jove is peak whimsy

a birch watercolor forest

grace is the same man who wrote a paper and called a section ‘why the Goldilocks zone is for idiots’ (AND HE WAS FUCKING RIGHT) and called someone, a very high remarked scholar in the science field, a ‘staggering waste of carbon’… and also wanted to give stratt a piece of his mind for shipping him off to space

plus he literally threw shit during the astrophage experiments and when he found out abt the taumoeba leak

also more for book people, Dr. Lokken, their first interaction… was just them bitching abt possible evolution or astrophage and whether or not its possible that it could be connect to earth. :)))

anyways. Yes, grace can be a sopping wet cat. But he was also in academia which means you gotta stand by what you believe is right. And then he got shunned from it and became a school teacher who dealt with rowdy kids, kids who start fucking puberty (that shit is scary and an emotional ride), and then he was the second in command of the petrova task force.

Ryland Grace is Eva Stratt’s sad dog wife he is astrophathers with Carl and their relationship is as doomed as it gets

he’s the third Adrian and Rocky decided was going to join their new polycule

he’s also the third Yao and Ilyukhina adopted off the street in the fashion of ‘we saw you from across the Hail Mary and we like your vibe’

he’s ALSO a very unwilling member of whatever Shapiro and DuBois have going on in the book for all the book readers the embodiment of ‘isn’t there someone you forgot to ask’

he’s also heavily gay for markiplier’s Simon Iron Lung starring in Iron Lung (2026)

and other variants of Markiplier

him being aroace and platonic soulmates with everyone yum yum yum

Cut to, one night, Simon’s streaming and he looks to his left to see Grace bringing him some water and food and Simon gets this lovesick look on his face and says “thanks Star.” And the chat are going crazy because “Simon has a partner?!” They hear a man softly telling Simon that he’s welcome and asking what time he’s finishing streaming so he can finish his marking before then so they can actually spend some time together (Grace watches Simon’s streams whilst he’s working on lesson planning and stuff)

Simon mumbles something about another hour then he’s “all yours” and Simon goes off screen a bit to kiss Grace as Grace doesn’t like being on camera. What Grace doesn’t know is that some people in chat saw his fox cardigan (like the front bit). Grace leaves the room and chat is going crazy speculating who it could be.

Mate Grace down bad for rocks, statement

Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.

Yknow, Ive been seeing alot of villies, but what about the TRUE superior team, the Rejects!!!!

Seprate drawings of them all bc theyre all SO COOLIO !!!!!!

like it is actually very important that you learn about who initially came up with the centrifuge design system for the Hail Mary and that she was one of the scientists that disagreed with Grace and he still doesn't like her for it and the feeling is mutual but he still acknowledges how fantastic her idea is because of course it is. She is the whole reason the ship works in a way that is vital to the mission.

It's important that you understand that Strat finds the world's leading climatologist to tell her exactly what mandmade catastrophe would increase greenhouse gases exponentially because it doesn't matter that it fucks with the world's ecosystem as long as it buys the earth more time while the sun actively cools down due to the astrophage infection.

It matters that you know she took a man out of prison for involuntary manslaughter because of his idea to pave vast amounts of land with solar panels to breed astrophage faster. It matters that you remember with Grace that paving a vast chunk of the Sahara Desert with these solar panels fucked up weather all the way up to Europe.

It matters that you understand the gravity, the desperation, and how all of it was necessary because there just wasn't enough time to work with without sacrificing something. Someone. Anyone.

It matters that you know how quickly Strat hired these people, blew off court appearances, hired convicts, and ordered bombings of the Antarctic to release gases into the atmosphere to make global warming worse. You need to understand the level of urgency, how Strat moved through these hurdles and approached solutions. How she was a history major in college and it's why she knows damn well how bad it's about to get for Earth.

Because once you know how little time the earth has, how limited the resources are, how risky the science is, how so few people are well equipped for this particular mission that is well and truly the world's only shot at surviving, you understand a lot better why forcing Grace to go was their only option after their other scientists died due to a simple, fatal flaw. Even with one scientist left in the world who was willing to go.