SnazzyWasHere

the medallion is also confirmed to be st christopher: the patron saint of travelers. it’s a symbol of good luck, guidance and protection on a journey

so you know. i’m really normal and fine about this

Rocky and Grace

I've seen so many awesome human!Rocky drawings/concepts (especially loving the ones of him with multiple arms) but it got me thinking about how the Erdian race would work as humanoids and, how in this AU, his and Grace's language barrier situation would unfold.

As far as the biology of it, I think it would be cool if they were made of entirely different compounds that make their bones and all other parts of them like 200% stronger than Earth human's components. This would still give them that very heavy numerical body mass no matter their 'fitness'. This fact would also be why they can and often work with sharp metals and Xenonite so easily-- it just wouldn't cut them due to their much stronger skin. This would also attribute to their different diet (due to different insides and composition); human foods would not only taste badly to them, but they'd have zero nutrients the Eridian body could use and therefore not even digest properly. Aka, just the reason in this AU why Rocky, other than creating Taumoeba, couldn't provide Grace with any spare food on the way to Erid.

Personally, I really like the idea of the Eridian language having/being a form of sign language. With the human!Eridians having two set of arms, I like the idea that they created a sign-able version of their language since they all can 'see' physical objects/movement and have the extra limbs to communicate while going about their regular work. With their numerous sets of vocal cords, maybe it's more common for medical issues to arise that erode their ability to speak in full melodies/words leading to the need of sign language among their species to be very necessary and second nature to all.

When Rocky meets Grace (the name ‘Rocky’ given due to his tough, nearly impenetrable skin), maybe Rocky's vocal chords are just minorly damaged from the slight amount of radiation that did end up affecting him, or from a previous injury on Erid. Either way, this would lead to the computre translator being inaccurate since it translates the chords Rocky speaks, which sometimes aren't exact. On Erid, the damage is so minor he can still talk and be understood by other Eridians, but just like Google Translate here on Earth when going from language to language you have to be pretty exact. This would lead to them making some device Rocky would wear on his hands, connected with a ring on each finger, that would instead track his hand/arm movements/signs into English and then to text to speech.