Nothing to See Here, Cousin.

A very small Anaander, really. Totally harmless, I promise. You won't even notice I'm here :) Fannish side blog, 30s, she/her, no minors please.

[cowardsexual]

not to sound like "why is there slop in my hetslop" but I'm never not going to be baffled by the sheer amount of baby fics in the strattland ao3 tag. "ryland comes back to earth and *gasp* eva had his child!" you cannot convince me that woman didn't immediately get her tubes tied. girl the famine

[cowardsexual]

if eva stratt gets pregnant she is aborting that thang and adding it to the pile of reasons why she's going to hell

[habken]

carl and grace doodles

[synthyk]

trying to figure out realistic logistics for space elevator stuff on erid and jesus christ. a trip from the top (where the dock would be, past the rings, WAY into the exosphere) to the surface would like. realistically. take something like 5 earth days, if they went at a speed that would not kill grace. The logistics of feeding him, getting his oxygen to him, bathroom time, sleeping (!!!), all of it??? oh man. This is not a casual 3 hour trip. this is a fucking ENDEAVOR.

so! The limitations make constant trips up and down impossible. Let's work with the constraints.

This means Grace's ass is STAYING on the hail mary until they have his biodome ready, and they are scrapping as much of the Mary's internals on that same trip, because this is an undertaking they are doing as few times as possible.

This also means! That if rocky goes to the surface! He CANNOT come visit Grace on a whim!!!!!! Which has lots of potential story bits, trying to make their only meaningful contact be long distance radio call and making that work (poorly. the shenanigans... etc)

[manyblinkinglights]

also the gravity flips around from one way at the top, to zero, to the other way at the bottom. It’s a whole thing.

[billiamdoor]

Earths most devoted daughter

progress under the cut :3

[manyblinkinglights]

DuBois would LOVE ending up in audiobook Grace’s depression dome on Erid. He’d stare out into the darkness with a contemplative sparkle on his face, like, all the time, and he tells it like it is so they’d all know how silly it was to make the walls clear but not put any lights outside. He would gravely request that they not put any lights outside. He would know the names of all 30 of the workers keeping his climate controlled, and probably all their family’s names, too. He would absolutely also have a Zen rock garden. Everything would be the same but he wouldn’t be depressed or incurious even at all, he’d be having the time of the rest of his life cupped gently between xenonite retaining walls down there in the crushing depths of Erid. And they’d all love him. And he’d let them love him!

[gaudebo]

Afrophage Reading List

Hello and welcome to my PHM but I'm making it Black AU. I'm gonna get all the characters with my melanin beam eventually.

Lore Posts: Original Post Original Post w/ My Favorite Tags Eva Stratt Grace, Carl, and DuBois DuBois Again Academia AroAce Ryland Grace

Bonus Content: The Fanfic I Started Art Cast/Faceclaims Grace + Carl Swap AU

and you can check the tag for any other content not listed here! sometimes i'm just yappin

[manyblinkinglights]

everybody out here giving rocky pretty mercury secretions and I’m out here trying to figure if I can get away with giving him white lead paste. anticorrosive/antioxidant to maybe resist Eridian microorganism attack all up on bits exposed for smangin’? Very very visible (opaque white!) such that if he ever gave in and jorked it on his own, later Grace would definitely see?

I just don’t think much fluid would dribble out of a guy who doesn’t drink. What if stimulation made Rocky’s insides release a little bit of protective maritime grade anticorrosive grease instead. So, like. he’d get all painted up with it. and only Grace could see.

[manyblinkinglights]

#oh im so glad others are on top of this too. im personally giving him tungsten disulfide dry lubrication. get him powdery grace

THIS IS LITERALLY WHY IM IN THIS FANDOM SO HARD… let’s all learn about tungsten disulfide dry lubrication together.

[ananaander]

okay I think we're all collectively ready to talk about how Carl got on the project now. personally I'm quite fond of the idea that Stratt requisitioned the entire american secret service to help her run PHM, because this would be funny and also mean Carl shows up with an existing network of relationships, but also what if he volunteered? or what if he and Stratt knew each other personally somehow and she requested him? UN hotel coffee bar during a conference? FBI agent she befriended? what kind of career and community did he leave behind to join up?

now logically I think he could have a lot of different backgrounds, but most of what we see him doing on screen is personnel and building security, or asset management, depending on how deliberate you think his supervision of Grace was to start with -- regardless tho, it definitely *becomes* that once Grace gets on the project more seriously, because Grace doesn't know he's the third science officer, but the people doing his security need to, in order to implement Stratt's rules

Which means at some point, not only do Stratt and Carl have a very juicy fic material conversation about Grace, but also he becomes the kind of person she can trust to keep this kind of secret. Not just as a professional credential, but someone that Stratt personally trusts, so, when and why does that happen? I think it makes the most sense if this is something that went down in their relationship before Grace was even in the picture - after all, she chooses Carl as one of the guys to accompany her to meet him, and then chooses him to leave behind as her eyes and ears. (also this kinda implies he was HER security first, which is part of why I think secret service is strongly implied, unless they know each other)

[ananaander]

ngl I flinch every time I go to reblog a Carl post and it says something about how Grace is his best friend or so important to him or w/e - like I'm sorry he is literally at work, we get no hint of his personal life, and the fact that his customer service facade IS undeniably Grace's best friend is part of the tragedy. not even a dog, and not even a single friend who isn't being paid to be there. because Grace either can't tell or actively prefers it that way.

[ananaander]

#Carl is at WORK#Carl probably gets to deeply enjoy Dr Grace as a coworker though tbh. Grace is probably way more delightful as a coworker#than as a true friend (unless you’re Marissa from the one fic)!#coworkers to lovers is way funnier than the feverish attachment Grace and Rocky later have going on anyway lmao.#like what if Carl is a normal cool guy with an increasingly frisky coworker who looks like Ryan Gosling or something. What about that.#it doesn’t all have to be syrupy fandom lonely types imprinting on each other.

@manyblinkinglights you get it! the coworkers to lovers is absolutely key to their dynamic, also Carl probably has a real actual best friend who is hearing the gossip about this all along and being like, are you seriously going to do a "he's so stupid I can't not fuck him" about this?? like, idk I feel like Carl has a much more communal job than Grace does and additionally is yes! a cool normal guy, so there's a LOT going on socially in his half of the story that Grace doesn't see, and also prob a lot more office social politics that Grace wouldn't report on bc it conflicts with his head in the sand coping stragegy, but like, if you're getting the two of them together it's relevant. Probably especially to Carl. Who also almost certainly has a lot more people off the ship than Grace does. idk, so much of what makes him interesting is that he's NOT the kind of weird loner type who would instantly imprint on someone! he has options! so why is he choosing this one?

[doomedblade]

has someone made a grace rocky edit to raye's WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! pleaseeeeeeeeeee

[doomedblade]

turns out yes. thank fucking god (thank you @deervsheadlights for the link!)

[ananaander]

tumblr post link: https://www.tumblr.com/waffle-meringue/819999954986762240/where-is-my-husband-question-a-project-hail

[glitchedgirly]

See the thing about Stratt putting all media ever in the Hail Mary is that it isn’t just for lolz or to keep the crew entertained, it always struck me as something deeply sad. Because even if all the crew survived, there was no way they could consume all possible media ever, language barriers alone would present a problem. And even then, they had a job to do and focus on first (which could have theoretically taken decades of work to figure out) so they wouldn’t have much use for The Great Gatsby or a week’s worth of poorly written amateur Guatemalan experimental opera. Let us remember that Stratt is practical and true utilitarian Instead, I think it was another part of the Hail Mary. If the scientists failed, if the Earth died, then what? Everything would have been completely lost. Art, music, film, history. Destroyed. Without a single living soul to remember it by. It would be as if all of humanity had never existed.

But if it survived? If other alien civilizations discovered traces of humanity? Then the memory of mankind could live on and be remembered. What better way to do that than to send everything (literally everything, the art, the music, the science, the history) out as far as humanly possible so that it might connect with someone else in the universe? It would be a long shot, a Hail Mary, but it was the best chance that humanity had to be remembered

[ananaander]

please tell me that you see the problems with assuming that grace and carl are each others only friends, please tell me what part of lionel boyce's performance you're drawing on when you insist that his view of the project is as simpleminded and selfish as graces is, where in "you'll do great" do you see his primary emotion as sadness, please tell me you didn't just copypaste grace's pov onto carl and ignore the racist stereotypes that evokes please can anyone hear me

[loth-creatures]

Anyone else get kinda uncomfortable when people draw white characters even whiter. Like significantly paler and blonder and more perfectly eurocentric-featured than the source material. Bad vibes -_-

[gaudebo]

https://www.tumblr.com/flippingthevan/820519021147521024/phm-au-where-carls-and-graces-roles-are

you’ll probably see it later but I wanted to send it directly cause it’s sooo good and i feel a brainworm coming in

clickable post link

HELLO >:3c not to make everything abt the dynamics Blackness adds to every situation but. (looks around) who am i kidding thats exactly what im gonna do.

because in this situation, now you have Dr. Carl ProjectHailMary, a chill, laidback teacher w a sharp wit and a barely hidden sense of humor. the kids love him. he was a big name scientist once, but… something happened, and now he’s not. he’s still got all the knowledge, though, and suddenly he’s worth considering again when the astrophage crisis hits. so he gets roped into the project by Stratt, and we have already talked At Length about what Blackness adds to that experience.

and then you add the security. he says his name’s Ry, never tells Carl more than that. no mention of family, no mention of friends. but he’s always there. talking, goofing off, pulling Carl on these impromptu shopping trips. they’re scientific partners. they spend 18 hours a day together. they might even be friends. but at the end of the day, Ry is a white man with a gun, and Carl can never quite forget the power differential between them. Carl is a scientist, and Ry could get away with killing a man. Carl knows what that means. and they’re still friends. by the end, Carl really likes him.

and at the end, his friend is gone, there’s just a white man with a gun, still smiling like he’s not ending Carl’s life.

“Listen, buddy, you’ll do great. This is just what we have to do, okay? Don’t take this personal.”

because nothing ever really was. Ry has no family, and no friends. Carl’s last thought on Earth was that he should’ve known better.

[ananaander]

does "Martin DuBois" strike anyone else as like, almost a stereotypically french name? like, kinda makes me wonder if his parents are from somewhere that got colonized by france? either african or carribean? *three* PhDs does kinda seem like the kind of thing a more thoughtful author would give an immigrant kid with supportive but expectant parents.

I mention this for two reasons, 1) potentially some of the enormous weirdness weir/grace has towards his behavior is cultural differences, esp some of the implications that he's wooden/expressionless/overly direct, I've def seen french ppl portrayed that way, (and as far as I'm aware this is not an african american sterotype - but maybe that and "neutral" white american professional aren't the only codes he's switching between) and 2) does he ever talk to Leclerc in canon?? Potentially interesting interaction, esp since Martin would be qualified to comment both on the science and on Leclerc's attitude towards it. Also might be a good place to bring up the tragedy of losing biomes other than antartica.

[ananaander]

ngl I flinch every time I go to reblog a Carl post and it says something about how Grace is his best friend or so important to him or w/e - like I'm sorry he is literally at work, we get no hint of his personal life, and the fact that his customer service facade IS undeniably Grace's best friend is part of the tragedy. not even a dog, and not even a single friend who isn't being paid to be there. because Grace either can't tell or actively prefers it that way.

[steamclouds]

Eva Stratt my east german queen they could never make me hate you </3