I Just Really Love Shadow

Page 44

to clarify, they took these notes over time and the "holy fuck" is that moment where you step back and look at everything and are like "jesus christ this is crazy". also, since i know it'll be brought up:

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close ups \/

i'm going to be a bit of a pedantic fun ruiner and say that rocky just doesn't qualify for sainthood - and that's a good thing. the reason that you can sincerely call grace things like "the patron saint of one-way trips" with a straight face is because he is straight up violently sacrificed (both as a consequence of the project being a suicide mission and in the sense that the induced amnesia strips him of his former identity) and raised up in order to perform a miracle that will save humanity from an apocalyptic event of legitimately biblical proportions. for a cause named after one of the most famous sacrificial religious figures in all of human history, no less. it's an almost absurdly and rather horrifyingly literal take on the prayer for divine intercession "hail mary, full of grace". it's a catholic's wet dream.

rocky is... not that. rocky and his crew were never meant to be on a suicide mission. nobody was supposed to die at all. rocky is, in fact, the sole survivor. there is something to be said of the blip-a, with its intricate, almost unbearably beautiful cathedral-like structure that refracts and radiates light, singing as it soars through the skies, chasing grace playfully and sending him messages across the void as if to say "be not afraid", being evocative of the angelic, and something to be said of the eridian language being made of music; of rocky being able to use this to communicate with an alien megastructure in order to fly through time and space. rocky feeling compelled to fulfil his purpose to the point of spending nearly half a century alone rather than returning home, and push the boundaries of possibility itself to "fix" as much as he can. but rocky isn't an angel, either.

there is, however, something else that is a significant recurring motif in religious mythology and folklore across a variety of cultures throughout human history, but not exclusive to any one of them. something that travels across the universe, enduring the centuries, singing all the while, and bringing comfort to those who need it even when they have nothing else left. what do we call a rock in the sky, too blisteringly hot to ever touch even if we could close the immense distance between us, that burns itself up to show us the way home?