Writer, artist, reader, probably currently procrastinating on something important by doing one of those things. Call me Owl. They/them, not a minor. I have a (mostly inactive by now) tss sideblog @artistowlsnest and an active tolkien incorrect quotes blog @elves-as-things-my-friends-said
I see your “Rocky swears like a sailor but only in pitches humans can’t hear/refuses to teach Grace what those words mean” and raise you “Rocky swears like a sailor and now has to explain to Grace that ‘bad bad bad’ isn’t actually a sequence you play on your Eridian speech piano in polite company.”
Grace is both horrified and amused to realise that a more accurate translation for what Rocky’s been saying is “shit shit shit”.
You know, another small point in favor of "pirating & downloading literally everything to put on the Hail Mary turned out to be a VERY good move"?
I doubt that the scientific papers, books, etc. (which would've had to be included regardless) would have a lot that would be helpful on the topic of "how does a person with a human lifespan (and the associated perspective/expectations) live among & integrate into a society of other people who have lifespans several times longer".
Now, Lord of the Rings fanfiction, on the other hand--
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rating: T
Words: 2,177
Content warning for graphic depiction of medical complications
Summary: One night on the trip to Erid, Grace wakes up to find that Rocky is in pain. Things don't get much better from there.
There had probably been signs of it coming before it happened, but we were two poorly-socialized peas crammed in a too-small metal pod, and I’d long-since taken to writing off any weird behavior from Rocky as a symptom of that for my own sanity’s sake. In my defense, Rocky later admitted that he’d also misinterpreted, misunderstood, and even flat-out ignored and hidden the signs that he had noticed, so really I could hardly have been expected to know what was going on with my alien best friend before things went wrong.
As it was, I didn’t even notice until one night—well, one of my sleep-cycles aboard the Hail Mary—when I startled awake for no reason that I could immediately discern. I laid in bed, blearily wondering why I was conscious, and also why my ears were ringing and my teeth were on edge.
Up until a low, muffled note creaked through the room, like a foghorn groaning at 20% volume, and I realized that, firstly, Rocky must have been making vocalizations just outside of my human range of hearing, and secondly, that he was in pain.
My eyes snapped open and almost all of my sleepiness fled from me at once, and I half jumped, half stumbled out of bed. “Rocky?”
A discordant jumble of notes tumbled from his carapace. He was in the same place that he’d initially set up to watch me sleep in, but in the dim light I could make out that the project he’d been working on was abandoned a few feet away from him, and that he seemed to be on his side.
“Mary, lights,” I said.
As the lights came on, Rocky slurred out a series of notes that I just barely managed to interpret as “I’m alright.”
With the lights illuminating the full scene for me, it was my turn to wordlessly yelp. “Are you sure?!”
“I’m not dying,” he amended.
I scrambled over the divider between us and pressed my hands against the transparent xenonite, my eyes scanning up and down his form. I was, distantly, grateful that he’d cleared that up, because otherwise I would have wondered.
There was so much blood.
Liquid mercury was pooling beneath his prone form. His ventral seam was open, and one of his organs was lying outside of his body on the floor. It seemed to be the source of the mercury, leaking from the tip of the tube-like organ. Was that his feeding and waste tube? Was this what Eridian vomiting looked like? Diarrhea? What was causing it?
“What’s happening?” I asked, frantic and possibly still not fully awake.
Rocky made another pained jumble of notes. “Grace, go…”
“Go? You want me to leave? Rocky—”
He made another wordless cascade of notes, and I must have been getting better at understanding Eridian tones, because I could tell that he sounded reluctant. “No, Grace right. Grace stay. Better to have someone…”
“I’m here for you Rock,” I said, trying to project confidence. “Just tell me what you need. And, what’s going on, because uh, I don’t have a clue.”
“It’s—” he cut himself off with a cry of pain, and his whole body seized up.
“Rocky!”
A lump moved into the organ that was lying externally, at the base of where I could see. It moved jerkily down, then, when Rocky finally went limp again, it stopped.
A kidney stone, maybe? Did Eridians get those? They didn’t have kidneys, but something similar maybe? They had so many minerals in their bodies already, it wouldn’t surprise me if that clogged things up every now and then.
“Yearly cycle,” Rocky gasped out, and after a beat I realized that was in answer to my previous question.
“Cycle? Of what?”
“E—eggs…”
That, I’ll admit, pulled me up short for a moment. “Eggs…?”
He groaned. “Supposed to release eggs every fifteen Eridian years. Has been longer…”
I was still trying to recalibrate to the fact that my best friend was laying eggs, and the possibility of him being a father (holy smokes, would we be co-parenting?) but I managed to compartmentalize enough to push that aside and focus on the fact that he was in pain. “What should I do? What do you need?”
He hummed a wheezy harmonica-like note. “J—just be here? N—not alone…”
“Not alone,” I repeated firmly. “I watch.” I cast my mind about. “Do you want me to talk to you? Or—something like that?”
“P—please.”
I started doing what I do best: rambling inanely. I gave updates on the taumoeba farms. I shared some behind-the-scenes trivia about the last Earth movie we watched, and offered some likely incoherent theories about what I thought would happen next in the Eridian audiobook that we were in the middle of. I rifled through my mental filing cabinet of biological theories and pulled one out at random, spouting off about how humans have yet to come up with a definitive theory for why and when cells decide to divide, and whether or not it has anything to do with the size they’ve reached.
As I rambled, I watched the lump slowly move down the organ as Rocky seized—or rather, watched the egg move down his ovipositor as he contracted, I theorized—until it finally slid out, and I stuttered on my words. It was oval shaped, maybe two inches at its longest point, and soft-shelled, grey and slightly translucent under the mercury.
“…Is that it?” I asked cautiously.
He shuddered. “U—usually eggs are clutches of five. But…probably will be less.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
He made a disagreeing noise that I was very familiar with, but before he could explain to me why exactly I was wrong, he seized up again with another contraction.
“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, statement,” I said frantically, and when no appropriate words immediately made their way to the forefront of my mind, I began humming a wordless tune instead.
Rocky began the painful process of laying the second egg. This time, partway through he reached down with one hand and grabbed his ovipositor just above the egg, making a high-pitched sound of pain, and started massaging above the egg, probably trying to get it to come out faster. It seemed to help at least a little; the second egg did release faster than the first.
His vents were wheezing loudly enough for me to hear them as he laid there, recovering. After a few minutes, his ovipositor slowly retracted, and he sealed his seam again. “Done now,” he mumbled.
My voice was hoarse, and I swallowed. “Mary, water,” I said, and accepted the proffered bag. Rocky didn’t even make a token protest. I almost offered to have Mary get him something as well and just barely managed to stop myself in time.
“Do you feel okay?” I asked.
He took a moment to consider that. “Rocky not injured.”
Well that was damning by faint praise if I’d ever heard it. “Uh-huh. Are you in pain? Anything I can do?”
He made a weak gesture with his hand. “Pain will leave soon. Feel…tired. Grace watch sleep?”
“Of course buddy,” I said at once.
“Good, good.” He pushed himself upright again, still laying down. I noticed one of his claws tapping the floor next to the eggs.
“Are they…uh…viable?” As the word left my mouth, I winced at the clinical tone of it.
Rocky made a dark noise. “No. Would need to be with mate for that.”
…Ah. Right. As was the case for beings that reproduce sexually. I had to restrain myself from smacking myself in the face for that one. And to think, I had a degree in biology. I didn’t even bother trying to pass that one off as a reasonable mistake. “I’m an idiot.”
Rocky didn’t agree, or tease me at all, and I straightened up. Oh. Oh no. This was serious serious. “Would not be viable even with mate,” he said in an even lower voice. He nudged one of the eggs with a claw, then quickly snatched the limb away. “Came out dead.”
“…Oh. Oh, Rocky I—I’m so sorry.” I frantically flipped through my mental filing cabinet, trying to find a folder labelled ‘appropriate responses when your friend has a miscarriage.’ Unfortunately, such a file did not exist in my mind.
“…Happen last cycle too,” he said, still in a quiet tone an octave lower than his usual. “And cycle before that. Many many years, eggs come out dead. Sometimes some. Sometimes all. Cycle isn’t regular anymore. Takes more than year before cycle start again. Almost never five eggs anymore. Four, or three, or two.” He didn’t say that he was worried that one day there would only be one dead little egg, or that one day there would be none at all. He didn’t need to. “Laying more painful than it should be.”
“How painful should it be?”
“Not,” he said. “Neutral sensation at worst. Supposed to see doctor if painful.”
I hissed between my teeth, and tried to think of something to offer. Mary’s supply of Eridian doctors was, put lightly, non-existent. If he was another human then I could have made my best guess using all of the pirated research papers that Stratt had supplied us with, but he wasn’t, and my Earth computer didn’t have any information on Eridians for obvious reasons. Rocky had a few Eridian computers, but they were much more basic, and didn’t have the storage space for as many files as mine did. The Eridians probably hadn’t even thought that there would ever be a need for that. What’s the use of storing hundreds or even thousands of files in the finite reserves of a spaceship when there’s a ship’s doctor with perfect memory who already knows all of it?
“Do you know why this has been happening?”
“No.” His tone discouraged me from probing further.
Rocky nudged one of the eggs, pushing it closer to the other. I entertained the idea of asking for the eggs to study them for about half a second before I stomped the notion into oblivion—even I knew that would be in appallingly bad taste. Rocky heaved himself upright and began cleaning up. The eggs got whisked away, and I didn’t ask where.
“Grace not need to sit on floor, statement.”
“Grace sit on floor, statement,” I said, pressing my hand against the barrier again. “I can’t hug you from here, so this is the next best thing.”
He stood there for a moment, probably regarding me, then moved back over to the barrier and loafed beside it, tilting his carapace against the xenonite between us.
“What’s the Eridian version of a hug?” I asked.
Rocky tapped the floor in thought for a moment, probably trying to find the right words in our still-limited shared vocabulary, then he reached up and tapped at his carapace. “Some tapping patterns in some spots feel nice nice nice. Can also hum while touching to resonate into carapace. Mostly for hatchlings. Still feels nice.”
I adjusted myself so that the back of my ribs were as aligned with his body against the barrier as I could make them, and began humming again.
All the while, my mind was spinning, turning my thoughts around and around. I knew just enough about Eridian biology to know that I didn’t know nearly enough to be theorizing about why Rocky was having reproductive issues. I only knew the basics of their circulatory, locomotive, digestive, and nervous systems. I knew that they were very good at not allowing contaminants or diseases into their bodies, but if those did manage to trespass into the body, they wreaked havoc. I knew that Eridians had no natural resistance to radiation, and that it could affect them.
I knew that radiation could cause reproductive issues. I knew that the Blip-A had no radiation shielding save for the spaces near the astrophage tanks, where Rocky had spent most, but not all of his time in. I knew that even that defense had been stripped away from him in the weeks it had taken me to turn the Hail Mary around to get back to him.
I breathed out hard through my nose, trying to force my thoughts onto a different topic. I picked a song at random to hum, rather than the aimless tune I’d been making before, and concentrated on getting the notes correct. Developing a better ear for pitch would be good practice for understanding the Eridian language when we landed on Erid. Which we would do in just a few years. Both of us.
After a few minutes, I heard a soft sigh from Rocky’s vents, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the boneless slump that meant he was asleep.
I knew that when he was asleep, he was dead to the world, and couldn’t feel or hear me at all. I closed my eyes and kept humming for a little while longer.
It kinda scares me that there's nepo baby fandomites who've never ventured outside of their massive 70k+ Ao3 fanfiction spaces and always have 20k fics of their yaoislop right at their finger tips
Imagine with me for a moment what it's like to exist as a person who only reads MCU yaoi fanfiction. Or someone who is obsessed with Drarry or Wolfstar. To me, it's unfathomable. It's so alien. It's like peering into some great eternally unknowable eldritch horror and coming out of it frothing at the mouth and twitching on the floor
Wretched and revolting on all accounts. How one can live like this I will never understand. I hesitate before even calling a ship with 3 fics a rarepair. How one can complain about only 5k fics is beyond any line of rationale
So I ofc adore all of the art and fics about Grocky exploring each other’s bodies in the name of science while road tripping to Erid. That said, one thing that’s always in the back of my mind is that Rocky is an engineer, not a scientist. I feel like while he is extremely curious, he’s more likely to want to know just enough to know how something works, and then once he's reached that point he wants to move onto something new. Adrian, however, I do hc as a scientist, specifically a biologist (specifically specifically an ecologist but still).
What I'm saying is that I think Rocky learned exactly enough about Grace’s digestive system to understand how to keep Grace healthy and not a whit more (ew eating gross gross gross) and then one day he walks into Grace’s house in the biodome and Adrian has their claws fully in Grace’s mouth
damn i love this scene so much, it's probably one of my most favorite scenes from the original trilogy
i like that this is literally their next meeting after bespin (no idea what the comics say about this and honestly idrc), so for anakin the last thing he remembers is the shock and horror and disgust of his son upon realizing that darth vader is his father, as well as the fact that luke chose death over joining his side. then anakin tried to contact luke through force skype in the deleted scenes of rotj but luke ignores it, so when sidious tells vader that his son is going to find him he takes this information with skepticism — anakin had some time to come to terms with the fact that his son didn't want to be with him and saw him as the same monster that the rest of the galaxy saw him as
but here's the thing, luke also had this time to come to terms with the fact that his father is one of the most feared murderers in the galaxy, as well as to understand what his father's real situation is. and so when they finally meet on endor, luke just drops this bomb on anakin without any warning, and anakin just stands there silently, clearly shocked, because it's unprecedented for a jedi to try to bring a sith lord back to the light, it's a 'what does he mean there's still good in me??' sort of shock, because anakin has spent the last 20+ years of his life in self-loathing, guilt and regret, fully convinced that he has nothing but the dark side & sidious left and has no chance of redemption.
but luke just keeps talking and, in the end, anakin doesn't even have anything to say to that, he just awkwardly changes the subject and talks about luke's lightsaber and his skills and power, you know, the topics that are appropriate to discuss when you're a sith lord. and luke is like hey, no, we're not done with this conversation yet. and that 'come with me' is a parallel for both padme's plea on mustafar and anakin's own offer on bespin. i like that luke is being matter-of-fact in this scene, pointing out what happened in the past (anakin's own past when he still had that name, the fact that he couldn't destroy luke on bespin) and what luke is feeling now (the conflict and the remaining good that he can sense in anakin through their connection in the force) and even offering a way out of the situation, to leave with him; while anakin is just repeating what seems like a memorized mantra (''you don't know the power of the dark side'; 'i must obey my master'; 'it's too late for me'; 'if that is your destiny'; 'the true nature of the force')
it irritates me when people in the fandom claim that luke was just a naive optimist, that anakin's redemption was simply a miracle and that luke never had any reason to think that this was possible, only blind hope, when this scene literally exists. yes, luke is guided by love and hope, but not blind ones. the idealized image of anakin skywalker confronted with the demonized image of darth vader in esb, forced him to look at his father from a realistic perspective, to understand him as an actual person. so it's not like luke is guessing whether his father might return to the light or not, he knows for sure that it's possible, and he's willing to put his life on the line to make it happen. 'it's too late for me, son' is the last thing anakin says before calling the stormtroopers, because, strictly speaking, luke is right and anakin has nothing to counter his words with, but anakin is also not ready to admit it, yet. so he's just avoiding the conversation, entirely. he wants luke to give up on this crazy idea of bringing him back and he wants this while being the emperor's literal slave, leading luke to the same cruel fate as his own, because at least this way his son won't die
'then my father is truly dead' leaves anakin speechless, because here he is, completely convinced that he's stuck, defeated and his situation is beyond repair, facing his son who is disappointed in him because he thinks that way and because he's not ready to fight for it to get better. and luke says it and then goes up to the throne room to fight for his father's redemption anyway
i don't know, for all i got to say, i think luke skywalker is the coolest person ever
I'm working as the costume designer for a historical play this summer, but I'm also play a small role in a couple scenes. So while I don't spend a lot of time on stage, I hang around in the costume shop in most of my costume for most of the show. Usually I'm working on repairs, but when there aren't any...
I just had a moment where I realized that I was sitting in here, in my poofy poet sleeves and waistcoat, sweating from the lack of AC and hoping that another breeze will come through the open door, writing fanfiction out long-hand with a pen, and just felt a deep kinship with so many people in the past. Also the mild absurdity of writing fanfic about an alien and a human being bffs in space while I'm in knee breeches and just finished darning a sock.
