Ooh! Bright! Shiny!

| still here still queer | | 30 | | same name on ao3 | | i don't know how to make gifs but will that stop me no |

[experienceandobservation]

Lupita Nyong'o | "The Odyssey" New York Premiere | July 14, 2026

[hybbat]

It's true, if Grace did have a partner or children or any other family Stratt absolutely would have used those people as a reason for Grace to go. She would have gone harder into how people would die if he didn't. Her only goal was to get him on that spacecraft by any means necessary.

But that's kinda the point, isn't it? It's not that Grace had no one at home was her base logic for why she picked him to go to space. Grace was going to space and she needed to make a logical argument. And the argument she chose was "you don't have family, therefore you have no reason to not go."

Because that's what matters, that's the main thing that would stop someone, surely. Grace is a charismatic guy who made several friends even with her in his time working there. Grace has multiple years of students and a school worth of staff who know him, he has neighbours and friends and a community he participates in. He has a career and hobbies and a home and possessions. But none of those matter enough to stop someone from going to space. They can just up end his life and move him to a remote base far from home where he isn't allowed to talk to anyone he used to know, isn't allowed to go anywhere, it's no big deal to send him a bit further.

He didn't have any relationships important enough in the eyes of their society for it to have legal ties that could complicate things, and that's what mattered. A social construct so deeply rooted in their society that those relationships are written in legal contracts and government papers, those are the ones that are designated to matter. They matter so much that certain rights are withheld from anyone outside those relationships. Grace could be as happy as a clam but as far as any government and person living in the society formed by that government is concerned he was a lonely man with no reason to not sacrifice himself, and so that becomes the pitch.

The pitch could have been anything, but what it was is based in a heteronormative amatonormative understanding of how people and society should work. And it doesn't matter whether Grace was aspec at that point, what matters is he didn't meet the standards for a person who has sufficiently participated in society, and should thus when made aware be willing to rectify this at the cost of his life.

It just so happens that an aroace person who inherently has a complex relationship with these systems by their nature is painfully familiar with that experience.

[nbarpf]

One of my all-time favorites

[zroem]

Environment study turned into a Nott instagram | bluesky | prints

[eroscestlavie]

normally I would not just screenshot myself and post it here but it’s Friday and I’m feeling lazy

[shamebats]

Emos & scene kids got this close to abolishing gender for real. I try not to think about it too much.

[shamebats]

The idea of a popular teenage subculture where girl & boys pretty much all dress the same feels impossible now but for a while it was reality and it was beautiful.

[ghost-mantis]

On this, the anniversary of the lunar landing, let us also celebrate the greatest post-mission achievement by a crewman.

I refer, of course, to the time Buzz Aldrin (age 72 at the time) cold-cocked a moon landing conspiracy theorist straight in his smug face after being accused of being a coward, liar, and thief.

Yes, someone was indeed dumb enough to tell a man so unafraid of death that he was willing to go into the void on a fragile explosive rocket, a coward.

Said dumbass was filming this confrontation as some sort of proof of moon fraud, but has instead captured this glorious moment of near-cosmic justice for us to loop for all time.

Aldrin was not charged with any crime. He should have been given another medal for public service.

[goldensunset]

>‘this thing is too generic and tropey’

>look inside

>forefather of that genre

[firestorm09890]

[frankbelloriley]

[daysleftofsecondterm]

Forcing myself to believe this is a bit on 916 days left

[pukicho]

If you’re anxious, don’t worry.

[thyboylovethgaming]

if you're having an asthma attack, just breathe.

[pukicho]

Exactly queen #I-am-a-normal-person-with-no-problems

[unheardoracle]

Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

Subtext is where tension lives.

[chillyfeetsteak]

[skeezels]

Chalk is squids road.

[communismlives]

[l0stvegas]

Some time ago (I think in 2021) I had to go see a neurologist over really scary symptoms that resembled seizures. I was a nervous wreck about what I was feeling and had barely slept all week, which seemed to be apparent to the doc’s assistant when I sat down in the exam room for questioning or whatever. Dude was pretty young and soft spoken, around my age. He was laser focused doing something on one of those tablet-laptop Surface things as I spoke, presumably writing down my symptoms.

Midway through talking about my symptoms my voice audibly started shaking as I was describing them, clearly upset.

In the middle of my monologue he turns the tablet to face me, closes whatever program he has open and the wallpaper is this fucking collage of pictures of lord farquaad from shrek, lovingly decorated. Dude just sat there placidly smiling at me until I noticed and stopped dead in the middle of a sentence. We sat there in silence like this for like a solid minute before I started wheezing laughing. Before I could even say anything else or process it he picked up the tablet and wordlessly left the room, and I just sat there dumbfounded until the doctor showed up. 10/10 doctor experience tbh

I didn’t own a cell phone at the time to get a photo so this rendition from memory is all I can provide you

[snow-nose]

ID: a digital drawing of a man in scrubs sitting on a wheeled stool, serenely smiling with his elbow on a rolling cart, where a tablet is flipped open to show an approximation of the Lord Farquaad screensaver. end ID

[enigma-absolute]

[l0stvegas]

Reblogging this bc it’s making rounds again

[winter-wise]

Some of the 2010s-era Loki stans were annoying but some of them were very justified. They put Tom Hiddleston in handcuffs and a muzzle. Then they put him in chains and a collar. Then they had him look waifishly sad in a prison cell. Then they put him in handcuffs again. Then they chained him up again. Where else were teenage girls going to see that.

[ulysses-but-somehow-more-transer]

take my ass to torture city where the grass is ouch and the girls are hit me

[armpits-are-crying]

nope. funkytown again

[ulysses-but-somehow-more-transer]

come on

[purplepints]

Oldest human footprint discovered, made 153,000 years ago in South Africa.

Oldest human footprint in North America, made 21,000 years ago in New Mexico, USA.

Oldest human footprint on the Moon, made July 20, 1969 on the Sea of Tranquility, Earth's moon.

[sforzzz]

i agree that kids deserve and need more access to HRT earlier in life should they desire to transition but i really hate that the main argument in favor of it is "we need to have people transition earlier before PERMANENT IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE makes it so they can NEVER EVER look like their desired gender and they'll be FOREVER UGLY AND CLOCKY"

[sforzzz]

like i just want more bodily autonomy for everyone why do we gotta frame it like this

[thekalpar]

My spouse and I were talking last night and the jeans problem came up so I want to talk about it with tumblr here.

The jeans problem was the favorite lecture one of my philosophy professors in college gave about the history of jeans and how it ties into capitalism/mainstream culture absorbing and monetizing any counterculture it encounters. So prior to the 1950s jeans were mostly an item of work-wear that you wore on the job as a farmer or factory worker or miner because they were cheap, durable, and hard-wearing. If you were off the job you'd wear what we'd call now dress pants or slacks. This changes in the 1950s when youth culture start wearing jeans as regular clothing, again because they're cheap, durable, and hard-wearing. But then jeans get absorbed by the culture and we start getting designer jeans, acid-washed jeans, pre-ripped jeans, and now we got people shelling out hundreds of dollars for "povertycore" aesthetic. And now jeans aren't even cheap, durable, and hard-wearing.

This came up because my spouse was talking about thrifting and spooky things (two of her favorite things) and how there was this trend of buying a landscape painting from a thrift store which was probably going to end up in a garbage dump and painting a sheet ghost on it to make it art millennials would like. But now you can go to Michael's or Home Goods or wherever and just buy a landscape painting with a sheet ghost on it, mass-manufactured by a corporation. The counter-culture once again being monetized and absorbed by the culture. It's the jeans problem again.