i absolutely LOVE grace's character arc in phm of learning how to be really truly selfless BUT the thing i don't get is people acting like that end state of selflessness is somehow this natural effortless default for him and not the cumulative result of very hard work and deliberate choices. grace's default state and the way he acts for most of that movie's runtime is this bizarre mix of entitlement and insecurity. he's like the classic undersocialized white male academic who both prides himself on self-sufficiency yet laments his isolation. he thinks he should be able to get whatever he wants. his personal comfort is worth more than everyone else's.
he's obviously the Fun Teacher but he still is slightly patronizing to those kids. they aren't stupid, they're paying attention to the news, they know what's going on with the sun and what the implications are. but he's talking down to them like they haven't figured out what the true stakes are when they clearly already have. it's sweet and noble to want to keep them calm, and sometimes keeping kids calm requires lying by omission, but the kids still had to trap him in the rules of his own hackey-sack game to get him to actually answer their damn questions instead of waving them off like he wanted to.
on some level he resents where he's at in his career and is ashamed of it, but at the same time, he insists he didn't do anything wrong to get there. he is shocked when somebody else is able to find out what he did and call him on acting like an innocent victim of censorship when he was actually excommunicated for his temper tantrums.
he enjoys all the freedom and authority of being the hotshot microbiologist on the project and fully believes he has worthwhile skills to contribute, but he wants none of the responsibility when it's time to put his money where his microscope is. he insists he knows what he's doing yet acts surprised and inconvenienced when people order him to do it. he is also upset that being privy to top secret intergovernmental information requires a limited range of movement and minimal exposure to the outside world.
he woke up on somebody else's spaceship with no memory of what it was out there for, what its budget was, or who was responsible for its deployment (any sane person would assume the answers to those questions are "something very important", "billions of dollars", and "government(s) that will likely not appreciate sabotage") and was immediately like "well let's scrub everything this ship was intended for so i can go home and be comfortable asap."
he was genuinely pissed off at the only other sapient lifeform around for lightyears, who had previously admitted to living in total isolation for decades and is clearly deeply traumatized by the all death and loneliness, for moving onto his ship so they can save their home planets more efficiently and socially.
the only belongings he will have access to for the forseeable future, his use of which the existences of entire stars are depending upon, are whatever's already on that ship, and he punched one of the damn laptops and broke it.
and again, like, HE GOT BETTER, he absolutely Learned His Lesson, but being a brave and protective guardian angel is still not his default state and it's something he had to first be completely broken down and humbled for. this guy went through a dickensian odyssey to learn the importance of generosity and charity.
like seriously we have got to stop always making the blonde one a sweetiepie, everyone's always hitting the blue eyed blondes with the princess peach beam and it drives me a little nuts. ryland grace would put a hole in drywall during an argument
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