Adult In Training™

SIKE

THEY'RE GAY

And they're not some rare exception to the rule, either!!!

About 25% of black swan couples consist of two swans of the same sex (typically, two males).

These couples will court each other, build a nest, and raise their young together in a more-or-less committed monogamous relationship.

In fact, these same-sex couples have a high success rate of 80% when raising their young to adulthood, as opposed to the 30% of their heterosexual counterparts! Two big buff papa swans are better than one when it comes to stomping on invaders of nesting territory.

"But," I hear you say, "where do their baby floofballs come from? Does mpreg exist among black swans?"

Alas, no, but there is a very elegant solution to this. The swan couple may simply temporarily associate themselves with a female swan.

Afterwards, the female swan deposits their eggs and swims off free to live her single girlie life if she wishes (or, find a boyfriend. Preferably one who isn't already committed to another boyfriend.)

So whenever someone commits the naturalistic fallacy "homosexuality bad because unnatural >:(" I like to point out not only their glaring illogicality, but also, respectfully, there is homosexuality happening in the local lake right now.

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

I mean full-on khaki-shorts-wearing, traversing-wilderness-with-nothin'-but-a-machete Adrian who yoinks snakes outta trees and pets swamp puppies and will unflinchingly dig around in elephant faeces for signs of a rare parasitic tapeworm if needed.

Oh, humans eat socially? No problem, Adrian has observed many many animals eat. Did you know that an obscure species of small underground dirt creature from the north side of Erid also eats socially? Adrian can give you a not-so-short presentation on them.

Oh, the human has no external carapace and so its internal sounds are absurdly loud, wet and off-putting? No problem, Adrian was just conducting an expedition last month researching the incredible eridian animal, the Wet Loud Worm from the south-east region of Wet Loud Wormland. They're desensitised, it's fine.

Oh, Grace leaks often from many orifices and it can be a bit of a learning curve to get used to? No problem for Adrian, see Wet Loud Worm paragraph again!

The first time he cheated death, Sisyphus had just angered Zeus by revealing the location of the Asopid Aegina whom Zeus abducted. Which is super valid, fuck Zeus.

Sisyphus knew that Zeus would send the god of death Thanatos after him, so he prepared a trap and trapped Thanatos in the chains meant for him.

After that, nothing on Earth was able to die so long as Thanatos was in chains. Which meant no animals could be sacrificed to the gods. This angered the gods, who made Sisyphus' life so miserable with pain and illness that he would beg for death. And so he released Thanatos.

But then came the second time Sisyphus cheated death. As he was dying, he asked his wife to dump his naked corpse in the middle of the public square. Denied a proper burial, his soul ended up on the far side of the river Styx, unable to cross.

He complained to Hades and Persephone about how his wife disrespected him, and begged them to let him return briefly to the world of the living to scold her and make her bury him properly. They agreed, and Sisyphus returned to life. He then embraced his wife, and refused to return to the Underworld.

It's only when he finally died of old age that he was sent to Tartarus and punished with the boulder.

I don't remember where I've seen it, but I like the interpretation that Sisyphus doesn't have to push the boulder. He can choose to stay in Tartarus and rest. But he was promised that if he managed to push the boulder to the top of the mountain, he'll ascend to Elysium.

And Sisyphus, in his stubbornness and cleverness, refuses to give up on a challenge.

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.