#even though i hate that book

[sugarcoatednightshade]

thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.

And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.

And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.

And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?

Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.

Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.

[tubbytarchia]

Hey guys I think The Last Unicorn is such a Scott book

[exoscreamsoda]

i made my religious southern black grandma watch the first ep of iwtv

most shameful thing ive done in a while, i already knew she doesnt like vampire or horror stuff because the blood disgusts her but shes really old and i wanted her to experience peak cinema atleast once

[my grandma is very open minded]

here are some reaction points ⬇

she automatically loves daniel malloy because hes old

she found "french white" to be a really funny phrase

i forgot that making her watch this meant i would have to sit through the sex scene. i spent 20 min trying to find an excuse and just as i got up ms. lily started rubbing her nipples, i knew this because my grandma started yelling WHATS SHE DOING? D:

my poor grandma was barely processing the ms.lily boob thing before my dad walked into the room. now theyre both witnessing this sex scene

she started laughing when louis pushed lestats hand away but when they started going at it she was like 👁👁 ?? and i had to explain that he was being seduced and also theyre freaky

"you know this doesnt suprise me, i heard new orleans is known for gay people". i ask her to elaborate on this but she doesnt???

she gets bored again when its over but paul's death grabs her

the confession scene (which i think is the best in the series) makes her lock in so hard she sits up and cant even hear when we're talking to her

immediately starts screaming and telling louis to run when lestat starts killing those priests and cant stop saying WHAT. DONT LET THAT WHITE DEVIL IN once louis accepts and kisses him 😭

she still cant get past the gore but said that i can show her some more episodes next time. i won 😚

[i need to reiterate that my grandma is not homophobic but the blood was genuinely making her mad 💀 propose normally next time lestat]

[canis-constellate]

psst systems and plurals of all kinds, if you have fictives from books please say hi. we have, quite literally, only met a single system other than ourselves who had more than one fictive sourced from a book. well over 90% of our fictives (which make up 85% of our known collective of 550+ people) are sourced from books. please

[somegrumpynerd]

How absolutely wild must it have been for Nightmare to have like, minimum-to-no contact with mortals for hundreds of years and then the first two he has any regular close interactions with are Killer and Dust.

Like he must have a book in his castle somewhere of all the observations he kept like he was studying a new species

[sochilll]

Pippa Fitz-Amobi is made of guilt and obsession and gray morality and loyalty and checklists and a deep deep distrust of the police

[thrumugnyr]

Tamlin sent the last of his men out, one by one. And they were willing - they begged him to go.

[instantpansies]

life is hard for us oz fans who are only meh about wicked. have half a meme.

[bxriles]

A lot of creators in bookish spaces (ones who I really respect and share similar tastes with) keep talking about how amazing The Locked Tomb series is and I want to try it, but then I hear it’s sci-fi and I’m just immediately put off.

I don’t really fuck with the genre too much, but I want to give this series a chance, especially after seeing what people have to say about it. But then I’m afraid it’s going to be SUPER HEAVY sci-fi, and that would nottttt be a good time for me.

So my question for the masses is this: is it worth trying out The Locked Tomb series if you’re not a huge sci-fi fan? And be honest lmao. If you think it’s super heavy on the sci-fi elements and that it might be off-putting to someone like me, let me know! But if you think it’s worth pushing through, I want to know that too!

PS - I know the books are confusing as hell and difficult to follow at times, but I’ve already read Malazan Book of the Fallen, so that doesn’t scare me. If anything, that’s a point in TLT’s favor.

[markantonys]

i don't know if i'll ever be over the greek tragedy shit of mat hearing that he's fated to stab rand, avoiding rand to protect him and in so doing making rand think that mat has abandoned him, then rolling up at a battle to save rand's life only to accidentally stab him just like the prophecy foretold. sophocles is shaking.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Arya wouldn't have been able to survive in KL" is really one of the dumbest fanon takes where you can tell someone only believes it because they like the idea of Arya and Sansa being "exact opposites and perfect complements" (even though it goes against the books). Actual evidence from the books to back it up? Never anywhere to be found despite how confidently people make this claim.

And not only does it severely mischaracterize Arya and ignore what she's been through, it also ignores her importance as a political hostage. The Lannisters weren't searching for her, and lying about having her, for no reason. They needed her because having only one Stark after executing Ned put them in a poor position to negotiate. So Arya would have been more than capable of handling herself (thoroughly shown in her Harrenhal chapters) and the Lannisters would've done everything in their power to keep her alive but, somehow, she wouldn't have been able to survive? It's truly one of those takes that falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds but apparently, that's too much effort for some people.

[brainrotcharacters]

tell me I'm wrong

[degenerateshinji]

i like them. they're cool.

[cogentranting]

The Hunger Games succeeds (and more so achieves sort of mythic effect) because it approaches dystopia through the timeless-- it (and Ballad) brings these universal ideas to a very personal lens and asks questions like "how do we begin to excuse evil in our lives" or "how do you hold on to goodness in the midst of oppression". And because it is so invested in the transcendent it lends itself to very powerful symbols, which give it that mythic feel.

Orwell's books (Animal Farm and 1984) both succeed through a very different approach to dystopia (Animal Farm isn't really a dystopia in the traditional sense but it has a lot of the elements). Orwell succeeds through real perceptive insight into the inner mechanisms of the subjects of his critiques. Orwell has vision that can cut deep into the way that things like propaganda or 'controlling the narrative' work and then, having dissected them, hold those tactics up for all to see.

And I think a lot of dystopias fall short because they get tangled up in the Idea of their story. The "what if" they've created. Either focused too much on the Issue-- too narrowly to be universal, too broadly to be revealing-- or too disconnected from anything genuine. And because they get stuck at that particular point they don't have much more to offer than "wouldn't this be bad?" And if you get a pretty good writer they can make that feel insightful but really it doesn't have much more to offer than whatever absurd YA book comes to mind first when you hear "bad dystopian novel".

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Well, at least Fukuzawa got his wish granted, I guess.... he's finally inside Fukuchi <3

[alasy]

this book literally made me *blush*. i. blushed. my cheeks flushed. i looked at the mirror and my face was red. because of a romantic confession. i...... i'm beyond gone.