The Celestial Quill

Remi's blog of writing and arts and other things that I like. I'm Remi, btw, and I write, I do other things as well, but mostly? I like to write, so yeah. Enjoy your time here!

[merlepsblog]

Someone else on here recently said "You guys don't actually want a night shift version" and I think the last couple of episodes proved them right. Not because the night shift characters are not interesting, but because the thing is: if you are going to spend more time with the night shift, by necessity they cannot only be the cool kids that roll in to make sarcastic comments about the day shift. They are going to be flawed and messy - yes, even - no, in particular - Dr. Jack Abbot. And apparently that needs to be said, because it's been quite interesting to see people grapple with seeing Abbot act like the guy he was always written to be, not as the perfect white knight/white savior figure they made up in their head. "Abbot would have punched those ICE guys" - Uhm, no. Abbot would have asked Jesse if he "punched the guy," which is exactly what we see him do. No, that doesn't mean that he loves ICE, just like many cops don't "love" ICE. He might even use his connections, the way Perlah does, if Jesse was someone he personally cared about enough. But look, are we seriously surprised that the guy who is proud of his Afghanistan service and works for the local police in his free time would start with "What did he do to deserve that?" "Abbot would never be dismissive towards his staff, especially not toward a woman" - And yet, as soon as he's officially on duty, he has no problem brusquely ordering McKay around and referring to Toomarian as "the intern," as if she isn't standing right there. We can discuss whether he is justified to ask McKay to help out (yes, he probably is!), but he certainly doesn't go out of his way to be nice about it, and maybe it's not great that he is not bothering to address a new hire he's in charge of by name (especially when, in contrast, we see Whitaker actively introducing her and Al-Hashimi warmly welcoming her). "But he's so nice to Mohan and Al-Hashimi" - Yeah because he likes them. Because he possibly wants to bang them (yes, both of them). Because he has favorites. He jokes around with Henderson, he's flirtatious with Samira, he glazes Dana, but he is curt and impersonal with McKay and Toomarian because they don't ping his radar, simple as that. "Abbot will sneak out and disassemble Robby's bike" - Yes, that was a nice thought and made for a lovely running joke, but no, he was really just talking to admin when he disappeared for an hour, not taking steps to make Robby stay. Now Dana is basically begging him on her knees to intervene and he is still reluctant to act. Dana is pushing Robby. McKay is willing to push Robby. Duke is ready to push Robby. Abbot actively needs to be pushed.

And that's to be expected, because ultimately, he and Robby are way, way more similar than a lot of people want to admit. They both play favorites. They both have "their guys." They both have a lot of unexamined bias. They both are attracted to women of color while being complicit in their structural oppression. They both have a temper when they are irritated. They are "two white old men poaching” Shen and Ellis' patient. They are both severely traumatized and cope with it in harmful ways. They are both determined to suppress their feelings until it kills them. Maybe literally.

And that's fine - that's what makes them interesting, complex characters. But at the end of the day, they are two middle-aged guys with a lot of manpain who were thought up by other middle-aged guys in a writers' room, and if you already can't handle Robby being an ass to people because he was abandoned by his mother and lost his mentor ... are you really sure you are prepared for an Abbot backstory that might tell us about how he became a doctor because he feels guilty for looking away when his Army buddies tortured a 12-year-old “terrorist”?

[ny-ji]

Actually.. yes, i still want it 🫶

All we're asking for is a good narrative balance, not sanitized characters

[monjustmon]

I personally have a stance where I'm not sure whether Abbot can carry a season of his own- because he is similar to Robby, but also different enough that he won't carry his suffering the same way, and his leadership is going to be, I think, very military style, which I think can be interesting.... for a little bit... but we must be shown how he carries his pain, and him being pushed to the brink, I believe, would indeed look like punching the fuck out of somebody or quietly actually making that jump (which I dont think The Pitt would portray), and him not being pushed to the brink is going to be very swaggery, as he usually appears. I get the impression he struggles more while unpressured, and I'm just not sure how compelling Abbot would be in a very critical day. The closest we've seen him in active crisis is at his introduction, where he glares at Mel and makes disparaging comments when she mentions being excited for her first day. Like. Even his crisis mode is still very steady if jerkish. Idk what could be done with that. Maybe give me an Abbot slow night, if that's possible.

I like my Abbot right now in small doses, but I am open to anything, because everything can be carried through with good execution.

I do like OP's post inmensely, though, because while I do think I have a slightly more rosy view of Abbot than them, I do become somewhat frustrated when people act like Robby is a mess and Abbot has to everything figured out. I love that our introduction to Abbot is literally him on the roof. We had a whole season to push Robby to the roof. That wasn't how we were introduced to him and now we think of Robby as our suicidal tendencies extraordinaire. Like yes, we explored that much more, and that was the focus of season two, but Robby is in active stages of crisis, this is not his baseline.

A lot of people headcanon Robby and Jack having this circular system of talking each other off the roof previous to season 1, but Jack says, "You're in my spot." This suggests to me that Jack is the one constantly being up there and Robby being his support system in getting him down. This is not a shared spot they switch their existential crisis at, not ordinarily. That's probably one of the reasons Jack was more awkward in his comforting Robby away from the edge than Robby is at comforting him.

If Jack can speak that freely and frankly about suicidality in the Pitt's second season to Robby, it is because it is something he is very very used to considering, and probably discussing with his therapist. That does put him at an advantage to season 2 Robby, who is dealing with an ongoing mounting crisis he does not know how to deal with, because Jack has already has made a choice to not kill himself and sort of understands dealing with his suicidal ideation as another part of his mainteinance.... which like. Does not mean his sustained suicidal ideation is not.... a problem. This man has had suicidal ideation that had him standing at the edge of a rooftop (maybe at the edge of streets, at the tops of bridges, there's so much we dont know) for months, if not years.

So when people write or talk about Jack as simply this cool guy that is always loose and composed and rolls with the punches... that's like. You fell for it. You fell for Jack's song and dance.

[best-of-inspirobot]

[tearlessrain]

this is in perfect iambic meter and sounds like the first line of a weird poem

[tearlessrain]

Rule #2

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

So don’t ever hug a lobster, simply put, it’s impolite.

[sisyphusshrugged]

Dan Hays Colorado Snow Effect 4 (with detail) 2007, oil on canvas

[zzoupz]

Here comes the sun

And I say, "It's all right"

[haveyoureadthisdcfic]

mutually assured

Have you read mutually assured?

Yes, previously

Yes, now that you've recced it to me

No

Voting ended onJun 1

Authour: @chejuu (cheju)

Subfandom: Batfamily

Media: Comics

Relationships: Shippy (Slade Wilson/Dick Grayson)

Year: 2024

Rating: Teen

Warnings: None

Summary:

Every night at sundown, Slade and Dick swap bodies. As soon as they figure out how the hell to fix it and who the hell is responsible, Slade’s going to kill the sorry bastard that did it. That is, if he and Grayson don't kill each other first.

Submitted by anon

Submitter's comment:

Bodyswap fic that does an amazing job making the body swap part important. These characters’ bodies are their livelihood, and the author is so, so aware of how they move and relate to their bodies. Lovely mystery as well; the author uses it to beautifully express how the characters think. Love how clever Dick gets to be here too.

[cannotacrowmb]

wemby is so great. he's 22. he had a potentially fatal blood clot. he's in a fantasy/sci-fi book club for nba players that's just him and one other guy. he beat the okc thunder in the nba cup semifinals and said immediately afterwards he was happy to be playing "ethical basketball" (implied: unlike them). he has a high kick so high that it can knock a basketball out of the hoop. he decided the best way to recover from the potentially fatal blood clot was training with shaolin monks. he could have had a career with fc barcelona but turned it down because the coaches weren't challenging him enough. he's 7'4". actually he's 2.24m because he's french. he cries on the court because he "refuses to hide the burden of [his] emotions." he elbowed a guy in the neck last week. he hates iso ball. he hates ICE. he's the first guy to win defensive player of the year in a unanimous vote. he's currently building a 7,500-piece lego model of the millennium falcon

[nebulaesailor]

and san antonio fucking loves wemby

who the fuck cares about the rest of the team, wemby's the best and amazing and everyone will fucking fight to protect this precious cinnamon roll of a basketball player.

like, literally, there were people threatening to fight the timbers last week or whatever because they thought the referees weren't being fair to them and that the timbers were attacking him too much.

[irradiatedsnakes]

you cant just say that man

[kelvintimeline]

Andy Wier going on an anti-woke podcast to promote his film (Project Hail Mary) and trash Star Trek (after his own ST project got rejected) just for Trekkies to terrorize him into an apology with a day… That’s one way to ruin your cutesy neo-liberal brand at breakneck speed

[kelvintimeline]

Genuinely such a dumb cunt thing to say while still trying to get Star Trek money:

“I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that,” Weir said. “I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make, and I’m not trying to affect the reader’s opinion on anything. My sole job is to entertain, and I stick to that.”

[offonaherosjourney]

Here is a list of all the politics and social commentary Andy Weir did in fact include in the Project Hail Mary book that I can recall at the top of my head:

When Grace is still incredibly amnesiac and manages to remember what his apartment looks like, he remarks the lack of feminine touches in the decoration and casually wonders if this means he is single or maybe gay.

Upon learning of the astrophage problem, all the nations of the world get their shit together in record time and give Stratt basically unlimited power, authority and resources to do whatever is necessary to save Earth. This itself is a political choice. Pair it with the vastly different real world response world leaders have to climate change and it becomes a social commentary, sorry Andy but it really does.

The reason Grace decides to join the Hail Mary project is because of his students. He's in the middle of a class when he realizes the incredibly hard and bleak future that awaits his students due to the cooling Sun, and tells Stratt he wants to keep helping.

Shortly after figuring out how astrophage reproduce on his own, Grace is taken to the aircraft carrier, where he meets for the first time the other scientists involved in the project. After explaining his findings, a Chinese scientist announces their team has been able to reproduce Grace's findings, the implied reason being they had somehow spied on them.

During one of his first conversations with Rocky, Grace remarks on an unexpected hurdle of meeting aliens: pronouns. His conclusion is to just shrug and slap he/him pronouns on Rocky. There are no further conversations about this topic, not even when both of them are able to communicate fluently. Grace doesn't re-examinate his pronoun choice any further, nor, despite having a PhD in molecular biology and being curious about things like how Eridians eat, ask about Eridians' concepts of sex and gender.

Following that previous point, when Rocky mentions having a mate back home, Grace chooses for said mate the name Adrian. This is yet another reference to the Rocky movies, albeit a more obscure one, and a lot of the people that didn't realize this simply read both Rocky and Adrian as male and therefore gay.

One last bit re gender and sexuality is the fact that at no point during the book does Ryland Grace, a single man of unspecified sexuality, lament being single or express any sexual desires, which is why many people read him as being on the asexual spectrum.

The movie had to gloss over many things and completely skip over others, some of these later things were the incredible sacrifices and hardships Earth had to go through to survive until hopefully Project Hail Mary managed to find a solution to the astrophage problem. First off, in order to produce the astrophage fuel for the ship they paved a huge chunk of the Sahara desert, which had devastating ecological and climate consequences, altered or destroyed the homes and livelihoods of millions of people and created tons of refugees. Also, in order to win time and counter the effects of the cooling Sun, they start to nuke chunks of fucking Antarctica, because making climate change worse will make Earth hotter and therefore buy them time. The first time the scientist (a self-declared hippie ecologist) in charge of this orders the release of the bombs, he understandably breaks down and starts to cry. Needless to say, nuking the fucking Antarctica raises sea levels and also has horrendous ecological and climatic consequences and once again would in fact create millions of refugees. The fact that the book doesn't dwell on the consequences of any of these two actions doesn't change the fact that we as readers are supposed to extrapolate and put two plus two together whether Andy intended to or not. Expecting otherwise is frankly insulting.

At one point Stratt tells Grace what will happen to Earth while they await for the solution to the astrophage problem. She talks about the famines and how many people will die, but that's just the people that will starve to death. Millions more will die in the wars that will break out all over the planet because there is no way the richer and more powerful nations will be willing to share resources equally with the rest.

Grace gifts Rocky, a member of an alien species, a laptop that contains the sum of all human knowledge, history and media. He knows Rocky, but has never met other Eridians, and despite this he chooses to give it to them.

The fucking foundational plot of the book is interspecies collaboration, trust, and friendship. Choosing to meet and befriend an alien despite all the possible risks and dangers is just as political of a choice as choosing to kill an alien would be.

Andy Weir is very good at writing Cosmic Hope books about Space MacGyvers, but writing any kind of story is inherently full of a myriad of political and social commentary choices, whether you want to or not, and whether you realize it or not. Being unable to see or willing to admit this makes him a worse writer and frankly greatly mars part of his supposed genius.

[catdownthestreet]

favorite take that I've seen on this so far. Andy Weir is a great author who writes very humanist novels, he's just also a guy who doesn't understand what political means. PHM is his best work and it's not even close, and it's a story about connection in spite of everything that would get in the way of friendship and community. in this world? there's no way to read that as anything other than political.

[nebulaesailor]

i feel like it should be important to recognize that this meta commentary?

this is what "death of the author" means.

andy weir has said there's no politics.

his audience has gone "fuck that" and read about the politics that he clearly has included without even realizing it.

[writing-prompt-s]

You are a villain famous for “killing” heroes. In reality, heroes come to you to fake their deaths.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Sometimes they try to pay you.

You are posted out by the Hollywood sign tonight, sitting under the frame where the W used to be. It got burnt to a crisp during last week’s big superhero fight. A hero died right where you’re sitting. The whole area’s been closed down until Hero Force can coordinate a recovery effort. Usually it’d be done by now but no one’s willing to touch it until the ash has been completely blown away.

It’s a rule that the world must stand still when a hero dies.

“How much?”

The voice comes from behind you. The lights that illuminate the Hollywood sign are down to hide as much of the scorch marks as possible. You wouldn’t be able to see anything even if you did turn around, so you don’t.

You put some chapstick on, the glide of the balm against your wind chapped lips grounding.

“I said,” the Hero says, voice tightening, “How. Much.”

There’s the sound of gravel crunching now. They’re wearing heavy boots and the scent of fresh blood grows stronger the closer they get. Their breathing is smooth and even which means it’s not their blood.

You put the cap back on your chapstick and tuck it into your leather jacket’s inner pocket. “I don’t take money.”

“Then what do you take?” The Hero rounds the Y and comes into your line of sight. The dark hides most of their features, but you can make out a glittering gold mask and the dull shine of drying blood on their chest plate. Their breathing may be even, but their stance isn’t. They sway in place, back and forth, back and forth. Their arms wrap around their stomach. “I’ve got land. A house. You can have it.”

Keep reading

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

the thing that you HAVE to understand about much ado about nothing is that beatrice and benedick are NOT COOL. they are HUGE DORKS and also major softies. they make everything loud and obnoxious and about themselves because they are SO hurt about what happened in the past between them and SO sensitive about it. Beatrice says this more explicitly but it’s also true about benedick. he gets legitimately so upset and angry when he thinks beatrice doesn’t know who he is at the party and she calls him a dumbass. he storms off stage when he sees her next. because he’s hurt!!! because it really really matters to him what she thinks!!!! and right after that Beatrice literally talks about how Benedick “lent [her his heart] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice” HE BETRAYED HER and she’s STILL UPSET. “thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt” she is not railing against marriage because she’s principled against it or because she’s Strong Female Character (tm). she’s sunburnt!!! she loved benedick more than he loved her and she’s still torn up about it!!!! she would rather never deal with that again!!! which is what you have to understand here. they are putting up fronts that they don’t care all the time. they are putting of fronts of Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl and Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude but this is not who they are in ANY way and they are both so sensitive and get hurt so easily!!!!!! and this is why they almost don’t get together this is why they almost take it all back in the last scene!!! they can’t be vulnerable! they can’t risk it! it’s easier to be Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl than just Beatrice who got her heart broken and now can’t trust anymore. it’s easier to be Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude when you blew it with the girl you’re obsessed with and you survived war just to go back to her after you broke her heart and she calls you a dumbass to your face. the vulnerability necessary to their relationship only happens through their friends but otherwise they are actually hopeless. it is so so important to me that these two are both incredibly sappy losers

[mariposagal]

Couldn't leave this excellent analysis in the tags!

[eaissilyy]

Good Riddance - Project Hail Mary

(thinking about Orpheus and Eurydice similarities where turning back saved them both. about saying goodbye and being freed from all the burdens, that you deeply cared and loved, but it also hurt you at the same time. about how Grace might sometimes see the future of humanity as a debt he needs to pay. about how guilty he will feel in thinking so. about making peace with it in the end maybe because he was as good as dead maybe he was content maybe he had rocky maybe he knew he did something good.)

[wreegis]

what if we kissed and we were both tyrannical rulers and girls

can i interest anybody in my old lady yuri

[pennywords]

X

[alexaloraetheris]

Oh, to be a little kitten who just got vaccinated and then taken to a high-end restaurant and tasted the best food the chefs could offer and then fell asleep in a basket.

[evaceratops]

it just occurred to me that darth vader, master engineer, probably looked at the death star plans at some point and noticed the flaw, but didn’t bother to tell anyone about it because he despised everyone who was involved in the project

[evaceratops]

#krennic and tarkin: [die as a (indirect and direct, respectively) result of the death star’s flaw] #vader, who knew about that flaw and did nothing: unfortunate

[rey-of-moonlight]

“Unfortunate”

[zeonicbolshevik]

Meanwhile Vader, expert ace pilot, acts well below rank to supposedly fight off the attackers. Attackers who, as far as anyone else knows, can’t hope to do shit to the Death Star.

Convenient.

[fluffycakesistainted]

Convenient…

Lol there are some ppl on here all “oh he was feeling a little Light so he knew he had to destroy it to do the Right Thing!!!” like nah. I love my boy but he’s a bag of stinky garbagé at this point and still totally evil.

He just despised the Death Star cuz everyone was all “nyeh heh this thing can do ur job for u u LOSER” and he actively loathed every single person who was on board it. Of course he was petty enough to ignore its self-destruct button. He’s just that bitch.

[ekjohnston]

this seems entirely reasonable sidebar: apparently thrawn treason is, like, mostly Krennic and Tarkin hating each other and i have never read a thrawn book but i might just read that one

[kyraneko]

Vader is high-key insulted by the existence of the Death Star, the effort and expense thrown into making it, and the way everybody’s praising it as the new ultimate power in the universe, and probably the worst part of the whole affair?

 He has no one to bitch to about it. 

Even the Emperor’s jumped on the superweapon hype train. Even the tolerably-competent officers like Tarkin are all #TeamDeathStar, and then there’s smug assholes like Admiral Motti who just won’t shut up about it, and honestly?

Vader’s probably been on the email CC list for the design since the project started. Years of enduring shitty design and interdepartmental bickering and watching some smarmy asshole in an inferior cloak prance about bloviating about his special superweapon like somebody who has an anime body pillow of the superlaser housing.

And then there’s this one scientist who keeps going on and on about this thermal exhaust problem.

Just. Huge amounts of emails on the subject, going on and on and on about it.

Vader is totally the only person who actually reads these after the first, like, five of them. Everybody else just skims through them with a side of “Seriously, Galen? Another one? Force-dammit, Krennic, couldn’t you have left him on that mudball with his family?” But Vader is bored out of his skull with 90% of his job anyway, and it’s not like he has anything better to do. Besides, viciously judging other people’s design abilities is the closest thing to pass for fun when there aren’t any Rebels to slaughter or armies to curbstomp, and there’s plenty of shit design for the judging.

He spots the flaw in the reactor the first time it appears in the plans.

He’d have shit himself if it wasn’t for the suit.

He promptly makes a bet with himself on whether anybody is going to spot it.

Nobody does.

They’re a pack of idiots. Every last one of them.

Maybe he contemplates telling them for like two-thirds of a second. It would be fun to lord his actual mechanical expertise over that little shit, Krennic.

But then he considers that he can only tell them once, and what if it were after the thing blew itself right the fuck up, what if that? He can still point out the flaw, and he can throw everyone’s stupidity right in their stupid faces, but also there’ll be no more Death Star.

So when Galen Erso sends out Thermal Exhaust Problem Analysis Report #6,109 and buried in paragraph 37 is a suggestion of an extra exhaust port, and Krennic responds with “SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN THERMAL EXHAUST PORT, GALEN, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!” and Erso goes, “So you approve the solution?” and Krennic goes “S***** F*** LKJDGJFKL!!!!LJF$%#$DJF! YES!” Vader saves the email exchange for posterity and is downright cheerful the rest of the week.

True, he acts in its defense, chasing down Rebels when the plans are stolen. Of course he does. They’re Rebels, and hunting them down is his job and one of the very few pleasures of his existence. But it’s not for the Death Star. In fact, if one of them were to escape with its plans, and hide them successfully, and keep their location secret through torture and worse, and if another of them were to fly a starfighter well enough to keep from being destroyed long enough to drop a torpedo through that vulnerable exhaust port and touch off that reactor instability and turn the whole massive, ridiculous, wasteful, absurd, and vaguely insulting contraption into so much spacedust …

… well …

… oops.

Vader’s only regret about the whole affair is that Krennic predeceased it and is therefore unavailable for gloating to.

It doesn’t stop him from snagging a copy of the Rebels’ footage of the Death Star blowing up and posting it anonymously to the holonet with the added caption “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

[maskedhatter]

What makes this whole thing better is that the comics ( Darth Vader Annual 2 to be precise) backs this theory up

The Annual literally starts with Tarkin arriving on Scarif, only to find Vader had broken into the archive and was just casually studying the Death Star plans

Then later on, he literally says THIS to Tarkin

Vader is the pettiest fucker who hates EVERYTHING to do with his coworkers and the Death Star and I LOVE it

[daughterofstories]

You know, I usually hate these exhaust port conversations, but I think it actually works here.

Because the entire point of the exhaust port is how absurd a long shot it is. If you can survive flying through a narrow trench lined with turrets while in an active dogfight long enough, then you might get close enough to attempt a shot your computers are literally incapable of making.

No matter how many times it gets brought up, no one is going to put time and energy into addressing this, because no reasonable person would consider this an actual vulnerability.

But we’re not talking about a reasonable person.

We’re talking about Anakin “I destroyed a droid control ship from the inside piloting a fighter I had never seen before when I was ten years old” Skywalker.

He sees those plans, and immediately knows how he would take down the Death Star.

Who cares that a computer couldn’t make that shot? It’d be easy, if you use the Force.

You know, the Force? That thing all you Imperial officers are calling superstitious nonsense?

Yes, well… I guess we’ll just see how this plays out.

[grakkie]

I saw a request for Jason having vulture habits but I can’t find it, so this is for you mystery anon,

Jason genuinely likes the taste of ‘old meat’ he has a heavy preference for bones but before and also as Robin he used to snatch any roadkill he could find to pick at and chew on during patrol, unfortunately for dick and Bruce it was hard to stop him since when he got caught he would swallow it whole.

At first it really scared Bruce Alfred and dick since they thought that is was a bad habit from Jason’s time fending for himself, until they recognised that it was Jason’s vulture nature and they focused on providing bone broths and jerky to encourage a cleaner ‘scavenger diet’ for little vulture jay

[alaspapilio]

...Grace

[nyuisnt]

Muse

Edit: by "I don't think that's happening" gerry is referring to getting the painting out of his head. He most definitely will help with supper. I need to learn to read tho.