New intro post ig, cuz i have no clue what happened to the old one
Hi, im Xena, i go by any pronouns (no need to ask, anythings fine whenever). Im aroace and probably autistic if the sheer amount of peer review says anything.
I am capital B Broke. This means i dont have money. Please do not ask for any.
I am actually technically an adult, dont let the cartoons and minecraft reblogs fool you
If im not reblogging something its probably a shitpost, i dont really do much else. Sometimes i write but eh.
Asking for myself btw. No where near the publishing stage, I just started writing, but there is an author with the same name as me and its just kinda sitting in the back of my mind
you’re a man please stop obsessively defending women. as a woman myself, most women either want to kill minorities or assault children. luckily for me i was born different and only want to assault adult men, making me more normal and good-hearted than the average adult woman
everytime i read this ask i laugh. so you think women are evil but you also attack men. do you like anybody at all??
I just saw a video title on YouTube that said something like “Why is glass transparent?” And that’s an interesting question and I’m sure it’s great that the video exists but my first thought was like “Because glass is terrible, obviously.” Because it’s unwieldy and let’s out warmth and needs to be heated to hundreds of degrees to be shaped and turns into hundreds of tiny daggers if you drop it. Why the hell would we bother with that if it didn’t have some magical quality like being totally transparent despite being solid? Glass is transparent because if it weren’t, we’d use something else.
If you’re still curious we did not start working glass for its transparency. It was most likely started as a sanitary concern. Glass is easy to clean with soap and water, once it’s cleaned out you can use it again for anything and no germs or flavor from the previous meal or drink will remain.
Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it. That would leak out seemingly at random no less. Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.
Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness. Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation. Also beads. Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.
The fact that it could become see through was a side benefit.
Saw a post about Stratt and Grace getting married so he couldn’t testify against her in court and I believe the interaction goes something like as follows:
“Grace, I need your signature.”
Grace looked up from his work in his closet of an office. Stratt closed the door behind her.
“An autograph? I’m flattered.”
She pushed the work off his already disheveled desk and set a single paper on top. It kind of looked like his degree, it kind of looked like-
“A marriage license? Well, now I’m really flattered.”
“For legal reasons. Just sign.” Stratt muttered.
“Are you serious?”
Of course she was serious. She only was serious. But she seemed…uncomfortable? The feeling looked strange on her. Eyes dart between the paper and him. Arms crossed over her chest as if hugging herself. It was definitely a new look. They were in new territory.
“I’m not the marrying type.” said Grace. “And I think I forgot to propose.”
Stratt breathed in deeply. Steeling herself.
“Grace,” Her hands were fidgeting with the cuff of her sleeve. “What I’m doing here is illegal. I’ve broken alot of rules to give the crew a chance to save us. But once the mission begins…the world order will need to go back to how it was.”
Grace listened intently trying to make eye contact with her glassy gaze. He hadn’t thought to much about the legality of it all. After all, that was her job.
“I will be put on trial. I will be found guilty. I will serve the rest of my life behind bars. That is my cost.” Stratt continued, “You, the team, will all be fine. But-”
She pushed the license closer to Grace.
“Spouses don’t testify in court.”
Finally she looked at him. She wasn’t telling him to sign. If that was the case she probably would’ve just forged his signature. Hell, she probably has a whole team just for that purpose. She was asking him.
His choice. Just between the two of them.
“We don’t have to sleep together, right?”
Her eyes went big. “God Grace! No! Just sign the damn paper!” she huffed.
He smiled. And put his name under hers.
Husband and wife.
Well, more like “Most powerful person in the world” and “Some guy she kept around.” But still. Till death do they part.
V!Owen is a person with rich emotional depths that primarily serve to drive him and everyone he comes into contact with towards horror and violence. the horror is that he is doing this because he cares and the tragedy is that he is the architect of his own suffering
V!Scott is an incredibly shallow person who gives up evil the same way a normal person gives up tacos. the horror is that it was always this easy for him and the tragedy is that he never had a reason to try before this
I can’t believe it’s over and OMG that epilogue is so cute I’m gonna scream on the bus ALDIFJJAJJCJJEJF
I have a bajillion questions like does the better regen mean they get to live long enough to see a forest on Erid I really hope it does
But mostly PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can we know what happened in the politics meeting I love politics PLEASE
(I’m writing this while transporting a month old kitten that my former coworker found if u gimme politics I’ll show pics LMAO)
anything for cat pictures /lh
and yeah i'd like to think the better regen lets them live like maybe twenty extra years? something like that. not enough to rival eridians in any way shape or form and it's not THAT much more if you really think about it but then again the regen isn't THAT overpowered. mostly it'll give them like twenty extra and let them get there a lot healthier and mobile and like. not as old-looking as i imagine someone being like 110 under erid gravity would look like. they'll still probably end up using canes though not as soon as grace does in the book, and towards the end the eridians will make them their five-legged contraptions to scuttle around. and yeah they'd get to see a poplar and eucalyptus forest + their maple
space politics below!
i did mention in the epilogue that the humans agreed to gather for a meeting, and as mentioned in the other chapters this would be the equivalent of a video conference between the spaceships as they come to orbit erid. from the log entries in the game it's not explicitly stated that eden and the c.o.i are the only human factions? eden is the biggest and the c.o.i is at war with them, but i'm just going out on a limb and assuming that there's at least a couple more, obviously a lot smaller. i did also get the c.o.i's number of space stations wrong that's mb (the logs said they had three stations and i forgot the filament entry clarified that it was three not counting filament. whoops)
so the meeting is like five spaceships arriving to orbit erid, one from eden, two from the other two human factions, and one more from the c.o.i that meets up with salvager so they can have the proper representatives present. nobody but the two c.o.i ships makes direct contact, and simon and grace stay in mary in her hangar along with rocky
ok so immediately the first thing about this is that grace and simon (and rocky) are going into the meeting with completely different mindsets. rocky is going to listen in on the humans and offer erid's perspective on the feasibility of their plans and trade ideas as erid's representative. grace is going to sort of mediate in case the humans cannot behave and also to interpret for rocky if needed. but simon is going to war.
simon knows that if they want any smooth cooperation and for grace to be able to act as a mediator at all that they need to establish Dominance as soon as possible, while also retaining grace's sort of. yknow. they can't establish dominance via threatening the others, basically.
he decides that the way they're going to go about this, and he doesn't explicitly tell either grace or rocky any of this, is by demonstrating soft but irrefutable power. he has grace dress in the white crew jumpsuit, which isn't a color that still exists in that shade (that clean) anywhere in their universe, much less in a single non-patched garment. he takes one of the red jumpsuits for himself, because while grace's power has to be somewhat understated, simon needs to be a threat. bright colors don't exist anymore, and muted red and green were always eden's colors. him showing up in (relatively) bright, unblemished, clean red standing right behind grace in white is the best possible way to get them to immediately understand that while grace won't exert power, simon won't hesitate to do so if they do anything funny (guard dog behavior back at it again). he also keeps the sleeves rolled up to show off the prosthetic arm.
someone in the comments of another ask had the idea that simon should make grace a flower crown and i agree so strongly, so while unfortunately they don't actually have enough flowers for this, simon will make grace a vine crown/circlet to wear to immediately cow eden into obedience and stun everyone else. he'll also wave grace's nerves away on having to keep his glasses in place, telling him that he should wear them as he always does: carelessly. glass is so incredibly scarce and priced on their side that the sight of this man being so careless with what is essentially a priceless artifact will only further cement the idea that THEY have the resource upperhand here.
again simon tells none of the reasons behind any of these choices to either grace or rocky, so grace just humours him on the vine crown and thinks nothing of the white jumpsuit and is immediately met with double-takes and shocked expressions the second he activates mary's camera feed (let's assume it has this, it probably doesn't).
simon's plan works, the other representatives are immediately made aware that grace is the main authority here and that any feuds between them will either need to be resolved later or set aside for now if they don't want to lose the oportunity they've been given (they kind of didn't want to believe the c.o.i that a man ostensibly allied with them was behind their sudden apparent salvation). eden's folks will be particluarly shocked to not only see simon alive and healthy and with a prosthetic (unthinkable use of resources), but also to see the vine crown on grace's head. they didn't actually really believe the c.o.i when they mentioned there might be seeds up for trade, but since the situation had already been ludicrous enough they'd decided they couldn't risk the chance of there actually being seeds on the line; so seeing the plant used as an accessory is kind of giving them a heart attack.
so most of the meeting would consist of grace getting the representatives to be honest and use their fucking words and have an honest open discussion on what they want, while rocky studies the humans and gives information on what erid can and cannot do for them (they were all forewarned of the eridians but all the representatives bar ava and the two other salvager crewmembers present still flinch and startle and stare whenever he speaks up). throughout all of this, simon stands in position slightly behind grace, arms crossed, expression impassive, interrupting only when grace's attempts to get them to stop arguing don't work (which is rare because he's a Teacher, but still)
despite there being a c.o.i representative from the organizers of needle, ava carries most of the conversation on their end, to the shock of the representative. she had enough time to steel herself and has been exposed to enough of grace's bullshit that she's almost no longer faced. the other representatives of the other factions are also a bit baffled that she's not taking a solid minute to process every single batshit insane revelation that comes out of grace or rocky's mouth, she's just rolling with it. she also had simon's exact same idea of immediately establishing not only the c.o.i but her particular dominance on this situation as grace's closest point of contact to them (bar simon), so she saved a slice of watermelon from the basket to purposefully eat it on camera in front of everyone. the salvager crew is unnecessarily smug about this. simon clocks what she's doing instantly and can't deny that he approves the tactic
this post is getting long enough so i'll reblog it and add more about the actual contents of the meeting,,,
grace establishes right out of the gate what the options are: a) have something massive to offer to erid so erid will consider housing them in a similar (though obviously nowhere near as grand) way as they do him and simon, b) stay put and live in their space stations and trade resources with erid, c) settle down somewhere in 40 Eridani (and trade resources w erid), d) set off into space looking for another planet to settle in, or e) head to earth
before anyone can say anything else grace will probably also add that, unless they choose to head to earth, they likely won't be able to restart another human society as they had it pre-rapture given their gene pool just isn't big enough for inbreeding not to quickly become a problem
i imagine eden, as the biggest faction of them all, will have the biggest qualms about whether the gene pool is or isn't big enough (strong chances they don't know how that works lbr), and it'll probably take some cussing out from simon to get them to understand that no, 400ish people isn't enough.
but aside from that i think they would come to a farily quick consensus that heading to earth is probably the best idea. dying out on their own or succumbing to the problems of inbreeding doesn't sound ideal to any of them, and the thought of seeing earth and mars (even if uninhabited) again is more than enough to get a little bit of light into the jaded eyes of all the representatives
so i think the meat and potatoes of the meeting would really be about what they could expect on earth, what they could trade with them, how the situation probably looks for them. probably a lot of insisting that they at least agree to a truce because it's gonna be horrible optics if the humans from the other universe do nothing but fight each other. grace might have to hold station-wide classes on relativity and how to operate mary's spindrives and there would be a lot of coordinating on how to integrate those into their spaceships so they can tow their space stations for sixteen light years/four travel years without falling apart. and also storing astrophage somewhere in there.
i think they could absolutely get eden to enter a full truce or even drop the war by just giving them seeds and establishing a sort of. let's just try not to interact more than necessary, with the c.o.i. and have the others act as mediators. they would be too gobsmacked by having actual seeds and soil that they might be too catatonic for too many months to remember why they hated the c.o.i so much. the c.o.i would still be upset with them but i think the knowedge that they're grace's closest human faction (in their eyes) might make them smug enough to be the bigger persons about it. imagine. the respect for grace from the salvager crew spreads through the c.o.i as they start teaching everyone what they learned from the man and they're like. yeah sure we'll hold a truce. its what doctor grace would want and doctor grace taught us to play nice.
adapting the ships to mary's spindrives and breeding enough astrophage for their fuel i think would take at least a couple years, so. they'd still be trading some things w erid and chilling around 40 Eridani, patching up their stations. i do think the utilitarian mindset of most of them would lead to a good chunk of the 'trade' being just letting the eridians study them more in depth. a couple of the older folks might even agree to let their bodies stay in erid for further science if they pass away before the ships are ready to start heading to earth.
(i think it would be infinitely funnier if grace never lets anyone know why he is in erid or what his relationship to earth is other than he's 'a bit of a known figure' there. imagine the chaos when they do get there and find out grace literally saved the stars. eden might start worshipping grace a little halfway through the trip and will feel validated in their views once they see that earth also seems to hold the man on a savior pedestal lol)
