feeling very normal about phm

[annabelle--cane]

I think eva stratt has detailed files on all petrova taskforce personnel that contain more information about their subjects than the subjects even know about themselves. several people in her employ have mild food allergies that she noted and had cut out of their diets via requests to the catering staff but that the people themselves have never consciously noticed, ilyukhina just thought she stopped getting regular stomach aches when she arrived on the vat because she's god's specialest engineer and not because all the dairy in her diet got swapped out for alternatives. grace does some shopping on the mainland at one point and doesn't realize he bought a different scent of moisturizer than usual so stratt just goes into his room and switches it with a hypoallergenic formula in an identical bottle. this is because she has never been normal about anything in her life.

[inkk-splatters]

the phm fandom is trying to get me with eridian question particle but as a music person and a linguistics person i am not going to fall for it

(long post ahead) (take it with a grain of salt! i said music person and linguistics person am i an expert??? by no means! i just mean that i have studied both to a degree at which i can. make up things about aliens with them)

i most recently read a fic that didn't seem to know what declension was called, gave grace perfect pitch (even if he's using a reference tone, perfect relative pitch is also insane and i simply will not believe that a guy who does not by any appearances seem to ever have been formally trained in music knows jack shit beyond the difference between major and minor chords ok), and decided that all tones used in eridian speech align with notes used in western music. which is like probably true from a canon???? standpoint that i don't particularly care about because a not-formally-trained-in-music grace is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between 440 and 450 hertz WHILE he is trying to do other things and also remember what the goddamn word means. especially when this is layered on top of many other notes, which brings me to

i think eridian grammar is harmonically rather than melodically complex! obv i use harmonically loosely etc etc but going by vibes i think eridians should be able to identify about six or seven (pause) notes played at once. humans? it gets pretty fucking hard past three, especially if those three are not in a familiar chord. ask me how i fucking know.

i'm not a biology guy someone else can figure out how they make all these sounds but given that they can also say six or seven (pause) notes at the same time without excessive effort, it makes sense for their grammar to just stack words on top of each other in time rather than put them all in sequence. assuming that each eridian word is a (series of) chords, that's what a little more than two words you can actually say at once? just to make grace's life harder i think they would also intertwine their words in time, like imagine latin poetry intertwined word order but they're doing that with syllables. caesura (i'm gonna call it that because i'm sorry what the fuck else am i gonna call it (i'm probably latining too hard on eridian but i don't care i'm allowed to do shit???)), in this case the place where a word ends without having already begun another word, in the middle of speech serves a grammatical purpose i haven't decided yet but it does not necessarily mark the end of a clause or sentence. that would be boring.

but yeah, with that, rocky is not at all speaking the way he normally does with grace. eridians with hearing disabilities must exist this has gotta be at least a little bit similar to how you talk to them. rocky does words separated in time to roughly follow english word order for grace!

you know how we can drop certain notes from certain chords (in western harmony) and have them still be the same. eridians do this in casual speech. just for funsies

mmm now let's think about eridian music

(if grace ever introduces human music to eridians, i would like to think that there is some old ass composer telling everyone i-told-you-so about non-chord tones <333 let me imagine ok)

most modern eridian music is rhythmically complex, often breaking up chords of words in unfamiliar ways and also definitely doing shit that would be hell to notate for me personally

listening to traditional eridian song-poetry is to listening to regular eridian speech as like. reading classical chinese to reading present-day (simplified) mandarin. maybe. this is not a great analogy but shoot me for not being able to come up with anything better on short notice ok. the song-poetry must follow certain rules of harmony (heh. eridian counterpoint....) and rhythm, which means that word order goes the fuck out the window and we see a lot more word forms that are not typically used in speech, plus because i have so much love for particles those are also used to clarify things that cannot otherwise be understood just from the word forms, i.e. things that would usually be expressed by word order, and they sound kind of like grace notes (yes i think i'm very funny) in human music because those are not policed by the rhythm rules.

prior to grace's arrival on erid there was already a musical style that used harmony in a way that didn't form words (i would not compare this to atonal music for humans, but i suppose you could try to say that if you wanted to, but it's really. it's really not what i'm imagining), but it was unpopular until grace. all his students love it. i think vibes-wise actually it's probably a bit like penis music if penis music also had lyrics that almost sound like real words but are gibberish. like if penis music and prisencolinensinainciusol (the song with lyrics that sound like english but are gibberish) had a baby. there's some subgenre that sounds like if the baby was raised by skibidi toilet. all-natural eridian brainrot, kids.

[caelusiskool]

Some scenarios inspired by this post from @katrandomwrites !

Presentations:

Be nice.. its my first time drawing anyone but grace.. (and stratt)

Might do more LMAO these were so fun to draw!

Im specifically looking at the sleeping lap board grace.. maybe! 👀

[unicafavorita]

Ryland Grace would have the craziest authors notes. "Hello, guys. Sorry I haven't updated in 11 years I just got sent to space and I didn't know they put me in a coma. Anyway, here's chapter 23. I hope you enjoy :)"

[cloudabserk]

comforting head bonk to make up for my feeble human lifespan

[starrose17]

Their reactions to him trying to give them reasons not to go fascinate me. Makes me think about Carl's last words to him "You know who you are." The problem is, Grace DOESN'T know who he is, but everyone else does. That's why they all look so confused. They all believe in him, they know how smart he is, they all know he can do this, but Grace doesn't.

[rias-favorites]

We NEED to talk about this scene because it shape-shifts when you watch the movie a second time???

On your first viewing, when Grace leaves the party to join Stratt on the deck, you’ve been following Grace's POV for the whole movie. You can feel how he's trying to break the ice and connect with Stratt via humor: "Permission to come aboard, captain?🫡"

And Stratt being Stratt kills the joke immediately: "You’re already aboard." And by killing that joke she also kills his attempt at connecting with her. That's her thing. You feel it in the knock-knock scene and you feel it here because Grace is feeling it. He stammers and he's nervous ("Talk too much, that's my problem, like right now"). His attempt at human connection is painfully unrequited (again).

When you finish the movie, you learn, however, that that is not true at all. You hear Stratt's voice crack when she has to do what she has to do, and you realize how her carefully constructed armor fractures because of him. He is not nothing to her.

And when you (inevitably) watch the movie again, and your POV is not limited to Grace's anymore but you can shift your view to Stratt ever so slightly, then suddenly the whole connecting-via-jokes business drops away to make room for the metaphorical meaning of "coming aboard".

"It is okay to be in your space? Am I allowed to be closer to you?"

And her answer?

He is already in her space, behind her defenses, and he doesn't even realize it (blissfully unaware about SO many things in fact). He is asking to be allowed inside the house while standing in the damn living room.

Of course watching a movie a second time will always deepen your understanding of the characters, but it's remarkable that Stratt's answer does not just gain a more differentiated level of meaning. Instead, it is transformed into it's opposite, from a very clear "I am not letting you in" to an equally clear "You've come in uninvited a long time ago", and both can be true at the same time!

God, the writing in this movie is KILLING ME

[rakel-on-ao3]

so hey am I losing or was the decision to put movie!Grace in glasses a natural extension of the movie's visual language that makes use of both physical and metaphorical barriers to distinguish between foreground and background?

you know how the movie goes out out of its way to shoot scenes through Rocky's xenonite where so many other movies would have rationalised away anything that blocks the field of view as a waste of time and money? the movie where they hired fabulously handsome character actor Ryan Gosling to be the only human on screen for massive parts of the movie and they said yes, let's put glass in front of his face, and then another layer of glass in front of his face, and then they got weird camera lenses and included so many instances of refracted, prismatic light to remind us that we are seeing things through glass, and that there are barriers keeping us separate, barriers keeping us alive, barriers letting us see the world differently, barriers to be broken so we can reach out and touch

what the fuck where they smoking when they made this movie

[autumnalfallingleaves]

I finally finished my Grace amigurumi to accompany my Rocky! :D He ended up being really difficult, as I had to make a pattern from scratch and ended up having to rework a lot of it as I went. He also looks a little over-beard-y, but whatever, I'm not going back and fixing it lol. There's also a wire shoved through his head, neck, and chest because his head was too floppy 😭

He's also got his Rocky handprint scar! It doesn't show up well in the pictures unfortunately :(

I also gave him ace and aro rings :3 If you look closely, you can see the white band on the left hand :33

And, of course

Bump: fisted 👎

[minart-was-taken]

Can I buy a Rocky from you? He’s PERFECT

Aah I appreciate that a lot! But I made this guy just for me. I've also been asked for a pattern, which... Sorry guys, I freestyled this thing 😅 I've never actually used a pattern, they didn't teach that in art school.

However I did draw a little something, so if you know the double crotchet stitch(?), how to swap colours, the magic circle and basic sewing... u can copy my approach o7

Note: There will be a lot of yarn-ends poking out, just push them inside the plushie. Out of sight out of mind. Ps. If you're an experienced crocheter, feel free to share your knowledge on how you'd done things instead! I'm really curious and want to learn :] Written guide below for accessibility

What I used: 5 colours of yarn, Beige, brown, metal grey, aquamarine, turquoise Sewing needle Crotchet hook (Make sure your yarn and hook are compatible in size) Big sewing needle 2 colours of thread Dark brown, dark turquoise _

The pieces:

First I crotcheted a brown semi-flat circle, giving it just a little roundness to not look weird with the top. Then I swapped colours and built a dome on top. When the dome was nearly finished, I stuffed it with fluff, then closed it.

Then I made the three vents, two shorter and one longer for the middle. Each one is a simple worm-y shape of brown that I then surrounded by swapping colour to beige.

The legs were made with a magic circle of beige that I then built down like a tube. After that I swapped to brown and built a more flat bottom. Also stuffed before finishing.

The grey joint parts were made with the magic circle too but I left a big hole in the middle for easier stringing.

The toes look bad and my method kept changing, just find a triangle tutorial. Be smarter than me.

The mate mark is just a circle, I swapped the colour to build a lump next to it.

Attaching it all:

Sew on the vents, Rocky canonically doesn't have a front but in case your human heart yearns to imagine one, this is a great way to establish where it is.

"String" the leg pieces together for each leg using yarn. Start by tying a knot at the top of the biggest piece, and then push the needle through the rest so it exits at the top.

Once you have the leg pieces ready (you can sew the toes on now or later,) you can use the crotchet hook to pull the yarn in and out of the body. This way you can test the leg positions before committing. Once you're happy with their locations you can do whatever feels right with the yarn to attach them securly... I don't know, I just. Did a bunch of stuff.

Once everything was securely attached I finished the plushie with sewing on the mate mark.

Hold Rocky gentle like a hamburger

[neverendingfanart]

Yeaaaah I’m back.

For these two.

[likelightinglass]

Part 1

[cloudabserk]

gracie

[bluemuffin-draws]

Lab Etiquettes with Dr. Grace and Rocky

[critter-of-habit]

Nap time

[katrandomwrites]

Grace finds a phone tucked in a random maintenance hatch a couple years into the Erid trip and starts laughing so hard he's crying because the pictures and videos folder is full of Vat shenanigans.

--

Shapiro drowning in Dubois’ EVA suit. Dubois with Shapiro's suit taped to him and her helmet balanced on top of his head

Grace looking at the camera confused while the core time circle around him like the one girl surrounded by five guys meme

Stratt reclined on a couch looking demure with a coffee mug and using Grace's legs as a lap board for her tablet. Grace is dead asleep, obviously snoring with his mouth wide open and covered in reports. His glasses are on Stratt's head.

Carl walking by the camera with Grace thrown over his shoulder. Grace is visibly pleased and yapping.

Illyukhina walking by the camera with Grace thrown over her shoulder. Grace looks vaguely ill.

Yao passionately doing karaoke with each of the core staff members.

Lamai asleep on a prototype coma bed.

Steve Hatch maternity shoot with the Beatles.

Grace and Dimtri using a centrifuge to make butter.

Grace and Dimitri getting yelled at by Lokken for using a centrifuge to make butter.

Dubois carrying Grace and Shapiro under each arm to the cafeteria. They all are talking like this is a normal occurrence.

Yao hanging upside down from a simulator that glitched with a straight face while Illyukhina is crying laughing on the floor below him.

Compilation video of the world's greatest minds dropping tools, tripping, and running into the glass walls.

Videos of the astronauts defeatedly drifting away from the mock ship in the buoyancy tank after losing their grip. The others are dramatically reaching out for them.

Redell teaching the Russians about New Zealand bombing dives in the training pools.

Shapiro, in formal wear, standing next to a slideshow titled “How I Cloned and Replaced the World Leaders”

Dubois - “My Alien Seduction Tactics"

Grace - “Middle Schooler vs Scientist”

Dimitri - “Using the Incorrect Equipment for Correct Results"

Hatch - “Yoko Ono: First Contact?”

Lamai - “How Not to Use a Coma Robot”

Lokken - “Grace is an Idiot”

Leclerc - “The Ice Age and You”

Stratt - “Things I DO NOT Have Time For”

Carl - “Securing a Home Depot for Idiots”

Yao - “Worst Times to Make a Joke”

Illyukhina - "Benefits of Vodka in Space”

Reddell - “What I Did in 1989”

Illyukhina passed out on top of Dmitri (also passed out) surrounded by a minefield of bottles none of which are for alcohol.

Leclerc looking upset and holding a penguin plushy.

Horrible mishmash of memes from all over the world plus some homemade memes of various quality.

[galacticsabc]

Did a little screenshot study and then turned it into a phone lockscreen.

and oh hey! you can use it as a phone lockscreen too!