Rogue Archivist

yeah you get it. that's what fucks rocky up so much about—eridians have a crystalline brain. rocky remembers every single thing that he perceives in perfect detail. he's one of the best engineers erid has ever seen, so it's logical that he double checks his work not just to screen for oversights, but to see if anything new can be added. typically this is done in a thrum, allowing for ideas to bounce off one another.

but rocky was alone at tau ceti for almost 50 years. there was no thrum—not for lack of trying to get his crewmates to respond—so rocky does it himself.

so rocky gets stuck in loops. his brain rereads the same information over and over again, expecting to be passed onto another one of his species. when it isn't, there's no sense of completion and the loop starts back over. not having another eridian translates to stress on an instinctual level so his brain thinks there's an error in the loop or in his work. he completes a ritual or task to satisfy the anxiety. the cycle repeats itself regardless because eridians are not meant to be alone.

he has to check on grace's breathing. he needs to check the taumoeba. he needs to make sure he isn't dying of radiation sickness. he needs to force feed his friend as he wastes away. there's so much rocky can't fix and so much that he could have if his crew was still alive (if he didn't kill them). it starts to become more irrational—tapping in sets of five on the xenonite barrier to make sure it's stable. saying words over and over that don't really make sense with eridiani sentence structure. if he doesn't click and shake his carapace, his brain will make him relive the fat of grace's arm liquefying and coagulating in his hold.

inside his body, his worker cells are exhausted from constantly going to repair a sickness that doesn't exist. his cells are the sickness, driving themselves to ruin in a never-ending death spiral.

Random redraw 💃💃💃

The Three Gables

The subdued omnipresent strain of period-typical racism that runs throughout the entire canon is at its worst in this shoddily plotted story. Though it gives us a hasty peek at the formidably under-used Langdale Pike, Holmes’ gossiping columnist friend, there is nothing that can redeem this adventure. Holmes is indeed a product of his time and privileged place in society, and as such displays a complex array of prejudicial attitudes, but it is hard to reconcile his relaxed mood at the conclusion of “The Yellow Face” with his aggressive racism toward the figure of Steve Dixie. The case itself is a rehash of an already twice-used plot, growing weaker each time: it is basically identical in premise to both the events of the Red-Headed League and the missing Garrideb, with clues that apparently no one but the reader picks up on, a Holmes with a remarkable absence of foresight, and the villain(ess) undeservedly getting away with her crime. One is left to wonder why it was considered for publication at all. 

Grace has a warped self-perception. He insists he's not a "people person" but gets along with majority of the crew, is a literal middle school teacher who the kids love

he's so sassy bro. "I seem friendly only bcuz I stood next to Stratt"

also establishes why so many ppl thought Grace was second-in-command, like he's usually always standing next to Stratt

The answer is: the uterus isn't what causes your period, it is effected by your period. What causes your period and what causes trans women's periods is the same thing: the endocrine system.

HRT changes the sex of your endocrine system. Feminizing HRT makes it a female endocrine system, giving us a 28-day hormone cycle just like cis women. At the end of that cycle, the hypothalamus floods the body with prostaglandins. Those are what cause all but one of the period symptoms, because they make muscles inflame and contract. They are what make the uterus shed its lining, they are what cause intestinal cramps, they are what cause body aches, they are what cause headaches and migraines. The only period symptom not causes by the release of prostaglandins throughout the body is depression, and that is caused by your endocrine system simply not processing as much estrogen and from simply feeling like shit.

So, the only symptoms trans women don't get every 28 days is menstrual cramps, because yes we do not menstruate since we don't have uteruses. But migraines, depression, body aches, intestinal cramps, and the infamous "period shits" don't exactly add up to us having any better of a time. Except we have to pretend that we're fine and nothing is different because no one believes that we get periods, not even cis women.