#science fiction love story

[sincericida]

ANDREW GARFIELD

staring "I'm Here", a 2010 American short film, written and directed by Spike Jonze.The film is a science fiction love story about two robots living in Los Angeles where humans and robots co-exist. The plot is based on the 1964 book "The Giving Tree", and the main character is named after its author Shel Silverstein. (source)

[otaku553]

Save me yi nine sols

(You should play nine sols it’s very very fun)

[kittybricks]

Do You Love the Colour of the Sky? (Or: This Must be the Place)

(I apologize for the resolution in advance. Still troubleshooting.)

[praxcrown5]

War and Wings: Truth or Dare

So, this piece is, like, three years in the making.  I started working on the lineart while I still lived in Texas, and really didn't knuckle down to work on it until last year.  I've been busy lately, so I've only been able to work on it a few hours at a time.  And since digital art isn't my strong-suit, it took a LOT of hours.  Way too many to count.

This deviation is a scene from the first chapter of an old Transformers Prime fanfiction I wrote back in the early 10's.  Team Prime is playing truth or dare with their human partners.  Their fun annoys Ratchet, whom is working on his nerdy science stuff (AKA synthetic energon).  Rafael rolls a nat 20 on his charisma check to convince Ratchet that they'll leave him alone...so long as he plays a few rounds with him.  Ratchet has no idea what he's getting into.

Link to the Fic on Fanfiction.net. Eventually, I'll migrate it over to A03. Eventually...

[whereserpentswalk]

You're the daughter of a nobleman living on a remote frontier world. You're at the edge of human and alien space, doomed never too see any of the great nations and planets of humanity. But the king of your planet is part of a powerful religion, and you sometimes get inner world technology that you otherwise wouldn't that way.

Because you're attending university in the city, away from the peace of your father's palace, in a city where even aliens and robots can be commonplace, your father got the church to send a guardian to protect you. You're a bit disturbed by the idea, but it's probably the most alone you'll ever be allowed to be in the city.

The guardian is a human enhanced with technology to be the perfect soldier. She's tall, slender but muscular, and vaugly masculine at least compared to the women you're used to seeing in your father's palace. She would have been kind of attractive if she was fully human, but you're reminded that she's meant as a tool to protect you, her body has bits of machinery sticking out of it, and her eyesballs were replaced with deep red robotic eyes with black edges instead of white ones. She always wears a suit of black power armor with holy symbols on it, you don't think she's allowed any other clothing.

She's submissive to you the way a gaurd dog is submissive. She obeys basically any order you give her other than to go away. It's weird how dehumanized she is despite her mostly human body, her face doesn't even emote, it's just this blank expression, with these wide paranoid eyes. It's hard to explain her to any freinds you meet at school, why there's this kind of creepy pale figure in black armor always standing over you.

As time goes on you do start to apricate her more and more. She's not like other servents, when you tell her to turn around she does, when you tell her to stand back she does, and she never asks to do anything you don't ask for. There's been a few times when you've needed her protection, useally just from catcallers, but there is worse you've needed help from, you're still nobility, and all your father's rivals would still be happy to see you dead.

As time goes I'm you start to talk to her more. Despite not expressing emotions she still has them. It starts just with her helping you in school because she's technically been to all your classes. But soon you just start talking about the subjects, she's actually surprisingly smart, and very curious about things that she never had a chance to learn about before. Once she's comfortable talking to you she starts asking about things. Eventually you start showing her shows you like, and reading stories to her, because it feels like she never had a chance to do those things before. Despite how powerful she is there's something very innocent about her, she's paranoid, but when she's comfortable she's excited to learn new things.

Eventually when you're more comfortable talking about your pasts she tells you she was captured as a child by the church during a war between the church and its enemies, she was strong, and obeyed threats well, so they turned her into what she is now so that she could be useful. It's been a long time since that, her body doesn't age anymore, she barely knows how it feels to still be human. You decide to start praising her more, and telling her how nice she looks, and how lovely she is, though her face doesn't emote she seems to really enjoy it. You start petting her head and cuddling with her. And even though she's taller than you you let her rest in your arms. You don't think she's ever gotten that kind of affection, it's really nice for her to finally have that, to be loved just for existing. If she could still cry, you think she would have when you held her, and when you called her lovely.

Things slowly chance. You find yourself talking to her more, and thinking of her as more of a human. Eventually you start sleeping in the same bed together, and you're ok with seeing eachother naked. She doesn't have genitals or breasts anymore, the church doesn't like it's little fighting dolls to have any parts they consider lewd, but she likes cuddling you naked, and her willingness to serve you includes giving you pleasure, even if you could never do the same for her. Despite how inhuman she is, there's something beautiful about her body, and something comforting about slowing rubbing her with your hands, and gently feeling the bits of machine that come out of her skin.

No priest would marry you, and no law would even see her as anything but your property. But when you look out from your apartment window at the city lights below, and the flare of starships above, it feels as if you were ment to be there together.

[kinoshi]

Ужастики смотрят

Яньцин не понимает, куда он жмал

Долго думала, выкладывать или нет, ибо жестко ошиблась при рисовании этой работы, из за чего все пошло под откос. Но ладно, пусть будет.

Полтора часа рисовала скетч на еще одну работу и в итоге удалила его, ибо вообще не вышло. Надо потренироваться, научите рисовать...

[marlynnofmany]

Just a Rock

For all the time I’ve spent traveling through space, I haven’t spend much of it actually out in space. It’s unsettling. Inside the ship, I can forget how close the airless void is, how small our precious bubble of air. But outside, everything is black like some vast creature ate all the color in the universe first, then the air, and is now hungering for life forms too.

Sometimes those distant stars look like teeth.

These are the thoughts that tend to pop up when I’m in my exo suit, hoping that my thruster pack doesn’t run out of fuel before I make it back to the ship. But then an empty pack of chips will float by my visor, and I can refocus on business.

That’s how it happened today, at any rate. (And yes, “day” is a silly concept in the blackness of space.) We’d made a detour to see if we could pick up some extra funds by gathering salvage from a museum ship that had gone kablooey, but so far all we were finding was trash.

Paint jetted past in her own exo suit, upside-down to my frame of reference, then stopped to pull apart a jumble of carpet fragments. “They really did clear out the good stuff already,” she said over the radio. She swatted aside a drink cup with her tail, looking like a little space-suited dinosaur, a thought that kept me entertained for a good few seconds.

Captain Sunlight’s voice said, “Keep an eye out for scrap metal. That may already be gone too, but it’s worth a shot.” She was somewhere else in the drifting junk pile, or maybe back near the ship; I couldn’t tell. There was too much stuff in the way. This was a mildly alarming thought — out of sight meant out of safety — but I caught a glimpse of the Frillian twins posted as safety guards at the edge of the cloud, and my heartbeat settled a bit.

“Do you think anyone will buy some mildly used carpet?” Paint asked the captain. “It’s only in several pieces.”

“Let’s go with ‘no.’”

“What about some very exotic — what is this — napkins? Made with authentic Earth wood fibers!”

I looked over at that. “How can you tell?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” Paint said. She held up half of a wall placard. “But this is from the Earth exhibit, so maybe the napkins are too.”

I looked around at the trash in a new light. “Man, it’s a pity we weren’t here for any of the good stuff.”

“Yeah, and all these food packages are empty! We can’t even get you a slightly exploded taste of home!”

I waved my hand through a cluster of soda bottles. “I appreciate the thought.”

Paint jetted over to a different pile of whatever. “Hey, do you think any of this food trash was actually an exhibit? Packaging from olden days?”

“Uh, maybe,” I said. “Probably not. That’s not the sort of thing I’d expect on a multi-species museum ship. A janky little humans-only one, maybe. But even then, most people aren’t going to care.”

Something clunked against the back of my helmet. I hate that. Nothing like a reminder that I can’t see behind me like some species can. I toggled the jets to rotate in place, so I could find the offending object.

It was a rock.

“What’s this doing here?” I asked, closing a gloved hand around it and bringing it in for a closer look.

“What’d you find?” Paint asked, sticking out sideways from behind a twisted bench.

“A rock.”

“A meteorite rock?” she asked. “Oh hey, do you think it pierced the hull?”

“No, it doesn’t look like a space rock,” I said, turning the small gray-and-white lump over. It was mostly smooth, with a divot that would have fit a fingertip if I hadn’t been wearing the gloves. “Weird. I wonder if it was part of some Neolithic exhibit or something.”

“Can I see?” Paint jetted over to park herself in roughly the same orientation as me. She was very good with that jetpack.

I showed her the rock. “It doesn’t look like any gemstone I know. Maybe some kid had it in their pocket, then threw it away.”

Paint cocked her head. “Is that normal, for your young to carry rocks around?”

“Sure. You never picked up something you thought was neat as a kid?”

“Not a rock,” Paint said with exaggerated disdain. “A sweet-smelling seednut or herb, absolutely.”

“But look: it’s even got a little finger groove,” I pointed out. “You could stick it in a pocket and rub it for luck.”

“Could you?”

I smiled. “You could. You probably wouldn’t, but…”

“Why?”

I looked at the rock again, already fond of it. “I get the feeling that I couldn’t explain this to a point where you’d agree.”

Paint shrugged. “Probably not. But hey, we found you a souvenir after all. From probably the Earth section of whatever museum this is.” She grabbed a handful of colorful pamphlets drifting by. “The ‘Galaxy in a Bottle Museum Tour Ship.’ Who named that?”

My smile turned into a wide grin. “Humans.”

Paint grumbled about the unflattering comparison of an elite starship to a simple bottle. When she moved to toss the pamphlets away, I held out a hand.

“What’s that white one?” I asked. “It looks like a display sign.”

Paint flipped over the stack and separated the one I meant. “You’re right. Hey, it’s about a rock!”

I reached out a grabby hand. “Gimme.”

She passed it over. “Is it that rock?”

I read the title, then was gut-punched by familiarity. I’d heard about this. “Yes,” I managed, skimming the rest of the sign and holding the rock close. “This is Bethan’s Rock.”

“What?”

I fumbled to explain. “Ages ago, a kid visited a museum — a human kid — and learned what museums were for, then offered her favorite rock as a donation, so other people could appreciate it too.”

Paint cocked her head in the other direction. “And they took it?”

“Yes!” I must have looked a little wild at this point, but I didn’t care. “The adults agreed that it was a fine thing to donate, not to mention adorable, and the only one of its kind that I’ve ever heard of. More museums should house the occasional favorite rock, though I suppose they wouldn’t be as special if they did.”

“So just to clarify,” Paint said. “There isn’t anything valuable about this rock, except that one of your youths decided there was. And all the adults played along.”

I smiled down at it, careful not to let it drift away. “It’s the most precious non-precious stone I’ve ever seen.”

Paint stared for a moment. “It’s not even one of those shiny ones you like.”

I laughed. “I know!”

The captain called us back in at that point, having found one decent chunk of metal among the mountains of trash. We had a schedule to keep.

I folded the sign and tucked it into my suit pocket, but held the rock tight in my fist as I jetted toward the ship, working the controls with one hand. I was already thinking of the safest place in my quarters to keep it until we got ahold of the proper Earth museum authorities. Other humans would want to see Bethan’s Rock, after all, but it would be my honor to watch over it until they could.

~~~

(Inspired by this post. Long live Bethan’s Rock.)

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character of this book. More to come!

[elbiotipo]

Even though I'm a bit guilty of it myself with my own space opera setting (it's supposed to have a retro aesthetic), it's surprising how science fiction has been so permeated by cynicism and what I can best define as "End of History" thinking that the only thing pop sci fi seems able to imagine is "the future will be the same as today (or even worse), but there will be Cool Laser Guns"

(lately even the lasers have been replaced by regular bullets)

What I mean is that much like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, it's easier to imagine our current capitalist system extending indefinitely but now In Space rather than imagine societal changes. Like, this it guys? We're gonna have to pay rent and fight pointless wars and be ruled by corporate suits forever? are we actually gonna have fucking CEOs as we explore the galaxy?

This is it? You can't imagine a better world than this?

Even when sci-fi authors talk about realism, it's usually about how to make ships pound each other harder with missiles, not how about society will evolve in the future, what changes might technology bring to society (the whole point of science fiction in my opinion). It's just Today, But With Lasers. We will still have corporations, nation-states, cops, war, the same society we have now. But Now With Lasers.

anyways, for a good start, read Banks and LeGuin, but there are others, lots more, who dare to imagine what actual futures might look like, they just aren't as well known

[honourablejester]

A Space-Themed Trinkets List for TTRPGs

Exactly what it says on the tin. Roll a d100 or choose from the following list of space-themed trinkets for your character to have with them:

01-02. A tattoo showing the galactic coordinates of your homeworld.

03-04. A sheared metal bolt from a spacewalk tether mounting unit.

05-06. A frayed cloth patch torn from your old uniform when you left.

07-08. A small display case containing soil samples from every planet you’ve visited.

09-10. The last vacuum-sealed bar of a discontinued line of rations that you’re keeping as half collector’s item and half item of last resort.

11-12. A small holo-unit that projects an image of your parents.

13-14. A poster showing a luxurious pleasure resort that you’ve never had the money to visit.

15-16. A small chip of a reddish mineral that glows in the dark that you have no idea of the origins of.

17-18. A small holo-unit that you bought in a junkshop near the spaceport and that purports to show a partially-corrupted map to a hollowed-out treasure asteroid.

19-20. A portable lamp that mimics the sunlight and day cycle of your homeworld.

21-22. A chunk of rock from the first asteroid you helped mine.

23-24. A metal box containing a horrific lump of congealed engineering fluids that you found on an inspection and are keeping partly as an example but mostly out of curiosity.

25-26. A strange metal object bearing a weird greenish symbol on one surface that you found on an otherwise completely uninhabited asteroid.

27-28. The smashed remnants of a medical scanner from your first, ill-fated mission.

29-30. A collection of tiny bottles of the weirdest alcohols you could find on various worlds you’ve visited.

31-32. A picture of you and your old crew in a protective sleeve.

33-34. A bio-locked address book containing the contact details of friendly faces in the various spaceports you frequent.

35-36. A holo-unit showing a person you don’t know that you salvaged from the personal quarters of a derelict ship.

37-38. An electronic portable library of choice reading material to keep you company on long hauls.

39-40. A really cool jacket that you bought with your first pay check and like to wear for shore leave.

41-42. An ‘emergency depressurisation kit’ that consists of a grappling hook and a canister of ‘sprayable oxygenated face mask’ that you bought from a shady guy at a spaceport and have no idea if they’re functional or not.

43-44. A medical pass granting you permission to leave the quarantine zone around your homeworld.

45-46. A disabled distress beacon from your escape pod fifteen years ago.

47-48. An inert and cracked AI core module that you really weren’t supposed to have taken from that derelict ship.

49-50. A ‘lucky coin’ you won in a game on leave that your opponent seemed weirdly upset to lose.

51-52. Your grandmother’s lucky bone-handled knife from when she used to be part of the distant exploration corps. She never told you what type of bone it was.

53-54. Your trusty environmental scanner that is four models out of date but has never failed you yet.

55-56. A tiny metal disc that a weird guy once paid you for a job with, which if pressed to your skin somehow perfectly regulates the temperature of the air in your vicinity to your preferences by no visible means. It works on every planet with an atmosphere that you’ve been on so far.

57-58. A beautifully carved spice chest containing spices from your homeworld, for when you’re feeling homesick. It’s been getting really hard to restock it out here.

59-60. A disabled registration chip from the labour camp that you kept after escaping, even though it would be a really stupid thing to have on you if you’re ever back in that sector of space.

61-62. A tiny bag of glittering micro-crystals from the surface of a moon. Worthless, but so pretty.

63-64. A canister of engineering lubricant that you are literally never without.

65-66. A tattoo of a series of unknown symbols that you and your buddies from your old military unit got after a particularly hellish mission. None of you took any pictures of the lab you found them in, but somehow all of you remembered them perfectly.

67-68. A portable mining lamp your dad ‘borrowed’ when they decommissioned the old colony. The batteries on this thing are incredible, as they haven’t run out nearly 55 years later.

69-70. A seashell from the first time you ever saw an ‘ocean’ after growing up in space.

71-72. A portable personal forcefield that only stops rain, from the first time you experienced ‘weather’ and decided you didn’t like it very much.

73-74. The helmet of a spacesuit that has clearly been partially melted through by some sort of acidic substance and which you refuse to answer questions about.

75-76. An object which you found in a junk bin at a salvage yard and which no one you’ve ever met has been able to identify.

77-78. A single live seed in a viability canister that everyone who leaves your homeworld is given to take with them.

79-80. A religious pamphlet that some nutjob on the hub station gave you. It’s got some seriously weird and somewhat apocalyptic stuff in there, but for some reason you haven’t thrown it away yet.

81-82. A well-read, second-hand copy of ‘Myths of Hyperspace: A Collection of Spacer Tales’ that you bought for funsies and totally don’t believe in, no sir.

83-84. A collection of antique medical equipment that your old captain gave to you, for reasons you aren’t entirely sure of.

85-86. An unlabelled collection of beautiful music recordings you found in a spaceport, and which you’ve been idly trying to identify ever since.

87-88. A dataset of sightings, speculation and other information regarding a mysterious ship that has been seen on and off for the last fifty years by gas miners and illegal racers in the clouds of your gas giant homeworld, and which you’ve been obsessed with since you caught what might have been a glimpse of it yourself.

89-90. A ring gene-locked to your lost partner that will never come off your finger.

91-92. A tiny realistic-looking but robotic animal that was the only type of pet allowed on your company’s spaceships.

93-94. A bottle of extremely heavy-duty and almost definitely expired anti-nausea medication that you kept from your first shuttle ride into space.

95-96. A dog-eared magazine containing a two-page spread of the most beautiful spaceship you’ve ever seen in your life, and which you’ve sworn to yourself that you will one day own.

97-98. A corporate logo of the company that left your colony to die, torn off the side of one of the cheap delivery crates full of useless equipment that they supplied.

99-100. A recording of a garbled and unintelligible transmission one of your old buddies sent you, and which you’ve only kept because they vanished not long afterwards. There’s a weird sound that keeps repeating in the background, but you don’t know what it is.

[filmnoirsbian]

nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist kip thorne BULLIED nolan to keep interstellar within the confines of spacetime plausibility?? new favorite Tidbit thank you for your service dr thorne and thank YOU for blogging about it <3

Yes he did because he knew the truth that the universe we live in is already filled with fantastical elements and possibilities that don't need to be overdramatized to still be thrilling and enchanting <3 he also wrote a book on the real science behind the film :)

[infosphere]

The Midnight Library - Magical, Fantasy and Realism short story

In a small town shrouded in mystery, there existed a library that only opened its doors at midnight. Known as "The Midnight Library," it was a place where time stood still, and the books whispered secrets of lives unlived. The townspeople spoke in hushed tones about its existence, warning each other that those who ventured inside might never come out the same. One fateful night, a curious girl named Elara, feeling out of place in her mundane life, decided to seek out the library. She felt drawn to it, as if the very air around her buzzed with untold stories. As the clock struck twelve, she found the entrance, an ancient wooden door adorned with intricate carvings that seemed to dance in the moonlight. Stepping inside, Elara was engulfed by a warm golden glow. The shelves were lined with books of every size and color, each one a portal to a different life. A sign above the check-out desk read, “Choose wisely; each book is a life you could have lived.”Intrigued, she picked up a dusty tome titled "The Life of a Dreamer." As she opened it, she was swept into a whirlwind of vibrant memories—her life as a painter in Paris, a poet in New York, a traveler who danced beneath the Northern Lights. Each page turned revealed another dream, another path she could have taken. But as the hours slipped away, Elara noticed something unsettling. Each life she explored began to blur with her own, and the lines between her reality and the stories began to fade. She met versions of herself—some joyful, others filled with regret—each urging her to embrace the choices she had made or to rewrite her story entirely. As dawn approached, Elara faced a choice: to return to her mundane reality or to stay and live among the infinite possibilities within the pages. Just then, the librarian, an ethereal figure with silver hair and eyes that sparkled like stars, appeared beside her. “Every choice has its price,” the librarian said softly. “What will you sacrifice for the life you desire? ”With a heavy heart, Elara realized that to stay meant leaving behind her family, her friends, and the life she had known. But the allure of endless possibilities was intoxicating. In that moment of decision, she understood that every life, no matter how different, had its own beauty and pain. As the first light of dawn broke through the library’s windows, Elara took a deep breath and closed the book. She realized that while she could explore other lives, her own was waiting for her to embrace it fully. With newfound clarity, she stepped back through the door, leaving the library behind but carrying the stories within her heart. From that day forward, Elara approached her life with a sense of wonder and purpose. She began to paint, write, and travel, each action a tribute to the lives she had glimpsed. The Midnight Library remained a cherished memory, a reminder that while infinite paths lay before her, the most beautiful story was the one she was living right now. And so, in the small town, the legend of The Midnight Library continued to grow, a beacon for dreamers searching for their own stories, waiting for the next curious soul to step through its door. Copyright 2024, InfoSphere

[beauspot]

ok so years after it came out I finally watched Tenet. and i’m confused…but it was good.

i had no idea what to expect from this movie except “ooh movie go forward and in reverse oooooo” i also knew people shitted on it a lot because the plot wasn’t super clear. through all of this I never heard the meaning of this movie. or what it was about.

Tenet (i’m assuming everyone who’s seeing this post has seen the movie but just in case) is a science fiction story about reverse entropy and a dying man who can’t let go of his control to the point he is willing to take the world out if he can’t be there. A story about destiny and fate and choice and meaning. All of that is what Tenet is about. But at its center

Tenet is a love story

Not between The Protagonist and Kat.

Between The Protagonist and Neil

Now THREE THINGS WE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE FIRST:

1. I am still not entirely certain of the plot but I will be rewatching this movie because I think it was fun and the people were hot.

2. Neil is not Max. I know this is a popular theory and at first I thought it made sense since Rob dyed his hair for the role specifically and we don’t learn his past, only The Protagonist’s, but Nolan said they dropped that plotline because the timeline didn’t make sense.

3. You can view The Protagonist and Neil’s relationship as a platonic one or a romantic one my point still stands.

The surface level viewing of this movie gives you the impression that nothing matters and choice is a fallacy, what’s happened happened and there’s nothing you can do about it. But looking even a fraction deeper you realize the choices of the characters directly cause the events of the movie.

Sator is forced to live around radioactive materials in Kiev because of a neglectful government, that causes his cancer. His cancer leads him to begin communicating with the future and allows the past to invert which leads him to choosing omnicide but also directly leads to Tenet being able to stop him. His abuse leads to his death. Most importantly Neil’s death leads to The Protagonist’s life being saved which leads to The Protagonist finding Neil which cultivates the greatest relationship of either of their lives.

The most tragic part about all of this is that only in the final moments of their time together do they truly have all the pieces of their relationship laid out in front of them. The majority of the time spent with one another is with one of them not knowing their history and they’re stuck in this loop.

Our Neil dies at the end of the movie but we’re following The Protagonist. He will end up in the past, Neil’s past and at the end of their story Neil will be sent back to meet The Protagonist and so on and so on forever. And you can see the exact moment The Protagonist realizes this. That he’ll know Neil but Neil won’t know him, not really. Not for years.

We can see how immediately drawn to Neil The Protagonist is. He’s an undercover agent who very likely doesn’t trust anyone he hasn’t known for a long time but this is his face during his first meeting with Neil.

WE know why Neil is being friendly and why he stares at The Protagonist the way he does but he doesn’t. Why is he so immediately comfortable with Neil?

From the moment they meet to the final battle The Protagonist is so emotionally affected by Neil’s impending death that he considers putting the world in danger to try and save his life. He doesn’t see the point in Neil dying, and when Neil tells him that it’s just “what happened” The Protagonist doesn’t see why he should care about anything at all if every decision has already been made.

Until Neil explains to him that just because their future self has already made the decision for them, just because the path is laid out, doesn’t mean what they do doesn’t matter. Neil’s life saved everything, that matters (this one lesson goes on to affect how The Protagonist forms and runs Tenet). The Protagonist understands that yet he still wants to save Neil.

But at the end, all he can do is let Neil go. Continue moving forward.

Because there is a past for Neil. And a future for them.

*just a cute gif i wanted to include of The Protagonist staring at Neil like a day after they met.(idk how long a timeframe the movie takes place over)*

[specialagentartemis]

My favorite genre of sci-fi is “small research team goes to a distant plant/star/space station/black hole/etc to study something weird there, and then the weird thing there Wrecks Their Shit.” Can’t get enough of it. “Small research team goes to a deep undersea research station” and “small research team goes to a deep Antarctic research station” are also very good variants of this as long as they get completely rekt by a weird mysterious alien thing there. I love it every time.

It is also important to note that these stories can range from “TPK” to “lone survivor” to “a few losses but most of the main characters come out of this harrowing ordeal alive, if changed” to “everyone survives this harrowing ordeal and they have a new friend now!” but the more characters survive the better the story better be. If it’s a TPK/lone survivor I eat this up and will love it no matter how bad it is (Underwater (2020) starring Kristen Stewart I am vaguing you here. Stupid movie. Saw it on the big screen and loved it). But if most/all of the cast survives, the writing and the story and the characters better be goddamn amazing (All Systems Red by Martha Wells and Wolf 359 by Gabriel Urbina and Sarah Shachat I am vaguing you here <3 )

[alpaca-clouds]

A measured critique of Love Death + Robots

Okay, let me talk about something I kinda wanted to talk about for quite a while: The Netflix anthology series Love Death + Robots. A show with which I very much have a love-hate relationship.

Because I absolutely love the concept. The idea of turning short stories (a piece of literary media that often gets ignored) into short films (that also tend to get ignored)? Genius! It gives a chance for some authors to shine, that normally do not get that much attention. Same for smaller animation studios/teams. It really is a super cool idea.

And I gotta say, that there were some short films in there, that I really loved. My favorites are:

Three Robots (Just LOVED the humor in both stories)

Sonnie's Edge (I loved the Cyberpunk-Monster mix)

When the Yoghurt Took Over (Again, something that hit my humor nerve right)

Good Hunting (Ken Liu still is among my favorite authors)

Fish Night (Pretty)

Zima Blue (The Artstyle was just super cool)

The Tall Grass (I liked the atmosphere)

Snow in the Desert (I really liked the aesthetic in this one)

The Very Pulse of the Machine ( I mostly liked the main character)

All Through the House (Once more: My type of humor)

Mason's Rats (Because Rats)

You will notice one thing: Most of these are from season 1. Though to be fair: Season 1 had 18 episodes, while seasons 2 and 3 put together only had 17. So generally... Well, there is a few issues I had with season 1. Issues that not only I had. And seasons 2 and 3 did not improve on either.

The one critique you have probably heard quite a few times: A lot of those stories really love to objectify and/or sexualize the female characters. There is a ton of unnecessary sexualization of female characters going on. At times sexualization in a way that is not even precedented by the short stories the movies are based on.

At times this goes as far as some of those short films fetishizing violence against women. Jibaro was the worst example of this, but it is something that happens in quite a few of the short films. And that just leaves a really bitter aftertaste after watching the stories.

Again, I am not the first person to criticize this aspect.

Meanwhile the other criticism I have is one that I barely have seen anyone bring up, even though it is very much connected to that first one: Almost all of the short stories that the short films are based on have been written by men. Of the first season there are two movies based on stories written by women (Sucker of Souls and Helping Hand). Of seasons two and three, not a single short film was based on a story written by a woman. Or to put it differently: Out of the 35 episodes, 33 have been written by men. And, while we are on it, mostly white men.

And... Look, fantasy/scifi already has a big issue when it comes to major novel publishing that often female, queer and non-white authors are overlooked outside of the YA genre. Still, when it comes to the short story magazines, like @uncannymagazine female and otherwise marginalized writers get more of a voice. The same is also true for a lot of anthologies, that are not dependent on "oh, we just will publish a couple of short stories by already known authors". So... Why the hell does Netflix not give those writers a chance to shine in this anthology series?

Like, fuck... This annoys the living hell out of me. Just allow other people some time to shine as well.

[oldtvandcomics]

Not a queer rec, but you know how we keep talking about needing more stories about an optimistic future?

This book is about to come out tomorrow (time stamp: 6/9/3023). It's a collection of short stories about a future where things are slowly getting better. It is the third part in a series.

Like any short story collection, these are not perfect, some stories are always going to be better than others, but they ARE absolutely lovely. And they are independent projects, so you'd be supporting small creators. Also, the people behind them are the same as behind the organization Queer SciFi, so while not every story has queer themes, they are still all very inclusive.

I'm going to tag @hopepunk-humanity, in case they feel like they can use this information for something. Or maybe they have other optimistic scifi that they can add?