Bryce Anderson, Daniella colon-cosme, Haley Schnitzer, Lanie Taylor ( Scribe)
Haley: The list relates to the characters we saw throughout the book with many of the characters being neuroqueer.
Bryce: I think in terms it’s like…Aster at some points we get a glimpse of what she feels in terms of her psychological state and how her personality bucks interactions with others and identifying self-consciousness with how she interacts with others. Mentions the end of part 3, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and ruin the mood. It carries out throughout the book, and things that most people do not think about, and how she has to make an effort to interact in the way that neurotypical people would interact.
Lanie: Agrees, Aster likes to mimic and to make sure she thinks about what she says to avoid angering others.
Bryce: Giselle and Aster played house, but kissing Theo made her feel different. It’s sort of like she doesn’t know how to move around Theo, or interact in the ‘right’ she becomes hyper-aware of her actions.
Talks about the sex scene between Aster and Theo and how it affected Aster. She was out of her comfort zone and Theo helped make her feel welcome and comfortable
Bryce: Talks about the racial differences and how it affects how they are seen. Lowerdeckers being seen as not desirable, which Theo counteracts with being attracted to Aster and seeing her as beautiful. They value each other in an emotional way and that’s even a sort of transformative experience for Aster because she is able to connect with someone on a different level.
Bryce: The note was sweet and creepy.
Lanie: we have to stan Theo for his asking for consent,
Bryce: Aster had to give a physical maker and say yes, for that consent.
Breakout room 2
Haley: What did you think about the ending?
Bryce: Bittersweet. But at what cost? For freedom for freedom’s sake to just get off. But there was loss with it and that is always sad.
Lanie: Its
Daniella: It’s bittersweet that she was able to get off the ship, but at what cost
Bryce: It feels like, as a message goes, she has the choice, freedom that exists, but at what cost. Is it worth it to live on the planet where you are the only one, maybe there are other people on that earth. Survival is key. They must have left for a reason. Read a scene where Aster wanted to bring Giselle back to life, how it relates back to Aster’s ability to grow plants. Their relationship is almost a foil, Aster has a consequence for being neurodivergent, Giselle has her own disability, but she lives on the outside able to express herself. She was almost a balance to Aster, even though there were differences, she showed Aster how to be ‘normal’ in a way.
Lanie: Agrees, Giselle is loud and expressive, Aster is drawn in within herself, and quiet.
Bryce: Giselle ran around Matilda, through the vents and finding where Asters mother was. The fact that aster said that she was sad to find her mother’s skeleton, but it was harder with Giselle, and now she has to bury her sister on an empty planet.
Foss: The amount of time on the ship has been 300 years, but on earth, it has been about 1,000 years.
Haley: Confused behind the motivation behind the people being on the ship and why they were seeking out a new planet.
Daniella: Like the ending and how it was up to interpretation
Breakout room 3
Lanie: It read a lot like how the others did
Haley: Did think it was interesting that it brought up the first known piece of literature from an autistic author. that this text is contrasting what everyone else’s piece worked on
Bryce: it was interesting in the way it went about reassigning meaning to the text, talks about the part that autists and their category of specific behavior that would be classified as not neurotypical. There was a need to classify everything. he thinks that separation would not be accomplishable.
Lanie: Talks about how classifying people based on different diagnoses and part dehumanizes them
Haley: Talks about ejaculation and how it is interesting. How people oversexualized autistic people, and how it makes it inappropriate.
Bryce: How do you redefine that, it can be used, but there are better words that could accurately describe the abrupt utterances of an autistic person. There is a sort of negative framing that is inherent in the definition of the world that harkens back to old categorizing, or old discoveries in the field of autism.
Bryce: Tells foss about wanting to separate the original meaning of the definitions and to take it away from that negative connotation. That categorizing is a pathological activity, whereas any other behavior is seen as normal and does not need logging. Trying to define it, feels like trying to define a single ‘normal’ person.
