I love TROPES I love CLICHÉS I love CAMP why does everything have to be “””good””” these days 🙄👎
in 2008 something I like to refer to as the Breaking Bad effect happened. What is the breaking bad effect? well the TV show Breaking Bad came out and it was good and everyone liked it. After that, all the people who make TV got together and were like… “hmm everyone liked breaking bad, why dont we make all tv good” and so they did. this is the breaking bad effect. Before this existed a phenomenon I call “Gilligan from Gillgans island gets hit in the head by a fucking coconut” See the thing about Gilligans island is just about every episode he gets hit in the head with that damn coconut. or someone gets hit in the head, or something of the sort. Is it clever????? no. is it smart??? no. is it good?? no. but, does he be getting hit in the head with the damn coconut every time you tune in??? YOU BET YOUR ASS!!! the “breaking bad effect” killed the “Gilligan from Gillgans island gets hit in the head by a fucking coconut” phenomenon. Now no one on tv gets hit on the head like they used to. I for one enjoy consuming media that is so predictable and trite you know whats going to happen before you even turn on your tv. I like knowing that some asshole is about to get a whole fucking coconut dropped on his noggin. what does that make me??? a horrid underdeveloped idiot man child? perhaps. but i dont care. every day i am forced to go outside and into the world where i dont understand one thing. with all this confusion there is something very satisfying about knowing you can always turn on the tv and see that damn fucking coconut fall on some small dicked bastard. amen, god bless, and have a good night yall
that’s exactly why most current police procedurals/crime shows are unwatchable to me now. they all think they have to make „good tv“, with season-long story lines and shit. I just want my „body of the week“ back.
People who don’t want to read The Martian in case the science is too complicated should be informed that it contains the lines “The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water”, “It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft”, and “If I cut a hole in the wall of the hab, the air won’t stay inside any more”.
I love this fucking book
“I’ve said the words kilowatt-hours-per-sol so many times they’ve lost all meaning so I’m going to call them pirate-ninjas.
“So I need to generate nine hundred pirate-ninjas…”
there’s an entire chapter dedicated to him wondering how the cubs are doing while he’s stuck on mars, dying
I like the part where the guys on Earth are like “He thinks we all gave up on him, and that he’s completely alone. I wonder what he’s thinking about right now.”
And he’s like “How come Aquaman can control whales?”
Mark Watney is such a great example of how to teach to laymen. Andy Weir wrote a book about a man who basically gives the reader a 369 page science lesson and it’s literally never boring or too complicated or patronising. He uses language that is accessible to the reader, removes technical jargon, adds in humour and all without belittling the reader or making them feel stupid for being given the simplified explanation.
Also here’s the thing: sometimes it did get too sciencey for me, the theatre major who failed chemistry because there was too much math.
So I skipped those parts. And the book is written so that you can. If you read ahead when the science is too much, you lose none of the story of human endurance in the face of overwhelming odds. It is still a pretty great story.
Read it. Skip the science. Enjoy the drama and the funny. Mark Watney says it’s ok.
