Erid-Earth Galactic Federation When?

Yeah, the PHM brainrot's gotten pretty bad

[druid-for-hire]

His raincoat was never packed, because obviously he wouldn't need it in space—I wonder sometimes if Stratt held onto it for any amount of time.

Something something getting someone out of their shell & shucking clams?

[starlittirade]

I read something funny about rocky artificially increasing Graces lifespan and I wanted to doodle it ,,, okay that’s all

He’s so whimsical I love him

[stealthetrees]

Rocky should have an identical twin and they conspire to prank Grace so the twin goes to visit him pretending they’re Rocky but Grace instantly knows it’s not cause they’re different colors despite being the exact same shape and texture.

[foralittlewile]

Actually, on the note of Eridians being natural multitaskers (capable of both fully engaged conversations and complex tasks simultaneously), while humans are... Not Like That, I think the human habit of going on "autopilot" would also be totally foreign to them.

Rocky is having a conversation with Grace while he's furiously typing at the computer, going "Uh huh. Mm. Yeah." every time Rocky pauses. What a good listener Grace is today, Rocky thinks happily! No arguing, how unusual!

Then he tries to bring the topic back up later and Grace has NO IDEA what he's talking about. "Grace agreed when Rocky said this meeting was at a good time!" "What?! No I didn't, you literally never talked to me about this!" "ROCKY DID. THREE HOURS AGO. EARTH HOURS. GRACE MADE AGREEABLE HUMAN NOISES AND SAID YEAH. ROCKY OKAYED MEETING WITH GRACE PERMISSION. GRACE SETTING ROCKY UP, QUESTION?" Rocky briefly thinks maybe human memories ARE that bad — but no, Grace has never forgotten a conversation they've had in such a short timeframe before.

He is NOT happy to learn that humans are capable of certain pre-programmed responses that we can just... automatically do when our brains are elsewhere.

What do you MEAN you can fake an entire conversation without absorbing any of it? How does that even work? Why?? GRACE DIDN'T EVEN COMPREHEND WHAT ROCKY WAS SAYING. HOW can Grace give such convincing responses???? And JUST TO TRICK ROCKY INTO THINKING HE WAS LISTENING????!??!? FOR WHAT BENEFIT??????????????? WHY WOULD HUMANS EVOLVE THIS??!!??!!!!!

It sends him into a brief rage of demanding to know why human brains can't just function completely consciously on several levels "LIKE NORMAL," before begrudgingly admitting at least it's not as fucking creepy as sleeptalking.

[wastelandnaturalist]

So a fun thing about "autopilot" mode is that, in the moment, you're perfectly aware. It's how we can go from point A to B perfectly, performing all the stops and turns and whatnot without getting lost - the only difference is that since we've done this thing before so many times, our brains just. Decide to not remember this exact instance of it, to save energy and space.

I saw an interview with Andy Weir where he talked about how Eridians don't have spatial awareness like we do. Like - if I close my eyes right now, I can still tell where I am. I know, without looking behind me, that there's a wall there, that there's a door, and that outside the door there's a hallway. We evolved this because, well, we only have two eyes, and they're both pointing in the same direction. We don't have a 360° view of our surroundings, so we *need* to remember said surroundings at all times to be able to move about freely.

Since Eridians are always receiving sound input in their carapace sensors, they just. Didn't need to evolve that. They don't need to spend this much energy to create a full 3d render of their space inside their head, like we do. This also means that if you shove an Eridian into a soundproof room, they will be pretty much thrown into a black void of sensory deprivation nothingness and probably have a panic attack and an existential crisis at once.

This comes back to one of the biggest differences between Eridians and Humans - brain capacity in regards to our senses. Eridians don't have your classic 5 senses, they have 4. Without the need to compute and store information gained from sight, their brains have evolved to be Really Good at other things - while our brains are a bit more bogged down by all the sensorial input. Which is why we need our autopilot mode and things like that! To conserve space and memory.

In the end, I love how we are just as advanced as Eridians are, but... in different areas. Sure, their brains are practically a walking calculator, but you have blind humans walking around and living their lives normally, even though sight is quite literally our Main Sense (which is why I believe 'deafness' to Eridians is pretty much a death sentence).

[foralittlewile]

Yes! The spatial awareness thing is another fun detail I love! Obviously this fandom loves to joke about Eridians deriding our bad memories, but the truth is our memories just function differently. We can close our eyes and picture whole environments we've been in; Eridians can't. They can remember the exact workings and solution for an equation once they've done it the first time (which, btw, if they haven't done the math before it takes them just as much processing time as us); we can't.

Also, the concept that for humans, it's relaxing to float in a sensory deprivation tank, whereas for Eridians that is the WORST kind of panic-inducing torture... lol.

[morallygrayautisticscientist]

Rocky: *tries to sneak back into the house early in the morning*

Adrian, turning around on a spinning chair to face the door: Rocky want tell Adrian where been all night question?

Rocky: Rocky…Rocky with Grace all night.

Grace, turning around on another spinning chair: Want to try again?

Rocky:

Rocky: Well 🎵🎶🎶.

[bitty-bean]

Book Grace ily

[darkestbrook]

I like to think Grace has 3 different classes that he teaches on Erid:

A pretty bog standard science class for children, it just has the fun twist of being taught by and having the perspective of an alien who perceives the universe differently. This one lasts however long most Eridian "grade levels" last. The kids who get into this class are half advanced students who are nominated for it, and half picked from a lottery system (by Grace's insistence)

An advanced course only for Eridian professionals and scientists that specifically focuses on the human understanding of physics, biology, and astronomy. This is basically meant to try to fill in the gaps in Eridian science that human science can fill. The equivalent of a university course in length.

A one lecture seminar about the basics of Earth, it's life, and humans as a species for the general population. Literally anyone can attend this one, and he does them so often that while demand is high it's not too hard to get a spot in.

[searchingforserendipity25]

'ryland grace has no close human relationships on earth' do you know how hard it is to have a standing weekly date with a friend for YEARS. that's crazy. that's amazing. marissa and grace going out every thursday is what modern devotion is made of. marissa phm i am holding you in the palms of my hands.

[daredevil-vagabond]

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

At some point on the journey back to Erid, Rocky gets around to asking Grace exactly why he was so mesmerised by seeing the astrophage in the Petrova line.

Grace describes it as best he can, but all he can really manage to get across to Rocky is that he was surrounded by small floating lights.

Later on, Grace is talking about the stars and how important they've been to human cultures for millennia. “What do the stars look like, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, y'know, they're a bunch of small floating lights.

There's a disco ball on the Hail Mary. Grace says it's there because it “makes me happy”. “How does it make Grace happy, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, it creates the illusion that he's surrounded by small floating lights.

Rocky begins to do some research.

Glitter: a substance invented by humans to make things look like they're covered in small lights.

Human jewellery: mostly involves gemstones or polished metals, designed to reflect small lights.

Christmas lights. Candles. Lanterns. Fireworks. Glowsticks. Glow in the dark paint. Rocky is beginning to notice a pattern here, statement.

It takes Grace a fucking while after getting to Erid to notice that a lot of the gifts he's receiving from grateful Eridians are either a) sparkly, b) incredibly shiny, or c) fitted with lights.

While the last one is obviously a concession for his human light sense, he's confused about the former two. Are Eridian materials usually this shiny? Is there some quality about sparkly or highly polished surfaces that makes them sound better? Or is there something about Eridian geology/metallurgy that makes their materials like this?

He asks Rocky about it.

“Simple. I tell people humans like lots of small lights. Humans are easy to make happy.”

Grace kind of wants to protest that humans are much more complicated than that.

But honestly… it fucking works. Like yeah the polished gemstones, shiny metals and glittery rocks are beautiful. Yes those Christmas lights you put up around the house did markedly improve my mental health, Rocky. Thank you, I hate it.

Grace spends a lot of time trying not to think about whether his species' urge to explore the cosmos (that saved their planet and nearly killed him several times) is tied to the same instinct that made his students like glitter gel pens.

[ryan-fluff]

rocky's crew died because of radiation poisoning, something humans have studied so extensively grace was able to recognize it in a second. grace's crew died because nobody was watching them sleep, something eridians do for each other naturally

[prismaprimrose]

Eva, world famous polyglot watching Grace pick up an entirely alien language in six month on the Vlogs after she dragged him all over the world for four years, having people speak English for his benefit, and translating for him while listening to him whine and winge about his own TeRrIbLe PrOnOuNcIaTiOn, knowing full well now he probably understood what everyone was saying around him just fine after six months, actually: Better stay up there...

Dimitri: What was that?

Eva in perfect Russian, glaring at the screen, Grace and Rocky having an arguement she can only understand half of: I said he better stay up there.

[queerfables]

I love that Grace says he and Rocky "haven't run into anything where our cultures clash" while they're actively navigating two pretty major points of difference. From Grace's perspective, being watched in your sleep is sort of unnerving; for Rocky it's imperative. From Rocky's perspective, eating is taboo and private; for Grace it's a casual, social activity. When Grace says they haven't run into any culture clashes, he's just woken up to Rocky watching him and now he's eating breakfast. It's obviously not true that they have no conflicts in their social norms! It's just that they instinctively accommodate each other with curiosity and empathy, finding ways to bend on the things that matter to each other and explain when something is really important to themselves. Grace has spent his life holding other people at arm's length, and then in Rocky he meets someone who makes him want to do the work, and that work becomes so natural he doesn't even realise he's doing it.

[its-timego]

Imagine the surreal insanity of being Irina Petrova and just hanging out having a hobby that you're very intense about and then you notice something weird and then all at once your name is one of the most uttered in history, by total accident. In the movie universe they describe her as a "radio telescope enthusiast" she does not even do this professionally. And suddenly everything is Petrova line, Petrova frequency, Petrova wavelength, Petrovascope, Petrova Task Force, Petrova problem. And you're like man. I have a day job.

[wildminti]

This deleted scene killed me 😂 Imagine 4 years of this. Sleepover of all time LMAOOO

[asteronomical]

eridian students: savior grace! what is savior rocky to you?

grace: he's the reason i wake up every morning :)

eridian students: aww!

[earlier]

rocky, banging on grace's door: GRACE WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP NOW

[sam-sometimes-wise]

I worked laughably hard on this