Loftwings and Demons

So in the Murderbot Diaries Gurathin and Murderbot start off intensely disliking each other, and I found this one of the most enjoyable dynamics in both the book and the TV show. Characters who have to work together but hate each other are like catnip to me. Absolute best character dynamic two characters can have.

Interestingly, I think the TV show does more to develop this rivalry and the character of Gurathin than the books actually do. A big part of this is that the books don't actually give Gurathin a backstory, whereas the show does. And so while there are aspects of the books I definitely prefer, I'm giving the show a big W for how it took one of my favorite parts of the original story and made it even better.

Reading the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler. Still working my way through this trilogy, but I've finished the first book and I just think it's such a powerful statement about social dynamics on both a personal and societal level.

One of the consistent themes of Lilith's Brood is that there's a difference between loving someone and respecting them. The Oankali love humans. They don't respect them. And this story shows the horror of that lack of respect, the horror of giving help that the person being helped did not consent to.

Anyone have suggestions for hard sci-fi that has good characterization? Most of the stories I've encountered tend to do one or the other, but not both. Mostly looking for novels, but other mediums are fine.

Was thinking about how much I wish I was a better essay writer because I'd love to write a long detailed essay comparing the politics of Star Wars and Star Trek and how I think that key among their differences is that Star Wars is a dystopia and Star Trek is a utopia.  This is one of the things that I think makes comparing them in a 'which is better' fashion, despite their superficial similarities (eg. genre, era of creation), an apples to oranges comparison.  What makes an exploration of utopian ideals interesting is inherently different from what makes an exploration of dystopia interesting.  Star Wars is a galaxy in collapse, stuck in a cycle of destruction and rebirth.  Star Trek is about a galaxy coming together and the creation of peace.  

In Star Wars, the war is never won.  Victory is inevitably followed by defeat in a seemingly unbreakable cycle.  Justice and happiness are transitory, fleeting, an illusion.  Star Wars is a tragedy unfolding slowly.

In Star Trek, war is beaten back by peace, intolerance by understanding.  The depths of despair may be deep, but emergence is inevitable.  Star Trek is a story of hope with a happy ending.

Additionally, despite being the happier tale overall, Star Trek is written more with adults in mind despite being rated so it could be viewed by children, whereas Star Wars was always written with selling toys in mind and thus was written to appeal to children first and foremost.  Star Trek is also the much more explicitly didactic of the two--I've mentioned before that Star Wars is much more confused in its politics but that lack of clarity makes it much less explicit in its politics as well.  

Where the narratives coincide, however, is the mutual scorn they share for conservatives.  This is not to say that Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas share identical politics, because I think it's clear they have some very important differences in that respect.  But having seen a great deal of both and having seen a number of interviews with Lucas in how he characterizes the political aspect of his work, it seems pretty clear to me that he is often criticizing contemporary American conservatives (and I'd say that J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson's works also sort of do this in addition to revisiting the political moment of the original trilogy by it's narrative reenactment).  And I think the scorn for conservatives Roddenberry has is communicated clearly by the didacticism of Trek.

I just have so many thoughts on this and I don't think I could elucidate them all properly or even write them all down.

This episode is about Pearl losing her phone...inside her own gem.  Bizarre and yet so incredibly relateable haha. 

It's somewhat vexing to me that I have so much trouble reading stories that aren't in the fantasy or sci-fi genres.  I may be more open to different plotlines and themes than I was when I was younger, but there's still a part of me that's 5 years old and needs to see some weird stuff.  This isn't to say that I think fantasy and sci-fi can't be intellectual, because I think there's plenty of both that is, but that I'm probably missing out on a lot of good stuff because of my resistance to reading outside these genres. Though also, I think I would find it a lot more painful to read a bad story outside of these genres than I do to read bad stories inside of them.