#there is also sometimes some overlap between fighting for anger vs need vs want. sometimes it is multiple at once

[mcmorare]

thinking about katrina feeling very self destructive and in a fight is Sad yes but it's also so fun and interesting for me to think about because there is such a palpable energy shift from when she's fighting out of anger or because she has to vs when she wants to. when she's indulging. she's shit talking. she's getting hit and grinning. they land a punch on her and she laughs in their face. she's energized. there's something very much unstable about her and it's visible

[commanderbuffy]

I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this since we found out Airk doesn’t know about Madmartigan, but I’m struggling to put my thoughts in order. I’m a little afraid you are going to take this as a critique, but I promise it’s not! I’m just having fun psychoanalyzing fictional situations. :)

I don’t see any difference between what Kit and Sorsha are doing to Airk in TTA and what everyone was doing to Kit in Armourium. I never really felt fully comfortable blaming people for keeping things from Kit in Armourium because they did it out of love. I especially didn’t like the idea that Kit never forgave Airk. He thought she might die, if he came clean! Was the outcome good? No. Were poor choices made on everyone’s part? Yes. The thing is, that they did this on the advice of professionals and all felt horrible and, deep down, knew it was a temporary fix.

In TTA, it seems genuinely cruel to keep this from Airk. This isn’t a life and death decision for his health, his dad (HIS DAD!) is alive and the people he loves most are keeping it from him. Keeping it from him as a child was probably not the best idea, but I fully understand it. But now, at 26, Airk deserves to know. Airk deserves to be angry. At his dad, obviously, but also at Sorsha and Kit. They kind of screwed him over. They need to sit down and apologize and explain everything from the beginning. This cat, literally, can’t stay in the bag. There’s no way this story is staying hidden until Airk’s death; the world doesn’t work that way. TTA Kit and Sorsha need to do better than the crew in Armourium, being willing to lose Airk in his anger for a while, with the hope that he will return. If they don’t, he will find out, and they might lose him forever.

To clarify: I know TTA is fiction, and it’s obviously not your responsibility to write this!! I’m just looking at this story and realizing that this is a problem with flawed, realistic, human characters, and I am imagining how things would need to go in the future after our girls get their HEA.

-Producer 3/Numbered Theories anon

hello! sorry it took a couple days for me to get to this ask. sometimes i put off answering asks that require me to think a good bit because I like to answer long ones from my computer vs. my phone, and sometimes the asks get buried as well (since I'm saving all the lovely playlist recommendation asks and they tend to bury asks some times)

I think the biggest distinction between Kit/Sorsha keeping Mads from Airk in TTA and everyone keeping secrets from Kit in Armouriam comes down to the secret that's being kept and how it relates to agency.

In Armouriam, the secrets being kept from Kit were Kit's life and history and truths about herself. Things that everyone in her life knew except her. Keeping the secrets kept Kit's agency away from her and the knowledge of decisions she herself had already made. With Airk in TTA, there's one secret and it's a decision someone else made (that of course impacts him).

Yes, there's overlap! Both involve keeping critical information from a family member that would inform their worldview and directly relates to them. And you raise a good point that in Armouriam, they thought keeping the secrets was necessary for Kit's health. And in Armouriam, I really leaned into that. It was messy and there wasn't a straightforward right answer. They weren't in the wrong for keeping the secrets even though it ended up being the wrong thing to do.

In TTA, Kit and Sorsha are hiding the secret from Airk to protect him. And you're right, that does take agency away from him. He should be allowed to know the truth. Sorsha's reasons for not telling Airk are both selfish and selfless. She doesn't want to cause Airk pain, but she also doesn't want him to hate her for A. not telling him sooner and B. not fighting harder for him to stay (which is not a reaction Airk would have, but a fear Sorsha has that that would be his reaction). On Kit's part, her reason for not telling Airk is more selfless. She knows her twin better than anyone in the world, and she knows how hurt he would be and how much he would blame himself for Kit's pain. So, she sees it as sparing him.

People are messy. I don't really think there is a right answer as to whether Kit should tell Airk or not. She was a child when she learned and it kinda fucked her up long term. She has really solid reasons not to tell Airk. They also have no reason to believe that there's any possibility Airk would find out without one of them telling him.

Airk is not going to learn the truth about Mads in TTA. Partially because it's not relevant to the arc of this story. That's not to say I might not explore that possibility in a one-shot though! You never know!

SORRY THIS WAS SUCH A LONG, RAMBLING RESPONSE.

[asking-jude]

Hey Jude, could you explain the difference between toxic and abusive relationships? Could one be in a toxic relationship and it not be abusive? Is there any difference at all?

Hi there,

 Thank you for coming to Asking Jude. This is a very good question and a very important topic to know about! 

There is a great amount of overlap between toxic and abusive relationships, which is why they are sometimes hard to differentiate, especially if you are in one. Both relationships may be manipulative, involve lots of fighting and anger, and make one or both of the partners feel insecure, hurt, and depressed. The difference has to do with the incentive behind the bad treatment: toxicity often comes from flaws in character and unhealthy reaction/action habits, while abuse often has to do with one wanting full control over another. Toxic people tend to instigate this toxicity in any given situation because they are not capable of reacting in a healthy way. So, a person who is toxic in a relationship with you will often also act in toxic ways with coworkers at work, or to family and their friends as well. An abuser, on the other hand, is more likely to assert dominance and control over you in harmful ways, but not feel the need to do that in their other relationships. There are many forms of abuse, but they all have to do with power and control. Financial abuse, sexual abuse, physical violence, and emotional abuse all have to do with tearing down what you have so that you are dependent on your partner fully, giving them control. If you are (or someone you know is) in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) Here are some resources that further explain the differences between toxicity and abuse: 

https://cerebral-sexuality.com/2018/07/31/toxic-relationships-vs-abusive-relationships/ 

https://www.nonpareilonline.com/archive/domestic-violence-vs-toxic-relationship/article_1c9ea963-a73e-5f6e-98e9-effc50f9ee81.html

 https://www.thecollaborativecounselingcenter.com/is-your-relationship-healthy-difficult-toxic-or-abusive/ 

Stay safe, 

Jordan

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[sol1056]

I think all yall choreograph the asks or something. I seem to get the same topic in batches. This time, two non-anon and one anon (not counting DMs even), so I’m just going to wrap it all up together since there was a lot of overlap. 

behind the cut: where I get ideas, beta readers, writing ahead, writing fast, editing fast, dealing with OCs, writing emotional scenes, and how I learned to write. questions about publishing and agents will be in the followup.

where do you get your ideas

the ‘what if’ questions. the source might vary -- a story if it’s fanfic, or history if it’s profic. by what-if, I mean a throwaway comment, implication, plot hole, gap, or missed chance. what if the characters end canon with this other dynamic, what if the protagonist goes left instead of right at a crucial moment, what if Lý Chiêu Hoàng hadn’t been deposed as queen regnant, what if Nobunaga had survived the attack at Honnō-ji, what if Nyi Roro Kidul had founded her own people, etc. 

from there, I stage that moment in my head like a fractal, seeking out the most interesting ways everything could go wrong. what I'm looking for is an image, a bit of dialogue, capturing that moment of sacrifice, betrayal, a twist in some way. this either ends up as the precipitating event, the midpoint, or the finale (basically one of the three pivotal emotional points). then I work backwards from there. for ffic, I need to figure out how characters get from canon to that point; for profic, I figure out what kind of characters would end up there. 

do you have a beta reader

uhm. not really? I’ve asked for help a few times, when I’m not sure of a particular characterization, but other than the first chapter of Bonds (for reasons I’ll explain in the followup), I don’t usually bother. after all, it’d be horribly rude to send off a chapter and then expect anyone to respond inside of a week. let alone a few days. I envy people who have the patience to wait on a beta reader ‘cause I feel like their stories are tighter as a result, but since there are small amazonian frogs with more patience than me, I figure what I write must stand or fall on its own.

however, I do tend to bestow snippets liberally on whomever’s talking to me online while I write, and I pay attention to their reactions. in fanfic, I’ll also sometimes run a scenario past a few people to see if their gut instinct on a characterization matches mine. that might be a kind of narrow-focus beta reading, maybe.

do you write some/all before you post

nope. I totally post-as-I-go (and yes that does mean at some point I was writing about 6K nightly, I’m not proud). if you said I had to write the entire thing, edit carefully, review, even let it sit for awhile before posting, I’d probably hurt something. or I’d just explode from the enforced waiting.

for profic first draft (or fanfic final draft, same thing), I plan 2-3 chapters in advance. then I write until the word count hits 6K or so, call it a chapter, post, and start on the next chapter. I do that until I run out of plan. then I assess again, figure out the next few chapters’ plan, and repeat until the story feels done.

how do you write so fast 

because a) I type fast, and b) you’re reading what’s effectively the first draft. writing that first go-round is always quick. I just sit down and spit out words. it’s polishing it into profic-levels, that editing phase, that can take weeks, even months. I’ve written pivotal scenes from scratch five, six, seven times if that’s what it takes. you’re just benefiting from my laziness with fanfic, basically.

how do you edit so fast

actually, I don’t. I tend to do it in fits and starts. even fanfic, if you compared first version posted with the current version, you’ll find changes here and there. mostly smoothing choppy parts, disambiguating, or just clarifying a muddy description. sometimes readers report a phrase felt wrong, or didn’t make sense, and I’ll tweak the offending line. 

there are tricks to make it easier, though. 

for profic, I write in scrivener, with a font of Open Sans, Lato, or Avenir, depending on my mood. a first pass of editing for the glaring issues, then I shift to full-screen display and change the font to Baskerville Old Face, Perpetua, or Oregon LDO. the radical font-change means sentences don’t end visually where they did before, and the serif element means I have to slow down slightly to read, a lot more will leap out at me. with fanfic, I write in google docs and post in AO3, but otherwise the font-changing process is similar.  

how do you keep OCs from taking over

an OC is just a character who was -- or might’ve been -- in canon but had no lines. they’re third person from the left, in that crowd scene in episode 17. they occupy the same world, and they have a story of their own -- it’s just not this story. they have a goal, but the core question is: does their goal support or conflict with the protagonist? there’s the tension those OCs can provide. 

on a more basic level, just don’t give them POV, and remember they exist to push the protagonist forward, or hold the protagonist back. if the reverse happens -- the protagonist pushes the OC forward, or holds the OC back -- then you’ve made the OC a major character and now the story’s warping to suit their goals. the focus must remain on the protagonist; it’s their story, after all.  

how do you write a character’s emotion so the reader feels it

use restraint. a scene’s strongest emotion lies in the gaps between what the characters are telling and what they’re showing. restraint is how you create those gaps.

avoid the impulse to ever say the character feels anger, feels joy. instead, have the character do something or say something that expresses the emotion. 

also, either we acknowledge an emotion, or we don’t. the first has no conflict, kiss of death for tension. the second, though, that’s basically a fight scene: the conflict is between the character and their own emotions. the key is choosing between word and deed to show the character’s purpose (narration or dialogue vs action). whatever’s left becomes the other half of the conflict. 

use scent, taste, sensation, sight, sound to project the emotion, distance it from the character. like, they can breathe fine but the air is stuffy. their hand isn’t shaking; the paper just won’t hold still. leave it to the reader to draw a line between the narrative’s tone and the character’s mental/emotional state.  

second, keep the sentences relatively short. think of the jump cuts in a filmed fight scene (or sex scene) -- you don’t need to see every move. that gets boring, fast. show only enough for the reader to connect the dots; what they put in the gaps will always be far more powerful for them than anything you'll achieve when spelling it all out. 

here’s the real challenge, and one of the hardest kinds of scenes to write (but so satisfying when you nail it) -- a character who acknowledges one emotion while denying the truth beneath. this is the character who’s furious but refuses to admit the hurt powering that anger. or the character who’s happy on the surface but jealous or broken-hearted beneath.  

my advice: overwrite the scene, take it to eleven... and then go back and cut one line in every four of dialogue, then do the same in the narrative. keep only the strongest lines. do another pass. keep going until the scene is down to a quarter the original length, and see what you’ve got. 

how do you write so well

err, okay, setting aside the discomfort of being asked that -- ‘cause I see flaws all over the place, starting with just plain overwriting, srsly, is that word count really necessary -- whatever skill I do have, I learned in one simple way.  

by critiquing other writers, and getting critiques in turn.

not beta-readers -- my experience with beta readers is that they don’t really tackle the story, though they may comment on characterization. mostly I’ve only ever gotten line edits (spelling, grammar, punctuation) and... that’s not really a critique, that’s a copy editor’s work. it’s valuable, but not what I mean.

a critique analyzes the work. they mark illogical or unrealistic dialogue, note missed opportunities for rising tension, point out potential plot holes or discrepancies. a good critique is sensitive to spikes and lulls in the pacing, and at a line-level it’s often attuned to repetition or ambiguity in word choice, muddy metaphors, even the ‘sound’ of the prose.

for every critique you do, you’re training your inner editor. I don’t catch everything (certainly never on the first pass), but having a stronger inner editor means being able to reflexively identify weaknesses. plus, exposure to other stories teaches you ways to fix those mistakes. to the point I sometimes edit as I write ‘cause I can already see what needs fixing.  

lastly

if you want to write better, read better. critique everything. 

this is not criticism, this is critique. this is why I post meta about whatever I’m reading/watching. by approaching a story through that analytical lens, I can peel apart what works (for me) and what fails (for me) and study my reaction. the goal is to duplicate what works and avoid what doesn’t.

you can’t learn to build a car engine just by looking at the outside of a car, after all. you gotta get in there, get the dirt and grease up to your elbows. take it down to the bolts, understand how it got put together. the same goes for writing. never be afraid to take apart anyone’s stories to see how they work. 

and then, go write.

[therealmikegolay]

project flow state q&a

still the dumbest thing i’ve done. this month, anyway.

if you missed the initial post, here you go. please help where you can!

meanwhile: you have questions (at least one of you). i have answers (of course i do).

why did you do this?

excellent question. the shortest possible answer is: i like, and respond well to, structure and projects. covid-19 has thrown the world for a loop. many of the things we’ve taken for granted in our lives are, at the moment, simply no longer safely possible. i’d been looking for ways to stay motivated in my personal life, but also keep myself and my family out of harm’s way. normally i’d be knee-deep in mountain bike race season this time of year. racing is not happening for the most part in north america this season, and speaking personally, i’ve decided that i won’t participate in mass gathering events, even if they do occur, until a covid-19 vaccine is available (there are several immune compromised people in my family, first and foremost, and further, i am simply unwilling to be a transmission vector in my community and beyond - i don’t think we should be mass-start racing or gathering in large groups, even outside, to be clear). so we have challenges like this one to keep us reaching. i wanted to do it alone, no support. 

i confided my intentions to only a very few: my wife and daughter (they were not thrilled), a close friend (i wondered aloud about the possibility that i might be able to complete the goal on a slack DM - the place where most bad ideas are born, these days), and my longtime coach, al donahue (he was excited?). i wanted to make sure i did the thing. i didn’t want to talk about doing the thing, or get overloaded with input about how or why i should or shouldn’t do the thing. less talk, more do.

so i started putting together a plan. 

and then things got [even] worse in america. george floyd, breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery… a country consumed by shock, anger and protest. a lot of us went necessarily silent, became introspective, listened, tried to become allies, demonstrated for change however we could. more or less concurrently, a continued wave of infection and federal inaction overtook our country.

as i took a look around, it became clear to me that, while in some respects i still just wanted to ride my bike out of self-preservation if nothing else, at the same time, i thought it might be possible to raise awareness and direct attention back toward those who were and are still fighting the good fight, as well as toward those in need (sometimes these are the same people). that’s what this project became, as it evolved. (you can still help.)

why didn’t you list black lives matter in the charitable section of your first post?

this was the toughest call that i made during the last two months preparing all facets of this project. first, i 100% support black lives matter. hup united, my longtime team, have been vocally and visibly supportive of the movement. we’ve raised funds through organized [socially distanced] rides. several of us have launched personal project fundraisers designed to benefit black communities. i’ve personally donated to the movement and did my own DIYBLM ride. i’ve tried, and continue to strive, to be an advocate for people of color in my community.

in the end, i concluded that adding black lives matter to a personal bike project unnecessarily diluted the message of the black lives matter movement. it stands on its own and i didn’t want to diminish its importance by attaching it to this particular effort. 

in my mind, covid-19 and systemic racism are the two biggest issues my country faces (along with voter rights), and the overlap between the two (or three), along with the fact that covid affects communities of color at much higher rates than white populations, is heartbreaking and must be addressed. i just didn’t think a white guy going up and down a hill on a bike was the right way to shine that particular spotlight, right now. i’ll continue to listen, learn, support and encourage feedback.

did you train for this thing?

i. did? [hangs head in shame]

what does training look like for something like this?

a lot of long-ish rides at low-end endurance heart rate and lots of muscular endurance around lactate threshold, basically. a couple of easy days per week, and hopefully a fun ride mixed in (around tempo). i had a pretty strong aerobic base going in, from lots of skimo training over the winter, and fairly structured, largely aerobic (vs. anaerobic) efforts (cycling, running and hiking) in the spring. i also did a ton of trail building and landscaping around the house, which is pure suffering, along with the same somewhat minimal core work i [try to] always do. sucks getting old.

i didn’t do any 12-hour rides. that’s not necessary, practical, or smart (for me). save the juice for the party punchbowl, am i right? i did a number of endurance-pace mountain bike rides in the 3-5 hour range - basically my weekend - leading into project day. 

the basic idea: i needed to concentrate training in the zone allowing me to meter out a practical effort that would get me through 10-15 hours on the bike. that meant the low end of endurance heart rate, for me. i paid almost zero attention to power output, other than to set ceilings for “this is going too hard.” efforts over threshold will tank an endurance attempt like this one, so keeping those in check was key.

i wasn’t going to be successful just winging it. i’m marginally talented, at my very best.

did you concentrate on anything in particular during the ride? how did you stay focused? did you stay focused?

the single most important thing on something like this (for me) was hydration/nutrition. that was the key point coach al impressed upon me during our first conversation about an attempt, and was something i practiced during training rides. if you get in a hole in either of these areas on a very long effort, you’re sunk. period. you can’t recover. i did not want to be defeated due to not taking care of myself. i’d put a lot of time into this thing and didn’t want to make stupid mistakes. i had a cooler full of water bottles at a small aid station at the lap turnaround point at the bottom of the circuit. i made myself drink a bottle an hour. drinking was only possible (for me) on the uphill. if i hadn’t finished a bottle within the hour while riding, i finished it at the aid station. in the end, i consumed 13 bottles of water (with skratch electrolyte) and a recovery drink after (it took me about an hour to get it down). the water consumption actually turned out to be more than i needed in order to replace sweat, but i don’t have regrets (i love to pee, it’s great). i had a staggered schedule for consuming food, which consisted of clif bloks, skratch bars, bananas, peanut butter sandwiches, and rice cakes. i ended up eating a little less than i’d planned, but still managed to get through most of it.

the second most important thing was not going too hard. i watched heart rate, not really like a hawk, but i kept an eye on it, again, just trying to stay below a ceiling (i have a weird heart: low maximum, narrow working range, resulting in lower numbers for given efforts than most athletes my age). i had to be honest in terms of logistics in order to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. it was very, very difficult to get my head around what it was going to take to be on the bike for 10+ hours. there are riders who make a practice of rides like that. i’m not really one of them. six hour races are the max length i’ve ever done, and i think i might have done an eight-hour ride once. two- to four-hour races (or shorter, shorter is fine) are more my speed. this was not a race. this was not a race effort. i did a couple of test “hours” on the track prior to the attempt where i tried to benchmark how many laps i could comfortably do in an hour at low-end endurance heart rate (7 laps). then i had to take that number and factor in how many i could do… over the space of… 10-15 hours (the fastest i figured i could go, to the longest period of time i figured i’d be capable). that turned out to be 5-6 laps per hour, with a brief break each hour (moving time was 11:43:22 when i shut off the garmin - meaning i lost about an hour and 15 minutes eating, drinking and peeing). that meant a 13-14 hour day, which was kind of crushing to consider, at the outset. i’d loved to have gone faster, but i knew it wasn’t going to be possible (for me) to complete the overall goal if i just went hahdah dyude. one interesting thing in terms of heart rate is that i saw mine steadily drop in the last four hours of the ride, which al told me would happen. i’m used to shorter, 2-4-hour efforts, where heart rate increases with fatigue. but then you, you know, stop, after 2-4 hours. i wasn’t going to be stopping. in the last four hours of the attempt i started to see my heart rate slowly but steadily decrease from the ceiling i’d been hitting on the climb, even though i was still pedalling at the same cadence and rough power as before. at one point i got down to 108bpm, which was crazy. it came back up a little in the last hour but was still comparatively low. 

the third most important thing was simply wanting to see this through. 177’-ish vertical feet isn’t much. it was, at times, somewhere between mildly to incredibly disconcerting to see just how slowly the laps added up in terms of overall ascent. if you’re a data person, i imagine you could work yourself into a lather just worrying about pace and averages and various. i tried to do the opposite, as much as possible. noisy brain = no good. i did the first hour in the dark and felt fine (lotta toad activity!). i did the second hour as the sun rose and felt the same. i was in my head a lot during those early several laps, and at around the second hour i did briefly consider just how incredibly stupid it was to be riding 1.4 miles over and over and over. then i hit 3k’ overall ascent, and it occurred to me that i was 25% done, which somehow brightened my outlook. and then 4k’. 33%. 8k’, 66%, was pretty huge. i knew i could do it, barring mechanical or complete breakdown. at 2k’ ascent to go i knew i had it in the bag, but was not thrilled to be out there for much longer. the last two hours were hard. i just wanted to be done. the after work crowd was starting to show up on the trails and, god love them all, i just wanted to be out of there and out of everyone’s way. i was happy to simply be finished. i got through this by not thinking much, and just pedalling, which was what i’d hoped would happen, and why i named the thing project flow state. i think i basically got there.

how hard did you go uphill? how steep is the track?

not very hard, at all. for the last couple of hours (hour 11-ish+) i switched into my little ring (i still run a double! i’m a relic!) on the steepest section of the up track, just to spin and save my legs from a little torque where possible. the uphill portion is about 5-6% grade. it never gets steeper than 7%, other than a very short section gaining the hayfield near the bottom.

how fast did you go downhill?

not very fast. at all. for a long attempt like this one, the best possible thing you could do to save energy is just… go downhill and not pedal. at all. that’s almost, but not quite, possible on the flow trail, if you stay off the brakes, which… i don’t. i was concerned about getting a little too loose and being a little too tired over 12 hours or whatever, so i rode very conservatively all day. the fastest i went, for reference, was a little less than half as fast as the top 10 KOMs on the downhill segment (which is insane - so damn fast). it’s not a particularly technical track, but there are frequently riders on it, there are trees, there are ways to screw it up. i just wanted to get down every lap without incident, and concentrate on recovery. i tried not to pedal wherever possible.

why did you choose this segment instead of something less stupid?

during the attempt i saw a few friends on the trails (sorry we didn’t chat more, folks, i still feel bad), one of whom asked why i hadn’t used a segment with more vertical gain, which would have made so much more sense (i don’t disagree). 

the truth is that there’s a continuing trail above the flow trail that would have roughly doubled the vertical ascent per lap. i told the friend mentioned above that i’d later explain why i didn’t use that segment, which is one i’ve ridden hundreds of times and is one i frequently use for dirt threshold intervals (it’s also a very popular downhill grand tour of the area, from the top). here goes. 

while there’s more vertical to gain going higher, there are some distinct disadvantages to that long segment, which i’ll work through from the bottom up. first, there’s a short, blind corner above the lap turnaround that i used. second, there’s a fairly long, not-very-technical-but-you-still-don’t-want-to-fall-off-of-it bog bridge that comes quickly thereafter, frequently the site of 2-way traffic and foot-downs. third, there’s a road crossing with a blind curve about 50 feet up the road on the rider’s left, with a fair amount of vehicular traffic, often traveling well above the speed limit. fourth, there’s a fairly steep, 2-way, primarily downhill trail to the top that sees a ton of rider and occasional foot traffic. starting at my aid station at the bottom of the valley, i’d have had to do about 30 laps of this circuit, in all, to get to 12k’ total (there are also a few sections where you actually lose elevation; gains are efficient, losses are not). so, for that particular route, which again, i’ve ridden many, many times, i’d have had to navigate blind corners, cross a bog bridge [fatigued] 60 times, cross a road 60 times, and most importantly, navigate a 2-way downhill with traffic potential 60 times, with covid-19 a concern all the while. the weight of worry alone on something like this almost guarantees failure (for me). i could have just done the top portion, set up an aid station on the road, i suppose, but that upper segment (which is actually a little less elevation gain - at ~150′ - than the circuit i chose) just isn’t what i had in mind, is significantly steeper and blind in sections, and wasn’t optimal for lots of reasons. so i had definitely considered it, talked with al about it, but it wasn’t right, for me. if any of you wanna try it, let me know how it goes.

what i knew i wanted to do was stay as local as possible (we live near the start of the circuit i chose), ensure safety in terms of traffic (hardly anyone rides down the up track i used at this point, and the flow creek trail is downhill only) and make setup and teardown of the aid station as easy as possible, because tired, coming and going. i feel like the circuit i chose ticked all of those boxes. there is one other trail in the area that would have been slightly more efficient for the goal overall (still, only giving me 2′ additional feet per lap in elevation over the circuit i used), but it would have been nearly impossible to stage an aid station without the help of a small army (i didn’t want to rely on external support), the descent is far more technical and consequential than i was willing to accept on a long day (it still would have been 40 laps), and there would have been significantly more traffic.

so that’s why i made the decisions on the circuit, despite the short lap. in the end, you go with what you have at your disposal. and that’s what i think about that.

how did it feel to hit the goal?

on brand. pretty empty. 

i wish i was kidding. and i wish i could have felt joy. but i was just relieved to be done, and i wanted to get down safely, and get my crap out of there. and that’s what i did. my wife was probably happier than i was, according to our texts. i will say that, immediately, i was super stoked to have this out of the way and not have to think about it anymore.

did you have any problems?

i had a minor but noticeable drivetrain issue going into this event that i was frankly too busy to diagnose. it got worse during the day and became a cause for concern. i’m pretty sure it’s a freehub or hub bearing death, in process. i need to get it fixed. someday. soon.

i worried about my wrists. i wore wrist supports in the last six hours. i think they probably helped. no other issues really, other than feeling a little bloated from all of the water. my arms got a little bit crampy toward the end.

and one other thing i’ll cover elsewhere, eventually.

what was the hardest part?

waiting. i was ready to go late-june. i wanted to get it done before fourth of july weekend. i’d drawn a circle on the calendar around june 30-july 2, latest. i was not going to do the thing on a holiday, on a weekend, or during crap weather. i felt ready to go on the week of june 29, and then… so much rain. so, so, so much rain. it wasn’t going to do to ride wet trails, on some of the most frequented singletrack in the state, no less (please stay off wet trails!). and it wasn’t going to do to ride this thing with throngs of people out there. so i waited. until a monday, which was odd, as that’s typically an easy day for me on the bike. i got up at 2am, left the house at 3am, was set up by 3:30am, and started at 3:45am. there wasn’t any point in waiting any longer.

in terms of perceived exertion, this was less physically difficult than i imagined it might be. it was hard, but nowhere near terrible. the hardest part was just watching the numbers slowly, very, very slowly, accumulate.

were there any surprises?

i saw a weasel sniffing around near my aid station. it didn’t seem to notice me until i said, “hey weasel.” this was the best part of the day.

should i try this project?

i don’t recommend it.

thanks for reading, and again, please keep an eye out for one another.

[kingsofchaos]

I had an idea, and it kinda made sense to me. What if the cops are also immortal? Or maybe not all of them but Key members, and they and the fakes have been doing this dance for centuries. They chased Geoff through the French Revolution, caught Jack a few times Stealing planes in WW1, so on.

Oooh! I actually thought about bringing in immortal cops (would be probably the only way I’d have RT people in the LSPD because I don’t want to kill them oops) but I tend to always consider it as more of a purgatory type situation, all gaining immortality at the same time in the cursed hellscape that is Los Santos. I love your version, with the long term historic kind of fahc immortality, because there are just so many ways it could go.I mean

1. You could go for something really ridiculous and full on, something like immortality itself being stolen in the first place, because humans were never meant to live forever were they? Were never meant to have this kind of power, but where something of great importance exists there will always be people willing to steal it. It’s an object of the Gods, maybe, of the Devils, perhaps, something ancient and terrible, something forgotten and far too tempting to stay that way forever. Not when people like the man who would one day be Geoff Ramsey exist to find and steal it, when the original iteration of Jack Pattillo is around to share it with, not when Ryan, still James, kills them both and takes it only for the dead to track him down and take it back. Not when Gavin has always had sticky fingers, always been a thief, or when any version of Michael would follow him into hell and back, not when Jeremy was always going to jump headfirst into action, touch strange glowing objects first and worry about the ramifications later.But objects like that don’t stay forgotten forever. Objects like that aren’t left unattended. Others have touched it before, of course, immortal beings who were meant to stand guard, who return to their post to find the object missing. Who comb the earth to track the thieves, playing at law enforcement to avoid detection, avoid even more mortals stumbling across secrets they should not know, but while the criminals are found over and over across history the object is never recovered. Even when the FAHC settle in one place, choose fight over flight and demand answers to some questions of their own, even when the trackers infiltrate the LSPD and raid every place the Crew owns, even then the object remains hidden. Because immortal beings the pseudo-cops may be but the FAHC are human, at least mostly, in all the ways that count. Human in their creativity, their deviousness, their cruelty. Human in their their unlimited ability to adapt, to learn and conquer, to outwit anything and anyone no matter how old, how timeless. So war is waged right under the nose of society, each side keeping their secrets but neither concerned with collateral damage, a city turned battleground for those who cannot die, the nightmare that is Los Santos.Then again:

2. It could be far more simple, where immortals just somehow happen at some point, with no connection to one another, except perhaps some sense that there are others, an odd pull to one another. In the way of humanity throughout history the divide between these immortals is simply human nature, the inclination of some to use their advantages selfishly while others look to protect the greater good. The Fake’s, of course, are individuals who upon realising their own immortality quickly work out that they are now in a better situation than anyone around them, that they can do just about whatever they want with no real consequences, and go wild with the power. Thieves and mobsters, criminals and cult leaders, notorious names in history and unknown puppeteers - over the years the one-day members of the Fake AH Crew have done it all.  They meet up eventually, hundreds of years apart, perhaps temporarily as rivals but overlapping interests and shared ability quickly sees them joining forces. Sees them becoming the most dangerous group history has ever seen. That history keeps on seeing, in many different forms and under many different names over the years but never any less formidable. The eventual immortal members of the LSPD, who’ve been everything from soldiers to international intelligence to vigilantes themselves were never any less dangerous. There have always been famous detectives, always been soldiers who survived the unsurvivable, law enforcement who’ve gone above and beyond, and like the Fake’s these individuals are eventually drawn together under their shared quest for justice. Imbued as they are with a sense of virtuous purpose, assured their role on earth is to police the corrupted immortals and prevent them from raining hell upon normal people, these officers have long been just as merciless as the criminals they hunt. They’ve dogged the Fake’s wherever they’ve gone for centuries, first individually and now as a group, set up for the long haul in Los Santos, doing their very best to curtail the criminal behaviour and prevent the death of those who will not come back to life. It’s a battle they are all locked into now, a duty for the police, a defiance for the FAHC, bloody and vicious and all kinds of unforgiving, on and on into eternity.Or alternatively:

3. For the less serious sort of version of the FAHC - immortal criminals vs immortal justice seekers, still at odds of course, always pitted against one another as the Fake’s fight for selfish gain and power and the cops fight to keep them contained, but maybe it’s all become a bit mundane. Maybe eternity has given them all a bit of perspective, thrown them together for far too long to stay entirely objective, to keep themselves separate. They are all the only immortals any of them know, after all, the only ones stuck in this loop, so maybe they’re on opposite sides but they’d have to talk to one another now and again. Eventually learn more than names, learn like and personalities, not friends, no, but certainly a kind of camaraderie, a familiarity that could almost be fondness in the right light, inevitable after countless lifetimes in each other’s presence. Inevitable when there’s no end in sight, no grand finale, no true winner or loser in this never ending pantomime of life and death. Sure, no one likes dying, no one enjoys the pain or the inescapable flicker of fear, no one wants to explain away their lack of injury or, when the death is too public, create a whole new identity, but you can only take murder personally for so many centuries. Can only hold onto anger for so long before it becomes a little trivial. A little childish. No matter how much Hollywood loves to romanticise supernatural grudges the reality is far less passionate - do anything on loop for 500 years and the fire is sure to dwindle, the emotions mute, shit gets fucking boring.The never ending battle wages on, the conflict between two sides that will never see eye-to-eye, and the ever-changing nature of society and technology keeps the fights themselves from growing too stale, but when you run side-by-side with someone for this long there are only so many righteous monologues you can make before you start feeling a little silly. Sometimes you’re going to see Geoff and Jack at a cafe getting breakfast, or Lindsay and Jeremy at the store debating hair dye brands, and you just have to keep walking. Sometimes you’ll sit down next to Michael and Gavin getting drunk at the bar, will see Trevor and Matt filling a shopping trolley with energy drinks and candy bars, spot Ryan wandering around without that ridiculous mask he’s picked up this time around, and just move on.Because you’re enemies, yes, and tomorrow you’ll be back at war, but today you’ve got a date or tickets to that one movie or haven’t had a coffee yet. Today you’re tired or hungry or just need to talk to someone who isn’t Frank because honestly fuck Frank anyway he’s been hung up on that one ruined shirt for seventy goddamn years, Christ almighty. So you look away, or they look away, or you exchange awkward nods that are perhaps less uncomfortable than they should be, silent acceptance that you’ll pick this fight up another day. Because hey, there will always be another day.