(clearly insane) the thing about strattland in the book is that two things about book!grace are simultaneously true 1) stratt genuinely likes the guy and 2) he fundamentally doesn't see her as a person. he's goofy and clever and sassy and ridiculous and blunt in the way where she clearly enjoys his company, but he is also incurious about her interiority to the point of dehumanisation (comes with the avoidant tendencies).
"but biscia, isn't a man not treating a woman like a person a particularly loaded dynamic in terms of sexism, wouldn't this normally throw you off" you might say, and you'd be right. except the woman in question is eva stratt and eva stratt is fucking insane and has decided to sublimate her own humanity to turn her existence into the single-minded purpose of saving her species. so she keeps ryland grace around, because someone she cares about who also doesn't see her as a person makes for an excellent tool to consistently sandpaper off the edges of her own humanity. AND he acts as her personal science lapdog. it's genius. very efficient system. but watch out.
