brightknightie

This wacky train of thought popped up in a conversation about how much money a billion-with-a-b dollars really is.

If you had a huge pile of money that you were to bestow as endowments on academia in honor of FK's characters, how would you distribute it per character?

Those I knew immediately, off the top of my head:
1. anthropology for Nick
2. biology for Natalie
3. communications for Lacroix
4. hospitality management for Janette
5. botany for Feliks
Those I pondered a little:
1. economics for Schanke
2. criminology for Tracy
3. psychology for Urs
4. history for Vachon
5. mathematics for Fleur
6. medicine for Alma
Those I pondered more:
1. sociology for Stonetree
2. military science for Cohen
3. philosophy for Reese
4. nutrition for Screed
5. business administration for Norma
6. community studies for Grace
7. literature for Emily
8. graphic arts for Marian
9. women's studies for Sofia & Amalia (different reasons!)
10. education for Alexandra
11. theology for Angel
12. peace and conflict studies for the Inca

Who else? Which other disciplines? ;-D

I haven't yet tidied up the traces of my LJ years. I will. For now, though, my account's still active. So when Susan's birthday came, LJ reminded me. I meant to post this in August. I ran out of time.

In case you've found FK fandom only recently, let me share that Susan M. Garrett was a kind and generous person, magnificent fan, and wonderful storyteller. FK fandom was blessed in her. Not alone, she tried so hard to do so much for all of us. But above all fanwriters whom I dearly love to read, I love to re-read Susan as none other. Her stories come so close, so nearly there, to the FK of my heart.

Check out Susan's FK stories. Here are just a few of my personal favorites:

"False Heart" (April 1994) & "Kind Soul" (January 1995)
"Peerless Pressure" (May 1995)
"Knight in Hell" (May 1994)

What are your favorite Susan stories?

For the month of August, in my corners of social journaling, here are the Forever Knight items that I happened to see:

Fannish charity fundraisers

harvey_fanaid is fundraising via fanwork creation/sponsorships, including auctions, buy-it-nows, and custom requests, through the end of September. (sharpest_asp's are the only offers I recognize so far.)
RevelCon, an annual fan-run Houston zine/fic convention, is fundraising for ConvoyOfHope.

Ficathons, fests & communities that welcome FK

trickortreatex, a Halloween exchange, has nominations through 9/09, sign-ups 9/11-18, due-date 10/24, and reveals on Halloween. FK is nominated.
yuletide time has come again. Check out the Master Index Post or Fandoms Brainstorming.
ladiesbingo, a challenge featuring relationships (all kinds) between women, runs September-March. (I've recognized chelseagirl, lightbird, sharpest_asp, and muccamukk among the sign-ups so far.)
fffc, a weekly "flash fiction" community, is holding a special September event with daily (rather than weekly) prompts.
picture_prompt_fun is a weekly picture-prompt fiction community.
Recommendation communities recap: fanart_recs, het_reccers, gensplosion, recshelf, underheard, and fancake. (More FK-friendly rec forums? Let me know!)

FK fanfiction & other fanworks
Archive of our Own (AO3) Summary: 4 of the 787 FK stories on the AO3 show posting dates in August.

"Balancing Desire" by Nicholas_Lucien (~25K words) (X, multi) (Part 3 of "Myths & Art")
"On the Eve of Totality" by Nicholas_Lucien (~2K words) (G, gen)
"One Death Too Many" by PJ1228 (~10K words) (R, multi) (Part 2 of "Relationships")
"In Sickness and in Health" by TonksForever36 (>1K words) (G, gen)

News & conversation:

8/05: abby82 proposed and illustrated actress Caroline Dhavernas to play Janette in a more faithful series reboot than the currently-in-production movie.
8/10: nicholas_lucien updated us on the filming of the upcoming movie. (Why they paid to use the FK title and character names to apparently reincarnate Angel: The Series remains unknown.)
8/15: nicholas_lucien wished Ben Bass a (belated) happy birthday.
8/19: pj1228 announced the sequel ("One Death Too Many") to the story she wrote for this year's FKFicFest ("One Loss Too Many"), and promised a concluding third installment.

Some years ago, when there was a natural disaster or the like, various corners of fandom would organize fundraisers in which people with more time and talent than money would create a new fannish work in "exchange" for a donation to the cause by someone else, often in auction format.

Have you seen any of those for the flooding in Texas?

I have no time recently, but I do have the wherewithal to donate just now, and I haven't yet donated to a charity for this disaster, so I thought that I might join forces with someone and sponsor a fanwork as well and direct my donation to that person's preferred charity, if that sort of thing is still done...?

Like most adults, I don't get to raid often during the work week, and less and less as oncoming autumn contracts the days (raids start sunrise to sunset only, it seems). But I am making more of an effort to spend my free daily raid passes to keep my Mewtwo options open since that mechanic was announced. Even if only on a Level 1 or 2 raid by myself before work, at lunchtime, or a really quick afternoon break, whenever I'm lucky enough to have (and notice) a raid pop nearby, I check my schedule.

On one of the 3 raids I managed to complete this work week, I dared a Level 3 alone. And I did it! I met my longstanding game goal of taking down a Level 3 raid boss by myself! It was close. And it was just an Arcanine with pure fire moves (no bite, crunch, or wild charge). But still! I solo'd a Level 3 raid boss! It took 4 pokemon: my 3 leveled-up Golemns with 2 rock-type moves each, and my biggest, best Vaporean. (Obviously, wild charge would've destroyed my Vaporean.) Shiny Gyarados with hydro-pump was my anchor, in the sixth slot, but we didn't get to her.

Previously, I'd tried soloing Arcanine and Flareon bosses with ground types (which are common around here). I've concluded that the ground-type moves will never be fast enough to solo them, not at any level.

There's an Articuno raid at the park nearest me right now. What's happening? Is Articuno back, or is this a glitch...?

I'd planned to post briefly this morning to share that I was so very lucky as to catch a 100% IV Zapdos yesterday! Yay! And then I was going to say that I actually hope summer legendary season will end tonight; I'm game-exhausted by these limited-time-only availabilities of the legendary birds. And then I was going to comment on the rampant Ho-Oh speculation. But...

Apparently, Mewtwo has been a raid boss at Pikachu Outbreak! People have caught Mewtwo! And clearly there's this Articuno right now, here, when we all thought that Articuno wouldn't be seen again in the game for many months, if not a year, if not ever.

Why does Niantic do these things on Mondays (work days) instead of weekends?

If all the legendaries are back in the game at high availabilities, I may perhaps feel a little ill-used or tricked for having invested time and effort in catching them while we were told they were limited-time-only. Hmmmm.

Addendum 10:56 PM: Niantic has spoken: Mewtwo and "other powerful pokémon" are coming soon to "Exclusive Raids," and all 4 legendary birds are back through the end of August. Read all about it.

For the month of July, in my corners of social journaling, here are the Forever Knight items that I happened to see:

Ficathons, fests & communities that welcome FK

wip_amnesty, an event to encourage progress on works-in-progress, holds its first round 8/10-8/24.
ficpositivity is encouraging a positive feedback meme (no deadlines).
underheard is a new recommendations community for underappreciated fiction.
Recommendation communities recap: fanart_recs, het_reccers, gensplosion, recshelf, underheard, and fancake. (Know more FK-friendly rec communities? Tell me about them!)

FK fanfiction & other fanworks
Archive of our Own (AO3) Summary: 7 of the 782 FK stories on the AO3 show posting dates in July.

Untitled Canada Day ficlet by abby82 (~750 words) (PG-13, m/f)
"Sesquicentennial" by greerwatson (~750 words) (G, gen)
"Reshaped in His Image" by rhodrymavelyne (~250 words) (Unrated, m/m)
"Ein Mädchen von edlem Geblüt" by LucySummerlove (~141K words) (R, m/f) (German)
"Die Konkubine - 1. Teil" by LucySummerlove (WIP, ~16K words) (R, m/f) (German)
"Schmetterling und Nachtfalter" by LucySummerlove (WIP, ~42K words) (R, m/f) (German)
"Forever Natalie" by LucySummerlove (WIP, ~17K words) (R, m/f) (German)
"Vaterfreuden" by LucySummerlove (WIP, ~10K words) (G, m/f) (German)

News & conversation:

Upcoming new movie

7/16: nicholas_lucien analyzed how these characters look when vamped.
7/08: nicholas_lucien shared the announcement of an original character, a werewolf named Jason, and observed that this Nick smokes.

Cast & crew

7/23: skieswideopen shared that Geraint Wyn Davies narrates the audio version of the "Regions of Canada" chapter of the Canadian citizenship test study-guide.
7/10: nicholas_lucien recognized the 8^th annual Lindsay Thomas Memorial Hockey Game, and that Geraint Wyn Davies is coaching again this year.
7/03: nicholas_lucien wished Deborah Duchene a happy birthday.
7/01: pj1228 linked to reviews for this year's Stratford productions, in which Geraint Wyn Davies, Nigel Bennett, Lucy Peacock, and Joseph Ziegler are performing.

Miscellaneous

7/10: abby82 celebrated the recovery of her lost FK DVDs. (Her brother had them.)
7/06: hearts_blood offered "DVD commentary" on any of her short stories (or chapters from long stories).

Do you get tired of the game auto-recommending your high-CP Blisseys and Chanseys for raids? What you really want, of course, are pokémon with the type advantages to deal the most damage per second, thus getting you more rewards, and your team more premier balls! For that, I learned this great tip at a raid yesterday, and will try it at the first opportunity:

To keep the game from default-suggesting certain pokémon, assign them as gym defenders, let them faint, and then don't revive them until you want to use them on purpose. The game won't recommend fainted 'mon!

(Blissey, with her unmatched endurance, is the best defender by far! But she's often a marginal attacker. She's slow and lacks super-effective same-type attack bonuses. So it's not considered best form to raid with Blissey/Chansey-heavy squads. It kind of suggests that either you don't know about type advantages, or you expect to be carried by the other trainers' expenditures of effort, revives, and potions.) (I'm so embarrassed when I don't have time to pick all my squad — because of connectivity, lag, app restarting, players already in the lobby, whatever — and the game default sticks me with a wall of pink.)

After the gym rework, I posted that 3K+ CP pokémon would lose motivation 10 times faster than >3K CP pokémon.

That was true until this weekend. Turns out, it was a bug! All gym defenders were meant to lose motivation at the same rate. Niantic has released an out-of-sequence update (this was a migration week, not an update week) and it's bursting with bug fixes.

Just thought you'd want to know. It's safe to go back to defending gyms with 3K+ CP pokémon. :-)

I was at my desk at work at 7:30 PM when the Discord app chat pinged. There was a legendary raid across the street from my home. Was I coming? You bet! How fast did I turn off my work computer and dash to my car? How far did I push up against the speed limit?

I'd been on 4 previous legendary raids: 1 Articuno (flying/ice), 3 Lugia (flying/psychic). The first was on Saturday night (as previously related), and the others on Sunday (one in the park across the street from my church after mass, one near my home in the afternoon, and one not far from my work in the evening). Each time, those gathered had beaten the raid boss together! Each time, my individual post-raid legendary had fled.

This time, I was down to 3 premier balls when a fellow trainer started helpfully offering advice. I was a little grumpy with him, I'm afraid. (That is not the moment a trainer wants to reconsider her ball-throwing style.)

With my second-to-last premier ball, the Articuno stayed in! 96% IVs. Front breath & Blizzard. I am very lucky!

I understand that Niantic announced this afternoon that Articuno will be around for only a week, at which time Moltres will get a week, and then Zapdos. Lugia will apparently stick around permanently, but get less common...? We shall see. One of each would be perfect! :-D

(Oh, and the bonuses are extended until 5 PM Pacific on Thursday!)

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Life! (not immortality)

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Academic endowments in honor of FK characters (humor!)

Susan's birthday is a time for FK fanfic

FK Recently: What You Guys Have Been Up To (8/01/17-8/31/17)

Any fannish fundraisers for the Texas disaster?

Solo'd a Level 3 raid

Surprise Mewtwo and Articuno overshadow perfect Zapdos

FK Recently: What You Guys Have Been Up To (7/01/17-7/31/17)

How to keep Blissey off your raid squads

the game meta can change at any moment (and just did)

I caught my first legendary! Articuno!

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