#catalyzes

[ariadne-mouse]

I feel fandom would get along a lot better if there was mutual understanding that liking a character, agreeing with a character, and thinking the character is well constructed/executed are all separate (if often overlapping) positions, each with their separate tastes and subjectivities. Also: character portrayals are intended to make the audience feel things; this is separate from (if often overlapping with) analyzing/appreciating their actions and role in the story.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

I’m going to be so hot this year but more than that I’m going to be so intentional w my time

[lime202]

While gathering screenshots for references I realized that:

Starscream hosting a tea party with the corpses of the bots he killed in the Earthspark finale is like a deranged equivalent of B-127 (TF1) making his imaginary friends out of scrap while isolated in sub level 50

Starscream definitely escalated quicker compared the B-127 IMO in a "lost hiker that suggests cannibalism way too soon" kind of way, like he was isolated there for ~ 1 month tops and he immediately gave into the voices 😭

(TBF, Starscream's quicker mental psychosis is in character and makes the most sense compared to Bee's slower mental deterioration, with the Earthspark bots actually being corpses. And, young Bee also has a sort of delusional autobot hope compared to Star's decepticon cynicism, I think.)

Regardless... these two have a similar coping mechanism in their isolation... even if it's in two different universes I'm sure this is still solid Starbee material.

[aledethanlast]

So here's the thing about Minyard and Josten: they've got something fucking weird going on, Minyard's captain can't figure out what it is.

The press call it a rivalry but he will eat his hat the day Minyard looks like he's happier being on the court than watching paint dry, so it can't be that.

That's not to say Minyard isn't fucking gold as a goalie. But during post practice talks it's very clear that he and the coaches have reached some sort of agreement on the axis of "If my contract had included some sort of save minimum I would hit it and walk off the court."

Except. Except. The captain is the only one on the team who saw what happened last week during the away game. They were getting their asses handed to them and Russo is biting it in the goal when suddenly, Neil fucking Josten is there. No hello, no how are ya, no explanation to why he's at their bench instead of three states away with his own team. No, he's just suddenly standing there, in front of Minyard, and the two are staring each other down like they're trying to telepathically generate cold fusion.

And then Minyard says, "The fuck do you want now." Which is kinda rude.

And Josten says "Your team is getting their ass beat. Which isn't a surprise, you guys are basically the bottom of the division." Which is very rude!

And Minyard says, "Stop stating the obvious. What do you want."

And Josten says, "You just told me to stop stating the obvious."

And then Minyard, who JUST played a full half, turns to Coach Lamm and goes "Put me in there, and swap Aquilar for Mitchell on the backline." And Lamm does, because this is the first piece of proof they have that Minyard actually knows any of their names.

And then he spends the last twenty minutes of the game plus overtime getting them a one point victory. And while Minyard hasn't directly threatened them, there seems to be another standing agreement to never, ever mention that this happened.

Long story short at the next national banquet he asks Kevin Day if they're hate fucking and the guy just says not to worry about it so. Who knows.

[crustyshrimp]

death on the oil rig.

[lorelune]

the jingfeng x reader dynamic is dan feng pointing at soggy guy stray cat reader and being like “i want that one”, jing yuan immediately concurring and the two of them wooing you into the most mother hen relationship you can imagine

[holychopshopgalaxy]

ultimate opinion on Silver and Flint's love is I don't think it was either platonic or romantic, but instead a secret third thing that can only be deciphered in an entirely different plane of existence

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

[pointing towards you emoji] favorite blaseball team. go

(if you want to practice drawing in another style, then draw yourself as a transformer OR as a human character)

WE ARE FROM CHICAGO

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

I've found that when I review a book that was on the whole quite good, but the element I was most interested in didn't quite play out the way I wanted it to, I tend to spend most of my word count on what I didn't like instead of what I did, so I'm going to try for a little more parity here. The Stars Too Fondly is a thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi romance with a lot to recommend it. It begins on a near-future Earth, twenty years after what was supposed to be the first of many missions to begin evacuating humanity to a new planet using a revolutionary new technology that would make interstellar travel cheap and easy failed dramatically and inexplicably on the launch pad, resulting in the cancellation of the program. A group of four postdocs who watched the failure live on television as kids break into the now-derelict launch facility determined to find out why the launch failed and what happened to the crew, all of whom vanished without a trace during the catastrophe. However, the ship inexplicably powers up and launches with them on board, and now they not only have to solve the mystery but also figure out how to survive their multi-year interstellar journey and return, with the help of the ship's onboard AI who, for some reason, has been programmed to be a perfect copy of the missing captain of the original expedition.

I really enjoyed the tone and setting of the book, which is much more Star Trek than it is The Martian, with much more focus placed on character drama, mystery solving, and moral dilemmas than logistical puzzle-solving. The influence of Star Trek: Voyager in particular are worn proudly in both plot elements - a holographic artificial intelligence with questions about her personhood, an unplanned years-long journey that the crew is trying to shorten - and smaller elements, such as the use of food replicators and even a direct reference to the show's most famous episode, Threshold.

The characters were solid and compelling, with engaging dynamics unique voices. I also, barring one personal gripe, really liked the book's exploration of queer experiences. If I found myself on an unplanned space mission, I would also be very concerned about how I was going to get HRT meds!

The book makes use of a combination of plausible hard sci-fi theories, which stopped me from giving the concept of a dark matter engine my usual obligatory eyeroll, and bonkers off the wall pseudo magic soft sci-fi. These elements synergized better than I was afraid they would, but the introduction of the softer elements was a little jarring. Also kinda like Star Trek actually.

The plotting was perfectly solid, though not extraordinary by any means. None of the twists and turns were particularly surprising, but neither did they come across as trite or formulaic. The themes weren't anything novel either, but they were well-supported and conveyed. The writing itself was mostly pretty good, with a few of the rough edges and structural oddities that I've come to expect from debut novels.

So now that I've actually given the book its due, I'm gonna dig too deep into what I found disappointing.

I've noticed a bit of a trend between the last few books I've felt really compelled by, and that's the idea of a character falling in love with someone who, by their very nature, they are not going to be able to have an "ordinary" relationship with. It's what drew me to Flowers for Dead Girls, which is about falling in love with a ghost. It's what drew me to Someone You Can Build a Nest In, which is about a psychologically and physiologically inhuman monster falling in love with a human. And it's what initially drew me to this book, which is about a human falling in love with the hologram of a dead woman - a space ghost, if you want, or a ghost in the machine, if you'd rather. All of these books take some pains to explore the rough edges of these relationships, where the participants' desires are stymied by their physical differences. However, where the previous two books end with the characters establishing an equilibrium of sorts where their needs are met, even if their relationship doesn't look like what society or their own imaginations expected them to look like, The Stars Too Fondly just neatly resolves things such that their differences are no longer a concern and they can have exactly what they imagined. And I found that to be cheap and unsatisfying, especially because the resolution only works if you really, really want it to work. When you start digging into it, it starts falling apart.

It's a symptom of a phenomenon I'm calling, "So You Want to Have Your Tragedy and Eat it Too". It arises when an author has an idea for a very compelling and evocative tragic event or outcome that results in rich character moments and strong thematic resonance and very profound emotions that they really want to explore... but it would also make the happy ending they want for their characters impossible, either because the rules they've established for their story mean that the damage can't be reversed, or because the change is such that, even if the conflict were apparently resolved, the characters have now been changed by the event that they can never be as they were before, and the happy ending is now emotionally impossible.

When this conundrum comes up in the writing process, the author has to decide - do they want to explore the rich possibilities of this tragedy, or do they want to go a different direction that allows for their originally desired happy ending. It's a difficult choice to make, and unfortunately, it's not uncommon for authors to think they can take a third option, that they can come up with a way to have their tragedy but still make things work out in the end. And the end result is a solution that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That's what happens here, to the point that it's hard to read the last couple chapters because the main character reads like she's deluding herself that everything is fine and she's happy. And you know, that could've been a really interesting - and tragic - direction to go on purpose and explore, but it wasn't on purpose, and it just winds up feeling like the book is trying desperately to convince the reader that everything is alright, really! I can't help but compare it unfavorably to the conclusion of Lovelace's arc in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, which confronted the fact that nothing could ever be the same again so unflinchingly that it gave rise to A Closed and Common Orbit, one of my favorite books of all time (that I completely forgot when I was trying to list some of my favorite books in a conversation the other day and now I feel like I've betrayed it).

And while I have you here, I also really hate that they made the transfem side character super into astrology. That's a personal bugbear, and while it's one I have grudgingly tolerated the singular time that I have seen a transfem author do it, I really, really wish non-transfem authors would knock that shit off. Find a different quirky interest to give to your transfem characters.

Still, on the whole, I thought it was a really solid book with a lot of entertaining and compelling elements. Unless you are reading it primarily for the logistical and emotional challenges of a romantic relationship between a ghost and a human, I would recommend it without hesitation. If you are, check out any of the other books I referenced in this post instead (except maybe for A Closed and Common Orbit, but if you're the kind of person who would like those other recommendations, I bet you'd like it too).

[sadquickchristmassnowman]

abed is better than me because I would NOT have been chill with the prospect of sloppy narcissistic season 1 jeff sharing my dorm room with me indefinitely

[larphis]

The fact that the entire crew lied to Stede at some point to take the blame for Ed’s actions because they knew that hearing just how severly he traumatized him would have scared him off (not as in being scared of Ed, but as in being scared that he has hurt Ed so much that he would rather run away once more as to not cause any more suffering than to face him and actually fight for him) and they couldn’t let that happen because everyone who has been near Blackbeard in the last few months knows that the only way to help this man, the only way to temporarily and after some work even permanently fix his deep rooted turmoil is Stede fucking Bonnet.

[averagemrfox]

Blake and Yang having a “meet the parents” moment in v10 seemed like wishful thinking before but now? Knowing that Ruby’s plan worked and the other kingdoms went to Vacuo which likely includes Ghira and Kali with the faunus militia PLUS v9 revealing that Raven has even more explaining to do than perhaps previously thought which is going to have to happen sooner rather than later….

Yea I think we’re gonna get the bees meeting the parents for sure

[lastthroes]

they really did this to me huh

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

Kismet belongs to @wildfandom

Anyway. Old man yaoi. GO!

[clonerightsenthusiast]

i got to the part of new mutants last night where they leave magneto and the school and I already miss headmaster mags and more than that i miss the incredibly funny dynamic where every time the kids sneak out of school for some mission despite being grounded (happens constantly, they can teleport, what's he gonna do), because cerebro is broken and he can't fix it, he has to GO TO THE HELLFIRE CLUB and use their mutant detector to find his kids while shaw and selene make fun of him for being outsmarted by six teenagers. again.

and he's soooooo mad about it

[smoky-solitude]

Anyone else think that this the moment the Fool realized he must bravely go to his death instead of fight back against it? Or is it the opposite? 😭