walking quilt

Like, this mindset makes everything that happens in the story absolutely hilarious, in particular the whole first interactions bit.

From Rocky's point of view he sent a simple model of the local star systems to indicate where he was from hoping these new creatures would indicate where they were from. He put it in a protective cylinder and sent it over to the ship. Something enormous climbs out of a hole in the side of their ship... Wait, did one of the creature go OUTSIDE its ship in a a god damn plastic bag just to catch it??? I better aim it at where it came out of so it doesn't do that again. Then when the cylinder gets back, the creatures have indicated where they're from by attaching a lollypop stick with chewinggum to the model... which has mostly fallen off in the heat. Also they put distilled fire in the cylinder???

The creature then climbs outside its ship, again, chiseles a lump off its ship with a hammer and throws it at you so it can send you a sample so you can join to it and... its made of thin sheets of soft lead???

Then on finally talking to this large creature you realise it's incredibly delicate like a jellyfish, so god damn stupid, has essentially no memory, and cant do basic maths. And you're supposed to be saving your entire civilisation with this squishy idiot. But then a while later it turns around and explains relativistic time dilation and background radiation like its something you should have figured out already.

Ive heard multiple people describing Rocky seeing Grace like the equivalent of a dog, but he's really more like a three and a half year old blind jellyfish. Its living in a frozen semi-vacuum of highly explosive gas, can't remember anything, needs to nap constantly or it becomes noticeably more stupid, and it's here to save the world.

yknow what yeah I think that's just about how anyone would react in this situation. fair enough.

alright this isn't how just Anyone would behave in this situation but I'm humble enough to admit that there have been times in my life when I was doing badly enough that I'd probably also fumble it like this

And you're like well. I'd rather trust myself to the fate of the world than anyone else. And I'd rather not let anyone else suffer the Torment Nexus just because of my own feelings. That seems kinda selfish. Alright sure.

So you enter the Torment Nexus. Each level has you pressing buttons like, [abduct innocent scientists to your vat: chances of humanity's survival increases by 0.005%] [everyone disliked that] [congrats! your moral goodness has decreased!].

The later levels get even worse. [blow up Antarctica: chances of humanity's survival increases by, ummm who knows ????] [total humans negatively affected: ????] [congrats! you're an ecoterrorist!].

Then you reach the final level. It reads: [through this door you'll break the news to your friend that he needs to die.] And you're like, wait he has to die??? I have to tell him?? But that's incredibly fucked up. After I went through the Torment Nexus as well. But it's the last level. So oh well. I can do this I suppose. Rather me than anyone else.

You enter the level and you friend is standing next to a cliff. You go over to him and say, hey this really fucking sucks but I've just learnt you need to jump off the cliff. Then we might be able to save humanity for real though. Maybe billions of people can survive if this works.

arguing generals

Based on this scene from “George Washington” (1984), where Laurens, Lafayette, and Hamilton are watching Washington and Lee argue the night before the battle of Monmouth. Bonus versions + my process on instagram (with musical accompaniment)!