Gossy Reblogs

Marvel Swimsuit Special: Brand New Beach Day #1 - "Pool Beasts" (2026)

Like, he felt like he put too much work in to just leave/quit, but at the same time, that's what he really wanted to do. And Grace is clearly someone who hates making decisions and choices for himself. He just wants someone to tell him what to do -- or in this case, that he's not allowed to do it anymore. So he got a postdoc but just started sort of quiet-quitting the whole thing, and everyone was really frustrated with him and his performance already. So when some controversy came along at the conference? It was a neat and tidy excuse to get rid of him.

Ohh interesting! And something I can also see. The whole thing makes a lot more sense—and also feels a lot more resonant to his character and his emotional arc—if he is kind of lying to himself about what actually went down and what everybody else thinks about him.

@bicherrim wrote something along somewhat similar lines in the comments of the post too:

I don’t remember where I read it, but I like the concept that Grace wasn’t actually ousted/blackballed from academia at all, it just feels better to him to frame it that way – in reality, he couldn’t handle the criticism his paper received, lost his shit, and then afterwards was so embarrassed that he dropped out of the field entirely so he wouldn’t have to face anyone about it.

And both of these options feel way more believable—that “I was kicked out because they couldn’t handle my UNCONVENTIONAL IDEAS” is an ego-soothing narrative he built up around what happened to avoid acknowledging that leaving was his choice. Ending up as a middle school science teacher was clearly making him much happier than academia was—is it because this is something that feels more genuinely fulfilling and meaningful than the relentless pressure cooker gristmill that is academia? Is it because children can never meaningfully be peers and can’t criticize him, and among 13-year-olds he’ll always be unquestionably the smartest person in the room? Little of column A, little of column B, probably. And he can do that while also clinging to this fantasy of being Astrobiology’s Alfred Wegener and Someday Everyone Will See I Was Right And They Were So Unfair To Me, and crucial to the fantasy is that it’s incumbent on everyone else to change their minds about him, not him to do anything.

And I like how the movie does allude to this interpretation that there’s some willful mental rewriting of what actually happened on Grace’s part:

STRATT: Do you stand by what you wrote?

GRACE: I was fired for standing by what I wrote.

STRATT: You were fired for calling the leading scholar in your field a “staggering waste of carbon” at the UNESCO conference in Denmark.

GRACE: You… you heard about that, huh?

Stratt like. You weren’t disliked for your ideas, idiot, you were disliked for your behavior. The problem wasn’t that you defended an unpopular idea, the problem was getting assholish and unprofessional about it. Luckily for you the world is ending and I don’t have the time to worry about your attitude!

Sisko. Is annoyed about having to go. After session three he is name-dropping me in casual conversations with friends and thinks I am really clever but it's unclear how much of that is really just that I agree with his opinions. 9/10 point deducted because he treats me too much like a friend and too little like a therapist with a job.

Kira. Insists she does not need to go. Twenty minutes into session one she is describing the death of her father in intricate and pissed-off detail. 8/10 because any therapy at all is bound to be better than the status quo.

Dax. 10/10 but she does all the work herself and I begin to doubt why I am even in the room. Really just needs someone to talk at.

Julian. Lies to me the entire time. Asks me out at the end of session one and in a cruel twist of fate I am forced to turn him down in order to keep my job. Does not come back. 3/10

Mountains of Mourning

Story of Miles' life that the cleverest possible solution is never ever gonna make Miles not terribly sad. Oh buddy.

Labyrinth

Illyan: I need an exact explanation of where Barrayar's money went on your mission to Capitalist Crimes Planet.

*record scratch* *screen blur*

Miles: Yep, that's me sopping wet in a murder basement--it's not the sexy dungeon cause that costs extra but non-sexy dungeons seem like a skill issue to me--making enthusiastic love to a Giant Woman who is also a genetically engineered Minotaur. Fyi, she is hot and this is excellent. But you're probably wondering how I got into this situation.

Illyan: I am not. Less exact would be okay come to think of it.

Borders of Infinity

Just imagining Elena and Elli surveilling the prison camp like--

Elli: "Uh oh, guy we were supposed to extract doesn't look so good. How do we get Miles out?"

Elena: "Wait, Miles is... doing a very small cult now?"

Elli: "Why is he doing a cult?"

Elena: "... You never heard how the Dendarii Mercenaries started."

Elli: "Stop cackling or you'll blow our cover."

Elana: "Mmmpffhsnort."

Elli: "Why is he like this?"

I have finally come up with titles for these so they can live on AO3 in glorious archive format properly.

Together - 899 words - Ryland Grace & Eva Stratt - “People think we’re—together. Like, together together. Sleeping together.” Other people's assumptions hurt more than they should.

Zero Cakes - 4,446 words - Ryland Grace & Rocky - “I think I might also be the first human to tell my best friend that I wished he and his whole species were dead because I can’t have cake anymore. I’m a lot less proud of that one. I think I’m a bad friend.” Grace and Rocky break down into their first real, big argument on their way to Erid.

In the eyes of the law - 828 words - Ryland Grace & Eva Stratt - “You want me to tell the ICJ that we’re…” “Lovers. Yes.” Fake dating, perjury, and blowing up your global reputation in order to stay out of prison.

This probably isn't the worst an assassination attempt has ever gone, but it's up there - 1,612 words - Project Hail Mary/Wolf 359 crossover starring Eva Stratt and Alana Maxwell, and Cutter sending SI-5 to assassinate the Hail Mary project leaders because can you imagine if these two organizations existed in the same universe.

No, no, and NO.

AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.

AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”

AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.

Like, yeah vampires don't get much out of eating, won't risk going out during the day, wouldn't have the inner compass to seek out a soul, wouldn't stand by a mad Drusilla for centuries, would avoid slayers at all cost, and wouldn't aid a slayer once neutered for funsies.

Spike is just a fucking freak. A weirdo. Darla and Angel couldn't stand him in part due to the fact that something just is sideways in that man's head. No wonder him and Drusilla got on like a house on fire, they both have something deeply wrong with them.

And yeah, there's that whole demon taking the human as a template theory, and Spike being hedonism personified, and I'm well aware.

But like, I think using Spike as any kind of metric is a mistake because he is simply like that.

Ryland Grace has made it all the way to his bike with Eva Stratt at his heels, so her trusted security team has correctly assessed it's time to move in the cars, and Carl is approaching off-screen.

Grace comes out of the little "I don't know why that makes me such a nut!" rant, and there Carl is, stepping up into frame exactly next to Stratt. Tall, broad, unimpressed, unmistakably a force to be reckoned with, unmistakably a trusted professional.

But also a nameless goon at this point. An extension of the threat Stratt seems to represent to Grace. A depersonalized tool.

Grace clocks the cars, his presence, the unfolding situation, instantly and incredulously. And he does something clever, something he always does, which is to call attention to the absurdity of the unspoken threat by trying to force the situation into a normal mold.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

Turning Eva's nameless goon into a person with agency. Trying to force a relationship that hinders coercion.

Ideally, this would force them all to acknowledge how abnormal they are acting and retreat a little to keep up the appearance of normality. Or admit to what they are doing by refusing. Either way, the ball shifts out of Ryland's court into theirs.

Neither happens, though.

Carl sees exactly what he's trying to do with that and interrupts him mid-question. "Carl." And then keeps staring at him the same way as before. One word, and we already know so much about him.

He is not a nameless goon. He is an individual named Carl.

And he fully supports what is happening there. Because nothing is normal and it's stupid to pretend that what is happening isn't happening.

So yes, while he bonds with Grace over silliness and is the astrophage-coparent and instigator of Carl's Hypothesis... he is also entirely introduced to us as the man who will wish Grace the best of success on the mission while he's being sedated on the ground. Because Carl has a personal opinion about what is at stake.

"Sun's really dying, isn't it?"