long live degeneracy

sol, 25, they/them. sunspots_after_dark on ao3

[i-suggest-aro]

the reason why i think so many alloromantic people outright refuse the idea of "aromantic subtext" being a legitimate thing is that people view aromanticism as inherently shallow. to a lot of queer fandomites, "aromantic" is what they make the side character they don't really care about, so they don't have to bother coming up with actual analysis of their interpersonal relationships. it sucks, because aromantic narratives in fiction, intentional or otherwise, are worth exploring, analysing, and appreciating.

[sunspots-after-dark]

I really enjoy Ryland Grace’s bent toward self-preservation as an examination of what it takes to make the stakes of something personal. Stratt looks at the number of projected deaths and that’s real to her, those numbers are people and she can successfully conceptualize them as such on an emotional level. To Grace, though, the number is just a number. He doesn’t hold anyone on earth truly dear and is therefore unequipped to be able to place their lives above his own. “Someone to be brave for” and all that.

Where it gets properly interesting, though, is when you start thinking about ways it might have gone differently. In the book Grace is motivated explicitly by his students, but that thread gets dropped after the initial play to stay on the project- I think that if Stratt managed to wrangle that class of little faces onto a video call after the explosion, there’s a very real chance he would have been capable of putting himself on that rocket. I read a Strattland fic a while back where she asked him to go “for her,” and it managed to get through to him in a way that the raw stakes didn’t, and while I don’t generally ship them romantically, that idea rang extremely true to me, that given a proper connection and an earnest plea, he could be made brave.

And so the real tragedy of the thing becomes his isolation before meeting Rocky. He loved humanity in the abstract, and his own life in the concrete; of course he couldn’t make that choice. But given a deeper tie, any tie at all, I think he might have managed it.

[sunspots-after-dark]

AU where eridians follow the homestuck quadrants system. Gracerocky become THEE pale serendipity story of all time, knockoffs of their life story dominate pale romance fiction for the next two centuries minimum. While Rocky was gone, Adrian had to dump multiple pitch suitors who were angling to eventually vacillate red (this also gets the romance fiction treatment, if more subdued). Rocky turns out to be kind of a pitch slut (this does not make it into the romance novels).

(Basically he falls in and out of rivalries on the regular mostly based on whose engineering ideas he’s beefing with at the time, it’s a farce to the degree that Grace sometimes doesn’t realize Rocky is complaining about a different pitch paramour than last time bc they changed over so fast he didn’t even realize.)

Human ideas of conflict mediation lead to Grace accidentally becoming the neighborhood’s ashen center-leaf bicycle. Rocky has to break it to him that the trinkets people keep giving him are not little thank yous for solving their relationship problems, they are coy invitations to be the couple’s semi-permanent semi-platonic third.

[sunspots-after-dark]

I’m still thinking about grace-adrian-rocky v-shaped poly relationship. Funniest possible outcome. What do you mean the fated star-saving soulmates are the platonic hypotenuse? The squishy alien decided to fuck an Eridian but NOT the one it saved the world with, no, it picked that guy’s wife and only that guy’s wife. And like, okay, yes, Adrian bad as hell, if anyone was going to pull both saviors of Erid it was going to be Adrian, but really truly are you sure that Grace and Rocky don’t fuck? Not even a little?? What do you mean they just “fist their bumps” while tagging in and out of sex???

[milkooze-deactivated20260329]

[sunspots-after-dark]

Cursed inversion of Homewrecker Grace: gracerocky are genuinely platonic besties, they get to Erid, Adrian is on the Human Habitation team, and as Grace gets well he comes to the horrified realization that he’s gradually become romantically enamored with his friend’s spouse and said spouse is kinda giving the signals back. Emotional implosion imminent!

(As entertaining as it would be for them to shuffle around it for an extended amount of time, I don’t actually think Grace would be able to keep his mouth shut about it for long and would eventually blurt it out to Rocky, crying and prepared for it to ruin their relationship, only for Rocky to be like. Yeah obviously you’d be in love with Adrian, everyone is in love with Adrian. Also Adrian’s a monsterfucker who finds your orifices alluring, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for them, Do Not fuck it up)

[marshmellowtea]

he's beautiful i literally need to put him under extreme psychological stress. i need to put him in extreme physical pain. i need him curling up in someone's arms for the feelings of safety and comfort he hasn't received in ages

[knifearo]

aroace nonbinary people you are everything to me. shout out to the bitches who just said "nah i'm not doing any of that"

[sunspots-after-dark]

Quick advice to writers who are new to posting on ao3 - don’t sandbag your own summary! It can be tempting to add a self-conscious note to the effect of ‘I suck at summaries,’ (believe me I understand the urge!) but all that does is make it seem like you aren’t confident enough in your work to even describe what it is about, which does not make a prospective reader more likely to click. Have some confidence! If you wrote the story, the hard part is done; you are perfectly capable of broadly describing the contents.

If you still want to add a disclaimer that you’re new to this, you can; that’s what author’s notes are for! People expect a bit of unpolished rambling in those. They’re also much less outward-facing. If someone has clicked, then they already like the sound of your story; a little uncertainty is no longer likely to turn them off when they’ve already decided to give it a shot.

[gr8writingtips]

writing tip #4130:

who cares if it's bad, have you seen some of the shit people are reading these days

[sunspots-after-dark]

that fanfic trope where the character gets swapped with the future/alternate universe version of themself who is happily married but it’s canon timeline Grace years into life on Erid suddenly swapping with a version of himself where Dubois/Shapiro survived and now he’s queerplatonically cohabitating with Eva fucking Stratt as they power couple their way through climate mitigation efforts

[jumpscart]

Sometimes you will be a lesbian to your parents and a straight man to your partners parents and a gay man to your partner and a woman to your grandparents and out to your friends and stealth to your classmates and a nice young lady to the cashier at the coffee shop and then people on your computer will ask you to choose which of these identities you ACTUALLY are and which you are Appropriating The Oppression Of because don’t you know they contract each other. You can only be one thing solidly forever

[7-inches-of-satanic-panic]

sigh

[ghsot]

everyones got that fic they chip away at like michaelangelo sculpting david. and brother? its penis month

[ghsot]

asked my friends if they knew what i was referencing and they said no. we all know that post where someone divided how long it took michelangelo to sculpt david by it's size and went "yuuuuup. whole month spent on penis" right. sure, my search history is full variations upon "michelangelo penis month tumblr" to no avail, but we all know it. right.

[itriedonce]

Hi, that was a MBMBAM bit. But i see you and i hear you and i dont know if someone already said something

[ghsot]

oh my god youre right.

[quasi-normalcy]

If you have bodily autonomy, then there is always a chance that you will do something to your body that you will regret. This is not an argument for taking that autonomy away.

[quasi-normalcy]

There is a much, much higher chance that someone who is not you will do something to your body that you regret.

[aquilacalvitium]

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

[aquilacalvitium]

Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again

[theglitchywriterboi]

I hope every writer who sees this writes LOADS the next few months. Like freetime opens up, no writers block, the ability to focus, etc etc you're able to write loads & make lots of progress <3