Revenge of the Jewfro

I know Mr. Szymanski and Markiplier do not pull their punches. At all. Ever. So I'm really curious to see what's going on here, if it means anything specific, or if it genuinely just looks like artistic nonsense.

The notes say what it does (vaguely), but I wish to connect those additional structures to what they are saying. This is an unreliable narrator scenario, too, so I can't really trust the notes.

The summary question: what the hell are we looking at?

And then they get high. And then they get drunk. And then Grace and Ilyukhina euthanise themselves; Yáo says goodbye, and then he shoots himself. The Hail Mary becomes a tomb for the first friends of Erid. Their corpses slowly decaying and mummifying.

Twenty, thirty years later, Earth returns to Tau-Ceti to retrieve their wayward heroes, to bring them home. Scrawled on the hail mary in angry, grieving, unfamiliar scrawl are the words MURDERERS and GOODNIGHT, FRIENDS.

The people of Erid returned to Tau-Ceti to study Planet-Adrian, and to their joy found friend-human space vessel. They approached, to no response. They got close, close enough to see, and saw only death and a message. "To anyone who finds our grave," reads the message, "do not be alarmed. We did what we came to do, knowing we could not go home. We rest now in the grave of our own making, at the site of our life and death's work. Earth is safe; Erid is safe. Goodnight, stars."

It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.

you are in the medieval era and you have this role!

“Then you go home. Go home now. I wait here. Erid maybe send another ship someday.”

“That's ridiculous. Do you really want to risk the survival of your entire species on that guess?”

He's silent for a few moments and finally answers. “No.”

Like holy shit.

Until Grace showed up, Rocky was gonna die. Rocky was gonna die of radiation poisoning, a horrible death that he watched his whole crew already succumb to, because the astrophage was not only his only fuel but also his only protection from radiation.

If the Eridians were gonna send another ship, they'd probably have sent it forty years ago.

Furthermore, if the Eridians sent another ship, it would almost certainly be made of xenonite, because everything they make is made of xenonite, which means that a) most of the crew would die of radiation poisoning and b) whoever survived would end up in the exact same situation as Rocky, because the taumoeba would escape into their ship the moment they docked and start gobbling up all their delicious fuel.

And still, Rocky gives Grace the chance to leave. Kind of like Yao did.

“Yeah, of course I want you to stay, but you can go. You can go home, and you can live, and I will lie to make you feel like that choice is one that won't kill me and everyone I love, because you deserve to be allowed to live if you want.”

Grace has to be in the Stratt role here. Grace has to be the one explaining that he's made the cold calculations, that he's aware of the consequences and that he's making this decision anyway because it's the only decision he can make. This is the only decision that will save their worlds.

Grace has to be the one to convince Rocky to let him die for Earth and Erid.

And yeah obviously it all works out because of the power of friendship/taumoeba, but this is where Grace earns his happy ending. Grace has to stand on the other side of that desk, watch somebody else beg for his (Grace's) life, and say “no, this has to happen, because it's the only thing that can happen.”

We barely know anything about Madagascar pre-500CE. We don’t even know whether the island had a permanent population before then, despite finding a bunch of much older signs of temporary human presence.

Malagasy mythology makes mention of the vazimba, a “precursor” ethnic group that might or might not be distinct from Madagascar’s current population.

The point is, we do not know.

So you were in Madagascar when the pyramids were being built in Egypt, i.e. during one of the most obscure, most undocumented parts of Madagascar’s human history?