back from the dead, again, again.
Breeeathe.
I'm getting awfully tired of coming back with the same news, but, yes--my computer crashed last Tuesday. Again. This time we formatted the entire C:/ drive, so all the My Documents, Desktop clutter, My Programs, D&S, etc. etc. etc. were completely erased, DESPITE what our Sneaky Technician said. This may not mean much to you, but among the casaulties are numerated three of my finished (and unbacked) fics, every single DL chapter/fic/chapterfic I've written thus far, most of my .jpg pictures (which I will be all right with, the moment I get my Photoshop back; currently, though, every single drawing of mine is saved in .psd and when I don't have the programs necessary to open the bloody things it gets me QUITE pissed), all my handmade icons, all my Ouran High School Host Club eps, an entire season of Jeeves and Wooster (ASFLASLFKASNLF), every single thing I ever received from MSN (which means, 99% of lence's scribbles, including the pretty DL ones; samekh_mem's pics and dolls and photos, both their sent mp3 files which means I need Lence for Broadway geekitude and Asenath for punkrock+Type O Negative love, and TEA's pics which, oh FUCK, I promised to Photoshop-edit), and a bunch of other stuff besides.
Things that were saved include my collection of computer books (if not the programs necessary to read them, d'oh), my .psd drawing archives (if not the programs necessary to open them, d'oh), my mp3 collection thank god for that, and, in defiance to all logic anywhere in the world, my PotC sountrack and the installation program for uTorrent.
One thing distinctly absent from the line of refugees is whatever frail, optimistic faith I had ever retained in computers and mechanics alike. It is completely shattered. Dead.
The internet is to being majorly sucky, so chances of a page loading are 1:100,000,000 in 100,000,000 years, but I've managed to read my flist nonetheless. (Well, the first page of it, anyway.) blizzardseason, never fear--if you want any of the music files back, or any other files nonwithstanding, I shall be more than happy to oblige you. Spreadin' the music love, yo.
ETA: Internet problem seems to be a bit more severe than mere suckiness, so nothing works and we need another prof tech-man, this time from the HOT cable service, to come and bang up our modem some. This would explain why a) the computer still isn't functioning properly, despite being amiable again, b) I couldn't upload this goddamn post for three days.
MSN isn't working, so I'll not be on for another long while, though now I can check my e-mail inbox, which is a definite improvement. In regards to that, I cannot thank jtsnoa enough for her willingness to labor and fret on my behalf, monitoring both my inbox and the fitzandthefool community. My gratitude is as infallible as Lord Golden's homosexual streak. Which says, as you well know, a LOT. ♥
ICon is in two weeks, which means I'll be away in Tel-Aviv for nine days, five of which will be spent cavorting in the Cinematech and kissing Neil Gaiman's shoes. Because, omg. Neil Gaiman is attending this year's ICon. In case any one of you haven't yet had the misfortune of being ranted at by yours truly, I use the opportunity to do so now. OMG NEIL GAIMAN IS COMING LOOK BUSY. Expect no cohorence in the following ever. Guh.
As lence will not be getting her DL chapterfic any longer (A Servant Still; thankfully The Measure of a Life is backed up on LJ), here, in compensation, is some very old Gedeon!fic I found on my private drive. Unbeta'd, unedited, and sadly lacking in Nuitari, but it's the best I can do right now. Hopefully the next few days will be enough to soothe my intense lamentation, because damnit, ASSchap.2 was one of the best damn pieces of stylized writing I've ever written. *KICKS SOMETHING*
* * *
When I was small, he told Lear once, I was sick, and Solin nursed me back to health.
Lear had stared, then pretended not to stare, then pretended that he wasn't pretending. Gedeon had waited patiently for the charade to end, but then Solin had cut in, remarking how he had fed him rabbit stew (which was particularly effective for fevers), and the man had nearly fallen off his horse.
Many such similar incidents had, over time, come to form Gedeon's main impression of Lear. Strange, eccentric, and easily shocked by the smallest details. Tall, unimposing, yet quietly dignified. Pageant. Worldly. Magical.
He didn't know why that last perturbed him, but it did. Like any boy, he had heard about Huma and his loyal Magus, about Justarius and Par-Salian, about Palin Majere. The man lived in his town, for the gods' sake; he was no stranger to the virtues of mages. But Gedeon just had this something; an inherent wariness, a trepidation of wizards. Once bitten, twice shy, he'd call it privately, yet while hedgewizards and their kin were all very well from afar, the thought of magic near him, in him, in his loved ones, was enough to make his skin crawl. You're not even once bitten, he said to himself in disgust, what kind of adventurer is afraid of something for no reason? And still he could not find another name for the fear, nor could he banish it.
Lear, though. Lear was different. At first, he had seemed nothing more than a trickster, innocuous and harmless enough. Even after his true nature--for magic was a nature, Gedeon knew, more than any profession--was revealed, it was something detached, quarantined to another person. After all, it wasn't like magic was contagious, was it? And even after he seemed to be keenly interested in him, even more so in Solin; even after he had taken them under his wing and laid the lands of Krynn before their traveling feet, Gedeon had felt confident, somewhat safe. This force, this threat, this magic of white and red and black was something restricted to their traveling companion, and it would not reach them, him or Solin.
So when he thought about Lear, it was as pageant and worldly. And the man was all that and more; it seemed he had traveled the whole world, seen every sight, tread every path. The sheer amount of knowledge he held within his mind was enough to astound both the brothers; Gedeon made his wonder plain, and Solin's aloofness was betrayed by bright-eyed avidity.
Both of them would sit around the fire at their camp every night--real camp, with bedrolls and bedbugs and the strange new sky open above their heads, foreign constellations glittering like the gems of the dwarven caravans back home--listening to Lear like babes on a grandmother's knee. Fantastic stories, unbelievable stories, which never started with I remember, back in the day... or When I was young... but always included Solamnians or Clerics of the Heart or even dragons, which nobody had seen in ages but which Lear claimed to have studied at a certain time in his youth.
Solin pondered this, then suspiciously asked how old Lear really was; the red-robed mage had merely smiled mysteriously, then fluttered his eyelashes outrageously and said something coy and wholly inappropriate about ladies' age and the never-asking thereof. Both the boys had looked blank, and Lear sighed theatrically and muttered something about "young, so young". Which Gedeon resented, really; he was going to be almost ten by next Winterfest (the real birthday was somewhat later, in autumn, but that was a minor detail), and certainly old enough to figure stuff out on his own, if only people would be civil and explain themselves.
Commiserating with Solin, his brother had shortly informed him that his logic was an oxymoron, then, when Gedeon had jokingly pretended offense at being called an ox and a moron, had stormed off in a black sulk to talk to Lear, and really, he wasn't an idiot, he knew what an oxymoron was and even though Solin didn't have that much a sense of humor he could at least get a joke, sheesh.
I'm getting awfully tired of coming back with the same news, but, yes--my computer crashed last Tuesday. Again. This time we formatted the entire C:/ drive, so all the My Documents, Desktop clutter, My Programs, D&S, etc. etc. etc. were completely erased, DESPITE what our Sneaky Technician said. This may not mean much to you, but among the casaulties are numerated three of my finished (and unbacked) fics, every single DL chapter/fic/chapterfic I've written thus far, most of my .jpg pictures (which I will be all right with, the moment I get my Photoshop back; currently, though, every single drawing of mine is saved in .psd and when I don't have the programs necessary to open the bloody things it gets me QUITE pissed), all my handmade icons, all my Ouran High School Host Club eps, an entire season of Jeeves and Wooster (ASFLASLFKASNLF), every single thing I ever received from MSN (which means, 99% of lence's scribbles, including the pretty DL ones; samekh_mem's pics and dolls and photos, both their sent mp3 files which means I need Lence for Broadway geekitude and Asenath for punkrock+Type O Negative love, and TEA's pics which, oh FUCK, I promised to Photoshop-edit), and a bunch of other stuff besides.
Things that were saved include my collection of computer books (if not the programs necessary to read them, d'oh), my .psd drawing archives (if not the programs necessary to open them, d'oh), my mp3 collection thank god for that, and, in defiance to all logic anywhere in the world, my PotC sountrack and the installation program for uTorrent.
One thing distinctly absent from the line of refugees is whatever frail, optimistic faith I had ever retained in computers and mechanics alike. It is completely shattered. Dead.
The internet is to being majorly sucky, so chances of a page loading are 1:100,000,000 in 100,000,000 years, but I've managed to read my flist nonetheless. (Well, the first page of it, anyway.) blizzardseason, never fear--if you want any of the music files back, or any other files nonwithstanding, I shall be more than happy to oblige you. Spreadin' the music love, yo.
ETA: Internet problem seems to be a bit more severe than mere suckiness, so nothing works and we need another prof tech-man, this time from the HOT cable service, to come and bang up our modem some. This would explain why a) the computer still isn't functioning properly, despite being amiable again, b) I couldn't upload this goddamn post for three days.
MSN isn't working, so I'll not be on for another long while, though now I can check my e-mail inbox, which is a definite improvement. In regards to that, I cannot thank jtsnoa enough for her willingness to labor and fret on my behalf, monitoring both my inbox and the fitzandthefool community. My gratitude is as infallible as Lord Golden's homosexual streak. Which says, as you well know, a LOT. ♥
ICon is in two weeks, which means I'll be away in Tel-Aviv for nine days, five of which will be spent cavorting in the Cinematech and kissing Neil Gaiman's shoes. Because, omg. Neil Gaiman is attending this year's ICon. In case any one of you haven't yet had the misfortune of being ranted at by yours truly, I use the opportunity to do so now. OMG NEIL GAIMAN IS COMING LOOK BUSY. Expect no cohorence in the following ever. Guh.
As lence will not be getting her DL chapterfic any longer (A Servant Still; thankfully The Measure of a Life is backed up on LJ), here, in compensation, is some very old Gedeon!fic I found on my private drive. Unbeta'd, unedited, and sadly lacking in Nuitari, but it's the best I can do right now. Hopefully the next few days will be enough to soothe my intense lamentation, because damnit, ASSchap.2 was one of the best damn pieces of stylized writing I've ever written. *KICKS SOMETHING*
* * *
When I was small, he told Lear once, I was sick, and Solin nursed me back to health.
Lear had stared, then pretended not to stare, then pretended that he wasn't pretending. Gedeon had waited patiently for the charade to end, but then Solin had cut in, remarking how he had fed him rabbit stew (which was particularly effective for fevers), and the man had nearly fallen off his horse.
Many such similar incidents had, over time, come to form Gedeon's main impression of Lear. Strange, eccentric, and easily shocked by the smallest details. Tall, unimposing, yet quietly dignified. Pageant. Worldly. Magical.
He didn't know why that last perturbed him, but it did. Like any boy, he had heard about Huma and his loyal Magus, about Justarius and Par-Salian, about Palin Majere. The man lived in his town, for the gods' sake; he was no stranger to the virtues of mages. But Gedeon just had this something; an inherent wariness, a trepidation of wizards. Once bitten, twice shy, he'd call it privately, yet while hedgewizards and their kin were all very well from afar, the thought of magic near him, in him, in his loved ones, was enough to make his skin crawl. You're not even once bitten, he said to himself in disgust, what kind of adventurer is afraid of something for no reason? And still he could not find another name for the fear, nor could he banish it.
Lear, though. Lear was different. At first, he had seemed nothing more than a trickster, innocuous and harmless enough. Even after his true nature--for magic was a nature, Gedeon knew, more than any profession--was revealed, it was something detached, quarantined to another person. After all, it wasn't like magic was contagious, was it? And even after he seemed to be keenly interested in him, even more so in Solin; even after he had taken them under his wing and laid the lands of Krynn before their traveling feet, Gedeon had felt confident, somewhat safe. This force, this threat, this magic of white and red and black was something restricted to their traveling companion, and it would not reach them, him or Solin.
So when he thought about Lear, it was as pageant and worldly. And the man was all that and more; it seemed he had traveled the whole world, seen every sight, tread every path. The sheer amount of knowledge he held within his mind was enough to astound both the brothers; Gedeon made his wonder plain, and Solin's aloofness was betrayed by bright-eyed avidity.
Both of them would sit around the fire at their camp every night--real camp, with bedrolls and bedbugs and the strange new sky open above their heads, foreign constellations glittering like the gems of the dwarven caravans back home--listening to Lear like babes on a grandmother's knee. Fantastic stories, unbelievable stories, which never started with I remember, back in the day... or When I was young... but always included Solamnians or Clerics of the Heart or even dragons, which nobody had seen in ages but which Lear claimed to have studied at a certain time in his youth.
Solin pondered this, then suspiciously asked how old Lear really was; the red-robed mage had merely smiled mysteriously, then fluttered his eyelashes outrageously and said something coy and wholly inappropriate about ladies' age and the never-asking thereof. Both the boys had looked blank, and Lear sighed theatrically and muttered something about "young, so young". Which Gedeon resented, really; he was going to be almost ten by next Winterfest (the real birthday was somewhat later, in autumn, but that was a minor detail), and certainly old enough to figure stuff out on his own, if only people would be civil and explain themselves.
Commiserating with Solin, his brother had shortly informed him that his logic was an oxymoron, then, when Gedeon had jokingly pretended offense at being called an ox and a moron, had stormed off in a black sulk to talk to Lear, and really, he wasn't an idiot, he knew what an oxymoron was and even though Solin didn't have that much a sense of humor he could at least get a joke, sheesh.