what’s in a name?

reaching for the parallels

Controversially young boyfriend: Ryland Grace (age: ~35+)

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

Obviously, there are Eridian kids with special needs, and a few of them even filter into his classes. But one specific type of special needs kid has never shown up in his classes, and the only reason he even learned of the condition is because Rocky and Adrien's first pebble has the condition.

It's initially quite a struggle for them to deal with, and Grace sympathizes of course, because the child will apparently have huge learning and academic struggles and will likely never be able to live on their own. That is, until he learns the details of the disability.

Basically, it's a condition where the part of the Eridian brain that gives them their eidetic memory isn't fully developed, and so these kids just... can't remember things the way most eridians do. And in a culture where an eidetic memory is the norm, all things cater to that, so not having that is actually a massive disability.

But Grace is like, so... this kid just learns the same way a human does, or something like. Which is nothing new to him, though he is somewhat boggled at how much Rocky and Adrian struggle with their infant and their "slow" learning curve, even as far as initial developmental stages. Grace, on the other hand, simply treats the kid the same way he would a human infant, and Rocky and Adrien are impressed with his patience.

But, through this, it occurs to Grace that there must be other kids out there with this disability who likely aren't getting the attention and chances in life that they deserve, because Eridian culture is particularly hostile toward this disability, and actively views those with it as unable to function in regular society.

So Grace demands that a special course be put together where he teaches kids with this disability specifically. Rocky is hesitant, as most kids with this disability are home schooled and kind of... kept shut away. But Grace insists and as one of Erid's saviors, he gets what he wants eventually.

His first class is super small, maybe only three kids because so few parents were willing to advertise that their children have this disability. And because of the stigma around it, even those who agreed to it are super unsure and want to be present during the lessons, perhaps paranoid about the impression it will leave on Savior Grace, who is so accustomed to only teaching the most gifted students.

But Grace knows exactly how to deal with these kids. Some of them have varying degrees of function when it comes to their memory banks, which isn't so unlike teaching kids on earth. And so Grace is able to introduce all these tools and teaching techniques that were previously unheard of on Erid (though very normal on Earth) like having textbooks for reference with you at all times and having strategies that are less focused on memorization for understanding, and providing these kids with tools like calculators and teaching them the art of taking notes to look back on, etc etc.

Suddenly, with all these tools that most Eridians don't need, these kids are learning at a much faster rate, and succeeding with the help of all their little tools. And because so many normal eridians are ignorant of Grace's actual biology, it's shocking to them that Savior Grace doesn't have an eidetic memory either (shocking to everyone but Rocky anyway)--that his brain functions quite similarly in capacity to these "disabled" children.

Once this news gets around, suddenly there's more kids in his special classes, and there's all kinds of discourse being inflamed because the real reason these kids can't live on their own or function is lack of support from Eridian society.

If Savior Grace, who is well respected as a genius in his own right amongst the Eridians, can function so successfully, they why can't these kids?

rocky: what the fuck

---

rocky: our analogue of your nervous system is like earth organism bee , we are like if beehives walked, all the helper cells have their own dna and we have to pass all of them individually when new eridian is made in egg theres no universal dna copy

They search high and low for a sign of the mysterious man who was at Stratt's side for so long. They didn't focus on him back then, the paparazzi somehow failed to capture him properly whenever they got close enough to badger Stratt. Just another lackey, they all assumed.

He was never one for photos, he'd bat away Ilyukhina when she called him for a group shot. He'd make some joke about how he always looked awful in them, that his smile wasn't quite right, and she eventually gave up trying to convince him. Only a few shots remain, ones she snagged when he wasn't looking. Sleeping at his desk with a stack of coffee cups piled beside him, eating a packet of sour skittles with a look of pure bliss, working on a report with his tongue stuck out and a pen behind his ear, hair rumpled. Half forgotten memories.

The media is tearing itself apart looking for a sign. They find his disproved scientific paper, but after that he seems to drop off the map. No family, no known friends. Who was this man?

Then people come forward, finally. Not scientists, not relations, but parents. People who sat across the table from him at parents evenings, people who trusted him with their children, perhaps the highest form of trust. They have photos from sports days and school plays and barbecues, and more importantly, they have stories. He was an amazing teacher, a good colleague, a kind man. He was patient and clever and inquisitive.

STOP-