“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”
Shout out to the (many) times I got called an elitist gatekeeper for saying that the only real way to fully understand a work of fiction is to experience it firsthand and that summaries and reviews are not a replacement for that
Me, reading the first 80% of the post: What do you mean, "experience it firsthand"? How am I supposed to join the Hunger Games or go the Odyssey?
Me, reading the final clause of the post: Oh, you literally meant that people have to read the book/listen to the audiobook in order to fully understand it. And people got mad. Oh dear.
And this doesn't mean you need to read / watch / listen to absolutely everything! (not that that's remotely possible)
It's perfectly reasonable that I have decided, based on ambient cultural information, that Ready Player One will not be my jam and I'm not going to read it. What that means, though, is that I have very little information about Ready Player One. I am not an authority on Ready Player One. If there's a discussion of the character development or worldbuilding or plot structure in Ready Player One, I can listen, but I can't really contribute, because I have not read it and thus am missing quite a lot of information about it.
There are more things in the world that I am not an authority on than there are things that I am an authority on, and that's okay! I should just be honest with myself and others about it.
"fandom is dying," they whine as they stab artists and writers in the chest with discourse knives and harassment screws. "why isn't anyone making content for me to greedily consume for free as I make the experience worse for them and everyone around me?"
I love Project Hail Mary, both the book and the movie, but the amount of shipping content I've been seeing for it recently really irks me.
I know a lot of people are just having fun, and that's all well and good, but there's also a reason that Grace is so aroace-coded, and it's intentional.
Spoilers for the book and the movie below, proceed at your own risk. However, this is a very important discussion to have imo, because I've seen a concerning rise in amatonormative responses to this story.
Grace demonstrates a massive amount of love, and none of it is rose. Platonic love for Rocky. Love for science and knowledge, love for humanity and for other people (his students, his friends). He is a full and complete person full of love and hope and ambition, and NONE of it has to do with romance. And I think that is very intentional.
I think that Project Hail Mary is inherently anti-amatonormativity. Like the fundamental message of the book is about all those other types of love and hope and it's beautiful. That's why it resonated with me so deeply, as a nonpartnering aroace. Like, finally, a beautiful story with practically no romance in sight, that doesn't infantilize Grace for being single, or tries to hook him up with someone in the end. It doesn't treat romance like the end all be all. He doesn't need that, and that's great for him.
His happily ever after is living on an alien planet with his alien best friend Rocky and Rocky's alien partner, Adrian, and teaching little aliens. Because Grace is a teacher. He gets his joy from teaching more than anything. It's a beautiful ending. Grace is happy and content without a single other human around, because he has his best friend and his students. Like, it makes me cry just to think about, because it's beautiful.
And then I see people shipping him, and it's like they totally missed one of the messages of the story.
You probably remember when Stratt tried to justify forcing Grace to go on this suicide mission because he had no spouse, no family, and not even a dog, right? You do realize that it's bad logic, right? Like, she did a bad thing. Yes, it saved humanity, but it was a bad thing to do. And she definitely would have sent him even if he did have a spouse or a family or a dog, because he was literally their only chance at saving humanity.
Stratt's excuse about not having a family etc is a bad thing. The story portrays this as a bad thing.
The message the book is conveying here is: "people are not worth less just because they are single".
So it fucking kills me to see people shipping Grace. There was a huge message here about how people have worth because they are people, and how Stratt did an extremely reprehensible thing to save humanity. There's a message here about platonic love and love for the Earth and humanity and hope for the future, and it's beautiful. It's truly beautiful, and I think it's why so many aroace people resonate so deeply with this book and movie.
As I've said before and I'll say again, if the only way you can interact with a fandom involves shipping, you should consider how amatonormativity may be affecting you and your biases. There is so much more to life than romance and shit. Try to get a little more creative with the way you engage with media, and also just the way you view life in general. There's so much more out there than rose relationships.
Remember when joining fandom as a younger person meant lurking for a bit and figuring out the vibe and etiquette instead of coming in on day one and calling people weirdos for liking weirdo shit in the weirdo factory.
meaning now, when a fool says you’ll be left behind for not using chatgpt, instead of talking to a wall about data centers and mental health you can now speak their language - regardless of your faith - and reply “AI is against official religious doctrine 😠☝🏼 purgatory for you, architect of babel!” which goes incredibly hard (first uno reverse card)
when they say what the fuck does the pope know about AI, technology and crunching numbers? pull up his wikipedia page where it says ‘FIRST POPE WITH A MATH DEGREE’ but what does an AI user know about being competent and qualified (second uno reverse card)
That's wrong, because I do, but for me, it's seen through the lens of Queerplatonicity. My romantic(????) attraction is replaced(????) with Queerplatonic Attraction I'd say.
I'm a yearner, like DEADLY. LIKE I'M MISERABLE.
QUEERPLATONIC ATTRACTION SO BAD I DON'T KNOW IF I'M QUEERPLATONIC OR VUPIOROMANTIVN💔💔💔💔
I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:
Fictional characters are objects.
They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.
I know this has good intentions, so I will just add the "how you treat them, even as objects of fiction, can speak about your own character, be careful out there"
Your addition is actually completely antithetical to my message. It is literally the opposite of what I am conveying.
Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.
How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".
It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.
I can write tentacle noncon of my favorite character all day long and be a fierce anti-sexual assault advocate in real life because what I do in my head is not the same thing as what I do in real life.
Ok class, art literacy time. This image "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) is meant to illustrate this exact lesson. A pipe is paraphernalia, a tool used to consume tobacco and drugs. Some places make it illegal to carry one on you. But this is AN IMAGE, not a pipe. It is art depicting a subject. You can have feelings about pipes and their use and risks but when you begin censoring art, you begin to surrender your freedoms as a human being.
A fictional story about a fictional person being abused is not abuse of an actual person. As uncomfortable as our society has become with so much as using the words for uncomfortable subjects is indicative of our society's slide towards fascism and puritanical repression. Art depicts life and, whether we as a society like it or not, abuse, domestic violence, rape, suicide, incest, child sexual abuse, addiction, homelessness, sex work and murder are all actual things that actually happen and most real life villains are never caught by the legal system. Burying discussions, censoring depictions and silencing artists only helps these villains.
You are allowed to dislike a subject and choose not to engage with media that depicts that subject. You do not get to villainize artists that produce art of the subject, you don't get to censor the words and images just because they make you uncomfortable and you certainly don't get to restrict production of that art.
Gather a bunch of titanium (about 200, but this will vary depending on how elaborate you want your bases on either end of the corridor)
Also gather a good supply of quartz for glass if you want windows so you can see out the corridor at intervals
Choose the starting point of the corridor carefully, since once you place the first building, that establishes the grid that the rest of the corridor will follow. I positioned it aiming for the Alien Ruins HUD marker, about 93 meters down.*
Make sure all your building materials are stored in lockers in the starting room, and make sure your base is powered for oxygen (I used two bioreactors, but if you build near a thermal vent or a current, you could use those.)
From inside the starting room, start building the corridor pointing in the direction you want to go, walking forward to build more, piece by piece. No need to build from outside in the water!
I ended my corridor about 100 meters away from the Alien Ruins icon, which put me right next to the Observatory tower and outside of the Collector's (current) range.
I didn't time it, but I estimate this process took about 2-3 hours, prepping and building from one end of the canyon to the other. Fully furnishing and decorating the bases at both ends took extra time/resources. And, yes, if you want a Tadpole on the other side, you will need to build a second Tadpole.
* Additional step in case devs change leviathan behavior so they start attacking bases/trying to attack the player inside bases: Build a tower of square room pieces until you're above the waterline, still pointed in the right direction, and build out from the top room so the corridor will be out of the water and hopefully out of the Collector's reach.
i did make one of these in my first save, but i think it's also worth noting that you have everything you need in the "protected zone" by the "alien ruins" beacon for the rest of the game. including base materials. most of them are in the sonic resonator clumps, too, which means more bang for your buck while collecting.
i didn't make my bridge until after i finished the story. i made beacons for both ends of what i called "the great bridge" lmao
theres SO many threads on steam abt not being able to kill the predators or have a gun or whatever and its just the worst media illiteracy ever. you are a clone-self working for a space megacorporation who absolutely controls your access to materials and technology. you think they'd give you weapons? ballistic ones, with bullets in them? to their debt slaves?
more importantly, the game could not be clearer: you don't belong here. you are a monkey flapping around in an ocean filled to the brim with things who were born to hunt and kill there. accept your place in that world, and hide under a rock. like smart prey.
anyway the funniest complaint is this one extremely dogged christian who is DEEPLY offended at a character quoting jesus christ, a thing that also happened in both other subnautica games multiple times.
i think what really gets me is that even your control scheme wants you to swing second and observe first. there's a reason left click is for collecting things and not swinging your tool, in context of about every other other first person game using left click as the primary weapon fire key.
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
snowghoul
2087
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
