#7pm writes

feat. weird fleshy human brains!

kay so methinks that the species of sentients with brains made of literal crystals who (based on how rocky seems to behave) seem pretty logic/facts driven and also may be a little rigid in terms of potential adaptability?

i think that the eridians would be a little freaked out or bewildered or something when grace explains that his brain changes entirely mid-crisis to produce entirely different chemicals that let him operate better under high stress situations. feat. cortisol and adrenaline which can do shit like increase breathing, heartbeat and blood pressure and slow the digestive and reproductive systems to divert more oxygenated blood to the brain and muscles. plus they can shut off pain receptors allowing the body to push past its limits and do things it normally blocks us from doing because we’d hurt ourselves (ie. shredding our muscles lifting cars, running with broken bones, etc).

and then similarly, our emotions are also at least partially driven by chemical-based reward/punishment systems our brains evolved. love? there’s a chemical for that. happiness? that’s a chemical. sad? that’s actually a lack of chemicals. literally every emotion can cause shifts in brain chemicals and hormones.

like imagine trying to explain anxiety? my species bodies and brains evolved to make us feel bad when we might be in danger or socially ostracising ourselves so that we don’t do that. why avoid social outcasting? hard to survive on your own, usually being by yourself with no infrastructure in ancient times meant death or a lot of struggle. and then trying to explain an anxiety disorder??? oh yeah my brain is not built right and registers things as threats or social ostracism way more often than it should. brain freaks out over nothing and i get to suffer for it :/

the fact that things like sadness, grief, heartbreak, depression, rejection, other negative emotions can physically hurt to experience. i think they’d be deeply concerned over that one. (cue grace being like “i told you it’s a reward/punishment system, why are you surprised there’s punishments?”).

the fact that (due to The Chemicals™) prolonged stress can actually have negative impacts on physical health. including but not limited to; potentially fucking up the thyroid and tanking energy production causing fatigue. altering brain structures causing depression, anxiety, brain fog/focus issues and memory problems and trouble sleeping. muscle tension and resulting tension headaches. gastrointestinal and cardiovascular issues. and also it can fuck up your immune systems making it easier to get sick and take longer to heal wounds.

the way that the long term stress of working on and the hm project and then being sent on the mission having permanently changed the structure of his neural pathways meaning his brain is still acting on the assumption that it’s in danger in some way and reacting accordingly to things like it’s in danger even though he’s safe now. and that this happens often enough that humans have a well-documented history of this issue and a name and diagnostic criteria for it (ptsd). honestly explaining human mental disorders and illnesses would be so fascinating for a species that has (likely) unchanging brains made of crystals.

the way the human brain can just decide some memories are not important enough or too debilitating to keep and erasing or blocking them out. the way we use sleep to file short term memories to long term storage (hence why you get poorer memory if you’re not sleeping well).

the fact that a significant part of growing up for humans is learning how to regulate yourself and your behaviour and work and function through hormonal and chemical changes and imbalances.

anyways there’s so so many fic opportunities in there! let the alien rocks poke grace like the strange creature he is! let his existence be lowkey horrifying!

endless angst and hurt/comfort potential!

or maybe in your “rocky becomes a human” fics you could be a bit evil and make him completely debilitated and/or overwhelmed by his suddenly very biologically and chemically backed emotions that he has no experience regulating or working through!

istg i’ve done this so many times! actually imma make a list. in no particular order i have:

• v!legundo and v!avid fuck up the cure and instead de-age v!scott into life-series!scott, the boogeyman curse follows him to vsmp and it’s gunna fuck shit up (shenanigans ensue)

• esmp1!scott of rivendell is origins!scott the starborn and he regularly dimension hops. turns out being an elf king is just his latest adventure (shenanigans ensue)

• in the middle of a hectic battle against the red kingdom bf!scott’s magic freaks tf out and teleports him away and replaces him with his aged-up self, life-series!scott (shenanigans ensue)

I PROPOSE POST-CANON RYLAND GRACE BECOMES ONE OF THOSE TEACHERS WHO WEAR SWISHY LONG SKIRTS AND SO MUCH JEWELLERY THEY JINGLE WHEN THEY WALK!!!!

he’s an alien surrounded by hermaphrodite rocks! gender expectations who???

like he already wears soft cardigans and sweaters often. swishy skirts aren’t a big reach from there in terms of comfort level.

and maybe he gets used to the styles common in eridian culture and he wants to sound nice when he moves! so perhaps he sews little dangling charms and thin pieces of metal to some of his skirts.

maybe he gets given pretty sounding stones or jewellery as gifts! maybe he picks up jewellery making as a hobby and makes gifts for rocky and adrian or his pebbles (students) or for himself.

maybe his pebbles like to give him little craft projects or carvings they’ve made and he turns them into wearables so they can see how much he likes them!

and hey! there’s so many places he can hang charms off himself! he’s got bangles and bracelets, little thin anklets, necklaces, chokers, earrings or maybe ear cuffs, decorative glasses chains (since they’re ways falling off his face).

but wait! his hair is getting a little longer! (he forgot to cut it) so he figures he might as well experiment a little. and then we get ornamental hair sticks keeping it out of his face and sometimes he’ll make a couple little mini braids and thread hair charms into them and tie most of it back with ribbons!

i think the eridians would be thrilled with these developments! ryland just likes that he can wear all the little presents his pebbles and his friends gift to him. hard to feel socially awkward and anxious or unwanted or unloveable or useless when dripping head to toe in evidence that people care for him and the results of his own creative talents.

additionally it would be extremely funny if he scales back a majority of his jewels, charms and looser clothes if/when he does lab work for practicality (i kinda imagine him doing half a week helping with research and proper scientific work and half a week teaching pebbles) so his fellow researchers don’t know about it. and then one day maybe the other researchers and scientists invite him to some recreational thing where he won’t need to worry about keeping his hair up and stuff. so they’re obviously unready for when he rocks up with the swishy skirts and jingling charms, beads and bangles he usually goes for when he’s with his pebbles or his family (rocky and adrian and their pebbles). anyways i think that while he definitely is kinda strange to most eridians, they still end up thinking he’s very pretty since he sounds so nice and has such a uniquely soft texture to him.

and also they should have access to the internet (they can post but do not see anything new posted) and i think there should be interlude chapters where everyone on earth is reacting to tweets and tumblr posts and fanfics showing up from the surviving hail mary crew members after 25 years over the course of months before the beatles show up.

except obviously earth isn’t broadcasting the internet to tau ceti or erid so it’s literally just ry and lesya screaming and shitposting into the void.

also rocky and olesya would absolutely be engineer besties, get along like a house on fire, and both bully grace into admitting he’s capable and good at his job n shit. oh and also sleeping regularly bc canon grace has the shittest sleep schedule ever.

plus plus a scene where olesya talks grace down from a panic attack after his flashback about getting run down, drugged and hucked into space to die against his will. she’s gunna be absolutely pissed about that one.

two sides of the same coin and they make up the whole of knowledge together.

feat. depersonalisation

ok so first depersonalisation can be experienced for a number of reasons including but not limited to chronic stress, anxiety, depression, hormonal shifts, ocd, and various other mental and personality disorders. and i’m sure we can all agree that grace has been chronically stressed for a long while and also probably has ptsd. so he totally could experience depersonalisation.

and here i’m referring mostly to the feeling of being disconnected from your body and/or inhabiting your body kinda like a ghost. sure you’re in the body but the body isn’t you.

and then of course all the things that come with depersonalisation of that flavour like treating your body and brain as separate entities from yourself that you sometimes need to wrangle into submission or negotiate with to get things done.

idk my thought process was that maybe the rock aliens feel more solid in themselves since their brains are made of crystals and they never forget, etc? i just think it could be fun to watch eridians be baffled by the concept of feeling like the body and brain aren’t part of yourself. it’d probably start with the lil phrases.

“sorry, my brain is being stupid.” -> maybe for anxiety grace can’t seem to shake despite consciously rationalising his feelings and deciding it’s not that scary

“c’mon brain work with me here.” -> maybe grace forgot something and is trying to remember

“my brain is being mean to me.” -> nightmares/intrusive thoughts/anxiety

“my body just can’t follow orders right.” -> perhaps said in reference to his clumsiness

“my body just won’t get the memo.” -> said in annoyance when his body gives him hunger cues that he can’t follow because he’s trying to ration

“it feels like my body is betraying me.” -> when they’re getting close to erid and grace is getting sick

and if you wanted to go even deeper you could even connect it to the fairly widespread human belief that our consciousness or soul is seperate from our bodies and can move on to other planes of reality or inhabit different bodies or linger in places without a body after we die. or maybe tie it back to having a brain that’s mostly water making us feel much more fluid and we therefore can easily feel disconnected from ourselves? there’s lots of ways you could take this tbh.

you could also play with different severities of depersonalisation if you’d like! maybe it only feels mild during the mission when it’s kind of helpful to disconnect and just work as hard as possible. but then once there’s suddenly 4 years of downtime with no particular objective to work towards and with the lack of focus and direction to keep grace tethered the disconnect feels much more like a problem. maybe rocky gets really concerned because sometimes grace just loses connection with his body and sits trapped in his mind looking out, and that manifests as lots of spacing out, dissociating and sitting very still staring off at nothing.

go for your life really

I THOUGHT OF A THING FOR MY ELDRITCH SHADOWVANILLA AU!!!!

ahahahaa pure vanilla, as the embodiment of truth, is physically unable to see the masks that people put up because he can only see the metaphysical side of things!!! he’s looking at you and he’s literally seeing your very soul. he’s looking at the world and seeing the magic and emotion and intentions and the truest display of what everything is and who people are.

yknow what he’s not seeing? the clothes people wear, the way they outwardly present themselves, their facial expressions. he’s going to read you like an open fucking book because to him that’s exactly what you are. he can see you for what you are, he’s watching your emotions flit past as you talk to him. people think he’s a good judge of character… he doesn’t see why it’s so difficult for some people when you can just look at someone like gingerbrave and see their shining enthusiasm and joy for learning and helping others. or just look at this corrupt politician and see how gross and slimy they are and how their words stick to other people and become a pain to wash off.

rahahs i’m a genius omg

have my chaos lmao this au has been haunting me for like 2 days.（ ´∀｀）☆

The truth is harsh, it’s cruel. It cares not for the sensibilities, sentiments and boundaries of cookies. The influx of so much knowledge is a strain on the cookies who harbour it unlike any other. It would tear you to pieces. Shatter you so utterly that you’d never be able to glue yourself back together even if you wanted to. And you don’t. You can’t want to go back to the old normal knowing what you know.

Somewhere deep in that wretched spire, the strain begins to truly catch up with Pure Vanilla Cookie. His mind is fracturing. Cracks are slowly widening along the seams of what make him a Cookie. Shadow Milk’s torment does nothing but speed the process along. Shadow Milk Cookie has seen this same process before. He saw it gradually unfolding over the course of centuries of gazing into mirrors and catching reflections of his soul breaking apart under the weight and pressure of the universe. It was an unbearably slow and agonising process he didn’t wish to see again. But someone must hold the truth or it would destroy everything, and if Pure Vanilla was intent on continuing to hold it then at least he could speed up the process of Vanilla’s destruction and subsequent rebirth. It was not kind. Not gentle by any means. But it was a mercy.

Pure Vanilla, in his time with Shadow Milk, began to see what it meant to hold the burden he carried. To cradle something so unendingly painful in his hands and hold it close. For if this terrible knowledge was not held by something then it may just cease to be. After all does something truly exist if no one can bear witness to it? It broke him down in ways he would never be able to explain. Pure Vanilla was completely lost. Atomised. Crumbled into nothing in the wake of the infinite wave of searing light.

It was then that he truly understood Shadow Milk Cookie and what he’d been trying to show him. Lies and deceit, if strategically placed, could ease the weight of infinity. Make it bearable. It was a fine balancing act, a knife’s edge. It was an artform to walk the razor-thin line so steadily, knowing one wrong move, even a moment of hesitation, would send him tumbling into the oblivion either side of him. He would walk the path as it sliced his feet and left him bleeding and he would not falter. He would not waver in his resolve, because Shadow Milk was there walking the same path alongside him. Shadow Milk soothed the crushing loneliness of having no one else understand the true, horrifying nature of knowing Everything.

Soft feathers unfurled from Pure Vanilla’s body. Unseen eyes opened across the universe. Pure Vanilla saw and it was Eveything. He saw the hearts and minds of every cookie. He saw the cycles of the universe. He saw the bonds between cosmic forces. He saw the nature of Everything. But most of all, he saw Shadow Milk standing there, hand outstretched and waiting.