wisest is she who knows she does not know

One of the worst feelings in the world: when you are just desperate, like claw-your-own-skin-off desperate, to create, but the only thing that even vaguely appeals to you to work on is a nebulous half-feeling that might be dreamily related to some half-formed notion of a concept. I must! Make! No thing! Only make!

Everything is boring. All activity is meaningless. I understand why Sherlock Holmes did cocaine.

heres the thing. in no universe whatsoever does ryland grace agree to go on the hail mary. and in no universe would stratt let him refuse. it is fundamental to both characters that grace goes to space; grace is not grace and stratt is not stratt if it doesn't happen.

observation notes after opening up the strattland tag on here to backread it like a morning paper on a daily basis for like three months: I'm not sure I've seen a single image of these characters directly kissing on the lips. I've seen cheek kisses (given by her to him, he's very rarely the active party here), I've seen faces held close enough to imply the idea of mouth kissing, I've seen a few iterations of the pair of them stripped down to get to know each other biblical style, but no direct smooching. also fairly little normal hugging or hand holding, this is easier to find but there is less of it compared to other phm ship tags. what the strattland zeitgeist / hivemind wants from these two in terms of physical intimacy is more enigmatic. she's dragging him by the tie, he's taking a sip from her coffee cup over her shoulder, she's giving him a judas kiss, he's kneeling down with his head in her lap, she's holding his limp body pietà / ivan the terrible style, they're sharing such a small workspace that they're shoulder-to-shoulder with their legs all tangled up, she's putting sticky notes on him, they're avoiding eye contact while she ruffles a hand through his hair, she's binding his wrists and neck with symbolically neon red ropes, etc. you open up any other popular grace ship tag (x rocky, x carl, x simon ironlung) and, boom, kissing cuddling sex and other coupley activities. you look for x stratt and it's like "this is an HR violation but I'd be hard pressed to say exactly why."