Tastes Like Key Lime Gogurt

when it's framed as a "so just get married for legality reasons" and im like. you mean like how gay people married/marry people of the opposite gender for legality reasons? and that's considered to be a symptom of a problem, not the solution? you want people to "just" get married against their will because it's the only solution this system has available?

if people cannot or will not get married for whatever reason -- not just for being aromantic, but, say, due to inefficient disability support measures within marriage, because of having had bad experiences with marriage in the past, because of being polyamorous, because some element of marriage is ineffective, unwanted, limited, discriminatory, or hell, because you can't find somebody to marry or nobody wants to marry you, or maybe because you just plain don't want to without there being a distinct Reason -- then it's a problem that this is the only framework in place for people to be afforded certain legal and social protections.

i am glad for others that more people can get married, but it's a flawed institution with gaping holes that isn't for everyone and builds social structures that leave so many people behind and unsupported. this is abundantly obvious in the way that we saw why people pushed for the need for equal marriage in the first place.

that's what's said when making a point that it's a social construct. and also what's meant (partially) when pushing against the idea that "love" as concept isn't at the core of queer (amongst others hinted at in this post) activism, because it's about building better structures. if the only people we care about are those we "love" within a family unit, or those who successfully manage to pretend that unit without actually really wanting it, and if not being in that unit for whatever reason means that care isn't going to be/is no longer afforded, then are we really doing any better than heteronormativity?

For clarification:

His name is Parking Lot

His scientific classification is El wiwi

I call him “pipi” or “wiwi”

He was aware enough of this to get off on trolling the class, though.  Whenever some force diagram in a homework assignment needed to be weightless, instead of being some generic spacecraft it would be “Mir” specifically.  And he’d always use ‘cosmonaut’ instead of ‘astronaut’, that kind of thing.

One day about halfway through the semester, he’s doing this with in-class examples on the board, and one of the students finally gets up the guts to troll back a little.  So this kid shouts from the back of the auditorium, “Hey professor, what’s the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?”

She’s the first person Grace remembers from his past. He remembers her before he remembers he’s a teacher, before he remembers Stratt, before he remembers HIS OWN NAME.

He mentions no other people who he’d consider a friend that he’d hang out with.

The first thing Grace tells us about her is that she and him have steak and beer together every Thursday at the same time at the same place, at the same TABLE because the staff immediately recognize them every time and know their orders.

They met in grad school because Marissa dated Grace’s roommate for three months. They have no inkling of romance between themselves at all.

They’ve known each other for TWENTY YEARS.

She works at the DOE and learned about the Petrova Line absorbing the sun’s energy before Grace did—she’s the one to tell him about it. The information weighs on her enough that she drinks four whiskeys.

Every other named character calls Grace “Grace,” “Dr. Grace,” or presumably “Mr. Grace” in the case of the students. But Grace calls Marissa by her given name (doesn’t mention her surname), suggesting she’s the only character who would call him Ryland.

The dialogue in their one scene together suggests Grace is used to joking around with her without feeling judged

The book never brings her up again after this one scene. This makes me feel CRAZY.

WHY did Weir make them seem so close only to give Marissa one singular scene? Her only tangible role appears to be to give Grace exposition about the Astrophage Problem, but there’s plenty of ways to write a scene like that without specifying that she’s also apparently his closest human friend?

Did Grace ever call her to explain why he can’t show up to dinner anymore? Did he have cell signal on Stratt’s Vat? Did Stratt LET him call people after signing him onto the Project? She seems to have taken care of his job, but she wouldn’t have any reason to know about Marissa and the Thursday dinners unless Grace and Marissa left evidence on social media or something.

What happened to her after her one scene? Presumably she kept doing her job at the DOE and having a harder and harder time due to the crisis, maybe she worked on trying to get energy to warm people’s homes.

Did Stratt know about her at all? Did anyone know she was Grace’s friend, did anyone know she had dinner with him every week, did anyone know she would miss him?

Petrova Taskforce Guys: Oh yeah Grace is a loser he has no family or friends to miss him

Me: DO THEY KNOW

How did she feel hearing that Grace became the science officer of the Hail Mary? Without telling her, without saying goodbye?

Did she think Grace just suddenly cut off their friendship, or did she get suspicious of the government and Stratt because she knew Grace wouldn’t just do that to her?

I see posts sometimes of people being like “oh Grace didn’t have meaningful relationships before meeting Rocky,” and I feel like I’m waving the book around like DOES ANYONE WANNA TALK ABOUT MARISSA HELLO MARISSA THE GRAD SCHOOL FRIEND SHE EXISTS SHE’S REAL

went to zootampa and got ominously stared down by their shoebill

The Sam standee is in the Backrooms from the movie Backrooms!

(made by @oof-i-did-it-agaaiiin)

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