I'm gonna be extra levels of woke and Bloodymary post just to keep pissing off everyone who's bothered by it, by the way. Enjoy your extra content while I be an annoyance. 🫶
Simon "sees his mother every time he looks in the mirror" Nolastname has some wild repressed takes on his own masculinity.
Simon "gender labels went out of style 300 years ago" agender Martian man. Gender stopped becoming relevant when alien species indicators became relevant.
Simon asking "what planet you from?" at Grace not realizing that's a wild concept to even consider from his perspective.
Simon "god I'm so tired of aliens" deadpan reacting to Rocky like it's a normal Tuesday event to see a rock spider singing at him.
Simon "we have bigger things to worry about" has no idea what the terms "gay" or "trans" mean and treats them both like an archaic medieval-era word.
2020s Earth sounding utterly and completely barbaric to Simon, who was born late into the social progress movement. Like, real late.
Simon who speaks a far future dialect of Martian-English (perhaps Martian-Korean) and sounds like he's speaking Simlish to Grace. Meanwhile, Grace sounds borderline medieval to Simon (having a nearly 400-year time period gap), who has spoken more Eridian than English at that point and so now even his English is rusty. Simon not batting at eye at this random dude who's humming at him because "I've seen weirder forms of communication from weirder people".
Simon "it's baseline normalcy to put women in positions of power" because misogyny went out the window long ago.
Simon telling Grace about Mars. Grace imagining Mars being some kind of closed-off, scattered colony situation. Then Simon starts talking about cities and how the Mars population had an overcrowding issue (in game lore, they surpassed the population of earth on a smaller total surface area). Grace having to come to terms with the idea that humans absolutely put the equivalent of a Dollar General on Mars.
Grace: Would it be potentially upsetting to you if I wore a skirt to class today?
Grace: Just checking if it's okay with you first.
Simon: ... What the hell are you talkin' about man? Why you asking me that?
Simon: You don't gotta ask me if you want to... wear clothes??
Grace: Sssure. Right. Of course! Why would you care? You're from ages from now!
Simon: You're fuckin' strange.
Grace being more weird about facing the prospect of queerness than Simon is. Simon's the chill one. Normalized-years-ago pansexual Simon's fucking vibing while Grace has the sexuality crisis.
Arospec Simon and Acespec Ryland. Simon being ferociously demi and compartmentalizing transactional sex with romantic sex because of the circumstances he came from. Ryland who's down with the casual shit while Simon works out whatever the hell is going on with his own avoidant-attachment issues.
A no expectations, no bullshit approach to the ship. "If something happens, whatever. If something doesn't, whatever."
Forced proximity trope gets completely turned on its head. Ryland isn't clingy in the slightest and loves having space and privacy.
Simon who's not used to privacy after prison and being crammed on overcrowded space stations his whole life, so he relishes in periods of alone time. He and Ryland enjoy crossing paths as they go about their day but the cohabitation is friendly yet breathable. Easy.
Simon sprawling out and taking up as much space as possible simply because he can.
Simon "everyone wants something frome me" Nolastname and Ryland "vulnerability is my worst fear" Grace both absolutely enjoying a no strings attached kind of QPR.
Simon: Population control was at an all-time high and same-sex stuff was actually encouraged.
Grace: We just got that stuff legalized where I'm from.
Simon: What? It was banned on Earth?
Grace: I mean, yeah for a long time.
Simon: You monsters... I really should've paid attention in interplanetary history.
Grace: YOU HAD INTERPLANETARY HISTORY TEACHERS!?
Simon: Professors, actually. They didn't shoot dumbfucks into space to colonize Mars.
Simon: How did you do that with your mouth
