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there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”
have i told this story yet? idk but it’s good. The Orangutan Story:
my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?
wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.
background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.
so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—
then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”
some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.
much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.
so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.
my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:
some actually fleshed out red string PHM au comics! (ft. qpr grocky)
happy pride month 🙂↕️ some doodled comics are below, plus a (warning: long) detailing of this au because i'm crazy!!!🧡
i have more doodles where that came from! but it makes more sense to post related ones together... so, to be continued. (i don't really do long projects [i get stressed], so it will likely be some non-linear storytelling throughout doodles.)
i am excited to post the next batch though, so have this (out of context) panel for now 😭
oh red string au, I love you so 😩 details are below. and I ramble. this has made this post very long. apology apology
there are multiple versions of a red string au but this is mine (so we are on the same page here):
people are born without strings, and get theirs when they are in proximity to their soulmate AND cross paths. think like bumping into each other on the street, sitting next to them at a concert, your waiter at a restaurant, new coworker, etc.
some people don't have a soulmate 🤷 it's rare, but not that rare that people believe it never happens. it's socially acceptable to believe that, if you reach a certain age, you may just not have one. but people find their soulmate at any age. it's just one of those things where the belief depends on the person.
people can also be tied to multiple individuals. #yeah
soulmate doesn't necessarily mean sexual or even romantic attraction. tis but a soul tie. two souls who were meant to be together. don't think ab it too hard. red string au storylines are super cute and I love them, but sometimes don't have a lot of complexity or nuance. just because two people "get tied" doesn't mean they're like, going to get married or something. what happens between two people after they get tied solely depends on those two people. it really varies. red string of fate au in 2026 means it's gonna be woke. happy pride month✋️
ALL THAT BEING SAID; we get into the plot of this being a PHM au...
grace not being tied, never getting tied. being surrounded by many people in the professional world who are all tied. always experiencing a slight othering because of it. nothing explicit, but just enough to be there. "making peace" with it, choosing to believe that maybe he's just one of those people that doesn't have one🙁 and that's fine! he knows that if he actually is, then it's perfectly normal. but he tries not to think about. ever. jokes that he is, instead, "tied to his work"
ironically, his fate WAS tied to his work though. this is where petrova line = red string of fate comes into play. Dr. "I'm soul-tied to my work" grace, pointing at the astrophage in a petri dish, then staring down into a dark xenonite tunnel protruding from the ship blocking the petrova line. screaming in shock as his red string appears, tying him to someone at the other end. (guess who!)
stratt's actions become more cruel, essentially dooming him (from the eyes of everyone on earth) to a life of never finding a potential soulmate. (though grace chose to believe that he might just be a person without one, there was always a chance he just hadn't found them yet. stratt took away his choice to do so.)
so. eridians can't see color. and because the string isn't a physical object with any mass or weight, it's just a force. i'd like to think this au is kind of just our society but everyone has a sixth sense to see the string of fate; like eridians discovering humans can see light. just another extra sense. ANYWAY, rocky can't see the string! he doesn't see that him and grace or tied, or have any idea about this aspect of human culture (or any, for that matter).
what's interesting though is that the red string also occurs for eridians, they just can't "see" it! i'd like to think that once grace is settled and situated on erid, he gets bombarded with questions and requests from eridians to tell them if they are tied with a "soulmate" according to human culture.
if you saw the other post, you may be thinking, "but bay you said grockdrian!" and you would be right. adrian is not pictured in this one (because this is the beginning) but they will be! qpr grockdrian domestic life on erid is a whole other thing. it's happening though. i said so.
bonus if you got through all of that:
NO IDEA why i'm locked in so hard. please actually ask me questions if you have any though. lowk i #needthat. honestly this post is so long... maybe i need to go outside actually holy shit 😭
rocky's crew dying from radiation exposure, something humans go to great lengths to prevent and are very scared of and grace's crew dying in their "sleep" with nobody watching, something eridians go to great lengths to prevent and are very scared of. cool book that is easy to read through your tears.
Recommended song to listen to: <Obstacles> by Syd Matters
First off, GIGANTIC CREDIT to @intrstellarisms and their BOMBASTICALLY FANTASTIC Coltland fic <based on a true story>. This mini-comic exists because of it and it is specifically based on chapter 2 <The buoy>. Please check out the fic here!!
really worked my ass off this(literally, I got rashes from sitting too long in a humid and hot environment) but I am just so obsessed with the fic that I feel compelled to create something for it. I really want to capture that constant melancholy and hurt present in the Coltland twins dynamic when grace is sent away. A perpetual hollow in Colt's heart where it makes all his memory with Ryland dreamy and fairy-tale like.
The recommended song <obstacles> by Syd Matters is also from the recommendation in the original fic. (Honestly the fic is like the age of enlightenment for me）
sorry if this doesn't rly have a nice flow and if the arrangements are a bit hard to read(My friend beta read this for me and that's her feedback), it's my first time trying to draw comic and I think I'm still a bit stuck on the static fanart mindset. (oh and i'm gonna add this into the 100 days drawing challenge hehe(13/100) Pls feel free to throw in any feedback on it as well!!
Lastly, huge thanks again for @intrstellarisms for giving me the opportunity to create this. And for being such a sweet author(did you know the comment you replied is my first ever comment on AO3?) That really made my day!
Thinking about how if Grace were ever to return to earth it would more than likely be years after Stratt is dead and buried.
Leaving Grace with no closure, with feeling they have no way to express and who will Grace talk to about this ? , how can anyone understand what Grace is feeling ? everyone from project Hail Mary is gone.
Just Grace and a headstone with Eva Stratts name carved into it.
And I bet no one’s visited her grave in years. It’s dirty and grass a has grown over it slightly.
Grace doesn’t cry as they wipe the grave off with their hands. There are no flowers and no one has mourned her.
So it’s just Grace standing there silent with a solemn expression. The last and only person who will mourn Eva Stratt.
I love the dont-go-crazy room in phm because the lab I work for has received NASA-funded grants specifically about this. we've done VR experiments in isolated and confined environments (such as Antarctic stations) to see what type of scenes (nature, urban) people find the most calming. nice to know that Stratt read our papers.
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
stormborns
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
dededos
yousharknotpass
