Chocolate reviews and discussion

Is it tacky to use a friend's husband for fanfic? Let me explain!

So I am somewhat embarrassed, having heard all my life about the Appalachian Trail, that I didn't know the west coast has a similar trek, the Pacific Crest Trail, from the border with Mexico, up through California, Oregon, and Washington, until reaching the Canadian border. A friend's husband started walking it mid-April, so I'd heard a bit about his planning and have been following his hike on Tumblr.
(https://www.tumblr.com/robpct2025) He's gone over 1000 miles already.

It makes me realize that this is something I would never have been capable of doing and will never try now, but go him!

At some point on the trail, he was given the sobriquet of Lighthouse. He's a tall man with a light on his hat, it was getting dark and other hikers used his light to see their way. Trail nickname! (This is apparently a special naming that happens for some people but not everyone.)

Of course, I had to think of Liam's 6'4" height. QUINN. Hiking the trail by himself. He's always wanted to do it and has taken a sabbatical for it. He's in his mid-40s, he figures he should get it done soon. He comes up on three hikers, young people in their 20s, moving a bit slower than him. Normally he politely passes slower hikers, but it's getting late and dark and he's looking for the next good spot to pitch his tent for the night. He chats with them a bit, sensing a bit of discord between them, but flattered when they begin calling him Lighthouse. Trail nickname has come to him!

They reach a good flat area and decide to camp side by side. He's taking a detour soon to meet up with his friend Mace, get more supplies, maybe sleep overnight in a motel and have a long, proper shower. He shares the rest of his candy. The young men seem fairly well organized but also certainly not perfectly, they didn't have his two extra decades of contemplation and reading about other people's successful treks.

One of them in particular (of course!) catches his attention. Ben, with his easy smile and changeable grey-blue-green eyes. He's the most diplomatic of the three and it seems like he's been playing referee a lot.

All goes well, it's nice to have real conversation over a meal after several weeks already of being mostly alone.

In the morning, they share breakfast and pack up. Does tragedy strike so that the other two bail, leaving Ben alone? Does Ben then end up hiking the rest of the trip with Quinn? Of course he does! Hours pass by where they silently walk, simply enjoying each other's company, but they also share long, thoughtful conversations and really get to know each other in a way that's deeper and more meaningful than casually getting to know each other in a city.

And of course, sex under the stars, in a tent, in a waterfall...

I probably won't try to write that, but it's been amusing to contemplate whenever I look at the pics on Tumblr. Such gorgeous scenery, it's so easy to see the boys enjoying it.

Fanfic everything!

Thy name is not Elayna. No, it's really not!

I hadn't thought much about writing until suddenly I had a story in my brain and was writing it. And kept doing that, and at some point I thought, I should probably read some advice on writing. I've read a lot but not studied that much about the actual mechanics of writing. So much advice is "Write What You Know." Really! So much! And I found this sorta stressful! I was a middle-aged female bureaucrat with a job in an 8x8 cubicle, I wanted to write about Jedi in a galaxy far, far away, not what I knew, thank you very much.

But I go through life and I swear, so often I'm thinking, how can I use this in fanfic?

I got a free turkey recently, which had been in a freezer since last November. Normally I cook a turkey once a year, on Thanksgiving, but I didn't want to keep this one for another 4 months. I cooked it yesterday. My brother always carves it on Thanksgiving, so I had to do that myself. I looked up instructions online, and it went fine.

Today I'm boiling the bones with vegetables for turkey stock. It smells absolutely delicious.

And I just keep thinking... who should be roasting a turkey> Thanksgiving or some other time? What do they think about how good it smells? What did they think about carving it and getting grease on their hands? I feel Bucky would snap a glove on his prosthetic hand so the turkey grease wouldn't invade the finger joints. Would Tony find cooking stock an extremely odd thing to do, or would it bring back fond childhood memories of Ana Jarvis?

I seem to be MCU these days.

I don't want to write what I know... except I totally do. EVERYTHING.

/weird writerly ramble

Mine and society's, I guess.

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of movies from the 1940s and 50s. Many of the characters smoked, which looked glamorous to me. I often pretended to smoke with those white candy cigarettes.

Then my parents stopped when I was around 13, and I got to watch first hand the difficulty of breaking an addiction. Also, a health unit at school on smoking showed a picture of a smoker’s lung and ew. Smoking still looked glamorous in movies but the impact in real life very much did not.

I saw The Materialists this week, primarily for my love of Chris Evans. In several early scenes, Dakota Johnson’s character smokes, looking very elegant with how she holds the cigarette. Chris’s character does too, though with less stylistic drama.

And it was so weirdly distracting! I don’t remember the last time I saw a character smoke in a movie set in modern times. All I could think was how nasty those characters must have smelled.

As the movie progresses, both characters stop smoking, like it was just something to give ‘a bit of business’ to their hands until the plot got more intense, but not really supposed to be part of their personality.

I’m very happy attitudes have changed so much toward smoking. I don’t know anyone who smokes. I only smell it when I go to a casino, which always makes me so grateful that California outlaws smoking most places.

I have no clue why the director had those characters smoke, but it seemed like a bad decision to have it and then inconsistent to drop it. I found the movie interesting though a weird mix of jaded cynicism and hopefulness. I don’t know that I’d recommend it, though if you want to watch for Chris, he definitely looked very good. There’s a scene where he has a few lines about love, and the camera stays focused on him the whole time, and I thought: someone must use that in a video. It would be perfect.

Pedro Pascal looks very good too.

So qualified rec. But really, why have main characters smoke? Why? It's a unpleasant habit that kills people.

The Old Guard 2 ends on a cliffhanger.

A. FUCKING. CLIFFHANGER.

There is no confirmation of The Old Guard 3 movie. IMdb lists 21 upcoming projects for Charlize Theron as a producer and 5 as an actress, and none of those are The Old Guard 3.

Multiple people are left in deadly peril at the end and the stupid AI overview says 'the movie leaves room for a sequel.'

The movie REQUIRES a sequel. It is incomplete.

My sister got to gloat because she said, "wow, this really seems to be heading toward a cliffhanger," and I hit the pause and said, "no, look, it's got 23 minutes left, this'll be wrapped up in 23 minutes." Bizarrely, the movie ended with almost 10 minutes left. Maybe the credits were that long. So sis was right.

I normally try to avoid spoiling people for brand new movies that I think many are anticipating, but I'm very annoyed by movies that end in cliffhangers without warning, and I would want to know. So now you all know.