#holden x amos x naomi

[rocicrew]

someone: is [amos] your family? nolden: yes

someone: is he your best friend? nolden: yes

someone: is he your boyfriend nolden: yes

[gunkreads]

Making a post for my full-series thoughts about The Expanse and how it wrapped up, good and bad.

Caveat lector (I looked up the latin word for "reader" just for this joke): when I have negative thoughts about something in a book, I force myself to pick them apart down to the most minute details. This generates massive walls of text. These text walls don't mean I truly loathe the thing; they mean I'm doing my absolute best to not be a Hater, but rather to analyze my feelings so that you can read something more constructive and interesting than "X was dumb and didn't work".

I want to break this down into six parts: one for each of the main characters (Holden, Naomi, Amos, and Alex), one for the plot, and one for the world (it'll make sense when I get to it, hopefully). This may not be as long as it sounds like it'll be, but it's still long as fuck.

Bear in mind that I read this series very slowly, over about three months, so some of the early-series details are hazy and my opinions on them should be taken with the assumption that I've forgotten some stuff.

On Holden, I can be brief:

His arc was almost a full 180. Call it a 173, give or take 5 degrees. Holden starts the series with the stalwart belief that "if you give everyone all the information available, they'll make the right choice". Eventually, during the Free Navy arc, he moves to "If you give everyone all the information available, they'll eventually make the right choice". During his Laconian imprisonment, he moves to "If you give the right person the right information, they'll make the right choice" (this is the biggest jump we see). That part was fun because he'd just almost turned into Miller. Fucking excellent.

He ends on "I have all the information and I have no idea what the right choice is, but I have to act." This is the very last thing he does: make a snap decision with all the information in the world, fully accepting that he might be wrong. The meat of this final decision is to take the stars away. Holden says "It doesn't matter if we deserve this, it doesn't matter if we'll earn it or conquer it eventually; we're dying now," and makes the decision for all of humanity that he's going to destroy the ring gates.

This could have felt cheap because of the way it completely absolves him of the responsibility for his decision, but it feels fully earned because this type of decision is his ENTIRE CHARACTER. The point of James Holden is that he takes hard choices away from people and makes them himself! He's already taken responsibility for dozens of these types of decisions before. He says there's no choice here; I'm going off to die. He survives this a hundred times, then finally dies from it. This makes it a beautiful ending for him. I loved it. He's such a profoundly simple character throughout a series with fairly complex characters, and that makes him feel truly special rather than lazy writing.

On Naomi... I have mixed feelings.

I feel that her lack of "epilogue" (not the literal epilogue, just a conclusive send-off for her character) made her ending less weighty than it could have been. If I had to point to a specific line that felt like her full-series character arc's climax, it would be Alex's "It would have worked beautifully" in reference to Naomi's program to monitor Ring gate traffic. Naomi's character is marked by decades of desperate cries for people to fucking listen to her, for them to believe her, that she wants everyone to live! She has the plan, she's objectively a logistical genius, and if you just tell her what's happening, she can save all of you fucking idiots! Alex's line there broke my heart clean in half. She won the wrong fight. She scored the season-winning goal the moment after the league was dismantled.

Naomi is a character about the frustration of having an answer but no voice with which to share it. This really comes to a head in Act 3, when she's coordinating the resistance (as well as anyone possibly could!) with the most janky, fucked-up communication system anyone could possibly design. If I consider that line of Alex's to be Naomi's legacy in the series, which I do, I'm very happy with her arc overall, but...

I don't really like the way she seemed to just drop off the map at the end of the last book. She has her little moment where she's pre-mourning Holden after he's revealed that he's injected himself with more protomolecule, but after that? She seems to just be... kind of moving forward. She's just working, nothing more--strategically, what she does in the series' climax is no more difficult than anything she's done before; it just has higher stakes and she's clearly drowning her grief in work. The thing that feels weird to me is that, while she gets the last line in the book (pre-epilogue), and her series-long arc closes out very neatly, it feels like her little mini-arc of the moment of that final climax never settles out properly. She gets cut off at the 80% mark and just... disappears.

I like to assume that she fully retired after getting back through to Sol. She deleted all those incoming messages and dropped herself fully off the map, feeling like it was finally time to give up after saving the entire universe. The simple act of her deleting the messages would've given me that closure, but as it was, there's just this little nag at the back of my mind that her arc in the book ended like five seconds too early.

It's a minor nitpick! I loved the way the climax wrapped around and had her basically leading humanity for a few beautiful moments, with all her hard work almost paying off before the game changed.

Amos? I fucking love Amos.

I loved him before, I loved him during, and I love him after. Everyone loves Amos. I'm not special. He really was the last man standing, after all. Fucking beautiful. Perfection. A simple arc, a simple conclusion, and a simple message for a simple character. His only real change in the series was during Persepolis Rising, when he had to deal with Clarissa's slow death, and while that was excellent, it was really more of an arc for Bobbie.

Alex... is the character whose ending I cared about the least.

I don't dislike it; it's fully above that margin, and on a surface level, I think ending his whole character arc on his answer to the family problem he's struggled with his whole life is a good choice.

It was interesting that they had his presence end before we'd confirmed he was safe, and with a slight hint that he might not make it to Nieuwestad. I didn't like that at first glance, but after further thought, I enjoy it as a way for the authors to say "the journey and destination don't matter; the conclusion of Alex's story was when he truly chose to step in this direction."

But overall, I don't know if I have much to say about Alex. He's a very sparse character who has less overt reason to be simple than Holden or Amos do; the latter two both have something deeply, deeply wrong with them that makes them really fucking wacko in a specific way, but Alex is just... kind of a regular deadbeat dad? He's just really into flying ships? That's kind of it. I know they explore that in Cibola Burn, but I didn't feel like Alex had that much presence in the whole story as a character, so I found the simple, vague ending they gave him satisfying enough through my general apathy.

For the plot!

The big stuff, the shape of the story. I still have a huge complaint about it: the Free Navy arc felt way too long and way too much of a sidetrack. It functioned as setup for Laconia, yes; it also had literally nothing to do with the overarching story. It felt like a side mission blown out of proportion, which is weirdly appropriate for a story that started out as a TTRPG setting.

On the above? I am one HUNDRED percent willing to be proven wrong. Please, please, please talk me out of my position here. I am currently at one end of the spectrum, where I actively see disconnections from the Free Navy arc and the main plot; I'd love to be pulled to the other end, where I can see how it all ties in. The problem is that I can see the cause-and-effect tie-ins: I get that Earth needed to be destroyed to truly push people through the gates, I get that the huge catastrophe needed to happen to distract from Laconia's growth, I get that it was an end to the concept of a unified Belt/OPA, and I get that it was an immensely well-done arc for Naomi's character, but... I feel like it's a puzzle piece that just fits in a little loosely.

Moving on. I think the wrapup of the whole protomolecule makers/dark gods lore discovery (via Elvi at the BFE) was quite well done, especially given that it was done in such a dispersed way. I felt like I never got a "sit down, here's the deal" exposition dump of like... generally what the nature of all this stuff was. I was just expected to read the "The Dreamer" chapters very carefully, remember the "The Investigator" chapters pretty well, pay attention to how the ring entities worked, and put together the cleanly laid-out pieces myself. I feel I succeeded at this, given that reading through the wiki pages for the ring builders and the smoke things doesn't really reveal anything new to me.

That said, I was... kind of too in-the-moment to process how insane the implication of the final reveal was: that this whole thing was a hidden metaphor for colonialism all along, and that these dark smoke entities are justifiably fighting back against a wound in (sub)reality that the protomolecule builders created. The road to heaven is paved in metaphysical blood, I guess? The protomolecule builders weren't willing to be as decisive as Holden, weren't willing to sacrifice all they'd built, and consequently left their problems for another generation of beings when they died; Holden managed to have the magical willpower to say "Fuck this, I'm shutting it down, even though it'll kill millions and change humanity forever." It was kind of cool that he got that send-off, performing a profound act of healing in this sub-universe by deleting the ring space. Maybe I'm leaning too heavily on my interpretation of this theme, but it feels fairly clear-cut to me, honestly, so I'd love to hear other interpretations.

Regarding the world.

This section is kind of a subsection of the plot, but I feel like "where does the series leave humanity?" is a question that falls more under "worldbuilding" than "story" in this specific series.

These books had so much fucking philosophy in them and it felt like none of it really mattered much. Most of that philosophy stopped at a very broad-spectrum level of analysis, which is the series' greatest... not weakness, necessarily, but missed potential: no philosophical conundrum is ever interrogated beyond the immediate scenario or vague hypotheticals. The authors clearly have a very specific set of ideas about human nature that all felt very generic to me when put into practice; I felt that humanity through their lens was a fairly predictable beast, which only sort of worked.

I understand that The Expanse is, at its core, a character series. More than anything, it's about the people in it; its plot is a vehicle for characters, not the other way around. In that sense, it ended in an overall great way, as discussed above. Because of that, when I judge the story on what it tried to achieve, I think it succeeded.

But when I broaden my approach a little and look at what the authors suggested to me that they could do, I feel like there's more to say. The end of the story, I need not remind you, is effectively a soft reset for humanity. There's no more interstellar travel until they figure it out for real this time, with no cheats--and per the epilogue, they do just that. The core message behind this is that humanity's tenacity will always push them in the same direction: outward. The problem with this, in my opinion, was that the authors chose to express this throughout the series in a very obtuse way: by making "everyone else" a character.

The following is specifically regarding Act 3 (Persepolis Rising on):

So the series is about its characters, and "everyone else" is a character. By having the scope of the story affect all of humanity, all of humanity must necessarily be involved. As far as Act 3 is concerned, this means that the gears of industry never stop turning, people never stop hating and loving, and all apocalyptic danger is effectively ignored to those ends. This made our perspective characters part of a small, exclusive group of people who were actually worried about the universe ending. Everyone else seemed to... not really care. They were scared, sure, but they didn't stop shipping stuff through the ring gates! It was fundamentally stupid, and as far as the authors seem to believe, fundamentally human.

My problem is that the story puts "all of humanity" into the same framework it puts its individual characters. As Act 3 hits, basically everyone not involved in direct on-page conflict is treated as one single character. This is fucking monumentally ironic, given the way the story ends and the whole hive-mind thing. I get how you might not see what I'm seeing here, but consider this: the story feeds us information about what "everyone else" is doing almost exclusively via Naomi. She's the traffic controller; that's her main job for the last two books. In her mind, the character named Everybody Else (Mx. Else, for brevity) is just... doing stuff she can't control. Mx. Else is upping traffic through the ring gates; Mx. Else is a threat to the underground's security; Mx. Else is blowing up the communications relays; Mx. Else is yadda yadda yadda.

It's not about whether Mx. Else is actually supposed to be a homogeneous entity (again, lol @ the irony); it's about the fact that we, the readers, only see Mx. Else as a single huge force. The way the authors write it through Naomi's eyes, "The UNN", "The MCRN", "The OPA", "The Free Navy", "Laconia", "Avasarala", "Saba", "Duarte", and most incongruously but importantly "humanity" are all the same type of entity. Groups and people get lumped together as characters, sure, and that works--but not when you expand the group to be everyone.

What would I have done? Simple. Shut the fuck up and write my own book, if I'm so smart Retain some semblance of different human groups in Act 3 besides "Laconia" and "the underground". Why don't Auberon or Bara Gaon have communities with specific interests? Why does Naomi not have to juggle the desires of different planets, all of whom are still doing shit the whole time, and OBVIOUSLY have interests beyond "just truckin' along"?

Here's my thesis: when there were 3 factions (UN, MCR, OPA) this worked fine. When the authors made some big "nature of humanity" statement, it tracked, because they were making that statement as a blanket over multiple opposing groups, which made it feel more potent--all these people who want to kill each other have this in common. Later in the series, when they're making the same type of statement, it doesn't track as well because most of humanity is all in one group; it's not a statement that unites any opposing groups, really, since Laconia and the underground aren't really included in it.

You know what? I kind of wish I could put all this under another, smaller cut, because it's really rambly and it's not reflective of my overall thoughts on the series.

To sum up, I feel that the series' philosophy and commentary on human nature was simplified more than it needed to be from a practical standpoint, and instead turned to a big old "oh well, nothing we can do about Mx. Else" that the characters could point to when it was appropriate.

To conclude (nine pages later and you're still here, so this one's for you):

:)

[factiousfcrged]

@aeternals / desi, continued from [x]

He's still not used to the idea of someone waiting for him. He'd never had anybody he'd been with that wasn't already berthed where he was, or had been interested enough to care about when he came and went. And it wasn't like Desi hadn't crossed his mind a time or two on this last hell in space adventure to chase a space station at neck breaking speeds while it succeeded in breaking the laws of physics itself -- it was just something of a foreign concept.

He hadn't even had time to disembark before he could hear Desi's voice, the words hurled at ... well either Holden or Naomi, and Naomi didn't seem the likely target, sharp and bordering on shrill. A slight frown, a furrow creasing between his brows. A step out onto the docks confirmed the presence, and for a moment his attention flickered between Desi and Holden. He couldn't blame Desi for assuming that Holden was to blame for what had gone wrong out there -- Amos had his own doubts, usually unvoiced, now and then about Holden's habitual button pressing, and Amos knew that he wasn't always the best judge of good and bad decisions, but there were times Amos was pretty sure the Cap had left any sense he had back on Eros.

But he didn't understand why Desi had chosen here, and now, to confront Holden... He closed the distance to Des, a large hand settling down on a shoulder, trying to get Desi to just - breathing seemed like a good recommendation, right? "Hey." A light squeeze of his fingers. "Believe it or not, the cap didn't fuck up on this one." He meant it better than it sounded. A moment's tilt of his head, his attention settling back on Desi. Worried... about him? "I'm good. One piece." He gestures to himself as his hand slides away. A few bruises and bumps but he barely even registered them. "It's all good."

[kissingdeadgirls]

this weekend i watched iwtv, the terror (first half very beautiful and comprehendable, second half i have some questions), the bear (everything tumblr said it was), and the expanse (almost done the second season)

some thots on the expanse so far

i wasn’t sure i liked most of the first season, but was stuck in bed, so i powered through it. and i miss shitty cable sci-fi. it’s the first space show i’ve seen since sgu, lmao.

the first season very much Feels Like A Book. that way books are so particular about all the threads connecting, where television (esp kinda b sci-fi shows) are more lax. this is especially charming.

the expanse has a very small amount of fanfic? i am avoiding spoilers, i just wanted to see!, but it’s f/f is the biggest category? and the top ship is the hot milf? god is good? i love chrisjen. holy shit.

i also do not know anyones name and spoiled myself trying to look some up. you should not pay for streaming services ever, and esp not pr*me who gives you a fucking ad in between each eps, but on the other hand if you want to know characters names without looking them up on the database where you will learn the number of eps they’re in, or a wiki which will spoil everything in a single sentence, the nightmare x-ray gimmick is actually pretty useful. sorry.

i just wanted to know drummer’s name so i could more adequately imagine her and naomi getting married in the mormon chapel (slow burn, 200k, au) (racket ball after game, 5k, explicit) (anarchist book club coffee shop au, 20k, archive locked).

took a lil break because i am currently frustrated with naomi’s characterization, where it doesn’t feel like she’s being given the room to be the moral centrepiece but actually just a wet blanket. like. this truncated version of her is making me want to scream. she’s not that!!!! and it’s so close to being a good continuation of her arc but fails to be and it’s driving me to violence.

trying to imagine changes that would have taken up the same amount of screen time but would have been more effective:

having the crew bust in to the aid ship in 2x09 the weeping somnambulist, being like: i am holden, saver of worlds, instead of mars cosplay. using this to really lead in to naomi’s distaste for Causes and jim’s newfound expediency through violence. having the pirates only go for the 10% (20% if you want to give a bone to jim, which i don’t) and not be especially murderous, (which also reaffirms the mundanity of this kind of violence, it’s structural) and then still having jim choose to be the hero to deleterious effect. those scenes dragged for a thousand years and blew chunks, and they seriously undercut naomi’s character and politics (and the politics of the show).

like. wrt the vulture preying on families looking to get reunited with stolen security access. is that the best example of violence as expediency and holden’s impaired judgement coming to align with amos (my belovéd)? i would personally break his legs for free. which again leaves…. wet blanket :(

idk i just think that would be a more useful base to cut from. idk!!! just really truncated her!!! the 10 second scene of her and pax mentioning her lost son in the hallway. like. the narrative about state experimentation on children doesn’t care about these kids at all huh.

a final note: having miller and julie die naked while being consumed by the alien life force, embracing a nuclear bomb is so comically close to being My Shit™ but i do not condone heterosexuality like that. also having an ingenue and not having her be gay about it is simply bad writing. and finally having her naked in her final scene (which is also the only one where we see her in real time) be naked (literal male gaze) is just so fucking boring. if they weren’t going to put her in the razorback gear (and then transforming to her dead self as they embraced etc) they should have just used the consumed state. i also hated that her solar plexus was exposed. we deserve so much better than that.

[purpleplaid17]

Jess watches Final Results - Day 285 [x]

The Expanse wins with 4 of 7 votes!

Amos: You ever get cramped in that thing? Bobbie: You kind of grow into it. Prax: Like a plant. Holden: I grew a watermelon in a box once, for a science project. It came out square. About this wide, this high. Naomi: Are they hypoxic? Holden: Guess it was more of a rectangle. Chrisjen: They're whistling in the dark. Holden: Still tasted the same. 🍉

[expansefanficstation]

Holden liked to joke that maybe Finlith was a water-wyrm in a past life, and Finlith always insisted, rather indignantly, that he had always been a dragon.

A Dragonriders of Pern AU for the Expanse, complete with telepathic dragons and all that jazz.

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: The Expanse

Sample Size: 520 stories

Source: AO3

[universalimagines]

I just finished watching The Expanse and I’ve got to say, it’s a hell of a show. Great characters l, well written world building, realistic physics for space travel and a jaw dropping story. (Plus the coolest ship I’ve seen, fuck yeah Rocinante)

Since I love this show so much now, I’m adding it and it’s characters to my list of shows/characters I write for so please send in those asks!!!

[rocicrew]

when the urge to climb your bf & kiss your gf comes at the same time

[elirandom]

I know I'm still shite at this website & finding gifs, & my right arm/shoulder is still fucked so even if I could find a rip & a software to make gifs I can't. But s4x04 Holden putting Naomi away safely on the ship with Alex & then s4x05 punches Murtry in his face & basically invades the camp as one man army to get Amos back? How can you not love that ❤

[always-tilting-at-windmills]

[captain-noir]

i love one space family

[pig-wings]

Chapters: 13/? Fandom: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton/Jim Holden, eventual Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata/Amos Burton, Amos Burton/Naomi Nagata Characters: Amos Burton, Naomi Nagata, Jim Holden (The Expanse) Additional Tags: Angst, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, it'll get happier i promise!!!, roci gang on vacation, Rough Sex, Everyone has feelings and no one is talking about them, Developing Relationship, First Time, Threesome - F/M/M, Dirty Talk Series: Part 2 of synchronous orbits Summary:

Following their camping trip, Amos, Holden, and Naomi navigate the new waters of their intertwining relationships.

Chapter 13 is up! Nolden time 👀

[itmightrain]

[diane-w]

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“Ma’am, for the first time in your life please just shut your damn mouth!” Aww Chrisjen was so anxious for Bobbie. And Amos expression. Not sure if he wants to join her, is admiring her bravery or is trying to understand her sacrifice.

[caribbeanmomma]

The Expanse - Naomi on the sidelines

I’m hoping that anyone and everyone is watching this awesome show. Maybe it’s because I love me a good scifi show (cue Battlestar Gallactica and Star Trek theme songs...). My only issue with the show is that I can’t watch this in one go like my other faves on Netflix. 

I’m sure everyone that loves the show have probably gone back and rewatched the episodes before season 3 started (amirite? Or is it only me?). This second time around gave me a lot to chew on when thinking about how the crew - mainly Holden - is treating Naomi.

Now, I haven’t read the books and am actually planning to, so I don't know what’s to come in the series (if they stick mainly to the book plot) apart from they supposedly are still together 6 books in? But for right now, Naomi is getting a rough handling by her family.

Yes, yes... we all know that she gave a sample of the protomolecule to Fred Johnson. Was she right? I’m not sure if she should have given it to him (better him than Dawes?) but we do know that he was manipulated in to killing those people on the Anderson Station and we saw that he had guilt and regret over it, so he may not be the biggest worst monster out there? Will he do the right thing with the protomolecule or will he really live up to his reputation as the Butcher of Anderson Station?

Anyways, back to Naomi... so one of the last sweet scenes we see between her and Holden is where he promised her “he’d love her through it all” but when she confesses what she’s done - he, along with one of the other most important persons in her life - Amos, turn on her vehemently. In the last episode, we see Holden basically telling her to leave. That certainly isn’t loving someone through it all.

What grinds my gears is that Holden, in his well placed mistrust of Fred Johnson, could not or would not see Naomi’s point of view or at least understand that her fears for the Belt and the Belters is warranted. Neither he nor Amos (who are both Earthers) nor Alex who is a Martian seemed to even bother to see the Belters as worthy as needing protection - preferring to lean towards a more wholistic approach to dealing with the war. All this even though Mars has a big hand in the events that have unfolded - even going as far as unleashing a hybrid on their own Martian Marines.

And another thing - yes, Fred Johnson using the protomolecule as a weapon against Earth and Mars would lead to more death something that everyone on the ship now including Chrisjen are furious about - but were they equally furious at the possibility of even more Belters being killed with it by Earth and Mars’ hands? Weren’t the Belters experimented on first?

Right, so having said all of that, and understanding that Holden does feel betrayed by Naomi for misleading him all this time AND bearing in mind that the sample that was supposed to be hurtled in to the sun was thought to be the last bit of it at the time (but subsequently finding out that it was indeed was NOT), can we truly say she has done the worst of the worst among this group of deeply flawed individuals? I say not. Case in point - some of the things these guys have done:

Holden - responds to the distress beacon against orders which in turn gets the whole thing rolling ever so much faster. He got everyone left on the Cant killed and Naomi covered for him until he was ready to reveal it to Amos, Alex and the guy who died fairly early on (forget his name!). I do wonder though, would Holden have covered for Naomi when Chrisjen was ripping in to them for allowing Fred Johnson to get his hands on the sample? At least Naomi gets a few reasons out for her actions without anyone shutting her up... again.

Miller - when presented with the opportunity to learn from one of the crazy scientists who was responsible for the protomolecule experiments, what does he do? He shoots him clean in the head - no real compelling reason apart from he was one of the dudes who killed Julie - a woman he’d never met while she was alive. The doctor could have helped - he made sure that didn’t happen. And wasn’t he considered to be a traitor to the Belters? Did Naomi care about that?

Prax - when presented with a room full of unarmed doctors who might have been able to lead them to his daughter and the location of more of the protomolecule, what does he do? He opens fire on them leading to yet another sh*t show. Uh, how do dead doctors help you find your daughter Prax? Yeah, thought so.

Amos - he doesn’t really do anything that I can remember that sets them back significantly but he’s guilty of not trying to see Naomi’s side and easily ignores and dismisses her. He who seems to be barely holding on to his sanity most episodes and he does this knowing Naomi’s got his back. No loyalty.

Alex - he also hasn’t done anything with regards to the mission that sets them back, but he is a lousy father and husband and has failed them on a deep level but Naomi doesn’t seem to judge him for it (luckily, he redeems himself by being anxious when he sees her looking at the path to Tycho while on the Razor Back and then reaching out to her through food - yay Alex!)

So these guys really aren’t blameless. Even Chrisjen is a manipulative person and sometimes you can hardly tell what her real agenda is - she has so many subplots going she’s always ten steps ahead. But Naomi sees clean through her though.

Bobbie is a defector - yes, she did what she did for what she thought were the right reasons. I didn’t get the impression she was going to be killed back on Mars, rather stripped from her rank as a Marine. Her people consider her a traitor but she’s being cheered for doing the right thing.

I’m going to close this dissertation by saying, I know that for the sake of the story and plot and in order not to turn the whole thing in to a space soap opera, there needs to be this conflict and some time taken to resolve it in order for it to stay true to what kind of show it primarily is. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck though. Maybe we’ll see some steps closer to resolution in the next episode.