Chronically tired, chronically enthusiastic

No parts of it extended beyond the lines, and the paper ticket was clearly displayed, impaled on a horn.

something maybe controversial that has been driving me BONKERS since the project hail mary book first came out that i finally just had to dig into my anthropology MA to bitch about:

it's fucking batshit that andy weir wrote the eridians as wearing clothes. there is no reason that eridians would ever develop something akin to human clothing.

like. do you know how long humans (not just hairy early hominin relatives of our, but straight-up anatomically modern homo sapiens) were rocking nothing but our birthday suits? LIKE NINETY THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS. HUMANS HAVE BEEN NAKED ALMOST THE WHOLE TIME WE'VE BEEN HUMANS, and we're famously leaky hairless apes, not hard-carapaced crab spiders with piston joints who live in boiling ammonia.

In order to be considered for the title of Mother of/Father [scientific field], you have to be the first to make significant contribution in that field. You're setting the groundwork in a way nobody else has. This can obviously cause a lot of debate in the end about who gets the title! That said, I think given the leaps and bounds that Grace makes in several fields of science that take them from the more theoretical to the practical gives him some notable options with strong arguments. So we've got options like: Father of Astrobiology (the discovery and study of Astrophage, Taumoeba, several other forms of life on Adrian, and the study of and first interactions with the Eridians; disproving the Goldilocks zone as the only area viable for life; making significant strides in proving the panspermia hypothesis), Father of Xenolinguistics (first person to create working translator and archive of an alien language), and Father of Interstellar Travel (this would be a title held alongside Dr. Dmitri Komorov, likely with Komorov being listed first, and there would be significant debate on if Grace should hold the title at all. I like to think Dmitri would want to share it though).

All workable cases, all real options. Buuuuut I think my very favorite option though would be the one that is the least open to debate and is the one that I honestly think Grace himself would like best: Father of First Contact.

Because on the one hand, yeah, that's a lot he was mostly doing. First contact with Astrophage, with the Taumoeba, with other life on Adrian, and most of all with the Eridians. The first ever intelligent form of life outside of Earth, he made First Contact with. He found ways to communicate, to establish common ground, to work alongside an alien being. He did something no one else on Earth had ever done before and changed the world with it. He made First Contact and saved the world.

securitycapecreature

1- father of first contact is the cutest option and if you can only have one title that would be best

BUT

2- the funniest opinion imo is him getting several of those so hes one of those "this guy is fuckin everywhere" scientists (i imagine one day in the distant future a group of college kids get together and one of them can be talking about learning of this great biologist that made so many new discoveries and someone else goes "you mean the linguist??" "You mean the ASTRONAUT??" And everyones confused for a little bit until they figure it out)

mercifulmother

2 - This is the ideal vision yes yes yes yes! Grace really went out there and decided to do a 100% speedrun on revolutionizing different fields of science, and now children of the future are going to suffer about it forever. It gets even worse once the political science kids get involved in the conversation. "Do you mean the DIPLOMAT?" STEM vs Humanities showdown is brutal. Trying to write a paper about this man is an absolute nightmare because the interdisciplinary sources on him are in five different sections of the library at any given point. Finding his stuff in a bookstore is even worse.

securitycapecreature

@mercifulmother Ahhhh!!! Yesss oh my those poor kids, im half glad i dont live in that universe rn, his Wikipedia page is the stuff of nightmares

On the other hand, someone does that type of post where they post a screenshot of the "subjects" in a weird wiki page with no context and everyone in the comments identifies him Immediately cause who else

mercifulmother

That's his family forever! He's their family forever! He taught them all how to make first contact, how to be with another species, how to love in this totally new way, and that makes them his kids! He's the blueprint humanity learns from! He never stops teaching, and all his students are his kids, and now they're his family too! Augh I'm gonna go get some tissues now, I'm very emotional.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

and the Salty Spitoon are

competing gay bars

what learning fandom history is like