More Rambling

I watched a little Avatar this morning; just missed 'The Cave of The Two Lovers', probably my favorite episode after Lake Laogai. It verges on filler, like the despised 'The Great Divide', but the story of the two lovers, and of *our* two lovers, is worth a lot of silliness.

I need to write today, and do a few other things, but mostly I really should write at least my 500 words... (What to write, Vinnie? 8-P Something weird, something wonderful!)

My big anime find of recent note was 'Summer Wars', a pleasant little romance comedy anime movie in the Miyazaki mode. The boy is shy, but impresses the girl by leading the charge to save the world, and then gets the girl, the stereotypical happy ending (to paraphrase that bit on the lawyer show about gloating, there's nothing wrong with a happy ending, as long as it's done well... 8-). I would dictate gallons of blood, tears and sweat, for my heroes ought to damn well *earn* their happy ending, but I am a bastridge!

'How the States Got Their Shapes', by Mark Stein is something I've wanted to do something with for a rather long time... either a fantasy setting, or more likely a SFnal one, with a provisional territories and such. The US Lunar Territories and the great state of Tranquility? Mars and a space elevator ribbon dropped down to Peacock Mountain?

What if, to protect and save our world, another one, just as terrible and wonderful, had to be destroyed? Who would be the hero and who the villain?

Wilhelmina Cannon, who I worked with for eight years, died last Friday, and I went to her viewing this Friday. Now, I really shouldn't be eating candy anymore, but I get these little fun-size packs of snickers and share with the rest, including Wilhelmina... I made sure she had a pack, and folded an origami heart for her casket. She was annoying at times, but I liked her, if that makes any sense at all. I'm going to write her into the Abducted stories, after a fashion...

Some of the abducted are grandmas and grandpas. The slavers took mostly the young, the aggressive; some might even say the not-too-bright, but not really. And some of the abducted were, if not seasoned citizens, then perhaps a little bit over the hill...

But not Wilma.

Wilma had three children and four grandbabies. The abductees were spared having to stare at pictures, but not the endless stories. I think, now, that this is what kept her focused like a laser beam, not on here and now, and survival, but on the Homeworld. The guards and trainers who tried to make an example of her for her 'malingering' all eventually met with curious and sometimes fatal accidents, the result of a geriatric mafia of sorts and her version of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Hers was a cunning and unconventional strategic mind, who played mind-games with sky-marshalls and starship captains. She wasn't the leader, but she was the kingmaker and schemer. Hers was the plan, perfectly plotted and executed, which won freedom for nearly two thousand janissaries, the crews of Frederick Douglas, Agamemnon, Fearless, Dauntless, Majestyk and Columbia Too... shines the names; brave ships and braver crews!

Well, we ended their damned galactic war and won the next one, when the Ubers rolled into the wider galaxy. But by then there was no going home to Earth anymore...

I think that she felt that she had done her part- y'know, Kipling and his 'little bit'? For as sure as the married man fights for more than one, Grandma fought for all the rest of us.

And then she laid down her burden and was still.