3 written by murray leinster and published by pyramid books, and one i was reminded of via a comment on my old series of LotG update designs over on dA that was written by carl henry nathien and published by the western publishing company (a whitman book?)
i am unsure where exactly that single book takes place/fits into the book order, so for this ramble i'll read it last (and also wait for it to arrive by mail)
((despite there being a copy on the internet archive I NEED PHYSICAL BOOKS OKAY))
(((thank thrombeldinbar for thriftbooks.com)))
that said since these are short books and the longest one (the odd one out) tops out at 14 chapters, i'm not splitting the posts and keep it to one entry per book
ANYWAY
chapter 1 summary: we meet the spindrift crew, a brief description of our passengers, and knowledge of space warps they will eventually find themselves in
TL;DR: a solid start, sets up the world and what they'll be leaving behind well enough, even if the dialogue is a little stilted
B-
The Good: the space warps are a known, albeit unexplained phenomena, that airports are aware of enough to mention on the weather reports during the pre-flight checks, including naming 2 ships that may have gone missing due to the warps: the Marintha (departed from tokyo) and the Anne (cape town to seattle)
the Anne even managed to get some photo evidence of distorted star patterns
the reason the spindrift passengers are so few is the simple fact the rest of the passengers panicked at the discovery of the space warp and didn't want to take the risk so they cancelled (great fodder to add onto the remake/update because it only enriches the reasons why berry, mark, val, and fitzhugh still hopped on anyway)
steve and dan have known each other a long time (as was also stated on the show, they went to flight academy together) and they know they have nothing to fear from a space warp...despite the fact 2 ships of the spindrift's sub-orbital class went missing without a trace
"i won't invite more [publicity] for the spindrift, by letting her vanish somewhere between los angeles and london and never more being heard of." oh steve. oh steve oh steve oh steve. wait til you have to eat those words
"apparently nobody thought about cancelling his reservation." oof, barry, bud, that absolutely sucks shit. bad for barry, but great for the plot
i love you book!betty for bitching about your passengers before you've even taken off, giving us a view into their personalities, and for book!steve to not give a shit about your bitching
yeah it makes sense that there are like 40+ pre-flight checks to make on a sub-orbital ship, it's practically a spaceship already
"in the meantime, nobody cared" <- concerning the presence of space warps, and since no one has tried to monetize them yet why should anyone be concerned? bad for the spindrift, good for the plot
the description of the "modern" tech and how easy shit is to do or talk or make is setting up a nice contrast to how they'll all have to survive on the giant world. same with describing the familiar planets and stars as they lift off
the mention of how the spindrift could fly for 8 hours straight every 24 hours due to their atomic battery, which is a nice explanation why they can't just keep in the air later on
it's actually nice to know the airline/airport/tower control wants them to keep in constant communication as a precaution, as well as steve pointing out the magnetic field is fucking up
the space warp description being equated to the stars reflected in a lake so everything looks wobbly is a nice touch, and if the stars suddenly disappeared i'd be extremely concerned too
honestly having the radio slowly but surely losing strength and the desperate cries of voices trying to reach you would freak me the fuck out
"then, quite suddenly, gravity ceased to be. there was no weight. the sensation was appalling." ooo that is such a good line i may have to steal it for...something. something else. or maybe this. we'll see
The Bad: continuity error on the first page, where the show and the book (both released/published in september 1968) have different flight numbers. the tv series is flight 612 whereas this book series has flight 703. one or the other was switched at the last minute because i can't believe this was approved before it went to print if the show's flight number was locked down beforehand
"dan ericson, a dark man" i don't...i don't know what i was expecting, this was written and published in the 60s, but it still feels like a bad way to describe a black person
another continuity error, not sure if the book is inaccurate or the show itself was changed before printing (stefan arngrim being cast perhaps?), but book!barry is so far described as 14 and not 11-12 like in the show, as well as mark being described as bespectacled and nervous (again, maybe a change made due to don matheson being cast?)
Salvageable: 75% i'd say
i'll be honest, i'm dead set on keeping the og series cold open (with the credits moved to AFTER it's discovered they're tiny in a giant land) to give it some suspense, but this certainly sets up a potential flashback scene well enough. the only thing keeping me from using it as is would be, as stated, the idea of the credits/logo popping in too early and ruining the suspense. "but they already know they're watching a show called 'land of the giants'" I KNOW BUT MY VISION DEMANDS SOME ATTEMPT AT SURPRISE
we don't get much insight into the passengers right away, but we don't need to, not when the characters themselves don't know they're about to be yeeted across the galaxy for thrombeldinbar only knows how long
that said, having the 4 passengers be the only ones who didn't cancel their tickets helps with a remake's backstory/personality building: mark the CEO can't miss his business deal, space warp be damned; val's double already lured the press/paparazzi the other way and she needs to make her audition; fitzhugh just impulsively stole a very important valise and needs to get the fuck out of the USA; and berry doesn't have anyone reliable stateside to cancel her ticket nor can she afford to get off and wait for another ship since she's just a kid after all. it works out great, actually. deffo adding it into any pilot/series starting episode for sure
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the problem with movie remakes is that they always remake something that was already good, meaning at worst you ruin it and at best your remake is largely redundant. to make a truly good remake you need to start with source material that is absolute dogwater. ignore the pull of nostalgia. redeem the sins of moviemaking past.
the best episodes of taskmaster are ones that make me have to google greg davies bisexual just to see if anything's changed since the last time i googled greg davies bisexual
Thanks @slightlylightly founded by Sunny Somrat, This is SSFood Challenge
The players in and around Bangladesh play and are rewarded with food even losers get food. The combination of colorful games and the feel-good factor of nobody going home empty-handed has given Somrat a genuine hit.
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I think part of getting better is complete ego death. Like you’re not above setting a timer for 5 minutes and focusing on a task. You’re not above doing a very simple 3 minute workout to start. You’re not above reading for 10 minutes a day when you first get out of your reading slump, even if you used to read for hours. You’re not above starting slow and then building up to where you want to be/where you once were. What you are above is total inertia. Doing something really is better than doing nothing. Radically accept where you are, radically accept your limits, and go from there. Don’t let your ego get in the way.
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I’d like to entertain and enliven you now with the saga of my Slut Era.
I’ve always been a serial monogamist and my shortest long term relationships clocked in at three years. So perhaps that’s why when I finally broke it off with my ex I went insane on dating. Part of it was definitely just that between anxiety and loneliness I wanted to fill up my time.
This happened when I was living alone for the first time, no roommates, just me and my little cat Leeloo. I didn’t want to come home to an empty house so instead I set up dates.
Most of these were disastrous. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I had a lot more first dates than second because they’d seen enough, including the one where people aggressively complimented me.
But after a few months I had four people I was seeing simultaneously. I was up front with all of them that things were not exclusive, and they all agreed, so no infidelity took place here, just a lot of hijinks.
Here’s who was on the dating roster:
• An apprentice woodworker that we’ll call Jill. I honestly thought at 26 years old that her being 21 wasn’t a problem age gap and I quickly learned that there was a vast gulf of both maturity and life experience between us. Jill described herself as “heteroflexible” and had just dumped her first boyfriend to flirt it up with me.
• A married woman looking for a friends with benefits. We’ll call her Alice. I insisted on meeting her husband first to be sure I wasn’t part of a cheating mess and he gave me his blessing when I stayed over at her house. Years later when he and Alice had divorced I would go on to sell him and his new fiancée an engagement ring and we both realized at the end how we knew each other and it was wildly awkward. Alice was nice, but a hardcore vegan who insisted I brush my teeth if I so much as ate string cheese before I could kiss her. She was also unhappy in her marriage and was feeling out if I’d want to get serious.
• A bartender dubbed Snakebites, so called because of her signature piercings. She cooked me a steak so raw it was still mooing and some of the best asparagus I’d ever had. In our singular sexy encounter she bit my nipple and I never got over it. Really don't bite someone if you don't know their preference and work up in pressure. We weren’t terribly compatible but neither of us were willing to admit it yet. Truthfully I considered still dating her solely because I desperately wanted her bathroom. It had all black tile, black toilet, black sink, a rain shower in the corner and a jacuzzi tub. I may not have loved her but god I loved that bathroom.
And finally,
• My beloved, who I would go on to marry, who was dealing with a lot of personal stuff at the time. Obviously that meant I liked them the best of all the people I was seeing because we were both disasters at the time.
So that’s the cast of this little misadventure. Now, our story begins with Jill.
Jill was someone who heightened my anxiety. Each of the three times she came to my home she brought and left more stuff. A self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans collection of DVDs. It was like she was trying to move in. She also liked to deride my taste in things, frequently calling me a pleb when I mentioned a band or show I liked.
She was working on a gorgeous little decorative table in her woodworking program. The main wood for the top had a beautiful dapple of knots like jaguar spots, and when she showed me a picture I exclaimed how pretty it was.
“Do you want it?”
“Oh- I mean it’s lovely, I wouldn’t mind having it, but you should sell it and make some money!”
But she was adamant. She’d give me the little side table. At about this time, Alice was starting to get awfully lovey for a FWB. I knew she wasn’t happy with her husband but I also knew we were not a good fit. Fun fact: Alice and her husband were step siblings with a pretty hefty age gap. They got together when he stumbled upon a kink photo shoot she’d done with vegetables. None of their family was happy about the relationship but they weren’t related by blood so it was fine.
So I was fending off more overt romantic advances from Alice, and feeling increasingly like I needed to break things off with Jill. Snakebites wasn’t ever initiating communication and I decided to pull a lot of plugs at once.
I ghosted Snakebites, told Alice that I thought we should cool it, and in a move worthy of a rom-com I asked my beloved if I could pretend we were exclusive to put off Jill. They agreed and I texted Jill to let her know that I was no longer single.
I was not prepared for Jill’s response. She. Was. Devastated. She flew off the handle. She’d just been waiting for the right time to tell me how she felt about me! How dare I do this to her!
What about the table?!
“You should keep the table, it’s gorgeous, you’ll be able to sell it, but I don’t expect a free table.”
Silence met me after that text. I worried and fretted and eventually headed home.
There on my doorstep. The table.
It was a small little end table, reeking of oil and polish, but very beautiful. I brought it inside. The little drawer didn’t even have a knob or guide rails. But it did have a handwritten bill proclaiming that it was costing me $500.
“I can’t afford a $500 table, Jill!” I texted.
“Well you kept saying how nice it was. I spent a lot of time on it.”
“I’m not saying it’s not worth $500” (it wasn’t, it was a tiny side table made by an apprentice) “but I can’t buy a $500 table.”
“Make me an offer.”
I stared at the little table. I did actually like it, but I worried about the repercussions of entering into this deal. Hesitantly I typed back, “$300.” I didn’t think it was worth that much but I didn’t want to insult her too badly.
This suited her for the night. But the next day she informed me she needed a new bed, and that she’d take her $300 in credit toward a new mattress. I spent the whole next day basically wrangling with her over what she wanted and eventually she spiked back up to demanding $500 for the damn table.
“Let me just give it back,” I begged. It was not the first, second, or even third time I’d asked to return the thing but this time she finally relented and gave me her address. Since she lived with her parents still I’d never been over.
I called up my beloved and said, “Hey, I need moral support, can you run an errand with me?”
They agreed which is how we loaded up a self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans DVD collection, and the table from hell into my little car together. Jill had said to meet her at one o'clock. I intended to drop everything off at noon and be done with this madness.
But while my beloved and I were on the doorstep leaving everything I heard, “Jill? You’re home early,” through the door. Her mom opened it to peer at us in confusion.
“I was just bringing Jill’s stuff back!” I chirped in alarm.
With little tact and a lot of speed we left her with Jill’s collection of things and then I sped out of there like my tail was on fire. I handed my phone to my beloved as I zoomed away instructing them to block Jill’s number. I was free. The tabletross around my neck had been returned.
It was about a month after that when my beloved and I officially began dating exclusively. I had wrapped up all my messy dating threads and it was a relief to be in a relationship again. They went on a trip to Mexico shortly after we made it official.
So I knew they were out of town. But next morning I walked out to my car and beheld a lipstick kiss pressed to the drivers side window.
I was petrified. I had just dumped three girls at once and had an extremely messy back and forth with one of them. Did I have a stalker?!
Of the girls, Alice seemed like likeliest candidate, being of a stronger lipstick variety girl than Jill or Snakebites. We had ended things a bit stiffly, but still cordial. She just laughed when I asked if she knew anything about it. “Nope,” she said, “but good luck.”
I’d rather have walked over broken glass then text Jill, and I’d firmly ghosted Snakebites so I was scared to reopen communication to ask if she was stalking me. I had to drop it. But it haunted me, that lipstick kiss.
For months I was jumpy, wondering which of my spurned lovers had done it. And why. Was it a threat? A goodbye? I lay awake thinking about it, worrying about how everyone I’d dated knew where I lived, which car was mine.
Finally, nothing else happened and I moved on. The kiss would remain a mystery and I had to be content with that.
It was a year later when I finally started filling my mom in on my dating escapades that I finally got closure. She was hooting and laughing as I went over the table debacle. Then I paused and added, “And then this kiss showed up on my car.”
“Did you like it?”
“What? No! I’m pretty sure one of them was stalking me! Who else would leave a kiss on my car?”
My mom started bellowing with laughter. “I did!” She wheezed.
Apparently. My mother had been driving by my place. And decided that a cute little gesture would be to leave me a kiss. And then decided to never mention it to me even though she’s never done anything like that previously.
“It scared the crap out of me!” I yelled while she collapsed with helpless laughter. “I thought I had a stalker! How could I possibly have known that was you?!”
“How could I have known you’d just broken up with three girls at once?” She wheezed in rejoinder and like. Fair play.
So that’s how my mom convinced me I had a stalker and I got out of buying a $500 table.
Growing up I did a lot of reading, as many kids in the 90s did, and thusly, much like many 90s kids, I was exposed to the wonderful world of Animorphs.
So OBVIOUSLY that meant I had to read the recent graphic novel adaptation. Which I honestly quite enjoyed for the most part.
It had some minor issues here and there, but it excelled in depicting the mid-morph process, (great job!) conversely it really struggled with it's basic character design, and because of this, nearly all the human characters had a terrible case of same face.
Everyone having the same chubby heads and big round noses, regardless of age, gender or race, and all of them constantly making that stupid DreamWorks eyebrow meme face that I found really unfitting for some characters. I was frustrated by it, because it really detracted from what I felt was otherwise a really solid adaptation.
So when I saw this piece of official art included in one of the later issues, I thought 'Wow, that's super cute, I just wish the characters looked a bit more like themselves.'
(Included here is the original image.)
So I decided to redraw it, using a mix of their book descriptions and their cover models. I really wanted to blend the aspects of both, as the covers are just so instantly recognizable to anyone even vaguely familiar with the series, I just felt I would be remiss not to.
Also I wanted to add Ax! Now the group is truly complete!
The best part of getting older is aging out of the demographic that gets killed in horror movies. I am now the age of the kooky local at the gas station who warns the band of college kids not to go to Camp Murderblood
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I have a medical condition where no matter how many people are in a room I will find the one person who likes me the absolute least and become desperate for their approval
I spoke to the doctor about this and she prescribed 100mg of "stop giving a fuck about people who hate you", hiding it in a spoonful of peanut butter labeled "the people who care about you deserve more of your time"
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