what where am i

they/them

[idgabuck]

Do you think Grace sees Rocky stretch one day on the Hail Mary and he says out loud without thinking “biiiggg stretch!” And Rocky is like “what’s big stretch mean. Question? Why Grace say that?” And Grace has to explain that humans have furry creatures they keep as pets and whenever they stretch, humans say that and Rocky remembers it. It becomes a problem when Grace is stretching and he hears Rocky say “Grace do biiiiggg stretch. Statement.”

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Okay, so there's a scene in Project Hail Mary (book) not long after Grace and Rocky meet when Grace leaves to sleep while Rocky is absent from their tunnel and leaves the amount of time he'll be gone taped to the wall between them in popsicle sticks. Grace then oversleeps and is gone more than two hours longer than he said he would be. He wakes up and Rocky is tapping on their divider wall loud enough to be heard in the crew quarters and he's very upset when Grace reappears, hitting the wall and the numbers and pointing to his clock and shaking his fist. And the first time I heard that I went "lil guy why are you so impatient" but after hearing the rest of his story it hit me:

Rocky lost his entire crew to an unknown illness and has been alone in space for forty six years. Lil guy wasn't impatient he was freaking frantic that something had happened to the only other being he'd met in the past fifty years and relieved and understandably worked up when Grace reappeared and was just fine but oh my word, can you imagine? You've been alone for so long and you don't even know what killed your crew or why you survived and you finally, finally meet another person and they leave you a note for when they're gonna be back AND THEN THEY DON'T SHOW UP ON TIME?! where are they question?! are they okay question?!

And all you can do to ask, "hey are you okay over there question?!" is bang on the wall between your two ships and HOPE that this person you met didn't just die or have a horrible accident. FOR TWO HOURS. Headcanon that those two hours were when Rocky came up with the idea for the zenonite ball so he could come into the Hail Mary because he HAD to be able to make sure Grace was okay, even before they were friends, he could not lose anybody else, even this weird alien he just met, this is the first time he's had HOPE in almost FIFTY YEARS. It's no wonder he insists on watching Grace sleep as soon as they have the words for it. ;-;

[kaelio]

my favorite thing about navigating fanfiction is finding a really good one and being all “oh boy this was good, I hope they have more!” and literally every other story they’ve ever written was for like Miami Vice 

[kaelio]

the tag game on this post is so strong

[mikkeneko]

#a lot of the time this happens because someone in their 40’s got into 1 new thing and threw a fic at it before resuming business as usual#like sorry gang they’re not a youth who’s weirdly into your mom’s shows they’re your mom who played genshin impact

[sufferingink]

things that I believe in my HEART are on the Beatles' message to Earth (Project Hail Mary)

taumoeba (obviously)

instructions on how to use taumoeba (obviously)

50+ hrs of unedited footage of Grace fucking up a bunch of stuff in the ship

so much info about Eridian language

1700+ hrs of unedited footage of Grace and Rocky fucking up a bunch of shit in the ship

Cannot emphasize how much info on the eridian sentence structure there is here

a weirdass knit sweater pattern that takes people weeks to realize is for Rocky

literally hundreds of pages of Grace just describing Eridian linguistic history which like honestly isn't even his field why should we even listen to this guy- (hes the only one to ever fucking met an intelligent alien Dave. we'll take him at his word)

Why the Goldilocks Zone is for Idiots Part 2: Biological Diversity all across the Petrova Line (subtitled "We haven't found them yet BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN THEY DONT FUDHING EXIST-")

what are essentially just those reaction videos "Alien watches Legally Blonde for the first time" "Alien gives thoughts on movie Cats (2019)" "You'll never believe what this Alien thinks of the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Grace's modified cardigan charts because someone was asking for them on his Ravelry and he never actually got around to posting them

(people have already fully recreated this cardigan just months after his launch. but they appreciate it)

very respective, kind eulogies for everyone who died in this mission (Grace AND Rocky's crew)

a lace shawl pattern inspired by the petrova line with a beaded fringe. knitters everywhere weep in despair because those instructions are gOD AWFUL, the man had 0 (zero) test knitters AND THERES NO PICTURES FUCK

Rocky make Grace cringe compilation statement

Grace's final goodbye to Earth ig

[animentality]

[mikkeneko]

#my family does this thing#when we've majorly unfucked a room or done chore that we were putting off#or whatever. Any sort of household Improvement.#'Come brag on me.'#I means come look I cleaned/rearranged/did dishes/put away the laundry#and the scripted response is 'oh nice it looks SO much better in here now'#like my mom did this when we were kids.#'girls comr brag on the garage I finally organized it so I can get my car in there'#and we go and 'ooh' and 'aah' and tell her how nice it looked and how she did a good job#and we could have her 'come brag on' us for like doing the dishes or cleaning our rooms#I do it to my wife now too#it's a dialogue that means#'I did a chore and it feels like an Accomplishment even if it objectively wasn't a big thing. Please acknowledge this.'#and#'Wow you sure did do a thing. It has improved our material circumstance even if only in a small way. Thank you for doing it.'#like yeah scrubbing the pans is my Job and it's a Little Task but sometimes it feels like a Big Task#and it's nice to have an Accepted Script where I can just demand 'I have functioned as an independent adult praise me with great praise' - by @thepioden

[kiapet2]

My explanation for the book v. film difference on Eridian eating customs is that movie!Rocky was full-on bluffing.

Like he was just calling human eating disgusting, what was he going to do, say "okay actually the way Eridians eat is so incredibly gross we do it in private sound-proofed rooms"? And cede the conversational high-ground and sense of species superiority to Grace??? Nah, it looks beautiful, definitely.

Then Grace says "show me" and Rocky is stuck now, he's committed. So he just bucks up and goes all-in. It's not like he'll see the human after this is all done, he can pretend it's totally normal just this once.

Eventually before they reach Erid Rocky is gonna have to come clean, and Grace will laugh at him for an hour straight.

[infernalfay]

Imagine you meet an alien that's entirely blood and fat. Like all the white blood cells and red blood cells and lipids kept in your body are just out there. That's their entire body, a blob of blood jelly. Even their brain is completely fluid. They constantly forget things and don't seem to notice the connection

They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts

This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous

Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous

They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning

They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched

They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them

They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking

You are an Eridian and have just met a human. You must now convince your mate to let you keep them.

[savsonfire]

Project hail mary thoughts.

As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...

I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!

But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...

That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and kind, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.

So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.

He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.

This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.

And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.

Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.

They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".

[infyni-taumoeba]

I think that eridian scientists would really enjoy testing Grace's ability to see. I feel like echolocation is Comprehensive but Limited in range. Like, sure, through doors and walls but only up to uhhh maybe 50m? (i dont know how to guess scale in space scenes. 100m?)

In the book somewhere in the tunnel scenes (so I hear) rocky freaks out that grace returns later than he agreed because he slept in. That implies that rocky couldn't hear the ship from his part of the tunnel.

Compared with humans that can see for MILES unless something gets in the way.

They're absolutely chucking lampposts in all kinds of weird places to see if Grace can see them from the edge of his biodome at night.

Grace: "Oh yeah, I can see Adrian at lamp 58"

Scientist: "this is bullshit"

[sunderwight]

I do think it would be kind of funny if Eridian media, like Earth media, sort of tends to go through phases. Like you know how sometimes 100% evil vampires are all the rage, and then sometimes they're sympathetic tortured antiheroes, and sometimes it's all vampire romances, and etc?

So like, with the stars dying, I'm thinking Eridian media might have gone on a whole "aliens are bad bad bad out there killing stars and wanting to eat Erid" and etc trend for their sci-fi. Long ballads about what are essentially evil Eridians with the equivalent of prosthetics doing terrible things to the galaxy and brave heroes like Rocky going off to stop them. Because y'know that's probably how you'd conceptualize a huge scary conflict like total cosmic annihilation in a way that makes it seem beatable: designate a bad guy you can just defeat in order to stop it.

But then Grace and Rocky get to Erid and that trend gets immediately flipped. Turns out that there were kind of bad aliens, the astrophage and all, but that's more like a natural disaster, and hero Rocky has returned with the weirdest, nicest alien ever. Erid media suddenly rockets back to a prior era of optimistic sci-fi previously considered intolerably twee and cringe after the solar disaster kicked off, where the aliens are always nice nice nice, incredibly weird and sometimes goofy as fuck but friendly and not the bad guys.

Of course you never get full consensus on these things, so there are also creative Eridians who are like. But what if evil humans question? Evil humans posing as saviors infiltrate Erid and replace Eridians with pods that hatch into creepy non-Erid rock monsters question? Evil human comes to Erid under guise of niceness and KILLS Eridians question???

Which is broadly considered like. Holy shit dude stop being gauche the nice alien saved the planet stop fucking writing stories where his skeleton cracks open like a nest of evil eggs and turns into a bunch of monsters! Rude, statement! Aliens very nice statement!

And like at first all the Eridian scientists are very sure to keep this sort of stuff away from Grace, they don't want to insult him or imply that he's being slandered in their media or anything. And again overall the popular trend turns a lot more to aliens-as-friendly, especially if they're expressly humans, and the sci-fi writers of Erid are having a total BLAST speculating about Earth and writing stories about it and etc, Grace seems to very much enjoy answering questions for the ones who want to keep things accurate and chuckling and enthusing over the creativity of the ones who don't. He's like, oh yeah they are definitely also doing this back on Earth, don't worry.

Researchers laughing and nervously just being like, yes of course, this is the full extent of it, not to worry! Normal thing which humans are also doing!

Until one day Rocky just brings Grace a recording of a full-blown Eridian horror sci-fi where Grace HIMSELF is EXPLICITLY a horrible monster that goes on a killing spree and tries to destroy Erid.

The other researchers are losing their shit. RoCKY?!?! WHY QUESTION??? Oh fuck Grace is going to be so upset! He's such a sensitive soul he doesn't even like it when one of his students gets distressed!

Anyway Grace thinks it's hilarious and Rocky gets to be smug about it for months.

[kiapet2]

It's commonly accepted in this fandom that humans have extremely fragile bodies in comparison to Eridians, but I think that's actually an oversimplification.

Because while Eridians are incredibly strong and tough on the outside, on the inside they are actually quite fragile:

They have no immune system, so anything that makes it past their enclosed carapace and internal heating will pretty much kill them

They have no natural defenses to radiation of any kind

In general they have very little organic matter so anything that targets their cells directly is quickly lethal

They are partially cold-blooded and live at a very narrow temperature range (about 20 degrees C)

They rely almost entirely on one, highly developed sense and are helpless if deafened (can't even remember the layout of a room)

They are completely helpless while asleep and can't control when that happens

They will forcibly become dormant after eating AND when badly hurt enough (their equivalent of going into shock)

They require more energy to function than humans do, and have very little organic matter to burn in the case of starvation

In contrast, humans:

Have an aggressive immune system and internal mechanisms for dealing with cell damage

Have adrenaline which allows them to temporarily ignore injuries and perform abnormal feats of strength

Are persistence hunters built for economy of movement and capable of extreme levels of endurance

Exist in a very wide range of habitats and on a diverse diet

Are very hardy in general, able to survive massive injuries, lack of sleep, prolonged starvation, and intense environmental conditions if given proper care

The quintessential example of this dichotomy between strength and endurance is the Going Fishing incident in the book: Rocky is able to survive and move in G forces that are killing Grace and to physically wrestle off the chair crushing him, but he collapses from his injuries almost immediately after. Despite being injured himself Grace then carries his 400lb friend up a ladder, is badly burned returning him to his atmosphere, and then proceeds to get some basic medical care, hype himself up on pain meds and keep working (albeit rather badly, lol) while Rocky forcibly sleeps.

The TL:DR is that Eridians are harder to damage, but easier to kill. They're like an rpg character with high armor and low health. I think Rocky would consider Grace to be very delicate at first, only to be blown away by how deceptively tough his friend can be.

[shoredeeppresage]

I think my fave bit of lore from the olden days was Pearlcatchers having different pearl shapes depending on their personalities and if they were born PCs

and then imagine if we extended this to freshwater pearls too-

[royal-t8]

Interesting tidbit! I imagine that depending on where they were born in Sornieth, the color of the pearl would change too. Due to diet differences, nacre production, water mineral content, environment, and genetics like the molluscs of our real world counterparts. Pearls aren't uniformly white or ivory colored either.

(These two images are just a small fraction of the colors that those funky little molluscs can produce. And that's to say nothing of artificial support pearls/nacre for those PCs who don't have the gland to produce the nacre/don't produce enough nacre to catalogue their memories.)

SO a PC native to the Sea of a Thousand Currents would have a wide variety of brighter colors (because holy crap do pearl producing ocean bivalves have some interesting colors), whereas those born in more diluted fresh waters like in the Tangled Wood or Viridian Labyrinth would have more muted/pastel or white/ivory colors. Or they could just be a mix of both, because a bivalve from an ocean can still produce pastels (Pinctada fucata) and freshwater molluscs can produce more variations of color (Hyriopsis cumingii).

I'm not a marine biologist or pearl manufacturer. I just find aquatic life fascinating. (Also I kinda had a small hyperfixation on this for about a week straight a couple years ago due to my family eating oysters. Additionally I spent like 5 hours just now doing some more reading on it all. lmao)

[6vcr]

art reveal 🤏

[atimesfeeler]

Seen a lot of ‘Simon is not only angry and violent’ posts going around and I completely agree.

So consider: Simon being wary of Grace’s frequent crash outs:

(Snippet)

Ryland chucked the scanner into the air, and it clattered against the floor with a loud crack. Simon flinched. 

“One thing!” Ryland shouted, “I just want one thing to make sense!” 

Every muscle in Simon’s body tensed, watching Ryland’s every move-

as he put his hands to his face and groaned into them. It was stupid, it was so stupid, but the sudden burst of anger surprised Simon. Violence wasn't something Simon was a stranger to. Anyone could be violent, Simon just knew better than to be in the line of fire. Ryland had been so gentle, but his anger was explosive as it was brief.

In less than a second, Ryland’s anger dissipated and he was sulking. His face barely changed from the sudden outburst, there was no warning, no build up. Even after it was clear Ryland’s anger had passed, Simon couldn’t banish the way his eyes tracked Ryland’s pacing, expecting Ryland to throw the item at Simon next, at the other Eridians. To hit a wall, the nearest person. It was so unexpected from a person like Ryland, but Simon should know better. Everyone was violent, anyone who survived or clawed their way to the top in this universe used their anger as their fuel. Simon was no different. 

“Grace!” Rocky scolded, “No breaking equipment!”

The Eridians barely moved at Ryland’s outburst. Had they seen the same thing Simon did? Why was no one reacting? 

Ryland turned to them with his hands on his hips. “Both the temperatures are the same.”

His anger wasn’t directed at anyone at least, and Ryland wasn’t taking it out on the Eridians despite how close they stood to him. Even if they were ‘family’, that meant little when it came to emotional outbursts. But Simon knew the signs of his brother's anger. He could read when something he said was going to trigger a fight, when frustration or annoyance would boil over into an explosion. Besides Gabriel, Simon wasn’t afraid of fighting any of his brothers or being in their line of fire. It was cathartic, even, sometimes, to take out their anger on each other. To funnel their fists into tough skin instead of breaking down screaming or crying at their unfair and cruel circumstances. Fucking Ezekiel had it out for Simon most, the scrappy shithead.

Then again, Ryland had barely reacted to Rocky’s outbursts, not doing much more than holding him back from attacking Simon. Simon was just being ridiculous. Afraid of the man currently hitting his forehead over the desk. He needed to get a fucking grip.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[ctrl-shift-alt-9]

The concept of the Red-Eyed God simply wishing to cherish Simon as some kind of sick and twisted belonging its in own domain, but it had to strip him of his flesh in order to do so, fucks me up so bad.

Because, what do you mean, it wanted help him, turn him into a creature worthy of surviving such terrible conditions at the bottom of a trench, but it had to strip Simon of everything he was to do so? What do you mean a God's love is also agony and that they are one and the same? Mark? Hello???

It wanted him to be more like it. To be remade in its image into something it deemed glorious. It saw a monster by human standards and believed Simon to be more like it than them, and thus made it so. Made him god-like. Remade him into the only God it ever saw humans worship. The Tree.

The way it couldn't stop tasting a new mind on its tongue like he was a prized possession to keep. How he was another body to put on display among bones.

The Red-Eyed God meaning, "I see you. I love you. I know you. You will live, but I cannot save you unchanged." Because he couldn't be saved by the God of Monsters and remain human.

I'm going to be sick. I love it.

[girlrandomstuff]

i love the women of project hail mary

i love annie shapiro and her not having any filter "sorry i had to go use the restroom, i was peeing myself" and her nerdy excitment to get to learn from grace

i love olesya ilyukhina, her bravery and childlike innocense, hugging the earth's dicatator like nothing, taking her teddy bear to a suicide mission, and literally sacrificing her life for humanity without a second thought

i loved dr. lokken's pride and her beef with grace about his theory

i love eva stratt and her love for humaity being so big that she had to destroy herself to give humanity a real chance to have a future

[atimesfeeler]

Modern BloodyMary au except they both keep their tragic pasts. Simon escaped from a violent cult and almost died and Grace got onto a research project that ended up almost killing him, wound up being illegal and was administered that amnesiac French drug and kidnapped where he met Rocky and they both escaped together.

They are all trying to live a normal life and Simon and Grace are both trying to fool the other into thinking they are sooooo normal. They’re like the most normal guy. And terrified the other will find out their sketchy past and get freaked out.