Robin

But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.

It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.

That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.

But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.

But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.

But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)

All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!

So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)

It has some genuinely fascinating stuff to say about gender, and I feel like it's worth looking at/thinking about in the context of Historical Gender Stuff. This 100 year old book has the following to say:

"The truth is that some young gentlemen would rather they had been born young ladies: they cannot admit this openly, because in the male world to confess as much would lead to instant ostracism if not worse; but they cannot conceal it either, and by preferring the company of girls, and soft, feminine clothing, and by flinching during the rough pursuits to which all boys, willing or no, are occasionally heirs, they attract opprobrium."

"Such boys weep too readily for their fellows' tastes - weeping is a great crime among boys unless it is generally admitted that circumstances left little choice - and are hounded for that reason."

"Just as there are girls who had rather been boys - we all know examples of the type - there are boys who, in a kinder world, would have been born into the gender more suited to their dispositions."

"Many young people of this sort are riven with a guilt they do not deserve but have been forced, by the conventions of society, to adopt; they are confused, ashamed and thoroughly unhappy."

"The ideal thing to do would be to treat these cases on their merits, send them to girls' schools, and so on. (The same thing should happen with those girls who would rather be young gentlemen.) Boys of this sort are girls in any case-in all respects save one."

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

But Elmo, after cheerfully surrendering his old toys, sees that the children who swapped toys with him are playing with his toys “wrong”! They’re imagining entirely different make believe scenarios! They’re pretending the football is a dinosaur egg instead of a rocket ship! Aaahhhhh!!!! And this is so distressing to poor Elmo that he does the unthinkable: He does swapsies-backsies and takes all his toys back!

This being Sesame Street, he learns that you can’t control how other people play pretend, but you can join in if you want to! And if you don’t want to, that’s ok, you can just play pretend your own way by yourself or with someone else who wants to play that way too. You can still be friends with people who play pretend differently than you (and aren’t being mean/harmful/etc, do not bad-faith-read this 🤨).

Sometimes I make posts to try

to bait haiku-bot