*kittens pour out of my pockets* uhh i can explain

biiig stretch!!! 🔊

(idea where tiny loose shards of bismuth inside their carapace will rattle whenever they vibrate)

Ambush hunters

Part 3 of the comic

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

@forestglade YOU'RE A GENIUS YOU KNOW THAT RIGHT

based on that one xitter post where rocky gotta go down to erid alone without grace. Why? Because the universe loves making him suffer.

First it was how out of a crew of 23 with unsynchronised sleep, someone was probably asleep for the launch — a pity, but expected

But imagine saviour Rocky got down there, and he was sleepin', and everyone was like collectively very understanding he was exhausted, and just couldn't stay awake long enough to greet them. But also guilty he rode the elevator with no one watching him sleep, so they settle in to watch him.

@peglarpapers HI. in both their cases there’s a lot of anxiety surrounding their food/eating situations; with rocky it’s culturally ingrained that eating is a very private process but is also usually followed by the eridian dormancy period which is inherently social and extremely stressful to go through alone. But he did go through it alone, for 46 years–imo it would be a completely reasonable/understandable response to try to avoid sleep for as long as possible, and the primary mechanism through which rocky can control that is restricting his food intake. Later, I feel like guilt and helplessness might also play into his eating behaviors as he watches grace start to exhibit signs of malnutrition and/or psychological distress at his diminishing supply of “real food”, while rocky has plenty to eat thanks to his own crewmates’ deaths. does he deserve it? does he deserve to eat well, when grace might die? when everyone else died? he wrestles with that a lot. but he keeps himself functional enough on the journey back home, because grace might need him.

With grace i think that the stress of having to eventually rely on coma slurry/taumoeba (and possibly die anyways after they get to Erid!) might trigger some reactive eating patterns, after which he tries to mitigate by restricting for a few days, which leads to more reactive eating, and so on and so forth. (I want to note that food insecurity is pretty strongly associated with ED pathology). it's primarily an issue with foods he actually finds palatable and as he starts running out (in a shorter amount of time than he expected due to binging) he starts feeling more distraught, more anxious, because that's it, that'll be the last of it, it might be the last good thing he ever tastes. he would probably put in a nasogastric tube if he finds the coma slurry intolerable to get down the old fashioned way but dr. captain "tube gravy is better than sex" seems to genuinely enjoy eating and not being able to do so would result in a considerable amount of distress

Grace is living on a planet of toddler sized rocks with twice his strength. If at ANY point he forgets to look where he’s going he is Going Trip Over An Ambassador. Unstoppable force vs. immovable object except Grace is very much stoppable.

Eridians either get used to talking to his shins, craning on their tippy toes to get a good look at his face, or begin forcing him to sit criss-cross applesauce for literally any important meeting. Picture him joining the Erid equivalent of a UN press conference and having to curl up his awkward water body and hug his knees for the whole thing.

He can conceivably be picked up by an alien the size of a hard helmet against his will. He’s surrounded by space roombas with perfect memories and attention spans shorter than his San Francisco classroom who can’t believe he’s incapable of solving complex math in three seconds. He has step stools around his house for them to climb so he can feel like he’s “looking them in the eye” even though Eridians think that’s stupid since they lack both eyes and directional perception.