Fun fact: due to the ongoing financial support from the people of tumblr, critically endangered pygmy raccoons being rehabbed in Cozumel are now able to get vaccines for deadly diseases like distemper and rabies before they are released.
this post is inspired in part by this one by @cheshirepirouette and sponsored in part by convos w @asteriis and @indouscurse hereās to yāall!! this post also goes out to my brothers, who are pale as hell for reasons unbeknownst to all of us (this is a joke).
like any good headcanon, this started as a joke because i thought to myself: Ryland sounds like the type of name that somebodyās Black child would have and only use on church sundays. nobody actually has ever called him that in his whole entire life, except maybe his mama SOMETIMES and thatās why he doesnāt remember it right away. i feel like every Black person knows somebody who is called literally anything except their god given name. people call him lil r, lil grace, gracie, ry, ryry, riri, RG, lando, mr. grace, dr. grace, but nobody calls him Ryland, which is part of why he Canāt Remember for so long.
so of course i went back to the source material to see if he ever actually mentioned being white anywhere and unfortunately it is very much at the beginning of the book. so THEN i started to think about how i could get around that while remaining at least largely canon compliant (as a little treat for myself). what i came up with is what i have affectionately dubbed my ālitebrite babyā headcanon.
grace was not particularly dark skinned to begin with, and then spent years in a coma with literally no sunlight. he is downright vampiric by the time that he wakes up, and upon seeing his white ass skin, assumes that he is in his own words, a Caucasian male.
unfortunately for him, this fits in really well with his theme of lack of identity and lack of connection. i think for most Black people it would be extremely hard to forget that weāre Black regardless of how light or dark our skin tone is. but throughout the book, even when Grace is thinking about his old, slowly resurfacing memories, he never thinks about family, he never thinks about friends. except for his students and Project Hail Mary, he is completely unmoored.
iāve seen a few different headcanons for why this might be: he was an only child whose single parent died young, he was cut off by his parents for some reason or another, he just isnāt ever triggered to remember. but no matter the reason, grace is disconnected from crucial aspects of himself. i think that by making him Black, and his Blackness something he canāt remember, it add an extra heartbreaking layer to his characterization. Blackness is such a communal experience, and when itās not, it leaves behind an ache. growing up Black in White Suburbia i know well both the experience of clinging to oneās own in a hostile world AND the hurt that comes with being severed from oneās community. grace loses so much of himself with the amnesia, unable to recall who he is at the deepest of levels, and i think if he could remember to grieve it, it would devastate him.
i do think he would remember eventually, either when his hair starts growing out (because in the book Armando shaves him iirc), or when he can finally catch a glimpse of his reflection clearly, or when he has a memory of someone in his family. my personal belief is he has a memory beamed directly into his brain of asking āMama, am I white?ā and his poor, long-suffering mom saying, āNow who the hell told you that?ā
and then it still never becomes relevant because he has negative desire to explain the nuances of human racial categories to an alien who quite literally cannot see color.
the bond of being strattās left and right handsā¦ hanging out with each other. developing a friendship. perhaps, for the first time, grace feels a sense of brotherhood. a sense of community. because carl gets it, doesnāt he? this situation theyāre in? weāre in this together, man. right?
@pulchrasilva OUGHHHH just imagined, with perfect clarity, rocky āsingingā Amazing Grace with all the harmonies of a church choir in his one, layered voice, and grace bursting into tearsā¦ i do think he remembers eventually, the same way he remembers bits and pieces of everything else, and teaches rocky about what he knowsā¦ in the book, the Hail Mary has (pirated) copies of every piece of media ever created just in case the astronauts need it. i like to think grace listens to the songs his mom listened to over and over, watches movies with rocky until they can both quote them from memoryā¦ heāll never experience the community again, not like he did, but heās a teacher. heāll share what he knows.
the trolley problem except the guy tied to one set of tracks is your friend and someone you trust and one of the few people in the world that you genuinely like and he's begging for his life and he's saying that you're murdering him and he's screaming and clawing and running like a wild animal. on the other set of tracks is every living thing on the planet. its a no brainer, obviously. but he will still scream. this happened to my good friend eva stratt
since becoming a barista i have noticed a few very distinct typologies among my customers. such as:
the woke left: young and fashionable. visible tattoos. often enjoys matcha, lavender flavoring, oat milk, and cold foam. pretty decent customers.
sweet old man: drinks very sweet iced lattes, pays in cash, puts all of his change in the tip jar. sometimes orders hot coffee and i get scared that his shaky old man hands will spill it and he'll get burned but that has not yet happened and god willing never shall.
evil old man: only wants drip coffee and declares it ridiculous that any other form of coffee exists. some variants only want americanos and these variants are even scarier. watch out.
sweet old woman: might need her daughter's help to order but is very bubbly and open to trying new things. compliments baristas freely and frequently.
evil old woman: does not want coffee and only wants sweet tea or soda. will not tip even if she spends three hours in the shop repeatedly asking baristas to fetch things for her.
errand husband: either stiltedly recites an order to you or shows you the order in their texts/notes app. needs to step out of line and make a phone call if you ask any follow-up questions.
grindset girlie: always wearing scrubs, an apron, and/or a name tag. orders the exact same thing every day and knows the exact change she'll need to pay for it. her regular order is both extremely caffeinated and extremely sweet.
#mamabear: is actively wrangling two to four children while ordering. order changes repeatedly because the children cannot decide if they want a muffin or a cookie or apple juice or chocolate milk etc. for some reason these women are always wearing an article of clothing or carrying some personalized item that says "mama" on it.
schoolchildren: band of two to eight adolescents hanging out after school. extremely indecisive but generally quite polite and tip well.
amnesiac in love: grown adult who needs their partner to tell them what they like. gets asked a question about their own preferences and turns to their partner to answer for them. generally acts like a shy child looking to their guardian for behavioral cues if you try to interact with them and only wants to talk to mommy i mean their wife.
this of course is not an exhaustive list but those are just some of the most consistent Types i get. ok bye xoxo
Thank you, Black people in fandom spaces. Thank you, Black creators and Black lurkers. Thank you Black artists, Black writers. Thank you, Black bloggers, Black influencers. Shoutout to those Black characters, both canon and original. Thank you, Black people, both queer and cishet.
Your perspectives matter. Your representation matters. You are not bothersome for demanding equal treatment in fandom. It is not your responsibility to make fandom more welcoming and inclusive to you. It is not your sole responsibility to create all of the Black-centered content. You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.
Black people in fandom, you are wanted. You are needed. You are loved and appreciated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
And since they don't get told it near enough, thank you, Black women especially!!!
You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.
I don't think grace knows he's nonbinary I think he just realizes ~five years into staying on erid that he's been living in a society with no concept of gender while exclusively going by "grace" and keeping some of ilyukhina's old postmortem hand-me-downs in his outfit rotation and thinks "hmm. do still I have any pdfs of those grover cleveland middle school gsa handouts."
Hey yāall I have an announcement! My web app that Iāve been working on, Afro Index, is now live! Itās a visual reference library of Black hairstyles, for artist, animators, writers, and anyone who wants to learn more about them!
Check it out at afroindex.org! šāØ
A reference library for Black hairstyles with accurate naming,
structured filtering, and curated reference images.
sense of self-worth so low that it loops back around into being totally dismissive of everyone else
a warm-hearted kind center beneath 200 protective walls of bitterness that doesn't actually make the bitterness better in any way at all even a little bit
bisexuality
crushing feelings of responsibility
zero understanding of own bodily autonomy that bleeds out and affects how they treat others
a lil petty vindictive sadism they maybe don't wanna look at too hard or acknowledge
full self-awareness of all their most negative traits without working to fix those traits at all
internalized misogyny
a mysterious undefinable hunger that cannot / should not / must not ever be sated
"this is soooo [character] apart from the internalized misogyny" and? give them some internalized misogyny. if they aren't already canonically a woman then toss a little womanhood in there and make them feel bad about it. I don't care if they live in a setting without gender discrimination, find a way.
ellievsbear
titsay
pixelskylines
izzy806
blakekathryn
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
