Music rules my mind

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

I can't remember where I first saw this information, but apparently Rocky's aim was to make the wall to the tunnel out of many different materials to find out which one Grace is able to see through easiest, not based on opacity - like a human or something that evolved to see light does - but based on acoustic impedance. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's a way of measuring how easily sound passes through a material - usually used in ultrasound scans. Therefore, for a species who uses echo-location, he's working out which material is easiest for Grace to see through - and from what I can tell he just got lucky with the clear Xenonite. I'm also fairly sure that he was completely unaware about species that see through light waves rather than echo-location, based on his reactions to Grace in the movie.

Basically, Rocky wanted to make things as accessible as he could for any alien that he could come across with the limited knowledge that he had of how different species see things. He is essentially setting himself up to be as accessible as he can for anyone he could possible meet out there. Whether its due to desperation for connection, or just because he's Like That, that's why I think he's so neat. His first interaction with Grace is just him trying to make Grace as comfortable as possible.

Do you think she had a moment of terror? of belief? Do you think her fingers twiched over her tablet ready to give the orders to quarentine everyone who ever interacted with the apperently slow acting mpreg microbe? Did her mind go to every Alien movie and ao3 trope that could have explained the situation? Did she wonder briefly about the ethical and political implications of keeping a maybe sentient maybe alien child? with human parent(s)???? in a pseuto-governmental lab?

i cannot speak my dialect around white without havin’ to assimilate unless i want people to mock me or just laugh at everything i say, even if i’m actually mad. other times, i just feel like i come off as rude to white people. in english i see examples of my native dialect be used as a “incorrect examples” of Real English. the reason i write in my dialect is so i don’t lose it bein’ surrounded by so many white people who only tolerate me as long as i throw my culture away. usin’ “is” instead of “are” in African American English (AAE) is the most common feature in the dialect i’d argue it’s part of what make it so distinct, along with the accent as well. i will not be fooled by white people bothered by grammar, cause 99% it’s racism they probably don’t even know of.

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!