Writer | Mom and Wife | Classically-trained Introvert | Builder of Worlds | Wielder of Words | She/Her | "What if it's not a death? What if life just...begins again?"
Being an Eridian scientist has to be so funny. You train your entire life as a biologist, becoming specialized in your field, probably giving lectures or educational speeches to other Eridians, and then the star savior Rocky comes home with his weird pet dog. Your job is now to cultivate food so the weird dog who is the age of average baby doesn’t die. The dog also saved the stars. Your job is making dog food out of the dog. You also learn that you and the dog have the same job. You are the happiest scientist on Erid.
Y'all ever think of what the person responsible for Rocky's voice bank must've felt when those videos finally got to earth? Imagine doing a voice acting gig for a bank voice on a computer or whatever that you eventually completely forget about, only for it to one day come back to you when the FIRST intellectual alien lifeform that a human being has ever met decides to use it as their chosen voice. The mild horror. The exhilaration. The emotional punch. This is it. This is your magnum opus. You have given a human voice to a sentient rock and it will NEVER get better than this. Also, they picked you over MERYL STREEP?!?!
Grace knows that Rocky has PTSD after the, well, everything. They've been stuck together for four years. He knows.
He understands.
They arrive to Erid, and one of the first things Grace does is playing for Adrian a little speech he made in Eridian using his recordings of Rocky's voice. And it's just... instructions. Mostly.
"He has a lot of anxiety about people's health and will probably freak out about yours at some point, don't dismiss it and let him see that you are okay."
"He is terrified of being alone, please make sure someone is physically close to him at all times."
"He is scared of falling asleep and will delay it as long as he can, you need to pay attention to his sleep cycle or he'll be hurting himself."
"He downplays everything bad that is happening to him, mental and physical, please keep an eye on him or he'll be ignoring his health completely."
"He never gave up, but I might die very soon and I'm not sure how he will react to it. Please be with him, even when it's not easy. He loves you. He wanted to return to you so badly. Even though he probably has changed, this is still him. Please keep loving him. He needs it more than ever. He'll need it when I am gone."
...Adrian is very annoyed because a) the fuck do you mean by implying that I'll leave him, b) the fuck do you mean by implying you know him better than I do (Adrian does have to begrudgingly accept this one later: Grace is objectively more familiar with Rocky's trauma responses), and c) the fuck do you mean you're gonna die no one's letting you die shut up and get into the lab we have science to do. They become friends fast, bonding over worrying about Rocky together.
(Rocky is not sure he likes it, but has to admit he can finally feel safe with the both of them by his side.)
According to Andy Weir's Eridian biology document, Eridians are better multitaskers than humans will ever be, but the trade off is they're physically incapable of locking in. SO funny to me. Yes this species can build a diorama while simultaneously blitzing through mathematics equations and also partaking in intense gossiping, but they cannot do any of those things for longer than, like, half an hour without going crazy. Species of supercomputers cursed with the TikTok attention span.
Rocky mocks Grace when he says that Rocky is distracting him by starting complex conversations while he's Trying To Do Science. "Human brain have to stop activity just because talking question? Useless! One track mind!"
Then Grace is on hour six of his "trying to recreate skittles" hyperfocus and Rocky is like What The Fuck. Statement.
Yeah human brains can only do a single very consuming task at a time but it can do it for a very long time. The one track in our one track minds spans multiple countries. Persistence predators, babey.
Phm from Adrian's perspective is just what if you were Penelope and Odysseus came home but he also brought a jellyfish and keeps begging you to build a fish tank for the jellyfish and make jellyfish food for the jellyfish and youre an ancient Greek whos never seen a jellyfish and you cant even comprehend how your going to do it but youre going to because if you dont Odysseus may kill himself. And also the jellyfish can do like. Witchcraft.
Your partner came back from the dead after being missing for decades. Every one of their friends who they went with ended up dying a horrible death.
Now, somehow, their entire mental health is based on the continued life and happiness of this fairground goldfish that they picked up.
Neither of you know the first thing about how to care for even a healthy fish. This fish has been poorly cared for, has multiple diseases and the person who handed it over explicitly didn't expect it to live nearly as long as it already has.
You're frantically googling how to set up a fish tank, where to buy fish food, can you even take a fish to the vet? Your partner wants you to know that they're happy they made it home and survived their horrific ordeal, but also that if anything happens to the fish then they're going to kill everyone on this planet and then themself.
You're honestly wondering if you're even helping the fish, or just prolonging its suffering, but your partner will only accept medical help for their many injuries or engage in basic self-care once they're confident that the fish is being looked after.
So you get a tank. You set up a filter and all that stuff. You learn way more than you ever wanted to know about water temperature and ph and nitrate levels. The fish is safe. You start to develop some affection for the little guy. Your partner begins to recover. The fish begins to recover.
Which is when you learn that in its 'healthy' state, the fish regularly refuses to sleep when tired, keeps begging for food that is obviously unhealthy for it (and struggling to eat the food that you do provide because “it tastes gross”), and continually tries to persuade your partner to take it out of its nice safe tank so it can go explore the wonderful world of Outside, where the slightest mishap will kill it instantly.
Your name is Adrian, and you kind of wants to strangle this fucking fish, statement.
hit that ask box with a fic prompt if you feel like it.
I will write exclusively Holmes/Watson and choose prompts that tickle my fancy. It’s been a minute since I’ve felt excited about writing but @holmestice has helped that a little. I need more whimsy and silly detective smut in my life. 🤷🏻♀️
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
Every time we learn more about the cuts for OFMD S2, the more angry I get with the BS the studio pulled on them.
A summary of stuff that has been confirmed by cast and crew:
David confirmed that the episode cuts came when they were already well into the writing, which meant they lost over an hour of their planned timeline and story for the latter half of the season. He also said that it was incredibly frustrating that "things ended up at table-reads that wouldn't have normally got there" because of the cuts, condensing all the plot they had and rushed re-writes and didn't have the time to rework and polish things up the way they normally would. (TNUC panel)
Multiple tiny moments were cut from the reunion of the crew including Roach being the one to bring soup up to the break-up-boat crew, Izzy being offered soup and a towel and refusing both, and Olu latched onto Jim and crying on their shoulder. (Samba and Vico, plus David mentioned in passing to watch for who doesn't take the soup)
Zheng and Olu's set-up in the republic was cut back to the bone with other scenes filmed but cut during editing (set photos and Ruibo spoke about it at TNUC)
There was a lot more polycule stuff written and planned. Vico mentioned the scene where Jim going full badass about protecting her people and that Archie gave them an appreciative look and said "wet below deck" and Olu nodded and went "same". Jim and Archie being Olu's hype-man and encouraging him as well. (multiple mentions by Vico and Ruibo and others at cons and in articles)
Also Lucius and Pete's shaggathon (ie. that scene where they said "lol we had so much sex" while standing separately fully clothed) was originally going to be Olu/Jim/Archie, specifically at Calypso's birthday after Jim drunkenly threw a knife and nicked Olu. The patching up was meant to get extremely erotic. (Vico, again)
Zheng and Ricky were filmed in a scene together in the Republic, which would have set up how she knew who he was and why she targeted him (Photos from the set)
Jack was meant to be mentioned by Hornigold in the Innkeeper episode, which would have then tied into Fun and Games - and I swear I read/heard somewhere that it was meant to confirm that Jack, Ed, Mary and Anne were the OG polycule, but again, snip snip snip went the text.
Lucius and Pete's matelotage was meant to be front and centre in an episode, instead of slapped on in a 2 minute scene in the finale. I can't find where I read it now, but I think the guilt money was going to be spent on that.
Said episode was also going to be while Ed and Stede were trying to "take it slow" and the crew basically decided to give Stede a makeover to encourage things along because the Horny Yearning was too much for everyone. (Samba's Momentus)
Confirmation of Ed and Stede's first time being much more visibly intimate and romantic in the first draft, with slow dancing, kissing and ending up making out on the bed together before the fade out. (Script page confirmed by DJ on bsky in response to the You Only Frame Twice project)
Ricky was meant to get more development but with all the cuts, they didn't have time and had to speedrun the second half of the season. David was very frustrated with what a moustache-twirling villain he was compared to Badminton "who had legit beef with Stede". He also made it very clear he didn't blame Errol for it (TNUC panel).
In conclusion, thanks to the network's interference and cuts (led by Zaslav being a malicious anti-queer dickbiscuit who has cancelled 75% of HBO's queer shows since he took over as CEO) we lost so much character stuff, a whole mess of queer intimacy and pleasure, and the romance and intimacy we did get was snipped down to the bare minimum.
I remember reading the notes that Alex Hirsch got on Gravity Falls scripts and I can only imagine the level of Tombuggery that Zaslav and his cadre brought to the table.
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