im offensive

And like, they probably mean well, its not malicious, theyve got a thin grasp of human social norms and or body language, if any, and those are normally a bit suspended in pursuit of scientific discovery, right?

if he asked the science team to stop they would, but,

They're going to such great lengths to be hospitable to him already, crafting a home for him, surely thats worth a bit of discomfort

Without them hes dead in seconds, better to stay on their good sides, obviously.

Every single one of them is physically stronger than he could ever hope to be, anyway

Its almost familiar, being steamrolled under an authority that holds the pillars of your life in its hands.

So, he doesnt protest.

and then when adrian actually meets grace they can't stop purring and they're saying 🎶hero grace. saved stars, saved planets. saved adrian mate. love love love.🎶 they're using a courting frequency.

grace likes their voice. cuddles up to them when they watch him sleep. they talk about science, and culture. sometimes rocky just listens to them talk.

"you're thinking too loud, rock," grace says. adrian has one of their limbs around him and chirps in agreement. "something wrong?"

(tags via @grimark)

first of all lmfao, second of all YEAH!!! Hang on I need to yap about this, I have so many opinions.

To make an example: one of the details in the book I keep returning to is Rocky's attitude around eating. Weir mentioned in various interviews that the idea came to him as a subversion of how aggressively social the act of eating is for humans compared to other biological needs. Which is a fair enough place to start with, but this kind of social taboo is usually tied to reasons like sanitation and avoiding risk of infection. Which fits, since as monostomes the process of nutrition and waste disposal are inextricably tied for an Eridian (not to mention the whole Making An Open Wound Per Meal deal).

Thing is, that wouldn't necessarily extend to the preparation of food, but Rocky is still uncomfortable and asks Grace not to comment while preparing his meal. Meat on Erid requires butchering to separate the viable parts from the nonviable. The Eridians doc describes the act of manually tearing food to pieces as pleasurable, "similar to chewing good food for humans"... except butchering larger prey is something that would require collaboration, and (shared) pleasure is just as much of a biological incentive towards social behaviour as fear.

I think it would be interesting if this was a peculiarity of Rocky's specific culture! Or if there was another Eridian clan who, due to climatic or migratory reasons, had to deal with recurring food scarcity and was used to curing and preserving large quantities of food to stock up as a consequence. This would decouple food preparation from the (gross) act of eating itself, making it more positive and commensal.

Imagine Grace striking up conversation with the nutrition technician that organises his taste tests like, "hey thank you for all you're doing, I know dealing with food is super gross for Eridians. just want you to know i appreciate it a lot" and the technician is like "??? huh? oh—OH. saviour grace misunderstands. preserving food and making it edible very fun where I'm from."

"Seriously? Rocky always said it was embarrassing"

"Not surprising, Saviour Rocky ♩♪♫ Eridian. ♩♪♫ Eridians ridiculous about food."

you can never get a clear listen to him. his primary sense node is covered in "hair" and the part that isn't is hidden by two crystals that refract sound waves in a pleasing but disorienting way. he covers his body in billowy cloth at all times. not snug and sensible and unobstructive like eridian coverings, but loose and layered, draped and flowing.

the most clear part of him are his internal organs. because yes, the alien's carapace isn't sound-proof. his single heart beats insistingly in his core, his lungs exchanging gas constantly, his long digestive tract always bubbling and contracting. his thorax is packed impossibly tight and it's all moving and singing.

and it shouldn't be possible, with how fragile he is, for that internal pressure to maintain. how does the thin membrane of his external organ (another horror that sends eridians reeling) keep it all contained? his "skin" is so easily pierced, cut, bruised, burnt, how does he not split open under his own mass?

when savior rocky first arrived home and described the environmental needs of his alien, the scientists thought he'd made a mistake in his frantic panic to get everything out. it isn't possible this being lives at such low atmospheric pressure, at half the gravity, and in a gas that's nearly double the weight of ammonia. in a gas so dangerous, so caustic. and if it does then how is it obligately terrestrial like rocky claims? shouldn't it fly or float instead? (and then to see it in the water, learning that it can float or sink at will.)

and this alien has come bearing gifts that will not only save your species but launch it into impossible heights of technological and intellectual advancement. he has discovered the solution to astrophage and bred it to thrive on threeworld and translated his instructions into eridian. he has given your people the complete sum of his people's knowledge, advanced in ways the eridians can't believe and behind in ways that seem ludicrous. and he has given his life for your people to have these things.

he knows how your solar system was formed. he knows how the universe started.

his name means beautiful and generous and relieving.

the eridians experiencing cosmic bliss.

It includes:

A telesync of the movie (with English soft subtitles)

A digital copy of the movie (with occasional Russian hard subtitles)

My transcript of the movie (more on that here)

Audio recordings of the movie

A PDF of the book

An EPUB of the book (for e-readers)

The full audiobook

A copy of Andy Weir's doc on Eridians

A copy of Andy Weir's spreadsheet on Astrophage physics (among many other things!)

A draft of the screenplay for the film from 2022

An audio recording of the director's commentary

My transcript of the director's commentary

The telesync subtitle SRT file

The audiobook, audio recordings, and commentary all have their properties programmed so they (should) work just like songs with a track number, album cover, artist, and so on if you download them.

There are two audios of the movie, one is the entire film untouched and one is that same audio cut up and broken down into separate scenes for convenience.

Additionally, there are two versions of the transcript, one with time stamps that match the audio and one without. The time stamps (+ their titles from the audio) are outlined in that version, so if you double-click on that tab or click "show outline," they'll all show up and you can pick a specific scene.

The first few seconds of the commentary are missing unfortunately as my US friend who was kind enough to record it for me had some technical difficulties at the start, but the commentary starts around the shot of the robot arms right before the shot of "good luck!" written on Grace's sleeping bag. It's also about 40-45-ish seconds behind the audio recording if you can only listen.

There's also a google doc with some instructions to follow if any of the files aren't working, which usually happens when too many people try to access or download something at the same time.

There are two different versions of the transcript, the first is made to listen along to the commentary, while the second is more intended to be read on its own. The first is a direct transcription of everything that's said (an attempt, at least), while the second is slightly cleaned up for easier reading, meaning things like jumbled sentences and stuttering were removed or reorganised, but nothing has been actually paraphrased or anything. Both are broken down into different scenes based on how their conversation goes, and the listening version includes timestamps. 

| mary has joined the crew 🛰️💫 based off priya kansara ♡

Zoologist, particularly focused on social behavior in various species. Studies social animals both in the wild and in captivity

Constantly refers to Grace's dome as his "enclosure", much to the rest of the team's chagrin. Grace thinks this is hilarious

General "call a spade a spade" attitude to using zookeeping terms when referring to everything to do with keeping Grace happy, healthy, and alive. Some of the others on the team misread this as depersonalizing and cold towards Grace, but it's just Adrian's communication style

Gets along with Grace like a house on fire. They terrorize Rocky together

There was a brief period of awkwardness where Grace and Adrian were trying to be normal about how badly they wanted to study each other like bugs

Relationship to Grace is like if your best friend was also an exotic animal whose enrichment and enclosure design was your responsibility, if you and said animal/friend were both gleefully studying each other

paranoia

control freakism

sense of self-worth so low that it loops back around into being totally dismissive of everyone else

a warm-hearted kind center beneath 200 protective walls of bitterness that doesn't actually make the bitterness better in any way at all even a little bit

bisexuality

crushing feelings of responsibility

zero understanding of own bodily autonomy that bleeds out and affects how they treat others

a lil petty vindictive sadism they maybe don't wanna look at too hard or acknowledge

full self-awareness of all their most negative traits without working to fix those traits at all

internalized misogyny

a mysterious undefinable hunger that cannot / should not / must not ever be sated