grace and rocky get to erid and both of them are hitting every eridian squarely in the uncanny valley because they've both absorbed so much of each other that they feel both too eridian and not eridian enogh. rocky faces in the direction he's paying attention to and it feels like he's trying to hide something, the way he and only he of the eridians seems to always be showing the same face of his carapace when he speaks to somebody. he speaks in metaphors that only make sense to somebody who understands light-based vision. his intonations are funny, rising on questions when they otherwise wouldn't, falling flat, his sarcasm goes to space dry and restrained and comes back with such force it almost feels like he's lying instead of joking sometimes.
and grace who is so alien, but reflects eridian mannerisms that they've never considered strange before but coming from a creature so soft and strange, it just doesn't feel right. grace who stomps his foot twice when he asks a question, and it rings out flat and dull instead of the strong, sharp sound of an eridian hand on the ground. grace whose voice is so alien, so one-note, so full of articulations that are sharp and round and everywhere in between, but who echoes the melodies of eridian poetry and music, sometimes on accident but sometimes perfectly in time with what rocky translates him as saying, and later, perfectly in time with his keyboard.
rocky and grace who mirror each other more similarly than they mirror their own cultures. who speak to each other in a strange pidgin eridian that nobody else quite understands fluently. who share jokes from movie and tv shows from earth filtered through eridian folktales, plays, and musicals until they only make sense to the two people who know both cultures. they're not strange to each other, but it puts other eridians on edge. even adrian, at first. they've changed each other, you see.
Grace and Rocky, giving a tour of the Hail Mary to fascinated Eridian scientists and diplomats.
Pointing at things and explaining what they are and how the ship works, lots of awed and appreciative noises are made.
Until one of the visiting Eridians points out a specific item. “And that?”
It’s a strange, circular thing, a xenonite disk mounted upright on some sort of pivot so it can spin freely, but around the edges it has… spokes? Pegs? Sticking out of it, that hit against a stiff flap that would slow down the spinning.
It is also separated into sections decorated with crude etchings of a human and an Eridian.
“Ah,” Grace says.
“That,” Rocky says.
“That’s. Um.” Grace seems somewhat embarrassed. “That’s the sacrifice wheel.”
The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”
“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”
“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”
“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.
“Which made sense.”
“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”
“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”
Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”
“What about the wheel?”
Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.
It lands on Rocky again.
He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.
“Rocky!”
“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.
“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“
“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”
“But you WOULD have!”
“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”
“I would not! I would have done fine!”
(The Eridian scientists and diplomats are still here watching this btw. Slowly dawning on them that 1) these two are extremely not normal about each other 2) if Erid ever does another space mission they NEED to send a therapist aboard because this is what happens when they don’t)
i like when eridians describe grace in other-worldly, incorporeal, eldritch ways. that he's beautiful and terrifying at the same time. a horror you can't look away from because you don't want to miss a thing.
you can never get a clear listen to him. his primary sense node is covered in "hair" and the part that isn't is hidden by two crystals that refract sound waves in a pleasing but disorienting way. he covers his body in billowy cloth at all times. not snug and sensible and unobstructive like eridian coverings, but loose and layered, draped and flowing.
the most clear part of him are his internal organs. because yes, the alien's carapace isn't sound-proof. his single heart beats insistingly in his core, his lungs exchanging gas constantly, his long digestive tract always bubbling and contracting. his thorax is packed impossibly tight and it's all moving and singing.
and it shouldn't be possible, with how fragile he is, for that internal pressure to maintain. how does the thin membrane of his external organ (another horror that sends eridians reeling) keep it all contained? his "skin" is so easily pierced, cut, bruised, burnt, how does he not split open under his own mass?
when savior rocky first arrived home and described the environmental needs of his alien, the scientists thought he'd made a mistake in his frantic panic to get everything out. it isn't possible this being lives at such low atmospheric pressure, at half the gravity, and in a gas that's nearly double the weight of ammonia. in a gas so dangerous, so caustic. and if it does then how is it obligately terrestrial like rocky claims? shouldn't it fly or float instead? (and then to see it in the water, learning that it can float or sink at will.)
and this alien has come bearing gifts that will not only save your species but launch it into impossible heights of technological and intellectual advancement. he has discovered the solution to astrophage and bred it to thrive on threeworld and translated his instructions into eridian. he has given your people the complete sum of his people's knowledge, advanced in ways the eridians can't believe and behind in ways that seem ludicrous. and he has given his life for your people to have these things.
he knows how your solar system was formed. he knows how the universe started.
his name means beautiful and generous and relieving.
Saw this rock at the World Museum in Liverpool and thought it was very Adrian coded. Wish I’d taken a photo of its description because I can’t remember what it is
yknow. i really appreciate ryan gosling's commitment to keeping the canon Grace reaction of just fucking crying the entire time. it's in character, and it's like, an extremely realistic reaction to the situation at hand. But. from most actor's ive heard (both irl friends and interviews from professionals) have bemoaned crying scenes in film, because it can be very draining and give you a splitting headache to do multiple takes etc etc. So they could have dialed it back and saved the tears for the more poignant moments. but no. they clearly went fuck it, we're committing. Grace is a Crier. here. have him crying in happiness, sadness, despair, terror, relief, disbelief, overwhelming joy. Have some heaving sobs. have some single tears. oohhh this man is gonna Cry about it.
so grace is probably alarming to most eridians at first because he's a lanky wet alien with too few limbs, yes--but what if he ends up being terrifying in a sort of divine way instead of a repulsive one?
like. a creature that perceives the intangible? a creature that walks with thin permeable membranes bared to the air, whose blood contains elixir that can destroy pathogens without heat? a creature that is impossibly fragile yet resilient? a creature that breathes potently flammable gas to survive? a creature that is loud all over and speaks in a strange and frightening monotone, who thought it would die for you? who gave up its home in the heavens for you without meeting you first, whose first words to your people were probably something along the lines of We saved your star. It's gonna be okay. Don't be afraid.
Day 197/365 of listing something good I saw today:
I discovered that if you lose a game badly enough in the online magic the gathering, you get an achievement for it. I managed to get a screenshot of just how badly I got my ass beat:
For those who don't play, the numbers at the top and the bottom are my health and my opponent's health. Both players start with 20 health and the goal is to get your opponent's health down to zero. At the end of the game, my opponent had 189 health, and beat me right through the foundations of the earth, leaving me with -888 health. My previous record of how badly I got beat into the negatives was -43.
I'm so glad I managed to get a screenshot of that. An absolutely legendary pelting.
there is a screen reader / magnification program that is the only one the low vision clinic knows of with these features and it is $650 Canadian Dollars behind specific approved vendors that require you to be geographically close to them and get government approval of a degree that I am only just now reaching after being visually impaired for going on seven years. I feel normal about this
if you can code a program that does any or all of the following:
Magnifies a display beyond standard options with keyboard / mouse movement inputs or voice commands,
Can read text on the screen,
Has different color filter options for text / background distinction,
Can change and magnify the cursor beyond standard amounts,
Works on Windows or more than just Windows,
Has a keyboard echo (says the character you've pressed on the keyboard out loud)
... there is a genuine, GENUINE need for you to code this and put it at a more accessible price point than $650 Canadian Dollars which I also just learned is a SUBSCRIPTION FEE AND NOT EVEN PERPETUAL. if you are reading this and able to code I am begging you. would genuinely change lives
2087
janainaart
