paper from hermits it would seem

I’m convinced Jinshi will be exactly like Lakan if / when he marries Maomao. A weirdo totally in love with his wife.

If they get married and Jinshi's not telling everyone "she's my wife" every chance he gets I won't buy it, this puppy would be so excited to be her husband he'd never shut up about it just like Lakan 😂

Lakan: Ah yes, a bonding sketchy moment between father and daughter, wonder what moves my beautiful daughter is going to play here

Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.

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.

it's not very detailed but look at the postures of the animals. And the way the goslings are not very young but recognisable as gangly and halfway grown.

but, due to the fog of the amnesia, then the urgency of the mission plus Rocky's appearance, Grace doesn't fully look through every box until they're on their way to Erid. and that's when Rocky wakes up from sleep to see Grace sobbing over a bunch of letters. students telling him how much they enjoyed his class, actually made learning fun and interesting. got them through tough days. made them feel seen and appreciated. quite a few cite his class as being the spark that got them interested in science as a career. and even those that didn't still consider him the best teacher they ever had. fellow teachers admiring his classroom management and lesson planning, and even so his kindness to every student who walked into his room.

one letter is from the principal. when Dr. Grace's involvement in the Hail Mary Project became public knowledge, there was a push from the community to rename the school after him. after discussions with the school board, there had been a secret agreement to do so, even had a new sign made. they were just waiting for him to be released from the project and return to San Fransisco to surprise him. but, with the recent news of his "noble sacrifice", they'd gone ahead and done it. attached the press release with a picture of the new sign, a bunch of his former students standing around it, beaming. a local artist has been commissioned to add a mural to the front entrance over the summer break. and a final note: "Do your work knowing that it will allow the Dr. Ryland Grace Middle School to continue to educate and inspire students for generations."

Batch of animated twitch emotes for Grian!

And it has been bouncing around in my head… now we all get to suffer ‘cause I share my brain rot doodles