Oh, 2016, you heartless witch

Wow. 2016, huh? Why does this have to be a leap year and make us suffer through one extra day?

Even aside from all the celebrity deaths, this year has seen both of my parents suffer severe health problems, leaving me to mostly take over dealing with my mother (who’s already driven both of my brothers away). And in just the last month, I lost both of my 14-year-old kitties, about two weeks apart. I got my first cat when I was five and since then have never been without at least one until now; it’s the first time since I was maybe two or three that I have no pets of any kind.

I’ve had one really good thing come out of 2016, and a couple of minor things. But overall, it sure has been a tough year.

Just two nights ago, Abs and I were talking about all the celebrity deaths, and I remember saying that 2016 better not take Carrie Fisher (who was at the time reported to be in stable condition after a heart attack).

“She’ll be OK,” Abs said. “The Force is strong with this one.”

I guess it wasn’t quite strong enough.

Carrie Fisher was a remarkable person, and I admire her for being brave enough to share her own struggles with mental illness and to fight so hard for others affected. I’ve battled depression most of my life, and it’s always seemed like something I should hide, be ashamed of. Carrie’s openness about her own issues helped me feel like I’m OK and not alone.

But the one thing I will always remember her for is the very first Star Wars movie. Her character, Princess Leia, has been found and captured by the stormtroopers, who hustle her immediately to Darth Vader.

Vader’s scary enough all by himself. And she’s surrounded by a bevy of heavily-armed stormtroopers. I remember watching and being terrified for Leia. I thought she would cry, or faint, or beg.

Nope. She stood right up to Vader, stormtroopers and all, with jutting chin and flashing eyes and even a bit of snarky humor.

And I sat there thinking, “WOW. Look at her! She’s not even afraid!”

Up until that point, I’m pretty sure I’d never seen a truly strong female character in any movie. Carrie’s Princess Leia was a revelation.

Probably seems like a little thing, but it was something that stuck in my memory, something to hang on to when the people in my life turned on me.

On the bright side, Even added a solo heroic elite Tempest’s Spine to her solo raid repertoire. Yes, really and truly solo, not using multiple accounts and re-entries and all that; if I say one of my toons soloed something, I MEAN that toon actually SOLOED it. Honesty, y’know? Anyway. I was looking through her compendium and laughing at all the low-level quests she still hasn’t run this life since, being PDK, she started at level 15… and realized she’d never run heroic TS AT ALL.

I somehow missed one rune but got ol’ Sor’Jek down to about 50% anyway before he blew me off the mountain. Picked up the missing rune on my way back through, and from then on, taking him down was a piece of cake.

And how about a happy accident? Logged on last night and there were no other Flower Sniffers online yet. So I was browsing the social panel, and accidentally clicked on an LFM from someone trying to farm a Bonebreaker from Palace of Stone.

“Oops,” I said, “didn’t mean to click that…” And then I thought, what the heck, I’m not really doing anything anyway.

So I stayed, and we had a couple other people join. Did one run each on epic normal/hard/elite, then decided to do one more run on EH. And in that last run, the Bonebreaker FINALLY dropped for the guy (or girl, or non-binary – don’t know for sure). Best misclick ever!

And thank you, Standing Stone, for finally correcting the “animted” mudballs to “animated” ones. That one bugged me just about as much as “an” planar shard. LOL

I was thinking about a year-in-review post and managed to come up with two ideas. Couldn’t decide between them, so I’ll be doing them both. They’re both filks, but entirely different from each other.

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