#what planets directed

[aq2003]

nobody understands the robot revolution like i do it's not about "AI bad" it's about how AI has no inherent morality to it as a technology and it reflects human bias/greed/entitlement i am sorry

[beggars-opera]

It's been 11 minutes and there are now close to 200 people dragging this woman to Hell, as I sit, popcorn in hand

[mmhberry]

Regarding the current situation with bans in SSO…

Can’t believe I am defending SSE right now but there’s so much misinformations on the Instagram side and especially the TikTok side of the SSO community about the ongoing cheat bans it drives me nuts

“SSO is banning half of their community” what are you talking about, they banned like 0,5% of the active players. “Even ReShade gets you banned” I have used reshade for years I never got banned for it and my account is still up since the update, SSO has already confirmed since years that they fully allow reshade.

[uncanny-tranny]

What I think is so important to learning how to truly appreciate life is learning how to appreciate the creatures and things we've categorized as "disgusting" or "gross."

When I learned to appreciate wasps, I realized how much they just... don't really care about anything, and they're not trying to be an asshole because they're uniquely cruel. If they have any wants, it is to live. Why would I punish that when I also want to live?

This isn't to say you need to fall in love with the creepy crawlies that stalk this world or to love what you cannot, but to recognize that in their arrangement of atoms, they are trying to persevere, and in the end... aren't we all?

[crispyappless]

Star Trek: "We must never, ever, ever, ever, EVER disobey the Prime Directive unless you know, we do it anyway."

[instarsanddyke]

but i'm not supposed to scratch

[katethevampire]

I started watching the direct an hour after it had happened during my lunch break and then with secretly watching it during my biology class and the SCREAM THAT I SCRUM WHEN I SAW MR FOX APPEAR ON MY SCREEN

[sometipsygnostalgic]

If Entrapta's character is like a feral shonen protagonist (Goku or Luffy) became a scientist instead of a fighter, then what is her opposite?

What character in fiction is like if a calculated mad scientist type (think Princess Bubblegum or Bulma) became a fighter instead?

[kerryweaverlesbian]

I've been in the worst situation for my productivity potential (have to set my own schedule, accountable to only myself on whether jobs get done, not working in solidarity or competition with anyone, with an end goal that would ultimately only benefit me and no one else) since...September. I'm having a hard time and I am NOT doing my best ☹️

[cosmicsociology]

If I learn enough about the Many-Worlds Interpretation and also add a touch of the idea of "sensitivity to initial conditions" from chaos theory, I can make an excuse to make my self-indulgent stuff of Blue Space like "what if they were in a rock band" into a series or integrate them into that eventual hypothetical series about a Blue Space Archives as bonus chapters as speculation

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT! Any thoughts on GRRM's (now deleted 👀) blog post about HOTD? Both in terms of content and authorial conduct?

My first reaction was some combination of sympathy and cringe. I can see where his frustrations would arise — especially if he's correct that Ryan Condal intended Helaena to kill herself "for no reason," although I doubt that's the whole story (most of the coming seasons haven't been written yet). GRRM was burned badly by the ending of GOT, which is why he's harping so much on the (to be honest, pretty minor) removal of a child who really has no role in the source material except to be the sacrificial lamb prompting Helaena's suicide. He can repeat the words "butterfly effect" until he's blue in the face, but that still won't actually make Maelor into a major character, and it still won't explain why changing Helaena's arc is necessarily a bad thing for the story the show's telling. Helaena in the books is a very happy person whose death by suicide would be uncharacteristic unless prompted by a slew of gruesome personal tragedies. Helaena in the show is much more melancholy and withdrawn, and the audience doesn't need to see (another) one of her children brutally slaughtered in order to believe that she might pull a Tommen, especially since we don't know what the HOTD team are actually planning for her. Getting pissy about cutting Maelor is like finding out someone's replaced all the furniture in your living room — while you watched — and complaining that the upholstery's the wrong color. My brother in Christ, it's a different chair.

Apart from that, I recently saw one blogger argue persuasively that the choice to eliminate Maelor was not just efficient, but a defensible and deliberate creative decision: whether George realizes it or not, removing Maelor puts Aegon in the same situation his father Viserys was before his marriage to Alicent, where his only choices of heir are his daughter (Rhaenyra/Jahaera) or his brother (Daemon/Aemond), the latter of whom has recently proved himself an untrustworthy and outright dangerous candidate (the King of the Stepstones arc in Daemon's case, and the assassination attempt from Aemond). This traps Aegon, because the only laws supporting him as king require that he pass over Jahaera and place his regicidal brother — who has already tried to kill him once, probably having realized this fact — directly in the line of succession. And I'm pretty sure the show is intentionally going for this, because they make a point of telling us that Aegon can't have more children, so unlike Viserys, he can't get out of this by having more sons. Is this necessarily more compelling than the Maelor/Helaena guilt storyline? No, but we don't know if that storyline would have been compelling either. The success or failure of a narrative decision is almost totally in the execution, and HOTD is, crucially, not finished executing yet.

Siloing the question of the post's merits, it's also incredibly unprofessional for one of the most successful authors in history to start publicly beating up on a writer's room that he's supposedly collaborating with. Like, frankly, I don't care what Ryan Condal said. I don't care if he said he was going to kill off half the cast in S3E1 and turn the show into an isekai about his self-insert avatar falling in love with Rhaenyra. You work that shit out in the writer's room, or, if need be, the negotiating table, and not by dumping on the guy's creative decisions on a platform where the core of the show's fanbase hangs on your every word (most of them in the hope that you've announced the completion of the book you're supposed to be writing). It's catty, it's spiteful, and, judging by the content of the post itself, grossly disproportionate to the scale of the creative conflict at play. If I were an industry creative, I would have serious reservations about working with Martin after this, and the level of poor behavior on display should be evident by the fact that any author whose IP wasn't making HBO a bajillion zillion dollars would have been rightfully shitcanned for doing something like this.

If I sound angry at him, I'm not; I think he's just an old guy who's been told by lots of people that he's good enough to be above the rules, and he's consequently forgotten some of the industry etiquette. I'm also, frankly, a little contemptuous, mostly because most creatives I know would give all the fingers of their writing-hand to have the opportunities that George does, and would conduct themselves with significantly more grace and generosity for their collaborators even if they did disagree on adaptational differences.

[marsbotz]

actually can we likeeee talk abt how inhos trauma DID influence his decisions…..? and like not in a “well its ok bc he didnt mean it” way like in a “he wouldnt have made the same decisions without his trauma” way

[c0smiccom3t]

So..... regarding those news about Nicholas Kole's crash 5.....

I'm going to explode.

[knifebucket]

I'm sure this has been said before but the way that conservatives hate queer people they've never met is so transparently because they're in this abuse cycle mindset that they are living Correctly so they won't be Punished, so when people are and can be living joyful fulfilling lives outside of that cult, it proves that the self-flagellation they've subscribed to is utterly worthless. like the fact that they're being shown that they don't actually have to be rigid and hypersensitive and hateful and follow cult orders and conservative dogma in order to be any level of happy or successful makes them foam at the mouth because it cuts through their primary identity of being One Of The Good Ones and they are left with not much else.

and truly, genuinely, from a humanistic and empathetic seat, that's actually really tragic.

[variousqueerthings]

im watching a danish 1918 silent film called "himmelskibet" (the sky ship/spaceship) and it's interesting from several perspectives

for one, i enjoy the idea that these people have the notion of going to space and build a spaceship (an incredibly charming spaceship) in 2 years and it works! lifts ve-e-e-e-r-y slowly out of the atmosphere over the course of several days

for two, they're going to mars. which in 1918 reads differently im sure, than in 2024 and the rich colonialism wet dream -- also because in this movie mars is in fact populated, so it's actually not colonialist in the way it might have been x amount of years later in space-exploration cinema and the martians are depicted as being far more civilised (and also more... back-to-the-earth, we'll get to all of That) than earthlings, which is interesting

for three, they build the spaceship and point it towards mars, but don't have the tools to gauge how long it'll take to actually get there -- they calculate a presumed date before they leave, but whilst on the spaceship just have no idea where they are? this isn't deep, it's just funny to me

point the fourth. mars is populated. it's populated by a bunch of very human-looking aliens, because it's 1918 and the only difference between us and aliens is that the aliens are fruitarian hippies who all wear long robes (yeah, i can buy that) who have overcome everything bad that humanity currently is. the message is a hopeful one, with the lead martian saying "what we are, you will become"

the martian society is presented as a utopia. they're fruitarians, they've got no crime, no violence, and in what feels like some of the most long-lasting of political ideas, when the astronauts bring violence with them, they are made to think about it, but not punished (and there's some christian repent vibes to it, but it's not too egregious as to not work as concept -- the movie as a whole is very christian in feel though) and the protagonist considers how evil it is to throw people into prisons on earth. there's also a whole thing about embracing/celebrating death, rather than fearing it, which i wanna roll around in my head for a bit

but... the film tries very hard to juxtapose this utopian ideal with earth, however can't figure out how to make that work in imagery, or even put its finger on what is actually wrong with earth society that violence abounds in the first place (you'd think there might be some wwi imagery in there, but no, not a one -- its way of "showing violence" is random young well-dressed people on the street assaulting an elderly man and laughing, or smoking and dancing, or implied sex before marriage...)

all the scientists/leaders on mars are men, while the women... idk, frolic in beautiful dresses (there are a couple of interesting women in this, but they're not The Thinkers, they're The Feelers). they're all white and christian (if, danish christians rather than american christians). they're all thin and able-bodied and "beautiful." there's a scene where the women dance "a chastity dance." it begs the eternal question of "wait is this actually portraying a white supremacist eugenics cult?" WHICH is not what the movie wants to say, it very much wants to say something about anti-violence idealism as the future for humanity, it's like. got its heart in the right place, even if the final messaging is "we take this woman from a higher culture and within her lie the seeds for a superior earth," which hmm.. yeah. ive. ive heard things like that said before. not about a martian

it's interesting what kind of shorthand we have for storytelling. how the people making this movie undoubtedly were trying to think of the most visually effective way of conveying utopia, and how that imagery is mainly used today to make a viewer go "uh oh" to the extent that i almost briefly wondered if there was going to be another shoe about to drop, even though the movie hadn't been going in that direction at all

very much enjoyed it on the whole though. a moment in time. a very very early scifi film. ye olde danish text

And the most important thing.

Behold A Spaceship:

[circle-around-again]

Not enough about Clark’s daddy issues — one of which was deeply cynical about the nature of humanity, who would try to kill Clark and turn him into a living God, and the other who thought the same thing but implied that Clark deserved it