Contentedly Chaotic

Worldbuilding where being queer is normalized and queerphobia has no impact on the plot? THAT'S FINE. Worldbuilding that includes queerphobia and tackles the effects of it as part of the story? THAT'S ALSO FINE.

Low-stakes queer romcom where the characters are fluffy and cute? THAT'S COOL. Messy queer drama with toxic people who fuck each other over and clash repeatedly? THAT'S ALSO COOL.

Stories that center the characters' queerness, show a trans character's transition, and are about the queerness as much as the rest of the plot? AWESOME. Stories where the characters' queerness isn't treated as a big deal, and have trans characters whose transition happened before the story entirely? ALSO AWESOME.

You may PREFER one thing or another, but it is actually good to have all these things. It's about variety. It's about queer characters being allowed to exist without censorship. It's about queer artists getting to make things without being told we're a "niche issue" or "adult content." It's about having as many goddamn cakes as the bakery can produce.

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.

I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.

Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.

Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

Optimist: This glass is half full.

Admiral Hackett: Shepard I need you to take care of this glass of water, you're the only one who can do it right.

Illusive man: Yes, I think it's morally correct to take away a glass of water from a child dying of thirst, but you don't have to agree with me.

Edi: This glass cup contains half of its volume worth of optimally mineralated water for human consumption.

Garrus: Can it wait for a bit? I'm-

Legion: Shepard commander, the volume of water is roughly 163.80083722 cm³.

Tali: This glass of water has enough pathogens to kill me.

Samara: I killed a person who drank water once.

Zaeed: I killed a person with a glass of water once.

Mordin: Primitive psychological test. Proven ineffective hundreds of solar years ago. Varren sexually transmitted disease on the Normandy a more relevant issue.

Joker: Ah thanks. [SLLURRRRPPPP]

Kasumi: [steals Joker's cup after drinking from it]

Grunt: [breaks it] It reminded me of my tank.

Jack: What is this? Why are you giving me this? Are you bribing me?

Wrex: Shepard.

Liara: [watches from Hagalaz and adds results from the test into their files]

Ashley: I can't believe Cerberus is bribing you with half a glass of water.

Miranda: Typical Alliance mindset. If we leave now I'll give you 5 glasses of water.

but now apparently troy’s a racist and was calling shane slurs to his face? a couple months ago bitches were headcanoning troy as south asian, right? what the fuck happened. i don’t think it’s a stretch for shane to have to take time to warm up to troy at all, but troy’s, like, not evil. i fear we missed the point of role model (and that brief moment with eric in tough guy) if you think that this is the direction their relationship goes. shane’s lived in the gay torment nexus for far too long and has too little queer friends in general, let alone ones who understand what it is to be a queer athlete in a sport like hockey, to resent troy until the end of time. i think shane gets over it pretty quick, if it even happens at all (because troy being well-received by the public in comparison to shane not being so accepted has nothing to do with troy at all really), and they form the singular bitchiest duo professional hockey has ever seen.

if anything, i think shane wishes he was as brave as troy became after his time in toronto. shane would wish that he was brave enough to stand up against toxic locker room culture (accepts jokes about ilya being a cocksucker when boston wins the cup) and support queer players (as far as we know, he made no attempt to speak to scott hunter after he was the first to come out, even in private, compared to ilya who did congratulate him and even partied with him at a gay bar despite at the time having more to lose with the whole russian gay propaganda thing).

Because when I think about it all, the anger and rage isn’t about one dude being homophobic to Shane when they met and played like 4 times a year. The actual people Shane should be mad at are right there. The Montreal Metros. And suddenly this whole revenge fantasy made a lot more sense.

The Metros were the ones who constantly used slurs and homophobic jokes and comments around Shane. For a decade. For Shane’s entire career. The metros are the ones who betrayed Shane. The metros are ones who deserve every bit of Shane’s rage and anger.

And instead, fandom decided to make Troy Barret, a closeted gay man himself, the face of hockey homophobia and tore him to shreds. Because it’s so much easier. It’s so much easier to use one person as a punching bag then an entire team and management of assholes. It’s so much easier to take someone like Troy Barret, who already thinks of himself as a horrible human and hates himself for his past behaviour and then rip him to shreds because he’ll take it. Fandom really really wants to hate someone for all the homophobia in the world and this round it’s Troy Barret. Before that it was Hayden Pike why do characters who are actually good keep having this happen to them

And Troy is such an easy target that there is a complete blindspot at the fact that the team he grew up with was no less homophobic then Shane’s. And Troy did not have a Hayden Pike in his corner, he had Dallas Kent. And there is not a single moment where Troy excuses his own behaviour or expects forgiveness so it becomes even worse that Shane and Troy, instead of bonding over survival mechanisms and healing, become each other’s source of misplaced rage and hatred. Because Shane stayed quiet and Troy used it back. If anyone would understand that feeling of knives on your skin, it’s them. If anyone would understand the feelings of self disgust and frustration and helplessness, it’s them.

So here’s my hot take.

Shane would not in fact hate Troy Barret. He would not blame him and then after months ‘forgive him’. Shane would not put himself on some pedestal of suffering and not have empathy for a fellow player in the closet and the terrible choices made in fear and terror of being outed.

Unhinged Text Posts: Lady Vivienne de Fer (Part 3)

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

The ENTIRE POINT of Grace’s arc is that he is a Coward, with a capital C. He is a coward not only in his refusal of the Hail Mary mission, but in the way he lives his life before the Petrova Line was ever discovered. Grace has no close friends or coworkers, no pets or hobbies, no partners (short or long term), no family that we know of. His two main drives in life are (1) being a Cool Teacher to his students, and (2) nursing a grudge over getting kicked out of academia for proposing wild theories about life forms not based on water. As Stratt ACCURATELY points out, both of these things have large self-serving components. Grace genuinely loves his students and is good at teaching, but it’s at least partially because his classroom allows him to demand respect and attention without returning emotional vulnerability in the same way a peer relationship would. His academic theories were also largely motivated by a desire to be The Specialest Boy - and while Grace DOES prove himself very smart and capable, his pet theory wasn’t supported by his work with astrophage. Grace doesn’t jump at the chance to work with Stratt when she first approaches him, and he isn’t out there Living LIfe to the Fullest every day. He ADMITS to himself and to Stratt that he IS a coward, both for the way he’s lived up to PHM and for refusing to go on the mission when the timeline made it clear that there wasn’t enough time to bring another candidate up to speed and have the same odds of success. He straight up tells Stratt that he’ll sabotage Project Hail Mary if she tries to force him, DESPITE HIM KNOWING that Earth is headed for a literal apocalyptic Ice Age, and that everyone on the planet - including his beloved students!- has a pretty good chance of DYING if the mission doesn’t succeed! Stratt has to give him a coma cocktail that induces mild amnesia, and bet on him being at least good Enough (TM) not to kill the whole planet because he hated her for doing this to him.

(Also no hate for Eva Stratt, I love her and I will SUPPORT THIS WOMAN’S WRONGS until my dying day, she committed so many crimes and I cheered the whole way)

Despite Ryan Gosling’s very pretty Sad Boi eyes and sweaters, Ryland Grace is NOT a manic pixie dream scientist in love with Earth and its life and cultures. He just ISN’T. And if he WERE, then. Well. He certainly didn’t love Earth enough to fully embrace it while he was here, OR to volunteer to save it when he had the chance. This IS one of those situations where the distinction between “I love life” and “I don’t want to die” is a meaningful one. Does this make Grace a Cancelled Villain of All Time? No - it makes him a coward, but that doesn’t mean he inherently deserved to die. Does it ethically or morally justify forcing him onto a suicide mission while he fought and pleaded not to go? No! It makes Grace ORDINARY. Just some average fucking guy, not evil but not valiant, either. It’s like trying to claim Laika was the top search and rescue dog in the city when she got put into the pod. You don’t NEED to give Ryland Grace all these Tender Tragic Qualities of “loving Earth/Life” to have empathy for this poor dude who got launched into space.

In fact, Grace’s arc DEPENDS on him STARTING from that place of “I don’t really have a reason to be here” to “I have EVERY reason to turn my back on survival and do this act!” Grace wakes up on the Hail Mary, and has no context for why he’s on the ship but assumes that he was a Heroic Volunteer, like Yao and Ilyukhina. He sees their personal effects and Reasons Why They Volunteered, and keeps searching for his own Reason Why until he remembers that he didn’t HAVE a “reason why.” He was never a heroic volunteer. He comes to terms with the fact that he’s going to die, and IS. IN FACT. AS STRATT PREDICTED. A GOOD ENOUGH man to want to save the earth anyway rather than die alone without even trying to figure out the Petrova Problem out of spite. And he can do some pretty neat science along the way, which has always been one of his life motivations! At least he can do that before he dies, in the absence of anything else!

But the thing that Grace ACTUALLY loves enough to die for is ROCKY. The one in a million friend! Who saved his life and opened up his entire view of the universe! Grace’s core trait was NEVER “loving the Earth,” or “loving life.” The WHOLE FUCKING EARTH wasn’t enough to get Grace willingly onboard the Hail Mary! What made him turn the ship around was his GOTDAM SINGING ROCK FRIEND. The whole point is the change! Humanity’s capacity for massive apathetic cowardice and also astonishing bravery and hopefulness in connection. Andy Weir has his head in his ass about politics in his work, but you see?!?! You see, right!?!?!?!