Twenty-somethings gotta twenty-something

[mikangirl]

Who: Everyone invited, everyone gatecrashing (technically you're all invited, so...)
Broadcast: Who knows, maybe some drunken texting later on
Action: Iskaulit Pool!
When: 3 July

[It's a party for a narcissistic redhead who likes to be reminded she's alive.  Come celebrate!  Alternately, come sneak in and steal the food!  There's a bar set up for drinks drastically lowered to cost-price or to-be-paid-later-tab, a non-alcoholic punch in case of wandering minors (spike it and Nami will end you) and random snacks.

Oh, and a pool.  Which is heated.  Kind of important, that part.

Step right up, I'm reliably informed we'll have Thor with his shirt off, take pictures while you can.]

Comments

[candothat]

[Pavel is so, so pleased to field such a question. Most people who know him make a concentrated effort to not encourage him to talk about his homeland.]

It is a wonderful country--the largest on Earth, and one of the greatest contributors to science and physics and space travel, and the most beautiful... but I'm biased, of course. There are wide rivers and deep lakes and enormously tall mountains, and there are days during the summer when the sun never fully sets.

[He just loves Russia SO MUCH.]

[watermarks]

[ His feelings toward his country are clear in his voice and his enthusiasm, and Katara can't help but smile back. That's just... really nice to hear in someone. ]

Are you very far south, then? We have days like that with the sun too, in the South Pole.

[candothat]

No, far north. [Close enough, climate-wise. Not a lot of people appreciate cool temperatures and short, brilliant summers.] You have a lot of snow, correct? Cold weather, long winters?

[watermarks]

[ She nods, smiling. ] There's almost always snow on the ground, even in summer. But we do get breaks long enough for flowers to grow, sometimes. We'd go on hunts for them. I bet it's pretty much the same thing in the north pole, although we didn't stay there very long.

[candothat]

Petersburg, the city that I come from, does thaw sometimes, and there are remarkable summer gardens. The South Pole sounds more like northern Siberia. Mostly snow and frost, but there are flowers in the tundra in warmer seasons.

Does the Water Tribe live in the north as well as in the south?

[watermarks]

[ She nods. ] Our sister tribe. They're much more isolated than we are, though, well clear of the main shipping routes.

[ Which was why they managed to stay out of the war for a hundred years. All they did was shut up their boarders and refuse to get involved while the rest of the world was burning. Katara was sorry for bringing trouble to their gates... but not that sorry. She was grieved over Yue, who had been innocent and brave and kind... and what would have happened to her if the North had defended the South, had defended the Earth Kingdom without needing to be goaded into it? ] I visited for the first time during our travels. They had many waterbenders up there, and they made good use of the snow there, turning it into buildings.

[candothat]

That's impressive! [The snow into buildings, not remaining isolated or anything in that bracket text.] If inconvenient, I would imagine, when it begins to thaw.

[watermarks]

[ She shakes her head. ] I'd imagine that it never thaws that much. But in the South Pole, even when we had those cities, we preferred to move into tents in the warmer season.

[candothat]

Neither of the poles have weather-independent cities? Buildings made out of stones or bricks? [That idea is so amazingly strange to him. He was a city kid before he was a space kid and he cannot conceive of a lifestyle where there aren't permanent, environment-controlled structures.]

[watermarks]

[ She puts her hand to her chin thoughtfully. ] I mean, it's possible that some of the buildings in the north had different building material and were just coated with snow? But no, we haven't had anything like that in the South Pole for years. When I was a kid, I remember that our village was bigger, but everything changed after the Fire Nation attacked.

[ She doesn't really want to talk about that time, though, so she gives a little shrug. ] Why, what's your city built out of?

[candothat]

[Pavel is pretty good at intuiting when people don't want to talk about something, so he just nods.]

Concrete, steel... glass and alloys and things. Sometimes wood, but that is mostly dachas outside of the city. Everything is constructed to last for a very long time regardless of what weather we experience.

[watermarks]

[ Well, now she feels like she has to defend her tribe's lack of... technology, for lack of a better word. Not because of his attitude toward it, but because of her own pride in where she comes from, and in the fact that they lived. ]

I'm... fairly sure that only the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom has access to steel, although it might be some other kind of metal. And I don't think I've seen concrete anywhere at home... maybe it hasn't been invented yet? Streets and houses in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation are usually just made of stone. It was the same with the Air Bender temples.

[candothat]

I'm not certain when concrete first happened, but your world is probably better without it. It sounds much more beautiful. [He sounds a little wistful.]

Is it uncomfortable, being in space? Or did the place that you were prior to this prepare you for an entirely artificial environment?

[watermarks]

It's not as bad as it could be. You should have seen me when Luceti first got electricity in houses - in my world, that's primarily associated with lightning and used as a weapon. I was really freaked out. [ And MICROWAVES. What. They still made no sense to her.

That didn't stop her from USING them, but they made no sense. (Laundry machines, though? Those erased any lingering doubts about the benefits of electricity.) ] And at least... the space here has stars. [ A little flicker of a smile, something haunted about it. ] I like to spend as much time as I can on the planets when we're by one, though. I miss fresh air.

[candothat]

I can't imagine being introduced to electricity for the first time. [He really needs to get a working replicator going. That would blow her mind.] Or space without stars. There were no stars in Luceti?

We visited a trinary system with a snow planet not so long ago. Were you here for that?

[watermarks]

[ She shakes her head. ] Not in space. It was just the sun. They shifted false stars in the night for the planet, because the blank sky was enough to make people go mad, but they couldn't hide the truth from us in space.

[ The replicator really would blow her mind, but this was, sadly, not her first time in space. ] No, my first system here was the desert. What's a trinary system?

[candothat]

Ah. That sounds... a little depressing, actually. But I suppose that the stars in Marina were also false since everything else was. [Speaking of depressing.]

A single solar system with three stars. It's remarkable that the system was stable at all--the stars should have exhibited more chaotic behavior than they did with their masses being what they were--and even more remarkable that there were multiple habitable planets. None of the planets even had elliptical orbits! It was the most improbable thing that I have ever seen.

[watermarks]

Oh wow. That sounds amazing. [ She thinks of bending, and what the firebenders on that world might have been like, and is glad that she didn't have to deal with that. ] With so much sun, I'm surprised it was a snow planet. I heard of an Earth once with two moons, and I always thought that would amazing to see, but three suns... it's hard to imagine.

wow, I actually meant two but forgot how counting works?

[candothat]

It was. I'm glad to have seen it. [In retrospect. At the time, he was mildly irritated because the system made no mathematical sense and none of the local scientists seemed interested in talking about that.] The snow planet was currently at aphelion relative to both stars. It was beautiful midday when both suns could be seen in the sky.

No worries! We can just pretend he said the right thing, if you likle :)

[watermarks]

...aphelion? [ That... was not a word she was familiar with, and didn't mind asking about. ] What does that mean?

much appreciated, thank you!

[candothat]

The point in it's orbit when the planet is farthest from the suns' common center of mass. [He really, really doesn't mind talking about it.] You are interested in astronomy?

[watermarks]

[ She shrugs a little. ] We are in space. It seems like a good idea to learn all I can about that while we're here, don't you think?

[candothat]

Yes, sensible.

I know a little [a lot] about the subject, if you would ever like to discuss it? [He's trying--and failing--not to sound too eager about the prospect of future conversations on one of his favorite things of all time.]

[watermarks]

[ A little wry twist of her mouth - yup, there she is. Sensible all over. But Pavel seems to be genuinely enthusiastic about this, so she puts a lid on her issues (she's good at that) and smiles more genuinely. ] Honestly, I wouldn't know where to start. Is astronomy something you learned about back home?

[candothat]

[It's okay to have issues, don't put a lid on them! Unless putting a lid in them results in talking about astronomy, in which case...]

It isn't always necessary to know where to start in order to start.

Astronomy was one of the very first things that I learned about. Right after talking. [He smiles like he's exaggerating (he is not).]