inspired by and prompted to draw this by my beloved @milolunde ‘s post and our conversations about not giving grace enough good things with no strings attached
note that i dont think simon calls grace “angel” as a petname like . ever. Its not a casual term it holds too much “yikes!!” energy that both of them get wary of , but there are very few and very specific exceptions
anyways that guy can NOT take praise as is. you gotta distract him a little with smth to make him accept any of it
- The reason you get extra hungry before and during your period is because your body is physically burning more calories, sometimes as many as 300 more per day for the duration of your period, with an elevated BMR (base metabolic rate) in the days before it starts. So no, you’re not being weird or gross or undisciplined if you want to eat a bunch of chocolate - your body is just burning the same amount of calories you’d expend in 25 minutes on a crosstrainer to shed your uterine lining.
- This is especially important to remember if you’re already, for whatever reason, eating fewer calories per day than it takes to maintain your current weight, which is about 2000 for an adult, though it can be dangerous to have much less than 1300 per day. Think of it like this: if you’re eating 1600 calories a day out of a potential healthy 2000, and your body suddenly wants an extra 300, you’re not craving 1900, but 2300, which is the difference between wanting a chocolate bar and a slice of toast, and wanting an entire extra meal. So, I say again: DO NOT feel bad about wanting to eat more during your period. Your body is working hard, and needs fuel!
- Paradoxically, despite the rate at which you’re burning calories, you’re also retaining water, which can make you both feel and weigh as heavier. Speaking personally, I’ve noticed my weight fluctuate by as much two kilos (4.5 pounds) before and after a period, rising before and during, then dropping sharply afterwards. So if you’re struggling with body image or weight issues, this is a suboptimal time at which to get on the scales: the result you’ll get will only reflect a temporary reality, not your actual progress, and is therefore unhelpful.
- If, for whatever reason, you’re self-conscious about easing your cramps with a hot water bottle where other people can see it, whether at home or work, consider using a plastic soft drink bottle filled with hot/boiling water. Even if you put it openly on your lap, instead of tucking it under a shirt or into a front hoodie pocket, it will just look like a regular bottle of water, and any relief is better than none!
- No, it’s not weird if you shit more during your period than usual, either. The hormones your body releases that make your uterus to contract and release sometimes end up in the bowel, particularly if you happen to produce a lot of them, which means that bowel contracts and releases, too.
- If anyone tries to make a dumbass sexist joke about your being more [insert stereotypically negative feminine quality here] while on your period, you can tell them that actually, menstruation raises testosterone levels, not oestrogen. (Telling them to go fuck themselves with an angry cactus can also be therapeutic.)
- The cramps and lower back pain often experienced during menstruation, when the uterus expels its contents and your hips shift slightly wider to accommodate it, are a microcosm of what happens during actual labour. So yeah: it can hurt!
- That being said, we’ve culturally accepted the idea of massive period pain as normative to such an extent that many people don’t realise their pain is a sign that something’s wrong. Despite how common they are, a lot of conditions like PCOS and endometriosis are poorly understood in terms of their etiology, which means it can be hard to get an accurate diagnosis. But if your periods regularly have you screaming, vomiting or totally incapacitated, get checked out: you shouldn’t have to just shut up and endure because it’s ‘meant’ to feel like that. It’s not, and there are ways to manage it.
- As well as being a form of birth control, you can take the pill to control or stop your period. When used to prevent menstruation, the pill tricks the body into thinking you’re already pregnant, which stalls your cycle (and stops you from actually getting pregnant). Though some people worry that it’s unnatural not to menstruate for long periods of time, or for your body to ‘feel’ pregnant for so long, it’s also important to remember that, after an actual pregnancy, especially if you breastfeed, your period won’t resume right away. This is called lactational amenorrhea, which can work as a form (though not, I hasten to add, a 100% reliable form) of natural birth control. Basically, it means your body is focussed on producing milk for an existing child, such that you can’t easily conceive another one until the first child is weaned. While this varies from person to person, the important thing to remember is that there’s ample biological precedent for stopping menstruation for long periods of time whether you’re pregnant or not, and that choosing to do so via the pill doesn’t make you unnatural, nor does it cause your body to do something it otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.
In conclusion: periods suck, but knowing how and why they work and how best to manage them can make them suck slightly less. So go ye forth, and be educated!
As someone who had to have a uterus removed for severe endometriosis, I will always reblog this sort of information. Don’t sit and endure, and don’t listen to the twatwaffles who insist that the pain is normal or you’re just overreacting. It isn’t just in your head and you are in legitimate pain.
-If your blood is brown, it means it has been sat in your body for a while. It is nothing to worry about.
-If your blood is black, it means it has been sat in your body for longer, but is still nothing to worry about. However, if it accompanied by an unnatural pain, get yourself to a doctor.
-If your blood is pink, go to a doctor. You could have an infection.
-Some other symptoms of PCOS are, having a sensitive lower back, where your ovaries are. It feels like a strained muscle and can hurt when pushed on. Having excess body hair, such as arms, neck, stomach etc. Having an irregular cycle. Your “bones” around your hips and pelvis hurt/feel weaker as well. It is harder to lose weight around your stomach, but nowhere else then that is also a symptom. If you think you may have it, talk to a doctor and ask for a blood test.
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
Thank you to everyone who commented in their tags or messaged me. Indeed, today is “Martin and Bosco Day”. I originally whimsically blazed this photo on 13 July 2022. I never expected Martin and Bosco to travel so far and make so many new friends. The experience has been such a gift for me.
Considering that Simon comes from a world where space travel has been a thing for centuries, he knows his way around a spaceship pretty well.
Since they found him, he's made it his mission to maintain the ship until they make it to Erid. He's been working diligently since his health stabilised. Grace and Rocky tried to tell him to rest more and that it wasn't necessary. But he said working is the only thing preventing him from thinking about what happened to him and keeping him sane. They couldn't really keep arguing with him after that.
He tends to lose track of time while he works, too absorbed in it. It’s like everything around him disappears for a moment. Grace completely understands; he's exactly the same. Though Simon is still recovering, he checks on him often and tries to encourage him to take breaks.
He's been running diagnostics and recalibrating things. Grace often hears him grumble about how ancient this ship is and how unnecessarily complicated everything is. Grace once asked him where he learned to fix spaceships and he paused for a moment before answering. As if he were considering whether to tell him or not.
"There weren't enough people left to have a specialist taking care of or fixing ships in every space station and we couldn't afford to lose one. So, if something broke down, you had to know how to fix it. Especially if you happened to be travelling alone. Otherwise, you're dead. Couldn't afford to waste anything on a rescue mission. Not to just save some useless dumb bastard, they said. It would cost more than a spaceship. So, I read what I could about it, which isn't a lot, watched how the best did it and studied how they were built. That's it."
Grace had been floored. Simon basically explained being a self-taught aerospace engineer, like it was nothing to write home about.
"I know how to fix machines and ships are one of them. That's it. It's not like I'm a genius or something. I just did things that felt right, hoped it wasn't going to blow up and when it didn't, assumed I did it right."
Grace blanched at that and Rocky paused the tinkering he had been doing.
"Calm down," Simon said with an eye roll, "This was when I was still learning. This isn't what I'm doing right now. I know what I'm doing. I have the manual and your ship is outdated, but in perfect condition. It won't blow up if I change something. I've worked on way more advanced ships in shit conditions that could explode if you breathed on them wrong because it was held together with duct tape and desperation. You're fine."
Grace relaxes and Rocky continues working. He remembers telling Simon about the manual. Since he started reading it, he's been catching Simon putting it down and complaining about how unintuitive this ship is or loudly asking, "Who made this?" Grace keeps telling him that the best of the best made it, and he sighs that this version of humanity still has so much to learn about space travel.
Today, Grace is checking on how far along they are in their journey to Erid, making sure everything is going smoothly. He is sitting in the pilot seat, trying to push the buttons on the ceiling, but they're not working. He hears Simon climb the ladder and stops to watch him once he reaches the top.
"What is it?"
"They aren't working,"
"Fuck, okay, let's see."
His eyes lock on the dysfunctional panel as he joins Grace under it. Before he can register what is happening, Simon climbs onto the chair, straddling him. He stretches out to reach the panel above their heads, takes off the cover. He starts working on it and Grace forgets to breathe for a second. He's now on eye level with his um impressive pecs and wide shoulders. He can see the outline of his harness and nipples under his shirt. Grace digs his nails into the armrests. This is too dangerous. He needs to look somewhere else.
He looks down and immediately has to close his eyes for a second to calm down. This isn't better. Simon's shirt rode up, exposing his navel and a part of his stomach. The happy trail and the healthy layer of fat on his stomach make his gums tingle with the desire to just bite and–No, he's not finishing this thought.
He looks lower and the sight of his bulge shoots heat throughout his body. Why does he wear his jeans so low? Stop! He needs to get it together! To look away! He can tell through his jeans that his thighs are huge and probably muscular. Okay, down is bad, maybe up his better.
Oh gosh, why out of every person Grace could have found in space did it have to be the only person who manages to look good from this angle? Simon is fearful and makes himself small except when he's working. The way he breathes confidence, quick-thinking and resourcefulness is beyond attractive. It doesn't help that he's stunning with his sharp nose, defined jaw, gentle eyes and soft-looking hair. Or that he's incredibly gentle with everything he touches, patient and extremely smart, unlike what he says.
He's also talking but Grace isn't listening; he can't. The smell of his skin slips down his lungs and Grace has never done drugs in his life but right now he gets it, he completely understands why it's so easy to get addicted. Higher. His bulging bicep. He swallows with difficulty. Forearm muscles are dancing under his skin. His breathing is getting heavy. Hand, veiny and visible tendons working. Calluses that would feel divine tracing naked skin. Meticulous fingers harbouring countless tiny scars that Grace wants to trace with his tongue. He just knows that the metal of his prosthetic will feel delicious on his feverish skin.
"Are you even listening?"
It shocks him out of his fantasy and when his eyes meet Simon's, shame overtakes him. He looks down, again, big mistakes and tries to concentrate on his own laps. A hand cups his jaw and makes him look up. His touch feels like sunlight on his touch-starved skin. His brain splutters, overwhelmed by the feeling and Grace has to swallow a whine back down. His eyes fall into his and Simon's face is firm and serious but his eyes stay gentle. They always are. They are so close, his heart is threatening to beat out of his chest. This is bad. He wants to reach out, cup his face in his hands, guide him down, devour his lips and lose himself exploring his skin.
"Look and listen. You need to know this in case it happens again and I can't help you," he chastises. He then angles Grace's head so that he can see inside the panel again. This is really bad. He feels himself lean into it. Oh, he knew it, the calluses do feel amazing. His grip is rather strong. He could easily force his jaw open by pressing his fingers in his cheeks. Oh gosh, is he getting hard? Please, not right now!
"Grace! Really? What's with you? Am I boring you or something?"
Crap, he's pissing him off. He needs to fix this. Say something.
"You're sitting in my lap,"
Simon goes completely silent and Grace freezes at his own words. He watches as Simon slowly and carefully looks down at their position. Next thing Grace knows, Simon is on the other side of the room. Wow, he's fast. He didn't even see him move.
"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Simon exclaims but then rubs his hand on his face. "No, it's not your fault. It's me. I did this and made you uncomfortable. Fuck! I'm sorry, Grace. I can't believe I did this," he continues, looking embarrassed, not angry.
"It's fine, I wasn't uncomfortable. I was just-," Grace interrupts himself before he says something stupid.
"What?" he asks, his voice wavering."Too scared to speak?" Simon asks and he looks heartbroken at the idea. Shoulder down and fear in his eyes just at the thought of scaring him. His body curls on itself with crippling guilt.
No, no, no! They made so much progress, he can't let this destroy it. He needs to say something! Fix it! He's the one who was perving on a man recovering from severe injuries, PTSD and who was just doing his job... While being on top of him, but still.
"No, I wasn't! It was just um distracting," he splutters, digging himself into a hole.
This is so incriminating, he's done for. Okay, he can fix this!
"Since, you know, it's been a while since I was last touched," Grace continues.
Terrible phrasing, Simon will never want to speak to Grace again. Simon stares at him in silence and Grace watches in horror as his eyes widen in realisation. It's over for him.
"Oh. Oh! Oh, okay. So, that's, um, that's why uh?" he stutters, looking away.
Is it too late to throw himself out of the airlock? Hasn't this man been through enough? Now he has to put up with Grace's stage four horniness. What is wrong with him?
"I'm so sorry," is all Grace finds to say as he buries his face in his hands. Ashamed of himself. He literally has no excuses.
"It's fine."
"It's really not."
"Grace," Simon starts but he interrupts him.
"I'm just going to go now," Grace says, unable to look him in the eyes right now.
He turns around to walk to the ladder.
"Okay, but you better not make this a bigger deal than it is, Ryland. It's fine really, I mean it," Simon says firmly but with a warmth in his voice.
Grace freezes in front of the ladder and considers his words for a second.
"Okay," he whispers before climbing down.
Grace climbs down the ladder and throws himself on a chair next to Rocky. Grace is going to spend the rest of his life with Simon and he just had to embarrass himself in the worst way possible in front of him. This is a catastrophe. All of this because he can't control his feelings for Simon. Simon, who forgave him even after making things incredibly uncomfortable between them.
"shipping and blorbofication are not inherently at odds with understanding a story's deep themes" and "some people can't grasp the themes of a story because they never learned how to engage with stories outside of the lens of shipping and blorbofication" are two statements that can coexist
blorbofication to me is when you love a character in such a laser focus way that you somewhat detach them from the narrative from which they are inserted and treat them in a way roughly similar to how you'd treat an oc for which you still have no story and just like to put them in situations just for fun. which there's nothing wrong with btw, it's just that it can easily lead to people forgetting the character engine in a narrative and not just a barbie doll
I see half the fandom characterizing Adrian as patient and selfless, and I see the other half characterizing them as bitter and unaccommodating, and I also see the joking and non joking 'what if Rocky were the trolley operator' fics and ideas, and I've come to the conclusion that you all are missing the beauty of the superior third option that is Adrian also being traumatized and feral over their mate.
Thank about it. Rocky's a spitfire and bounces off the walls at baseline and they looked at that little autistic, bossy ball of energy and went 'yes. that's them. the creature I want to spend the next 500+ years with'. They have to at LEAST match their energy somewhat. And if you think you wouldn't be a fucking ball of PTSD and bitterness at your culture and society after fifty plus years of not knowing they were alive or dead, you're fucking operating on moon logic. Honestly, Adrian and the other families were probably begging for a rescue mission that never happened for various political and logical reasons; and while it probably would have ended in mass fatalities as well, so thank goodness that figurative and literal ship never got off the ground, the fact that it didn't happen probably burns more than a little, reasonable or unreasonable.
So one day Adrian gets some Eridian diplomat on their doorstep, and they're expecting the formal condolences at long last, but instead they go into this whole spiel of ' so. So! Turns out twenty two of the original crew died, but your mate survived! When did they die? Oh, early on, so your mate was submerged in crippling and literal deafening loneliness for over four decades; and now he's back and acting weird, and he's become codependent with this weird fragile squishy human being that's the only reason he came back at all, and he's refusing to send down the cure unless we make the blob an aquarium. Could you come to the space elevator and tell him to stop being so unreasonable?'
If that were MY mate? I'd fucking lose it.
Just throwing things at this poor messenger and shrieking like " Oh! Oh!! So it's somehow Rocky's fault that you're refusing to take a few months out of the several hundred Eridian years we have left to ship the cure we already have to Threeworld before things actually become problematic to make sure one of the two saviors of our entire species doesn't die?! To give the sole survivor of the mission--my mate, who's been alone and in silence, with no one to watch him sleep, for hundreds of years--some sort of solace and peace?! And you're wondering why he's acting erratically?! Maybe you wouldn't be in this position at all if you'd sent the rescue mission for which we've pleaded for years at every single thrum! I don't care if this Grace thing is a literal giant space amoeba; get the fuck out of my house and tell the powers that be to give it literally everything it wants and needs!"
And they're all 'be reasonable' and Adrian's like " I've been reasonable for hundreds of Eridian years, and you would not be in this situation if you'd actually sent a rescue mission and not simply wrung your claws and hoped for the best, so fucking live in the nest you made. All I'm going to do if you get me on the radio with Rocky right now is tell him he's doing amazing and give him advice on how to properly parboil the Taumoeba so that you can't even recover even the slightest scrap of DNA if you don't give the flesh blob that saved his life and saved OUR lives PLURAL goddamn vitamins."
Like, they think it's bad that Rocky basically stands over Grace's sleeping body and hisses? Wait until they get the MUCH LARGER ERIDIAN doing that for Grace and Rocky. Wait until the much large Eridian leads the families of the dead twenty-two crewmates to the space elevator to riot because this sure sounds like a coverup to them!! This sure sounds like the deflection of blame on the sole survivor!! This sure sounds like the same paralysis that left them to die alone in space because you didn't want to admit failure!!
Yes, I know, I'm weaving some sort of political intrigue plot that probably doesn't exist in canon. All I'm saying is that you all are missing the delicious implications of a mission that went radio silent for fifty plus earth years with no word from the government and no obvious attempt at rescue, followed by your partner coming home with the only being that's been around to watch him sleep since the rest of the crew died forty-some years ago, and people are calling him weird and changed. You'd be horrified. You'd be sick.
You'd be pissed the fuck off at every body of power that let this happen.
I see so many fics where authors paint Erid as this utopia that is significantly more progressive and accommodating than Earth but WHAT IF IT WASN'T !!! What if it was a deeply troubled and unfair world like ours! What if governments---ahem, sorry, entities---kept things from citizens JUST LIKE OURS! What if there was a political battle happening in the background of Grace's recovery/implementation of the Taumoeba? What if there had been major public outrage and mourning over the lost 22 crew members? What if Adrian had every right to be bitter and cold, NOT to Grace and Rocky but to ERID?
GRAHHHH I LOVE ANGRY ADRIAN !! I LOVE ANGRY ADRIAN TO TAU CETI AND BACK !!
And oughhhhh, the political intrigue... Of the long-silent mission... NO RESCUE SHIP...
AND OUGHHHH... Earth literally tore itself apart to send the Hail Mary and I KNOW CANONICALLY that Erid was much less strained, but all that is from Rocky's POV. What if there was problems from the dimming star than he cared to tell Grace? He was an engineer, working to BUILD the ship, but what if Adrian was in another job, working to REPAIR a struggling Erid?
Hear me out, what if Erid was already succumbing to climate change and disease. Eridians canonically have piss-poor immune systems because of their basically impenetrable outer shells of oxidized minerals but what if... the atmosphere cooled... and those outer shells... got more brittle...
AND THEN ROCKY LEAVES.
From Adrian's perspective, Rocky was gone approximately 73 Earth years, which is 12,5133 Erid days, which is 2979.4 ERID YEARS.
HUHHH??
Of course, Rocky is changed from his mission, but how is ADRIAN changed? Adrian who has dealt with the stress of a world slowly marching to its death, of diplomats and politics constantly silencing the loved ones of those long-gone astronauts---space exploration is a VERY NEW and HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL field for Eridians. Of course those 2980 years would be fraught with worry and tension for both the Eridians on Erid and in space.
ADRIAN THE ERIDIAN THAT YOU ARE, MY LOVEEE MY BELOVEDDDD.
I feel that we as a fandom severely underutilize the concept of an absolutely SEETHING, FURIOUS, and STRESSED ASF Adrian.
For additional context: the Spanish flu spread like wildfire amongst American troops at the end of the war and they often brought it home and/or contracted it on their way home. I have come across so many historical burials of WW1 soldiers who died that way. Of the 105 million people living in the U.S., 20 million of them contracted the Spanish flu and it disproportionately killed and permanently disabled young people.
izzy806
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
gracieabrams
