ONE. WAY. OUT.

Like, the Alien setting is ripe for a story about the capitalist hellscape of the present. It's an idea present in both Alien and Aliens, and the features of thr monster itself mesh with the larger landscape. I don't need to go back into detail about the ways the Alien functions beyond the boundaries of sex and violence. There's a layering of the ideas with both movies having characters and creatures bound in mutual exploitation, wrapped inside a cultural idea of individuals people as mutually exploitative with institutions, wrapped capitalism as an all consuming force that doesn't care if anyone survives it, and etc. The point being that Alien: Earth extensively doesn't care about positioning its creatures anthing more significant than meat barriers - their job is to make a backdrop of gore and menace for the quandary about human vs. AI to play out. You can tell it doesn't care its own context by the way it sometimes forgets to have characters react to the urgent dangers around them for the sake of emotional dialog beats and major revelations. But why are we here, what does it all mean? The majority of the characters both metaphorically and textually have arcs which don't feel tied in to what's happening on the ground, and what's happening on the ground loses its sense of tension with almost lightning speed. For a show that's desperate to exploit trauma on the destructive scale of major urban disasters, it practically falls over over itself walking back the devastation and largely slows its characters to a casual, tour-guide pace as they, y'know, try to evacuate a building that just had most of what looks like the first twenty floors obliterated, trying to make sure the extremely large space-ship that's responsible for said obliteration. Not even considering the concern about multiple dangerous animals which aren't from earth and beyond apparently ranging from hostile to vicious, who knows what kind of brand new diseases they might bring. Even the poorly rendered capitalist moguls appear to have little interest in urgently gaining control of massively valuable organisms. As someone who has struggled and, I think, failed at holding a large scale story together in a way that feels compelling, it's pretty apparent to me when someone else is making the same mistake.

I don't know what to touch on first, but a hallmark of bad horror storytelling is a mismatch between the character behavior / dialog, and the events arouns them. The most common example is exactly the one in Alien: Earth, in the midst of severe peril, the characters are all taking a minute to have little story beats and emotional development and things that by and large aren't generally at the forefront of anyone's mind walking through a crashed spaceship which could explode or fall apart underneath you, full of deadly creatures, buried in the middle of a skyscraper that's probably also structurally unsound - generally people are in a bit more of a hustle. Anyway, it's the kind of thing that speaks to a disregard for character, plot, and overall tone - which is part of why Alien: Earth is so generally middling.

Also, as an aside, this is yet another movie that wants to say something about capitalism, but can't seem to shrug off the idea that CEOs must somehow be uniquely brilliant people. It's 2025, we've seen a dozen or more public billionare and CEO meltdowns. We all know they are, at best, average humans with exactly the kind of total ignorance of the world and human lives you'd expect. At best, they're revealed to dumb as a bag of hair. But, again, this whole series feels mired in a brighter version of dystopia than either movies or real life ever suggested.

The Alien itself looks pretty bad, we're talking 1990s bad, it screams out Underpaid Sweatshop CGI. It's also pretty much just a monster. It attacks people and kills them and makes a big mess and tries to use gore to replace dread or fear or any of the forms of body violation that made the two movies unsettling. Horror doesn't have to be frightening, but it does have to know how to evoke something that transgresses the internal boundaries, no pun intended. Alien: Earth seems to be more frightened of being transgressive than anything else. Remember the thing about the Alien that it's intelligent? It didn't leave bodies behind? It hunted and ambushed? It figured out how to cut power? It's intelligent and organized, it kills for food, reproduction, and if people get close to the queen. It looks unfamiliar, sees humans as both food and resource, it's unsettling because it's more than a dumb animal that slaughters everything in its path and leaves corpses littering its wake. Alien: Earth may want to talk about what it means to be human, but when it comes down to the real nasty gross goopy reality, it's terrified. It would rather try and hit you with they eyeball monster killing a cat that put it in a human. It doesn't care about chopping up bodies, but it shies away from the deep body horror of the Alien birth. You can see all the dismemberment you want, as long as it doesn't make you think about your own mortal flesh. Dying children are saved with artificial bodies, but it doesn't dwell at all on the sickness of the flesh or its uncanny absense. It only cares about the mind as some abstract ideal with no connection to anything material.

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software

I believe how we end up where we do.

I so often look at characters and find joy in imagining the 'what ifs' on how I or a specific character could solve the situation, but no amount of super human savior complex has me believing I could solve Jax, which just makes her feel real, because no one can solve someone else- but usually a fictional character is written so obviously as to be 'fixed' if someone gave a single good word or asked the right question- words and questions us the viewer clearly already have access to thanks to all the signals and clear direction we attained from our seats across the fourth wall.

The goal in caring is not to solve someone, but with fiction it feels like the obvious "best form of support" possible which is nonsense.

tadc even pulls on this string through the other characters. Between Ribbit trying again and again- feeling that need to help, to support, and demonstrating that it isn't working, there is no 'correct word' because Jax reacts too strongly to the fear welling inside her, and then again at the end with Pomni voicing it aloud- saying 'What if I just-' because it feels impossible to believe you couldn't do more.

You always could, to an unreasonable degree even. But with Jax... I understand why it went this way and I struggle to imagine how to pierce the walls she put up. Keep offering that help... keep being there for her, but can I reasonably imagine the way in that doesn't involve her efforts joining alongside rather than against?

The circumstances around why she does this just make it too believable.

She's someone deserving of so much help, but one of her core struggles is in accepting that help- in reacting to a sense of vulnerability with anything but intense hostility due to what vulnerability has given her in the past. Someone who fundamentally can't ask herself the right questions or allow herself the many opportunities presented to her, because she 'lucked' into an escape.

Why fight the hardest battle in her entire life, the struggle to be known and allow that, when this digital world has given her an excuse- an escape- on a golden platter?

The reason she needs to address herself is for her happiness, but she can just as easily- far more easily even- convince herself that she's happy with 'no consequences' if she simply accepts the role she feels she's been placed into.

None of this matters- none of this is 'real', so why in the fuck should she do the emotional equivalent of burning alive? This isn't REAL. Play her role and it keeps working out. She escaped her horrible life out there, she got away, and leaving 'that' whole internal war out there is just as well.

Why risk turning 'here' into 'there'. Why risk being laughed at again, all with a smile on the person's face.

There are right steps to take, right approaches, but very little that isn't outright done In The Text Itself by many of the other characters.

People offer unconditional support, it feels manufactured.

People offer their ear, feels manipulative.

People offer their own vulnerability, it's a trick.

The circumstances Jax found herself in- the literal setting of the series- help reinforce any doubts she has that say being 'seen' is not worth it.

Because she experienced what being 'seen' can do to her out there, and poof, she's here.

No one knows. No one sees.

And she never dies, never goes hungry, doesn't need sleep or water

and no one can laugh at her, so long as she plays her part and hides away as the 'funny guy'.

Laugh at him, it's his role! Of course he's rude and vile- he's a cartoon character.

Just don't see her.

Not when she's finally found an escape from how terrible it felt to be seen the last time.

Not when she finally found a safe place to stay where no one can hurt her.

Not when she finally got away. From everything. And some of these pointless 'characters' are trying to bring that back- bring back the 'real' stuff, the terrifying stuff, the anxiety inducing incredibly difficult stuff.

The vulnerable stuff. Her included.

...but we just have to keep trying despite that. Giving up is just not the answer. For her, her friends, or any of us.

"I get it."

It didn't feel like a cop out "If only they just talked!" style narrative device to force her to her lowest.

tadc fucking put her at her lowest and it took its time revealing that she was even there- all through cracks in her mask. And it showed how being hurt had left its scars.

not just her anxieties, but the coping mechanisms she relied on to survive- a sense of revulsion towards what felt like superficial supports just like the tainted hug she received after being vulnerable to her mother- those scars- and how a survival technique became a vice making it incredibly difficult for her to recover.

Instead of Jax feeling like a character that aimlessly swung at everyone around her when all they wanted to do was help, she felt like someone running- full sprint- away from her pain.

Others held out their hands and she was shaking too hard to grab on.

And it's important that others tried to help, it's important that we always try, and it's tragic that someone could be hurt so deeply that everyone is left feeling helpless as she falls apart.

But Pomni still caught her hand.

Even after everything felt done. Things felt broken beyond repair.

"You should have just talked to me, man." "It's too late. I did this to myself. There's no coming back from this." "But then.. Talk to me now?"

We can still keep trying.

Even when things hit the bottom, we pick up the pieces. We soothe that hurt.

We rebuild. Different now, but together still. Not just Pomni or Ribbit's efforts, the entire circus came for Jax. They banded together to help.

Because despite how badly Jax felt the need to run away, none of this was a race, recovery takes time.

She was scared that no one would accept her because of (to simplify) a night filled with so much regret and emotion and pain and new, harsher fears placed on her life that all happened 'because' she was vulnerable. 'Because' she looked to someone close to her for acceptance. And that night reverberated in other relationships like Ribbit because it broke her ability to accept vulnerability.

And look at her now.

Shrouded in the calm of a dark tent to ease her over-stimulation. One built by those who care.

Well after it was 'too late' the others still came. Pomni saw who she was- witnessed her most vulnerable truths- and she gave a hug of love and care to combat the memory of a hug of denial and dismissal.

cashapp: $Vecu629

hello. I'm a transmasculine genderqueer man-type-thing person. I'm pretty open about not believing that transandrophobia is a useful lens through which to analyze my struggles. furthermore, as you can see from my bio, I think that the labels "tme" and "tma" are useful descriptors of privilege/oppression. also, I tend to go on ocd-fuelled guilt spirals about the ethics of my transmasculine transition and whether or not it's moral for me to 'become a man' under patriarchy.

because of this, many well-intentioned transmasculine people have reached out to me in an attempt to explain to me their opinions. I have largely ignored you all.

However

I need money.

Specifically, I need about $400 USD to pay for my dear friend Amelia's storage unit so that she doesn't lose all of her worldly possessions due to being broke and disabled and trans.

Therefore:

If you send $5 USD to any of the following money transferring sites (and then, like, DM me or send me an ask with a screenshot of proof):

vmo: @/sparkdust

c.a: $/spaarkdust

I will read any one (1) article, essay, piece of literature, masterpost, zine, (watch a) youtube video, etc; on any topic of your choosing in good faith, annotate it, and discuss my thoughts on the piece.

If you're reading this and thinking "this sounds like a terrible idea"

Good news! You can send any amount of money to the same places above and once I hit $400 USD, I'll stop doing this.