I was watching Vol 2 today and a bit that’s always kind of nagged me finally clicked.
When Rocket describes Ego as a little guy and holds up his fingers as about an inch, and then clarifies that he’s sure he would be much larger if he got closer…
This is actually a measured phenomenon. During early development, human brains learn how to interpret the world around them through a variety of different physical and chemical stimuli. Eyesight, for example, is cells in the backs of our eyes being stimulated by different wavelengths, and our brain putting that together to “see” the world based on those stimuli. While growing, creatures learn how sizes relate to distance, they even learn how to expect to see the world around them. Illusions that rely on corners to create the illusion don’t work the same in people who grow up in a culture that uses round houses. Learning how the size of something relates to the distance of that object is one of those things.
There is a case study taught in introduction to sensation and perception psychology classes, where a man studied a remote forest-dwelling tribe. He took a member of that tribe out of the forest and at one point, they came across a large field with a herd of buffalo in the distance, and the researcher pointed them out as an animal that people hunt. The man looked, and then asked why, because they were only the size of ants. Over time, the man was able to learn how distance perception worked.
So I realized.
Rocket had to teach himself size perception as it relates to distance because he spent his formative years in cages and laboratory rooms. He had to fucking teach himself VISUAL PERCEPTION and has to do the manual calculations in his head of how big something is based on how far away he guesses it is, and vice versa, calculating distance based on size.
We get a glimpse into that manual conversion when he’s explaining it out loud. He might not realize how automatic it is for other people, or maybe he just trusts his family to understand, I’m not sure. But it gets thrown back in his face, and the wall goes right back up.
This is too painful, make it stop.
Well, damn.
Man, Rocket is so well done in terms of the cognitive and biomechanical downsides of being–well, a tiny little monster who didn’t ask to be made.
