It is the 41st Millenium.

For ten centuries, the God Emperor of Mankind has watched immobile from his Golden Throne.

It is a time of teeming trillions toiling about their days in peace - in hives, on farms, in cities and forges and starships. For every world which dies screaming in the pyres of exterminatus or is touched by the flames of war, a million more spin peacefully around warm suns scarcely aware of the horrors of the void beyond. For every heretic, seditionist or arsonist in the dark, a million faithful hold the line against the night. For every craven coward hiding from their duty and crying against their fate, a hundred step forth on far foreign worlds certain that the home they would never see again and those they still loved would be next if they don't.

The bonds of brother and sister, of common humanity still remain. Parents wish for a better future for their children. Where there are wars against heresy and xenos, there were those who wage their wars of Faith against the ravages of disease and famine. The pen of the mundane adept which condemns thousands in callous error guards millions through thankless diligence.

The Emperor's divine hand touches the living souls of those in need, bestowing upon them the strength to endure even where they alone could not hope succeed.

Even against the Grim Darkness of the far Future, the best angels of humanity still shine.


So long as that remains true, there is still hope.
------

If I can bring Grimdark to to a happy go-lucky setting ----   why not do the opposite?

So it was sometime in late 2023... you know, a little after Mackie fucked up with his Griffon project and nearly got everyone killed at Frigga, and about six months after that whole United Belt Alliance fiasco.

Here's what only some people know about that time... you have to remember that UBA was trying to throw all sorts of wrenches into the JMC works - and it was in a big bid to force us to work for them, or to fold up, and to either way isolate everyone who wasn't under their banner further and tighten up that set of thumbscrews.

Overall, it was a really rough time for everyone out Jupiter way, almost but not quite as bad as the Boskonian War had been for us. After all, I came out of that Milestone Event with a biomod, using a dose of the substance Handwavium to basically change from someone who was rapidly dying to someone who was going to keep on living. Oh, and it included a level of involuntary gender flipping whenever I’d get excited or stressed. But that was usually once a day, tops, and either would reset when I’d get sufficiently calm, or had gotten a good night’s sleep.

A little thing about the UBA situation now that you know about the biomod... my gender flipping had gone into serious overdrive from the stress... I was literally spending, well, not full up days at the time, but I was finding there was less and less male time as the stress had mounted from dealing with what they were doing to be maximally disruptive to our operations, the shift happening pretty much every single day and earlier and earlier in the day. It took months after enough information was found to bring that entire thing down around their ears for us to finally start getting to where we could deliver on time regularly.

My variable gender thing... didn't really recover quite so neatly. I was still finding myself randomly changing, in both directions, with no apparent cause or reason, and it stopped even being as predictable as “early in the day”, to say nothing of the fact that relaxing was no longer guaranteed to shift me back and make it stick. It took a little bit to realize why. Of course, it wasn’t me who realized it first.

*****

I woke up in the middle of the night with the overriding need to use the head, and did what I always did up until that night, padding into the head, pulling down the front, standing over the toilet and doing the business, as it were.

I didn't hear the sound, at least as soon as I should have... but the warm, wet sensation that unexpectedly spread down my legs brought me right awake.

*****

Nene woke with a start to a muffled groan almost becoming a scream from the head of the small sleeping area aboard Starbug 1. She quickly threw off her side of the blanket and rushed into the head nestled between the two cabins. Jeph was there, leaning against the wall, panicking a bit... her underwear still bunched down around her hips and dripping with something that clearly wasn’t water.

"Jeph... are... are you all right?"

Jeph seemed to come back to herself, her lips quivered, and she lunged against Nene, grabbing her into a hug and practically sobbing.

"Nene... nene... it... make it stop... I... i can't..."

Nene did the only thing she could, taking Jeph into a hug, lowering her carefully down to the floor and seating herself to cradle her, letting the crying fit run it's course, stroking her hair and making soothing sounds. "Jeph... it's all right... it'll be all right…”

*****

I don't remember, honestly, how long the sob attack lasted. Nene held me until it had properly passed. I felt more than a little wrung out.

"Ne...Nene... I... gods I just want this to be stable..." I sniffed, straightened myself back up, then leaning against the bulkhead. "I need to just be one gender for a day... just one damned day..."

Nene looked at me, and there was that look again, the one that told volumes about the depths of the love she could hold.

"Jeph... OK, first of all, take a shower... a good soaking long shower, as much as you need, OK? I'll go down to the galley and put on some of that Death Wish on the pot and a couple of bagels in the toaster. You come down as soon as you're ready and decent, and then we'll talk about what we can do, OK?"

I nodded. I was a bit numb as I showered... I hadn't woken up female like that in a long time, not since sometime in the middle of the War, and that had been a week that included a major flashback to nearly getting killed... and something had hit me really hard about it when I'd felt my underwear get soaked when I expected the stream to just hit the bowl… and it was clear the last bit of gender consistency I’d had - waking up in male form - was no longer going to be.

I yanked myself away from that, and worked on getting myself cleaned up, washed out my hair just to be certain and to partake in the ritual of cleansing, so to speak, and rustled myself up some clothing while wrapping my hair up in a towel. Pants, shirt, undershirt ‘waved to become a bra (which it did immediately) shorts, the whole drill at the time. And I slinked down the stairs, feeling a little more out of sorts than I had been feeling of late, while smelling the sweet roasted bean smell of caffeine ready for the cup.

Nene had gotten the coffee and bagels out as she'd threatened, and had even taken the time to make scrambled eggs and bacon, which had become a fair luxury of late for us as they still haven’t figured out a way to vat grow a satisfactory form of bacon. She put a steaming cup of coffee and a nice, hot plate of breakfast down on the table, and indicated the chair. We both sat down, and she watched me intently as I ate and drank, and gave me a few minutes to eat in silence before she sighed.

"OK... I'm just going to take a page from Priss' playbook for a change and just come right out with it, right now, and spare us a lot of drama and misunderstandings and everyone else around us second guessing all of this. Something's been really off since all the business with Maico and her Saber Chase, like it’s thrown your balance way off and you’ve never really recovered it, and given the way it's gotten even worse now, I think I have some idea, after all these years, what it's all about." She took in another breath, held it, let it out, then,

"Jeph... all of that stress, then dealing with the Griffon fallout... there's definitely been a lot more to the variable gender thing you have than most anyone have been aware of." She gave me a look, much sharper than I was used to seeing on her face. "It... it's like it’s been part of a mismatched and bodged up coping mechanism, isn't it?"

I looked at her, still trying to shrug off the awfulness of the morning thus far, as she pulled out her laptop, opened it, and read the file that was already pulled up on it. "OK... I'm going to ask a few questions, and I need you to answer them completely, and honestly. This comes from those Biomod Psych Tests that Peters came up with."

She asked me the question: What was my name before I went Up and joined Fenspace. I said it, three names. First, middle, last.

Her expression, it didn't quite sour, but it got more thoughtful. "Uh... huh."

She asked a few more... all of them were about my past, how I grew up.

She closed her laptop up. "Jeph... OK... I think... I think we can stabilize this a bit, but I'm not sure how much you're going to like the idea."

I sighed, shuddering a little. "Nene... I need a lot more gender stability than I've been getting... It... it's like I change for no reason now, no stress, no excitement, just suddenly." I shuddered. “It’s starting to feel like Hell.”

Nene reached over, and took my hand in hers. "Maybe... we should ride this day out. Take it as just two girls today. Geo says we're about an hour from landing. Don't worry about changing back for right now, just see if this will be stable for today." She smirked. "If history is any indication so far, it takes anger or a good night's sleep for you to go all boy again, and the latter clearly isn’t reliable at this point. Might as well just work with it." She breathed again. "I also went ahead and rescheduled that one meeting you had today for tomorrow. Explained that we had some unexpected issues aboard Starbug to iron out."

I could only nod. Part of my brain was still a bit all over the place from the really rude awakening I'd received from a body that had, lately, seemed determined to mess with my head.

She got up, got me another mug of coffee, and sat back down. "Oh, and Jeph? That name you went by? Can you say it again? And THINK about it this time?"

I opened my mouth to say it, and thought about it, and right then, I realized it wasn't the name I'd been given when I was born. Not quite. The last name was the same, and one of the other names matched, but wasn't the middle name, but the first. I’d heard of the phenomenon, but it was shocking, if not disturbing, to actually FEEL what it felt like to have had the discontinuities in one’s psyche wallpapered over. Nene's face wore an expression of sympathy as she watched me suddenly find something that I'd not been aware of since I'd gotten biomodded in 2012.

"Jeph... here's the deal... I remember we decided to not sell that lifesaver kit you'd developed... and I know you'd bred that strain of 'wave for it specifically..."

"Yeah... because I wasn't sure it was going to have that effect on others, and we decided not to take the chance."

She nodded. "You were the only one who worked on that strain. I... I think you put more of yourself into it than any of us suspected at the time, nor suspected until recently." She gave me that piercing look again. "There is something else I've noticed, now that I can really think about it, and seeing the stuff that happened with Jet when she incepted Mackie has brought it into stark relief. You're... more comfortable once you've shifted. Every single time. At least once you're past whatever triggered it, whether it be excitement over something, or general stress." She looked towards the cockpit door. "Geo noticed it too, but I didn't really put two and two together myself for a while, and he literally can’t connect the facts because he doesn’t quite understand the reasons, but I think the excitement causes you to drop the barriers you’ve erected, and when it's general stress, it's happening to remove an element of stress to give you more room to cope with it."

"...and what do you think is the stress it... it's removing?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the truth.

"Jeph... I... I think you're just more comfortable as a woman. And you always have been." I opened my mouth to protest. “And no, you know what my history is, both before and after inception.”

“But… but what about… well…”

“In bed?” Nene tapped me on the forehead, three times. "THIS is what I'm in love with... what's inside that thick bone skull of yours. I've... spent time realizing that I don't care about what sort of package it's actually been wrapped in. I love you, the person, not the bundle of hardware you happen to be installed on." She looked me straight in the eyes. “I want you to be happy, Jeph. That’s the one thing in the ‘verse that is guaranteed to bring me pure joy, seeing you happy.” And she snorted. “Besides, has what form you’ve been in stopped us having a little fun? It’s just different avenues to the same end for me.”

<I hate to interrupt the counseling session,> Geo tweeted over the intercom, <but we’re coming into the Ganymede Traffic Control Area. Captain to the bridge, Blue Alert!> I quickly dumped another round of coffee into my cup, slapped the lid on it, and we made our way from the common area to the “bridge”, which was way too small to really qualify as such, but was also ludicrously larger than what you’d really consider calling a “cockpit”. Someone on the internal JMC listserv had once sarcastically suggested we call it the “codge”, but the sheer intensity of the groaning was almost too much and the idea was tabled without further debate.

I sat down at the forward right control station, dropped my cup into the cupholder, looked at the radio, and looked back at Nene. “I… I’m sorry, my throat’s a bit raspy from crying.”

Nene gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s OK.” She sat down at the station right behind me, and put in the headset mic. “CQ CQ CQ, this is Starbug 1 to Ganymede ATC, we are on approach, and requesting a landing course, over.”

“This is Ganymede ATC to Starbug 1, we have you on scope. Landing course is already open on Beta 5, destination pad is your usual green zone.” There was a pause, and a new voice came on. “This is Commander Hayes, is everything all right over there, Romanova? Usually Captain Antilles speaks for Starbug 1. Over.”

Nene sighed. “This is Starbug 1. Nothing a little bit of rest won’t solve, Commander. We had a little bit of a rough night after the last course correction. Over.”

“Ganymede ATC, anything you’d need to report? Over.”

“Starbug 1, negative Commander, it was all internal logistics, we have it under control for now. Over.”

“Ganymede ATC, understood, happy landings, over and out.”

“Starbug 1, over and out.” Nene pulled the mic back off, and sighed again. “You know, they’re going to ask after the next town hall.”

“I know. I’ll have to figure out what to say… at least, once I figure out what I really need to get on and do about this. Geo, you have the course?”

<Yeah, Boss, all green on my boards. Need me to take us in?>

“Knowing my state right now, I’d probably manage to bang into the pad and bend one of the landing legs. So yes.”

Geo made a happy chirping noise. <I don’t get to park us often enough. Consider it done. You take it easy and let me handle it. Like a pillow made of feathers.>

Nene mock quailed. “Oh no, I’ve heard that before… we’re going to crash, and then explode.” She dropped the mock quail, and got thoughtful. “Or was it explode, and then crash? I can never keep the correct order straight in my head.”

<Har har sis.> Geo twitched his head back and forth in an expression of annoyance, only made mock by holding his holoprojector up. <I’m only going to take it gently because I know Hayes would demand you uninstall my flight controller software.> The last was one of the raspy blurts that was the astromech form of a raspberry.

“OK, OK, you two, settle down. I just want to get home. You can be bratty siblings all you want once we’re at home and settled back in.”

“Awww…” Nene mock groused as Geo chortled. <You got it, Boss.>

Ganymede got much bigger in the viewports, the ground rushing past as the horizon went from curved to flat quickly. We’d made this approach so often that I could almost see the exact moment of the transition between the two now, and then the beautiful, glittering domes of Serenity Valley appeared from behind one of the last crests of mountains. For once, not distracted by the task of piloting, I felt the catch in the back of my throat… as pedestrian as the sight was to me these days, there was still some level of beauty in seeing it, of coming home after weeks out in the black pursuing business.

<Bay doors are open, starting the landing cycle,> Geo reported as the engine’s timber changed, and we felt the angle shift, our ship slowing down considerably, and the landing legs rotating from travel mode to landing mode, as we slipped past the huge hanger door meant to accommodate the much larger Blue Midgets, then spiraled in and passed through a much smaller door into the dedicated parking slip that was only marked with a big green “1” above it.

Starbug 1 slowed further, kicking up a cloud of dust in defiance of all physical laws, spinning almost in place above the turntable pad before finally settling down on her four pads, even as the door we’d come in dropped closed and a gangway extended from the staging walkway nearby.

<And we’re down.> Geo stated as the engines spooled down, from a rumble to barely a vibration of anything. <And not a moment too soon... Boss… something really didn’t feel right about something in that landing, but I can’t pin a servomotor on what’s wrong.> I paused, going over it in my head, then nodded.

“I’m not going to trust my senses myself, given the way the morning’s gone, Geo… schedule the deep inspection team to come in and give the ‘Bug a proper going over.” I unbuckled my harness and stood up, reclaiming my coffee cup from the cupholder and brushing bits of peanut shells from the seat of my shorts. “Right now, I just want to get home.”


-----

OK, yes, I'm finally putting paid to part of why Jeph's biomod worked the way it did. Feel free to chime in with your pieces if you have any, since I'm starting to post it. Also, I'm hoping doing some posting will help me kick the rest of my writing of this story into gear. There is still more to come that's in the datafile.

Renegade Game Studios is getting ready to release RPGs based on GI Joe, Transformers, and Power Rangers
https://www.enworld.org/threads/lets-hav...EvIfg3lieQ

https://nestflix.fun/

Someone's spent a lot of effort creating a "netflix" for fictional films and TV.

The remnants of Ida just swept up and through NJ on its way to New England, and I lost track of how many tornadoes and near-tornadoes it spawned before we were graced with "just" violent thunderstorms -- which are continuing as I type.  Helen, Peg and I spent from 7:40 PM to 8:15 PM in our bathroom at the center of the house with pillows and a quilt, taking shelter as a six-mile-wide tornado+storm system was supposed to go right over us.  It appears it fell completely apart a few miles short of us, but it still was a different way to spend the evening.

Previous thread is here.

Starting new thread with specific topic at hand.

No, wait, I have one. Did LiberaChat ever get back to us?

And a couple others: The Patron Saint of the Four-Kilobyte Run-On Sentence, EmberFist, hasn't posted anything since Rob undid his undoing of grammar fixes about two weeks ago. In case he does come back, I just want to reiterate that folks let Rob or me handle anything they contribute that's longer than three words.

And I note that it's now been almost a week since NormAtreides' ban expired, and he has yet to make a re-appearance in the wiki. Could we possibly be so lucky that he has forgotten about us and has found some other benighted site that needs its coverage of El Presidente Trump sanitized to the standards laid down by the Ministry of Truth?

If either are within the limits of his powers, this one might well do it:


Back From The Dead by Halestorm

I'm not sure how often he'd really need either suggested effect, but there's no denying that when you do, you really need them.

I've been working on characterization for Nanoha Takamachi, and doing all kinds of research.  Labster was reviewing some of my work, and he noted that I had her introspecting on her emotions quite a bit.  When I pointed out that it probably helped that my character, who is on the Autism spectrum, was mentoring her and gently nudging her along that path, Labster conceded that it made sense.

But then I thought about it a bit more.

Autism isn't something that's cut-and-dry.  There's a reason why it's now referred to as a spectrum.  And there are quite a few people out there that you wouldn't think are autistic... except that if you stop and think on it, you'll start to realize that the signs were right under your nose all along.  And these will usually be things that you just brush off as personality quirks.

Quirks like the ones Nanoha Takamachi has.

I'll go over what I feel are some of the most telling signs that Nanoha Takamachi is on the autism spectrum.  Please feel free to confirm, deny, and criticize.  I want to be absolutely sure that I'm not the only person seeing this before I make it an actual part of her characterization.

First off, one of the classic examples of ASD that Nanoha exhibits: an unusual ability to hyper-focus, even to the point of ignoring bodily needs and functions.  This is Nanoha to a T, and something that even led to her detriment in the off-screen Gadget Drone Incident where she pushed herself so hard that she permanently crippled her Linker Core.  (This is something that gets glossed over - that injury was a permanent one.  Had it not happened, Nanoha would have been even more powerful than we saw in StrikerS!)

And it was clearly implied, too, that she spent quite a bit of time recovering from that.  Hurting yourself like that... while the details aren't clear, there's very few situations that occur that can cause a person to push their body BEYOND the point that it breaks.  That goes beyond mere adrenaline surges.  That is a monomaniacal focus on an objective that usually only people on the Autism Spectrum can muster.

That's because it's one of our specialties - shutting out something that's annoying us. (Yes, I'm on the autism spectrum myself.  And as the saying goes, it takes one to know one.)  And if we can't ignore it?  We tend to go apeshit and let that be the driving force for our actions.

Another thing I've noticed, and I'm sure others have too, is that Nanoha is incredibly compassionate.  To the point where it incites violence on her part.

This is yet another Autistic trait.

Now, I know some people might be thinking here.  "Compassion?  With Autism?  WTF?"

But that's the thing.  People who are on the Autism Spectrum?  We're hypersensitive to all kinds of things.  And this is especially so for our own emotions.  This is why someone on the Spectrum having a meltdown is such a spectacularly horrible sight to behold.  We become like the emotional equivalent of that train wreck scene in the film, Super 8.  Yes, being on the Autism spectrum actually is that intense.

The ironic part is that the disorder commonly confused with Autism for lack of empathy is actually Antisocial Personality Disorder, or Sociopathy, which is so diametrically opposed to Autism that you might as well be comparing PCs to Macs.

The point is, a fair number people on the spectrum are very much capable of empathy.  I'm one such person, and I can tell when something is bothering someone, clear as day.  For most of us, the issue is communication.  While I can tell something is wrong, I can't figure out what it is for the life of me - not without asking some very direct and potentially tactless-seeming questions.  That, and how we communicate our emotions to others.  Many of us seem emotionless because a lot of us never really learned how to properly emote.  For a long time, just smiling was something that felt horribly awkward for me, and I had to spend HOURS practicing a smile in front of a mirror until I could do one that looked natural.

And poor Nanoha?  She has so much trouble with communicating her feelings that sometimes that she feels the best route for communicating her feelings to people who just aren't getting her is through her fists.  So to speak, anyways.  Hence all the memage about people getting "befriended" by the girl.

To be fair, she got better with age.  But when we're the age she was at in MGLN and MGLN-As?  Yeeeaaaahhhh.  Let's just say: love HURTS.

Another clear indicator is her troubles with getting going in the mornings.  One of the more "d'awww" inducing things we saw in MGLN was how she would groggily grope around for her phone, trying to hit that snooze button for just five more minutes of blissful slumber.  Thing is, though, this is a classic symptom of ASD.  And you don't need to take my word for it.  Just watch this short video about the connections between autism and difficulties sleeping: https://youtu.be/Q2a75v8wzgU

Another sign is how susceptible Nanoha is to anxiety.

Yeah, I know, right?  Her?  Anxious?

But this is another bit of character development that often gets swept under the rug.  When Nanoha was five years old, her father, Shiro Takamachi, suffered some kind of accident and was put into a coma for thirty days.  Now, a common thing in Japanese culture is that no matter what the situation is or how many hands you have available, everyone is supposed to have some kind of job doing something.

Nanoha's mother, her brother, and her sister (actually cousin, but that's more of a Triangle Heart thing), all had things they could do.  But not Nanoha, because she was too young to really take on any kind of additional responsibility beyond her own needs.  So what does a helpless child like that do?

She waits.

In her case, she waited by her father's bedside for THIRTY.  DAYS.  (This is and of itself is yet another sign of ASD - the stubborn refusal to do anything else but wait at her father's bedside.)  And no one had the heart to dissuade her from that.

That kind of thing leaves a mark on a kid.  Usually in the form of anxiety of one form or another.  For Nanoha, this takes the form of feelings of inadequacy - that if she isn't good enough, then she is likely to lose someone important to her.  Hence her tendency to drive herself to ruin.  And we actually get to see a bit of this characterization referred to during StrikerS, where an older and wiser Nanoha tells Teana Lanster about how she overexerted herself at Teana's age, and suffered dearly for it.

Another clue is one tends to fly under the radar because of Japanese culture: Nanoha's tendency for orderliness.  Now, like I said, this one tends to fly under the radar...  but that's because of a stereotype.  People think "Japan" and they automatically think of neatly ordered and tidy spaces, right?  Well, the fact of the matter is that even in Japan, there's quite a few slovenly people.  We even see it in anime from time to time, and from people you would least expect.  Witness Aisaka Taiga in Toradora.  The girl comes from an affluent family... but her behaviors are utterly slovenly.  Her own apartment is full of trash, she'll blow her nose and wipe it on whatever is at hand, and so on and so forth.

But definitely not Nanoha.  Her room is absolutely PRISTINE.  How many nine year old kids do you know that has a room that is that tidy without Mom and/or Dad being the ones to pick everything up?  Her family simply does not have time for it.  They're all busy working in the family's patisserie shop.  The cleanly state of that kid's room?  That's all Nanoha there.

The one Big Sign of Autism that I don't see on Nanoha is a tendency for clumsiness.  Us autisics tend to have a lot of issues with motor control and hand-eye coordination.  But here, I have my theories as well.

In the show, we see that the family does have a dojo, one in which they practice their family style of sword play - the Takamachi Twin Kodachi Style.  Everyone but Momoko and Nanoha practice this style.  Momoko because she married into the family.  But Nanoha?  Why wouldn't she practice?  She is definitely Shiro Takamachi's daughter, after all.

Simple answer: She can't get the hang of it.  (Although she does very much enjoy watching the rest of her family practice, and finds it calming to do so.)

Granted, there are people on the autism spectrum who do practice dance or martial arts or something of that sort... but these people will tell you quite readily, it was a labor of love that required incredible focus and no small amount of time devoted to it in order to become any good with these skills.  Granted, Nanoha did eventually have to learn Strike Arts - the formal Midchildan hand-to-hand combat style - when she joined TSAB.  But that was something that she likely had to put a lot of time and effort into, and by order of her chain of command.  It probably helps that she had Fate as a sparring partner the whole way through.  And Fate, much like Nanoha, isn't known for pulling her punches.

Insert mental imagery of Fate going all git gud scrub at Nanoha... albeit in a loving and supportive way. 

One other note I'd like to part on here is how incredibly mature Nanoha is.  A lot of people get caught up in that it's anime and that a child is being portrayed that they often brush aside the various precocious quirks that scream "FAR TOO MATURE FOR BEING NINE!"  And those that do notice tend to feel that she scans as an adult with her mentality.  Which is really how she is - she's like a tiny adult, except she's hampered by lacking an adult's experience and wisdom.

Recall in ShadowJack's In Which I Watch threads for MGLN and MGLN-As.  He always made a joke about how these characters are children by having their eye-level at the bottom of the panels.  But the thing is?  There's a subtle clue there about these kids in that joke.  In the work I'm doing, my character will remark: "...children that have seen and experienced the things those two have?  They can still have a child’s desires and needs.  But at the same time you can’t sit them at the children’s table anymore.  You would be gravely mistaken to treat them with any less respect than you would afford an adult of your peer."

ShadowJack's visual joke suddenly seems a bit too on the nose now, doesn't it?  The perspective of the panels are set for an adult, even though they can barely fit into said perspective.

Children on the Austism Spectrum - especially at the high-functioning end - are incredibly intelligent and highly perceptive individuals.  While social matters can go flying over their heads, most everything else they catch in the steel-tooth bear traps that their minds are and assimilated into their intellect.  And this tends to lead to these children being far more mature than most people think they ought to be.  Add in the emotional trauma Nanoha had from her father being in a coma?  That not gasoline you're pouring onto the fire there.  That's oxy-acetaline.

Boom.

So, am I right or am I wrong?  Kindly discourse over this.  For now, I'm signing off and hitting the sack.

As someone who has worked part-time in a restaurant (a BBQ place), I have heard some dumb shit in my time. Such classics as:

"Does that bun have bread in it?"

...and...

"That sandwich, is it a sandwich?"

...to someone holding up a line for well over ten minutes staring at the menu while said line starts literally going out the door, all the while ignoring myself and others attempts to help answer any questions or have them sit at a table with a carry-out menu, only to have them finally order three things... none of which are on the menu.

Do anyone in the forums have any winners amongst the losers that they have heard in person and would like to share?

If there's one thing that summarises the nightmare of the modern era, it's the smartwatch. Already,. notifications on my phone give me a range of pavlovian reactions ranging from 'Oh Fuck off' to 'Wait, someone actually knows I exist and Said Something to Me'

Anyway.

I've picked up a couple of 'old fashioned' stupid watches - just to give me a chance to escape from them.

The first is Soviet-era Racketa. Probably once belonged to a Soviet submariner -- the outer ring lets you track your watchstanding times. It's not water resistant -  I suppose, if you got water in your submarine, keeping good time would'nt be a problem you'd need to worry about for very long. Good in that you can patch it up -- I've replaced the crystal on it already.



Anyway. It has problems. Most of which relate to it being a relic of a fallen civilisation which has never been properly maintained. It's clearly dying slowly. (At least until I can put the guts into a decent solvent to clear the old oils out of it)

To complement it, (And so I can tell what time it is when I'm swimming) this just arrived from the Chistopol watch factory. A hundred quid - and I've fitted a new bezel to get a second time-zone on it, strap and anti-magnetic back to it. It'll go down to 200 meters and run for ten years, with an automatic winder. 

It's not a Rolex - but it's not exactly the typical 'cheap and awful' either. It's cheap and clever-  using good design and engineering to save money and achieve the same results as more expensive watches. Even if it struggles to be accurate to within 20 seconds a day..... it's reliable, but not precise. (It's also a completely in-house movement which is something watch nerds care about) . I've managed to tweak it to get it running within a second every 2 hours which isn't bad.



Both of these irritate the watch-nerds I know.