#serif rambles

In the Eridian Shifter and Eridian Pebble Shifter AUs, Grace doesn't get the shifting ability until post-Adrian fishing incident, a couple weeks into breeding the Taumoeba. i combined book and movie canon so that Rocky didn't take the implied (movie) weeks to wake up, but it wasn't a couple days (book, also I dont remember the exact number sorry). More like 2 weeks? Ish? Then they're awake and then a couple days after that is when Grace starts not feeling well, and then boom wakes up as an Eridian

But imagine if in the pebble au, Grace gets the shifting ability during the period when Rocky's still unconscious, once he stops panicking, he's gonna be glued to Rocky's side. Like he'd get up to go work with the Taumoeba and everything but otherwise he's tucked himself between Rocky's carapace and one of their limp limbs.

some highlights:

chekov's gun but with the pocket knife. we see grace put a knife into his spacesuit pocket while dragging all the cables and lights to the tunnel to see rocky. that same knife saves his life during the fishing incident.

The whole ship is labeled with flags from different countries who made those parts! Japan's flag on the outside of the hail mary near the airlock. South Korea on the hatches between parts of the ship. Canada on the wall(?) while grace is holding the camera and talking to it during the rocky moving in montage. Australia (i think?) in the clean room where the taumoeba breeder tanks are kept. American and specifically Boeing built the room that houses and launches the Beatles. You can literally see all these flags in teeny tiny little spots and know that that country made that thing. Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head

Grace wears the dress and glasses that ilyukhina wore in the party scene, and the bucket hat that yao wore

The ONLY time we see the scar from rocky on grace is when grace is doing the math to decide if hes gonna go to earth or go to rocky. Every single other time, its under bandages or covered by a sleeve

Grace's lip quivers at least 4 times while talking to stratt before he runs

The EVA suits either all have the same number on them or they have a way to clean/repair the suits. He wears suit #2 and it gets beat up and dirty during the fishing incident, but when he says bye to rocky and then goes to the blip a to find rocky, the suit is no longer beat up

The 3 astrophage in the movie ARE named just like in the book. Its a blink and youll miss it bit on the whiteboard before the shopping montage

Grace had a twizzler in his mouth at the store in checkout. They are shown buying the skittles but not the twizzlers. Either grace brought twizzlers in and ate them in the store, or he convinced Carl to buy them and opened them before they paid for them.

The "2" thing with grace (number 2 on the project, 2 on his eva suit) continues. His PPE suit in the argon filled lab has a big 2 on it under the numbers '1075'

When grace reads off what the astrophage are made of, he does so out of order to whats on screen

The hail mary has idle screens. Like the movie one where it would bounce around and get close to the corner

Grace has plants in his classroom and doesnt have the overhead lights on

similar to my post about what if grace developed the ability to shift before rocky wakes up post-fishing incident in the pebble shifter au, please imagine more angsty versions of the eridian shifter au.

rocky busts out to activate the centrifuge, starts to try to drag grace to the med bay/dorm, but collapses. grace's body, already in agony, writhes and then as rocky is struggling to stay awake, they hear an eridian forcing its way out of grace's EVA suit. the eridian is staggering and smeared with both human and eridian blood (the result of blood all over the eva suit and probably the floor too, from both of them). grace's world is spinning literally and figuratively; he doesnt know what the fuck is going on, his whole body hurts, and he definitely is not shaped the way he should be, but he can hear rocky DYING on the ground

and so grace, with only seconds of being in this new body, reaches out and drags the larger eridian down the hall to the nearest airlock - in the lab, because with the movie hail mary layout I think most of rocky's tunnels and airlocks are in that chunk of the ship, and the bulb in the cockpit is separate, since extending the tunnel through the dont go crazy room and into the cockpit could have resulted in rocky accidentally fucking with some really important things - and grace is wailing the whole time. rocky's lowkey fighting to stay awake and is super fucking weak, but they're quiet, limp, bleeding, BURNING

and so grace manages to drag rocky into the airlock, doesnt even hesitate, just through sheer force of will he forces his unfamiliar body to obey so he can smack the controls and get rocky into their atmosphere without even knowing if the ammonia would kill him too

and then they both collapse, slumped against each other

eventually grace wakes up, and rocky briefly slept but the cycle was pretty short, and grace just does his best to carefully drag rocky back to the dormitory, all while rocky focuses on breathing and the feeling of claws on his carapace for the first time in so long

finally grace gets rocky comfortable and slumps over, exhausted, and rocky asks, "grace?"

and grace whistles back quietly in confirmation

and rocky says, "grace watch rocky sleep?"

and grace manages to say, "always"

and then rocky passes the fuck out

and grace is left with his friend who's gonna remain unconscious for like 2 weeks. he eventually goes human again once he leaves the tunnel and almost IMMEDIATELY is in pain because his human form only slightly healed and that plus the pain from shifting for the first time? holy fuck ow and Armando forcibly sedates him again so he can be treated, cause theres still burns on his human form (you can pry the scar from rocky's claws from my cold dead hands) and smoke inhalation and ammonia burns and like ten concussions and internal and external bleeding from being slammed into the control panels under at LEAST 6Gs, plus the damage from when debris from the hail mary briefly knocked him out on the hull

and then grace has two weeks to work with the taumoeba and then sit next to rocky and try to figure out how to sing, how to properly work his body when he's not losing his mind with the eridian equivalent of adrenaline

when rocky wakes up, grace is not asleep but he's sitting quietly so that their carapaces are pressed together, and grace is focusing on the screen reader where he's got it pointed at a laptop set outside the tunnel with some research paper set to autoscroll so he can read it

imagine rocky thinking that his hazy memories from when they were last briefly awake wasn't real, like when they imagined the voices of his crewmates on the blip-a, until grace shoves the screen reader aside to cling to rocky, crying his name over and over again until rocky realizes that this actually is grace

and rocky still aches but now he's finally touching another eridian and not only that but this is GRACE and they just sing together

anyway

LOL thats a much better sound than the one i imagine - i literally imagine his body making like crunching and shlorping noises as his bones crunch and break and his organs squish and restructure into his eridian form. and when he goes from eridian to human the crunching is even worse because yknow the carapace.

there are nitrogen gas pipes running through the ship

those yellow pipes with black labels running alongside the cables that grace pulls out to power the lights he brings down the tunnel to meet rocky? yeah those labels say "nitrogen gas"

i did not realize this. maybe everyone else knew this. but i just saw it and went "oh duh" because grace isn't breathing pure oxygen. he's breathing a nitrogen oxygen mix. because thats what we breathe on earth. it's at like 40% the pressure of earth, but its still a mix of gas. so thats the pipes carrying the nitrogen gas.

easily accessible for later on when he needs it for the taumoeba. he doesnt just have to rely on dubois' tanks.

speaking of, why the hell did he not realize that in the book? did weir forget that astronauts dont usually breathe 100% oxygen on ships? the apollo missions did, but thats a crazy fire risk and i doubt stratt would permit that. modern ships and stations use a mix of gas like we breathe on earth. why didnt grace just. decrease the oxygen and increase the nitrogen in the ship's atmosphere to flush the ship out. why didn't he just use some of the existing nitrogen in the hail mary instead of having to ration the amount of nitrogen from dubois' tank.

am i crazy in thinking that? like no way did weir forget that humans live in 78% nitrogen and that would easily kill the escaped taumoeba. even if it didn't, grace could just put on an eva suit and then modify the existing settings of the life support to increase the amount of nitrogen further to kill the taumoeba.

"what happens to grace's clothes when he shifts?"

the answer: whatever is most funny and or convenient in that moment. for example, in "you may call me grace" theres a hint that the clothes he'd been wearing before shifting to leave the hail mary are on the ground where they'd fallen. he trips over them! he also rips through his eva suit in the first fic when going onto the blip-a to find rocky!

but there are also times where the clothes just. disappear. fold into the pocket dimension his human body does.

this will eventually change and i will go back and edit whatever fics as necessary to reflect whichever option i go with. either grace shreds his clothes when shifting while wearing them and as a result strips before shifting (when he can), or his clothes stay on his human body and just pops into existence with his human form when he turns back.

she initiated a conversation with me on the way back from yoga and breakfast about the differences between book and movie canon and when I explained to her the fandom joke/idea of "eridian culture is like the book, movie rocky is just a freak and or traumatized and weird after 46 earth years alone in space" she started laughing really hard and said "that's my headcanon! I think i used that right!"

I also played clips of interviews of ryan gosling and james ortiz and I didnt even have to say his name before my mom perked up and said "thats james ortiz! hes really good!"

I also hesitantly brought up "rocktiz" and she nodded and said "those artists are right. human rocky would just be james ortiz."

but i did start writing another au of the eridian shifter au (are we surprised? absolutely not)

and yes. yes it is in fact the exact same as the main au except instead of grace being able to shift between a human and eridian form, it's rocky who can change forms. his eridian form can only survive in erid's environment, but his human form can do both.

yes. human rocky is just james ortiz. he is exactly 1 inch taller than grace. they have their carvings and the stone representing adrian.

grace will freak out but the overwhelming feeling of skin contact after so long overrides his "oh my god rocky is human" panic.

it's only 500 words and i wrote it at 4am while in a waiting room. it will get longer lol i've just forced myself to actually work on the main au. the outline is in my head because honestly that's a lot of work to write down right now.