A Macaron of a Person

@acarefreewind

Okey

"Smooth edges of screen fonts"

My computer was running hot before I turned everything off; the office I'm in is very warm, I could feel the heat of my CPU through the keyboard. The fans were going, not as loud as they usually get, but they were still blasting.

Y'all.

I can barely feel the warmth through the keyboard now. It's been like 2 minutes. The fan is nearly silent.

Click the Windows key and start typing "System settings", and "View Advanced system settings" will pop up. Then click "Settings" under Performance:

Then you'll see this:

TURN IT ALL OFF.

10AppsManager lets you uninstall bloatware. Winaero Tweaker lets you disable crap like Cortana/Copilot, ads, telemetry, internet search results when you search from the taskbar, and all kinds of other stuff, plus it gives you lots of other little options that are just nice to have (like, it can restore the old MS Paint program in place of Paint 3D). Both are totally free.

Oh, and check your startup programs in the Task Manager tab to make sure your computer isn't automatically starting eight million programs every time it boots. But I think people mostly know about that. (Unless this is me going "they only know one or two feldspars... and quartz of course.")

Skull of a two-faced bottlenose dolphin prepared by Enault & Auclair-Kraniata osteology.

grace grace grace grace

(in the tune of Bill Nye the Science Guy)

GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE!!!!

No one could get him to stop crying after he found out his pebbles were doing this

I really really like the idea of Adrian being the one to find Simon like, a decent chunk of time before Grace and Rocky return, and him and Adrian having their own deep and complex relationship outside of Grace and Rocky. Then by that point when Grace arrives sick and starving, Simon has to be the one to act as caregiver and learning to be gentle in that way, not Grace babying a PTSD riddled Cult-raised Soldier.

Because yeah, all the fics seem to have the same mentality of, Grace has finished his journey/character arc, so all he needs to do now is nurse this sweet owo baby back to health and show him the stars and everything will be alright.

Give Simon some agency! Let him be the one to care for Grace for once, especially when there's nothing immediately benefiting him to do so, (EI, he's not already in love with Grace, or feels he owes Grace anything for caring him before, or because he worships him as an Angel) he's simply doing it out of good faith.

This starved to the point of looking skeletal man named Grace apparently helped save Adrian's husband, and the whole planet of Erid? That's all well and good but its not like the Eridians have an unlimited supply of human food or oxygen. This man might not get better and even then, until he does, he's a drain of resources. All of his life experiences and training tell him its better just to end the poor man's suffering now and lay him to rot.

But he won't do that.

He'd begged Adrian to end his own suffering months ago, back when the worst of his wounds where still in the new stages healing and he couldn't see the end of his pain.

It was thanks to Adrian kind stone-like claw that Simon had healed as well and he had. It was thanks to Adrian that Simon had some place to call home, something he hadn't had since his Mother had been culled all those years ago.

Adrian of course had told him all about their mate, a brave and smart engineer who'd gone to space decades ago on a mission to try and save the stars.

Rocky had returned, not only with a solution to save the star, but a Human man of his own that needed caring for immediately. Though not nearly in the same ways Simon had needed help when he'd first arrived. There had been a lot of trail of error with his treatment early on.

This man, Grace, was on deaths doorstep, and it was up to Simon, Adrian and the small team of Eridians who'd helped Simon live comfortably on Erid to save him.

Of course it was mostly Simon who had to do the bulk of the manual work, seeing as the Eridians couldn't comfortably enter their oxygenated spaces, specifically made for Simon, but quickly being adapted and modified based on what Rocky could share about Graces preferences. He couldn't say he LOVED the idea of a large body of water, some would call an ocean, being added to his not-so-little-anymore biosome, but apparently Rocky had been adamant about it though. So Simon only asked that Adrian expand the green house area and add a crop field on the opposite side of the dome for him as compensation.

Adrian agreed, but reminded him that if he needed anything else he just needed to ask, no compensation required.

That was still a hard lesson for Simon to unlearn from Eden and the COI, but Adrian hadn't lied to him yet so he was doing his best to believe them.

He's really pretty sure he's not gonna like this Grace guy once he regains consciousness though, if only because every human aside from his mom has lied to him or manipulated him at some point in his life, but he's starting to get the impression Eridians can't lie at all.

So basically even when Grace wakes up and is super excited to have a human friend on Erid, Simon is basically ignoring him in favour of either working with the Eridians to test more human food varieties/develop botanical life in the dome, hanging out with Adrian, or any other eridian at that point.

Simon be like 😒😠 rocks over jocks! Fuck off! 🖕

22

of these magnificent ancient creatures still alive on this world. and I was aware of this at that age because nearly half of them were in a very secretive building on a hilltop near my house, in a last ditch effort by conservation scientists to breed and raise babies.

fifteen. Just born. this season. I cry tears of joy.

Where Simon challenges The Father. Because!!! It shows he is smart, he’s always been smart. He challenges authority when it he doubts what they are saying.

Do you know how dangerous a doubting child in a cult is??

The Father laughs like he likes the question and that’s the trick because Cults hate questions and doubts and independent thinkers- but they pretend to love questions.

Especially from new members. Simon is a new member (came from Mars- that one conversation with his mother “I don’t want to go- Simon don’t be like that.”) They love to answer questions from new members because it offers them a chance to nip any doubt in the bud, answer with absolutes and half-answers and usually end in humiliating or tearing down the person who asked the question. Not to get personal on main but trust me. You just see their teeth sharpen when you admit to a doubt or ask a question as a kid. They’ll make you feel stupid for asking and if you keep not understanding their half answers (asking more questions) they will get angry at you for persisting.

That’s why I headcanon that Simon has always been a doubter- especially with his monologue later about “what’s more likely? The stars disappeared or a few space stations?” (Paraphrasing) but it’s a very difficult and painful life for a doubting child growing up in a quite literally inescapable cult. But doubting doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t listen. Doubting doesn’t mean he didn’t fall for the dogma. He can still doubt and be their Butcher. They made him a solider, they made him loyal, and just because he privately thought it was all horse shit doesn’t mean he didn’t learn to not to challenge authority (that he still struggles with). That the belief sank into him like thorns, that he can’t help but feel a religious reverence for the seed despite hating what they did in the name of the Last Tree.

Couldn’t leave this is the tags bc YES THIS exactly. He got the harshest job/title BECAUSE he was a doubter

(And also the personal note is so real)