Arduinna

This is not a post about Sandy, even though right now she's touching almost everything I'm doing and thinking. I'm still trying to find a way to say something about her, and how hugely important she was and is to me, and how much I miss her already, and the big huge sinkhole that opened up in fandom when she died.

So last night, to distract myself a bit from everything, I watched an old Mythbusters ep I'd never seen that my tivo brought me, where they debunk the idea that the NASA moon landing was a hoax. And it was good, watching them bust conspiracy theory "proof" after "proof", in concrete, provable ways that are just nifty.

(Like, Earth sand/dirt/grit particles are all rounded and worn down from being weathered for eons, while Moon dust particles are sharp-edged on accounta there's no weather there to weather them, so where dry Earth sand won't hold a footprint because there's nothing holding the rounded particles together, dry Moon dust totally will. Hence debunking the theory that Neil Armstrong's footprint in the moondust was faked, because dry dust won't hold a footprint like that. Hah.)

And then in the last few minutes of the ep, they go to an observatory (the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico), and meet an astronomer there. She's a woman, which made me happy. And then the voiceover introduced her, as "one of the observatory's top docs -- Russet McMillan." And I hit pause on my tivo and just gaped.

I used to read a Russ(et) McMillan's stories, in a bunch of different fandoms, years back. This does not seem like a common name, to me. And this woman is fan-shaped, and fan-styled (long, loose hair, very casually styled, and wearing jeans and a comfortable jacket), and just generally has a vibe where if I saw her when I was at a con, I'd assume she was at the same con. But still -- what are the odds, right?

Pretty damn good, as it turns out.

There's a lot of ways to look at that, and most of them went through my head -- holy shit, a fan I used to interact with, at least a little bit, is a successful astronomer, zomg that is fantastic! And is on Mythbusters, how awesome is that! And she's just generally totally cool and competent and collected through the entire segment, which, go her. <3

But mostly what I was thinking, in the midst of feeling the loss of Sandy so much, was, wow, fandom and fans really are everywhere. We really do endure, and we pop up in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times.

I have no idea if Russet's still fannish; her stories are still up, but it doesn't look like she's written in years. (ETA: I'm told she's not only still fannish, but still attending Escapade, which makes me really happy to hear.) But she's still a part of my fannish history; she wrote in more than half a dozen fandoms that I was in at the same time as her, so I saw her name all over the place back then.

It was weird and wonderful to stumble over her again, no matter how distantly, and strangely comforting.

( clip from the show beneath the cut )

Fans, man. Fans are awesome. ♥