She’s Trying Her Best. :3

I wish all writers who haven’t been able to write in a long time bc of depression a very I love u and I promise u will write again

Very disappointing. That’s nowhere near enough shuttlecraft for Voyager. I demand at least 42 shuttlecraft crammed into that bay. Oceans of shuttlecraft. Shuttlecraft without end.

Star Trek Voyager Game Project

i wish orson welles was here to run a toxic blog

That modern Captain Planet discussion you guys had at the beginning of the latest @transmediacrity podcast was surprisingly resonant to me, @wyattsalazar. I’ve been chewing on this essay criticizing the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, and it seems like the attitudes and beliefs that the liberal TNG era was built on are now also verboten, and have been replaced by sadder, crueler things.

Looky looky @coppermarigolds! Now that’s interesting: Bataar Jr. isn’t sitting with his family in the gallery. I wonder if he’s been scheduled for a later hearing, or if Suyin has...“arranged” matters so that he’ll be serving a lifetime sentence in “exile” in Zaofu in exchange for not facing trial. Both theories are plausible, given what we have seen of Suyin’s character. Hmm, Kuvira still believes that her cause was a just one, still considers the other powers hypocrites for their attitudes towards her and the former Earth Kingdom (which they are), the divide between her and Suyin (a divide, ironically, for which Suyin herself still refuses to take responsibility)...it’s still early to tell, but it looks like this comic is bringing us some of the issues that weren’t handled that well in Book 4 and which the Kuvira fandom has discussed extensively. It’s still too early to tell, but at the moment there’s reason to be optimistic for this comic.

The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part One PREVIEW PAGES!

After the new Korra graphic novel trilogy was unveiled yesterday, today we have our first preview pages courtesy of Entertainment Weekly!

And they. Look. Amazing.

The new artist, Michelle Wong, has done a STUNNING job bringing the Avatar universe to life.

Equally as exciting is that it appears the story is full steam ahead, picking up directly where the tumultuous Earth Kingdom plot of Book Three: Change and Book Four: Balance left off. Kuvira is on trial for her crimes as leader of the now-defunct Earth Empire, and she’s not backing down.

In these pages, she also has a quick reunion with her sometimes-foster-mother Suyin Beifong.

It’ll be really interesting to see where these plot threads go, especially considering the intriguing points mentioned in the official description for Part One:

Korra must decide who to trust as the fate of the Earth Kingdom hangs in the balance!

On the eve of its first elections, the Earth Kingdom finds its future endangered by its past. Even as Kuvira stands trial for her crimes, vestiges of her imperial ambitions threaten to undermine the nation’s democratic hopes. But when Korra, Asami, Mako, and Bolin don’t all see eye-to-eye as to the solution, drastic measures will be taken to halt a new march to war!

All in all, these pages just look beautiful– the art style, on-model characters and facial expressions, and detailed backgrounds, in tandem with a plotline directly continuing from the series, really make it feel like we’re back in the show again. Can not WAIT to get a whole trilogy of this.

Ruins of the Empire Part One is coming May 21st, 2019.

I'm not a nice person but I still deserve LOK comic featuring Kuvira’s redemption quest guided by Avatar Korra.

My go-to source for the history of scientific romances is Brian Stableford’s 1985 book Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950. (While long out of print, this book is worth its weight in gold.) In Stableford’s account, scientific romances are very much the products of the environment they evolved from. Before the 1890s, publishing in Britain was divided into two rigid categories. On the “respectable” side were the great triple-decker novels, conservative in both style and content, and physically inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t wealthy or who didn’t have access to a circulating library. On the less reputable side were, of course, the penny dreadfuls; cheap to make, quick to read, easy to forget, and not that well-written. Scientific romances (and to a certain extent modern sf) tend to work best in the range between short stories, novellas, and single novels; long enough to properly extrapolate from a central idea, but not so long as to wear out their welcome. It was only at the end of the 19th century, with the decline of the triple-decker, the rise of a literate middle class, publications that catered to them, and of writers that could comfortably support themselves writing for this new audience, that scientific romances had the space and opportunity to emerge. Naturally, this was a different class of writers with different influences that those who had written the gothic works from earlier in the century, so scientific romances evolved in both style and content in a much different direction. (As an example, scientists in 19th-century Britain had a unique tradition of penning essays to explain their theories and their significance to a more general audience, a tendency that was absorbed wholeheartedly into the scientific romance, to the point that both scientists and novelists tried their hands at both essays and stories every so often.)

I was thinking about the literature of 1897 and it got me thinking about the Scientific Romances and how they differ from the Gothic Romances or Gothic Horrors of the age. Clearly, there is some overlap and Frankenstein (much earlier but still relevant) crosses those borders many time without showing a passport for either but by the late 19th you couldn't really compare say 'The War of the Worlds' to 'Dracula'. Where did they diverge so wildly? Or did they?

That’s a really good point, and I’m sorry I took so long to get to this question!  Arguably, Frankenstein himself brings this up- he started out reading ancient mystic texts and moved to more scientific ones later- but I guess there started to be a clearer divide between what we’d call fantasy and what we’d call science fiction as science itself became better known.  You could probably write gothic science fiction in the mode of Asimov, where the science is there to set up philosophical and psychological issues- I’d certainly read about the drama between robot heirs to their creators’ estate and legacy- but the divide certainly feels there.  Returning to H. G. Welles, maybe The Invisible Man is the midpoint?  Or maybe it’s when “scientist” became a common enough profession to not seem mysterious?  Any followers with ideas on this subject, help me out here!

Alien Covenant (2017)

Speaking as someone who does a fair bit of reviewing and occasionally writes for an ezine filled with people steeped in academia, I often feel the same way. I'm always worrying that I'm not being "insightful" enough or that I don't know the correct language to properly discuss a particular theme. I find it helps to remind myself that, at the end of the day, I don't really want to be an academic or write in that environment (or have to force myself to learn that unfathomable prose), and that it's far better to work on something I enjoy doing rather than making myself miserable slaving away on something just to sate my insecurities or gain the approval of some imaginary person I don’t care about.

i feel dumb because i write fiction instead of theory or critical work

if you relate to having an idea for a story for 4 to 8 years with almost zero progress towards actually writing it down, clap your hands