Haphazard Brilliance @elfpen - Tumblr Blog

if it's any consolation, you'll be hailed as a hero

Okay wait, I know that there are only so many stars specifically within plausible visiting distance (on a human lifespan) that we also think could have habitable exoplanets to namedrop in sci-fi, but was anyone going to tell me that Erid supposedly orbits the exact same star as Vulcan or was I supposed to read that in the "In Fiction" tab of the Wikipedia page for the 40 Eridani system myself.

astriiformes

Actually wait, you all deserve to see the swerve I made in the groupchat the minute I discovered this:

theereboseffect

pale blue dot

vampirejuno

Can you imagine being stuck in space completely alone with only the corpses of your friends for company, and the first living thing you meet after 46 years of that misery is a fucking weird alien creature who just rolls up with crazy advanced tech and goes "hi let's work together" and makes it possible for you to save your world through the power of friendship and molecular biology. AND THEN you find out that in this creature's language, its name means "mercy". Happened to my good friend Rocky btw

purpldology

Do you think he got the job?

snuffysbox

guy tied to the tracks and his best friend, the trolley operator

hayleywilliamsfan84

i keep laughing at the way that eridian culture in the movie and eridian culture in the book are not contradictory at all, if you accept that movie rocky is just a total FREAK

grace: boy i sure can't wait to meet other eridians haha! rocky, putting on a shirt for the first time in four years: rocky has something to tell grace but does grace promise not to be mad, question?

autisticlittleguy

"Grace Ryland is Rocky's dog" is such a funny fucking dynamic when you think about it

Eridians are further behind than humans technologically right? They dont have computers, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. In fact, Eridians probably dont even know about the Big Bang because their atmosphere would filter out most of the cosmic microwave background radiation we use to detect it. On a human timeline, theyre anywhere between like early-mid 20th century. Rocky's basically a cosmonaut.

So the human civilization is pretty advanced from Rocky's perspective. Rationally he understands this. On a conceptual level he knows this to be true.

But at the same time... imagine youre one of the first ever cosmonauts to make it into space. Then you meet a 10 year old alien dog who cant do 2+2 without pulling out its calculator. It forgets everything constantly and has to keep notes everywhere, like it basically lives in Memento (2000). Also if it doesnt nap constantly it gets even stupider. And you somehow has to reconcile this with the fact that this dog has a better understanding of physics than your entire civilization does. Like the dog knows how the universe started.

keydekyie

"It would have been easier if you'd just said yes."

original

huanggugugu

thats illegal people cant do that

bourbonciel

party

penny-anna

honestly funny to me that project hail mary stars Ryan Gosling bcos like imagine being an alien and the first human you meet is Ryan Gosling. im imagining Rocky trying to figure out how physical attractiveness works for humans (u know out of scientific curiosity) and while trying to get a fix on it being like 'Grace considered attractive??' and Grace is like nooo not really I'm pretty regular.

& then later in the event of making contact w other humans Rocky being like 'so that was a fucking lie'