#i literally just apologize bc that's what's expected in that situation i don't think twice about it

[sgkjd]

thank god for long time friends. i forgot what it feels like to have my sentences, jokes, tone (or lack there of) be interpreted the way i intended.

[thegeminisage]

ok, i have a lot of extremely important stuff to do today, but nothing and i mean nothing is more important than this latest tng update. sunday we did "first contact" and "galaxy's child" which was so bad it came close to making me skip my first tng ever and then last night we watched "night terrors" and "identity crisis" which sent me to fucking mars. let's do this

first contact: what a wild episode. my favorite bit in the world is "humans are aliens." it's never not funny. it was funny when they did it in farscape and it's funny when they do it in star trek. i was having a great time. they hold up one of riker's hands and wiggle those strange alien appendages (fingers). gasps all around. "what ARE these?" "a birth defect." points for trying, buddy. he stayed with it until the bitter end

i do wish this had been a funny episode instead of a serious one about space bigotry and alien republicans. the premise is hilarious and the seriousness of the tone, and knowing that in any other context i WOULD have been taking it seriously and enjoying it, kind of brought down the mood a little.

i have mixed feelings about riker's whole deal with that alien lady, tbh. i love watching riker suck and fuck his way out of situations. i love how down to clown he is. unfortunately he didn't seem very down there which turns what could have been an outrageous and fun riker slut moment into a close encounter of the space babes, and i don't really want riker to have any close encounters with space babes. i just want him to have a good time. like did they play it for laughs? yes. and was her fetishisizing him as an ~aaallliiieeenn~ hilarious? also yes. but he literally put his boots back on. and so i just have a hard time finding it as funny as the writers did. i would have been over the moon if this happened to kirk though we could have added it to our slideshow

that said watching him lift up that huge bench preparing to break the window with it was great. he's really strong. good for him.

galaxy's child: i think the only episode worse than this one was code of honor. and at least during code of honor i knew what to expect. i knew everyone said tng seasons 1 and 2 were bad. this blindsided me. it made me incoherent with with rage. catherine straight up stopped watching and let me do the back half on 2x speed.

speaking of seasons 1 and 2, i went and checked and the writer for this episode wrote primarily season 1 and season 2 episodes. they they let this person back i'll never fucking know.

the b plot to this was passable, actually. i liked the pregnant space whale thing even though i thought picard was kind of holding the idiot ball about it. i think it could have been really good in a different episode.

i can't even begin to articulate my thoughts on geordi and leah. it's easily one of the worst examples of star trek aging poorly...in 1991 they had no idea we'd be fighting these battles for real, but today in 2024 we absolutely know it is wrong to use a version of a person's face and body, without their consent, for your own emotional and physical gratification. and the fact that they had kind, easygoing geordi not only do this but then be a huge creep once he met the real woman is already bad, but they didn't even use it as an aesop moment where the moral is not to do that, because even though she yelled at him and told him how violated she felt, she immediately apologized afterwards???

it's just like the barclay episode. fucking real women in the holodecks is embarrassing but not immoral??? but this is totally different from having fantasties in the privacy of your head. he pulled information about her from the fucking computer! christ i'm so glad she turned out to be married. i'm going to try to forgive geordi bc it's not his fault they gave him this shit plot device twice but eeeugh.

night terrors: i literally deserved this. i EARNED this. after the sheer torture of last episode i needed nothing more than whatever the FUCJ this was

firstly for context i had had about two hours of sleep and been awake since 5am while watching this episode. that everyone else in this episode was also profoundly sleep deprived was a source of unending fucking joy to me

i spent half this episode shouting JUST LIKE THOLIAN WEB and then was briefly devastated when it was not in fact the tholians but they delivered in the form of scaring me silly

people hearing things that werent there. picards doorbell pranking him and then the KNOCK AT THE DOOR. the elevator trying to squish picard. SPACE GHOSTS. i was so happy

untill. the scene in the morgue

if you havent watched it then well don't read any further. but beverly is in the morgue and she's looking at all the bodies and then all of a sudden all of them sit up. in the body bags. they moved and they weren't supposed to be moving because they were dead. i may have screamed out loud. i definitely had to pause the episode. i will be thinking about it for the rest of my life. the episode ever. i can never watch it again because what if it's not as good when i've had an adequate amount of sleep? better to leave it as an extremely fond and terrifying memory.

anyway whatever cgi they did to put deanna in that dream was so funny. i hope it looked great in 1991

OH AND I NEARLY FORGOT. her talking worf down from suicide. fueling my riker e deanna e worf ambitions <3

identity crisis: this one was also scary because 1. geordi was with a woman and 2. that invisible shadow thing

luckily the woman brotherzoned geordi within the first 5 seconds (wise) and geordi almost turning into an invisible blacklight guy did a lot to redeem him in my eyes. cuz i dont WANT to dislike him yk thats like the reading rainbow guy

anyway the little invisible shadow in the footage/the holodeck got me bc at first i couldnt even see it. and then i did see it and i got scared about what it belonged to. and then geordi made that little invislbe blob and AAAA it was STANDING THERE even though nobody could SEE IT and i hated when he did it in the holodeck and i hated that planet and

oh yeah everybodys uniforms kept getting shredded. i thought the planet was trying to fuck them or something i didn't like that. but they were just naked bc they had to be naked to be invisible. and i didn't like that either but it was better than the alternate but it was all very frightening

anyway the makeup/special effects in that episode were VERY good, 10/10

TONIGHT: "the nth degree" and "qpid," which i am dreading already <3

[skinni-girls-eat-books]

Wednesday, February 21st, 2024!

4:13am: Ok I love when I read something online and it actually helps sometimes it just takes a day to find ofc someone, or a whole group/ thread of ppl to relate to. I love the Internet, it helps when you're alone 80% of the time.

Ok so a thread about shame/guilt. But it's a good one bc a lot of the time ppl will post about guilt but then everyone in the comments just yay/nays what they did. This guy never says what he did so it's definitely more applicable to other scenarios and not just a peanut gallery.

Basically, kind of like CBT for intrusive thoughts. Pretending like you're telling someone this story, how would they react? Pretending like ok your worst fear about this case comes true, then what? (Either breaking into my apartment, stealing my cats (idc about other possessions personally but to each their own) or being taken to small claims court I suppose. All of these things, even the worst being the cats being taken away somehow, I know I'll live and life will continue on. Things happen for a reason I 100% believe that nothing happens for no reason. There's a reason this chain of events occurred. Something is telling me God was maybe the one looking for any reason to cut him out of my life. Just have faith in something and you'll always have that something to live for (at a minimum, besides all of the other wonderful things there are to live for).

It happened, I apologized, I offered to help, I made my amends. Could things have gone better? Yes I'll take accountability for that. But also, did he have to threaten my brother twice last week? Absolutely not, and he does not realize how that impacted my decision to be much less cordial, less accommodating, because that would infringe upon my boundaries. I don't want my family to feel uncomfortable, this is a boundary for me now and yk it just doesn't only apply to relationships but also friendships. You were making my brother uncomfortable, there is now a crossed boundary and no shit I'm going to alter my behavior because you act erratically and think your behavior doesn't affect anyone outside of yourself. You are wrong.

The other thing the post says is identifying why you did what you did and how to not do it again. I did what I did because I was scared of you. I'm scared you would make a move on me if we went into that closet together. I'm scared of what would happen if I reject you. I'm scared that you were going to provoke a fight with my brother. I'm scared you're going to take my cats AND this is not irrational because you have given me reason to think you would because they are "in your name". You can't just say that shit to people and expect them not to fucking react to it, you are a shitty person for so many reasons and so many things you've said to me like WITHIN the last month bro, not even like I was holding onto shit you said a long time ago. No this was all recent bullshit you said to me and just thought you could get away with.

Ok so how to avoid this in the future? Don't associate with narcissist assholes who disrespect every person who has ever tried to be nice to them. Don't be friends with assholes. This is literally how I will avoid this moving forward. Don't move in with an asshole who is full of red flags. Ok I feel confident now that this will not happen again. Please feel free to refer back to this post. That's the remedy to this situation, don't get involved with a shitty person, once they show you they are shitty, time is up. Just don't get so entangled with a little bitch coward who is willing to value possessions over people time and time again. You know you're better than him, and there's other better people to be friends with. I actually feel like I can move on after writing this all out. I've learned my lesson time and time again with this one person. Repeated behavior doesn't change. Now if I had been known to destroy people's personal belongings, do you think he would've kept that shit here so long? No because I've never fucking done that before, intentionality or accidentally. So to act like this was some grand scheme of mine, he's just looking for a reason to hate me and dump his negativity onto me. I understand nobody likes getting their shit fucked up, and I apologized, he's too immature for me. I can't control what he does or how he feels, if this is how he chooses to react, my reaction to that is really all that matters! I just gotta do what's best for me.

"Life is 10% what actually happens and 90% how you react to it"

2:10pm: vibing in class, finally caught up with everything after being sick!! :') also sitting here thinking, I think my brother saved my life this weekend ❤️ truly, like how my neighbors saved my life. I love them all. I already feel so much less stress.

5:49pm: (text to speech while driving) I called his grandma and talked to her for an hour :) she told me when she saw that all of the things were wet that she just had to laugh and that she was not mad at me and this is why I love this woman she told him that he still could not be mad at me because of all of the f***** up s*** he did to me and she's right that's how I felt about it too I was like I could have thrown these things in the garbage and she & everybody is surprised that I didn't throw his s*** in the garbage like I what why would I keep the things and just let them get wet makes no sense and everybody knows it doesn't make any f****** sense except for his pea brain girlfriend. I feel better. This is so crazy and she even said that he did not mention anything about it to his grandma because he probably didn't even feel that angry about it and he knows it was an accident but that the grandma heard it from the girlfriend because she wants to run around and tell everyone that I left his stuff in the rain and then he just nods along to that, that's hilarious I feel like it would have been a non-issue except that his girlfriend is just running with it I knew it he doesn't hate me bro I f****** knew it he'll be back I'm going to give him his space because I mean I understand it's still not a nice thing to have happened to you and that's his ego talking, right, that ego that he has to protect by Acting mad or whatever but then once it blows over and nobody is bringing it up AKA she is not bringing it up I'm sure he'll find some reason to freaking text me again about something and then it's just all going to start up again. it's cool it is cool I don't know how long it's going to take but it will happen

Honest to God I'm just glad that Grandma thought it was funny and she's not mad and everybody still hates the gf and everybody thinks she's a snake and that she's fake and that something is morally wrong with her she's such a b**** and nobody likes her his grandma also said that she's working on giving him some type of timeline or ultimatum to move out because why would he still be living there as an adult like it just nobody wants him there AND she said it again she wants them to move in together so that they'll break up like and I keep telling her, you still don't like her?? like it's been literally 5 months they've been together for 5 months and I'm like, the fact that nobody likes each other still, nobody is trying to get to know each other, nobody has tried to make amends and everybody still is petty AF towards each other like that's not what I want to happen but that's what's happening and it has nothing to really do with me now it just has to do with the fact that she's fake as f*** and everybody can tell and he has too big of an ego to admit that he's just f***** up big time and then he just keeps f****** up it's insane the only thing that matters is my opinion about it, God's opinion about it, and his grandma's opinion about it bc she is a saint and she is amazing and I love her and I could talk to her for the whole entire night except I had to go to a meeting and now I'm here. What a relief such a relief I could talk to this woman every single day of the rest of our lives I love her and I mean even his grandpa even asked me like last week, called me randomly and was like when are you coming to town he's so cute I love them both, how can you not? oh wait unless you're a raging b**** ��� he even mentioned to his grandma how nice it was that I sent him his birth certificate etc in the mail, like he KNOWS this was an accident, he's just being a little bitch for the time being 😂

6:06pm: Long story short, nobody is mad!! Normal people don't get mad about accidents plus everyone else would have thrown it away!! Grandma thought it was funny and still loves me, and he is just protecting his stupid ego 😂 I'm so glad I called her ❤️

P.S. Grandma did not GAF about poor grandpa dying 💀 she said I don't know that man 👀😂 aaaaaaaa I love her sm that's wild. She said the gf is so fake, just puts on this act like she's so innocent and everyone thinks she's just a weird POS. Plus she agreed it's fucked up and if she really cared about her grandpa she wouldn't have left!! I was like wtf?? Jeez so mf fake as helllllll and she's not fooling anyone yuck ick ick. And she STILL looks like a boy 💀 fucking dumbasses 😂

[wickedpact]

A ranking of all the TTT stories in order of how much I liked them.

(Oh god this is so long)

1 My Mother's Axe

BABY ANDYYYYYYYYYYYY. Honestly this one had the trifecta of developing a character's motivations, developing a character's backstory, & developing their personality. The story starting out with Andy teaching Nile to use the axe was so charming and fun, and you could feel that chemistry they had in Opening Fire, the way they teased and bickered with each other so naturally. I loved the wedge between them on the subject of the axe, how Nile was perhaps a little too young to understand Andy's feelings about whether or not its the 'same' axe. I also love how the axe is obviously the symbol of the franchise and hugely important, but you never get a sense of exactly how important it is to Andy until you read the story.

I love the entire Ship of Theseus theme, and how it feels so natural that for Andy she has to get attached to the idea of things rather than the things themselves because she'll always outlive the things themselves-- the axe is symbolically her mom's axe, even if physically it isn't. And I love how she clearly clings to that concept so tightly. "This is the labrys she held in her hands...." IT GETS ME.

And the fact that this sense of BELONGING, of FAMILY, of CULTURE is so important to Andy that she clings to it (figuratively and literally) with both hands. And of course it's important to her, she spent so long alone that the woman doesn't even remember her birth name. That axe (or the idea of that axe) is all she has left of her mother and that family/culture she was born into.

PLUS on that note I love how Andy doesn't remember if her mom was her actual biological mother, but it doesn't matter to her. This woman was her mother in all the ways that counted. And how her mom BETRAYED AND KILLED Andy but Andy loved her so much that she avenged her and carried her axe for thousands of years. THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!!!!

I also loved how the story transcends the timeline of the whole franchise and seeing Andy through the years. Loved seeing her with the varying squads and with varying axes. Also baby Andy was so cute. It was cool seeing her so young. like holy fuck. Andromache The Scythian, Immortal Warrior (but smol). Love that.

Also I think this one is one of the few ttt stories that doesn't suffer from length problems.

tldr: goddammit greg you've done it again.

2 Zanzibar and Other Harbors

Zanzibar my beloved. I've said before, but it's downright comedic how little regard there was for Joe and Nicky's character designs in this story. The same person who does the colors for the regular comic did the colors for this one too, and you can tell, every panel of this story was Beautiful.

Ik there was A Lot of criticism of this one (lmao @ how the fandom had no idea what was to come) but I thought a lot of The Discourse was a bit dramatic. I did think Nicky came off as a little oblivious to Joe's feelings in this story, but I've said before, I honestly think that was a 'tone not translating' thing. It felt like Nicky was nagging Joe for [checks notes] saving innocent people, but Joe was so amused by Nicky's complaints I really do think it was supposed to come off as teasing.

Plus I know the 'Joe running off into danger and Nicky reluctantly following' dynamic wasn't popular (I'm a pretty meh on it meself) but I did love how Joe's impulsiveness (if you want to call it that) was interpreted as heroism and not hot-hotheadedness. All of the examples Nicky and Joe talked about included Joe explicitly saving people. (and it also took A Lot for the nazi to actually provoke Joe).

I also feel like their characterization here was closest to the movie canon-- the bit where they hear the woman scream and Joe goes running in to save her while Nicky swoops in on Joe's heels to comfort her while Joe and the nazi were fighting reminds me of the train car scene. Joe had suggested First that they go find Nile because she needed to be protected, and Nicky later added that Nile probably also needed emotional support. Similar reactions.

But it was So Good, the themes of queer community and the enduring nature of queer culture are Not themes you see in media that often and it was such a delight how it was done. Also it's one of the few more modern TTT stories that has a completely valid excuse for taking place when it did. Chef's kiss.

3 Passchendaele

I love the Duality between seeing baby Andy and then seeing Mama Andy in the very next issue. This story doesn't have a ton of meat to it, but the entire concept of Andy adopting a war orphan straight off the battlefield PLUCKS MY TENDER LITTLE HEARTSTRINGS, and I think it's especially poignant for comic!Andy. I think most people wouldn't think twice about movie!Andy doing something like that but comic Andy is so hardened and almost cruel sometimes, and seeing that even for her the world hasn't beaten all of the compassion from her yet is SO!!!!!!! this woman contains MULTITUDES okay, she's violent and angry and tired and Done but she's also so kind and compassionate and THE STRENGTH OF HER!!!!! Also the idea of her and Yitzhak co-raising a kid together is so damn cute. It was #mysterious pre-Yitzhak-story but now it's cute. holy fuck. It's cute.

& the headbonk panel of her and Zeus lives in my heart. anyways.

4 Many Happy Returns

I Know people weren't thrilled about Booker being in this one, but I've developed a pet-peeve about that: this story was *not* booker-centric. Booker only exists in this story to the extent required to explain the importance of the gesture Nile makes towards him. If there was a story about Booker making some grand gesture of kindness to Nile no one would be saying it was Nile-centric. bc it wouldn't be! Booker exists in this story to explore Nile's kindness, its not about him. I saw that a couple times and it bothered me. anyways.

AAAAAAAAAA I loved this one, the art was beautiful, I loved how Andy Nile and Booker were drawn (like their comic selves but.. more looking like actual people). I loved Andy and Nile's Bants, how Andy wanted to jump right in and Do Violence but Nile was basically telling her to hold her horses.

I feel like I'm just repeating the post I made on this story a few days ago, but I LOVED how Nile's plan revolves not around violence or Cool Mercenary Skills but on Nile's own life skills (as she canonly did a lot of minimum wage job-hopping before the marines in comics canon). Her plan used her skills, not the skills of an immortal warrior, and HER SKILLS were in fact more useful for the situation! lov to see Nile's resourcefulness and planning skills.

AND HOW NILE WAS PROBABLY WATCHING BOOKER??? it's so Much bc 1.) nile knew booker A SINGLE DAY and yet he made such an impression on her emotionally that she had to keep an eye on him and 2.) she said in the movie she wanted Booker to get off free with an apology. Yes she's a member of the team but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to follow orders like a good little soldier. I also love how she convinced Andy to go along with it. her HEART, her KINDNESS, her THOUGHTFULNESS, UGH.

5 The Bear

Honestly I have like no negative things to say about this one other than a.) character design issues which is less about the story itself and is more of a 'tog comic in general' criticism and b.) too short, but it was supposed to be a tease, so.

But I loved Yitzhak, I wasn't expecting to really like him at all but like I said in my other post, he tickled me. I love characters who are Kind™, especially if they have little reason to be so given their backgrounds. Chef's kiss. Lov him.

6 Bonsai Shokunin

I know this one was a little controversial bc of the outsider POV but whenever I see people upset about that they never point out that the Outsider Guy (the samurai) existed as a reflection on Noriko. His ideas are explained in the text to develop hers. The whole story follows how she gave mercy to a scared young man and in response he murdered Noriko, repeatedly! Who gave him the right to inflict such pain and suffering on the world? In his opinion, the lack of response from the gods was his permission. And for Noriko-- over and over again she dies and suffers because she gave mercy, which lines up with her ideas in FM about how it's their fate to rule mortals and if they don't align with that plan/fate/whatever then they suffer. It shows some background to those ideas and how they developed in her mind outside of Ocean Madness™. Additionally, his idea of 'the Gods have done nothing to strike me down so it's fine if I do these things' kind of explains how Noriko may justify her own morally corrupt actions-- she's died so many times and it's never stuck. Maybe if she did die any of those times, or while she was in the water, maybe that would've been a sign she was doing something right, or at least doing something normal. But she hasn't died. Fate isn't done with Noriko yet. And maybe there's a reason for that. In her mind, it's just not a very pleasant reason, is all.

There were things I was kind of meh about tho. I did kind of wish we saw something of Noriko and the team, or smth explaining the way she was before her dip in the pool-- personality, likes dislikes, etc. but it wasn't bad or anything. It was super vague tho, I had to read it a few times before I got what it was going for. Liked the art. Liked the bonsai metaphor. And of course I Respect the decision to use the 1300s (1200s? I don't remember off the top of my head) rather than using the last 200 years.

7 Strong Medicine

Honestly looking back, this one made me kind of sad because both this one and Bonsai Shokunin explored character's ideas on Fate and The Divine and how that intersects with immortality and I totally thought that theme would be continued, especially with Love Letters. But Then It Wasn't™.

Admittedly.... I had to re-read this one to remember most of it. I liked Booker's ideas on God, 'The conductor of the symphony just may not be very good at his trade' but the plot itself was kind of forgettable. Some fuckin cowboys try to kill a doctor (their second) because he couldn't save their sickly brother. Book tries to stop them, gets killed, and then comes back and kills them all before they get the doctor. Alright. I liked the artstyle because the characters were ugly in a similar way that leandro's are, but way more bearable.

I love the Irony of Booker concluding that there is no such thing as fate or destiny and nothing has meaning, AS HE UNKNOWINGLY SAVES MERRICK'S GRANDFATHER FROM BEING KILLED. Booker getting fucked over by life/god/destiny yet again. It also kind of explains about where the fuck hell Merrick's interest in immortal mercenaries even came from.

I originally had this one a lot higher and then I thought about it and moved it down like two spots.

8 Never Gets Old

I liked seeing Booker interact with his kid. And we got a name for the kid! Philippe was a little bitch though, he was a little obnoxious. I liked how Booker was so thrilled to experience a restaurant with his kid (and since we know he was there before, it can be assumed he went with all of his kids and yet he was so charmed each time). It fits with his line to Nicky in the moon landing story about how you don't appreciate beautiful things 'unless you have someone to share them with'. It was charming to see Booker interact with his kid, and to see him so happy. Also lmao @ Booker's big fat Ye Olde Crush on Andy.

However at the same time it was like.. of all the things to write about,,, I guess? Booker's Night Out...... alright. Especially since Book had so many stories.

I don't know, it was alright. The old man killing him really came out of nowhere, (but the 'Salut, asshole!' panel was funny tho).

9 How To Make a Ghost Town

I've hit a point where talking about these stories has gotten less fun. I liked this one but I felt like Achilles getting lynched was not really necessary for a story that was already tragic (a story that already involved Achilles doing a lot of suffering at the hand of bigots). When we first got the blurb for this story I thought it would be about Andy returning to the squad and making friends with Booker after losing Achilles and them butting heads on the idea of family and when to cut off ties. So a little bit of my underwhelmedness about this one might be just my expectations being different.

Honestly I was pretty interested in Andy and Achilles' relationship and I would've liked to see more of them-- like, what was their dynamic like? What did they love about each other?

But anyways Andy leaving and Achilles getting killed anyways feels so pointlessly tragic (which I suppose is the point..... I don't like tragedies) she left to save him and yet people killed him anyway. Meh.

I did love the bits about Andy wanting to have a domestic life (Andy and her multitudes again) and the little detail about how she buried her axe near the road but he buried his guns under his bed-- he was an escaped slave, he never had the luxury of assuredness like Andy did. It was a sad story.

10 Lacus Solitudinis

'You put this one above love letters crim??? how could you???' easy, lmao.

There was stuff in this one I liked. But to talk about stuff I didn't like: (I'll keep it brief, I know ragging on this story has been done time and time again)

UH, setting aside the 6 year cold shoulder between Joe and Nicky, I thought their chosen method of conflict resolution was... bad at best. Nicky's inability to talk about his feelings was also annoying, especially since the entire point of this story is a fight Joe and Nicky had, and yet we don't get both sides to the story, which is...... important? That fact is especially annoying bc in the absence of Nicky explaining his side of the story, it's absolutely a possible (and admittedly probably unintentional) interpretation of the text that we do get that Joe routinely resolves conflict between him and Nicky by simply cutting Nicky out of his life entirely until Nicky just. caves? Even if it takes years?

WHICH i could get into that interpretation and how fucked up i find it. but im not going to. out of restraint.

I don't know, I think there are a lot of interesting ways to go about this conflict but 'Nicky wants to kill a guy and Joe refuses to acknowledge his existence until he stops because he thinks Nicky is too much of a Good Boy to get his hands dirty like that' ('I wont watch as the world turns his (...) compassion into something ugly'. ) wasn't.. how I would've done it. (I mean you know Joe doesn't give a shit about what Nicky is doing in a moral way, because Joe doesn't even care or mention that Booker is killing those cops too. Joe only cares because he doesn't like the idea of Nicky changing in a way he finds undesirable.)

admittedly I've said before, I do like the emphasis Joe's reaction puts on Nicky's kindness. Joe has a complete inability to cope with Nicky simply Not Being Kind. It speaks to the steadiness of Nicky's compassion all those years. but still that fact doesn't make it the conflict feel worth it

hm. I said I would be brief and I wasn't.

oh well. basically I thought there was interesting conflict potential there but it wasn't done the way I would've liked, and the way it was done leaves a lot of disturbing (and again probably unintended) interpretations to lie.

What I did like? Andy and Joe having that pessimist/optimist dynamic. Joe nerding out about science. Andy not being impressed by The Achievements Of Man. I loved Booker needling at Nicky about his outdated slang and also trying to give him Older Brother advice practically in the same breath. I loved Booker giving The Worst relationship advice ever and Nicky being like 'I Will Not Do That, Ever, Thanks.' the family vibes were so good. The Joenicky vibes left a lot to be desired tho.

11 Love Letters

I talked about my problems with Nicky in this story (and Lacus Solitudinis). I don't know, the story isn't bad but I do hold a little bit of a grudge towards it because its very existence begs the existence of a solo Joe story and we didn't get one. If we never got this story, then we could happily count Lacus Solitudinis and Zanzibar as The Joenicky Stories™ and move on with our lives. sigh.

I remember when we first got the blurb for this story I was really curious about why Nicky specifically + the setting, and the answer kind of feels like 'the author had an idea for a story like this and saw ttt as a good enough place to utilize that idea'. Plus I was really underwhelmed by the Romantic Sentiment in the letter. If you look at it line-by-line, the majority of the letter is actually Nicky talking about how lonely and disturbed he is, rather than actual,, yknow,,, Romantic Sentiment. I mean, compare the van speech and this letter and this letter is just kind of meh in comparison. I liked nicky calling joe wise! and I liked the brief sun/moon metaphor! and otherwise it was eh. It didn't even have cute squad banter, which is why Lacus Solitudinis is above this one.

12 An Old Soul

Nun orgy. Nun orgy?????? Nun orgy.......

The whole story felt like a setup to have a nun orgy. Why did Booker have abs? Why did they do that to Andy's nose? ?????? the art was good at least.

nun orgy.