Starsinabox

Wanted to try my hand at comparing Book Rocky vs Movie Rocky. At first I was much more partial to movie Rocky (having seen it first), but now that I've read the book I think I'm fonder of his design and character in the book more! I thought it would be fun to combine my favorite attributes from both into one design.

Eridians' perception of the world relies on something that is completely absent in space — sound. They haven't been looking at the stars their entire existence the way we have. Their concept of aliens might only be as old as their discovery of astrophage. They made a bad ship, because it was their first one ever! Rocky himself says they rushed it, and that multiple (vital) things broke. Their mission was just as much of a Hail Mary pass as ours was — they had no idea what they were doing, if they could even travel in space safely. And, as it turns out, they couldn't.

Humans are the ones who have been doing it over multiple lifetimes. Mary is state of the art. We've been space farers longer than most humans have been alive. We can actually see through space. We are more likely to survive exposure to the void. We can encase our lighter, more flexible, more mobile bodies in a material that lets us walk outside of our ship, and, to a degree, we can get our bearings out there in a way Eridians just can't.

Grace describes it as best he can, but all he can really manage to get across to Rocky is that he was surrounded by small floating lights.

Later on, Grace is talking about the stars and how important they've been to human cultures for millennia. “What do the stars look like, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, y'know, they're a bunch of small floating lights.

There's a disco ball on the Hail Mary. Grace says it's there because it “makes me happy”. “How does it make Grace happy, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, it creates the illusion that he's surrounded by small floating lights.

Rocky begins to do some research.

Glitter: a substance invented by humans to make things look like they're covered in small lights.

Human jewellery: mostly involves gemstones or polished metals, designed to reflect small lights.

Christmas lights. Candles. Lanterns. Fireworks. Glowsticks. Glow in the dark paint. Rocky is beginning to notice a pattern here, statement.

It takes Grace a fucking while after getting to Erid to notice that a lot of the gifts he's receiving from grateful Eridians are either a) sparkly, b) incredibly shiny, or c) fitted with lights.

While the last one is obviously a concession for his human light sense, he's confused about the former two. Are Eridian materials usually this shiny? Is there some quality about sparkly or highly polished surfaces that makes them sound better? Or is there something about Eridian geology/metallurgy that makes their materials like this?

He asks Rocky about it.

“Simple. I tell people humans like lots of small lights. Humans are easy to make happy.”

Grace kind of wants to protest that humans are much more complicated than that.

But honestly… it fucking works. Like yeah the polished gemstones, shiny metals and glittery rocks are beautiful. Yes those Christmas lights you put up around the house did markedly improve my mental health, Rocky. Thank you, I hate it.

Adrian: Dear, wanting to fuck an alien is not that strange.

Rocky: Yeah but wanting to break into his ribcage while he's awake is. With lots of painkillers so it doesn't hurt.

Adrian: ...That's a very specific fantasy.

Rocky: Grace asked me if I would do it when he was delirious from the trip to Erid. I can't stop thinking about it.

Adrian: Ah, so it's his idea?

Rocky: He's so creative when he's on the brink of death, my song.

rocky's pissed off when he comes to this conclusion. even more angry than before— before it was a sense of betrayal, from feeling grace's betrayal, but now it's infuriation. he could cope with them sending him up here, as cruel as it was, he's a selfish eridian. he cant fathom a life without his grace. he wants nothing more than to keep him.

fast forward two months I have over 200 bloodymary fanart/edits saved to my google photos and my bookmarks are ridden with bloodymary ao3 fics. where the hell am I

It’s basically what happened to me, i watched iron lung then went on TikTok to look up some edits and fanart, found out about Bloodymary and thought “haha Markiplier and Ryan Gosling, what a silly combo”.

"So! I met an alien."

Oh he's hearing voices. He went mad. Okay. "We are trying to communicate". whatever.

Still going through the recordings, science, science, astrophage, science, I named it Rocky okay, science... he cope by inventing a friend I guess, he still look lucid enough for the mission so, we are still good, aren't we...

And then the alien actually shows up on screen "Hi, I'm Rocky, Rocky from Erid, I am not Rocky from movie no no no"