and what if i fly?

As I have sudden new influx of free time, aka an unemployment, to keep myself afloat I'm open for commissions!

YOU CAN GET THEM ON MY KOFI! More info under the cut.

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

So to the dad, anon just challenged his authority and his manhood. Dad is already threatened by his daughter having a boyfriend (and potentially eventually moving out due to that boyfriend/marriage), now anon is saying "I don't give a shit about you or your threat" as far as the dad is concerned. So anon saying he didn't mean it that way is what's triggering the "liar" comment.

It's a very patriarchal woman as property thing that crops up especially among white Southern Christians. I would lay money based on this story and my own experiences that anon is the girl's first boyfriend and that she's in the kind of family environment where she will live with her parents until marriage, a very literal dad giving daughter away at the altar situation.

Anon probably does not have sisters and didn't have all of this subtext made text constantly throughout his life, even though him carrying on a daily basis suggests some level of immersion in gun culture

Dad shows gun = "If you hurt her, I will kill you."

Boyfriend shows gun as well = "I also suspect you of being capable of hurting her and anticipate having to defend her."

And "hurt" in a dating context (or at least this specific gun related one) usually just means heartbreak, but "hurt" in a father/daughter context would more often be abuse.

So there's an implicit accusation he could read into it that turns the conversation into:

Dad: I think this relationship might not work out, and you will hurt my daughter's feelings.

Boyfriend: Well, I think you are physically harming your daughter, and brought this gun to show you I mean to rescue her.

Dad: How dare you! At least accuse me outright, for such a strong claim as this.

Boyfriend: I shall never say it outright, and therefore you have no evidence against me to use to kick me out right now.

Creative energy is a renewable resource; you can use it on any number of projects in many different art forms, including ones you've never even tried before.

"but I don't know anything about--" Who cares??

Amateur work is more than okay. You don't have to show anyone, and you don't have to learn any of the complex theories if your goal isn't to get really good at whatever you're doing.

(and who knows, maybe you'll fall in love with the new form!)

Also, sometimes you just need to get an insistent idea onto something other than your brain matter so other ideas can keep flowing. Our minds can be like clogged drains that way.

Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.

By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.

this kind of policing is why ao3 was created

remember, kids, the three laws of fandom are:

- don’t like; don’t read

- your kink is not my kink

kink *but your kink is okay*

don’t forget that part

One set made as a trade and the other for me to keep.

Design wise, these are based specifically on a chapter in Duty of Care where Ilya tries to take the blame for breaking Pike’s vase.

This first fic is Ilya getting pieced back together through acts of love by everyone around him. Kintsugi fit thematically and I absolutely love the imagery. The layered HTV is meant to mimic the vase and gold repairs and the dust jacket.

For the second fic, Holding Patterns, I wanted to continue the broken vase theme from the first bind. Except for this time, instead of it (aka Ilya) being mended back together, it’s the final fracturing of Russia. The idea for the artwork comes from a chapter in “Duty of Care” when Ilya takes the Hollanders to Russia to visit the iconic Red Square in Moscow.

This fic made me cry. 😭 it was amazing. I loved it. But wow it’s gets you in the feels.

End-pages are hand marbled, and the photos don’t do justice. I used an iridescent white that makes them sparkle along with the gold paint. For the red pages, I had initially wanted to replace the gold with black, but unfortunately black paint still hates me. Despite that, I’m still very happy with the outcome.

Hand sewn endbands to continue the color theme.