Full-Throttle Axolotl

drawn thin, a FFXV: Episode Prompto 4-koma. Extra:

In order to be considered for the title of Mother of/Father [scientific field], you have to be the first to make significant contribution in that field. You're setting the groundwork in a way nobody else has. This can obviously cause a lot of debate in the end about who gets the title! That said, I think given the leaps and bounds that Grace makes in several fields of science that take them from the more theoretical to the practical gives him some notable options with strong arguments. So we've got options like: Father of Astrobiology (the discovery and study of Astrophage, Taumoeba, several other forms of life on Adrian, and the study of and first interactions with the Eridians; disproving the Goldilocks zone as the only area viable for life; making significant strides in proving the panspermia hypothesis), Father of Xenolinguistics (first person to create working translator and archive of an alien language), and Father of Interstellar Travel (this would be a title held alongside Dr. Dmitri Komorov, likely with Komorov being listed first, and there would be significant debate on if Grace should hold the title at all. I like to think Dmitri would want to share it though).

All workable cases, all real options. Buuuuut I think my very favorite option though would be the one that is the least open to debate and is the one that I honestly think Grace himself would like best: Father of First Contact.

Because on the one hand, yeah, that's a lot he was mostly doing. First contact with Astrophage, with the Taumoeba, with other life on Adrian, and most of all with the Eridians. The first ever intelligent form of life outside of Earth, he made First Contact with. He found ways to communicate, to establish common ground, to work alongside an alien being. He did something no one else on Earth had ever done before and changed the world with it. He made First Contact and saved the world.

securitycapecreature

1- father of first contact is the cutest option and if you can only have one title that would be best

BUT

2- the funniest opinion imo is him getting several of those so hes one of those "this guy is fuckin everywhere" scientists (i imagine one day in the distant future a group of college kids get together and one of them can be talking about learning of this great biologist that made so many new discoveries and someone else goes "you mean the linguist??" "You mean the ASTRONAUT??" And everyones confused for a little bit until they figure it out)

mercifulmother

2 - This is the ideal vision yes yes yes yes! Grace really went out there and decided to do a 100% speedrun on revolutionizing different fields of science, and now children of the future are going to suffer about it forever. It gets even worse once the political science kids get involved in the conversation. "Do you mean the DIPLOMAT?" STEM vs Humanities showdown is brutal. Trying to write a paper about this man is an absolute nightmare because the interdisciplinary sources on him are in five different sections of the library at any given point. Finding his stuff in a bookstore is even worse.

securitycapecreature

@mercifulmother Ahhhh!!! Yesss oh my those poor kids, im half glad i dont live in that universe rn, his Wikipedia page is the stuff of nightmares

On the other hand, someone does that type of post where they post a screenshot of the "subjects" in a weird wiki page with no context and everyone in the comments identifies him Immediately cause who else

mercifulmother

That's his family forever! He's their family forever! He taught them all how to make first contact, how to be with another species, how to love in this totally new way, and that makes them his kids! He's the blueprint humanity learns from! He never stops teaching, and all his students are his kids, and now they're his family too! Augh I'm gonna go get some tissues now, I'm very emotional.

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?

okay anon you win. you conceived of the one REDACTED crossover fic i would read.

thats his rock and they are bonded by fate, extensive trauma and years of forced proximity. they are uniquely predisposed to caring about each other more than anybody else. that said, i do love me a tortured rocky so he i think he should be anxiety-ridden about ending up the second choice for Various Activities until it becomes abundantly clear grace actually still favors his xenonite-covered self above all else.

cut to grace going like. yeah man ive been having some undefined abdominal issues rockys gonna do this exploratory surgery on me. can you believe he built this laparoscope himself? hes sooo smart right. no you dont need to help its all fine and dandy hes got it under control. five arms and all, yknow? haha. i guess you can watch if you want..?

cue the grossest psychosexual display of devotion ever witnessed by another human being. at this point i think it would be kinder to euthanize him.

Another sketch

Grace and Rocky play hide and seek— or Rocky finds out about persistence hunting the hard way, and Grace gets some pumpkins to roll around his enclosure.

I wanted to experiment with a more sketchy comic, instead of spending weeks and weeks on making it “Perfect”— and I had so much fun with it!! I need to do these more!