so like two decades after launch, stratt gets a call that's just grace being like

Damian: was he not- i mean i know he wasn't fatherly, but was he not strict when you two were younger?

Dick: *loud laughing* oh, man, not even close-!

Jason: yeah, he really wasn't- i mean, he tried to be on occasion i guess; but it wasn't really parental strictness more than it was just being harsh and bitter.

Tim: so B really didn't try at all at first, huh?

Jason: he didn't- ok, honestly? my personal theory is that he didn't know he had kids until after i died.

Dick: *laughter turns to wheezes* wHAT?

Jason: no- *wheeze* shut up, hear me out, *cackles*

Tim, audibly amused: what the fuck does that even mean--like you think he forgot he adopted you both?

Jason: no, no- i just think he didn't understand the correlation between adoption and actually being in charge.

Damian: you think that in his mind it was a one time thing? like 'oh, adopting kids? yeah i did that in the past, fun night'.

Tim: *wheeze*

Jason: y-*snort*-yeah, you get it.

Dick: SO WAIT- *deep breath* so you- so you think that for Bruce it was like he had no idea until after you died, at which point he was panicking looking around like 'FUCK A CHILD IS DEAD, SOMEBODY CALL HIS PARENT- ooooh, i get it now,'

Tim: *loud uncontrollable cackling*

Jason, also fighting through wheezes: no i- *choke* no, i mean like- i think he didn't really understand that he was supposed to be a parent in all the senses rather than just the legal. i think you were too happy with every non-parent-like decision he made, and i was too independent, so he thought we were all just chill living in each other's spaces.

Dick: *wheeze* he thought- he thought that Dad was just a title, like Mr or Mrs,

Damian: -like when you buy a two foot square of land online so you can legally be called a lord.

Dick: *cackling* tHAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS-

Jason: yeah, yeah- and then i died and Tim fuckin' showed up, and i have to imagine he was just white-knuckling it in the Batcave looking at him like 'god, i really need to lock the fuck in with this guy',

Tim and Dick: *start crying*

Damian: you think- *snort* so finding Drake was Father internally sighing and going 'ok, time to grind i guess'?

Jason: exac- *wheeze*

*connecting ping*

Bruce: boys, it's-

*a pause* *breathless laughter*

Bruce: i don't even want to know what's so funny this time. i'm just here to call Robin home; it's almost three, i want you to come back to the cave with me so you can get some sleep before your exam at school tomorrow.

Damian, disgruntled: *sigh* yeah yeah, on my way.

Dick, weeping, tone high-pitched: he's locking in-

This sketch is incredible. Perfect moment to capture. 10/10 for the artist.

Link to post

It is actually nuts how much Grace is canonically liked and likeable in PHM. Obviously there's all the hints about how much the crew like him, but even outside of that, we can see that in his pre-project life, when he wasn't 'important,' people wanted him around! His fellow teachers were asking him to hang out, and he had more friends than just Marissa! Who, by the way, hung out with him every Thursday night (insane amount of consistency for adult friendship tbh) for YEARS. Don't even get me started on how Marissa met him because he was the roommate of a guy she BROKE UP WITH. Imagine staying friends with your college ex-boyfriend's roommate for almost two decades??? To the point that you tell him about a world-changing problem before it's even public, just because it's him.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."