beware this is where i blog

They should try and broaden out their media palette instead of rewatching shows like Steven universe, the owl house, and other media aimed at children/general audience.

Not saying that these shows are bad or don’t have any complex themes. As I love these shows to death and literary grew up with them. But there’s only so much that children media can cover and explore compare to media aimed at older audiences/adults.

If you want to create media aimed at an older or even adult audience, expand your media palette so you can get inspirations and examples of how different media handles their stories.

Or hell even if you aren’t a creative and just want more interesting and complex stories. Start watching media aimed at your age range.

"oh ryland. only you would cry over a bunch of rocks."

Creators do not owe anyone content. Do not ask writers when they will update.

If an author did not ask for [negative] criticism , do not give criticism.

Read the tags carefully before reading a fanfic.

If you ignored the tags and were upset, that is your responsibility, not the creator’s.

Disliking a ship does NOT give you the right to attack people who enjoy it.

Do not tell authors or shippers that their ship is “disgusting,” “wrong,” or “shouldn’t exist.” Shipping fictional characters is not a moral failing.

No one is obligated to justify why they ship two fictional characters.

Headcanons are PERSONAL interpretations, not universal truth.

Dark themes in fiction do not equal real life beliefs or intentions.

Leaving kudos or short positive comments genuinely matters.

Not every fanwork is made for you, and that is okay.

Scrolling past content you dislike is better than engaging negatively

Enjoying a fandom later than others does not make someone less of a fan.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how dog-piling can disincentivize people from doing what is ostensibly being asked for (taking accountability, apologizing, promising to make changes to future behaviour, etc). which sucks, because there are probably well intentioned people out there who deserve all three of those things, but any sort of Statement just ends up dumping gasoline on the fire.

this is because: you are giving the worst people involved the attention they want, you're giving them Fresh Drama Content, and you're letting them know that you can be made to do things. it's not in their interest to say "alright, you've worded things a bit clumsily, but you're on the right track and we think you mean well," because that ends the party.

and if you're thinking, who cares about what randos on tumblr say, your main concern should be acting in accordance to your morals – WELL! if you're a creative whose income is tied to your online reputation, these sorts of campaigns can directly impact your ability to pay bills. which can be very, very scary. and if you're any flavour of marginalized, you probably came onto a site like tumblr seeking community, and the thought of losing that community can be painful. in these cases, the best way to survive a dog-piling is "grey-rocking", or making yourself as boring and non-reactive as possible until their attention shifts to other targets. which means no statements.

Stuff the Movie Added That I Liked More Than the Book:

Carl. Since the book is in first-person, the narration in the book is basically Grace's stream-of-consciousness of his thought process. But in a film, having him constantly narrating his thought process for the audience would be weird, so the addition of Carl as someone to bounce ideas off of worked to explain the science experiments more naturally.

Rocky having an actual text-to-speech voice. In the book, Grace just catalogued Eridian words in a database and would constantly refer to it while he became more proficient at just understanding it himself, and Rocky's dialogue was italicized to indicate it was a translation, but not necessarily a spoken translation. Again, this was for streamlining in a film medium.

Grace's nerdy shirts. In the book, Grace didn't have any personal effects packed on the ship, they were all still for DuBois.

Not an addition, but the movie moving Rocky's offer of extra fuel to the third act. In the book, he makes the offer almost immediately after moving onto Grace's ship rather than right before their climactic "fishing" expedition. I feel like this scene happening so early in the book makes it lose some of its weight.

Grace actually getting to go to Rocky's ship. In the book it was established that the temperature and pressure of the Eridian environment would kill him, so there was no way, and he was bummed, but it was just left at that.

Stuff the Movie Cut Out That I'm Honestly Okay With:

The panspermia plotline. I saw that it actually was brought up in a deleted scene, but I'm glad they didn't go with it. For a story that otherwise is all about rigorous scientific validation, and then just going "Wow, what are the odds we have this biological similarity? We must all be descended from Astrophage seeding life throughout the universe!" and then just settling on that with zero rigor feels counter to the overall theme.

The entire Taumoeba breeding fiasco. Similar to my complaint above about Rocky's offer of fuel coming too early in the book, the fishing expedition and Rocky nearly dying is the climax of the story, but there's still 1/3 of the book left at that point. And the fact that they do so much dicking around with breeding nitrogen-resistant Taumoeba, it getting loose on the Hail Mary and Grace having to purge and sterilize all the fuel tanks, then having to rig the Beetles to the ship as makeshift engines to limp back to Rocky's ship just kind of kills the tension of that earlier moment. Also, it sets up the Beetles as way too blatant of a Chekhov's Gun, what with the repeated pointing out that "I saved one Beetle just in case I might need it for something later, HINT HINT".

Grace's food situation at the end. It's fine to just surmise that they've synthesized nutrients for him on Erid without specifying that he's eating his own cloned muscle tissue. I feel like that would have been tonally jarring for the movie to bring up specifically.

Stuff the Movie Added That I Wish it Didn't:

The attempts to soften Stratt, or even try to hint at some chemistry between her and Grace. Like, yeah, it wasn't much, but none of that stuff like the karaoke scene were in the book, and where Stratt was 100% no-nonsense through and through. She was basically just dragging Grace along because she'd pegged him as the POV character and none of her actions would get recorded for posterity if he wasn't there to observe (why else would a microbiologist be present at a copyright infringement hearing, if not so that Stratt could ensure that her being like "Yeah, I pirated all your software to save the world. What are you gonna do about it?" was recorded for all to see).

Making Yao a goofball, too. In the book, he was always described as super serious. He wanted a gun as his means of suicide so that he could take the other two out first in case their preferred methods were unsuccessful. But he was made silly right along with everyone else in the movie, with the "You make a funny face in literally every photo", which made the characters less differentiated.

Stuff the Movie Cut That I Wish it Didn't:

Grace having to get Rocky back to his habitat after Rocky saves him. In the book, Rocky is only able to save Grace from being crushed against the control panel by the G-forces before he collapses, and Grace has to drag him back to his habitat. But Rocky is like 400 pounds and molten hot, so Grace ends up suffering burns for his efforts.

Dimitri and his team of crazy Russian scientists. Like, he's in the movie, or at least a character in his role is, but he isn't named and has like two lines.

Various one-liners like: "It took you two days to think of poking it with a stick?" "Yes, always Earth units, you are bad at math." "I scary space monster, you leaky space blob."

Subtitling Rocky with more fluid, casual English in the ending. The reason Rocky speaks in broken English for most of the movie is because his translation is limited to a few hundred English words. But by the end of the movie, both Rocky and Grace are fluent in each other's languages, so Rocky's speech style is appropriately more fluid, and he says stuff like, "I haven't seen that in a long-ass time!"

Questions I Had in the Movie That the Book Answered:

If Eridians can't detect light, how did they detect the Petrova Line, which is infrared light? A: They have sensors that can detect things that they can't physically sense, too

Okay, if the Eridians can detect light through instruments, why hadn't they discovered radiation? A: Erid has a massive magnetosphere that protects the planet from radiation that extends farther out than Eridians had ever traveled, so they'd never seen it even on their instruments

Why did the Astrophage protect Rocky from radiation? A: Astrophage are black bodies that absorb all energy that come into contact with them. The Hail Mary has a layer of Astrophage throughout the hull for this purpose.

Why didn't they just pull out of Adrian's atmosphere first before going out to reel in the collector? A: The drag on the collector from the atmosphere while traveling at escape velocity would have vaporized it.

How did Grace find Rocky's ship when he went back for him? A: By doing space donuts to use his Petrova frequency engines and Petrovascope as a makeshift long-distance radar.

Questions I Had in the Movie That the Book Contemplated for One Sentence and then Dropped it Because it Would Destroy the Entire Premise:

On an evolutionary level, pain is for things that require immediate fixing. It wouldn't make sense to be able to recreate it and ruminate on it.

Rocky would have no frame of reference for this. He apparently remembers in perfect clarity the freezing and burning he experienced in human atmosphere. (I know fics go on about his perfect memory, but usually only about the emotional side of being the last surviving crew member, rather than the physical side of pain experienced)

Humans, on the other hand, are highly adaptable persistence predators. They are not as well suited for climbing as other primates but they are still pretty good at it, and very light in comparison to Eridians to boot. Their primary sense is perceiving a kind of physics the Eridians only recently discovered the existence of. They can survive nearly anywhere, physically and culturally adapting with unparalleled speed and efficacy.

Even if everything had gone right. Even if Dubois and Shapiro had survived. Even if the mission went off without a hitch.

He was Stratt's right hand man. He was there for the bombing of Antarctica, the paving of the Sahara, and each and every terrible, terrible choice they were forced to do. He saw all of it, and at points was absolutely complicit. He even begged to be allowed to continue to work on the project.

If he had not gone on the Hail Mary, not been cemented in history as a hero (and later on, once the truth comes out, the sacrificial lamb), he would have been condemned right next to Stratt.

And I had to watch the world turn my twin brother into some glorified mythical hero.

I think part of him would be proud that now everyone else is seeing how amazing his twin was is.

But I think that more of him would be sad and angry and confused because the more fame Ryland gets, the less real he becomes.

You can't just love a person once they're gone.

Ryland's newfound fame feels almost disrespectful compared to how he was treated and shunned while on earth.

And yeah, Ryland wasn't perfect.

But now, even the scientists who used to hate him are on the news talking about how he "had a fiery passion that was outmatched by his peers".

If we need someone to do a job, that job is a role in the community and deserves not just a salary but cultural respect for the role.

"high" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve domineering and controlling others. "low" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve service to others. Have you noticed? Because I have noticed.

is actually more needed

than controlling them.

It was her responsibility as a mother to ensure that Ada didn't turn out like her father;

Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet; and

The opposite of poetry is math.