General Stuff

Simon "sees his mother every time he looks in the mirror" Nolastname has some wild repressed takes on his own masculinity.

Simon "gender labels went out of style 300 years ago" agender Martian man. Gender stopped becoming relevant when alien species indicators became relevant.

Simon asking "what planet you from?" at Grace not realizing that's a wild concept to even consider from his perspective.

Simon "god I'm so tired of aliens" deadpan reacting to Rocky like it's a normal Tuesday event to see a rock spider singing at him.

Simon "we have bigger things to worry about" has no idea what the terms "gay" or "trans" mean and treats them both like an archaic medieval-era word.

2020s Earth sounding utterly and completely barbaric to Simon, who was born late into the social progress movement. Like, real late.

Simon who speaks a far future dialect of Martian-English (perhaps Martian-Korean) and sounds like he's speaking Simlish to Grace. Meanwhile, Grace sounds borderline medieval to Simon (having a nearly 400-year time period gap), who has spoken more Eridian than English at that point and so now even his English is rusty. Simon not batting at eye at this random dude who's humming at him because "I've seen weirder forms of communication from weirder people".

Simon "it's baseline normalcy to put women in positions of power" because misogyny went out the window long ago.

Simon telling Grace about Mars. Grace imagining Mars being some kind of closed-off, scattered colony situation. Then Simon starts talking about cities and how the Mars population had an overcrowding issue (in game lore, they surpassed the population of earth on a smaller total surface area). Grace having to come to terms with the idea that humans absolutely put the equivalent of a Dollar General on Mars.

Grace: Would it be potentially upsetting to you if I wore a skirt to class today?

Simon: ... huh?

Grace: Just checking if it's okay with you first.

Simon: ... What the hell are you talkin' about man? Why you asking me that?

Grace: Uh.

Simon: You don't gotta ask me if you want to... wear clothes??

Grace: Sssure. Right. Of course! Why would you care? You're from ages from now!

Simon: You're fuckin' strange.

Grace being more weird about facing the prospect of queerness than Simon is. Simon's the chill one. Normalized-years-ago pansexual Simon's fucking vibing while Grace has the sexuality crisis.

Arospec Simon and Acespec Ryland. Simon being ferociously demi and compartmentalizing transactional sex with romantic sex because of the circumstances he came from. Ryland who's down with the casual shit while Simon works out whatever the hell is going on with his own avoidant-attachment issues.

A no expectations, no bullshit approach to the ship. "If something happens, whatever. If something doesn't, whatever."

Forced proximity trope gets completely turned on its head. Ryland isn't clingy in the slightest and loves having space and privacy.

Simon who's not used to privacy after prison and being crammed on overcrowded space stations his whole life, so he relishes in periods of alone time. He and Ryland enjoy crossing paths as they go about their day but the cohabitation is friendly yet breathable. Easy.

Simon sprawling out and taking up as much space as possible simply because he can.

Simon "everyone wants something frome me" Nolastname and Ryland "vulnerability is my worst fear" Grace both absolutely enjoying a no strings attached kind of QPR.

Simon: Population control was at an all-time high and same-sex stuff was actually encouraged.

Grace: We just got that stuff legalized where I'm from.

Simon: What? It was banned on Earth?

Grace: I mean, yeah for a long time.

Simon: You monsters... I really should've paid attention in interplanetary history.

Grace: YOU HAD INTERPLANETARY HISTORY TEACHERS!?

Simon: Professors, actually. They didn't shoot dumbfucks into space to colonize Mars.

Grace: ⁉️

Grace is having a similar problem to Rocky, Rocky cannot seem to just give Grace his full attention sometimes which is fine mostly but.. well. Grace is a little greedy and a little bored, and one day he’s rummaging around in the storage area, opening boxes he’s never opened before and he finds..

A dog whistle!!

He almost goes to blow on it experimentally but then he pauses.

This is a brilliant scientific opportunity!!

Grace has about a million thoughts at once but it all boils down to this: Can Eridians be trained to react positively to certain sounds?

When Rocky discovers how humans can just.. tune people out he is shocked and more importantly very annoyed because he’ll try to get Grace’s attention and half the time he’s just nodding along or just doesn’t answer while he’s doing something

So one day Grace is doing just that, barely nodding along while doing something on the laptop and Rocky has a thought; “loud noises wake up humans while they’re sleeping, could they also be used to snap them into focus?” Rocky tests his hypothesis with a loud whistle, and to Rocky’s utter delight Grace immediately snaps his head up and looks at Rocky with a confused expression.

So he starts using it when he wants Grace’s attention, repeating that same exact whistle with perfect volume and pitch, at first Grace is a bit annoyed but he usually forgets about it when Rocky starts talking, but slowly over time there’s barely a reaction, Infact, Grace starts reacting quicker and without thought.

Rocky, ever curious, sees if he can get Grace to associate other sounds with certain things. He’s sure it won’t work, but he’s bored out of his mind and well. For science!!

So whenever Grace eats, Rocky will make a barely audible clicking sound before hand and Grace doesn’t notice, after a week or two of this Rocky decides to test it out

So when Grace inevitably forgets to eat one day, instead of Rocky annoying Grace into doing it, he just does the clicking sound, he doesnt expect it to actually do anything but low and behold a moment later Grace looks up and says “huh. Hey Rocky I might take a break and go eat, wanna come?”

Rocky has to do everything in his power not to cackle evilly with his new found power

1. "Five second rule!" while scrubbed, after dropping a sterile scalpel on the floor (no they did NOT pick it up again but I swear everyone's buttholes puckered)

2. (spoken during the closing of a particularly long and difficult case) "Nurse - my tunes." :heavy metal starts blasting:

3. Gently to a fretful patient, pre-anaesthesia: "It's going to be okay. I promise, I've dealt with worse." As soon as the patient is unconscious: "This is literally the worst thing I've ever seen."

4. [okay this one was a med student] "Wowwww, that's so gross!!" Reg: "Please remember that [patient] is awake for this procedure." Student to patient: "Oh my god. I am so sorry, that was really unprofessional - " Patient, cheerfully, also engrossed with what's happening inside them on the screen: "Nah - it's, like, super gross, right?"

6. Elderly surgeon to the anaesthetist who is gossipping with their reg: "I need you to pretend you're in church." [weirdest way to ask people to be quiet, but whatevs]

Anaethetist's new reg with big, horrified eyes: "You mean we should start praying???"

7. Panicking rad tech: "Uhhhh my machine broke. I need to jump on this part and kick it, but I am not paid enough if I break it. Can you - "

Surgeon, casual as: "Yeah, sure."

:violently beats up the C-arm until it starts pumping out those sweet, sweet x-rays:

8. ODP to theatre assistant: "Saw the new tasche earlier. Suits you."

Theatre assistant: "Thanks! it grew on me :)"

9. Surgeon using the electrocauter, leaning over the incision and inhaling deeply: mmmmm, that smell always gets me hungry. I'm having barbeque tonight.

Spinal surgeon: hey, that scoli's getting bad. want me to fix it for ya?

Me: I mean. There's a pretty long wait list

Spinal surgeon: yeah but I could do it tonight

Me: that would be very illegal, Jeff

examples:

I thought it was just like, the one that goes to all the kids soccer games...

boy moms are huge on tiktok, and tiktok's idea of a boymom is visibly abusing children or enabling their abuse

what is covert incest (and how does it relate to boymom as an identifier)

i could keep going but i think that's a good enough start. if you look up the words in this post - "boymom incsstusous abuse" - you will see suddenly what everyone is talking about. it's a pretty big discussion going on right now. especially given the visibility that filiming and posting your children on the internet provides.

"boymoms" of course predate tiktok. i remember a lot of boymoms from the 90s and early 00s, where the boys were encouraged to behave however they wanted, and take whatever they wanted, all while the sisters were "mommy's little helper" or worse. lots of these kids i grew up with went on to commit acts of violence, because they were raised with that entitled position in life & genuinely did not understand why they were being punished for this. that is a theme you will see repeated if you study criminal cases with this dynamic.

incest (both overt and covert) create an inability in the victim to emotionally regulate; because the lines familially have been blurred, there is no one to teach them how to process their feelings, and instead they're left in a feedback loop where encouragement from the mother v. resentment from the other siblings & the father create a "black and white" worldview that is complex to detangle & impossible to navigate (because it doesn't translate onto reality at all.)

in many victim/survivor cases, the emphasis / focus on the identity of pride "mother of a boy" for mom, leads to the boy being dehumanized. this might look like being dolled up, or treated like an action hero, or "sonsband" wherein a son is treated as a/the husband. "my angel can do no wrong" or "he eats as much as he needs before the girls tuck in to whatever's left!" or "boys will be boys"/"he's just a boy"/"that is how boys are!" this is abuse. but it's a specific kind of abuse when the abuser takes that identity on as a point of pride - identifying herself through her victim.

it's less "you guys are deeply traumatized" and more "weirdos making this into a point of pride for their identity often reduces or flattens the object of their fetishization in a dehumanizing (traumatic) way". and I mean fetish literally here, not in a sexual slang way - the object or subject of one's fascination.