meowdy

yeah you get it. that's what fucks rocky up so much about—eridians have a crystalline brain. rocky remembers every single thing that he perceives in perfect detail. he's one of the best engineers erid has ever seen, so it's logical that he double checks his work not just to screen for oversights, but to see if anything new can be added. typically this is done in a thrum, allowing for ideas to bounce off one another.

but rocky was alone at tau ceti for almost 50 years. there was no thrum—not for lack of trying to get his crewmates to respond—so rocky does it himself.

so rocky gets stuck in loops. his brain rereads the same information over and over again, expecting to be passed onto another one of his species. when it isn't, there's no sense of completion and the loop starts back over. not having another eridian translates to stress on an instinctual level so his brain thinks there's an error in the loop or in his work. he completes a ritual or task to satisfy the anxiety. the cycle repeats itself regardless because eridians are not meant to be alone.

he has to check on grace's breathing. he needs to check the taumoeba. he needs to make sure he isn't dying of radiation sickness. he needs to force feed his friend as he wastes away. there's so much rocky can't fix and so much that he could have if his crew was still alive (if he didn't kill them). it starts to become more irrational—tapping in sets of five on the xenonite barrier to make sure it's stable. saying words over and over that don't really make sense with eridiani sentence structure. if he doesn't click and shake his carapace, his brain will make him relive the fat of grace's arm liquefying and coagulating in his hold.

inside his body, his worker cells are exhausted from constantly going to repair a sickness that doesn't exist. his cells are the sickness, driving themselves to ruin in a never-ending death spiral.

I love Rocktiz, but I can't draw him with human Grace because I'm just too attached to the interspecie bond between Grace and Rocky. It's the soul of the movie and its so beautiful.

The human Rocky AU and eridian Grace AU down there, since i really liked the linearts its a shame they're so hidden

Rocky’s radar is amazing because he can “see” through walls, he can “see” the insides of bodies, and his sense is full 360 degrees all the time, unlike eyes which have to be pointed a specific direction. He has a much better sense of space and can easily find hidden objects. When eridians “watch” each other sleep, it’s different from humans watching something because they don’t even have to be in the same room as someone in order to watch them. Rocky could be in the next room, working on stuff, and still have sleeping Grace fully within his scope of radar.

But human sight! Sure, we can only see the surface of things, and if the light goes out we’re useless. But!!! We can see things that are 2D. That’s crazy to Rocky, that we can see things that can’t be touched or heard. We can see color, which gives us a wealth of information about things that eridians are entirely unaware of. Grace explains that humans can walk through a forest full of thousands of textures and easily spot out edible fruit because it’s a bright color. And the distance on sight! It’s incredible. Grace explains the concept of lighthouses, and how one small light can guide ships from miles away through a deafening storm. No eridian could hear that far, and even if they could, the noise of the storm would drown it out. And then there are the stars. Humans can see stars!!! Erid only learned about stars recently but humans have known about them since the very beginning because they can just look up and see across the vastness of space with no technological help. They can see the other planets in their solar system. They can see their own star so powerfully that they can’t even look directly at it. No eridian can hear their own star. And when they’re in space, Rocky is totally blind because sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum - but light does! Grace can see just as well in space as on Earth!

Also, and this is a big one: humans can turn off sight. Grace doesn’t think it’s that cool, but Rocky explains that there’s no way to stop using radar. There’s no way to block out sound completely. Humans can cover their eyes and see nothing if they want to. No distractions, no stimulation. That’s amazing.

I also love the idea of Grace explaining the concept of “see-through” to Rocky and telling him about all the types of transparent materials earth has developed over the years. And there are naturally transparent materials, too! Rocky is very excited to learn that water is transparent.