I exist whether you like it or not

Grace: wassup carl and I made a baby

Stratt, under her breath: fuck

Grace: what

Do you think he stood in front of them and told them that their teacher was a brave man who volunteered for the mission because he wanted to make sure they got to grow up.

Do you think he asked them to draw pictures that he could send with Grace, so that when he woke up and looked in his luggage the first thing that he would was all of their artwork.

Do you think Grace looked through all of the art from his students and started remembering their names and the silly things they did and all the times they made him laugh.

Do you think he got confused when he found a drawing signed by someone named Carl, because he doesn't remember having a student by that name.

Do you think he cried and cried and cried when he realized who the drawing was from.

Do you think he asked Rocky to make two little Xenonite figurines, smiling and holding hands, with the names Grace and Carl inscribed on them.

Scientific contributions and discoveries made by people of color, women, and non-advanced degree holders so often get swept under the rug or erased entirely and Grace made sure Carl was recognized.

It’s one of the first things we see in the movie that shows us as an audience that, at his core, Grace is a good person who isn’t driven by ego. A lot of scientists wouldn’t have thought to credit Carl or would have intentionally downplayed his contribution.

Simon rejected sleep.

Simon is afraid that everything will be taken away from him again(((

So like, with the stars dying, I'm thinking Eridian media might have gone on a whole "aliens are bad bad bad out there killing stars and wanting to eat Erid" and etc trend for their sci-fi. Long ballads about what are essentially evil Eridians with the equivalent of prosthetics doing terrible things to the galaxy and brave heroes like Rocky going off to stop them. Because y'know that's probably how you'd conceptualize a huge scary conflict like total cosmic annihilation in a way that makes it seem beatable: designate a bad guy you can just defeat in order to stop it.

But then Grace and Rocky get to Erid and that trend gets immediately flipped. Turns out that there were kind of bad aliens, the astrophage and all, but that's more like a natural disaster, and hero Rocky has returned with the weirdest, nicest alien ever. Erid media suddenly rockets back to a prior era of optimistic sci-fi previously considered intolerably twee and cringe after the solar disaster kicked off, where the aliens are always nice nice nice, incredibly weird and sometimes goofy as fuck but friendly and not the bad guys.

Of course you never get full consensus on these things, so there are also creative Eridians who are like. But what if evil humans question? Evil humans posing as saviors infiltrate Erid and replace Eridians with pods that hatch into creepy non-Erid rock monsters question? Evil human comes to Erid under guise of niceness and KILLS Eridians question???

Which is broadly considered like. Holy shit dude stop being gauche the nice alien saved the planet stop fucking writing stories where his skeleton cracks open like a nest of evil eggs and turns into a bunch of monsters! Rude, statement! Aliens very nice statement!

And like at first all the Eridian scientists are very sure to keep this sort of stuff away from Grace, they don't want to insult him or imply that he's being slandered in their media or anything. And again overall the popular trend turns a lot more to aliens-as-friendly, especially if they're expressly humans, and the sci-fi writers of Erid are having a total BLAST speculating about Earth and writing stories about it and etc, Grace seems to very much enjoy answering questions for the ones who want to keep things accurate and chuckling and enthusing over the creativity of the ones who don't. He's like, oh yeah they are definitely also doing this back on Earth, don't worry.

Researchers laughing and nervously just being like, yes of course, this is the full extent of it, not to worry! Normal thing which humans are also doing!

Until one day Rocky just brings Grace a recording of a full-blown Eridian horror sci-fi where Grace HIMSELF is EXPLICITLY a horrible monster that goes on a killing spree and tries to destroy Erid.

The other researchers are losing their shit. RoCKY?!?! WHY QUESTION??? Oh fuck Grace is going to be so upset! He's such a sensitive soul he doesn't even like it when one of his students gets distressed!

didnt quite make this in time for 12am on june 1st. not upset or anything /silly

its pride month so its officially the month of Wren. yup his month only dont think about it