probably supposed to be doing something else rn

I had a random thought about another character, who I don't know if I've ever seen directly addressed in fanworks (and who barely existed, as an actual PERSON, in the canon) -- what about getting Dr. Irina Petrova with the... melanin beam? me-laser-in beam? melaninjector? what would that look like?

because it occurred to me that both canons & also the fandom will reference the famous Petrova Line left and right, but Irina Petrova herself is INVISIBLE. Everything started with her; she was the first domino. And she showed up once in one of Grace's early memories of checking his emails, and then she disappears from the story completely. Which seems really weird, when you also factor in Stratt's stratt-egy of "Anyone who's got the skills to help with the Petrova Problem? Congratulations, you're on the team now. Here's your free hat, pack your bags, let's go."

Canon Grace (and his fanwork remixes) tends to accumulate accolades for being 'the Astrophage guy'. But I don't see it often pointed out that even if he named it, he wasn't reeeeeally the guy who FOUND it, who was already looking out at the universe, and spotted it, and pointed at something new and unknown, and went "hey wtf is THAT, we need to learn more about it, come on everybody in the scientific community, chop chop". That was Irina.

first of all melaninjector has me HOWLING im adding that one to the lexicon immediately

and SECOND of all. you are so right. we never even get to know her and she was the one observing the astrophage from the start!! which like. is in part because our author does not see women as people. we know this. but ☝🏾 getting her w the beam would make so much sense under those circumstances because PLENTY of things are invented or discovered by Black women and maybe they get to be mentioned in a top 10 Buzzfeed article if they’re LUCKY. unfortunately, being a Black woman who kicked off the entire plot with her contributions, got one (1) thing named after her, and then disappeared forever because weir forgot abt her would be par for the course.

in conclusion. let’s learn abt Black woman inventors together ok?

"Another similarity: You and me both willing to die for our people. Why, question? Evolution hate death."

It seems obvious that he's talking about their mutual missions to find a cure for the astrophage problem and save their planets. They're both here in Tau Ceti, volunteering to die so long as it ensures the survival of their homes.

“It’s good for the species,” I say. “A self-sacrifice instinct makes the species as a whole more likely to continue.”

“Not all Eridians willing to die for others.”

I chuckle. “Not all humans either.”

Oh, that foreshadowing sure is looming...

Except, wait, Rocky didn't volunteer for a suicide mission either. He volunteered for a dangerous mission, an uncertain mission, but the goal was always for the Eridians to return home. We can guess that he likely would be willing to die for Erid, but so far he hasn't been put in a position to find out.

“You and me are good people,” Rocky says.

“Yeah.” I smile. “I suppose we are.”

I think there's a double meaning here, even beyond the obvious dramatic irony that comes from Grace not realising he never signed up for this. Because the truth is, I've buried the lede. The vital context I'm obscuring, and which Weir obscures when he frames this as a discussion about evolutionary similarities, is that the conversation takes place right after Rocky and Grace each almost die saving the other's life.

"You and me both willing to die for our people."

He backs away. “Then you go home. Go home now. I wait here. Erid maybe send another ship someday.”

In that moment, Rocky might well have been willing to die for Erid, but he didn't want to let Grace die for Erid. Because Grace is just as much "his people"!!!

It takes up an abusrd amount of land to keep healthy, to the point that you have to cordon off acres of land around the habitat to make sure nothing goes wrong.

As far as you know this could be only living specimen left alive, it is critically endangered. It lives for such a short amount of time too.

But like, come on, hes just a little guy.

Anytime a single eridian suggests that maybe the human doesnt need that many resources allocated towards its survival, those scientists thrum to create another facility that costs 12 billion dollars to build so that they can manufacture vanilla flavor for his nutrient shakes.

The shitty colleague had brought in a small class pet of some kind for their classroom to try and win cool-teacher-points, planning to dump all the effort of actually caring for it on the students, while offering them no guidance whatsoever. That plan wasn't working out too well for the pet, health-wise. Teacher McShitface decided that rather than having to deal with the kids' distress if the pet died in the classroom, they'd just get rid of the pet and make up some excuse about 'school regulations not allowing it' or something.

Well... Yes and no.

The last time Ryland Grace was CONSCIOUS of any human touch was when he was knocked out. Absolutely true.

But the last human contact he would have had was Yao and Ilyukhina. Who were told that he was scared about panicking during launch and asked to be sedated. Who did all the pre flight checks before the Hail Mary launched. Who would have carefully, gently carried Grace to his bed in the dormitory, made sure he was secure, and initiated his coma procedure.

There would have been love there. Remember Ilyukhina throwing her hands high and saying "welcome to crew!" Remember Yao saying how he hoped Grace would say yes. Remember how much the crew trusted Grace, Stratt's First Officer, the guy who helped them so much, and was so kind to them, and was the one who they entrusted their preferred methods of suicide to. Who thought they were wonderful and brave.

They would have tucked him in. Maybe brushed his hair out of his face. Maybe said something kind to him before initiating their own coma procedures.

Then there's no direction... How do you explain left and right to an Alien, when they don't have a front?

Up and down may exist, but Eridians are 360° listeners.

How does their compass work???

Inspired by this awesome comic by @shisabun-art

Eridian geography expert: "Okay! So, as everyone knows, navigating on Erid requires attention to the five directions (not including the center, which is sometimes counted as a 'sixth'), based on Erid's magnetic fields--"

Grace: *mentally waves a sad farewell to the classic Earth 'Compass Rose' and its FOUR cardinal directions*

and then years later on Erid, the Eridians are poking around studying humans’ baseline abilities as documented in the Hail Mary’s computers, and they’re like hey. wait. wait a second. Grace learned the Eridian language like… 1.5 to 2 times as fast as a human is supposed to be able to learn that kind of thing. oh wow, Trainer Rocky caught a Shiny Human with S-tier stats we really lucked out with our one (1) human, huh?

Random Au idea; Miraculously, the Blip-A crew survive, but at the cost of their travel time, making it so they arrive at Tau Ceti around the same time as the Hail Mary. (Don't think too hard about it)

Grace now gets regularly hassled by many Eridians, all of whom can hold multiple conversations at once, unlike him.

I think it would be cool if someone took that idea and really leaned into it in its own story. Maybe Rocky (+Adrian if the author wished) had to carefully juggle their political capital and influence over the Eridian court of public opinion in order to get Grace’s needs provided for in anything like a timely manner, and eventually when Grace would’ve been well enough and established enough to teach, that “get-shit-done” power, which would be needed to get the classes approved, had all been spent. As soon as Grace wasn’t about to fall over and die, the Eridians in power wanted to shift attention and resources toward restabilizing the population, shaken and anxious from the near-miss with the Astrophage but beginning to recover.

So in the end Rocky throws up his hands and goes “Screw it, it’s quicker and less controversial to just establish a new branch of a pebble daycare that just happens to be adjacent to the Graceland biodome. We’ll sell it to ‘the powers that be’ as a necessary expansion of subsidized pebblecare services, bolstering the local economy and all that, they’ll eat that shit up.”

I would frankly read an entire second novel about these kinds of shenanigans, statement.

Also, I have a small headcanon that Grace - eventually, maybe even very very very eventually - clocks that his Eridian care team did not, strictly speaking, all sign on as volunteers. Cue flashbacks to the wild old days with the Petrova Taskforce...