Storms that Rage

I am shaking Fandom Culture by the shoulders screaming "JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DOESN'T LIKE SEX DOESN'T MEAN THEY CAN'T FEEL ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT!

"AND JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DOESN'T FEEL ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT DOESN'T MEAN THEY CAN'T ENJOY SEX."

It is actually insane to me how intertwined those two SEPARATE identities have become in fandom spaces. It's like if every lesbian character was also, idk, ADHD.

Yes, it happens irl and is very cool to see represented, but if the only ADHD representation and only lesbian representation only ever co-occurred and were never represented individually, like. You get how that would feel weird, right? It would kind of start to feel like people think lesbians have to be ADHD and if you have ADHD you're automatically a lesbian. Which is insane.

Hieroglyph Crimes Located.

There's a lot to unpack here, so I'm just going to hit the most egregious cases.

Let's take a look at the top left column.

That second hieroglyph? Uh, it's supposed to look like this, with three loops instead of four:

Don't get me wrong, HUGE kudos for getting close, but the art department just wrote the equivalent of the below for an English "h":

It's only one hump off, but that one extra hump sure is doing a lot of work, you know?

Anyway, on to the second column.

So, the truly egregious problem here is the middle character. Sir snake is - well, Houston, he appears to be doing a flip. As snakes famously do. Here is what he SHOULD look like:

My man is FULLY upside-down. And if you don't think that's too bad, look at an English "f" doing a backflip.

Isn't it beautiful and completely non-jarring. You can tell this is completely accurate to the language.

Another egregious problem in the second column is the bird. What's wrong with it, you ask? I DON'T KNOW. Is it the number of tail feathers? The globular body shape? The angle of the neck? Hard to tell! Here, help me select the correct bird from Gardiner's sign list so we can figure out where the art department went wrong:

Now, let's get into the third and fourth columns. Oh, wait, actually, let's not, because THE ABOVE HAS BEEN NIT-PICKING AND AT THE END OF THE DAY NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN OR WILL BE A REAL WORD OR GRAMMACTICALLY CORRECT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *incoherent screams trailing off into the distance as I run at the horizon*

Anyway.

That's not a choice. She didn't have any more say than he did.

And the way she was pleading with him. Asking him to sit, telling him they can do this easier. Seeing his frantic panic and the way it so obviously killed her.

God.

And, you know, at least in the movie, I think she wasn't emotionally prepared. They were three days from launch. He was the backup's backup. I think a large part of her was envisioning having him beside her after the rocket launched. I think she had thought about having his steady companionship beside her in the upcoming years, consulting on the astrophage and helping create temporary stopgap measures.

I think that explosion destroyed her future just as much as it destroyed Grace's. I think, after betraying the one person who could get her to smile, after hurting the only one who could give her a small respite from the horrible reality she lives in with a bad pun or stupid science fact, all she had left was the nightmare of being responsible for the survival of the human race.

The whole team settles in with rapt attention, ready to roast the shit out of Roz over it via group chat, only to see. Well. It's a series of interview clips over the years. It's made up exclusively of three things. One, clips of Hollander "stealing" linguistically challenging questions that the whole team knows Rozanov hates. Two, clips of Rozanov derailing questions that are about Hollander's "representation of his community," which gossip on the street says makes Hollander uncomfortable. Three, Hollander and Rozanov commenting individually on the rivalry, with vicious comments such as. "He's of course a great player, but he'll find us difficult to beat." Such fire in Rozanov's comments are especially damning, given his whole chirp-king-schtick. The video editor, with all the obsession and perception of a true fangirl, makes sure to circle every instance where you can see the shadow of Hollander and Rozanov pressing their feet together - and in one instance holding hands - beneath the interview table. (You wouldn't see it unless you're looking for it - or unless someone circles it in red for you.)

The video finishes, and the team sits in a kind of shocked silence as the next video auto-plays. This one is a compilation of Rozanov chirping Hollander on the ice. Here, the editor has helpfully drawn an arrow to Hollander's face whenever he blushes. The editor has also inserted text overlays with comments like. "Look at how fiercely Rozanov insults his rival." And then puts smaller arrows pointing to Roz's body language, with helpful texts like "excited wiggle indicating absolute fury," and "besotted grin indicating deep hatred." The sarcasm is distressingly accurate in its point.

(Listen, the whole team knows what Roz looks like when he's chirping someone. This - this is not it. This is not it at all. This is him when he's being silly with people he really likes. What is going on.)

The video finishes, and this time someone has the presence of mind to stop the auto-play before another mind-breaking thing comes up.

Someone else, trying to lighten the silence with a joke, and maybe dismiss it all as a fever dream, says, "Montreal Jane? More like Montreal Shane, am I right?"

And. Well.

Once it's out there, there's no coming back from it.

@munsons-mutiny It is a crime to leave this in the tags. I would give my firstborn to see your ideas in fic form.