Iris895

I think if there's anything in this story that ties in to that it's Eva Stratt.

Eva Stratt is the Orpheus that doesn't look back. If she so much as falters, if she so much begins to doubt her choices and decisions: the Earth and Grace are lost. All of it is lost. If she looked back, if she let her sense and love for Grace overtake her, everybody would have died.

Stratt is a woman in an impossible position who cried when she watched Grace run away screaming because she was sending him to his death. She knew what she was doing and she had all the world on her shoulders.

thing thats bad: aww

thing that has both genuinely amazing pieces of storytelling and abysmal dogshit slop both happening like entirely interchangably:

What if he didn't wake up alone and the crew has to work around Ryland's amnesia and like maybe he over hears a conversation between the two where they distinctly remember Ryland being put in a coma earlier for his safety and they just put two and two together and now they're trying to juggle that massive shitshow of a secret while simultaneously experiencing a very changed Ryland Grace vastly different but oh so similar to when they met him back on earth

rocky spends half an earth century alone in space, which is notoriously so extremely quiet, and people have been exploring the idea of eridians experiencing a version of touch starvation in the form of like, a lack of noise. and then grace comes along. and he is just so goddamn noisy. he breathes audibly. his body has no exoskeleton, and all the little things inside of him also make noise. he snores. a thing done while sleeping.

rocky does find the fact he can hear all of his internal organs and their functions somewhat disgusting, but eventually it becomes such a comfort to him that when he and grace go their separate ways home, the hardest part is being in the quiet again. the sounds of his ship do little to comfort, because there is no heartbeat. there is no blood rushing to listen to like white noise. no disgusting mouth sounds and 'humming', those vaguely eridian-but-not-quite noises that grace insists do not have meaning.

rocky sits in his ship with the fruits of his journey actively killing him, not knowing what's wrong, not knowing how to fix it, his planet doomed and the families of his crew never receiving their remains, thinking he has failed, and the only thing he can think is that it is so quiet.

i know rocky still technically got to play with the measuring tape in the movie but the way it happened in the book always makes me smile when I read it. :]