Silver, they/them. Should probably start posting

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

mark watney: if i met an alien queen i’d fuck her. lol i’ll be in schiaparelli’s favorite hole

jazz bashara: i’m into casual sex. damn this guy sucks but lowkey i’d be down

Rocky’s gift to Grace immediately reminded me of the Voyager Pulsar Map

When Rocky gives him that little model with all the connected points and lines, Grace somehow catches on almost instantly that rocky is from 40 eridani. And at first i was like how the hell did he recognize that pattern so fast???

And then it clicked for me...

It visually mirrors the pulsar map placed on the Voyager probe. I'm aware they work differently because the Voyager Pulsar Map is about locating Earth in the galaxy using fixed pulsar landmarks, while Rocky’s model is just mapping local star distances from 40 eridani to systems like Tau Ceti, but it’s just cool because they’re alike in the way they both use spatial patterns instead of language to show where something is from and how to get there.

The concept is so similar that your brain immediately associates it with “location,” “origin,” “this is where i am from”

If you don't know, the pulsar map on Voyager was basically humanity trying to leave behind an address in space. If extraterrestrial life ever found the probe, the map could theoretically help them trace where it came from. It was humanity saying: hey, you found our probe. Please return to Earth!

I like to think that is why Grace understood it so quickly. Because even without language, the idea behind it is strangely universal. Every intelligent life form wants to know the same things:

@post-brahminism check it

of course grace is delighted! but it'd be very funny if rocky had just. a massively specific regional accent. and now grace has it too. all the eridians from that area are like OMG THE ALIEN IS ONE OF US - we're adopting it. that's an honorary member of the clan. listen to it. it might as well have grown up here.

...actually i'm gonna do it. fuck it. rocky is space scottish. to me. he's mine now, i'm taking him out to look at the kelpies and the falkirk wheel and climb up ben ledi. he can go fishing in a loch. and now grace's eridian accent is their equivalent of scots. he says stuff to adrian's family (posh motherfuckers) and theyre like 'i think it's trying to communicate with us..?' meanwhile adrian, well used to rocky's accent by now, is like 'it's giving you a compliment. be nice to my spouse's alien, please.'

Like yes, you could make a valid argument that "death worlds" are probably common or that other species are also batshit and it's honestly pretty likely that we would consider truly alien environments to be as mindblowing as we imagine ourselves being to other species.

But most of the time when I see people posting in the HASO tag, it's just something cool they noticed about themselves or the people they love and celebrating the joy they feel in being human.

Because really? We don't know what aliens will be like. We have no idea. They could look like anything. But we know that humans poison ourselves for fun, risk our lives to save deadly creatures, pack bond like nobody's business. We're the best endurance runners in the as-yet-known universe. Our brains are so coded for tool use they treat cars and planes and cranes as extensions of our bodies; and so coded for social bonds that we see faces in rocks and trees and teach our robots to sing themselves happy birthday.

And our planet? It has so many kinds of spiders and so many kinds of fungi and so many creatures that like to get pets and SO many animals that will get themselves drunk on fermented fruit or jellyfish zaps if given the chance. Dihydrogen monoxide, the universal solvent capable of dissolving more substances than any other liquid we know, falls from the sky and we dance in it. Our world is deadly as fuck and beautiful in its danger and in its wonder.

At our best, we imagine a future in which we are a benefit and a joy not only to our planet but to the universe. We dream of meeting alien species and inviting them home to meet our parents. We make art imagining all the ways we could be part of a galactic community.

When You Look at Dr. Grace

When You Look at Dr. Grace

and sometimes it’s someone else’s food preferences. sometimes it’s a weird-but-normal thing that human bodies do. sometimes it’s someone else’s kink.