This forest is old. Very old. Old as fuck.

Grace hunches in and says, "Guess I was bullied a lot growing up, haha-" Carl cuts in. "So was I." Grace: "What? Really?" Carl pops Skittles in his mouth as he replies, "I grew up fat and black, I got my fair share of shit. Sure, it got to me, but I came around to the idea that those teenage dipshits were wrong about me. What's your excuse, man?"

Grace says uncomfortably, "I never- Uh. I, well-" Carl looks very unimpressed and says, "See? You're doing it again. Say what you mean to say." Grace slumps. "I guess I never thought about it that way." Carl: "Yeah. I know. That's why I said it. Get out of your own damn way."

We see the first panel in color: Grace floating outside the Hail Mary, surrounded by the red glow of Astrophage, as Carl says, "And once you do that? Hoo, man. You'll be unstoppable."

From that, they concluded that I must be able to see the Petrova line. They're smart. [pg.148] They connected my airlock to theirs, with a wall in the middle. Clever. [pg.166] "I like you, Rocky! You're a genius!" And he is! [pg.183] Brilliant. Simply brilliant. [pg.186] I bet Rocky's the captain! He puts himself at risk by talking to the scary alien. Everyone else stays back on the ship. That's what Captain Kirk would do. [pg.195] I've never seen him be wrong on arithmetic. [pg.211] Wow, he's quick. [pg.254] The closer we get, the more I respect Rocky's astronomy skills. [pg.278] "You're an amazing engineer." [pg.287] Rocky - ever the talented engineer [pg.309] He really is a genius. I wonder if all Eridians are like that, or if he's special. [pg.310] "Smart," I say. [pg.348] Rocky seems to be able to do pretty much anything. Either he's gifted, or all Eridians are like that. Either way, I'm incredibly lucky. [pg.365] the world's best engineer [pg.377] I don't doubt him for a second. The guy knows engineering. [pg.388] Rocky delivered on the testing apparatus as promised. As always, everything worked flawlessly. [pg.388] At this point I trust Rocky to do any engineering task. Heck, if he wanted to do open-heart surgery on me, I'd probably let him. [pg.410] Rocky's ad-hoc fuel bays are perfect, of course. [pg.419] "you're my best friend." [pg.425] I wish Rocky were here. [pg.438] I always wish Rocky were here. [pg.438] Rocky tends to find elegant solutions to complex problems. [pg.444] He's one of the most talented engineers on his entire planet! [pg.445] All of the hard stuff is already done, thanks to Rocky. [pg.451] There's nothing Rocky can't fix. [pg.454] Rocky could probably whip something up if he were here. [pg.457] I wish Rocky were here to help me save Rocky. [pg.457] "I have full faith in your abilities." [pg.488]

As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...

I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!

But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...

That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and friendly, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.

So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.

he should not have.

rocky realizing grace has a baseline risk for spontaneously developing both benign and fatal illnesses, that he has this constant ambient threat hanging over him, and rocky spends all his free time trying to learn more about it. at first he can excuse the fixation as needing to understand human health so he can explain it to eridian doctors. he suspected it would be a simple bit of research he could master while grace is asleep that night.

he cannot.

pages upon pages upon endless scrolling pages of wikipedia and medical textbooks detailing every single way the human body can go wrong without outside interference, let alone the risk of injury, the risk of pathogen, the risk of exposure to gases and heavy metals that are commonplace on erid.

he used to think of the human body as a well oiled (is joke! because human plural so wet!) machine. disturbing and revolting and alien but beautiful in its complexity and harmony. how strong it can be despite how fragile it seems, how tough despite its softness, how tightly packed despite how it jiggles and wiggles and twists. a marvel of evolutionary engineering, something he finds himself studying constantly, fascinating and disgusting in equal measures.

now it looks like nothing more than the first pieces of wire stuck together by a pebble. the resilience masking how every moment is a cellular gamble, how every bit of strenuous activity risks delicate blood vessels and tendons and bone. how all that revolting moisture is the human body's first line of defense, how the drippingsloshingleaking reveals to rocky how constantly under siege grace really is.

grace is far too blasé about it all for rocky's liking. telling him to log off, that he's just freaking himself out. reminding rocky that he's a biologist, he's well aware of everything rocky's desperately screeching at him, that he understands it far better than rocky does, and that he needs to trust him when he says it's fine.

but it's not fine. it's bad bad bad bad bad. how do humans live like this? how will this human live like this? how can the doctors of erid possibly keep up this fight?

every time fear strikes him rocky scans grace's body, looking for any changes, anything amiss. any blood where it's not supposed to be, anything shaped differently from yesterday, any masses moving around in odd places. he stops ordering grace around, or, rather, he starts ordering him around in new ways. yelling at him when he lifts wrong, telling him to get things to stand on, demanding he use the pulley system he's made, insisting he expand armando's field of reach not only in case something goes wrong but so that it can do the grunt work for him. panicking like he's never panicked before when he realizes exercise damages grace's muscle tissue.

after weeks of this grace has to sit him down and try to screw his vents on straight because there's only so much over-barring nannying from a stir crazy alien he can take.

I haven’t seen this comparison made yet—we talk about Ryland walking toward himself on the beach as a type of foreshadowing—BUT LOOK the figure Rocky makes of Grace in the beginning of the movie is the EXACT POSE Grace makes when he comes back to save Rocky in the end and is banging on the glass!!!!