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and grace is trying so hard to not accidentally be sexist or assign gender roles to a monogendered species, so like, trying hard not to call someone he/him just because they like sports, or she/her just because they seem caring, or whatever. and he's having a hard time about it because he's like oh man why am I assigning the pronouns I'm assigning, i hope I'm not bringing any of my biases into this. just absolutely eating himself up over it

he tries to fix this by starting to roll a die, or throw darts at a dartboard, but his students immediately throw a fit because the point of the word-gifts is that they are specific, picked deliberately for them, right? and grace tries to explain gender bias and so on, but it becomes clear these kids could genuinely not give less of a shit, they just want to know what their AGAG (assigned gender at grace) is, alright? why is this so hard for him to understand??

eventually grace comes to the conclusion that he's on a different planet, and severely overthinking this, and that his kids really just are having fun--they really don't see the grace-given pronouns as categorization, he figures they see them as something more akin to astrology. or an eridian tiktok trend. when grace learns they call the assigning a word-gift he probably cries tbh

"teacher grace!!! what my pronoun question???"

"hmm. getting big they/them vibes off you"

Ship him with the genderless rock alien(s) but not ☝️ in a normal way. They are very weird by all standards.

Ship him with Markiplier some guy called Simon who somehow has even worse trauma. Again in the least normal way possible.

Made your choice? Hit the readmore to find out which of my students' favorite foods you turned out to be! [TIP: you can Reblog and Tag this post to let your friends know what you chose!]

So random Eridian scientists are talking to Grace and are like, absolutely no disrespect intended, but very interesting Rocky overcame the cultural weirdness and sensory disgust of "hugs" and does them despite no benefit to himself because he cares for your needs! Its sweet!

Grace: actually Rocky freaks out if he cant press himself against my lungs and heart through the thinnest xenonite possible until he can hear every muscle cell in my body moving at least once a day.

Also Andy Weir:

"Probably asking if Sally’s Diner served gluten-free vegan grass clippings or something."

"This is a single man’s apartment with a single man eating a single man’s meal. I don’t see anything feminine at all. There’s nothing to suggest a woman in my life. Am I divorced? Gay? Either way, there’s no sign that children live here."

"So I’m a single man in my thirties, who lives alone in a small apartment, I don’t have any kids, but I like kids a lot. I don’t like where this is going…"

"The situation was dire and deadly, but it was also the norm. Londoners during the Blitz in World War II went about their day as normal, with the understanding that occasionally buildings get blown up. However desperate things were, someone still had to deliver milk. And if Mrs. McCreedy’s house got bombed in the night, well, you crossed it off the delivery list."

"Kids are smarter than most people think. And they can tell when a teacher actually cares about them as opposed to when they’re just going through the motions."

"God knows we could do with more parents being engaged in their kids’ educations, but there’s a limit."

“'You guys know about climate change, right? How our CO2 emissions have caused a lot of problems in the environment?' - 'My dad says that’s not real,' said Tamora.'"

"Thirty years. I looked out at their little faces. In thirty years they’d all be in their early forties. They would bear the brunt of it all. And it wouldn’t be easy. These kids were going to grow up in an idyllic world and be thrown into an apocalyptic nightmare."

"A modern nuclear plant can power an entire city for a year with the energy stored in just one kilogram of Uranium. Yes. That’s it. The entire output of a nuclear reactor for a year comes from a single kilogram of mass."

"Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years."

“'That’s…! Dimitri, I want to hang out with you. Like—can we hang out? I’ll buy you a beer. Or vodka. Or anything. I bet there’s an officers’ club on this boat, right?' - 'It would be my pleasure.'"

"The Orlan-MKS2 is possibly the best EVA suit ever made."

"'I’ll write up a paper and send it along to the UN. We can form a committee—' - 'No, I said we’ll do it.” Stratt stood up. 'You’re with us now, Dr. Lokken.'"

"Well, I say 'his hand,' but maybe it’s her hand. Or some other pronoun I don’t have a word for. They might have seventeen biological sexes, for all I know. Or none. No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I’m going to go with 'he' for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being 'it.'"

"The Blip-A control room probably has awesome-looking Braille-like readouts. Well, I’m sure it’s way more advanced than that."

"“'Because I have the U.S. Army,' she said. 'And that’s a damn fine army.'"

"I should be more culturally sensitive, but he threw shade when I talked to myself."

“And just like that another climate denier is born. See how easy it is? All I have to do is tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

"I am a tree-hugging antiwar throwback to a bygone era of protest politics.”

"'You are very heavy,' I say. I hope he doesn’t take that to mean Hey, fatty! Go on a diet!"

“'Are they artificial intelligence of some kind?”

Stratt asked. 'No,' said Lamai. “We do not have time to develop a complicated neural network. This is a strictly procedural algorithm. Very complex, but not AI at all. We have to be able to test it in thousands of ways and know exactly how it responds and why. We can’t do that with a neural network.'"

"There are old Eridians out there who were alive when Columbus discovered (a bunch of people already living in) North America."

“'I never would have thought a woman would be so sexist against women.' - 'It’s not sexism. It’s realism.” She righted a strand of hair that had blown into her face. “My guidelines were that all candidates must be heterosexual men.' - 'Why not all heterosexual women?' - 'The vast majority of scientists and trained astronaut candidates are men. It’s the world we live in. Don’t like it? Encourage your female students to get into STEM. I’m not here to enact social equality. I’m here to do whatever’s necessary to save humanity.' - 'Still seems sexist.'”

"I put my hand to my chest in mock surprise. 'Goodness me! DuBois appears to be black! I’m surprised you allowed it! Aren’t you afraid he’ll ruin the mission with talk of rap music and basketball?'"

"I leaned to Dimitri. 'Are all Russians crazy?' - 'Yes,' he said with a smile. 'It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.' - 'That’s…dark.' - 'That’s Russian!'"

“And can you tell the goddamned corrupt government officials in North Africa to stay out of the way?”

“'That part will be easy,' she said. 'When this is all over, those governments will keep the blackpanels. They’ll be the industrial-energy powerhouse of the world.'”

“See, there we go,” he said. “Save the world and permanently lift Africa out of poverty while we’re at it.

“'Why would New Zealand pay a bunch of money to help Africa?' I asked. 'Because we’re nice,' Redell said. 'Wow,' I said. 'I know New Zealand is pretty cool but—' - 'And it was going to be a New Zealand–owned company that charged for the power,' Redell said."

"We have an unspoken agreement that cultural things just have to be accepted. It ends any minor dispute. 'Do it my way because it’s how I was raised,' basically. We haven’t run into anything where our cultures clash…yet."

“We’re part of the ecology, Ms. Stratt. We’re not outside it. The plants we eat, the animals we ranch, the air we breathe—it’s all part of the tapestry. It’s all connected. As the biomes collapse, it’ll have a direct impact on humanity.”

"It’s Russian for 'vodka.' How do I know that? Because I spent months on an aircraft carrier with a bunch of crazy Russian scientists. I saw that word a lot."

"This screen is just three columns of white text on a black background. The left is all Chinese characters, the middle is Russian, and the right is English."

"We need to raise a strong, solid generation of survivors. Right now we’re soft. You, me, the whole Western world. We’re the result of growing up in unprecedented comfort and stability."

"Do you think the United States—the most powerful military force of all time—is going to sit idly by while half their population starves? How about China, a nation of 1.3 billion people that’s always on the verge of famines in the best of times? Do you think they’ll just leave their militarily weak neighbors alone?”