mostly void, partially stars

Trapped air is NOT what causes explosions in the kiln. You can have an air filled sphere with no hole, a chunk of clay 5 inches thick, or something with both, and they won’t explode if dried properly.

The real culprit is moisture. If your piece is not totally dry when firing, THAT is what causes cracking/explosions. (When drying, make sure to do it low and slow too, especially around joints or handles— that’s what prevents cracking in the bone dry stage.)

Art teachers often say you need an air hole, which is well intentioned but misinformed. Art teachers often have less time to let things dry, and thick pieces are more likely to trap moisture. While a hole often helps air circulate and dry your piece more thoroughly, the tiny pinprick I’ve seen art teachers make their students do is usually too small to do anything. (Though it is funny how many times I gave my figurines “buttholes” like the comedy genius I am.)

What if Grace made a lopsided crochet Rocky and cuddled it every night.

What if Rocky couldn’t stop making xenonite puppets of his alien friend.

Grace is joking around with a selectively violent creature that can rip his soft squishy body apart in an instant!

But it’s also a lot of fun to hear Weir talk about all the stuff he wants to include in a possible sequel, like the fact that eridians can have several conversations at once even with the same eridian. He imagine Rocky and Adrian bickering in one conversation while having a nice conversation at the same time that slowly turns into a fight and all of a sudden they’re yelling at each other in two conversations about different things.

He also says they have terrible spacial memory because they can see everything around them all the time thanks to their echo location so to them it’s crazy that humans can only see in one direction but still remember what’s behind them and even what the last room they were in looks like. Apparently eridians mostly just remember that the room exists and that it has the computer in it but if you asked them where the computer is placed in the room they’ll struggle to give a precise answer.

And Rocky got scared when Grace hugged him because eridians don’t have a concept of expressing affection with physical touch. To them it’s only neutral or violent because thanks to their hard shell they can’t really feel much. They only use it to move each other around or to break through their prey’s shell to get to the soft insides. So in their inter-species friendship only Grace would feel any desire to touch Rocky. It makes it very cute that Rocky joins in on Grace’s hugging ritual. It’s purely for Grace’s sake.

Rocky mocks Grace when he says that Rocky is distracting him by starting complex conversations while he's Trying To Do Science. "Human brain have to stop activity just because talking question? Useless! One track mind!"

Then Grace is on hour six of his "trying to recreate skittles" hyperfocus and Rocky is like What The Fuck. Statement.

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

BUT