words of GREAT encouragement

the end of project hail mary is such a ‘just this once, everyone lives’ moment bc the safety of earth and erid relied solely on grace and rocky meeting. earth would have never retrieved the taumoeba if rocky has not used his engineering skills and xenonite to retrieve it, nor would erid if grace had not made the scientific breakthrough and turned back for rocky. put other people (and sentient rocks) in their place, who may have allied but not had such a poignant connection, and the equation is missing a crucial component. everything truly did depend on them loving each other

rocky always yells “enrichment for grace! enrichment for grace!” when he has a new invention to make the humans time more interesting on erid. grace, while appreciative, replies ‘I know I’m in a zoo enclosure but could we maybe not call it that? I feel like a bear getting thrown a pumpkin covered in peanut butter.’ rocky simply gives him a thumb, not wanting to explain that a significant amount of the population sees grace as the celebrity savior scientist who rocky keeps as a controversially young trophy wife and publicly lavishes in gifts

I love the headcanons that are like ‘the eridians already figured out how to replicate earth’s atmosphere, temperature, food, light, the ocean for the human. ofc they found a way to extend grace’s life expectancy’ bc talk about my exact brand of cope. but I also think another motivating factor could have been no one wanting to deal w 400 years of rocky in a bad mood

“rocky HATE mark” is so funny bc it’s over something relatively minor but also u know that sentient rock holds a grudge. so taking inspo from grace naming a planet after adrian, rocky names a field of space debris after mark & gleefully opts to blow the bigger pieces up. grace sits there in silence bc ‘oh shit how am I gonna tell him about getting exiled from academia or god forbid eva”

despite knowing for a fact that project hail mary was a success imagine the absolute rollercoaster of emotions eva stratt would have gone through. “I am the only one alive on this ship” holy shit bro is NOT an astronaut……….he doesn’t know how to fly that thing……….. “this is rocky and he lives w me now!” first contact with a sentient alien has been made by a middle school teacher. *rocky makes a pop culture reference* ok so in between the fate of their planets resting on their shoulders they’d been having moving nights. “rocky’s ship is made of xenonite” ahhhhhh— “I’m turning around” awhhhh

it’s kinda funny bc the videos of grace hanging out w rocky is the happiest eva stratt had ever seen him. like imagine guilts been haunting you and the laws been hunting you and for decades you have no idea if it’s been all for nothing and then….. first clip you see is the scientist and a sentient rock going “this is me and my BOI ✌️”

Ever think about how, with the average clutch size for Eridians being about 5 eggs, Rocky is almost certainly not an only child? Also, the other 22 crew members would have had siblings too. Do you think any of the crew members were clutchmates with each other? Were any of Rocky's clutchmates among the crew? Much to consider!