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IT WORKED THEY FIT NOW

doing the unexpected: washing + drying a pair of wool blend hiking socks HOPING they will shrink because they're a liiiiitle too big

#WILD #risky maneuver here but it worked #i either expected them to get pathetically tiny or to not change at all #BUT NO THEY SHRUNK JUST ENOUGH TO BE MY SIZE!

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Totally understandable! My only comment to that is Scar wouldn't have to install a radio or anything, all his gear would be supplied by the government. (Unless he brought his own? But fw!Scar is the type of guy who does NOT see anything wrong with using govt equipment for personal use based on how he speaks to Grian. Rules are like....a suggestion to him)

It's very likely to me though that it could go another way: Scar has simply never bothered to figure out what channel stuff like that would be broadcast on! Baseball game? Huh? No clue how to listen to that!

fir no reason in particular, a certain "fan" wouldn't be able to hear a baseball game out in the middle of nowhere, would he? Lol

It's so funny you say that because I'm pretty sure there's a whole thing in Fire Season where Philip Connors passes time by listening to baseball games on the radio at his fire lookout. But this is something that is going to depend on individual location, so just because he could hear it at his lookout in Gila Natl Forest does not mean you could pick that up from Shoshone Natl Forest.

I think the answer to this honestly depends on a higher level of technical understanding of radios than I actually have. Lookout towers are often set up with some pretty fancy repeaters and antennas because they're so high up. Even defunct lookouts that are no longer in use for fire watching are often still maintained for radio purposes (as I saw with the not-so-abandoned lookout I climbed in Arkansas.) A good network of lookout towers didn't just help national forests with fires, but also making sure there was good radio coverage.

To really answer this you'd need to know more details about signal strength, frequencies, repeaters, etc. Grian can get the NWS report from the radio tower in Cody, WY at his tower. (He can also hear the dispatch at the office there, and likewise they'd need to be able to hear him for fire reports.) But his handheld radio doesn't have the signal strength to speak with Scar outside of a certain mile radius (as he loses signal on that particular frequency when he leaves the NF or when he was trying to find the Cloud Lake Connection.) Scar also has more fancy radio equipment set up in his tower than Grian does, because Scar's tower has easier access from the road. So maybe the question is if the radio tower in Cody would be transmitting this game? Maybe it's weak because it's coming such a long distance compared to the transmissions that originate in/around the National Forest.

But the actual, MOST reasonable answer is: it's fiction, you can decide whether or not it's realistic if he can hear a baseball game or not. We're operating with fake lookouts that exist in a vague area of the national forest where none of the landmarks I mention are in their true-to-life positions. I have no blueprint for the type of radio equipment Scar has, and I am not too well versed on the intricacies of how they work. So I think there's evidence for it either way—maybe he's too far and remote to pick it up, or maybe it's bouncing off the tower in Cody to reach him. The real answer will be whatever makes the most sense for what you need it for :D

#perhaps cub doesnt want to mess with the radio to try and manually land on the channel #or perhaps he finally does and it's so staticky that everything is illegible #LOTS of fun directions to go with torturing the poor man xD #....i dont THINK there's a specific accepted channel for sports #i assume cub may know the fm/am frequency it would be playing on at home in chicago #but it wouldn’t be the same in wyoming #i assume

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I have a delivery I have to sign for coming this afternoon and I just KNOW it will come during the one (1) meeting have the entire day today, from 2-3 pm

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doing the unexpected: washing + drying a pair of wool blend hiking socks HOPING they will shrink because they're a liiiiitle too big

#it may depend if they're too low a percent wool or if they were pre shrunk/pre treated for shrinking #generally dont wash + dry wool things to avoid shrinking though (hand wash cold and lay flat to air fry will always be the gentlest option) #though for socks in general i feel like you GOTTA just expect to be able to throw them in the wash #it feels too extra to bother to handwash that. nice sweater sure. SOCKS? #so that is why i am unsure if my methods will actually work to shrink the sock #if not then i will gift to my mother because she has a slightly larger shoe size than me #(im cursed at women's size 5)

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fir no reason in particular, a certain "fan" wouldn't be able to hear a baseball game out in the middle of nowhere, would he? Lol

It's so funny you say that because I'm pretty sure there's a whole thing in Fire Season where Philip Connors passes time by listening to baseball games on the radio at his fire lookout. But this is something that is going to depend on individual location, so just because he could hear it at his lookout in Gila Natl Forest does not mean you could pick that up from Shoshone Natl Forest.

I think the answer to this honestly depends on a higher level of technical understanding of radios than I actually have. Lookout towers are often set up with some pretty fancy repeaters and antennas because they're so high up. Even defunct lookouts that are no longer in use for fire watching are often still maintained for radio purposes (as I saw with the not-so-abandoned lookout I climbed in Arkansas.) A good network of lookout towers didn't just help national forests with fires, but also making sure there was good radio coverage.

To really answer this you'd need to know more details about signal strength, frequencies, repeaters, etc. Grian can get the NWS report from the radio tower in Cody, WY at his tower. (He can also hear the dispatch at the office there, and likewise they'd need to be able to hear him for fire reports.) But his handheld radio doesn't have the signal strength to speak with Scar outside of a certain mile radius (as he loses signal on that particular frequency when he leaves the NF or when he was trying to find the Cloud Lake Connection.) Scar also has more fancy radio equipment set up in his tower than Grian does, because Scar's tower has easier access from the road. So maybe the question is if the radio tower in Cody would be transmitting this game? Maybe it's weak because it's coming such a long distance compared to the transmissions that originate in/around the National Forest.

But the actual, MOST reasonable answer is: it's fiction, you can decide whether or not it's realistic if he can hear a baseball game or not. We're operating with fake lookouts that exist in a vague area of the national forest where none of the landmarks I mention are in their true-to-life positions. I have no blueprint for the type of radio equipment Scar has, and I am not too well versed on the intricacies of how they work. So I think there's evidence for it either way—maybe he's too far and remote to pick it up, or maybe it's bouncing off the tower in Cody to reach him. The real answer will be whatever makes the most sense for what you need it for :D

#sadly it's my dad that has the HAM radio license not me.... #i get messed up with frequencies/channels/repeaters/etc and confused about them #quara asks #hc_firewatch_au

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Finished my final edit of Firewatch AU last night, so I will try to update the AO3 chapters to reflect this shortly. Don't worry much about major changes. Most changes were grammatical or slight rewords of sentences.

A few times I would slightly alter a sentence so that it lined up more with the established canon of the story. One side effect of writing a story over a year and uploading it chapter by chapter is that sometimes you get lines in earlier chapters that don't make as much sense with the direction the story actually went in. For example, and I think I already edited this on AO3, but originally when Grian reported Mumbo missing in chapter one he told the ranger on the phone several places he thought Mumbo might have gone. I changed this to Grian just saying what trail he took, because it's quite clear later in the story that Mumbo had told Grian his specific plan for a specific trail. It no longer made sense for Grian to be unclear on where he was. We go through this very thoroughly in the middle of the fanfic, Mumbo was supposed to be on the Cloud Lake Trail! It is an interesting thought to consider that perhaps Grian was always a little fuzzy on the details of where Mumbo was going, and that he just later talked himself into 100% believing that he always knew the exact location. But I didn't really intend for that, and that does start to get into the weeds a little bit on the level of nuance a reader will pick up on. So I changed it.

Functionally though, this change was like....5 words within a sentence. Like I said, not major changes, just little things to keep the story aligned.

Another example of a larger reword is that I changed my fire finder math to exclude the part about finding the elevation of the fire based on the vertical angle. This is because I had to change the height of Grian's lookout (in my internal notes) so that it would be below the treeline for the Greater Yellowstone Area. My only experience with treeline is in Colorado where it's about ~11,500 ft and I hadn't realized that it varied so widely in other mountain ranges, so I orginally put Grian's lookout at far too high an elevation to still be surrounded by trees. I also finalized the height of his lookout by looking at standard lookout schematics and the amount of stairs it has. If you're curious, I originally had it at around ~10,800 ft, and changed it to ~8,700 ft. I also changed the height of the lookout from 45 ft (non standard) to 40 ft (a standard height.)

Because I changed that height, I needed to recheck my math and fix it. But when I went back to that problem, I had a lot of difficulty figuring out how I had calculated it last year. I did eventually find the calculation I used as a base in my 1958 fire lookout handbook, but when I scrutinized that more closely I was unsure I even interpreted it correctly last year. (The person who wrote this in 1958 did not do a great job of explaining certain things.) I also realized that most lookouts just report the vertical angle and nothing else. Like, you're only expected to report the angle, not the elevations. I even found a video of a fire lookout explaining the Osborne Fire Finder where he mentioned calculating elevation of the fire, and mentioned that it is pretty dificult and generally only experienced lookouts report that, and that he had three years of experience and still only reported the angle.

So because I only want to include things I know are accurate, and I was unsure of the math, and I found out most lookouts don't even report that math to begin with, I just changed it to talk about the vertical angle. Probably better for the readers I lost with the math, anyway!

Anyway, that's the type of edits I did mostly LOL

#also i fixed my em dashes long ago in my main document but a lot of earlier ao3 chapters still have en dashes instead #and unfortunately the ao3 font makes en dashes look identical to hyphens #so when i update the chapters it will improve that readibility too #drives me nuts! i promise i know that you don't use hyphens for that! they were always supposed to be em dashes! #i think the em dash correction only appears chapter 8 and onward #so now it will soon be all the chapters #hc_firewatch_au

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The weather is supposed to be bad tonight (again), so I hope you stay safe !

thank you :(( love the spring, hate the tornado season

#well really tornado season is every season the one that hit my house as a kid was in january #quara asks

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Pretty sure that Two Forks is supposed to be a 30 foot L-4 style lookout, which was the most popular type to build. It has a 14'x14' R-6 style flat cab on top for living space. Ironically, this layout is not present in my wonderful 131 page schematic document from 1938 because it was newer, more of a 1950s style. If not L-4 though, then it could also be like a CT-5 or CT-3 model, also 30' tall. (They're all pretty similar looking.) But I think it is an L-4 due to the stair style.

Honestly though? I think I'm going to go rogue and make it a 40' tower for the fanfic because it just looks more correct to me.

back at it again

By the way, one of the things I'm obsessed with about writing this fic is just the absurd number of highly detailed historical references I can find with relative ease because of govt recordkeeping.

#it's the tiny bit of added height that sells it as a lookout tower in this style to me #'what are you doing' you may ask #i am making sure the continuity in the beginning of the fic is correct #whenever grian talks about flights of stairs or number of stairs #and also the calculations in his fire finder math need to be corrected #i think i??? didnt research this much last year because i think i just tossed a dart and was like uhhhh the tower is 45' #which is a very atypical height for a tower to be (which i now know but didnt then)

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back at it again

By the way, one of the things I'm obsessed with about writing this fic is just the absurd number of highly detailed historical references I can find with relative ease because of govt recordkeeping.

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having a blast at the permit office.

#hermitcraft #art #scar #smallishbeans #grian

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I saw a recruitment TikTok by the Utah conservation corps and it reminded me of your firewatch au so of course I had to go back and read it and now im crying

SLFJSLFJSLKF

God I love Utah btw. Some of the prettiest National Parks in the US are there, and I've only been to two of them. I need to get my numbers up!

speaking of conservation corps should i buy this civilian conservation corps sticker set and put one or two on my new laptop? it's like $4 and i kind of regret passing it up when i first saw it in a state park gift shop in Arkansas last year

#quara asks #btw we owe like. basically all our park infrastructure and trails and fire lookouts and stuff to the CCC in the 1930s #part of roosevelt's new deal to give young men jobs during the great depression

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here's one reason i'm doing the final edit of firewatch au. i just tragically discovered a sentence i liked in chapter 12, in which grian talks about how from the perspective of thorofare, he's now looking at the south faces of the mountains that were north of his tower.

except. if the mountains were north of him, then he was always looking at the south face? the north face would have been. north of him lmao. i just reworded this into something that still worked and kept the same idea 👍

#theres so many cardinal directions thrown out in this fic #and you have to believe me that even if you cant keep track of it in your head #the directions make sense to Me writing it. i have a mental map #i just....have messed up one (1) time. perhaps.

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Hello! Im not too active in ask boxes so im a little nervous sending this, but i wanted to reach out!

I read your firewatch au fic about a month ago and I’ve gotta say, genuinely, it is STILL dancing around my mind. It was beautifully written and left me with such an intense feeling- I don’t even know what that feeling is, but it’s intense!

I read your authors notes at the end of every chapter and the amount of research you did to make sure this fic was written accurately is amazing and very commendable. Your notes also led me to discovering “out alive by backpacker” and it’s quickly become one of my favourite podcasts!!

Ironically, this fic really sparked an interest in me for hiking and I’ve started going for longer walks with my friend! It’s been a really great way to connect with nature and develop a closer “bond” with the planet. (I say ironically since both the fic and the podcast tell these terrifying stories of survival and how brutal nature can be.)

Since I can’t seem to stop thinking about your fic, i just started re-reading it! I want to make fanart of this story, so I plan to take at least one scene from each chapter to illustrate. My energy isn’t reliable these days so I’m not sure how many I’ll actually be able to do, but I’d really like to show my appreciation!

TLDR: this is the most impactful fic I think I’ve ever read and I’m really glad I did!

Have a wonderful day!

- Pocket

AAAAAAAA this is such a wonderful ask to receive!!!!! Thank you! I really feel like I've accomplished something how you're not even the first person to tell me they've started going outside and walking/hiking more often. That's a really beautiful thing to see. I love what you've gotten out of it—the closer bond with the planet—because that's equally what I wanted to share in the story, along with all the survival aspects. I loved the research and I loved the setting and I loved to share it with everyone.

I would be SO excited to see the art you make for the story, however many you end up making (and if it's none, that's fine too!) I love seeing how people interpret things in the story. I gave y'all the words, but it's always up to YOU (the reader) in the end to picture it :D

thank you <33333

#i hope i didnt make u too nervous by waiting a few days to answer this sorry 😭😭 #had kind of a weird week. not an actually busy one or particularly eventful like the other weeks this month! just meh #also join me in trying to manifest that backpacker magazine saves out alive with a new host #i got so many people into a podcast that ENDED as soon as I recommended it (cries) #hc_firewatch_au #quara asks

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the chosen aesthetics of the various redstoners fascinate me. tango and impulse are tinkerers of various mechanical marvels. doc is the industrial revolution personified. mumbo continually casts himself as a silicon valley startup guy. its just. Interesting

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if i've got any followers in nebraska, hope yall are safe!

hate tornadoes 🙃🌪

#not looking great here in TX either #i was watching a storm chaser follow the tornado in nebraska on livestream and they abandoned the chase to do search and rescue instead

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hate tornadoes 🙃🌪

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i genuinely love the mcc subreddit bc they live in such a different world that the bad takes have a whole new flavor

anyway they're saying xisuma is probably gonna be one of the stronger hermits because he's been in twitch rivals before so obviously that means he must be competent

#LMAO #not xisuma #(/affectionate)