#phm lokken

ilyukhina and yao (i just know they had some of the best friendships going on)

carl and stratt (a lot is talked about carl and grace, but what about them?? i think they would be pretty good friends)

shapiro and ilyukhina (ilyukhina is a menace, just add annie no-filter shapiro to olesya innuendos ilyukhina and they would be so chaotic above the vat, i know they would bully grace when stratt is busy)

yao and stratt (i'm pretty sure they could also develop a really good friendship)

ilyukhina and grace (sorry but i'm a sucker for them being little sister-older brother coded)

dimitri and grace (this friendship is kind of canon in the book so, to see more of them, maybe even seeing dimitri and ilyukhina racing grace to drink, of course grace is out really quickly at ilyukhina's and dimitri's comparition)

lokken and stratt (lokken actually being everyone's mother figure on the vat sorry, i'm a sucker for parent figures, i have issues okay. i know my perception of lokken may have changed a little with the movie, but i really think that lokken and stratt would get along just fine, they both seem rough at first but after spending a while with them you get to the conclution they are both really nice people)

yao and grace (yao is a person i think grace would reach out looking for some guidance, in the movie yao is the only one grace approaches to say "thank you for what you are doing" and i think yao's words really stayed with him, so yeah i think their relationship, friendship, or however you want to call it or see it, would be really nice to see)

Grace: Was being introduced to every pet of the school via. Zoom calls. He eventually set aside a minute of class as pet show and tell, and even that went downhill when Ethan from first period showed off Slinky the ball python.

Stratt: Joined the bandwagon of writing essays on The Decameron. She actually was able to publish a short paper on how food availability effected it’s writing.

Carl: ‘That’s classified.’ (In all seriousness, he was probably working at Area 51 or something.)

Dr. Lamai: Simultaneously working on developing COVID treatments and watching her company tank.

Dr. Illukhana: Video calling friends, day drinking, and not wearing any clothes while alone in her apartment.

Dr. DuBois: Getting way too invested in the data analysis of the whole thing. His family is correctly saying that he’s freaking himself out, but he’ll deny it until the cows come home.

Dr. Lokkan: Publishing papers nonstop and fighting conspiracy theorists on the internet in her spare time.

Dr. Yao: Trying not to get mind numbing oh bored by distracting his kids.

In their first meeting Lokken is initially polite but Stratt is most certainly not, and then Lokken annoys her by getting into an argument with Grace and saying Stratt’s decisions are bad. Then Stratt conscripts her for the Project against her will and so now there’s that additional friction that could be really fun to play into.

Also they both used to work for ESA and Lokken apparently has a lot of professional connections (she has friends at CERN who were willing to do experiments for her off the books, she was able to get SIX WORLD LEADERS to bother Stratt about meeting with her). So she and Stratt could REALLY butt heads about stuff if Lokken is somewhat used to being higher up on the totem pole and Stratt just bulldozes all that with being Empress of Earth. Gimme the TENSION.

Maybe Lokken even knew about Stratt during her time as an ESA administrator and either admired her or disliked her beforehand and Stratt had no idea she existed. Maybe part of her felt like she had to compete with Stratt professionally. And now they’ve got a more direct boss/employee thing going on, and it’s infuriating.

Grace is pretty annoyed about Stratt yoinking him from his nice normal San Francisco life but he adapts to it fairly quickly. Lokken though? Imagine her SEETHING with resentment for being conscripted for a WHILE before she’s forced to accept that this is her life now. And then also still thinking Stratt is rather impressive for being able to do all this and also maybe she’s kind of hot uh oh.

This post by @vonlipwig besides being really true, also made me think of poor Dr. Lokken having a crisis over Grace in the book :"D