level 70 dungeon, we went through three healers and begged the last one not to leave.

We were doing nothing out of the ordinary, just trying to get through and get our daily chores done so we could get on with whatever else in game we were doing.

At first I put it down to Square Enix having recently added their games to the XBox platform and seeing all the new sprouts and trying to talk them through how to do things and play their job and how to do dungeons in the game. Then I saw yellow flowers, people who have come back and reminding them of some recent changes they may not know about. It was easy to shrug and say, "Well, they just announced the expansion and released the trailer and benchmark, things are always a bit crazy before release."

And then today I'd had enough. I was un a dungeon, working on my Summoner, and trying to get her next Manderville relic weapon and tomestones for credendum. Need to be 650 by next Friday, ya know.

Summoners have heals, that suck, but can help heal oneself to keep you on your feet until the healer can top you off. We also have rez. We're really loved, along with Red Mages, because we can battle rez in the event the healers go down. It speaks to my healer side while I'm blasting away at a monster.

Today, in a level 90 dungeon, I had a WHM, or White mage, who demanded I heal the tank.

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary... Come again?

They weren't healing, they weren't working their lilies, they were just DPSing (Damage Per Second for the folks who don't game), then screaming at me for not keeping everyone healed.

White Mages can earn mana free, instacast heals, single target and group when they do DPS. They have a nice huge bell that can heal the platform and do a lot of damage to a monster. They have domes they can place over the players that can heal them over time. There is no healer in any game who is going to turn their nose up at a free heal for anybody.

Was this bitch doing any of that? Fuck no. She was our Glare Bitch.

The next daily I went into the tank was complaining about the same thing. I will still playing my Summoner so we were joking around about it. But then I got to thinking and I'd heard several of other people talking about it and how bad the healers were now.

Nothing in game had changed, just the players.

I also remembered that some idiot on YouTube, don't remember his name because he was complete weaksauce and frankly, I think is a secret power bottom. Just the way he acts and talks. Either that or he's on The Spectrum. He claims to have caused a Healer Strike in game because he ran a group, sans healer in the Dawn Trail press tour and claims you no longer need healers.

Well, as a healer, who admittedly doesn't attend The Meetings, I've yet to hear anything about it.

Then I was finishing up my dailies and got thrown into the last trial of the Main Scenario before you're sent off to save the universe, not just the world, and I had two White Mages in our group and I thought, Excellent! We'll all stay full health!

After the second wipe the Main Tank stopped everything and chewed them both out after I had had to rez BOTH healers back into the game for the 3rd time. I died a lot in the encounter, with the exception of one time, because I was rezzing the healers.

the MT was majorly pissed because they weren't healing, weren't putting down their awesome Bells or putting the Asylum done over us for heals. They weren't healing at all. The only heals I had received were my own 400 pt heal for myself. I went through a ton of healing potions because they weren't healing. They didn't even know how to do a Limit Break to rez all the dead and restore everyone to full health with no rez sickness.

I just wanted to get through the encounter and get out. But, I did speak my mind. I told them as a WHM main, they made me ashamed, being too stupid to even do the free lily heals. This was me venting spleen as well as giving them both a bad rep on the servers in our data center in front of everyone there. I wanted to get out of there, put back on my WHM clothes and cry for my healer who just wants to keep everyone, not just the tank, alive. I get through if they get through. It's symbiosis at its best.

I can earn the tomestones I need on any job I can play, so I may just white mage it, even though I wanted a break from healing for a bit. My Summoner is fun and I was enjoying it until this week. I'm a back up rezzer. I can heal, but you really should not be depending on me. If you don't know that, perhaps you should be playing Reaper.

The Pussification of Two Generation of Kids

 

Recently, my daughter-in-law and I were talking about parks and playgrounds lacking... things to play on. Gone are the Merry-go-Round, the Jungle Gym, and most importantly, the Monkey Bars.

I know. You're sitting there with that is that chick insane? look on your face right now. But trust me. I gave this all of about five seconds of thought.

You can think Dave Matthews for this epiphany. I've been on a kick this weekend and was listening to his Proudest Monkey song off his Crash album. It's always been one of my favorite tracks to listen to because of the rhythm guitar and the declinations of tone and structure. If you don't know it, it's extremely relaxing... until you listen to the lyrics. Really listen to them. I'd know the chorus forever, but this time, for whatever reason I dove into the lyrics and realized what a depressing song it is. Almost as depressing as his Pay For What You Get from his Under the Table and Dreaming CD.

Anyhoodles, as I sat at my desk contemplating country vs city life, I realized that, as a society we have become so risk averse that we are actually afraid of actually enjoying or getting benefit from anything. In fact, we started with our kids first.

When my kids went to the park and on their school playgrounds, they had those three pieces of equipment, including seesaws. Think about that for a moment. 

I don't know about you guys, but some of the merriest moments in my childhood, and the childhoods of my children were on old park swings, slides and monkey bars. I can almost see why we got rid of the old metal slides. Hot as hell, but then the hot ass plastic ones aren't much better, are they?

Now, look at your average Millennial and Zoomer. Ain't no upper body strength there to threaten you is there? The fat little blubber balls can barely stand up much less lift a game controller. Am I right? I mean, they're either deathly thin from not being able to eat anything so that mommy could post about how put upon she was by the food allergies that all wound up being made up except for the nut allergies, which we can all blame on the CDCs along with COVAIDS. 

I'm sure that, as a parent, that makes you feel so much better for not allowing kids to go outside and, wait for it, just be kids.

When my kids were growing up, my house was where everyone came to play out in our backyard, climb in trees, swing, sand box, basketball goal and tons of games to play in the rec room (made out of our old garage).

We also had video game consoles and a computer. I watched over them, baked snacks and proctored their homework before they got to play. I was, in fact, parenting them because their own parents were uninterested in the job. Some were busy with big families like my own. Some were busy with both parents working to keep them in our definitely blue collar, refinery row housing development that was quickly becoming a barrio. Some were fatherless, a couple were motherless. My home was a safe place for them to hang after school. I was mean and scared the socks of any bully chasing them after school.

You know how I know it was good? My kids ALWAYS talk about that when they're all together. 

I was there for tae kwon do. Yes, I actually sent my children out to fight other children in their dojang. They played baseball, football, basketball, and still would go to play at the local park with their friends. They ran around screaming, eating snow cones and JUST BEING KIDS.

I was part of the PTA and I volunteered at their elementary schools. I did that because I didn't get to do it in the beginning, so I embraced being a stay at home mom when I got the chance. No, I didn't get it, I took the damned thing for my own.

I don't remember parents of my generation because such fucking pussies, but it's where it began. We were going to be so much better than our Boomer parents, weren't we. And we were almost there. It was the ones that came after my kids that frankly make me want to slap a bitch.

I'll tell you a story to illustrate. When my youngest daughter was playing softball in elementary school, I made cupcakes for her birthday because she had a game that evening. One of her little friends took one and her mother ripped it out of her hands and threw it at the trashcan telling her she couldn't have all that sugar.

Yeah, you know that cunt had my sights on her face. All the little girls talked about that little girl and how mean her mom was. And it wasn't just them, the other parents talked about it. I was coach that year and kept a very close on her. Her home life had to be hell is all I can, but since I never saw any signs of physical injury, there was precious little I could do. I just fucked up things in other ways. Because I'm a bitch. You can think it and know that it's a universal truth.

I noted that the elementary school my daughters went to took out their playground equipment and I no longer saw the kids outside playing. I saw it at the Intermediate schools and the Middle School... sometimes. You know you're going to see it during football season at the High School. How else can you boost your parents' egos?

These items disappeared from our local parks when they were all remodeled and updated. Because someone might fall and hurt themselves. Gods forbid you learn a lesson as a child, right?

Hardest Morning of My Life

 

I woke up at four this morning with Apollo dry heaving and having a lot of difficulty breathing. He'd been off his feed, but he was a Husky. We just had to find out what he had decided he would eat now. Right? Right?

We got Apollo nine years ago. He was adopted from our local Humane Society shelter and he was so sick He was eating like a maniac and still losing weight. After a month he was finally diagnosed with Sarcoptic Mange. However, he had heartworms and we had to treat the mange first so it was three months of smelly Sulphur baths every five days.

We got through that, he gained weight and finally began to accept his place in a new pack. At first it was him, Sam, Zeus and Schaub, my son's Beagle. He was the last of them.

I have often said that Apollo, because he was a wild dog when captured, was never going to be the typical family dog. He'd been running around a local park for nearly five years when his illness finally allowed him to be caught and ultimately treated.

He sailed through everything like a Boss, but it left him with extreme anxiety of going to the vet. I would wait for some pet thing with vaccinations offered just so I could get him his shots. We were a couple of years overdue for Rabies.

This morning I woke up to him dry heaving. His heavy breathing started last night. He was getting more anxious as his breathing got worse. We made the decision to take him to the ER vet when he wouldn't even drink water.

They were going to do an exam while we went over paperwork, but we had only had a chance to look at the paper when they called us back and said there was nothing they could do. The vet had found the mass in his chest. 

We both cried like babies. My husband said goodbye and went to settle the bill and make the cremation arrangements while I stayed with him and begged him to let to go and play with Sam, Schaub and Zeus. Run through the trees chasing rabbits ad squirrels, go be with his pack.

He was never the dog that would stay by your side, head on your knee as you sat doing anything, like Sam and Zeus had been. But, he loved us in his own neurotic way. Whenever I left the house he would become almost manic. I can't tell you how many times I'd be at the store or an appointment and have a neighbor call to tell my my mutt was running up and down the street looking for me.

I'd get home and he would be waiting by the garage door for me. whining and nosing me as we made our way inside. When he finally got too old to hop the fence and we put up coyote rollers, he would stress pee and poop everywhere to show his displeasure at being left alone with the cats. He was always happy to see us.

The fact that he preferred sleeping next to my desk or bed was a telling fact.

In the past few years he became close to my husband. He really doesn't like men, and I think that may come from having lived in a park where most males would have felt compelled to catch the beautiful white dog. To the end he had a problem with small children, not wanting them to touch him. He was never mean, but he would nip if they pulled, as if teaching one of his own pups the boundaries.

He loved us. We love him still. We love all of our boon companions. We were so lucky to get him. So lucky we got to have him in our lives.

We made the decision, years back, we would have no more animals than the ones we currently had. Back then it was Zeus, Apollo, and our three demon cats. We're not down to just the cats.

We're gathering up all of the blankets, beds, toys, dishes, etc. Everywhere we move a new blob of Apollo Hair flies up at us. We just dusted and vacuumed. You'd never be able to tell. I'll be honest, a day will come when I will miss that as well. 

It was when I was picking up the water bowls off the floor of the kitchen that it really caught me how much has now changed. No more leaning over to put something in the microwave because the dog's bowl is in the way. No more constant Swiffering of the floor because of muddy puppy feet. No more groaning because he'd peed on his bed in protest of me walking outside to get the mail.

We never realize how much we're going to miss someone we loved with all of our hearts and complained about constantly until they're no longer there. It's wrenching.

Goodbye, Apollo. You will be missed. Thank you for letting us love you.

Me Me Me Is Not Just A Warm Up

 Eric D July, on Critical Drinker's podcast recently opined that all of these screechers are basically just boring and they take over and hijack things in an attempt to get notice. Because notice is the social currency they have been conditioned to crave.

But I dug deeper. Because it's what I do. I must have been born with a shovel in my hand. Perhaps I should be more appreciative of my egg donor, but, on second thought, no.

They take over and hijack things to try to make you accept them.

They have no interest in comic books or gaming. They have no ability to accept good story telling. Name one Marxist who could tell a good story. I'll wait.

For me, my notice of this was brought forth in gaming. This was in the years I wasn't even gaming at all. I'd stopped playing WoW and my poor Steam account was begging me to play Borderlands2. "Come on, Sev. Doncha wanna see and hear Claptrap again?" God help me, I did, but I was too busy writing books.

Then, while I was cruising around the Breitbart News site, I happened upon an article by Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulis. It was about gaming journos accepting sexual and monetary favors for good reviews for video games. No lie. Just ask Zoey Quinn about it. In between murdering men she lures into her honey trap. She was sleeping with no less than seven men, plus her own boyfriend, for good reviews for her crappy depression game.

Then in steps Anita Sarkesian and she's all about the grift. She has spent the past ten years trying to reclaim her fifteen minutes to try to get more money out of an industry that never needed or wanted her in it. She doesn't even game! But, she needed to crowd fund tens of thousands of dollars for a Discord server. Let that sink in for a moment. I have a Discord server. People I game with have Discord servers. Teenagers have Discord Servers. It ain't hard or expensive, Anita. Shoulda looked that one up, Cupcake.

Neither one of those chicks are gamers. They wanted to invade an industry to make people they wanted to like them accept them into their group. That didn't happen. They were exposed for the lying harpies they are.

Take the movie industry. They flocked to Disney and Netflix and have ruined them in their made desire to be loved and accepted by people who are actually repulsed by them. No sane person, in the whole history or man, thinks Cleopatra was black. Why? Because we were taught history by people who didn't use Howard Zinn history books.

Millennials have a self-destructive need for altruism, which is possibly the most selfish thing I've ever seen. Most importantly, they do it against their own self-interest. Because they've been taught they should be martyrs. No, that they MUST be martyrs on the altar of Wokism. 

Gen Z are different, and yet not. They appear to be able to peek behind the curtain and see the crap for what it is, but still want to fit in among their peers. I have hope for Gen Z and hold none for Millennials.

For decades, as I watched my kids and their cohort grow up, I said we would have to throw away, almost completely, one generation. I wasn't sure until 2008 it would be Millennials, but then it became horribly obvious it would be. I'm still watching Gen Z.

They have been taught, through the "Self-Esteem" syllabus, that they are greatest, the bestest EVAR because... Just because. They didn't have to do anything to earn it and then they started handing out Participation Trophies because they were able to show up.

When they began growing into their little minds they expected everything to be like Little League. They expected straight As for merely showing up at school. No effort needed, you're breathing, brother, here's your accolades. Doubt me? How many schools around you have graduation ceremonies from Kindergarten or have eliminated valedictorians?

They went to college being told and believing that mere attendance would get them a degree. Knowledge? Just parrot back what Marxist teacher says and you'll get there. They were hired into jobs by Marxist psych majors who needed to pay off college loans to come in and parrot Marxist ideologies and work to tear down the systems that paid their way. They didn't have to actually work, they just needed to make sure their inserted their crap politics into everything and they would be loved and lauded throughout the world.

Then the venture capital ran out. Suddenly, the journos and influencers were no longer protected from scrutiny and lo and behold the babies began to cry. This wasn't how it was supposed to be! They had been told that if they towed the party line (my use is more accurate than the usual use of the word toed in this instance) they would be loved by all, accepted by all no matter how they debased themselves publicly. No amount of cope will get your original reproductive organs or sex organs back. Hasta la vista sexual pleasure.

Whack off and carve out your genitals. Do it in full public view! You don't need a psych eval to see if you truly need it, this is all for The Cause. The Cause is never fully understood, but asking for an explanation gets you kicked off the plantation and no one wants that, right?

Self-Immolate for The Cause. Accept utter and complete degradation of your body and your mind for The Cause.

You'll be famous.

Celestial Sisters Gifts AKA My New Mothership

 

This morning I made my way into Celestial Sisters Gifts and I was delighted. Our helpful clerk was Adam and he was helpful and very informed. I was impressed.

I don't make my way through our town down the main drag anymore. Traffic is too much and full of stupid drivers who think the middle turning lane is their own personal lane of transport.

I wanted to go in mainly to get white sage smudge sticks for the house... it IS spring. But... you know me... I wanted to see what stones they had. My love of mystic crystals in a joke in the family, but I have them squirreled away everywhere in my house. I'm horribly bad about charging them when they are depleted. I'm making a concerted effort to do better this year and it's somewhat of a success.

They had everything for someone interested in the mystic arts could possibly want. I was impressed by their assortment of rune stones and tarot cards, as well as their books. You could work up from avid beginner to jaded expert with their books.

They had a really good stock of components you would need for any tincture or decoction you might want to make. They had mortars and pestles, incense, and candles. They had vials and bottles for potions, well, tinctures and decoctions... potions is such an antiquated but cherished word.

Adam was opening as we drove up minutes before 10, when they open, and welcomed us in. He made some tea for my husband who has the man flu (allergies). He doesn't really get all of this, but he's interested and indulges me.

They have so much in the shop and they do readings, although I didn't check into how they book those, but I will put the address and a link to their FB page so all of you can look and see.

Yes, I bought a huge coffee mug. I was compelled.

If you're in the area, go in and take a look. Buy a jasper or amethyst.

Celestial Sisters Gifts

102 Jim Dr. 

Hewitt, TX 76643

(254) 300-4051

Evolution of Writing

 

This morning, while I was tidying up my desk in preparation of getting to work on the body of my new manuscript, I opened a drawer and found two reams of printer paper, and two toner cartridges for my laser printer that sits on a shelf, languishing with disuse.

You see, in the past, from the very beginning of my writing, I would print out each draft, mark it up with a red pen, then sit back at my desk and make corrections. It was a very long process and uncomfortable. I stopped printing things out year before last. My editors, the intrepid and eagle-eyed Stephanie and Mariko, now get digital copies where they can mark things up in the file and send back to me and I quickly make changed by reading the notes and not the whole thing all over again.

By the time my book is thrown up on the shelves of e-book retailers everywhere, I've read my book about 5-6 times all the way through. I know loads of people who don't read books twice. 

It made me stop and think about how greatly my process has changed across the board when it comes to writing and all of the collateral issues.

I have a file on a terabyte archive drive that holds nothing but story ideas. I back it up weekly. I am buying still another to store things like pictures, videos and such. I don't hoard files, but I do have a ton of programs cluttering up crap on my main operating drive. 

Last year I put out exactly one book, and it was one I'd been working on the previous year and was more or less ready to go. It was the last of my Paladin stories for a while. 

And then for a year there was nothing. I was busy being bored, playing PC games and then last fall I became ill and required surgery. Things looked really well for about two weeks and then the rug was pulled out from under me and things got worse. I got a virus and secondary bacterial infection that was not treated properly and made things ever worse.

Really worse.

One afternoon, while watching two of my grandchildren, I woke up on the floor of my kitchen with no idea how I got there. The kids, thank God, were blissfully unaware. I couldn't get up to open the garage door or the front door. I called my daughter-in-law, who works for the local constabulary, and evidently asked her to come get the kids, telling her to open to garage door with the opener in my husband's truck.

I woke up, again, on my couch with a mask over my face and people barking questions at me. My daughter-in-law thought my blood sugar had gone low. Nobody was listening to me explain. Finally, a woman EMT came in and calmly asked me questions and I told her of my problems. They tried to sit me up and again, I was passing out. Someone got my sensor reader for my glucose monitor (my cybernetic implant) and discovered, yes, her blood sugar is perfect. Let's roll!

The first thing they did, before I even got into a room was take my blood and very quickly they discovered what I'd been telling them, I'm bleeding out, you idiots. As you can probably tell, I do not have a good opinion of the medical personnel in my area. Coming from the Houston Medical Center as I do, my small town medical professionals are seen as splinters from the bottom of the barrel. 

I received two units of blood, told to take iron and another medication. I had surgery scheduled for two weeks down the road, I should be fine! Wrong. My surgeon won't touch me until my blood volume is my own and richly fortified with iron bonded to my hemoglobin. I will have it in the summer when I can easily take the time to recover with no lifting children and constantly scooping up toys to be put back into place.

During the time immediately following that, I quit playing games as I just could not sit at my desk long enough to log in much less play at all. I lay in my bed and chatting with friend in texts and discord. With everything on my PC in my office, I was watching TV and re-reading books and discovering new ones.

I began ideating. I began making notes and then outlines and re-reading the books that mattered in my Shifter series and I decided to end a story arc that started at the very first Cat Shifter book. I managed to get two outlines for the last two books in the arc, the beginnings of a new series are, and then an idea to close out an open plot from before. I made sure I made notes on everything. My poor oxygen starved brain was working overtime.

It was hard to bring together a plot line that spanned eleven books. I was entering into Nalini Singh territory and it was terrifying. I love her books, and plot and series arcs. 

I had started the last book in the arc, and then got hit with the idea for another one. I quickly wrote that one in like a week. While that one was with Stephanie and Mariko, I was finishing up the last in the arc, which I fully fleshed out while editing the previous book.

It was murder to write because it was an end, and secondly, it not a happy ending. We like happy endings, we accept happy for now endings. This one ends on a happy note, but it's clouded by the reality that Pran was correct, it was Zero Sum (title of the first book in the Shifter series) because no matter what choice he made everyone would lose by his decision, there were no winners. So, after stopping and starting and taking forever to write the last chapter, I took a tone of slim hope. I think we all needed it. 

I'm happy to be now doing all of the editing on my tablet. No more printing forever, putting it in a binder and then sitting there marking things up, no more sitting at my desk for house rewriting and fixing run on sentences. Now, I can easily sit in my recliner and not be sore and have swollen legs from sitting far too long.

I'm feeling so much better than I did just a month ago. I still tire very quickly, but everyday I'm making strides. I feel like that is our purpose. We strive, we get through, we carry on, we improve.

I hope you all think that I have improved since the first Demonworld book (please God, yes) those books were horrible. I leave them up as a lesson to myself. I've learned so much since then. 

Most of all, thanks to everyone who buys and reads my books. You don't have to, but you do and it really makes me strive to be better, to write books worthy of your money. You could easily spend it elsewhere, but you chose to grab one of my books. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.