Off brand Satan

timeskip 🫶🫡

REEKS of artstyle inconsistency. but also love 🫶 and my insane ramblings over the course of mutliple weeks. i wanted to get a semi-coherent storyline to post so here it is!!

shoutout to @kikithepink for this post, for ideas about the eridians' version of a fated soulmate; because they use echolocation, not being able to see the string, but instead hearing special vocalizations/a special sound to let them know that they are "tied"! every reference to rocky hearing grace's heartbeat is for you!

hopefully this post wasn't too difficult to understand- i did the timeskip because i wanted to get adrian in there AND! i love comics framed on memory, so them reminiscing on how stupid they were in communication ugh. i love it. hopefully it's comprehensible LMAO

so they basic premise is that grace initially didn't tell rocky that they were tied. he's nervous! and they also didn't know each other well yet.

they did talk about it after rocky tells grace about adrian, and then details to grace the "mate thrum" though that means something a little different for eridians. essentially feeling a "big big energy"; i'd like to think it's a very low-frequency tone (like the color RED! get it. red string.) but very powerful and unmistakable.

and rocky didn't bring it up to grace because he thought grace knew! LOL. but also navigating the "my soulmate is an alien" landscape, and it became clear to him (during the eridian mating conversation) that grace, in fact, did NOT know that rocky knew that they were tied/fated.

i'll probably make more fleshed out doodles about grace getting tied to adrian as well (i wanted to keep this one basic/short [well..]) but they were tied on first meeting (just like rocky and grace)!

and little easter egg, but every frame of grace and rocky sitting post-time skip, they are sitting on adrian! i too am not immune to big adrian propaganda, i love it so much, here's a more detailed look into my psyche:

i have more doodles where that came from! but it makes more sense to post related ones together... so, to be continued. (i don't really do long projects [i get stressed], so it will likely be some non-linear storytelling throughout doodles.)

i am excited to post the next batch though, so have this (out of context) panel for now 😭

oh red string au, I love you so 😩 details are below. and I ramble. this has made this post very long. apology apology

there are multiple versions of a red string au but this is mine (so we are on the same page here):

people are born without strings, and get theirs when they are in proximity to their soulmate AND cross paths. think like bumping into each other on the street, sitting next to them at a concert, your waiter at a restaurant, new coworker, etc.

some people don't have a soulmate 🤷 it's rare, but not that rare that people believe it never happens. it's socially acceptable to believe that, if you reach a certain age, you may just not have one. but people find their soulmate at any age. it's just one of those things where the belief depends on the person.

people can also be tied to multiple individuals. #yeah

soulmate doesn't necessarily mean sexual or even romantic attraction. tis but a soul tie. two souls who were meant to be together. don't think ab it too hard. red string au storylines are super cute and I love them, but sometimes don't have a lot of complexity or nuance. just because two people "get tied" doesn't mean they're like, going to get married or something. what happens between two people after they get tied solely depends on those two people. it really varies. red string of fate au in 2026 means it's gonna be woke. happy pride month✋️

ALL THAT BEING SAID; we get into the plot of this being a PHM au...

grace not being tied, never getting tied. being surrounded by many people in the professional world who are all tied. always experiencing a slight othering because of it. nothing explicit, but just enough to be there. "making peace" with it, choosing to believe that maybe he's just one of those people that doesn't have one🙁 and that's fine! he knows that if he actually is, then it's perfectly normal. but he tries not to think about. ever. jokes that he is, instead, "tied to his work"

ironically, his fate WAS tied to his work though. this is where petrova line = red string of fate comes into play. Dr. "I'm soul-tied to my work" grace, pointing at the astrophage in a petri dish, then staring down into a dark xenonite tunnel protruding from the ship blocking the petrova line. screaming in shock as his red string appears, tying him to someone at the other end. (guess who!)

stratt's actions become more cruel, essentially dooming him (from the eyes of everyone on earth) to a life of never finding a potential soulmate. (though grace chose to believe that he might just be a person without one, there was always a chance he just hadn't found them yet. stratt took away his choice to do so.)

so. eridians can't see color. and because the string isn't a physical object with any mass or weight, it's just a force. i'd like to think this au is kind of just our society but everyone has a sixth sense to see the string of fate; like eridians discovering humans can see light. just another extra sense. ANYWAY, rocky can't see the string! he doesn't see that him and grace or tied, or have any idea about this aspect of human culture (or any, for that matter).

what's interesting though is that the red string also occurs for eridians, they just can't "see" it! i'd like to think that once grace is settled and situated on erid, he gets bombarded with questions and requests from eridians to tell them if they are tied with a "soulmate" according to human culture.

if you saw the other post, you may be thinking, "but bay you said grockdrian!" and you would be right. adrian is not pictured in this one (because this is the beginning) but they will be! qpr grockdrian domestic life on erid is a whole other thing. it's happening though. i said so.

bonus if you got through all of that:

NO IDEA why i'm locked in so hard. please actually ask me questions if you have any though. lowk i #needthat. honestly this post is so long... maybe i need to go outside actually holy shit 😭