With You In The Dark

It is *not* AI. It is not """interpreting""" Rocky's words/meaning. It only picks up literal words.

This is how it works:

Eridian words are musical notes/chords

Soundwaves are physical, and at different frequencies they make different patterns! These physical patterns, and therefore Eridian language, is formulaic and repeatable. This is easily processed by computers in a reliable way. This is also lucky for Grace!!

Grace and Rocky create a database that maps notes/chords to words

When Rocky speaks, the computer looks up the exact notes in their pre-made database and returns the associated word

It is a FORMULAIC LOOKUP, NOT AI

Rocky isn't saying "My loneliness knows no bounds, and I have forgotten my soul in the endless abyss" which the translator outputs as "Rocky in space too long"

Rocky is literally saying "... Rocky in space too long" knowing that that's the only words the translator has to draw from.

Rocky is doing the hard translation work in his head before he speaks because Grace is learning and the computer can only regurgitate words that have already been saved — in the order that Rocky says them.

Like when you have a friend who is learning your language, and you slow down and use simple words/sentence structure and fewer slang/jargon words to make it easier for them.

Because hearing is Eridians' primary sense, they have a better memory for sounds, which means Rocky picks up English quicker than Grace can pick up Eridian.

In the book, there is no text-to-speech involved, Grace records Rocky's vocab into a spreadsheet, which he uses for reference on the fly and also as a DIY duolingo for Eridian practice. The movie just adds a speech generator (which is a pre-recorded soundbank provided by a NASA journalist, played by James Ortiz, lol).

But it's doing the same thing — just out loud for the audience's benefit (and so Grace doesn't have to be running back and forth to his spreadsheet in the early days). It matches soundwaves that Rocky generates to the vocabulary spreadsheet and then pulls the corresponding English word from the soundbank.

Obviously it *should* sound very early GPS voice 🤣 because it's word-by-word without infection, but although Ortiz did try that a bit, it wasn't working well on-camera. So they turned him loose to give Rocky's voice personality. And we can suspend our disbelief for it because he's *fantastic*.

But especially when writing for Rocky in fics, we need to remember exactly what's happening, otherwise it won't sound authentic.

go out and fuck someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

go out and date someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

You’re Not Allowed To Be Gay Anymore

what this post DOES mean

if you just ‘prefer’ to avoid majority black areas of your city

if you just ‘prefer’ to read, write, think, and talk about men

if you just ‘prefer’ to socialize with people you (perceive as) your assigned birth sex

if you just ‘prefer’ to exclusively watch white-directed movies, read white-written books, listen to white-authored music

if you just unconsciously perceive men as more authoritative/competent and ‘prefer’ to be spoken to by them

"A corpse is talking"

I'll save you... so you save me.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

@creatingblackcharacters's melanin beam challenge feat. the a.b.a arcade mode crew 🗝️