:^)

he's an engineer. he's an apex predator. he is two apples tall. he's a sentient spider-shaped beehive made of rock. he watched his friends die. he can't take a compliment. he piloted a 23-crewed spaceship to a star 10ly away completely on his own and knowing nothing of relativistic physics. he talks in whale song. he was stranded in space for 46 years. he got distracted during first contact cause he was fucking with a tape measure. he's older than the united states of america. he loafs like a kittycat :]]]] it should've been him. it should've been him. it should've b

The fact that Grace and Rocky were the only people the other interacted with in any capacity for 5+ years is really understated. That's insane. That's so much worse than trial by fire. Stratt was so worried about a crew of three with a stated mission in a fully functional ship literally actually killing each other that she put them all in comas. Rocky has spent 40 years in complete and utter isolation and is now stuck on a spaceship significantly smaller than his own in an environment he had to manually install with One Guy. Grace has lived with exactly one other person in his adult life and it blew up after less than a year and he never tried again. They would be semi-well adjusted for like five months tops before someone started to go properly stir crazy and I think that someone would be Rocky tbh. I think they should bite each others' heads off. I think they should get into really stupid arguments and say really awful things that permenantly impact their relationship. I thinks they should have gross sobbing make up hugs three hours later. I think they should learn so much about each other that privacy stops being even a remote concern. I think by the time they get to Erid they should be so molded to each other that it's genuinely disturbing. I think they should.be brought up in every conversation about why the crew of any given expedition needs to be more than ten people.

some of the best tropes: divorce, cheating, cucking, weird love triangle, breaking up making up, breaking up never making up, pining for your ex, pining for the person you're nominally in a competition with for the third end of the triangle, infidelity, emotional infidelity, fucking someone and imagining they're someone else, toxic soulmates, toxic codependency, proxy sex, exes with benefits, cheating, divorce

rocky likes to stare at grace when he’s thinking. rocky likes to stare at grace when he’s sleeping. rocky just likes to stare at grace CANON.

i am sooo unbelievably tempted to put rocky into a sort of groundhog day scenario except the major twist is that the loop was self inflicted. rocky lived through the entire scenario once before. his grace died and he wanted to fix it. so: timeloop. that rocky would have just enough information to treasure his time with grace, but wouldnt know he made the timeloop so the question of stopping it would never be solved. cant risk the sudden onset development of ethics! in this way ryland grace is a kind of living but narratively dead wife

there are certain fetishes that you basically need to develop in order to properly understand and appreciate 7/10 sci fi blockbuster project hail mary