A Little Bit Of BIG SCIENCE

don't worry, that lil guy will keep trying until he gets it right

-Stratt uses the mobile app, has thousands of points

-She refuses to go through the drive through because she doesn’t want to hear the words “happy meal” come out of her mouth

-Refuses to use the mobile pick-up spots because someone might recognize her

-So she sends in Grace to grab the bag

-Grace says he wants the toys but now these “trinkets” are accumulating all over the lab

What do we think is on their mobile order??

my addition to the ryland grace regressor agenda!

anyone interested in my au's eridian oc ? anyway this is Bráss, the primary sociobiologist

Bráss is very fond of humans, they wish they could spend their whole life studying them

Grace: *Retroactively freaking out about Doing A Misogyny™*

It does not present Erid as a perfect utopia. The streets of Erid aren't paved with gold, it's not the land of milk and honey, it's just a place. That's all anywhere is, it's just a place. And I feel like for people who've never, like, had to seriously consider leaving their home country before, overcoming the assumption that moving Elsewhere will make everything better, that rent will be cheaper and health insurance will be free and there's reliable public transit and that must mean there are no problems, and confronting the fact that it's all just places and the only difference between them is how easy or difficult it is to exist as a regular person is a really important step in successfully adjusting to a new place.

It does not put Grace in the position of having to completely denounce Earth in order to appreciate his life on Erid or to be accepted there. There is a lot of pressure on refugees and other migrants coming to western countries to completely denounce their homelands in order for asylum applications to be accepted and in many cases (focusing in on Muslim migrants here) to not be labeled as a terrorist. Grace is not only allowed to miss and care about Earth but Erid joins him in that care (especially in the book, where Grace can't actually see the stars from his biodome so Erid's astronomers have been keeping an eye on Sol and Rocky tells Grace about Sol returning to full luminence on their behalf) by offering to help him return to Earth, they just have a standing offer to do that which is a huge ask for aliens whose space program is roughly the equivalent of 1960s cosmonauts in terms of experience and successful known missions

Grace is not forced to assimilate, his integration into life on Erid is allowed to happen naturally and without interference. He understands Eridian fluently even though he can't speak it and, considering his book version AAC is a gigantic pipe organ that's not mobile or present in all the meeting rooms since it's not in the one he and Rocky meet in, at least some Eridians he regularly speaks to besides Rocky are presumably able to talk to him without it. BUT he also doesn't have to participate in all of their customs. Movie Grace (and the movie's ending I believe takes place earlier than the book's, the book mentions Erid offered to refuel the Hail Mary to return to Earth and when they made that offer is when the movie ending takes place) but Movie Grace does not have his big pipe organ AAC, just the translator laptop, and is still fully capable of and allowed to teach Eridian children, using Earth classroom materials. His house is a mix of Eridian and Earth styles, Armando is in his house, and while you could make the argument that Erid just happens to have a beach on hand that looks like Durdle Door but considering the waves are machine made and we know the Don't Go Crazy Room has a video of Durdle Door I think it's entirely possible that Rocky and Adrian and the rest of biodome team purposely reconstructed Durdle Door (the script also specifies that Grace's biodome is a replica of a specific beach)

idk I just like that all this is allowed to exist in relative normalcy in a way that both mimics real migration experiences and also, as all good science fiction should, shows what could be, and yeah this is another case of Andy fucking. Logicking his way out of imperialist views on a given topic relating to human geography and it really grinds my gears that there wasn't intention to this because if there was the stuff in the story that makes this ↑ weaker could've either been either avoided or addressed head on, but I do think it's neat that the ending is presented in this way, like this really works for me in a way that "Grace is having the time of his life on Erid" and "Grace's existence on Erid is kind of horrifying" don't like

Like there's downsides, yeah, and they're pretty big and scary downsides. But that contributes to the placeness of it all, because there's upsides, too. As far as I can tell, Eridians don't use money. They don't even have a government why would they use money? So Grace doesn't have to worry about rent, or a mortgage, or taxes, or any of the other woes of capitalism as long as he's on Erid. He gets to do the thing he loves doing the most which is teach, his health and physical needs are taken care of even if the flavor is bad (but they are, notably, trying to make it taste good they're actively working on it in the book) and he doesn't have to worry about most natural disasters (I mean theoretically an earthquake could take him out but I'm pretty sure rocky had the good sense not to put grace's dome in a seismic zone).

Eridian speculative biology time!

Erid is a very big planet, very very very big planet, twice the size of earth in fact- and divided by oceans, perfect conditions for populations to remain and develop separately and for long enough to create diferent species. So, unlike us, Eridians are a Polytypic genus: there's more than one species of sapient eridian, All of them sharing a common ancestor in the form of a small, 5 legged ambush-hunter land carnivore, all share common traits taking only slightly different evolutionary paths

Divers- get their name from living in semi-flooded caves, their high small vents allow them to be partially submerged without drowning and their long arms allow them to grip things easily underwater, similar to a sea-horse tail

Climbers- similarly, they get their name from their living enviroment, living in very high caves, their long thin arms allow them to grip and climb very steep rock walls, kinda like goats in a way

Drills and Stompers get their name from the shape of their arms, they both developed closer to the surface compared to the others, their arms are like that for dealing with sandstorms, while Drills "drill" themselfs in place, Stompers use their body weight to keep themselfs down

Blocks are very similar to Stompers, but they live in caves much deeper down, so they're quite compact

Common traits between all species: all Eridians can thrum, all Eridians organize in "colonies" like ants or termites (tho the specifics of how each colony works varies), all Eridians are True Carnivores(can only eat meat) and all Eridians are unisex

In theory any one eridian can procreate with any other eridian, between the 5 species there are 4 fertile hybrids and 3 infertile hybrids posible

note: tho each species has a more broad vague shared culture between themselves, none of them are a monolith, all of them have vastly different culture, language, texture, practices and even phenotypes between different colonies around the world

note 2: the fact humans are a monotypic species (there is only one in our genus) is really fucking weird to them

Obviously this is going to be reflected in the amount of painkillers and general medicines he's been supplied with— enough for three astronauts to last several months to a few years max— but also… there's really no point in keeping any of those astronauts alive after they stop being useful to the mission.

Grace finds this out when he gets to a certain point in his starvation on the journey to Erid and, instead of offering medical advice, Armando announces that Doctor Grace is far too sick to continue being of use and so it’s recommended that his fellow crew members euthanise him to save on resources.