queerastronauts

[queerastronauts]

oh so we’re all about subverting the chosen one trope until the chosen one nukes the earth and eats the solar system. i see how it is

#books #the locked tomb

[queerastronauts]

eughhb couhgh griddlehwrk griddlehark help

#books #the locked tomb

[queerastronauts]

alecto the first

#books #the locked tomb

[queerastronauts]

Um if youre still taking requests : Wake ..? Or Pyrrhawake !

"Anyone who spaded your mum would brag about it."

#books #the locked tomb

[queerastronauts]

hey kkc squad I’m curious

#he said he had written the whole series in advance and everything now is just 'rewrites and edits' so like #I figure even if he dies his next of kin can jirt him #not that he's close to death or anything he's like in his fifties isn't he? #googled it he's exactly 50 #basically. I'm holding out hope #kkc #polls #books

[queerastronauts]

I think my favorite part of TSC is that we get the counterpoint of Jeremy's POV.

Not only because it's funny (it is) or because I love Jeremy (I do), but because it drives home the themes of AFTG in a way that Neil or even Jean's POVs cannot.

With Neil, we get the upperclassmen, but for the most part everyone he interacts with is so steeped in the mafia plot and the ravens, but also just so much abuse that we as the readers get kind of stewed into seeing things from Neil's perspective. It's why we have to remember that Neil is an unreliable narrator. (It's not a bug, it's a feature btw; I love Neil's batshit view of the world)

But with Jeremy, it gets thrown into stark relief that it does not have to be like this.The Trojans practice, and they go home. Exy is not a metaphor to them, or a lifeline, or an obligation; it is an activity. They have lives. They have friends outside of Exy, something Neil does not have.

So, I watch a lot of college gymnastics. I love the sport, but (like all sports), there is the looming specter of abuse. Every year, it seems like another coach is discovered to have abused their athletes. Weight tracking, emotional abuse, physical abuse and intimidation. Its something you weigh when you're a college sports fan, knowing on some level that this thing you enjoy on some level enables this. 

And it makes me think of the line in TSC:

“What we don’t understand is how a grown-ass man took a bunch of kids and turned them into monsters for sport.”

Because this is what Neil's POV can't give us. Neil, and Kevin and Jean, the stakes are higher because of the mafia plot, it's true. But SO MANY OTHER ravens were just normal kids who got destroyed so some adults could make money and have a little bit of glory. 

And, to be clear, this isn't a place to be like “and this is why I don't watch sports” because it's EVERYWHERE. In music, TV, school theater and choir- anywhere there is a power dynamic, there is the potential for abuse. 

And by providing the counterpoint from the Trojans, it becomes even more apparent how unnecessary it all is.

#tsc #tfc #books

[queerastronauts]

someone talk about the Nona grief with me. Someone talk to me about the grief.

#the locked tomb #books

[queerastronauts]

It had been a long time ago, but also, it was no time at all.

Prelude: Take Me Back - Dogfight, Pasek & Paul The Camera Shop; I Don't Know; Usher, Part 3; Midnight - Ghost Quartet, Dave Malloy No One Else - Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Dave Malloy Road to Hell (Reprise) - Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell Chillin' the Regrets - Alice By Heart, Steven Sater & Duncan Sheik Karnak's Dream of Life - Ride The Cyclone, Brook Maxwell & Jacob Richmond The Raven Boys/ The Dream Thieves/ Blue Lily, Lily Blue/ The Raven King

#trc #books

[queerastronauts]

#books

[queerastronauts]

not back for TSC, not on hiatus, but a secret third option–

spinning mushing rotting the new taylorswift & aftg together

#so meeee #tfc #tsc #books

[queerastronauts]

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

#tolkien #books

[queerastronauts]

Thinking of the larger context of LOTR and like, the fellowship swapping old war stories and shit and Sam just says “Yeah I killed a huge spider…Shelob, I think?”

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

Gandalf elects not to tell Sam that he killed the spawn of a primordial demon.

#tolkien #books

[queerastronauts]

Jeremy and Jean are living inside my head and I don't care that they don't pay rent (working on some redesigns for these two)

#tfc #tsc #books

[queerastronauts]

this is my only thought right now thank you

#books #tfc #tsc

[queerastronauts]

Aaron getting into medical school and leaving exy behind at Palmetto. He makes some friends, of course, and he doesn’t feel the need to mention to any of them that he’s family friends with multiple professional exy players, including the son of exy himself Kevin Day. He’s moved on from exy and while he’s proud of the Foxes he doesn’t want to be known for it while starting this new adventure.

But obviously he’s not gonna cut ties with the Foxes, so he continues to text them and call them and he’ll be included in some of their social media posts and occasionally he’ll post something with them in it. And his new classmates and friends start to catch on that he’s the Aaron Minyard, former starting backliner for the Palmetto State Foxes NCAA champions, brother of one of the best goalkeepers in the league and close friend of many other professional players.

And Aaron absolutely dreads it when they connect all the dots. Like he refuses to acknowledge that he knows them. People will ask him like “omg do you really know the Kevin Day?” or “is all that stuff about Neil Josten true?” or “are you actually Andrew Minyards twin?” and he’ll just deadpan stare at them and just go “who?” Even worse when someone tries to treat him like a celebrity or ask him about his time as a Fox and he just gives them the most disgusted stare until they eventually walk away.

Yet he’ll keep posting with them he even increases how much he posts with them because he proud of them because he thinks it’s hilarious to watch people get pissed off at him for pretending not to know who they are and then turning around and posting a picture of himself at their games or on their annual vacations.

And when Kevin signs with the team that’s located in the same city that Aaron’s in they start hanging out all the time. They’ll go out to a bar and his classmates are shocked that this kid from their anatomy class is taking shots with Kevin Day. Aaron will just ask them “who” when they confront him and immediately turn back to Kevin to continue their conversation.

Idk just something about Aaron being this random med school kid with 3 of the best professional Exy players trailing him is my favorite thing. Also him being proud of his foxes and showing it in his own asshole way

#books #tfc

[queerastronauts]

Ok, so, as most know hobbits LOVE mushrooms, but what if they love ALL mushrooms, even the poisonous ones. What if a hobbit’s body is able to handle more of the poison and it doesn’t affect them at all. And they love it!

#tolkien #books

[queerastronauts]

what people think alice oseman books are like: blushing awkward first meetings, little chaste first kisses, giggling teenage boys holding hands what alice oseman books are actually like: hey what if your entire personality is actually a carefully constructed facade to make other people like you and to disguise the fact that you don't actually know who you are. if you stripped away all the walls, all the artificial things that you think make you up, what would be left? what would happen if you stopped living for other people and started living for yourself? is there even a person in there or just a gaping void with nothing left in it? wouldn't that be fucked up? do you even know yourself? do you even have a real personality anymore?

#alice oseman #books