A catastrophe, and yet a masterpiece

two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl 🎏

Scott’s Oriole (Icterus parisorum), male, family Icteridae, order Passeriformes, AZ, USA

Putnam's Jumping Spider (Phidippus putnami), juvenile, taken May 1, 2026, in Georgia, US

Grace who does jazz hands and taps when he's asking a question and says some words three times like Rocky. Grace who makes chirps and trilling noises when he's happy.

Grace who starts thinking and dreaming in Eridian, who sometimes has dreams that are just sound, no visual. (Grace who, if he ever goes back to Earth for whatever reason after years on Erid, forgets some words in English and speaks in the sentence structure of Eridian because he has to translate from Eridian to English when he speaks outloud).

Grace who does scarification (even if Rocky protests at first) - I've read some fics where he does the Voyager pulsar map, or dots and lines showing his route from Sol, to Tau Ceti, turning around towards Sol, and then the line going all the way back to Erid. Even though he already has the scars from Rocky saving him, maybe Rocky's family crest. A scar showing his rank as Captain of the Hail Mary - maybe something to represent her, too.

Grace who wears Eridian gems, as earrings, in a chain for his glasses, in strings draped over him that clink together when he walks - the most important ones, like the earrings he wears all the time, the color of the blueish-green gems (or spots?) in/on Rocky's carapace.

Grace who wears a bracelet on each arm that have ribbed marks like on Rocky's arm so he can properly say goodbye (not something he had to do, but something that felt right to do, something that made him feel more like himself), sound included.

Bullock’s Oriole (Icterus bullockii), male, family Icteridae, order Passeriformes, AZ, USA

In 2017, American film researchers recovered “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” a short film depicting a playful kiss between a Black couple which had not seen the light of day for more than a century. A long-forgotten artifact from the earliest years of American film, the sweet, humanizing vignette, produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, makes a startling contrast to the overwhelmingly racist and blackface-ridden contempory portrayals of African Americans. Four years later in 2021, archivists in Norway, halfway across the world, identified a sister short in their collections—an extended alternate cut which reveals more of Chicago stage performers Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle’s vaudeville-like routine, a theatrical, hot-and-cold romantic dynamic between two lovers which parodies the popular and controversial short “The Kiss” (1896). Both films, which had previously been lost, were known from entries in old motion picture catalogs but had been assumed to be era-typical, anti-Black “race films” until their rediscovery in the 21st century. Together with its more famous sibling, which has since been inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, this alternate version of “Something Good” represents the first-known instance of Black intimacy ever captured on-screen.

I guess spoilers for the book?

And despite such a long time, the stakes were kept high and there was an incredible sense of urgency. If they weren’t desperate, why would they pave the Sahara desert with astrophage farms and why would they blow up Antarctica. Both being huge things with irreversible consequences that take long time to take effect.

It was like running a race in extreme slow motion. They were working on things they couldn’t rush because if they did then it would all come to nothing but they couldn’t delay and actually spend proper time on it otherwise they’d all end up dead. But this rush was taking hours, weeks or even years to complete something. The way it was balanced is amazing.

Robust Assfish (Bassozetus robustus), family Ophidiidae, order Ophidiiformes, found in the deep ocean in tropical and temperate parts of the world

it is bird time once again!! only 6 more orders left to go :)

woke up at 5.45 am to execute this vision, so enjoy