Becca Stareyes

Fanfiction.net Meme

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:37:51 GMT

I stole this from galuxkitty.

1. How many words of fanfic have you submitted?
315,071

2. Your profile page URL?
http://www.fanfiction.net/~beccastareyes

3. How many people have faved you?
13

4. Which fandoms do you write for?
Digimon, Slayers, Escaflowne, Dragaera, Dresden Files, Fullmetal Alchemist, Harry Potter, Avatar: Last Airbender, Earthbound, Misc. Books, Crest of the Stars, Miles Vorkosigan, Star Trek: 2009, and Legend of Zelda.

5. How many stories have you written?
41 posted to ff.net, which is most of my long work that is not so old as to be crap.

6. Which story of yours would you recommend for people to read?
Depends on the fandom. On the ones I write a lot, I'm fond of Watch and Review Please (Avatar), Monster Slayer (Escaflowne), Xellos ex Machina (Slayers), and Movie Night (Dresden Files).

7. Which story are you most proud of?
Monster Slayer is one of them, as is And Then There Were Two (Earthbound). The Kite Flying Woman of the Dragon's Teeth (Avatar) was also just a fun story to write.

8. Which one was your biggest challenge?
Masking the Symptoms (FMA) refused to end in a settled way. It was supposed to be a problem story, but not for the author, dammit. Rain and Mist, Shadow and Storm (Slayers) had a bit of the same problem in that it was written for a contest that had a 5,000 word maximum and it lost a lot to keep it below that. I should have written it long and edited, or just ignored the contest.

9. Which one had the most reviews?
To Be Human, one of my ancient Slayers stories, back when I wrote multi-chapter fics. Of the one-shots, it was Twas the Night Before Solstice a Slayers holiday poem parody.

10. Which had the least?
Ripples of Change a Sharing Knife fic I wrote for the Bujold ficathon, and Sticks and Stones, my Escaflowne/Laundry crossover.

11. Which story do you feel deserved the most reviews?
I dunno. Among the Ice (Avatar) has a boatload of hits, but only 4 reviews. But, really, I like reviews -- more is nice.

12. Which story was your longest?
To Be Human

13. Which story was your shortest?
Twas the Night Before Solstice -- I don't generally post my drabbles, so it's one of the few that was substantially below 1,000 words.

14. Which story was a surprise hit?
None so Blind a Slayers/Avatar fusion I wrote on a plane ride because I was bored and imagining what Rezo and Toph would say to each other about being blind. Only 3 reviews, but two wanted 'Avatar cast in Slayers world' to be a series of fics.

15. What story are you most known for?
Dunno.

16. What fandom are you most known for?
Slayers, probably

17. What pairings are you most known for? Zel/Amelia, no question. Not sure on the rest.

18. What is something you will never put into your story?
Porn, probably. Not just because I don't generally write it, but because if I did, I wouldn't be posting it to FF.net. Unless the rules changed to allow it.

19. What do you think your trademark is?
Rare fandoms and cute, character-centric gen.

20. Give us a hint of future stories!
The FMA AU I'm procrastinating on.

Today

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:36:14 GMT

I was all set to spend today cleaning, except then I developed the headache from Hades after going to the grocery store -- the same one that kept me in on Halloween. It's gone now, but it was enough that all I got done was spending the afternoon passed out on my bed asleep*.

Well, and a drabble. Added a new fandom to 'stuff I have written' -- yay for drabbles about book fandoms. (Suddenly you see why I took to Yuletide like a duck to water -- writing for odd fandoms is one of my favorite things to do.)

I am not adapting to the early darkness at all. For an astronomer, I sure hate the dark. No, that's not quite true. I like the dark when it comes on after I eat dinner and can sip my decaffeinated tea and watch the sunset, then go out and look at the stars. Not so much when I come home from work in the dark, or have to wake up before the sun.

* My normal response to pain is OTC painkillers and sleep until they take effect.

Tomorrow work should be busy -- I got a lunch seminar and a meeting with my advisor on 'where I am going with research**', and a lot of paper-writing and stuff.

** Basically, I'm done with one major project, unsure if I should pursue the other one further or just finish and publish, and suspect that I might need a third project to get enough dissertation writing material, but I'm going to ask my advisor. Also mention something someone mentioned to me at DPS about something I brushed over in my talk, and maybe calculating a lower limit on something. (Except I don't know -- or am not sure -- how. Maybe that, plus the F-ring feature thing that I'm helping Matt with, but is low on his priority list, would be enough stuff -- 'cept the F-ring stuff is Matt's project, and I'm just giving him the data from my data set to add to the data he has.)

My Brain is a Strange Place

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:15:39 GMT

As in, it thinks doing a Kino's Journey/Slayers fusion fic would be a good idea. Or even a crossover type dealie taking Kino, Hermes and the feeling of Kino's Journey* and bringing it into other settings. Just as kind of a series of one-shot crossovers to play with settings/characters of various series and to write Kino and Hermes.

* If you like thoughtful anime, I recommend this series highly. Basically, the premise is that Kino is a traveler who only stays a few days in each town she visits and Hermes is her motorrad (think motorcycle with AI). A lot of the episodes are stand alones or two-part arcs, and they're very concept oriented. For example, the first episode, Kino visits a town where the inhabitants developed an ability to read each other's minds. As time passed, they discovered that knowing the innermost thoughts of even loved ones was making it impossible to live with them, so they all isolated themselves and used robots to do everything. The one person Kino meets tells her this, then invites her to stay, since she's the first person he's talked to in a while and he wants to live with people who he can't read. It's a very matter-of-fact anime, showing great beauty and kindness, but also great suffering, irrationality, and brutality. (Oh, the ending...) "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is."

I really liked it, because it was... I guess because it wasn't depressing for the sake of angst, but because it was matter of fact, showing the world which was. It's on my list with Haibane Renmei and Mushishi for cerebral anime that I liked from club and want on my shelf.

Language Peculiarities

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:04:23 GMT

In English, a queen can be a Queen Regnant (a monarch), a Queen Consort (the wife of a monarch) or a Queen Mother (the mother to the monarch). But a king is always a King Regnant -- the husband of a monarch is a Prince Consort. I don't think the father to the monarch has a title. Then again, reading Wikipedia indicates a lot of it is because Britain -- who tend to be what sets usage of noble titles in the English language, since most English speaking countries either look to Britain for their nobility needs or don't have nobility -- has only had two reigning queens in the current era. Victoria outlived her husband and Elizabeth II is still alive, so that means that 'widower of previous monarch/father to current monarch' has never needed a word, and apparently Victoria couldn't get Parliament to call her husband king since he wasn't British. (Elizabeth II made her husband, Philip, a prince, but not Prince/King Consort.)

Now, the reason I think about this is for fantasy writing -- or non-English-language fanfic*. I mean, if I have a country that didn't have the tradition of men inheriting first, then the courtesy titles for spouses and parents should be consistent with that. So, either one has to go with Queen/King as only meaning a monarch, and Prince(ss) being a term for 'member of monarch's immediate family or direct descendants, who is not the monarch him/herself' -- so you end up with this being the Prince(ss) Consort, former Prince(ss) Consorts/now Prince(ss) Father/Mother, and the 'normal' children, grandchildren, and siblings to the monarch. Or you could have King/Queen be the term for a spouse/widow(er) of a monarch as well as the monarch him/herself. (This would also extend downward -- so a Duke or Duchess could be ruling a Duchy or the spouse of the ruler of the Duchy.)

Or you can just use the male terms as unisex terms, and use the Consort as a title for a spouse. I know for my tweaks to Green Ronin's Blue Rose setting, I'm changing it to drop King/Queen as the title of Aldis, and just go with Sovereign (the name of the office), with the Consort (or Consorts) being any spouses.

* I specify the language since a lot of politeness and titles and stuff translate better figuratively than literally.

Annoyance

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:20:06 GMT

Today is a rainy and gray day. But that's not what I'm here to complain about.

So, last night, I finished my first read-through of papers and went to the fabric store and out to dinner. I get home around 6, and go to my computer.

Me: *attempt to wake the computer from sleep*

Computer: *no response*

Me: *tap on the keyboard and wave the mouse around*

Computer: *I'm sorry, were you doing something?*

Me: *sighs* Fine. *restarts the computer*

Computer: *Mac start up chime, but shows a folder with a question mark on it instead of the Apple logo*

Me: Shit, that's not good. *finds the OS disk and puts that in*

Computer: *working well enough to bring up the Install/Disk Utility windows*

Me: Okay, let's see what's wrong with you. Verify the hard drive.

Computer: Hard Drive needs repairs.

Me: Okay repair it.

Computer: *runs* Hard drive repair failed. Recommend you erase and restore from backup.

Me: ... Good thing I have backups*. Okay, erase the hard drive.

Computer: *runs* Disk erased.

Me: Restore from the external drive.

Computer: *runs*

Me: *does other stuff*

Computer: Restore failed.

Me: Shit. Fine, re-install OS 10. I'll restore my applications and files later.

Computer: *runs* Reinstall failed.

Me: ... Shit. You stupid piece of junk. Fine, let's hope the backup is in good condition. *runs the Disk Utility on the external drive*

Computer: Disk OK. No need for repairs here.

Me: *checks the install DVD*

Computer: Disk OK. Install OSX?

Me: Fine, yes. *tries again*

Computer: Install failed.

Me: ... -_- *tries several times in hopes that somehow the computer fairies will smile on her*

Computer: *you do know that doing the same thing and expecting different results is a sign of insanity, don't you?*

Me: ... I'm going to bed.

TLDR: Desktop at home is borked. Considering I tried at least a half a dozen time to either restore from backups or reinstall the operating system, with no helpful results, I think my only recourse is to send it to Apple and let them deal with it. (It's two years old, so no longer under warranty, and I don't live near a place that is certified to repair Macs. I could ask at Best Buy, or somewhere, since it's not like I can void the warranty by taking it elsewhere.)

I have the laptop, so I can head home tonight and do something (and get my files off the external drive), but expect me to be slow about everything computer-related in the next couple of days.

* Seriously, the computer is set to backup the disk every hour when I'm at the computer. I even have a program (Time Machine) that remembers the changes I make between backups, and keeps track of it, so I can essentially browse my hard drive as it looked in the past. Reminds me that I should get an external drive for work.

sigh

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:26:11 GMT

90% confident I won't do NaNo this year. I'm just too drained these last couple of weeks. I might sent a NaNo-esque goal, but something less like a sprint in that I won't need December to recover. Maybe to write every one of the 31_days prompts for a different fandom, or to take a month where I draw every day. In the state I'm in, I'm just not in the condition to do something intensive like NaNo.

In other news, my officemate can't find someone to open the observatory for her lab students. Normally one grad student handles these things, but he's not answering the phone. If he doesn't show up by the time I head to group therapy, I said I'd come by and help. Which will probably mean taking the late bus home and just passing out. I already didn't sleep well, since I feel bad about not doing much for Ben's birthday this weekend, and I'm still trying to work out what to do about the whole holiday thing*, besides to buy my tickets for Boston. (I found out that Shortline offers a special bus from Cornell to Newton over the break, and I can get the T from there to a couple of blocks from my aunt's house.)

* By 'the holiday thing' I mean that Dad wants me to visit Florida with him and Marjorie**, Mom wants me to visit Nebraska with her, my siblings and my friends. Both of them have said it's ultimately my decision. Dad had assumed I'd be in Nebraska for Thanksgiving -- I don't know why, since I don't go home over that break, though I did visit him in Florida once.

** I don't know if the invitation applies to Ben, but Dad is asking Jenn and Matt next year, since he can't put up all four of us in his condo.

To NaNo or Not to NaNo

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:43:27 GMT

So, this week I have the following I would like to do:

-- Finish my drawings for MAX and mrcaex
-- Finish Winry Rockbell, Martian Space Pilot! (a Fullmetal Alchemist AU) for scifibigbang
-- Put together two Halloween costumes. I'm going as the Virgo Cluster as a Museum of the Earth volunteer and as Tetra from Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for CJAS's Halloween party. I might also repair my Amelia costume for CJAS Costume'd Kareoke on Friday.
-- Clean my apartment.
-- Help with some RPG stuff and get my activity for the Museum event ready.

Work is slow, and the thing I really need to do there (besides grading) is sit down with my adviser and have a 'Let us plan where I go next so I can get my PhD in a timely fashion'. He's out of town for Tuesday and Wednesday, so I could get away with taking that time off for home (and grading) if I finish everything in my office tomorrow.

Next month, I'll have yuletide and yuletart, doing some art for scifibigbang, and slayers_request. Plus, finishing Christmas gifts and ag_over_18 will probably do a Secret Santa.

I wonder if maybe I should take a break from NaNo and maybe just do something like mekosuchinae is doing -- pledge to write every one of the 31_days prompts, which still gets me writing, but lets me work on other projects. Plus, I have one unfinished NaNo already, that doesn't suck and isn't fanfic. (I have three in total: the one that needs massive editing to salvage (if it can), the fanfic which needs its third part, and the one that really just needs a second half and some editing.)

But, that does kind of make me feel left out, since I really like the NaNo community. I like going to write-ins and such, and it would break my winning streak. But on the other hand, I don't want to win just for the sake of 50,000 words and a cute banner and certificate. I want to turn some of my scribbles into things other people can read. (Well, they can read them now, but it would make me cringe.)

And doing scifibigbang is making me realize that my writing has gotten somewhat more stable -- in that, a lot of my older writing from several years ago doesn't look like it sucks. For a while, I was improving fast enough that reading my old writing was painful. Now it looks like a lot of my drafting skills are stable enough that drafts look good when I re-read them, even years later. Which might mean I need to take more risks and start editing to see if I can improve myself more.

Signs that I, Becca Stareyes, hate myself...

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:04:08 GMT

Reading comment threads on:
-- Same-sex marriage on any political site (in this case, 538.com)*
-- Anything relating to feminism/civil rights, unless on a dedicated site
-- PunditKitchen (ICanHazCheezburger's site for news/poltics image macros)
-- Anything relating to vaccination/evolution/chemotheraphy***/the moon landing/Obama's birth/9-11/the Kennedy Assassination...

You know what? I should just stop reading blogs, except for the ones with pictures of puppies and kittens and humorous pastries.

* No, seriously, Willfully-Ignorant One, same-sex marriage will not cause humanity to die out because, believe it or not, gay people have children too. Frankly, even if every gay/bisexual person decided to not reproduce (unlikely -- in fact I'd say that same-sex marriage would be prone to make gay folks more likely to reproduce, because it would protect parental rights of the non-biological parent), there just aren't enough of us to bring the population down to replacement**. After folk have told you this twenty times, while insinuating that you are closeted for assuming that same-sex marriage will cause enough people to have same-sex relationships to alter the birthrate that much, do not move the goalposts to the 'if same-sex marriage is legal, churches will be forced to perform them'. Yes, and I can kick down the door of the local synagogue with any guy from work, and demand they marry us, regardless of not being Jewish (in either ancestry or religion) or ever having been in a synagogue before.

** Current world birth rate is about 2.5 kids per pair of humans. 2.1 kpp is replacement (because it needs to account for people who die in childhood). Gay folks make up somewhere between 2 and 10% of the population -- let's assume 10%. If every gay person stopped reproducing because of same-sex marriage, the birth rate goes down to 2.25. Face it, most human beings are below 3 on the Kinsey scale -- they prefer the opposite sex.

*** Yes, there are folks who seem to believe that cancer can be cured by diet, vitamins, positive thinking and shoving coffee up their rear ends (warning, Wikipedia link), and that chemo is what kills cancer patients.

Nothing in Particular

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:45:59 GMT

Well, it appears a lot of my previous health-bitching may have been PMS, though my digestive system is still filing protests.

Anyway, yesterday was a good day. I was running late, so I went out for lunch, and the dessert was enough to keep me from eating a snack at coffee break time. I did some copy-editing on a report that is nominally internal, but that a couple of professors who expressed interest in the project might see. Then hit on a major error in some of the theory that I'll be fixing today, but it makes me feel better, since now the theory and the models give similar answers.

When I got home, sadly I couldn't make chili for dinner, since I discovered that the big pot I couldn't find was hiding in my fridge with month-old soup*, so got to be soaked in bleach before I used it again. So I'll make that tonight. I also got some writing done before I passed out early, and now I feel wide awake, even before I had my tea.

* Well, at least three-weeks old soup, since it was before I left for DPS, so it was made in September sometime.

It's amazing about mood. I mean, thinking back, if I had been in a crappy mood, the bad things (like the soup, or finding that error) would have outweighed the good things (a nice lunch, finally getting sensible answers, writing 1000 words). Hopefully the mood will maintain -- some of it might be the weather. It's doing the Ithaca fall thing where it's nice and sunny and the leaves are all pretty colors, and you know in a couple of days it'll dump rain (possibly snow, or 'wintery mix') on your head.

Writing

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:33:40 GMT

At this rate, I'll be approaching a NaNo-writing-rate just to get my scifibigbang story done before NaNo starts. A rough draft is due in a week and a half, which gives me 11 days to write 14,000 words. (At least I pegged a story that has a natural length of 25,000 words.)

NaNo Rate: 1,667 words/day
Rate to Finish: 1,260 words/day

(Oh, anyone who likes FMA fanfic and is not having his or her life eaten by NaNo is welcome to beta this -- caitycat said she'd try, but couldn't guarantee timeliness, and I really need it done in the first couple of weeks of November. I can start sending chapters now.)

Also, yay for 1 November falling on a Sunday. It means I can stay up late on Halloween night and start on midnight. My normal NaNo strategy is to get as much of a lead as possible in the first week or so, while I'm still excited and know where I'm going.

Twitter Melodrama: A Play in One Act

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:46:53 GMT

Twitter Preacher: “Know God... Know Peace. No God.. No Peace!”

TP's Followers: *retweet*

Twitter software: Huh, a lot of people are saying that. ::automatically picks phrases out, including 'no god':: Better put it on a trending topic.

Chorus (including various and sundry pagans, atheists, troublemakers, and various people just sick of fundamentalist Christians): Hee! Let us play with this. *tweet*

Fundies: What... hey, that's not funny, guys! Damn atheists making 'No God' a trending topic.

Chorus: Guys, you started it. We just picked up the trend and ran with it.

Fundies: *curious mix of death threats and glurge*

Chorus: *botherbotherbotherglee*

Fundies: Twitter, make them stop!

Servers: WTF, this is bad! Red alert, red alert, too much stuff going on!

No God Trending Topic: *suddenly vanishes from the top position*†

Chorus: OMG Censorship!

Fundies: HA! SUCK IT, HERETICS! (Only not, because that would be gay.)

(Sourced from here -- I expect a second act when more blogs get into this, probably within 24 hours of this post going up.)
--

† Friends advanced the position that Twitter might have done this as self-preservation to keep the servers running. I submit this is about the equivalent of tossing water on a fire only to realize some wag filled it with gasoline. If there is one thing that will get internet folks up in arms, it's censorship. Heck, it would have been better just to take down the entire Trending Topics widget for a day, just as sort of an even-handed thing, or even take the server down, in hopes that folks would lose interest if you cut off the instant response.

... And also a family rant.

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:08:04 GMT

Not quite a rant, but more a frustration I'm trying to work out.

Dad just emailed me to invite me to spend Christmas and his birthday in Florida with him and Marjorie, my stepmother. Normally I spend Christmas in Nebraska -- Dad lives there, Mom lives there, neither of my siblings have moved out of state, and I still have friends in Lincoln. But Dad and Marjorie have taken to spending winter break in Florida for the weather. Dad apparently thought I did things closer to how we did things as kids -- I'd spend Thanksgiving with one parent, and Christmas with the other, so he offered to pay for my plane ticket down to Florida, assuming I'd see Mom next month.

Well, except I don't feel like flying across the country for a long weekend, so I normally take a bus to Boston and visit my extended family there for the Thanksgiving holidays. So, if I take Dad up on his offer, I save some money, get to see him for Christmas, and get to spend Christmas on the beach. On the other hand, I won't see Mom or my friends -- and probably Jenn and Matt, since my sister both has to deal with spending time with Matt's family and if given a choice between Mom and Dad, will choose Mom. (I don't know about Ben -- he doesn't like having his routine disrupted*, but he also does like seeing Dad, though, unlike me, he sees Dad regularly.)

* And Christmas morning at Mom's is traditional -- normally either we go over Dad's the night before, or for Christmas dinner. Or, more recently, a later weekend.

The only compromise I can come up with is to visit Dad for a week or so for Christmas, and then maybe take a week off for my birthday to visit Nebraska.

Health

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:51:42 GMT

I'm home today. Not really intentional but this morning, my lower digestive system decided it was going to gum up the works and make me feel like I was going to have to expel everything from the other end. I'm better now, after spending the better part of 3-4 hours either in the bathroom, curled up feeling sick, or asleep*, but this is part of a long line of annoying minor complaints I've had for the past two weeks.

Though, there is something. I had my yearly blood test last week. Since I'm on anti-anxiety drugs, the psychiatrist wants to make sure any feelings of moodiness, anxiety, depression or lack of energy (not to mention the side effect of feeling sleepy) were due to a busted brain and 15 mg of Lexapro, rather than everything else, I have to get blood drawn yearly. Except the only time this actually happened was when I was first medicated in '07. In between, the lab started testing Vitamin D levels.

Yesterday, I got a call from the nurse noting that my Vitamin D levels were low, and could I please come in next week to consult? I figure this is probably a mix of me not drinking milk and the fact I'm not eating as much fish as I used to. On the other hand, one website says as little as 10 minutes in sunlight should give me enough Vitamin D, assuming my body isn't breaking the parts that make it. Especially considering I have fair skin.

Before then, I hit up google for Vitamin D deficiency in adults. Rickets is what happens in kids, and it's apparently a lot less fun in people who are trying to grow bones than people who just need to maintain them. Adults just start bone softening, and are at increased risk of osteoporosis later on. Also, apparently you get pain from this, and fatigue. It would be really nice if the aches and pains were just from 'crappy diet' and would clear up if I start taking a multivitamin.

Bah, all my bitching about health makes me sound like an old woman. I'm not even thirty yet.

* Sleep is generally how I deal with feeling crummy, unless it's too crummy to sleep.

I am annoyed

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:05:15 GMT

Dear Immune System,

Quit it. Seriously. I'm sick of days where I feel feverish but am fine, or feel achy, but it's not the flu, and it goes away after an hour or two. Because this makes it hard to plan anything, or know if I should stay home as a preventive strike against seasonal flu/swine flu/mono/cancer/it's-never-lupus/lycanthropy/etc. -- mostly because my co-workers would rather not be sick.

Now I spend an hour of my cleaning time feeling nauseous and wondering if I should bother making my slides for Planetary Lunch Seminar tomorrow. I already held off in making chili in exchange for boring pasta and cheese, because spicy foods and uppity digestive system. On the other hand, it could be nothing, and then I will be cranky. And, if I miss Planetary Lunch when it's nothing -- not to mention a psychologist's appointment and a meeting to plan a Halloween astronomy event -- I will also have to deal with the anxiety levels from screwing up an obligation.

So, seriously. After dinner, I want to be either fine, or obviously sick enough to send an email to everyone I have to talk to on Monday telling them that we will have to reschedule. Or even settling for Monday morning.

Just pick something! At this point, I don't care what as long as a couple of days' bed rest can fix it.

-- Yrs,

Rebecca

Letter to the Muse

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:42:18 GMT

Dear Muse,

Between Yuletide, NaNoWriMo, and scifibigbang (plus possibly slayers_request which is restarting, maybe), I am quite booked until the end of the year. I do not need more plotbunnies. Yes, a story or series about Sheik!Zelda's adventures while Hyrule is occupied and Link sleeps would be fun. So would writing Reg Shoe's adventures into paranormal romance in an attempt to advocate for Dead Rights* -- heck, it would give me a chance to poke at paranormal romance, NaNo (and anti-NaNo people), self-publishing/publishing scams**, and writing in general. But, as you can see, I don't have time, and would prefer the plot bunny list to STOP GROWING,

No love,

-- Rebecca

* Why should vampires get all the sex appeal, after all?

** PTerry got this a bit in Maskerade with Granny Weatherwax trying to get the profits made from Nanny Ogg's 'cookbook' (which she had published mostly so she could pass on her advice to folks outside the mountains, and to have a nice bound and collected copy, and ended up being a best-seller).

Travel Woes, Part n

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:59:06 GMT

So, who wants to hear another travel story?

I like to joke I have strong travel luck -- the two times I missed flights, I was able to travel on standby and get there only hours late. This makes up for the missed connections, and so on. I've only had to overnight once and it was paid for by the airline.

This was clearly the tail end of the distribution for my travel luck. As in, I had luck, but it was bad.

So, I got up at 6 AM in San Juan, with a headache. I decided I have enough time, so I took some Tylenol and laid down for ten minutes to wait for it to kick in. Two cups of tea later and I was checked out of the hotel and getting a taxi -- despite the fact the hotel's coffee shop was supposed to be open at 6:30, it was still dark, so I decided to take my chances at the airport.

I get to the airport, and go through security, which seemed to be unusually strict. Partly because the government has a couple of regs regarding plants and animals you aren't allowed to bring off the island. I had to go through an extra machine at the security checkpoint -- something that shot puffs of air at me. I don't know whether it was looking for contraband mangos or explosives or what.

But I get in and grab a muffin and eat. Boarding is a bit late, but such is travel. Then we sit for a while. I'm mostly asleep at this point, but the pilot does occasionally mention what's going on. Turns out there was an oxygen leak on the plane that they traced to a emergency mask in the cockpit. While the plane probably could have flown fine without it, it would really suck if there was an emergency and the pilot passed out from anoxia.

Finding and repairing this takes two hours, of which we all sat in the plane. Since my connection in Philadelphia was about an hour and a half, I'm pretty much assuming I'll have to take a later flight.

So, anyway, we land in Philadelphia, and the counter has boarding passes prepared for everyone who missed their flights. Turns out there's several people on the Syracuse flight that were coming from San Juan. One of them happens to be Sara, a Cornell student who works on Cassini stuff -- not part of my group, though*. They hand out the boarding passes, and happen to switch mine for someone else's. I do not notice this at the time.

Meanwhile, I enjoy the first nice surprise of the day -- free wireless. And surprise number 1.5 -- enough time to have lunch. Considering the prices for snacks on the flight from San Juan, all I had was that muffin at 7 AM and it's now about 2. And I realize that I never worked out how to get from Syracuse to Ithaca. I call my normal source, who tell me that because I didn't book in advance, the last van to Ithaca will leave a half-hour before I'm supposed to land, and that they won't send a van out for just me. They will send a car at three times the price. I decide to see what my options are, and debate sending out a call for assistance via the astro mailing list.

So, the flight is late coming in from Newark, so it's late boarding -- we might have got on the plane at 5 PM. We all board, and here's where it's noticed I have the wrong ticket. Seems the woman with my ticket did notice and ask for a reprint. So, we both try to sit in the same seat, eventually sort out what happened, and then I move to an empty seat on the plane, assuming it's mine.

So, about 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot gets a warning light about one of the engines. The pilot decides that not crashing is a desirable thing, and they are close enough that turning around to get to Philadelphia is better than pressing on, and that the aircraft is sufficiently stable that means we don't have to land in the nearest small airport. (Which would mean that if the aircraft was broken beyond the ability to repair quickly, we probably would not get to Syracuse that night.)

So, we land. My name is called, because US Airways figured out that there were two tickets for Woman X and none for me, so they wanted to make sure it was just a case of me having the wrong ticket, and not some third party hitching a ride to Syracuse and leaving me in a ditch or something. We get told to stay near the gate until they figure out if the plane can be repaired quickly enough to send us on. Sara and I at this point decide to band together for moral support in the light of Severely Bad Travel Luck. Plus she offers me a ride home when I mention I don't know how I'm getting back to Ithaca -- nice surprise #2, as I no longer have to pay for a ride home**. While we're waiting, I check out bus options in case we have to choose between overnighting versus pressing on via road. Turns out it would take 6 hours, and the last buses to New York (and on to Ithaca) would depend on us getting the call soon, then booking it to the Greyhound station. Plus, Sara had her car at Syracuse, so would later have to head up there to retrieve it from airport parking.

So, the flight can't be repaired tonight. Around 7PM they tell us that we'll be taking a jet out to Syracuse, but we will get there that day. They also call out names one at a time to make sure we all get our tickets, which is slightly more efficient than making 50 people stand in line. I debate wandering off to be sure I get food, but they are taking IDs, so leaving would hold up the whole process. Sara and I get our food, and have enough time to eat before changing terminals again and boarding. Surprisingly, the jet to Syracuse and the drive home are painless -- we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So, I arrive home around 11 PM. I expected to be home by 4PM or so, with enough chance to get a meal and do the grocery shopping, and maybe laundry. Instead, I say hello to folks on the internet, then pass out.

This means I am karmically owed at least two uneventful trips for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Or maybe just one unexpectedly nice trip.

---
* She does satellite-surface stuff, plus is one of the Mars rover staff.

** Okay, NASA has to pay for my ride home. Still, NASA only gave my advisor so much money, so being frugal is good. Especially given what I've paid to eat this past week.

More Puerto Rico Incidentals

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:43:19 GMT

One thing I forgot to post is how noisy outside gets after dark. I'm told that it's because of the coqui, which are frogs that are native to Puerto Rico. At night, they start chirping, and you hear it everywhere. You can even hear it faintly from inside our room. They aren't much to look at, being a gray-brown in pictures and only about 1-2 inches long. I haven't seen one. I have seen little lizards on the path during the day, and Janet, who is a sociologist who studies scientists*, found a crab the size of her hand roaming around outside the room. Her room was closer to the waterfront, while I'm close to the pool and the conference center.

I took a swim yesterday before lunch, and that was lovely -- the weather feels much nicer when you spend a half-hour in water, and the pool was the perfect temperature. It looks like trying to settle my stomach this noon means I can't take another one, except maybe before dinner. The session I want to go with lets out early, so that would be fine. Getting to the beach is a bit more of a pain -- the hotel's waterfront is built up and all the beaches are on an island offshore, which means it requires an excursion.

Speaking of excursions, Dan invited me along on kayaking a bioluminescent bay this evening. I don't know if he got my email, but it sounds cool and worth seeing. Hooray for boating and interesting microbes.

Last night was the conference banquet, but I didn't go. I was just going to have a quiet evening in my hotel room with take-out pizza, but Janet (see above) saw me checking my mail and asked if I wanted to come to dinner with her and a couple of friends. We went down for drinks, and then ate at a reasonably fancy restaurant -- enough that if I had thought ahead, I would have went back for my skirt. Also, the people she meant were scientists working on a Cassini instrument (CIRS), and some rover folks, and Alan Stern (principle investigator for New Horizons, and used to hold a big position at NASA). So, yeah, that was worth the extra money. The food was pretty tasty -- I had dorado, and some apple crisp for desert. Also shows the value of serendipity -- now if I interview for postdoc positions at JPL or Colorado (or a couple other places), I can say 'yeah, we talked at DPS'. Hooray for networking!

I also met a few new people interested in my work. A couple of dynamicists (including the person who predicted volcanoes at Io, and they had to rush his paper into print so it would beat the spacecraft there) and some of the CIRS folks I mentioned above. Plus some people I met before at other conferences. It really feels like I'm starting to become someone other than 'Phil's student' -- I still am, since most people in the field know my adviser**, but now I'm also known for my work. Now, to get it published.

* She and I both attended Cornell, though she's a bit senior to me, and were both in student government. She also did work at processing images from Mars -- her thesis was on the Mars rover team, and now she studies the Cassini team for NASA. She had some really interesting ideas about how teams relate to their robots and each other -- apparently, she's one of the few (if any) sociologists studying modern planetary science teams, and one of her goals is to figure out the best ways to get us all working together with minimal friction and maximum science. And, yet, she once told me she was a bit envious of us getting to work with such cool projects -- if it weren't for a couple of bad math professors, she might have tried planetary science herself.

** Someone at dinner last night described the planetary science community as a small town, in that we all know someone who is dating/shared an office with/collaborated with/etc. someone else, and that DPS is as much a venue to talk about science as it is a community. Everyone agreed. There was also the discussion about how mission drama during Galileo (which was active when I was in high school) is still shaping the outer planets community. So a bit of me is always going to be Phil's student, just like how I'll have ins to the Mars and Moon geology and asteroid communities because I've shared office space with and TA'd with their grad students. Or even outside of planetary science, because I did extragalactic astronomy at Nebraska and Wyoming, and still talk to the other groups at Cornell. Trust me -- you get two astronomers in the room together, and they will find their five degrees.

--

I still haven't given you a science report, but I will -- I was kind of inactive yesterday after working off post-talk nerves, but I did get to Rings, Irregular Satellites and Icy Satellites so far, and some scattered Exoplanets talks. This afternoon is Origins of the Solar System from 2 til 5. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow. Also, expect photos and such -- on Saturday, I get to go to the World's Largest Telescope before coming home on Sunday.

Also, for those of you in Europe or up early in the morning on Friday (tomorrow), at 7:30 EDT, NASA will be dropping a used rocket onto the South Pole of the Moon to look for ice in the debris cloud. There will be a probe (LCROSS) watching it, then following it down, as well as Earth-based telescopes. I'm sure there will be streaming video on NASA's website. I'm going to watch it from the conference room here -- they've been making a big deal about it, and the registration gift was a mission patch. Which will be going on my jacket next to my Apollo 40th anniversary one. Perhaps I can find some more patches in the Arecibo gift shop.

Puerto Rico Not-a-Vacation

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:16:49 GMT

I have a bit more than an hour before my presentation, so I thought I'd do some blogging to relax.

We got into San Juan around 3 on Sunday, and drove to Fajardo. The hotel I'm staying at is a resort, which the only reason that it is remotely affordable is because I have a roommate, and NASA (through my adviser) is footing the bill*. I still have the interesting problem of finding cheap food -- while, technically, I will be reimbursed assuming I don't go crazy, I'm trying to keep my incidentals down to under $30 a day. So far that means lots of sandwiches and pizza, the occasional hike off-site, and being sure to help myself to the free pastries at coffee breaks.

Anyway, this place is both beautiful and immense -- seriously, there's a funicular down the hill to the coast, and a boat to a private island. There are also about a dozen restaurants and stores on-site, including a Starbucks. Also the wireless doesn't work in the rooms, which is disappointing, considering my half payments are about the price of a single at a reasonable chain motel.

I'm gonna head out sometime and get pictures. I took a few, but not that many.

The weather throws me a bit, because my Midwestern thunderstorm sense is thrown by seeing regular thunderstorms in the evening, that may or may not hit, and usually pass within an hour. Plus, the humidity makes me think that something is coming as soon as I see the clouds off the hill. It's also 90°F and humid no matter what time of day it is. I wore a skirt today, and it's the first time I don't feel coated in sweat. On the other hand, the rooms are all over-air-conditioned, so I get cold if I'm in a skirt and open-toed shoes.

It's now 15 minutes until session start, so I'll post this and give an update on the science later. Maybe I'll have a seat after the session end and chat then.

Until then...

* Your tax dollars at work.

See you later, everyone

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:32:15 GMT

My wireless decided it was going to crash, which meant I had to reboot things so that the modem and computer would talk to one another.

This does not bode well for the conference. See, every time I have stayed in a conference hotel, it has intermittent wireless outages, especially during the weekend. It's like hotel staff do not realize what having hundreds of scientists in one place will do to data networks, since 90% of them probably have laptops, and at least a quarter of them will be doing last minute talk touch-ups, which may well mean working with ginormous data files stored in Arizona.

Here, since we're staying during the week (presumably with fewer other people, and IT staff on call), maybe it won't be so bad. If I drop out of contact more than normal, that's why.

Drabbles and a Guessing Game

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:52:27 GMT

I miss writing drabbles.

The Great A-Z Multifandom Drabbling Meme!
This is how it works:

Pick a letter.
Pick a prompt that starts with that letter (ex. K is for Keyhole).
Pick a fandom / comic / webcomic (if you're not sure of a fandom I might know just ask away - I can also write personal characters if I know of them) and a character/pairing. Yes, I can do more than one drabble on a particular character/pairing, just not more than one letter prompt.

My List

is for 'arrow'. Sokka & Zuko, Avatar: the Last Airbender (for earthstar_chan)
is for 'fight'. Lina/Gourry, Slayers (for pharoh999)
is for 'impossible'. Xellos, Slayers (for amdsmrnitesdrm)
is for 'moon'. Zelgadis/Amelia, Slayers (for earthstar_chan)
is for 'probability'. Dr. Andonuts, Earthbound (for eiviiaru)
is for 'satisfied'. Lina, Slayers (for nanthimus)

If that doesn't interest you, another meme. This one's a guessing game:

Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/bands etc. that you've had an obsessive fannish love or interest in at some time in your life.
Have your f-list guess your favorite character/member from each item.
When someone guesses correctly, strikethrough the item and put the name of your favorite character next to it.

~~Slayers~~ -- Amelia, with Zel as second
Fullmetal Alchemist
~~Avatar: The Last Airbender~~ -- Iroh
Crest of the Stars
Digimon Adventure
Vision of Escaflowne
~~Legend of Zelda~~ -- Zelda
Planetes
~~Discworld, by Terry Pratchett~~ -- Granny Weatherwax
The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher
The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Sharing Knife tetrology, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Earthbound
Final Fantasy IV
Chronicles of Elantra, by Michelle Sagara
The Codex Alera, by Jim Butcher
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Shadow Unit
Scrapped Princess
Lunar

Productive Day

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:28:40 GMT

What I did today:
-- Polished my presentation for the Division of Planetary Sciences 2009 meeting based on comments I got from grad students on Friday.
-- Did two sketches -- one for MAX, one for mrcaex. I'll see how they look tomorrow before coloring them
-- Cut out all the pieces for my exchange gift for ag_over_18
-- Finished a fic for fma_fic_contest
-- Finished reading The Mermaid's Madness

What I'm going to do now:
-- See how many words I can get on my fic for scifibigbang before bed

What I would have liked to do:
-- Grade the dozen essays I have to do tomorrow.
-- Go over a report to ask a colleague for help.
-- Do my dishes

Insomnia

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:32:12 GMT

I'm starting to discover the causes of my occasional insomnia. Basically a mix of anxiety* and irregular sleep patterns. Two nights ago, it was anxiety. Last night, irregular sleeping -- I fell asleep after dinner, so it took me over an hour to fall asleep for the night. Both of these should be correctable with effort.

Also, I think I'm turning into my mother, in that displacing myself to the living room to sleep for a couple of hours, only to wander back to the bedroom, seems to help.

* Usually compounded if I forget to take my meds.

Also, someone needs to tell my father that he's allowed to email me for reasons other than shameless self-promotion. I sent him an email when my computer broke about that, and trying to chat, but most of the emails he sends me are links about him making the news.

Today, he was mentioned in a NYT article about a bombing suspect. Dad studies a chemical that's commonly manufactured as a bathtub explosive. Mostly because it's the type of thing you can make with stuff from the drugstore, and is terribly nasty -- it was the explosive used in the 2005 London bombings. Which means he gets occasional news mentions as an Expert, and the occasional local piece as Chemist Fights Terrorists with Science~!

Worldbuilding and Plotbuilding... Intertwined.

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:14:59 GMT

I spent last night -- well, Sunday night, now -- thinking about NaNoWriMo, and I don't really remember much, except for some short story ideas, and stuff that I didn't feel competent enough to write.

An idea for ecological magic that was tied to warfare. Basically, that settlement was accomplished by place-mages (witches?) that changed the climate to be one that was friendly to the settlers. (For baseline humans, it would probably be something like a mix of plains and light forests, with mitigation to keep the winters mild, the summers not too hot, the rain enough for crops and livestock, and the weather from being severe.) Moving a mage in could not only change the weather, but the native plants and animals and humans if the mage was strong enough.

So, if you wanted to invade, you kept a place-mage (or many) with you, so you could essentially force 'friendly terrain' around you, make the forage easy, and force the conquered peoples to live on your terms, not their old ones. Besides the obvious uses of weather/climate/ecosystem control of hurricanes/tornados/etc -- while they might bring down cities, they are not so good if you want to use the land afterward. It also means that place-mages are Big Fat Targets.

I'd have to figure how much concentration the magic requires -- if it's not much, these folks would probably collect political power. If it does require a lot of concentration, it would be more of a comfortable ceremonial role with the duties of 'keep the weather nice'. Sort of an Earth-Parent thing.

Trying to think how this would form governments beyond the city-state... you could probably get a larger area, but with more border effects. You'd have to dump the heat or rain or what-have-you somewhere, or get it from somewhere. Either the borders become no-mans-land full of people living on the edge, you save it for your enemies during war, or out to sea/on high mountains. Where things might be living, and now they don't like you.

Now, how to weave this into a story. The short story idea I had was of telling how a special ops sort of person during a standoff at a pass, was ordered in to assassinate the enemy place-mage, and going into the transformation as s/he approached the target, and the effects afterward. And I want an excuse to do some really weird environments, things like the Sea of Corruption from Nausicaä. If you haven't seen that movie, think weird plants and giant insects.

It also would make colonization interesting. Again, there'd probably be the instinct of incapacitating the place-mage of any visitors.

The kinds of stories this suggests are questions about the difference between terraforming a new land, or changing the settlers to work in the new environment. And an issue that the power of this rests in a specialized few who could make the decision without consultation. Or for that matter, the tie between people and place.

I still don't have a plot, even if I have a character and a setting-type thing. The world suggests a story about colonization, but honestly, I'd think that if I saw ships on the horizon, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, since a couple of people could seriously screw up your way of life via magic. There'd be a fine line between settlers and invaders, unless you were certain there were no magic-users among them.

That could work, though. Melisan's folks are already inadveterntly getting shat on via bad weather via border effects and getting their borders nibbled at by an annoying neighbor. They aren't much of a power, and are losing ground, so someone gets the bright idea to try to establish a colony that could preserve Our Sacred Way of Life (tm). Plus, it would be a way to dump mages that can't be trusted around Civilized People but still could be useful. Either they died, were assimilated into the local peoples, or will actually do something useful-to-the-motherland and the motherland can send farmers and craftspeople now.

The trick would be both in writing a survival book and in trying not to fall into traps. Melisan by default falls into Narrator with Biases, so short of giving a second POV, I'm going to have someone who is a bit jingoistic and sexist and trying to come to terms with his own closeted transgender-ness, but who was recovering from essentially being tossed to the dogs by his superiors for not fitting the mold.

So, we'd have a group of mages who are unwanted enough to be exiled but not enough to be killed, caught between the Guys Back Home who are all 'yeah, we're going to deport you to this place far away -- be a dear and kill/assimilate the locals, kay?' and the Locals, who are all 'yeah... how about no?'. There'd be an element of 'want to maintain the familiar', especially since 'normal' entrance to a new ecosystem involves physical change, and varying degrees of loyalty to Back Home versus the Locals. But, I'd be essentially writing a story about people intended to be something between invaders and immigrants, who can't choose to go home, but can choose what to try to make of this.

It also lends a conflict, but not a definite one. I mean, not a situation where I can say 'and they lived happily ever after', or even 'and things were quieter then (until the next problem)'. I mean, I suppose I could have the group travel for a while, dealing with the fact that none of the locals trust them, and eventually find some new volcanic island or isolated valley where they would be the first settlers, so didn't have to choose between maintaining the familiar versus disrupting someone else. In which case, it would be a conflict of person versus nature or person versus self (well, or 'group with itself', kind of a subset of person versus person...).

This might work -- what do you guys think?

Unexpected Side Effects of Being a Grad Student...

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:48:56 GMT

Or maybe just an astronomy grad student.

Every couple of months, someone gets the bright idea to email every email account on the website* with their Brilliant New Theory. Since this person seemed to forgo the traditional method of 'publish in peer-reviewed journal', I guess 'make a website then spam the name of everyone in a prestigious astronomy department to go look at your site and adopt your ideas' seemed like a reasonable option.

Well, even ignoring the normal response to unsolicited mass mailings -- that is, 'delete and mark as spam' -- it's the sort of thing that, while it doesn't guarantee your theory is a crackpot one, I would be comfortable betting my salary that that is the case.

This month, we get 'space mirror guy'**, who is apparently convinced that the universe is a bubble 1 AU in diameter, just containing the Earth and the Sun, and that everything else is the product of some kind of space mirror.

I can't really tell. His grammar is not that much better than his grasp of astronomy. I kind of worry that this is some sign of mental illness, but I suppose if the worst thing you do with your time is build websites and occasionally email scientists with generic messages... well, it could be a lot worse.

Which is actually on the loonier side, even for unexpected spam. Normally, we just get Big Bang or general relativity disprovers. Well, and the occasional anti-science troll telling off the Submit a Question form on Ask an Astronomer. (Ask an Astronomer actually collects a lot more of the 'I have a theory!' statements, but the really bizarre ones tend to be the 'mail everyone in the astronomy department, down to the people who do our paperwork and the IT folks'.)

I wonder if this happens to other departments. Or every department. Might be a game -- figure out what kind of crackpot emails go to what department. I can guess at some of them -- usually sciences.

* Emails on the site are a good idea -- if someone reads a paper or sees a talk, googling for the scientist and getting an email to ask questions is a good thing. Just... the To: list is pretty much straight down every professor, postdoc, researcher, office worker and grad student in title-then-alphabetical order.

** Or space mirror gal. The email just has a first initial. So I am assuming a gender, even though I have no reason to think this person is male or female.

Writing and NaNo Ramblinh

beccastareyes@gmail.com — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:32:46 GMT

Most of my drabbles are written like I imagine other folks write poetry -- I have an image or joke I want to tell, and I craft the setup around it.

Short stories tend to have a simple conflict. I need to know the character, but the conflict is usually set with the story idea, and the characters fold around that.

My longfic -- and here I use anything that's novella or novel length -- seems to be very character driven. I come up with a protagonist, and maybe an antagonist, and give them conflicting goals. Sometimes the protagonist can drive him/herself and I just need to figure out who comes up in the way, but sometimes the antagonist is driving things by wanting something that the protagonist is opposed to. NaNo '08 was like this. So was NaNo '06, a bit, until the protagonist discovered his goal of 'get home' and then 'free my buddy'. (NaNo '06 needs to be strip-mined. NaNo '08 might suffice with a polish.) NaNo '07 had protagonists that didn't need to be prodded as much -- partially because it was a sequel, but also because I knew the characters' goals.

(The project I'm writing for scifibigbang may be different, since I'm deliberately trying to echo the plot of the FMA anime. But I still had to figure out what Dante (the antagonist) wanted.)

I'm thinking of giving Melisan -- a game character of mine -- a story for NaNo '09, once I get a world for him other than the (copyrighted) game world we played in. Problem is, that the thing is shaping up to smash his world to pieces in the opening chapters, which means I need to dive into his psyche and see where he goes next.

For background, Melisan was born a woman in Theocratic Patriarchal Culture A, which inhabited a barely habitable area full of monsters and stray magic. She loses her family in a raid by Annoying Neighbor B, and she takes on the identity of her youngest brother and attempts to join the priesthood. Here he* tries to get involved with foreign policy, to steer things away from the cold war with Annoying Neighbor C, who isn't particularly aggressive, but has lots of resources and a particularly offensive-to-A culture, to ally with C versus B -- C is kind of the regional superpower, so B would love to conquer them. Melisan also develops into a paranoid and manipulative person -- scared someone will discover he is a woman, he collects others' secrets for blackmail purposes. Just in case. This does not make him popular.

Anyway, I'm thinking that Melisan discovers some of his superiors engaging in some kind of anathema magic, and gets told 'if you help us, we'll make sure you get that promotion -- oh, yeah, and we know your secret, so if you expose us, we'll make sure to take you down'. And Melisan decides that his own personal goals, not to mention life, isn't worth getting this out of his country, and blows things up in the most spectacular way he can pull off and hopes that this is too quick or unexpected

No good deed goes unpunished. Melisan is caught, and for the crime of breaking every law about proper behavior of women, gets tossed to the wolves. Well, that and this being an excuse to get Melisan's Purple Files out of Melisan's brain and into Internal Affairs, and so no one gets the idea that disguising yourself as the opposite sex is allowable.

I'm thinking about starting with Melisan about to be interrogated/psychic-probed and being broken out of prison. Which gives me a bunch of internal plotlines of 'what do you do when the country you are loyal to until death tosses you into the scrap heap after trying to get every bit of use out of you?' and 'Melisan sorts out gender identity, now that external constraints are no longer directly pressing on him'. But, I need some kind of external plot for a character who expected to die, and just had a very busy month.

* Melisan does have some gender dysphoria, which complicates pronoun use. I'd say Melisan is a genderqueer individual who lives as a male and is biologically female -- he doesn't identify as male, but is most comfortable with a masculine identity, and is uncomfortable presenting as a woman, even in situations where everyone knows his biological sex. (And wasn't especially comfortable with being a young woman as a child.) Melisan's culture doesn't have words to describe this. And it's all complicated by the patriarchal rigid-gender-role nature of Melisan's upbringing and that Melisan has been hiding his biological sex for over a decade under severe penalties.

tl;dr: Melisan's culture fucked him up, and this interacts with his natural inclinations.