#but it's supposed to be on alien planets and 10000 years in the future. I feel like it should feel far more alien

[girlscience]

I finished Nona the Ninth and.... I was going to make a whole post outlining everything that confused and frustrated me about the book (because there is A Lot) but actually I think I can sum it up much faster. This is a story mostly focused on characters and people, and I often do not care about characters and people. I far prefer worldbuilding to nearly everything else and I think the worldbuilding is there, but it is not really being explained. There is a war happening, and I understand absolutely none of it. I don't understand the sides/factions, I don't understand the politicking happening, I don't understand the goals, I don't know who is leading what or why or where they are etc etc etc. And I don't know if that's a fault on my part as a reader or that it's simply not being explained well. In relation to that, everything is unreliable narrators. And I think I am coming to the conclusion I don't like that. It means I don't know what's actually happening ever and it is beginning to really frustrate me.

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

@headspacedad

First of all thank you so much!!! Ngl creepy and dark really arent my strongest strengths so this genuinely means a lot to me. I just am really really fascinated with idea of the scars remaining. The Empire ruled the universe for 10,000 years, our written history is younger than that, humanity was still living in caves during that time. Like? That is genuinely a lot of time for nothing but war and colonization and suffering and genocide. Pain like that can not be ignored, whether it be in the shape of empty planets with long forgotten pasts, ruins still intact and abandoned and forgotten, or corpses of every being from the sentient species to the wildlife, of the plants and insects even the microorganisms like bacteria that causes the bodies to rot who died when their planet was destroyed.

(And just imagine Coran who is the only person alive who was there 10000 years ago when Altea was destroyed. Imagine him setting foot and seeing Altea in any of the above three states, each equally as devastating and horrifying as the other. Coran is an old man who has outlived his family and his friends and his people and his planet and his daughter figure and knowing how little humans live compared to Alteans, he's going to outlive his human friends too)

Second of all, agreed on Monsantos saying crap things in interviews, and i dont know if it is me and Monsantos being completely different people, because honestly? So much of the characterization, ideas, and concepts that interest me the most in vld are the ones that were never really explored, written on accident, or just werent supposed to interpretated the way i interpret them

Like for eg, Hunk, one of the first things that stood out to me about him was that yeah he is kind and he is nervous, but also he doesnt trust anyone he doesnt know easily (he didnt initially trust the lions, that episode with Rolo) And he can be insensitive (Keith Galra reveal and him making fun of Lance's very very serious crush on Allura) and also has a tendency to disregard personal space. Now the last bit i know wasnt really meant to be Hunk scene as much as it was to set up Pidge's backstory, because if it were it would have come up.

But the point is when i look at this i see an actually a complex and interesting character who is very much more than a fatphobic comic relief and gentle giant than he was portrayed as, and someone who could have had a much bigger role in the story he was given (i for one think it should have been him who should have had discovered Lotor's truth and it should have happened because he never trusted Lotor and so decided to investigate him. Seriously are you telling me he went all "Yeah, he's cool, ��\_(ツ)_/¯" about a guy who has tried to murder the team multiple times? Like i am sorry but even Lotor had a plot armour almost as thick as Keith)

Similarly i am very interested why different aliens cultures seem to have different types of quintessence magic despite the source being same, and why humans who despite living in that universe dont seem to have any inclination towards quintessence (something that seems to be life itself), and how would it look if they Were able to use it.

I am interested in Zarkon who says he loved Honerva, says he did all of this for Honerva, maybe even did love Honerva or atleast believed himself to love Honerva, but also let her do experiments that were clearly killing her and than proceed to lie to her about her own identity for 10,000 years because this gave him power and control

I am interested in the Space Whale and the altean colony and how it showed Keith future and how it means it most likely also shown Lotor future as well. Are Lotor's actions a result of some future he saw? A danger he decided needed sacrifices to prevent only to lead to his doom in a Greek Tragedy style? Could he have seen Honerva's rampage or is there another danger that has yet to come? (Also there's very likely chance that all the Alteans with Mark of Chosen are dead. It seems to be a genetic thing and Lotor went for all the Alteans with high quintessence which is linked to the Mark of Chosen. Soooo yeah. Oriadne if it was revived is very likely closed for good)

And just so many things i could go on about that interest me but clearly didnt interest the EPs. Maybe they didnt do it cause they didnt have the time to explore them (this show did 8 seasons in 2 years after all) maybe they didnt do it cause they simply werent interested in it. But yeah i am paying close attention to Monsantos ideas cause so many of them can be good, but also simply do not care for what they have actually do have to say.

Ok so i dont particularly care about what monsantos have to say about vld especially after it ended but i still think about LM saying Allura only brought back those who died during Haggar's tantrum and "planets which died before their time and not the life on it" (or along those lines. I think it was in the interview after the show ended? Someone made a post detailing it). Like i dont know about you all, but i found the idea absolutely fascinating in a morbid way.

Cause like maybe they come back as completely empty. The planets and their landmasses come back intact, rejuvinated, but not even a whisper of the lives that once lived. The planets are back but they lay bare, even the memory of life upon it now long dead. They have potential to nourish life, but what is the point? When there is no life, no beings to be nourished. These planets came back empty shells, with their children long dead and forgotten.

Or maybe they come back as they died. Maybe their soil is deep and rich, only in the way forest soil can be, maybe there are islands made up of what used to be bones of corals. Maybe there are well trodden paths, leveled lands, diverted rivers, and mined grounds. Maybe there are empty buildings, unused roads, abandoned items of every day use, each telling a story of life that once lived but the pages are long torn and the pictures have faded. Planets which were scarred and loved by the unique life that lived on it, but the beings that did that have long since been dead. These planets come back as ruins, still haunted by its inhabitants.

Or maybe (and i am going full SCP 2935 here) the life does come back, but dead. They had been dead for thousands of years but now there are bodies here waiting to be buried. They do not rot, because decay itself needs life and everything on that planet is dead and has been dead for a long time. Frozen in time, to see them is to come face to face with the devastation brought, because it is much harder to deny personhood of a fresh corpse, than of stories and ruins and fossils. No one is left to mourn them, to remember them, to hold a funereal because everyone that could died with them. These planets come back as graveyards and memorials, holding the grim proof of what was taken from them.