🎻

25+, Queer

[lettaniko]

Finally finished this piece after months of reworking. Far from perfect, but I’m glad it’s done. Inspired by the amazing Bruno Redondo, Dan Mora, and especially Dexter Soy.

[occasionalauthoring]

You ever think Batman stretches after a meeting and his back goes all crunchy at? Like I'm talking biblical levels of popping and cracking of the back bones while the JL just stands in the back in abject horror because 'there's just no way he's human, why do his bones sound like that?!'

Yes.

[ratsoupee]

field trip cancelled

Based off hit tumblr post:

[mawofthemagnetar]

Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.

“Oh but this language sounds scary-“ have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?

“Oh but this language sounds silly-“ have you heard someone’s grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?

“Oh but this language is really weird-“ and yours isn’t? Everyone’s language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.

Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.

Isn’t it wonderful?

[ghstwht]

Had a thought that Grace technically never used reverse translation for Rocky, and Rocky understood him without a translator because he basically learned the language himself.

And you know all those jokes and headcanons about Rocky swearing every other word like any self-respecting engineer would, right? And Grace most likely did enter all those words into the translator, but replaced them with softer censored equivalents because he himself doesn’t really swear so the idea that someone might be talking to him in profanity every other sentence probably never even crossed his mind.

Now imagine this. They finally arrive to Erid. Grace desperately wants to make a good first impression, so he spends days hunched over his laptop, painstakingly assembling a greeting speech out of fragments from Rocky’s recordings.

And the resulting first contact speech sounds… bad. Like really bad. He turns the laptop toward the delegation looking unbelievably proud of himself. Presses play. And the computer proceeds to unleash a magnificent torrent of multilayered alien profanity stitched together from fragments of Rocky’s voice. Grace has absolutely no idea.

Rocky watched all of these preparations in silence the entire time, making those sly whistling noises that could absolutely be interpreted as laughter. Rocky's proud.

Meanwhile the Eridians are just thinking: "Yep. Okay. This leaky space blob really did spend years with our Rocky."

[revlynn-rabosa]

It's always "hail Mary, full of Grace" and never "Eva, the first woman, whose sins cast humanity away from Eden (but humanity found it's place out there)".

Anyway, Eva Stratt, you did everything correctly, you made the wrong choice, humanity is alive because of your determination, the most woman ever. They coul never make me pin your morals down as 'good' or 'bad'.

[loving-jack-kelly]

grace and rocky get to erid and both of them are hitting every eridian squarely in the uncanny valley because they've both absorbed so much of each other that they feel both too eridian and not eridian enogh. rocky faces in the direction he's paying attention to and it feels like he's trying to hide something, the way he and only he of the eridians seems to always be showing the same face of his carapace when he speaks to somebody. he speaks in metaphors that only make sense to somebody who understands light-based vision. his intonations are funny, rising on questions when they otherwise wouldn't, falling flat, his sarcasm goes to space dry and restrained and comes back with such force it almost feels like he's lying instead of joking sometimes.

and grace who is so alien, but reflects eridian mannerisms that they've never considered strange before but coming from a creature so soft and strange, it just doesn't feel right. grace who stomps his foot twice when he asks a question, and it rings out flat and dull instead of the strong, sharp sound of an eridian hand on the ground. grace whose voice is so alien, so one-note, so full of articulations that are sharp and round and everywhere in between, but who echoes the melodies of eridian poetry and music, sometimes on accident but sometimes perfectly in time with what rocky translates him as saying, and later, perfectly in time with his keyboard.

rocky and grace who mirror each other more similarly than they mirror their own cultures. who speak to each other in a strange pidgin eridian that nobody else quite understands fluently. who share jokes from movie and tv shows from earth filtered through eridian folktales, plays, and musicals until they only make sense to the two people who know both cultures. they're not strange to each other, but it puts other eridians on edge. even adrian, at first. they've changed each other, you see.

[squaresaw]

So last month I got hit by a car and died right. Which I didn't initially realize until I watched some guy haul my body into his pickup and drive off. Which, being that it's deep in rural Michigan, I assume means my body will make some venison jerky and maybe some wall decoration, and I'll be resigned to being one of hundreds of deer ghosts floating around Saginaw, which is w/e. But then I find out the guy works at a taxidermy shop or something, and he's actually pretty good at stuffing and mounting deer carcasses, which I come to find out when I find myself face to face with my old body in the shop window. So naturally, I figure since ghosts need to possess something to interact with the living world and etc etc etc the most logical thing to do is to possess my own body, since it's basically a statue of myself. And a little surprisingly, it actually fits like a glove. Like, since it's my body, it feels like stepping right back into place. So I get out of town and back to my herd, eventually. And that's where the trouble starts coming into it, because after I get settled again, I don't know how to explain to everyone else what feels so weird. Like since I can move my body and do everything I used to do, it's functionally the same, like nothing happened. Or it SHOULD be, so I don't know how to explain how it's NOT. But it's just hard to explain it to someone who's never been hit by a truck I guess

[jansila]

@charl0ttan

[beescream]

because grace learns eridian from rocky do you think he speaks to people on erid with his little piano/organ/instrument setup and theyre like lol wow. you've got a REALLY strong accent. and grace is like well im an alien, thats to be expected, right? and theyre like no that's not what we mean. it's just... you sound just like rocky :,) it's very cute actually

of course grace is delighted! but it'd be very funny if rocky had just. a massively specific regional accent. and now grace has it too. all the eridians from that area are like OMG THE ALIEN IS ONE OF US - we're adopting it. that's an honorary member of the clan. listen to it. it might as well have grown up here.

...actually i'm gonna do it. fuck it. rocky is space scottish. to me. he's mine now, i'm taking him out to look at the kelpies and the falkirk wheel and climb up ben ledi. he can go fishing in a loch. and now grace's eridian accent is their equivalent of scots. he says stuff to adrian's family (posh motherfuckers) and theyre like 'i think it's trying to communicate with us..?' meanwhile adrian, well used to rocky's accent by now, is like 'it's giving you a compliment. be nice to my spouse's alien, please.'

(adrian is like the dad who doesn't want a cat. theyre like this is my spouse rocky and rocky's... alien friend.. and then like two months later rocky comes in and adrian is letting grace sleep on top of them. he was cold, I couldn't just let him shiver, and rockys like no no beloved you're so right, and secretly rubbing his claws together like yesss just let it happen, grace will win all of erid over at this rate..)

[silvermoon424]

As an ace this is the only time "you just haven't met the right person yet" has made me laugh lmaoooo

[all-my-simpings]

Friend: Don't you want to have a romance?

Me: I'm good, I have romance at home.

Romance I have at home:

[knighthearts]

happy pride month for it/its users, polyamorous people, xenogenders, non-transitioning trans people, and other "weird" identities. btw

[cozy-stardust]

Imagine Grace defined his name as the elegance definition of grace and Rocky spends years thinking how fucking ironic this clumsy leaky space blobs name is.

Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.

And Rocky has to suddenly reconcile that the clumsy leaky blob that saved his life twice, that almost certainly doomed himself to come back for him, name is Mercy.

[till-dawn-do-us-part]

[trickstercarlos]

seeing trans women out in public is like warm sunlight washing over me it genuinely brightens my mood

[musiicpix3l]

Yes yes i know love is love. But they are still killing CHILDREN. over this.

[asphodelis]

superhero suit glove-sleeve connection design showerthought

[rainbow-femme]

They move in together full time and Ilya notices that Anya acts differently with Shane than she does with him, more quiet and less playful, and he worries that means she doesn’t like Shane or is jealous, so he hires a dog trainer to come over and see if there’s anything they need to do to help

After a while of talking about how Anya acts the trainer says there’s nothing to worry about, Anya likes Shane just fine, it’s just that she sees him as the boss and is acting accordingly

And Ilya is like. But. I’m the one who adopted her? And raised her before Shane got here?? And the trainer is just like yeah well she sees you more like an equal. And Ilya is like WAIT she thinks Shane is in charge of both of us?? And the trainer is just like well do you interact in a way that would make her think that?

Ilya’s life flashes before his eyes as he thinks of all the times Shane has come over with a snack for Ilya and a treat for Anya, or all the times Shane has announced they’re all going for an after dinner walk, or pets Ilya’s hair and tells him he did a good job at practice, or the fact that he uses the same warning tone with Anya when she misbehaves as he does with Ilya when he’s causing problems on purpose

Shane comes home to Ilya with his face in his hands going oh god I’m not Anya’s dad I’m her brother and she thinks we’re both your pets. And Shane just goes. What.