SAROS shows Arjun's perception of Nitya is more feminine than she actually is. In his hallucinations of her, she's got longer hair, more jewellery, and she's wearing a dress. In the flashbacks she wears trousers and minimal jewellery, and in the present she wears her work uniform, and both in the past and present her hair is cut to chin length. It really shows how he's not seeing her as she is or as she was, and an extra layer is added when we find out that Nitya is queer so he's feminising the presentation of a queer woman.
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(Spoiler warnings for Project Hail Mary and Saros below)
Well, this is a helluva way to celebrate Pride Month.
Now I'm sure there are a number of people reading this who watched the movie and/or played through the game and know these guys' stories and are in turn looking at this crackship utterly gobsmacked.
Mostly cuz Arjun is an absolute dumpster fire of a human being steeped in toxic masculinity while Ryland is a precious disaster nerd riddled with low self-esteem and the severe need for a hug and pep talk.
Ignoring the logistics of how the hell these two would even feasibly meet in the first place, by all rights and accounts these men together are a time bomb waiting to implode in a whole fuck off inferno.
And that's why I love the thought of this ship.
There is so, so much room for toxic dynamics because these two could easily bring about the worse in each other.
While Arjun very likely murdered Sebastian, the one person who accepted him, and was manipulative AF to Nitya, his own childhood friend, due to a mix of internalized queerphobia and desperation to prove himself as a man, Ryland - his movie self anyway - was willing to reject the astrophage mission even at the expense of humanity itself out of both fear and a deep lack of self-confidence ingrained into him by a history of ridicule by others.
I can absolutely see Arjun bullying Ryland to no end and Ryland doing his best to shrink away and ignore Arjun cuz he does not need another person ridiculing him, thank you very much. To say nothing of how these two (mainly Arjun) would consider each other dead weight when survival becomes a priority.
And yet there are good qualities these two could encourage in one another too.
Arjun has shown that he is capable of caring about others as people (albeit in a too little, too late capacity) and in the secret ending demonstrated self-reflection, while Ryland learned to be braver and how to take more initiative throughout his own story thanks in large part to Rocky's influence on him.
Speaking of Rocky and his influence, it'd be interesting to see how our favorite rock spider would interact with Arjun and help along his character development, especially considering Rocky's PTSD and survivor's guilt from being the last of his crew in contrast to Arjun's constant abandonment of his team and duties in the game. Not to mention hilarious once Rocky mentions Adrian, his mate for over 180 years, and Arjun realizes the small rock crab has better game than him (and may be a good source for relationship advice later on).
Shipping Ryland and Arjun would also be interesting from a narrative perspective since the Sun is a major motif in both their respective media (even if in way different capacities). Same with the sorts of literature they draw from (PHM being a straight up adaptation of Andy Weir's novel and Saros drawing inspiration from Robert W. Chamber's The King In Yellow) and how that difference would reflect in Ryland and Arjun's interactions.
But mostly I just think they'd look cute and hot together.
Only question left is: what would their ship name even be?
Men be like 'fighting the eldritch and incomprehensible horrors π' and then you look at the eldritch and incomprehensible horrors and it's repressed homosexuality, comphet, and toxic masculinity.
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Not even done with the Cathedral, and I'm already looking back and seeing how quickly Arjun got corrupted by Carcosa
It hid itself better than with someone like Stack or Tarn, but it was always there even if you discount Seb. There's at least a couple dozen moments of his suit AI clearly having been corrupted/taken over, but after the first two or three he doesn't question it at all. This computer program that, notably unlike Primary units, has no personality and cannot actually think is rambling about the Shore like it's Stack and at times responding to Arjun in ways it's obviously not programmed to, and he doesn't even think twice about it. Because it wasn't important-what's important is finding Nitya, and therefore anything that isn't directly related to that is unimportant, including computer programs gaining sentience and telling you to give in to an eldritch god. Or already-sentient computer programs hard-wired to prioritize a corporation abandoning that in favor of also telling you to give in to an eldritch god. As long as they can help you get closer to her, find her, save her save hersavehersave YELLOW AND BLUE LIE TO YOU, nothing else matters.
Me last night as I am having the realization that Saros is about the intersection of repressed homosexuality, comphet, and toxic masculinity. Cannonically.
Arjun Devraj will do literally everything, up to and including deicide of ancient eldritch horrors from beyond the event horizon, before he admits he likes guys.
