leo✯

Grace: That's me!

I bet he used to be a MENACE. He probably mellowed a lot after Denmark and carefully controls himself now that he's a teacher.

While it's not 1:1 we can see in both the book and movie that he's given to snark and a little impatience for what he sees as nonsense (like demanding immediate results on studying a brand new species). "Wow! Nothing happened!" isn't something a spineless person says to a group of obviously important people. He's a little smart ass who, imo, took a major hit to the ego and had his internal foundation rocked. And because of that maybe retreated into insecurity and finds it difficult to believe in himself.

But those basic personality traits are still there. He'll still tell Stratt she's being a jerk. He'll still say things like "sure seems optional to me" then get in his car and leave. He'll still demand to be let back onto the project and refuse to take no for an answer. He's still the guy who was taking random drugs from strangers back in the day.

This version of Grace is infinitely more interesting than the woobified version I see sometimes. The character is many things, but weak was never on the list. That man is a retired crashout who just might take things all the way left if pushed and the deep breathing/countdown combo doesn't help.

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.