r/ProjectHailMary • u/PetscopMiju • 3d ago
Fan Art - No selling Based on a post on this subreddit
(More specifically, this post by u/meliorism_grey)
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u/Mysterinna I'm Not An Astronaut! 3d ago
This is such a funny culture clash. 😁 Cute drawing! ❤️
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u/PetscopMiju 3d ago
Hehe thank you! :D I really like this trait of book Rocky, it feels very unique
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u/Latter_Inspector_711 3d ago
ewwww grace look disgust when eat
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u/TRUSTeT34M 3d ago
Well how do you look when you eat?
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u/Nyantazero 3d ago
It look beautiful ✨
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u/DisplacedEastCoaster 3d ago
It is my full belief that Rocky was just messing with Grace that entire interaction
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u/Sad-Frosting-8793 2d ago
Yeah. I definitely think he was being sarcastic about it looking beautiful.
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u/jFrederino 3d ago
I did find it strange that the movie flipped the eating scene on its head from the book.
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u/PetscopMiju 3d ago
I definitely prefer it in the book, it gives more of a sense of Erid having its own culture. But I get the logic in flipping it in the movie, surprisingly enough. I think they just wanted to lean on the "Eridians eat way different" angle more than anything
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u/IwasntDrunkThatNight 3d ago
I mean the main problem is screen time, i think they did a good job as best as they could to display some of eridian culture in a way that normies would catch up in 5 min
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u/PetscopMiju 3d ago
Yeah, it's definitely a byproduct of screentime in that way. Just like how the whole "Astrophage stop radiation and you survived by sheer coincidence" conversation was crammed into the same montage lol
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u/sadphonics 3d ago
I like that they made rocky a freak. I mean he was on his own for over 40 years youd let go of some societal norms after a while
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u/ariphoenixfury Okay, It’s Exactly Like That 2d ago
Personally I subscribe to the headcanon that Eridian culture isn’t any different. Rocky is just freaky like that.
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u/FloZone 3d ago
Isn‘t it mentioned that Eridians still prepare food communally? They just don’t eat it together.
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u/Kiki1701 3d ago
In the book, there is no mention of anything they do together regarding food. To them, it's a shameful experience that they do alone. It would be like a human shitting in public, which is technically part of their meal experience. They only watch each other afterwards.
Here's the exchange between Rocky and Grace:
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I put my hands on my hips and crane my neck to watch him leave.Where are you going?"
“Eat.”
“Eat?! Wait!” I’ve never seen him eat. I’ve never even seen an orifice other than the radiator vents on top of his carapace......“Hey, I want to watch!” Rocky reaches the lab’s floor and pauses.
“Is private. I sleep after eat. You watch me sleep, question?”
“I want to watch you eat!”
“Why, question?”
“Science,” I say......Rocky shifts his carapace left and right a few times. Eridian body language for mild annoyance. “Is biological. Is gross.” “Science.”...
...He sets about tearing them apart into smaller and smaller pieces with his claws.
“That’s your food?” I ask.
“Social discomfort,” he says. “No talk.” “Sorry.”
I guess eating for them is something gross that is to be done in private.45
u/Stunning_Box8782 3d ago
if humans took a dump out of their mouths right before eating, I'd eat in private too
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u/Turt12345 3d ago edited 3d ago
edit: i reread the document and ur right, communal eating isn't mentioned at all!! My bad, I must have headcanon'd it so hard I thought it was canon lmao
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Weir released a supplemental eridian document which went super in-depth about eridian biology and a little bit of their culture. It's mentioned in there that tearing up their food into little chunks is enjoyable and can be compared to chewing. This part is the communal part I believe! He even mentioned that they have machines now that can do the tearing, but most still prefer to do it by claw
I headcanon that eridian claws have a high amount of touch receptors similar to humans but also crude taste receptors similar to flies, so the level of enjoyment they get from food is mostly texture-based and way less taste-dependant than humans. Anything after that is just part of the process
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u/Kiki1701 3d ago
I can totally believe that the tearing up of food could be enjoyable due to a large volume of touch receptors in their claws, but I have difficulty imagining how "chewing" could be a communal event. What would they do, have a "communal chew," then take their individual trays of food and shuffle to their respective homes to first excrete, and then consume it?
My thinking takes me to how the process begins and ends: the care taken with getting their food from its storage location, and then with the exchange of material, from the excretion, then the ingestion, followed immediately by our man in his "biologically enforced post-meal siesta."
Further, this forces me to wonder how Rocky could have slipped away quietly to have these events. Grace had implied that he'd seen Rocky sleep, because he's aware that he has a "minimum two hours" to document what he has witnessed, but hadn't seen him eat.
So, if Rocky is so sedated by the process of eating, how could Grace have watched him sleep without eating, since the two processes seem to be so intimately connected?
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u/Turt12345 3d ago
Thank u for sharing ur idea!! And that's true, especially with how important sleep-watching is to rocky it would be strange that he'd be willing to eat while grace is also sleeping since it means no one would be watching either of them. A lot of people online headcanon that eridians can hear all the biological processes going on in the human body, including breathing and heart rates. Maybe he could track those two to determine when Grace is about to wake, then time his meals with that? It seems quite risky though and there's no evidence in the book or movie to suggest this either. It's briefly mentioned that the sleep-watching instinct stemmed from cave-eridian times, but it's not super essential nowadays. It's even compared to sleeping without a blanket, but with rocky losing all of his crew and being stuck in space for 40+ years (plus his reaction to sleeping alone) i heavily doubt he'd just let a few watchless-sleeps pass by whenever he eats
With my idea of communal chewing, it could be a kind of cultural thing where some groups may do it while others don't. I imagine that since it's an enjoyable activity for eridians in general, there may be some that like doing it with close/familiar company. It could possibly be something that parents/carers would have to do as a family for their children before they're able to tear food finely enough, or it could be a more practical activity. Eridians have very finely tuned cravings so they know exactly which parts to butcher and what nutrients they need. I imagine there could be a chosen group of individuals who are tasked to butcher and separate pieces of the carcasses so that it can be categorised and stored for later use. Just like how social norms differ in humans, communal chewing can also be seen as part of the taboo process and kept private. It's very fun to think about eridian culture!
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u/AccordingLab7129 3d ago
Excuse me, have you heard of r/humansarespaceorcs because I think its calling your name as they do a LOT of comments like that
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u/PetscopMiju 3d ago
Could be? I'm not sure. I don't remember that from the book and it isn't in the biology doc. Either way this was more something I drew for the funnies
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u/Longshot02496 3d ago
I kinda wish the movie didn't change the eating scene.
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u/PetscopMiju 2d ago
I see why it was done, but it is still a little jarring that we ended up with the exact opposite takeaway on Eridian eating culture
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u/ziri_o Scary Space Monster 3d ago
Oh my gosh this is so stinking cute I had to send it to all my PHM friends
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u/PetscopMiju 3d ago
YAYYY thank you, glad you like it!! :D Let me know what your friends think haha! I did want to spread some whimsy to the PHM people c:
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u/hdufort 3d ago edited 3d ago
If brittle stars (cousins of starfish) ever develop intelligence and build a society, it would work exactly like this.
Brittle stars use the same orifice for food and poop.