Cats Can't Draw

(but I can) a side blog for all of my art || she/they ||https://www.twitch.tv/dollyblueplays|| sideblog of JustKindofThingShaped || https://artfight.net/~KindofThingShaped

[cats-cant-draw]

I just ate paper, am I gonna die? 🥲

[cats-cant-draw]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Another chapter be upon ye!

Including a light study I did of a screenshot, I hope to have better sketches later for some scenes, but for no I need some time lol

[the-kestrels-feather]

When you and your best friend agree to watch all 9 of your adopted siblings bc you guys thought it wouldn't be that hard :)

Spot, Firestar, and the Rockdrisn pebbles are mine, and Duck, Soap, Shoomy, Big Blue, and Zoeye all belong to @cats-cant-draw, I hope i did your babies justice!

Below the cut os me rambling about why I grouped who I did with who for anyone curious!

Gracie (blue Pebble riding on Spot, uses they/them pronouns) would get along with everyone tbh bc they're the ':D' emoji personified, but every time I draw Spot hanging out with Rocky and Adrian's pebbles I draw Gracie on Spot, so we're keeping that tradition up

Mars (red Pebble with Soap, uses He/they pronouns) is super chill and laid back so I think he and Soap would get along really well

Starry (snowflake obsidian looking Pebble, uses they/them pronouns) isn't fully mute, but they hardly ever talk, so I think they and Shoomy would have a lot of common ground. Rosie (the very animated pink Pebble, uses she/they pronouns) is Starry's closest friend, she's the only one who can get them to talk, but they also know how to communicate with a non-verbal Eridian, so I think Rosie would latch onto Shoomy too!

@/cats-cant-draw made a joke about Duck desperately wanting to be friends with Crash (gray speckled Pebble hanging off Firestar, uses he/him pronouns) and Celeste (blue sharp pointy crystal like Pebble, uses She/her pronouns) because the two of them crave CHAOS, so how could I draw Duck with anyone else? I like to think the three of them would love getting into shenanigans together :D

Anyways I just really wanted to draw all of them together after Rockfight and the Eridian Class picture, they're all friends 🥺🥺

[cats-cant-draw]

Eeeeeeee!!!! Give the babies a playdate!!!! Lookit them all!!

(the babysitters will be well paid for their suffering, be that in money, education discounts or access to designer fashion, or anything else these poor exhausted rocks can give

[natjennie]

I really love all of the headcanons about rocky essentially accidentally teaching grace baby-talk as pidgin aboard the hail mary and has to re-learn real eridian.

but now I'm emotional about a version of this where like. I think eridian as a language wouldn't really change based on memory failing as it's passed down but cultural phenomena and evolutionary anatomical changes and new research and understanding of concepts in the wake of the astrophage crisis etc etc would definitely impact it. so I'm thinking about a rocky who touches down on his home world with not a clue what anyone is talking about and he's trying desperately to pass on this information about how to save grace and he's giving them all the resources he can but it's just out of his hands because he can't connect and communicate in the same way. he thinks well if he can't get his melody to make any sense maybe he can thrum, maybe he can feel and think and will them to take what's in his brain and make it happen, make everything okay, but oh god what is that nails on a chalkboard horrible cacophony oh mothererid make it stop make it stop. and so he cries and wails and begs for adrian and finally they come and of course he would know adrian's carapace with his auricles shut but their song is.. different. now. it's hollower and more resonant, higher pitched where time has worn their voiceboxes smooth and the words they use swim in rocky's brain and he whines and trills and scratches at the xenonite barrier because grace is the only one who understands him now and he's DYING and what is he supposed to do.

and then eventually even when they all do figure out how to communicate and grace is healing and rocky can breathe again, the isolation and the oxygen exposure has affected his voiceboxes and his audio processing more than he realized when it was just him and grace and he's got so much human slang and references in his repertoire now and adrian puts so much effort into understanding his choppy outdated and wavering tones with a sort of earth lilt they have no reference for and he loves them for it and grace is. grace is picking up real full-fledged eridian with no problem. his pentatonic keyboard keeps up with ease and rocky.. can't. he's understanding better and better every day, eridian brains outmatch humans on recall by leaps and bounds, but humans are adaptable. 4 years of chopped and screwed simplifications becomes like 2 years of intentional study surrounded by native speakers and grace is a natural. and rocky is stuck with a brain that is completely caught up but easily overwhelmed auricles and a fragile crystalline database and a larynx that is physically incapable of making all the right tones.

[cats-cant-draw]

Rounding out my art fight wrap up with the GlitterBomb art!!

I'm so delighted about the art I've gotten for these babies!!!

[cats-cant-draw]

So much utterly charming art of Dolly, Mu and Liesel!

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So much utterly charming art of Dolly, Mu and Liesel!

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Now that Art Fight is drawing to a close, I get to share all the amazing attacks my babies have gotten! I didn't expect to receive even close to this many! Especially since it's my first art fight ever!

[cats-cant-draw]

[cats-cant-draw]

Now that Art Fight is drawing to a close, I get to share all the amazing attacks my babies have gotten! I didn't expect to receive even close to this many! Especially since it's my first art fight ever!

[freckle-craft]

Eridian dance mass attack!

You can see the whole video here (I learned tweening to do this lol)

But I wanted to include the individual gifs (which unfortunately had to be squished for tumblr) here so the oc owners can each have their own!

[nexus-nox]

Grace asp telling Rocky that he used to sleep under/stay up all night watching the stars.

Rocky losing decades of stress and tension when he realizes Grace has been watching over his sleep the whole time, that all of earth has.

Humans have been watching the stars since the dawn of their species, it’s a part of who we are. Not a single Eridian has ever slept without a human, somewhere far away, keeping watch.

[justkindofthingshaped]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 2, ready to go!

Trying to get inside Grace's head was surprisingly fun, that man's brain is running six trains of thought at once and all of them keep derailing!

[cats-cant-draw]

"how Grace not notice whole 🎶🎶🎶 planet, question?"

Good question Rocky

[casisashadow]

Coltland Gentry universe, Stratt's sent Ryland off to space (she did NOT know he had a twin and an older brother) and she randomly catches some interview with Colt on tv while she's in prison and her heart just fucking SINKS when he mentions his twin brother being involved with 'cool space science stuff' because the likelihood of a man that looked EXACTLY like the world's sacrificial lamb having a scientist twin was...slim to none. and she's not stupid, she can see the expressions he makes and there's no way it could be anyone else. right down to the nose scrunch when he laughs.

she makes a few calls, Colt finds out what happened to Ryland (in a 'sanitized for the public' way), and then *whoops* Sierra fucking Six is kidnapping her from prison and demanding real answers about his baby brother. Eva Stratt, for the first time, has Regrets.

[cats-cant-draw]

Ooooooooooo your braiiiinnnn

[cats-cant-draw]

Haven't been working on my writing much lately, partially because of artfight, but also partially writers block, then I got @idgabuck 's blessing to write a MedClinic Au fic, and suddenly over put down 5k words in two hours.

Thank you for your magic space yaoi prompts , I love you Robyn

[goldenaltar]

concept: no astrophage au where eridians and humans still make first contact but like, properly. a whole diplomatic mission meeting in the middle of space to save travel time. stratt is humanity's greatest representation. the eridian equivalent is equally as scary and secretly soft. it's all very star trek.

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

cut to grace curled up with rocky while he sleeps like a baby.

[cats-cant-draw]

Week four wrap up! I think I'm pretty much done for this year, it was a fun first experience with Art Fight