meowdy

ryland grace + ○

And that's reflected in the sound design with Rocky's echolocation noise.

He makes this sound when he's trying to "look" closely at something, usually objects. The cool thing is, he also does it when he feels insecure. Whenever he gets vulnerable and uncomfortable he pings this noise at Grace. It's like looking really closely at someone because you're anxious to know what they're thinking.

He goes from doing it before and after every sentence, to less and less as they get familiar with each other. He's suddenly doing it non-stop again for the whole one-way trip conversation, when Grace is actively hiding his emotions from him. It doesn't show up again after that until the end when he hesitates before calling Grace "brave".

Yes, he did post about to gifting them to Barry Keoghan, the actor portraying him in the upcoming films, as a good luck charm for his role. However, the photo he posted was of him handing Keoghan a small leather sack, while elf stones famously erode all kinds of skin. Additionally, Ringo is on the record (I think? I swear I read this but I can't find the interview. Please reach out if you know what I'm talking about) that he keeps the stones away from cameras to prevent power-dampening effects.

It's likely that what he gave was a pouch of prop elf stones as a show of good faith, which could also be related to the old legend that a false elf stone will become real in a moment of need. Some people when presented with this evidence claim that while the photo was staged, the real stones were handed over in private, but this seems far fetched to me, especially since it's widely accepted that Ringo bound himself to the stones for nine and ninety years when he acquired them.

Yay