Eyes Up

rem you little thief (affectionate)

May I propose we talk about Mark Watney?

Mark was just one person. One singular person who was stranded on an alien planet, with almost no chance of survival.

And yet- the whole world came together to support him. NASA spent who knows how many millions of dollars to try and get him home.

One person. One man who doesn't have a romantic partner, kids, a dog- he has his parents and that's it. But his life was still important. It was important enough for his crew to spend extra months away from their families to save him. His life was important enough for the Chinese national space agency to give up their secret rocket design to help NASA.

We keep talking about how society views aroace people as "useless" and how Graces life "wasn't important enough" but I think looking at some more positive "rep" would be nice this pride month. ("Rep"- it's not canon and weir most likely did not intend for his character to be read like this, but in my head Mark's story could very well be tied to him being aromantic.)

I would say it's a combination of things. Do you:

Share the same values?

Safely share being vulnerable with each other?

Have compatible personal needs and life/family goals?

Work as a team to accomplish what needs to be done on both the small and large scale?

Address when there is a power imbalance and work to reduce/resolve it?

Find ways to compromise when you have different interests or preferences?

Lift each other up?

Protect each other?

Still retain your identity separate from the other person?

"And it seems like it's worth your time, right? And, by the way, there's actually- the superpower inside of feeling alien is admitting that you might be an alien."