Where I Might Find Answers

Thank you so much to everyone who left comments on my solstice/anniversary post. ♥ ♥ ♥ I don't know whether I'll manage to reply to you all individually, but I have been loving reading them!

In 2000, I was married on the summer solstice, and we decided at that time that the solstice would forever be our anniversary, no matter what day it fell on. This year is our 25th - silver! we made it to a valuable metal! - and we met at the place we were married (Pioneer Park aka Alaskaland, a local park with food concessions) to revisit the pavilion in which we were married, and have a takeout dinner (halibut/Thai/Brazilian fusion tacos; it was delicious). We took a number of terrible selfies, and completely by accident, especially given that it was taken on a timer with my phone which was propped up in a crack in a picnic table, we achieved what may be my favorite picture of us in all the time we've been together.



I never realized that I lift my heels off the ground when I kiss him, but apparently I do. That's what a foot of height difference will do for you.

We came home to ash and charred needles dropping on my car hood from a wildfire north of town.



Yesterday we had a fire evacuation scare, and still have the fully packed bags sitting in our living room. Today we're fine, despite a gentle rain of ash. I can't wait for the next 25 years.

The show is feeding me well.

( Spoilers )

helen_keeble recommended this LitRPG series, and I am having a GREAT time, although I'm only about 80% of the way through the first book (but honestly I don't expect my opinion to change a whole lot; it might really surprise me later, but this strikes me as a series where what you see is basically what you get).

But what you get is really a lot of fun - light, entertaining, very funny, with a lot more humanity and a darker edge than I was expecting. Also, it's a good Baby's First LitRPG (a genre I've bounced off repeatedly in the past) because there's a solid in-universe explanation for the stats, leveling, and other aspects of the genre.

Basically, Earth is now an alien reality game show.

In one moment, the vast majority of Earth's population is exterminated (everyone who was indoors or inside a vehicle or other contained space - they're all recycled by an alien resource development company, along with just about every other human-made thing on the planet). Everyone else finds themselves plunged into a world-sized dungeon with nothing but whatever they happen to be wearing at the time, where they must compete against an escalating series of challenges, televised for a galactic audience and run by a psychotic AI with a foot fetish and a ruthless alien corporation. The hero - Carl - was outside in a freezing night in order to rescue his ex-girlfriend's pedigreed Persian cat Princess Donut from a tree. Now he's in a dungeon, forced to compete against all too real enemies as well as fellow contestants, with a mind-controlled virtual pop-up display giving him descriptions of his and his opponents' stats, and a virtually unlimited inventory space. Princess Donut almost immediately gains a level-up bonus to human-level intelligence and becomes Carl's partner in the dungeon crawl, a squishy mage with sky-high Charisma next to Carl's tank. Who knew all that time playing first-person shooter games with no company except his cat was going to pay off ...

( More about the book (no big spoilers )

Over at recthething, I posted a few recs for diagetic_exchange (Babylon 5, Murderbot, Megamind). Diagetic Exchange is for in-universe fic/RPF/etc; I did not participate in this one, although I enjoyed the results!

Meanwhile in exchanges I did participate in, whumpex author reveals happened tonight. I wrote two things:

Mission of Mercy (Biggles, gen, 5800 words, Flies East AU)
My assignment! Rather than just letting it go, Biggles becomes determined to find EvS's crashed Bristol fighter. Is this really just an excuse to write EvS suffering the effects of a crash and heatstroke? Mmmmaybe.

A few ending-spoilery author's notes on the story

My biggest problem, once I'd started writing it, was figuring out a way for EvS to get away given how I had set up the situation. I had trouble with Biggles just letting him go, at this point in time, but no ending that involved him being taken back to be tried and interrogated or shot felt good either. Eventually, I came up with the eventual sort-of compromise that involves Biggles finding a way to justify (to himself) letting EvS plausibly-deniably escape. (For certain values of plausible.) It is really interesting to write them when they're so young!

High G Maneuver (Babylon 5, Londo & Vir, 1700 words)
This was a treat for a recipient who had requested (among other things) a "Dust to Dust" tag in which Vir stays on the station longer so they can deal with the events of the episode.

A few notes

I've been wanting to write more about aftermath from that episode, so I immediately jumped on that prompt. But I realized when I started writing it that this is actually a really difficult time in canon to write emotional h/c for, because Londo is so closed off, and really doesn't start opening up to people, including Vir, until a season or so later. And he's going to be even more shut down in the wake of being physically and mentally hurt as badly as he is in the episode. I ended up wrapping it in a metaphor about Centauri fighter pilots, as a way of getting at the emotions that they won't talk about.