Just a twink gallivanting around

some of my favorite underrated moments from the phm deleted scenes:

Too hot in my room to sleep. making grace suffer my pain

i coloured it :))

This deleted scene killed me 😂 Imagine 4 years of this. Sleepover of all time LMAOOO

eridian children in Grace’s class interested but slightly disappointed to learn that much earth life is bilaterally symmetrical with even numbers of limbs

Grace going “oh!! But!” and teaching them about starfish, to their absolute delight

new eridian schoolchild trend of starfishing aka flopping flat down with all legs out and moving by wiggling and squirming around, giggling. parents hooting at Grace in despair. why did you teach them this

here’s a longer cut of grace trying to get the space suit on

I love the thought of Grace and Rocky slowly figuring out what's an 'alien' thing and what's a 'them' thing. It's mentioned a couple times in the book and it's so fun, because these are two people who have been pushed to their absolute limit both physically and mentally, in unbelievably horrific situations, and they are. the only living example of their respective species. for several years in Rocky's case and probably decades if not forever in Grace's.

Like, Grace thinking that all Eridians are very physically busy because of their brain structure driving them to engage with multiple different lines of thought or even conversation at once only to find out when they get to Erid that Rocky is just the most tightly wound ball of nerves anyone has ever met and if he doesn't have something to do with his hands he gets anxious.

Rocky thinking it's very normal for humans to have large gaps in their memory and/or occasionally dissociate for several minutes at a time and come back crying, then hearing the nannybot mention 'potential amnestic side effects' one day and falling down a WebMd rabbit hole that ends with a very high pitched scolding.

Grace finding out that for all his badgering, Rocky actually sleeps and eats as little as physically possible for a functional Eridian, a habit he picked up out of mingled fear and practicality as the only remaining crew aboard in case of emergency.

Both of them getting much better at reading each other and much worse at lying once they've established what's a normal quirk for the species and what's an alarming stress response. Nobody likes this. Interspecies trauma exchange. So many stones are thrown in this glass biodome.

Okay but teacher Grace on Erid having very little say in which kids get filtered into his class, though he is aware that the selection process is super specific and that most of the kids he gets are high performers with star academics and some even with influential parents. He isn't quite comfortable enough with Eridian culture yet to object to the selection process and make it more inclusive, however. That is, until he learns about the special needs kids.

Obviously, there are Eridian kids with special needs, and a few of them even filter into his classes. But one specific type of special needs kid has never shown up in his classes, and the only reason he even learned of the condition is because Rocky and Adrien's first pebble has the condition.

It's initially quite a struggle for them to deal with, and Grace sympathizes of course, because the child will apparently have huge learning and academic struggles and will likely never be able to live on their own. That is, until he learns the details of the disability.

Basically, it's a condition where the part of the Eridian brain that gives them their eidetic memory isn't fully developed, and so these kids just... can't remember things the way most eridians do. And in a culture where an eidetic memory is the norm, all things cater to that, so not having that is actually a massive disability.

But Grace is like, so... this kid just learns the same way a human does, or something like. Which is nothing new to him, though he is somewhat boggled at how much Rocky and Adrian struggle with their infant and their "slow" learning curve, even as far as initial developmental stages. Grace, on the other hand, simply treats the kid the same way he would a human infant, and Rocky and Adrien are impressed with his patience.

But, through this, it occurs to Grace that there must be other kids out there with this disability who likely aren't getting the attention and chances in life that they deserve, because Eridian culture is particularly hostile toward this disability, and actively views those with it as unable to function in regular society.

So Grace demands that a special course be put together where he teaches kids with this disability specifically. Rocky is hesitant, as most kids with this disability are home schooled and kind of... kept shut away. But Grace insists and as one of Erid's saviors, he gets what he wants eventually.

His first class is super small, maybe only three kids because so few parents were willing to advertise that their children have this disability. And because of the stigma around it, even those who agreed to it are super unsure and want to be present during the lessons, perhaps paranoid about the impression it will leave on Savior Grace, who is so accustomed to only teaching the most gifted students.

But Grace knows exactly how to deal with these kids. Some of them have varying degrees of function when it comes to their memory banks, which isn't so unlike teaching kids on earth. And so Grace is able to introduce all these tools and teaching techniques that were previously unheard of on Erid (though very normal on Earth) like having textbooks for reference with you at all times and having strategies that are less focused on memorization for understanding, and providing these kids with tools like calculators and teaching them the art of taking notes to look back on, etc etc.

Suddenly, with all these tools that most Eridians don't need, these kids are learning at a much faster rate, and succeeding with the help of all their little tools. And because so many normal eridians are ignorant of Grace's actual biology, it's shocking to them that Savior Grace doesn't have an eidetic memory either (shocking to everyone but Rocky anyway)--that his brain functions quite similarly in capacity to these "disabled" children.

Once this news gets around, suddenly there's more kids in his special classes, and there's all kinds of discourse being inflamed because the real reason these kids can't live on their own or function is lack of support from Eridian society.

If Savior Grace, who is well respected as a genius in his own right amongst the Eridians, can function so successfully, they why can't these kids?

I dunno, I just think it's an interesting premise.

At some point on the journey back to Erid, Rocky gets around to asking Grace exactly why he was so mesmerised by seeing the astrophage in the Petrova line.

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.

Grace spends a lot of time trying not to think about whether his species' urge to explore the cosmos (that saved their planet and nearly killed him several times) is tied to the same instinct that made his students like glitter gel pens.

WHY DID THEY CUT THIS SCENE IT IS SO CUTE, it has the "single ancestor panspermia" theory and BEAUTIFUL GREEN LIGHTING FROM ADRIAN and "when we think we make a sound so people know we're thinking" and grace looking at rocky like rocky personally hung the stars across the cosmos

two of them

There are SO many ways humans and Eridians compliment each other, and I don't even think some were intentional. For example: Lots of fan content I've seen has been kind of thoughtlessly projecting humanity's heat seeking behaviour onto Eridians. Reading the biology document, however, has made me infer something — Eridians love the cold.

They sleep at night, even in the absence of a light cycle, because that's when the temperature drops. Unlike humans, they don't use blankets. They don't try to preserve heat. They want to cool down faster, because because that's what their body needs shut down and rest! They RELAX in the cold!

Not only that, but their version of breathing is a constant influx of cool air. If they're without that coolant for even a few minutes, they're in serious trouble, and after half an hour, they're dead. Unlike us, they're at constant risk of overheating.

But not while they have a source of cold nearby. Like, for example, a human who lives at a fraction of their temperature.

On the Hail Mary, Grace spends a lot of time pressed against Rocky. Their temperature differences are extreme enough that xenonite can't entirely halt the heat transfer, so it's pleasantly warm. He feels like a cat curling up by the fire. It's relaxing. Of course, he also feels a little bad that he's draping his freezing raincloud of a body all over Rocky, but he figures Rocky puts up with the unpleasant cold okay.

Except: Rocky is chasing the cold just as much as Grace is chasing the heat.

Grace's muscles unwind with a constant heat press. Rocky relaxes with an endless source of peaceful, relieving cooling. What a funny quirk of biology, Rocky thinks, that being so incomprehensibly opposite to each other is so pleasant. What a lovely quirk of fate, that they've been given the opportunity to learn that through each other.

@sarasplenda has funny ideas

reblogs are highly appreciated, and please do not repost my art

Another horrible merch idea straight from my brain. I woke up in the middle of the night to draw this.

I would unironically love this

the upgraded xenonite suit was invented shortly after

inspired by this tweet

book grace loves to go on and on about rocky’s intelligence. every page he’s like rocky is SO smart, and so talented and skilled, eridians are probably WAY smarter than humans right rocky (and rocky’s like no, i think we’re of similar intelligence just in different ways) and grace is like NAH eridians are smarter, especially rocky, who’s probably the smartest one of all, who can fix anything and do anything and god i miss him i wish he was here right now. i wonder if he wants to do surgery on me. because i would let him if he asked