Kaymyth

I went through a Dakota once. The experience was so unnerving that I blocked it out of my memory.

Heh. Yeah, I remember the topography shock when we moved from the mountainous Southwest to northeast Missouri when I was a kid. (Though I was amazed enough at seeing so much green that it lessened things a bit.) But one gains new appreciation for hills once one has driven from KC to Denver and found that the only major topographical landmarks of note are windmills.

Heh. You've got Nebraska right. When going west, we'll head through Denver because even the KS-CO route is less dull than the NE one. But Missouri has hills, at least, and even Kansas isn't too bad through the eastern third of the state. In Iowa they're a bit more rolling, but at least it's not the never-ending oceanic flatness that is NE / western KS / eastern CO.

But...it's so north. Your winters are scary. Heck, it got below zero this weekend here and I barely survived. I mean, college towns are always fun places, but if I were there I'd be that one idiot lobbying the administration to install human-sized heated hamster tubes connecting all the buildings so that lizard-blooded folk like me could traverse campus without dying. What I'm saying is, I'm just not built for winter. Of course, as a redhead of Scotch-Irish descent, I'm not built for the tropics, either, as I tend to burn if the sun so much as sneezes in my direction. So I live in a middle latitude where the extremes of the seasons only try to kill me a little bit. Flat. *looks out at the metro, with its weird tangle of roads designed to go around all of the weird hills and river ravines like some eldritch rune that keeps a restless Elder God asleep below the city* *thinks about some of the crazy hills that I've gotten stuck on when they ice over. or that one awful hill on the bike trails that I tried to bike all the way up once, lost momentum, and fell over* *giggles uncontrollably* Bweeheehee! *tearwipe* Hee. Sorry. I know that we're flat compared to mountains, but you want to see what real flat looks like, go visit the Kansas-Colorado border.

Well, sort of. Alloy of Law was, "Oops, I wrote a Mistborn book by accident." Bands of Mourning was, "I was having trouble getting into writing Shadows of Self, so I wrote its sequel to get me warmed up."

Drat! I have been ninjaed!

Please, take it. I implore you. My childhood from first grade through most of fifth grade was spent in the desert southwest. I have still never acclimated to Midwestern winters.

You've got it. Well, there has to be enough moisture in the air to set dew that then freezes. Though you're in Louisiana, so the idea of not having enough humidity for frost is a bit absurd. We had temps below zero this weekend. Did Not Want. Snow on the ground. Do Not Want That, Either.

But speaking from a psychological point of view, the way they handled it was much more effective for a greater number of people. In fact, had your preferred method been used, I would have been actively pissed off. This would have worked in, say, a war movie "based on a true story" because the audience would be prepared for that kind of ending. In a Star Wars movie, however, they are actively not prepared for that, and thus from a storytelling perspective had to be handled carefully. The characters are our emotional investment in the movie. We care about what happens to them, and to go in the direction of killing everybody in the end is a bold move. But it has to be handled in a way that doesn't alienate the audience, and just dropping the Death Star onto everybody without those little moments would have absolutely done that. People need the payoff to their emotional investment, or else they're just going to walk out of the theater feeling furious and cheated.

I kind of love the fact that this thread exists. If you by some weird twist of fate wind up in Kansas City, I will totes introduce you to all of the cool nerds. (But seriously, I will be very happy to see you get out of the desolate tundra in which you now live, wherever you end up.) Heh. Now I am picturing Chaos teaching calculus with the power of Wayne stick figures. This ranks very high up on my list of Best Mental Images.

My team is doing a Secret Santa thing at work, and the person I drew likes scarves and bright colors. And I remembered, hey! I still have a few balls of sari silk yarn lying around. So I am knitting her a scarf made out of saris that met the end of their lives by being cut into pieces and spun into yarn. It's pretty. I'm also making little goodie bags for everyone, because I'm the boss* and I should do that. So I made fudge today. And I bought a bunch of different types of cookies, because they will probably be way better than anything I try to bake. *this is still weird

My base personality is pretty much the same, but I'm very filtered on the Shard (though not quite as filtered as I am at work). Like, if I had a RL warning label, it would say something like, "WARNING: contains adult content and angry unicorns. Is volatile if friends are threatened. Do not bend, fold, spindle, mutilate, individual or individual's name. Might explode if poked with sharp things." I'm a bit less filtered on Facebook. If you are 18+ and we are friendly on the Shard and you are clever enough to find me, I will probably accept a friend request. (Sorry, younglings, I have a general rule of only friending minors if I know their parents.) I'm more articulate in text than in speech, mostly because my brain tends to run faster than my mouth can keep up. So I'll suddenly be thinking half a sentence ahead of where I am and will lose my place, have to rewind, and basically fall into a weird mock-stammer where I repeat 1/2 - 3 words a couple of times as I try to pick up my train of thought again. This is true. WAY more. You are also talkative when you meet a Sharder for the first time and hang out for a bit.

Just got back home from seeing this. My thoughts/replies/caveats: 1) CGI Tarkin and Leia were both awful. Their facial movements were extremely unnatural to me, but then I tend to be highly tuned into faces. Seriously, guys, was this really necessary? If you can't get it perfect, don't do it at all, because they just gave me the creeps. 2) Everything else was awesome. 3) Saul's death actually made sense; the dude couldn't move quickly. He had two metal legs, and kind of hobbled along. The others barely made it out by the skin of their teeth; if they'd waited for him, they all would have been blown up. As it was, he made it to the entrance just in time to look Death in the eye. Likewise, the Big Guy knew that he was at the end of the line. He'd just watched his best (and last living friend) die, he didn't have a rescue coming - so he went out in a blaze of glory and took down as many bad guys as he could along the way. 4) Which brings us to Everyone Dies. I disagree strongly with the idea that this was lazy storytelling. I think we're so used to seeing the heroes beat the odds and win the day that a choice like this hits us hard in the feels, but I think the ending is far more authentic than "the heroes magically escape in the nick of time!" And it gives the ending of A New Hope weight that it never had before, putting faces and (in some cases, heh) names to the people who sacrificed their lives to make that victory possible. Heroes don't always survive. That's the nature of war. But particularly this: Yes, I absolutely think it was necessary. A blanket "Death Star goes boom, everybody dies" would have borne a fraction of the emotional weight and done the characters a disservice. Seeing them meet their ends, each a hero in their own way, it finishes each of their lives with the respect due a hero. 5) R2D2 and C3PO - I...just tell myself that three seconds after 3PO's whining they got ordered onto a ship and shuffled off. It takes a few minutes to scramble that many ships. They had time. Yep. Sure. That's it. 6) Leia - Bail Organa left with parting words that heavily implied he was about to send her to get hold of Obi-Wan. Likely she met up with the fleet, learned what they were doing, and made the choice that she needed to see them herself before pulling a hidden Jedi out of retirement. Or something to that effect. Throwing herself into danger wasn't exactly the cleverest idea she's ever had, but it was certainly in character for her. 7) The Death Star Plans - IIRC, it was White Cloak Wossname who knew that Galen had built a weakness into the Death Star. He's a bit too fond of his own skin to have shared that knowledge with higher leadership. "Oh, Lord Vader, by the way! I know you just Force-choked me, but I thought you'd get a giggle out of this - there's a deadly flaw in the Death Star plans! But no worries, I'll figure it out, wait, why are you swinging your lightsaber at me...?" Yeah, no, he's not going to share that little tidbit. Finally, that last shot of Jyn and Cassian was just beautiful. That hug was so perfect and so human - two people clinging together, taking solace in their last moment. I think maybe someone snuck an onion into the theater.

Until the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, anyway.

Awww

Yeah, you'd definitely need to lighten first if you wanted to get any sort of bold color effect. And as for damage to the hair, it really depends on the starting health of the stuff to begin with. People who do a lot of recoloring all the time do tend to wind up with damaged ends, but I think for a first-timer you'd probably be fine. Especially if you just want to do the ends - worst case scenario, things get damaged and you have to trim it off down the road and end up with slightly shorter hair. I do recommend getting it done by a professional stylist, though; they know what they're doing and have the right products to do it well. (And yes, this is very much a "do as I say not as I do" sort of thing from the woman who is planning to dump manic panic into her next henna mix just to see what it does to the roots of her hair.)

Usually with dark hair, if you want a bright color you'll need to bleach the part you want colored first.

My dad is visiting for a few days. The weather has been crap (first ice yesterday, snow on top of it today), so for entertainment we've mostly been watching movies. As it turns out, my father's reaction to watching Deadpool is, "That was a cute movie." He meant it unironically. This...this probably explains a lot about where I get my sense of humor, actually. I was momentarily confused myself. I thought, wait, weren't we supposed to wait until we knew the next Star Wars title? I'm still getting used to my new mod powers, realizing things like, "Oh, I could totes sneak a post in and ruin this. But I won't because that would be mean." Don't even get me started on the way my fingers twitch whenever I see a post that uses textspeak. I know that I can fix it now, but I can't, but I want to, but I shouldn't because that would be an abuse of power and it would be wrong but oh gods it's a dang good thing that this little issue of mine doesn't quite overlap into my OCD area or I would be in so much trouble. YOU HAVE FUZZY TARDIS BOOTIES. <3 <3 <3

Purple hair is always worthy of being shown off.

To be fair, northern states have the infrastructure and budget to handle winter. There are snowplows and salt trucks, and most people have all-season tires. If you get really north, people put chains on their tires or have studded snow tires. They're ready for this stuff. Southern states have none of this. Most of those cities never experience this kind of weather, and it would be wasteful for them to attempt to budget yearly for something that happens one day out of every three to four years. And people simply don't have the driving experience necessary to know how to drive safely in those conditions. Plus, the further south you get, the more likely you are to get ice storms. Snow is a pain, but ice will absolutely cause accidents, down power lines, etc.

I got my ship notification, too! I honestly wasn't expecting to see any movement until January. I am excite.

Blech. It's cold and slick and dangerous out there. Last night, I convinced James to reprogram the thermostat from 70 to 72. I am no longer a miserable block of ice-feet while at home. This is helping my general sense of well-being so very, very much. I imagine your coworkers would appreciate it if you kept your illness to yourself. During cold and flu season, sharing is NOT caring.

Huh. Usually Target is good, at least around here. (The gloves and handbag would be "accessories" but you've got me stumped on the lotion.) We have freezing drizzle going on outside.

But it really doesn't prepare you for life after school. "Winter break? Hahahaha! No, you're working."