I'll move on if I sit tight

[sovay]

Tonight in a move of true insult to injury, our dishwasher which we never use tried to flood the kitchen. Many towels were sacrificed. Many floorboards were mopped. We shut off the water under the sink, pulled the plug for good measure, and bailed out the inside of the dishwasher, but suspect we will need to call for a plumber no matter what. For consolation, we watched the first four episodes of Apple TV+'s Foundation (2021–). I wish Patricia McKillip were alive so I could tell her how formatively she imprinted me for millennially long games.

Comments

[sholio]

There's a lot less of it on AO3 than I would have expected, and while I understand there are a lot of Cleons to go around, I would not have expected them to dominate the writing scene over the rest of the main cast, especially Gaal or Hari! There's a lot of time in the first season already. No one's writing the interstitial stuff?

I know, it's truly astonishing to me that there's so little fic and the vast majority of it is focused on the Cleons. (And not just that, it's mostly Cleon/OFC from what I saw when I was poking around.) People gonna like what they like! But it is really surprising to me that this show seems to have very little toehold in fanfic-writing fandom at all. As you say, there's so much scope for interstitial fic that it's really a shame no one seems to be writing it.

That being said, there are definitely a few things I want to write! Whether I'll get around to them, who knows, but I've had a few thoughts.

It's the passion project of its showrunner:

I am delighted to know this. ♥

[sovay]

As you say, there's so much scope for interstitial fic that it's really a shame no one seems to be writing it.

I can't believe no one has even poked at the sheer fucking space horror that so obviously took out the Invictus. It's bad enough when it just looks like the drive fritzed on its own and jaunted its crew around known space until they died effectively marooned on their own ship. Then we get the barricaded bridge and the interpretation of a mutiny and the captain who killed herself after writing in her own blood an ominous last message of EXO—"Outside the galaxy? You think they encountered something out there?"—and we are in full bore Event Horizon, last voyage of the Demeter territory. The who-knows-why-he-was-shot navigator still strapped into his cradle, the AI still jacked into his dead brain rifling it for coordinates as it jumps from nowhere to nowhere on its own. The reminder that the conscious and unaugmented human mind cannot bear very much exposure to folded space, so who knows what kind of number it did on the crew to survive inside the ship as long as they did. Every single part of this scenario is freaky af! Entire sci-fi horror movie's worth of a very bad place to be! And unless the show ever revisits the ship's past (at the moment we're cliffhanging on its present, although I am banking on the show not actually warping Salvor into the heart of a sun; dammit, Lewis, you did not actually have to resemble favorite minor characters from sf I grew up on, especially not when you were just starting to be less of a twerp), here it's just casually part of the long chain of history of which there's so much already that the calendar's into the 12,000's and that's just in Imperial years. It's a big universe. Lots of weirdness. Keep moving.

I don't think I understand why readerfic exists when second person has been a viable narrative voice for millennia.

[sholio]

It is EXCELLENT space horror, and deeply creey! I love how the show bounces around between several different space-opera subgenres (which also feels true to its Golden Age roots).

Edit:
dammit, Lewis, you did not actually have to resemble favorite minor characters from sf I grew up on, especially not when you were just starting to be less of a twerp

I know. :(((( He went out a hero, at least, but I didn't want him to go out at all!

[sovay]

He went out a hero, at least, but I didn't want him to go out at all!

"You wished us home."

brb augh forever

Otherwise spatch and I just watched the first-season finale which had the pleasure of confirming at least one of our evolved theories, surprising us in several other directions, and seriously Hari would it kill you to tell anyone the entire truth at any one time, oh, wait, no, it wouldn't, you are literally dead, you can risk it. (I'm sorry, it sounded inspirational, but you cannot have curated the Terminus settlers. Psychohistory by definition does not work down to the individual level! You got luck of the draw on who was willing to follow you into exile! They may be the seeds of a new civilization, but that's tautology, not prognostication!)

[sholio]

The finale was a lot of fun! I love how the plot is unpredictable without feeling unplanned; it's fun to guess where it's going and be proven right, or not. Hari definitely needs to start telling people more than one (1) thing at a time.

I was already expecting some kind of timeskip due to the nature of the show, but having everything jump forward 100 years was certainly a surprise!

[sovay]

I was already expecting some kind of timeskip due to the nature of the show, but having everything jump forward 100 years was certainly a surprise!

We were speculating that it might work as a kind of linked anthology following the structure of the original stories—a different crisis each season—but I had no expectation of most of the developments in the intervening decades, including the quite impressive latest nonsense from the Cleons. The continuity of Poly made both of us happy. Meanwhile I don't know whose id is driving the minor casting, but we are now two for two on dillweed Foundation Directors I would die for; this season is slightly cheating since I did have a prior liking for Oliver Chris ever since One Man, Two Guvnors, but I didn't know he was in the cast and therefore spent the entire first board meeting staring really hard at Sef Sermak. The pace of the second season is a lot more breakneck so far, but it has correctly recognized that there's almost no point in casting Jared Harris if you aren't going to emotionally rough him up.

[sholio]

YEP, I was completely gone for Sef Sermak within approximately one (1) board meeting and figured you would be too. The fact that he's an utter softy for his adorable daughter helps tremendously. (Edit: It may interest you to know that one of the main fanfic ideas I want to write for this show involves him.)

Jared Harris as a scruffy disaster this season pleased me enormously. Watching him diverge from both his previous self and Vault Hari is fascinating. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Hari-Gaal-Salvor Road Trip From Hell.

[sovay]

(Edit: It may interest you to know that one of the main fanfic ideas I want to write for this show involves him.)

I fully support this plan.

(I haven't seen as much of her other dad yet, but I love Constant and her riding bishop's claw and her relationship with Poly and I will be extremely unhappy if anything happens to any of them.)

Disaster Hari is a treasure. [edit] spatch and I agree that his arc last season was fucking around and this season it looks to be finding out.

[sholio]

spatch and I agree that his arc last season was fucking around and this season it looks to be finding out.

I can only agree with this. <3