Keigan, actual adult™, aroace agender (pronouns whatever but preferably they/them), queer for short. Too damn old to give a shit about juvenile fandom puritans so antis can fuck all the way off.
Relationship: Ryland Grace/Rocky/Adrian (plus various past relationships)
Chapters: 28/28
Word count: 99,274
Summary: the Eridians have built an interstellar research station, and the time has come to journey to Earth to pick up some human scientists. For Grace it means confronting his past, and finally coming to terms with who – and what – he truly is.
Main tags: slow burn, soul bond, alien/human relationship, exophilia, worldbuilding, flashbacks, space exploration
(Note that this fic is only viewable to registered AO3 users, hence the lack of hyperlink.)
this russian attack on kyiv didn't utilise drones or slower missiles, only ballistics and hypersonic missiles i.e. the things that reach kyiv in a few minutes if not under a minute. everything to try and kill more. this isn't even terror anymore because terror has a goal. this is just genocidal frothing at the mouth at the sight of blood and death
russians are striking kyiv and region with zircon hypersonic missiles. these are actually anti-ship missiles. what kind of ships are they targeting in kyiv? no ships. because they themselves measure zircon's accuracy in five-storey buildings
"the accuracy of the target is literally up to centimetres."
"centimetres? and this is true about zircon as well?"
"yes, zircon as well."
"so if there's a cross target, you can hit it like a sniper."
"practically, yes. if there is a five-storey building, and we target one of the entrances, if it won't hit this exact entrance, it will hit the next one for sure."
now-dead russian occupier on a russian state tv channel "zvezda"
After some explosions, Lukianivska metro station in Kyiv was damaged again. A metro station, you know, underground, where people try to hide from the attacks.
It is not a fucking military object, it is a fucking bomb shelter that was already damaged many, many times before.
Also I’ve lost count of missiles by now, the amount is closer to thirty by now, I guess
Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:
This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.
And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?
She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.
I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.
Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.
At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.
I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.
“What… did you do?”
“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”
She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.
My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”
And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.
TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.
A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.
IDK I think if cis men are being told that being fat will lower their testosterone and make them Insufficiently Masculine, and cis women are being told that being fat will raise their testosterone and make them Excessively Masculine, and fat trans people are being denied the right to medically transition if they're fat, and thin trans people are warned against HRT because it will make them fat (and this is said about both testosterone and estrogen HRT), and androgynous-presenting people are told that only thin people count as androgynous...
Then maybe...
Maybe...
Maybe the weight loss industry is just using Gender to enforce fatphobia.
It's funny how american guys who got "73% Scandinavian" in a mail order DNA test once will be like "I have Viking blood coursing through my veins, I'm a natural-born warrior and I've got +5 poison resistance and I'm immune to frost damage", while the average Norwegian guy is just some guy named Lars who works in IT, rides a bicycle to work, and looks like this.
you know those studies showing that cursing helps with pain tolerance or whatever. that’s how i feel about making my weird little noises to get through my basic daily activities. sometimes you just have to go hggblaaaah for a minute so you can find the strength within yourself to get up or wash the dishes or send an email. mmmnneh. urgh. the torments are unending but you can always make some little sounds about it.
actually as a woman I still think misandry makes you an unpleasant person and if you’re just out there saying shit like “all men should die” or “men’s mental health doesn’t matter” then you’re the type of person I want nothing to do with. also this is not what feminism is about btw, you’re not being a strong girl boss with this ideology, you’re just a bully
-the idea that women are less capable of abuse than men is an extension of the idea that women are weaker than men.
-the refusal to acknowledge men's mental health and emotions as valid things worthy of support comes from the idea that emotions are inherently feminine in nature and having them is, again, a sign of weakness.
-the treatment of men as generic and expendable and women as special contributes to the idea that women should have less representation because we already "have enough" and "don't need more" and we gotta "even the playing field" or some dumb shit, so any need or want for more attention, regardless of reason, is attributed to "pointless attention-seeking".
-all of this puts trans men in an even more uncomfortable position, because either they're made an exception (because they ~aren't really men~ you see) or they're viewed as self-hating misogynists because why else would you "choose" to be the Trash Gender (tm)?
all of these seemingly pro-women anti-men sentiments stem from beliefs produced and enforced by toxic masculinity; as such, misandry is often really just misogyny in disguise.
-the idea that men are inherently terrible only serves to excuse men for being terrible. because, hey, they can't help it, so why bother trying, right? part of holding men accountable for their awful actions is believing they can in fact be better.
-the reason "not all men" is so frustrating to hear is because it's often used in poor faith to derail much needed conversations about toxic masculinity and how it manifests, not because the phrase itself is untrue.
-continuing from the trans men thing, misandry can and does make it harder for trans men to come out, for fear of the aforementioned responses.
-yes, misandry can stem from trauma at the hands of a man. that's understandable, but trauma can reinforce a lot of prejudices, and we all have a responsibility to understand how we come to believe things and mind ourselves accordingly. that doesn't mean you need to hang around men all the time, nor does it mean you're wrong to feel the way you do about what men did to you - it just means recognizing the objective line between fact and feelings, and recognizing that you don't need to conflate the two to validate your feelings. "i am uncomfortable around men because of past experiences shared by a lot of women" is different from "men are all horrible irredeemable pieces of shit and need to die".
Russia’s Empire Is Starting to Fall—the “Good Russians” Know It
As someone who lives in Kyiv under almost nightly missile and drone attacks, let me tell you something.
Published 16 July, 2026.
By Kira Rudik
The more Ukrainian missiles hit Russian oil refineries, the more articles by "new" and "good" Russians we will see. That is the first sign the empire is beginning to fall. The "good Russians" will recycle the same old arguments. In Ukraine, we have heard them so many times they make me sick: “Russia is too big to fail,” “Russians cannot be humiliated—otherwise there will be nuclear escalation,” “The Russian army is incredibly strong,” “Russia has a democratic future,” etc.
None of these claims withstands scrutiny. The truth is that Russia is the last surviving European empire. It outlived the tectonic changes that reshaped Europe after the Second World War. Then it was a totalitarian state controlling the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. Today it remains a centralised empire ruling over 21 national republics within the Russian Federation.
It is a top-down, KGB-FSB state that survives by exporting natural resources while investing billions in propaganda designed to convince the world that it is an indispensable global power.
In reality, before the full-scale invasion, Russia's economy was roughly the size of Italy's or Canada's. Yet we never heard either of those countries claim to be one of the defining poles of a new multipolar world.
Black smoke rises from the area of the Russian oil producer Gazprom Neft's Moscow oil refinery on the south-eastern outskirts of Moscow on 18 June, 2026.
Russia is not too big to fail. Its territory is enormous, but territory alone does not make a superpower. The Soviet Union was even larger—and it collapsed.
The idea that Russia, and especially Vladimir Putin, must never be humiliated, became one of the defining narratives of 2022. I remember it vividly. As the world was discovering the atrocities of Bucha, it felt surreal that so many influential voices were still concerned about protecting the dignity of the dictator who had authorised murder, torture, rape, and countless other war crimes.
Back then, "Putin's red lines" dictated Western policy. Many governments refused to provide Ukraine with essential weapons because they feared escalation or believed Putin might resort to nuclear weapons.
That conversation sounds very different in 2026. Ukraine has demonstrated that the Russian army is not invincible, that Russia cannot adequately defend its own borders, and that its military power has clear limits. The Kursk operation, Operation Spiderweb, and the destruction of Russian warships across the Black and Azov seas proved exactly that.
As someone who lives in Kyiv under almost nightly missile and drone attacks, let me tell you something.
There has never been a diplomatic formula built on fear of Putin that protected Ukrainian civilians. The only thing that has worked is reducing Russia's ability to wage war.
And despite years of warnings about "retaliation," Russia's retaliation looks exactly like its regular attacks. It bombs civilians regardless.
Perhaps the biggest illusion many people in the West still cling to is the belief that Russia can become a democracy, return to the international community, and resume business as usual.
The "good Russians" want you to believe this too. There are two fundamental problems with that narrative.
First, Russia has never been a democracy—not for a single day in its history. Ironically, many of the same people who insist that 148 million Russians cannot simply disappear also expect those same 148 million people to embrace democratic values overnight.
We in Ukraine believed this ourselves in 2022. We thought that if ordinary Russians simply learned the truth about the war, they would rise against Putin. Considerable resources were devoted to breaking through the Kremlin's information blockade.
Reality proved otherwise. The majority of Russians support the war. Many genuinely believe they are fighting NATO and the West to defend their way of life. Good luck convincing them otherwise.
The second problem with the fantasy of restoring relations with Russia under the slogan "trade is better than war" is even simpler.
Russia already had all of that. It belonged to the G8. It traded freely with the democratic world. It created enormous wealth for its oligarchs while distributing just enough prosperity to much of its population. It expanded its influence across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East while building partnerships with authoritarian regimes.
Now ask yourself a simple question. Can Russia realistically expect to achieve greater economic prosperity than it enjoyed in 2012 or 2013?
It already reached that point. And it willingly sacrificed it for one overriding objective: preserving the empire.
Russia is likely to collapse for many of the same reasons the Soviet Union collapsed—falling energy revenues, the growing political weight of war veterans, and the desire of Russian elites to regain access to the wealth and assets now frozen under Western sanctions.
The story of a sinking empire is never new. As the ship begins to sink, different players suddenly present themselves as reasonable, democratic, pro-Western, and pro-peace. They promise they can build the "good Russia" Europe has always hoped for.
What almost every one of these self-appointed Russian leaders desperately wants to distract you from is a far simpler conclusion.
The destruction and decolonisation of the Russian empire would be one of the best things that could happen to Europe—and the only lasting strategic outcome worthy of the immense price this war has already demanded.
