No such thing as Normal

Genderqueer - Shi/Hyr - Biromantic Asexual - 25 Ask Box is open! Can there truely be such a thing as normal when everyone is different? Hello! You can call me Lili! I like Nintendo games, One Piece, and loads of other stuff!

[liliflower137]

Hello I'm Lili!! I don't post a lot but I reblog tons!

I'm currently working on multiple One Piece fics, I'll keep the latest chapter updated here!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62747653/chapters/161343376

Feel free to send me asks about my fics! I love to ramble!

I also have a YouTube series!

Lili's Sillies

And please consider donating to my Ko-fi to help me finally move out! (And fund my sewing addiction hehe)

Buy Lili a Coffee. ko-fi.com/liliflower137

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[aknowwhatyouare]

"It is perfect as it is," I say as I walk away with a suspiciously Project Hail Mary (2026) Directors' 4-Hour Cut shaped lump in my throat.

[djpachipikachu]

Finally saw PHM today and I gotta ask: considering Rocky's mate is only ever spoken about in reference to being Rocky's mate, and is never given a physical description of any kind, why does everyone, and I mean EVERYONE depict them as three to four times Rocky's size and teal-colored? Who started that trend?

not sure who started it exactly, but the reason they’re teal-colored is because of the marriage inclusion that rocky has for adrian!

plus rocky has some teal accents on his puppet so its popular to see this little inclusion as a piece of adrian’s carapace that rocky has, and adrian would have a piece of rocky

adrian is widely headcanoned to be large im assuming because there is something very charming about a small hyperactive guy who loves his much larger and calmer mate very much (its got the energy of that one my little pony picture with a big princess cadance and a rly fucked up looking shining armor)

[qwanderer]

I get why Ryland Grace doing nothing productive, getting bored and almost dying of scurvy on the way to Erid is a popular trope but yall.

The man is a trained, distinguished molecular biologist with access to a state of the art biochemistry lab and the entirety of human knowledge.

It's hard for me to imagine a years long trip where he doesn’t make at least some attempt to synthesize his own nutrients.

Whether by engineering different strains of taumoeba and other Adriatic life, engineering himself and/or his own microbes or other handy Terran samples, or pure synthetic chemistry - personally, I tend to envision a combination thereof.

I can totally imagine Grace making a clumsy attempt, failing, and mopily becoming resigned to the malnutrition, but is Rocky really going to let him just mope for the rest of the trip? No! He has to try again!

I just think like, yeah, sure, even an alien planet is going to give you some advantages in terms of sourcing raw materials and building new equipment, but why wait to start on the whole process when you already have the guy involved who's most familiar with Terran biochemistry who's a trained molecular biologist and you have all of this knowledge and equipment and so much raw material in the form of taumoeba and probably a decent range of reagents in the lab? Not to mention whatever medical substances the medbot has on hand and (in the movie) the contents of the autohydroponic garden.

Anyway I just think this is a very underutilized concept in fic.

[normal-creature]

oughh..... thinking about.... grace believing that he'd volunteered for the mission until right near the end of the story. rocky saying "we're good people", and grace smiling and agreeing that they are, allowing the knowledge to sit with him and warm him. throughout all the flashbacks, grace carries this sort of lingering self-hatred with him. he lets everyone know that he's a coward and an awkward loser and a volatile academic right from the start, as an excuse to stop people from getting too close. he doesn't want anyone to get close enough to touch, because he doesn't want anyone to see him for who he truly is. deep down, he can't stand himself, so he sets himself up for constant failure to soften the blow. when he tells stratt he's not brave and he's not an astronaut, he's not just telling her, he's telling himself as well. he doesn't want to disappoint himself by trying.

then he spends months on the ship with rocky, slowly coming to terms with the fact that yes, he did volunteer for a suicide mission to save the world. he may be deeply scared and clearly not the first choice for the job, but he chose to do it. for the first time in years, he allows himself to sit with the self-evident reality that he is a good person, someone who is brave, someone who can rise to the occasion. the way he blossoms into a happier person while aboard the hail mary is due to his meeting with his soulmate, but it's also because his self-image is gradually reshaping itself for the first time in years.

then, of course, he finds out he didn't volunteer after all. he was forced onto the ship crying and screaming, a coward until the end. and of course, that's devastating.

but he's already reshaped himself.

he spent all that time believing he was brave and good, acting as though he were someone who made that choice. if he hadn't spent all that time allowing himself to believe that he was someone capable of being brave, if he had known from the start that he hadn't volunteered, he might not have had the courage to go back and save rocky. but he did. because if he'd done it before, he can do it again. even when it turns out that what he the thought he'd done wasn't what truly happened, he'd already lived with the reality too long to be unchanged by it.

[jack-the-fool]

Rocky: Grace say Hail Mary archives have all Human media yet Rocky still cannot find classic film Goncharov for movie night statment.

Grace: ....What?

Rocky: Grace not know own earth greatest mafia movie ever made question?

Grace: .......

Grace: What?

[infernalfay]

Imagine you meet an alien that's entirely blood and fat. Like all the white blood cells and red blood cells and lipids kept in your body are just out there. That's their entire body, a blob of blood jelly. Even their brain is completely fluid. They constantly forget things and don't seem to notice the connection

They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts

This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous

Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous

They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning

They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched

They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them

They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking

You are an Eridian and have just met a human. You must now convince your mate to let you keep them.

[sunderwight]

I do think it would be kind of funny if Eridian media, like Earth media, sort of tends to go through phases. Like you know how sometimes 100% evil vampires are all the rage, and then sometimes they're sympathetic tortured antiheroes, and sometimes it's all vampire romances, and etc?

So like, with the stars dying, I'm thinking Eridian media might have gone on a whole "aliens are bad bad bad out there killing stars and wanting to eat Erid" and etc trend for their sci-fi. Long ballads about what are essentially evil Eridians with the equivalent of prosthetics doing terrible things to the galaxy and brave heroes like Rocky going off to stop them. Because y'know that's probably how you'd conceptualize a huge scary conflict like total cosmic annihilation in a way that makes it seem beatable: designate a bad guy you can just defeat in order to stop it.

But then Grace and Rocky get to Erid and that trend gets immediately flipped. Turns out that there were kind of bad aliens, the astrophage and all, but that's more like a natural disaster, and hero Rocky has returned with the weirdest, nicest alien ever. Erid media suddenly rockets back to a prior era of optimistic sci-fi previously considered intolerably twee and cringe after the solar disaster kicked off, where the aliens are always nice nice nice, incredibly weird and sometimes goofy as fuck but friendly and not the bad guys.

Of course you never get full consensus on these things, so there are also creative Eridians who are like. But what if evil humans question? Evil humans posing as saviors infiltrate Erid and replace Eridians with pods that hatch into creepy non-Erid rock monsters question? Evil human comes to Erid under guise of niceness and KILLS Eridians question???

Which is broadly considered like. Holy shit dude stop being gauche the nice alien saved the planet stop fucking writing stories where his skeleton cracks open like a nest of evil eggs and turns into a bunch of monsters! Rude, statement! Aliens very nice statement!

And like at first all the Eridian scientists are very sure to keep this sort of stuff away from Grace, they don't want to insult him or imply that he's being slandered in their media or anything. And again overall the popular trend turns a lot more to aliens-as-friendly, especially if they're expressly humans, and the sci-fi writers of Erid are having a total BLAST speculating about Earth and writing stories about it and etc, Grace seems to very much enjoy answering questions for the ones who want to keep things accurate and chuckling and enthusing over the creativity of the ones who don't. He's like, oh yeah they are definitely also doing this back on Earth, don't worry.

Researchers laughing and nervously just being like, yes of course, this is the full extent of it, not to worry! Normal thing which humans are also doing!

Until one day Rocky just brings Grace a recording of a full-blown Eridian horror sci-fi where Grace HIMSELF is EXPLICITLY a horrible monster that goes on a killing spree and tries to destroy Erid.

The other researchers are losing their shit. RoCKY?!?! WHY QUESTION??? Oh fuck Grace is going to be so upset! He's such a sensitive soul he doesn't even like it when one of his students gets distressed!

Anyway Grace thinks it's hilarious and Rocky gets to be smug about it for months.

[im-your-nan]

The reason that I fell in love with Rocky as a character, as a physics student, was during Grace's first in-person meeting with him, and there is just one small area of clear material that Grace is able to look through.

I can't remember where I first saw this information, but apparently Rocky's aim was to make the wall to the tunnel out of many different materials to find out which one Grace is able to see through easiest, not based on opacity - like a human or something that evolved to see light does - but based on acoustic impedance. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's a way of measuring how easily sound passes through a material - usually used in ultrasound scans. Therefore, for a species who uses echo-location, he's working out which material is easiest for Grace to see through - and from what I can tell he just got lucky with the clear Xenonite. I'm also fairly sure that he was completely unaware about species that see through light waves rather than echo-location, based on his reactions to Grace in the movie.

Basically, Rocky wanted to make things as accessible as he could for any alien that he could come across with the limited knowledge that he had of how different species see things. He is essentially setting himself up to be as accessible as he can for anyone he could possible meet out there. Whether its due to desperation for connection, or just because he's Like That, that's why I think he's so neat. His first interaction with Grace is just him trying to make Grace as comfortable as possible.

I LOVE ROCKYY

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Human-inspired names really take off on Erid after the Hail Mary arrives. Human media, especially audiodrama and music (for obvious reasons) becomes pretty huge, and giving your pebble an Earth name becomes the new way to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

Grace finds out about this after one of his students excitedly informs him that they've got a new batch of baby siblings, named 🎵🎶🎵🎶, 🎶🎶, 🎵🎶🎶 and [pitch prefect rendition of the Star Trek theme].

[poltergeist-404]

Based on this tweet!

[petrova-line]

I just know the arts game on Erid goes crazy. Especially fiber arts like lace-making—I like to imagine that they have huge, complex pieces that incorporate xenonite and precious stones. They convey stories, culture, and memories.

Bobbin lace is probably the most common. You're most likely to have a shirt with those decals on it or use it for decoration. Having that many limbs makes it easy to sit down and make a design; it's a common gift for parents to give to their grown children expecting pebbles.

Needle lace however is a lot more complex. Huge, intricate pieces that take years to make even with 5 arms and a crystalline brain. A finished lace tapestry can take years with several Eridian lace-makers who dedicate their lives to the craft. Thrums are often used to get the product done faster, with 5 Eridians on each end working outward and communicating in sync. It's a beautiful process to watch. A traditional technique is to start at a single point and work outwards with no plan, making a complex and unique piece. These are rare and usually owned by Eridians with high-ranking jobs.

At the memorial for Blip-A's crew is a massive tapestry meticulously created over the course of a decade. Small pieces of the families' carapaces have been woven in alongside an intricate, sectioned pattern. The piece can be read like a book—the lace echos back the frequencies of the crew's voices, immortalizing them in Eridian history forever.

In Rocky and Adrian's home is a tapestry from the ceremony of the night they mated, a common tradition for Eridian couples. Over the course of the event, the Eridians in attendance work off the hexagon representing the couple's courtship. No one involved is usually a master craftsman, so the work is a little all over the place. It functions as a quest-book, echoing the memory off the walls of their home.

It's an art that can never be lost—it's so ingrained in their culture. Lacework is everywhere you look on Erid and one of the most common arts for sale (next to glasswork, something just as complex). But then Grace shows up and tells them that their work is beautiful and while he can't read it like the other Eridian's can, he's able to see the colors. He's frequently "borrowed" from the bio-dome to consult on projects after that.

[callalillee]

[ratsoupee]

field trip cancelled

Based off hit tumblr post:

[cl0wnah0lic]

I fucked up

[paper-mario-wiki]

do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

thank you, Marsha. we remember you.

[charl0ttan]

adhd and weed will both have u like fuck i had to go look up pictures of the giant manta ray

[dastardlywlw]