As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...
I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!
But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...
That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and friendly, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.
So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.
He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.
This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.
And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.
Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.
They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".
we as a society ignore rocky's jazz hands far too often. i imagine that he's literally the only one who does them and he told grace it was a cultural custom because he's always wanted to start that trend. adrian spiritually raises an eyebrow whenever he does it.
I just know the arts game on Erid goes crazy. Especially fiber arts like lace-making—I like to imagine that they have huge, complex pieces that incorporate xenonite and precious stones. They convey stories, culture, and memories.
Bobbin lace is probably the most common. You're most likely to have a shirt with those decals on it or use it for decoration. Having that many limbs makes it easy to sit down and make a design; it's a common gift for parents to give to their grown children expecting pebbles.
Needle lace however is a lot more complex. Huge, intricate pieces that take years to make even with 5 arms and a crystalline brain. A finished lace tapestry can take years with several Eridian lace-makers who dedicate their lives to the craft. Thrums are often used to get the product done faster, with 5 Eridians on each end working outward and communicating in sync. It's a beautiful process to watch. A traditional technique is to start at a single point and work outwards with no plan, making a complex and unique piece. These are rare and usually owned by Eridians with high-ranking jobs.
At the memorial for Blip-A's crew is a massive tapestry meticulously created over the course of a decade. Small pieces of the families' carapaces have been woven in alongside an intricate, sectioned pattern. The piece can be read like a book—the lace echos back the frequencies of the crew's voices, immortalizing them in Eridian history forever.
In Rocky and Adrian's home is a tapestry from the ceremony of the night they mated, a common tradition for Eridian couples. Over the course of the event, the Eridians in attendance work off the hexagon representing the couple's courtship. No one involved is usually a master craftsman, so the work is a little all over the place. It functions as a quest-book, echoing the memory off the walls of their home.
It's an art that can never be lost—it's so ingrained in their culture. Lacework is everywhere you look on Erid and one of the most common arts for sale (next to glasswork, something just as complex). But then Grace shows up and tells them that their work is beautiful and while he can't read it like the other Eridian's can, he's able to see the colors. He's frequently "borrowed" from the bio-dome to consult on projects after that.
The real reason Stratt didn't want to join the karaoke party on the vat is because she knew Leclerc would be singing sad song after sad song but changing the words to match the despair he felt over nuking Antarctica
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a mission he doesn't remember volunteering for. Alone on a ship scaled far too large for a borrower, he has to try to figure out why he's so far from home, and what he's supposed to do. On top of that, he needs to figure out why this mission is so prepared to have a borrower on the crew--standing at only six inches tall, it's easy to think none of this was meant for him. And yet, everywhere he looks he finds evidence that whoever built this ship built it with both humans and borrowers in mind.
An impossible task looms over him. A scientific mystery has somehow sent him hurtling through space, impossibly far from any other human or borrower, and it's on him to surpass an extinction-level threat that doesn't care how big someone is. It will end the world all the same if he doesn't do something about it.
But, despite what he thinks, he's not alone.
Artwork by the incredible @hailed-marys! Go check them out for some artwork, or even just some fun blogging. Extremely grateful to them for this lovely work ❤️
I thought to myself that this little Eridian looks like a wet cat, then I remembered that we are calling the babies pebbles, so then I thought this little guy looks like a wet pebbles, and then I thought webble: wet + pebble = webble so may I suggest Webble?
this shit from the comments is unironically so fucking sad to me. this is where we’re at now? “aren’t books supposed to have morals?” genuinely let’s all just pack it in and go home, we tried the whole “experiencing life and art at a greater complexity level than an eight year old can handle” thing and it didn’t work out, somebody break the news to oscar wilde, we’re done here. “books are meant to teach you something.” christ.
