she still wears the corny science t shirts but she puts a white button up on over them so everyone knows sheās self aware about it. sheās the most insufferable woman to ever live.
rocky is exactly the same except for getting hit with the she/her beam
Bloodymary Fanchild? Nah, have we considered giving them custody of the original Space Dwelling Stray Child tm Le Petit Prince? Yknow. The one who likes roses. The one who likes foxes. Like. Perfect for Simon who likes to garden and Grace who likes foxes. I shall now spread my agenda because it has had me weeping for a couple hours now frankly
so simon āfigured out how to blind pilot a submarine in like 5 minutes without reading the manualā iron lung definitely had an aneurysm the first time he saw grace pilot the hail mary, right?
rocky should be naked: an anthropological treatise
something maybe controversial that has been driving me BONKERS since the project hail mary book first came out that i finally just had to dig into my anthropology MA to bitch about:
it's fucking batshit that andy weir wrote the eridians as wearing clothes. there is no reason that eridians would ever develop something akin to human clothing.
like. do you know how long humans (not just hairy early hominin relatives of our, but straight-up anatomically modern homo sapiens) were rocking nothing but our birthday suits? LIKE NINETY THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS. HUMANS HAVE BEEN NAKED ALMOST THE WHOLE TIME WE'VE BEEN HUMANS, and we're famously leaky hairless apes, not hard-carapaced crab spiders with piston joints who live in boiling ammonia.
listen to me. the first hairless hominin was homo erectus, about 1.6mya. naked. anatomically modern humans like us evolved 350-270,000 years ago. also naked. when do we first have solid evidence for consistent human use of clothing (bc it's when the clothing lice genome evolves to diverge from the head lice genome lol)? only 170,000-83,000 years ago. before that? BUCKASS NAKED. and even when we did start using clothing? well, as we know from excellent textile archeologists such as elizabeth wayland barber, a LOT of early human clothing was likely more decorative than functional āĀ i.e. the string skirts that you see on some of the 'venus figures' from the upper paleolithic, which were solely decorative but would NOT do anything for warmth.
now consider eridians, whose bodies are functionally impenetrable unless they're actively eating (which is a private activity anyhow), who are carnivores (thus having no need to cultivate plants āĀ aka the source of most textiles ā like humans do), who live on a planet with no sun exposure (so probably nothing like earth plants anyways) and no fucking seasons (no need for rain/snow protection!), who evolved to exist ONLY in very specific & stable temperature ranges (like most life on erid, per andy weir), who have five fucking hands to hold things, are famously so good at multitasking that doing just one activity sucks for them, and CANNOT FUCKING SEE!!!
so where the FUCK is eridians' evolutionary or social impetus to develop ANYTHING akin to clothing supposedly coming from? N O W H E R E. you heard me.
decoration like the celebration jewelry, absolutely ā though notice that was clearly designed for its auditory qualities and ability to show up on sonar, not anything approaching the level of coverage that human clothing has. rocky's engineering lederhosen (leather! bc again, carnivores!) as a (evolutionarily speaking) modern development to help hold tools, yeah, totally. carapace carvings, 100%.
BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON FOR THAT ROCK TO WEAR A SHIRT. in fact, it's way the fuck weirder that he DOES wear a shirt in the book! the movie was completely right to have a buckass naked rocky, there is no goddamn reason eridians would ever develop clothing, and the idea of a five-legged spider rock trying to put on a sleeved shirt makes me want to have a stroke. thank you for coming to my ted talk.
i imagine simon being bad at verbalizing his desires (for fear of rejection), so he never directly asks for affection. he sits on the couch across from grace and slowly opens his posture more and more until he's literally holding his arms out for grace to snuggle into. he puts his face right up to grace's and just stares at him until grace gives him a kiss. he sits there looking cold and despondent until grace offers to share his blanket.
(grace both finds this adorable and recognizes that it's something they need to work on. he'll teasingly ask 'what do you want?' until simon at least mutters out 'kiss please'.)
things in phm that really tickled me as a marine biologist:
the concept of star-eating microbes causing a crisis and the solution being the introduction of space wolves to space yellowstone to control the space elk population. i love a good trophic cascade
dr ryland grace immediately pitching "turn the spaceship into a giant centrifuge to generate gravity" and then not balancing his actual centrifuge later on
the entire "life is reason" scene really
grace forgetting to open the mystery alien container in a fume hood AND immediately sticking his nose in it. if we did this in chemistry lab we were executed on the spot
academia drama being one of the cornerstones of grace's character
grace switching through every spectrum setting on the microscope to try to see into the astrophages and not being able to (relatable)
also: the astrophage dying and grace going "ohhh it died..." (very relatable)
grace having his not-scientist buddy Carl to give him frank solutions when he's overthinking. yes, often the solution is just to put the box in another box
copious duct tape usage
just sticking a filter into the path of the petrova line to collect astrophage goop
eva going "so it's alive" when grace tells them the astrophage are moving, and him being like "WELL ok that could be for a lot of reasons" in the tone of someone who doesn't even know where to start explaining why that's a hasty assumption
grace referring to the first new astrophage as his and carl's baby multiple times (HIGHLY relatable)
humanity's greatest hope being a teacher. humanity being saved by grace's ability to find novel ways to communicate well with others -- something that made him excellent as an educator, and enabled him to bond with rocky
I'm so so so impressed with your characterization of Simon. His reaction to everything going on feels viscerally real, and the recent scapegoat scene BROKE MY HEART. I love it when people portray him as more of a scapegoat than a lamb, because that's what he is! And him just accepting it and believing Grace would want to use him like everyone else ever had literally had me in tears no joke. You're BloodyMary fic is the first one to make me cry so thank you for that. Please please please never stop writing I'm so obsessed with this.
The angst???? The drama???? The sex-repulsion + bond-deepener? I'm so excited for that??????????????
Kill me now before I become addicted because this will become my lifeline. I love you and your work so so much
Kisses and well wishes <333333333
Thank you šš you made ME cry now.
Iām so glad you like my Simon headcanons and characterization. I really needed the kind words and encouragement today so thank you. I know the ask was sent a bit ago, but I hope you continue to enjoy the chapters!
something about the portrayal of food in phm. amnesiac grace tasting the coffee in the mary and it's exactly how he liked it. rocky being embarrassed being watched while eating. the astrophage eating the sun. yao and ilyukhina dying giving grace more food. the journey to erid which resulted to grace feasting on taumoebas. grace not being able to eat rocky's food. eva being a history major knowing wars will occur over sustenance. the me burgersā¢. the taumoeba hunting down the astrophage. life is, indeed, reason.
