Doc says Rawr!

They’re burying Edward Kennedy today, and in watching the funeral, I found myself getting choked up, teary-eyed over a man I never met, never knew except for brief appearances on television, glances at the Congressional record, never even read that much about.  Compared to what I (used) to know about his brothers, what I knew about Edward Kennedy could fill a thimble.  And yet here I was, watching his funeral mass, and I was choking up.  I know I have a tendency to get overly emotional about some things, but this?  When my mother told me he died, I was sad, but no tears.  Nothing like that.  Just “Oh.”  Even though standing in my kitchen with my mother, I knew something had changed and probably not for the better, it still…didn’t quite strike me.

In part, I guess it comes down to the fact that Edward Kennedy was the only very politically active–and successful, despite faults and mistakes–Kennedy I ever ‘knew.’  I know the stories of his brothers, Jack and Bobby, but I didn’t live those times.  The older I got, the more I came to realize that while the brothers were inspiring figures, Ted accomplished volumes more–and I wonder if either JFK or Bobby could have done more if they had lived.  I’m not sure it’s possible for that to have happened, given the turbulent times that they lived in.  I think that Bobby would have had more chance than JFK.  JFK’s presidency is tragic, storied…but I have a feeling that it would have ended in disappointment, both for him and everyone that looked to him as some sort of shining beacon of hope.  (There’s an incredible irony here, given all the comparisons made between him and Barack Obama–I admit to having a great deal more faith in Barack than my historian’s eye will allow me to have toward a “what if” of JFK’s presidency.)

The fact of the matter is, when you get right down to it, that Edward Kennedy could never cover up all the mistakes he made in his personal life and yet still make an incredible difference in American political life.  The Lion of the Senate, patriarch to a family that is now suddenly bereft of one (it will be interesting to see who rises to the occassion inside of the clan to take on the enormous mantle Ted shouldered).  He was so much and did so much…but he was still a father, a brother, a husband, an uncle, a grandfather–you can look at the faces of his family and know that, to see the pain that’s stoic and raw at the same time–stoic because they’re on camera, raw because even though his death was a foregone conclusion, you know that they weren’t ready to lose him.  You’re never ready for a blow like that.

I found the prayers for intercession, offered by his children, nieces and nephews and grandchildren, to be the most poignant part of the service (beyond, perhaps, Kara Kennedy’s responsal psalm, which I’ll have to identify later).  I hope god really does hear those prayers, because I can’t really imagine who will take up everything that Edward championed–or who can afford to, who’s powerful enough to take them up without totally torpedoing their political career.  They’re things that are necessary and right and without them…I don’t know where the country and the world will end up.

God will have a lot for the Senator to accomplish in heaven before his next time on earth.  He’s certainly paid his penance for his mistakes in this life, in working so hard for the common good.  There will be some that will say no, he’s going to hell for this sin, for that sin.  I don’t believe that’s the case, nor do I believe that he’s going to languish in purgatory for mistakes made.  No…he’s got important work to do.  He started it in this life, and it’ll be continued in the next, of that I’m certain.

Go softly, Senator.  You’re already dearly missed, but the respite is deserved.

So I’ve kept saying over and over again since last year (actually, since before last year) that I wasn’t going to try to do NaNoWriMo again since graduate school inevitably prevents me from actually getting it done.  The ideas tend not to be my strongest or my best (When All’s Said and Done, my first NaNo, is a huge exception to that; I really need to go back and do a second draft on it to add in some more stuff regarding miss Allyson and suchnot) or my longest stewed over, which hurts whatever I write to begin with.

Of course, I keep saying that I’m not going to put myself through the stress of it again, especially with so many half-started (half-finished, mostly finished) writing projects already, plus my thesis, plus two classes, plus everything else.  Shiawase, among others, talked me into doing it last year.  I got about 26,000 words in and had to call it there.  I’ve kept the project, still untitled, and poke it every so often (it’s a prequel to a post-apocalyptic Arthurian reimagining that I want to write someday–another one of those half-started projects–that’s based in part on a short story I wrote in college), though not often at all.  Epsilon more often captures me (that’s trying to become three books from two, with one focusing on the resistance movement in the Borderworlds.  We’ll see what happens).  But I digress, as I often do.

An idea has been tugging in the back of my brain for the past several days, a confluence of some things that happened at work and some random musings.  I work in retail clothing sales, so I meet all kinds of people and help people find clothes for all kinds of occassions.  An incident this past weekend got me to thinking about one of the strangest customers I’ve had in the thirty-some odd months I’ve worked there, and that in part triggered the idea for what may or may not end up being my NaNoWriMo project for this year.  The other part that’s inspired me was thinking philosophically about World of Warcraft, the internet, and how we meet and come to know people through cyberspace without actually knowing much about their “real lives,” their “real” circumstances.  These things coming together have given me a starting point for a potential NaNoWriMo project for this year.  I’ll probably do some scribblings about it today before work, maybe, while I’m grabbing my dinner (otherwise, I’ll be reading in the cafe at Macy’s like I usually end up doing–one or the other).  I suppose in part the idea is also inspired by .hack//sign though only in a vague sense–some of the elements of my idea are similar, but only on the surface.

“Byron” is a very sick young man, probably in his early twenties or so, with little hope of survival.  He retreats into “Universe,” a VR-equipped (though not required) MMORPG that’s become popular in the past several years.  He’s played since launch and is somewhat popular and powerful as a result.  “Iryn” or “Ryn” is a more recent comer to the game and isn’t a big fan of Byron’s at first, until she gets to know him thanks to a mutual friend (maybe the mutual friend gave her the account?  I have to brainstorm more).  Byron and Ryn form a tight bond and after a while, Byron opens up to Ryn, telling her about his out-of-game circumstances.  Out of the blue, after this, she receives a VR rig for the game.  Not too long after this, she realizes that he’s stopped logging out of the game and starts to worry.  She ends up tracking him down thanks to some other friends and meets his terrified parents.  Byron, having suffered some painful, difficult setbacks, has completely retreated into the game through virtual reality and cannot be pulled out–he has to make the choice to log out, which he will not do.  Ryn convinces him to log out for the sake of his parents, at least for a little while.  I don’t have much more than this figured out (it’s a very new idea, after all), but it’s a start, at least.  Maybe I’ll be attempting NaNoWriMo this year after all.

This article.  It says a lot.

That is all.

So…a plan come up with shortly before leaving for session kind of sort of worked (yes, Vee, you’re right and we’re crazy, but maybe what we ended up doing might work out for us).  No evacuation plan for the Inquisition prison we were going to break into…but misdirection seemed to work in our favor, at least for a while.

While on our way to the site of the Inquisition prison where Frederico DeSoto’s being held, Ren suggests that maybe we should let Mable set off some explosive distractions–the sort of things that will let some of us sneak inside hopefully unnoticed.  She intended it to be a lot more hands-off than it ended up being, but in the end I’m generally more flexible than most.  The plan, of course, gets changed even before we start setting it up and the group splits between an infiltration team (Ren, Grant, Grace, and Ano) and team violence (Christian, Mei, and Mable).  Grant and Mable are going to rig up some explosives in optimal places and Grant’s going to find a good way in for the infiltration team first and then we’re going to start in, hoping to rescue Fred without everyone getting dead.

Ren, of course, chooses this moment to grab Grant by the collar and kiss him full-on, earning a surprised (but not displeased) look from him and a very dirty look from Mable.  She tells him to be careful and he tells her “It’s better with the mask.”  And then Mable and Grant go to set up explosives for the distraction team violence will be responsible for.  They come back in the same amount of pieces we went them off in.  In the meantime, Ren muses to herself about wearing the mask or not.  She decides she’s going to.

Team violence wanders off first.  They walk into what appears (key word being “appears”) to be a run-down old Cathedral.  Inside appears to be more of the same until Mei notices and wastes a camera.  Which results in a hologram appearing–a hologram of our good friend the Marquis, the same one who put some of us (ie, Ren) through walls while we were in Japan, the same one we hoped had died in that warehouse we tried to blow up in Japan.  He advises us to get the hell out of Dodge.  He’s basically told in his dreams, we’re coming to get Fred and that’s the end of it (we’re really not sure why Christian decided to tell him that we were after Fred).  Which earned us a “bring it” and the hologram disappearing.  Mei finds the entrance to the lower levels–basically, the prison and the like–and rips the door up and open.

Violence ensues, though it’s a bit of time before we get the explosion that the infiltration team was waiting for.  As soon as we get that first explosion, Grant takes off like a shot without saying a word and the rest of us are at his heels.  Of course, we’re in the first hallway when we just barely miss getting toasted by a trap (he saved Ren, again) but with the infiltration team cut in half by a very, very heavy stone slab.  Of course…this could be both a good thing and a bad thing.  It depends on who you ask.  So Ren and Grant head off to find Fred while Grace and Ano are left to figure out another way in.

Insane violence is taking place outside.  Ano and Grace find a new way into the tunnels…but it’s not too long before they run into our old friend the Marquis.  Grace starts trying to talk to him after throwing Ano back down the hallway.  Grant and Ren reach an impasse and have two options: either they wander around blindly trying to find the prison cells or they abuse some guards and “convince” them to tell us where they are.  Grant is once again surprised when Ren’s okay with hitting the abuse the guard button.  So we run into a group of four guards.  Grant pwns three of them and Ren trains both guns on the last and makes him shit himself in fear (apparently, the punk didn’t feel very lucky).  And then she gets to see a bit of Grant’s dark side (…something tells me he’s a little surprised how okay with it she is) as he “convinces” the guard to tell us where to find the prison cells before the guard is rendered violently unconscious.

Meanwhile, topside, the demon that almost gutted Grant the day before has shown up and gotten its claws into Mable.  Thank god that Mei was paying attention, because otherwise we’d be needing another demolitions tech.  Things went from bad to worse up there because the demon has a slight edge on Mei.  Chris eventually manages to intervene and they slowly start to push the demon back.  And that’s the cliffhanger they were left with.

Somewhere between the surface and the prison cells, Grace manages to get some interesting information out of the Marquis.  Apparently, he’s been questioning a lot of the same things we’ve been questioning.  Grace finally asks him, “Why don’t you just let us take Fred and leave France and never come back.”

Marquis: “What does that get me other than killed by the Inquistors for losing my charge?”

Grace pauses, and then: “You could always come with us.”

And that’s the cliffhanger that she was left with.

Grant and Ren reach the prison block after abusing some more guards.  Grant produces a ring of keys and once again brings up the phrase, “You’re not going to like this.”

“You use that around me a lot.”

“Well, you tend to not like anything that involves danger.”

Which is true.  Danger means people are going to get hurt.  Getting hurt is bad.  But once again she surprises him.  He’s managed to lift a key ring from one of the guards, but this is a place where they lock up all kinds of bad people.  We’ve got to open cells and let some potentially very nasty shit loose.  Ren grins at him and holds out her hand for the key ring.

“You’re a better shot than I am.”

This he can’t disagree with.  But before Ren can get the first door unlocked, Odyle shows up and starts taunting Ren.  Of course, Ren deduces that she’s here to cause trouble–big surprise.  Grant’s disappeared in the meantime, and Ren trusts that he’ll have her back if she needs him–when she needs him the most, since that’s his style.  Odyle underestimates Ren, thinking that she hadn’t made a decision on whether or not she can hurt the girl.  Ren, of course, has made her decision.

Damn guns jamming.  Odyle gets annoyed with Ren’s attempt to solve the problem once and for all and smacks her in the head with her zotty staff.  It was pain.  Odyle asks if she’s ready to do it the easy way now.  Ren shrugs and decides to play prisoner, for the time being.  And that’s where my cliffhanger was, in part.

Ano, meanwhile, has made it to Fred’s cell at about the same time as Grant, who looks at Ano and tells him that his only job now is to get the man in that cell safely out of the prison.

Grant: “I left someone behind that I have to go pick up.”

He picks the lock and dashes off.  And that’s where we cut for the evening.

We’ll have a week off next week since some of the crew will be at GenCon.  I’ve teased David about consistently giving us cliffhangers when we’re going to be off for a week.  It happens every time.

It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out.  Hopefully–hopefully–in our favor.  We’ll have to see.

So…it was a mostly a recap evening last Thursday with us chasing ourselves in circles and arguing. A lot of arguing. But then…there were four Terran/Nile Empire characters in the room staring daggers at each other and not agreeing on anything. So we go in circles.

On a lighter note, we totally got to meet Dr. Mara Hatchi-Two and Christopher Bryce (well, we kind of got to meet Dr. Bryce). And Yuri showed up again, which of course had Grace even more in knots than usual.

Of course, me being me, I don’t actually get to lecture Grant like I wanted to because it’s so bloody hard to do in front of the rest of the group. Because it is, damn it all!

So, we found out that Fred has indeed been captured and that necessitates a jail break. Which will hopefully not get us all killed, though we have very little faith in this, and here’s why: The witch-hunter that found us in Japan, the one we tried to kill by blowing up a freakin’ building? Yup, he’s the one that’s got Fred. I have no idea how we’re going to deal with him, but I’d better come up with something sometime between now and 8 eastern (probably should come up with something by 6:30 eastern, since I’ll have to discuss it with Jen in the car on the way in and pass a note to Trish before study ha–err. I mean pass a note to Trish before we try to get ourselves all killed). I really don’t want to get Ren killed–mostly because I’m not certain who I’d play (though a realm-running version of Cmdr. Brigid O’Connell or Colonel Tim McConaway could be interesting) but also because I think the party would completely disentegrate without her.

Grant made a suggestion, prefacing it with a “You’re not going to like this plan.” Which Ren didn’t, since he suggested getting someone captured so we’d have a man on the inside. Which, of course, didn’t fly very well with Ren for various reasons (one of which being that Grant would probably be the one getting himself captured). It just doesn’t seem to be a good idea to have to have two people to rescue rather than just one. That was the largest chunk of the issue. To her thinking, the group needs to stay together as much as possible. That’s just the way it is.

I have a feeling we’re in deep, deep trouble with this one. but time will tell.