M.Maurysiek

I spent almost an entire work shift drawing this tooth-rotting fluff

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

Don’t they know that murder is illegal? You just know there are a bunch of homicidal maniacs out there who love to read those stories. They write them, too, in between killing people. 

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

When it comes to stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, I’ve found it’s usually way better to think to yourself ‘I don’t want to be’ than ‘I’m not’.

Too many people categorize racist as the same kind of adjective as tall. Something that you can’t easily change and that everyone else can see about you.

When someone says to you “you sound a little bit racist/sexist/ableist/etc” it’s hard not to see that as a judgement of you and a condemnation of you as a person. Of course it’s hard not to! No one wants to be the Bad Thing Guy!

But, if you’re able to manage it either in the moment or after, ask yourself “do I sound that way because I really think it or because I’ve experienced bleed-through from my environment?”

More often than not, it’s actually the second one that is the problem. And once you’re able to identify that fact, you can then go “well what can I do about that?” and move on from there.

For me, I am still sometimes bigoted or biased when I least expect it of myself, and it’s hard not to knee-jerk “no I’m not the Bad Thing!” and shut the whole thing down. If I manage to avoid shutting the whole discussion down, I’m usually able to think “okay, where does that thinking come from? Is it me personally or sth I grew up with? Is it from my family or just my society? Are there ways I can detangle myself from the Bad Thing to be less biased/bigoted?”

It doesn’t make you a bad person to shut down the “you sound like Bad Thing” in the moment. It doesn’t even make you a bad person if you don’t want to think about it later on or acknowledge it.

It’s only bad if you double-down on that Bad Thing thinking and actively use it to hurt others.

The sad thing is, when we say “everyone is a little bit racist” it’s kinda a sad truism. Just like “everyone is a little bit ableist” and so on.

I think people also often forget that power dynamics don't always fully favor the customer, and sometimes power dynamics can be tilted in the favor of the customer service worker and subsequently abused. Able bodied customer service workers can be, and often are, ableist to disabled customers. White customer service workers can be, and often are, racist towards customers of color. Customer service workers who are men can be, and often are, sexist towards customers who are women. Customer service workers who are non-immigrants can be, and often are, xenophobic towards immigrant customers. Shall I go on? That's obviously not an exhaustive list and I could very well go on.

When I worked retail I had a co-worker scream at a little old lady and kick her out of the store because she spoke to him in a language he didn't speak. I saw her face as she was leaving and she looked so shaken up like she was about to cry. I've overheard so many of my co-workers calling customers racial slurs behind their back. Once again, I could go on, but I feel like my addition here is already getting long enough.

One customer being mean to you isn't justification for being to another.

You will often deal with customers who don't speak the same language you do. Being patient is going to go a lot further than being mean.

When a customer has a bad experience with another representative there going to approach you thinking you're going to be mean to them.

When you don't spend the time listening to customers they don't feel heard. If you don't spend time explaining things fully they won't know.

Yes it's soul crushing when a customer walks in demanding a manager. It's also soul crushing when you ask for help and it's denied.

location: Grace being American, I imagine the main exhibit would be at one of the Smithsonians (or affiliates). originally I went with Space Center Houston, but the National Air and Space Museum in DC might make marginally more sense. it’s pretty small, but they do also literally have Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit and the command module from Apollo 11, so a Hail Mary exhibit might make a nice companion.

name: Earth’s Saving Grace: The Story of Project Hail Mary (if this was real life it would be called like “The Lockheed Martin Hail Mary Exhibit” or something equally asinine, but this is fake so I can ignore that <3)

actual artifacts:

at least one of the Beetles probes (probably Ringo, idk I’m attached to that one for some reason) 

xenonite taumoeba breeder tank 

replicas of the yellow and red jumpsuits grace wore, with highlights on each of the individual patches and what they mean + the patches that were on Ilyukhina + Yáo’s suits

a small replica of the astrophage panels used to power the Hail Mary

I imagine Grace kept some kind of physical research journal while working on Stratt’s Vat, that would be in here

interactive:

tech panel breaking down time dilation + the difference between the actual time the hail mary traveled to tau ceti, the time as experienced from earth, and the time as experienced by the crew onboard

tech panel that teaches about base 6 + Eridian numbers, and has a little quiz where you’re given a number in base 10 and have to convert it to base 6 (or you’re given a number 0-5 and have to pick the Eridian equivalent) 

tech panel with a 3D model of Rocky you can spin around and click various parts of to learn about Eridian biology (or at least what they know of it from Grace’s logs)

tech panel comparing the planet characteristics of Earth vs Erid, + potentially Venus vs Threeworld +  maybe Sol vs 40 Eridani A; I’m not sure how comprehensive I want this panel to be actually thinking through this a Sol/40 Eridani A comparison would be built in, as I envision you being able to both look at the planets themselves side by side and switch views to look at their orbits around their hosts side by side 

other elements:

one of those semi-enclosed movie rooms with the big wall projection(s), where they loop through a curated collection of the video clips sent back by Grace [when the museum is busy this part of the exhibit in particular is packed]

wrapping around the exhibit is a timeline of the entire mission, from the Petrova line discovery all the way to the Sun returning to full brightness (and when they have confirmation that 40 Eridani A has also returned to full brightness, I imagine this would be added as well) [the actual line part of the timeline is red, of course]

a dedicated wall with pictures of all of the big players in the mission, and a placard naming them all. Stratt is at the top (which she hates), with Grace immediately beneath her, and then the remaining astronauts side by side underneath him, continuing down through technicians scientists etc. Grace never took a mission picture the way the rest of the astronaut crew did, so it’s just his final yearbook photo as a teacher. it’s led to a number of conspiracy theories online that maybe he never actually agreed to be the tertiary scientist, but it’s explained in the exhibit as highlighting that he wanted to be remembered as a teacher, not an astronaut