"Random Passion"

This blog has changed a lot since it started. It's now pretty much random things I really like. Quite a bit of social justice stuff as well as quite a bit of cute and/or funny shit. I have a separate blog for my fandom stuff, so this is pretty much everything else I'm interested in. I'm terrible at tagging on this blog fyi.

[dailycatsblog]

[kayl-aluenne]

I miscarried my first pregnancy and had to have surgery on Christmas Eve morning. I was absolutely crushed. I came home from the hospital and my cat Simon climbed into my lap and pressed his head against my stomach and wrapped his front legs on either side of my belly, like he was giving it a hug. He stayed there all afternoon. He never did that again before or after but he knew I was hurting and I needed him.

When I got pregnant again, Simon would lie on my belly and purr for hours. I had read somewhere that there's a theory that cats purr at a frequency that can promote bone growth and healing. So we joked that he was helping the baby grow bones.

When the kids were little we told them that Simon's love was soaked into their bones. When died we reminded them that he would always be with them because his love is soaked into their bones. He was such a good boy.

[theroyalgardens]

[preserving-tiktok]

[monstermonger]

Friend in an alleyway | my wife sent me this photo the other day and said "you HAVE to draw this." and I agreed completely <:

[monstermonger]

oops I was told you can only see the photo if you have a bsky account, so here's a screenshot of it!

[toastyglow]

they should make a kind of cute patterned sock that isn't a sensory nightmare to wear

[docholligay]

Obviously I'm fine being told no, but it doesn't hurt to ask right? May I share some Eva Stratt facts with you from the book (Project Hail Mary) that didn't make it into the movie?

Sure, why not, go ahead!

[thoughtfulfuri]

Yay! Okay. SO!

Pretty early on, they decide the crew will need to do most of the traveling in a coma, and it turns out a group had been studying prolonged comas and found that most people can't survive the length of time needed. They've found a specific gene though that seems to determine a likelihood to survive. This is like, an early phase of working on the mission. Stratt immediately takes the test herself before ordering everyone else to also do it. I think she even says at this time that she doesn't want to ask anybody to do anything she wouldn't be willing to do herself and is part of the argument for making everyone (including Grace who questions it) take it. (This is also the real reason Grace ends up needing to go. Not some sort of time crunch.) Theoretically, if she'd had the gene, she might have gone herself.

There's a scene where a scientist unrelated to PHM pulls strings to meet Stratt because while she was following the progress of the mission, she figured out a science thing that they needed to sort. Stratt ends up being like 'great observation/point. You're now on the team.' And the lady is like 'no way. I'm going home.' And Grace is like, 'oof sorry. this is now your home' so she's forced to stay (because he knows when Stratt says that it's done)

Stratt arranges for the crew to pretty much have access to any and all information that can be crunched into their systems. A huge Library of Alexandria, as they have no idea what the team will need while they're away (this is how Grace ends up being able to make a translator program/software whatever with Rocky), and multiple organizations put together a suit. She shows up to court to be like, 'I'm here as a courtesy. I don't need to defend myself. It is within my power to do whatever I want. Now I'm out.' Immaculate

When Grace is refusing to go, he says he'll sabotage the mission if she makes him go. She tells him she doesn't believe him, but she doesn't take chances, so fine, his drug cocktail for his coma will include an amnesia drug so he won't remember right away that he wasn't a willing participant, and by the time he does remember, he'll be too invested in his research.

But my favorite has to be after Grace has refused to go on the mission, she has him put in a cell while they get closer to the launch date/start him in on his coma. She visits him in his cell and has a sort of monologue moment where she says once the mission is launched, she believes she is going to be sent to jail probably for life. (Not just for the above but also authorizing plans to nuke Antarctica and pave over a whole African desert in the process of making the project work/warming up the planet to save them time as the sun cools.) She's very much like 'there's no happy ending for me here. You will die out there doing research. I will die in a jail cell.

We do not in fact ever learn what becomes of her after the launch.

Sorry for word vomit. You know me. I just fucking love her so much lmaooo I get why most of this didn't make it into the movie, so not a complaint. Just fun tidbits.

[blog-artlover]

"In Gentle Light"

by Kaoru Yamada

[only-cat-memes]

[urgetocreate]

Elena Wuest (Kazakhstan/German b.1977), Lost in a Dream, 2026, Oil on canvas

[orphanedsource]

the place I work at remodeled these split gendered restrooms into “inclusive restrooms” and never told us what they meant while construction was ongoing. I need you to know every atom of potential criticism or whining that could’ve happened disappeared when people found out this meant we got 10 fully separate private bathrooms with sinks inside. I’ve not heard a single person crack a joke about the inclusive signage. this is the world TERFs are trying to steal from you

[just-another-cat-blog]

pride month!!!

[lemonsharks]

Is that a miette?

[jeanjauthor]

Pride for you!  Pride for a thousand years!!

[lost-and-cursed]

you COME OUT to miette? you come out to her as queer? oh! oh! pride for mother! pride for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

[stimman3000]

[tsukarikata]

ラドン

[cute-catts]

[drtanner]

He did that.

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

my greatest accomplishment in life is that I inadvertently made my friend break up with her shitty boyfriend by throwing her a really fucking awesome birthday party

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

okay so I fucking love event planning and decorating and hosting and baking, aka all the elements of a banger birthday party. I am so freaking happy to throw people parties because it means I get to throw a party, then go to a party! yippee!

so my friend's birthday rolled around and I knew she wanted a party because I'd done them for her before, but I wanted to make it extra special because she was turning the big 25. so I did all the regular stuff I am So Excited About: had her roommates let me into her apartment while she was out, put up balloons and homemade garlands and streamers and table decor, made her favorite cake and snack plates and cocktails, ordered catering from a restaurant she loves, got a bunch of our friends to come over to surprise her, wrote her a disgustingly heartfelt card, etc. and then because it was the big quarter century, I was like I gotta do something extra.

now. I do not like clowns. my friend loves clowns. we've gone to the circus together and she's seen me literally close my eyes and hide when the clowns are out in the audience, meanwhile she's screaming and waving at them. so obviously I hired a clown for her birthday. (btw seeing him out of clown costume made me less freaked out because now I knew that the guy under there looks like someone's uncle.)

so she showed up after work totally expecting a party because I'm too paranoid to throw a real surprise party, and obviously loved it. and then I was like btw. there's a clown.

she lost her mind. she was sooo excited. she loved the party and she loved the clown. I was like haha yes I'm getting a good grade in birthday parties and didn't think much of it because frankly I do this a lot, and it's so much fun for me that I don't consider it work. like, I love doing all that for my friends. it's not any kind of sacrifice.

two days later, she texted me that she broke up with her boyfriend.

naturally I was like omg tell me everything I hated that guy let's get coffee. so we did and she told me that for her birthday, her boyfriend of nine months 1) forgot about it and didn't get her anything, 2) got mad at her for not texting him while she was at her party, 3) got mad at her for telling him about the party because it was "passive aggressive", and 4) called her immature and stupid for being excited about a clown at her birthday.

this was all very in character for him. but she'd just come from a lovely birthday party full of her friends who love her and want to put effort into making a nice day for her, where her friend who hates clowns hired a clown just to make her happy even though the party alone would've been plenty. and suddenly this wasn't a boyfriend being kinda forgetful and lazy, it was a glaring incongruity with everyone else in her life. so she finally dumped his ass. and I was soooo freaking happy. so clowns can be good.

[impossiblepackage]

that relationship was already over, she didn’t even bring her boyfriend to her birthday party at her own apartment

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

actually it's worse than that! she knew there would be a party, but not what day. I invited her boyfriend to the party. he said no.

[geopsych]

April sunrise: blossoms and fog

[mollybeenoel]

[dracoj]

what they dont tell you about adulthood is that it’s startlingly easy to go long periods of time without having any fun at all not even a little bit. btw this causes ur brain to try to kill you with knives and hammers.

[alex51324]

Yeah the thing is, when you're a kid, there are often a lot of people going out of their way to make things fun for you: parents, other family members, your friends' parents/families, adults at school and at community places like libraries...and that's on top of your friends your own age, and the general fact that as a kid having fun is one of your top priorities.

And then if you go to college, there aren't quite so many people making things fun for you--although there are RAs, and the student life office, and various clubs and organizations doing activities, etc.--but you're in an environment where your friends are nearby and you all have similar schedules and responsibilities, so a lot fun just kind of arises spontaneously.

But once you're out on your own, in the workforce and whatnot, all that just drops of a cliff. Planned activities for adults exist, but you generally have to seek them out, rather than having them relentlessly advertised to you and/or taking place in locations where you will bump into them on the way to breakfast. And your friends are all spread out, and everyone's busy at different times, so you aren't just bumping into people and getting sucked into whatever adventure they have going on, you have to make arrangements.

It's a big shift! If you have kids, you generally figure out pretty quick that your role is now the Planner Of Fun, but without that big obvious signpost, it can feel like the world just gradually stopped having fun things in it.

But it hasn't; you just have to plan and seek out opportunities for fun yourself, because it's no longer anyone else's job to put them in front of you--it's yours!

TL:DR, when you're an adult you've got to take yourself to the aquarium and pick out a plushie in the gift shop and pay for it with your own credit card; you don't just wake up one day and find out that's happening. (Or that it's a have-dinner-on-a-picnic-blanket-in-the-living-room day, or that you're going to your cousins' house where you can splash around in the creek and look for frogs, or that's it's the day when we put the speakers in the window and let the music echo in the alley down below while we wash the car, or anything!)