While I appreciate the utter freakery of Grocky, I think what struck me and stuck with me so deeply about the strange fuckers in the first place was the fact that the entire narrative held space for friendship. Unlikely, messy, crazy, soulmate-y, fucked-up, bickery friendship. For once, a friendship saved the world. You're allowed to live and die and breathe and sleep and wake for a friend. A friend is allowed to be the single person you love most in the world. We've lost so much to romanticisation (not the concept, but the literal need for every single meaningful bond to be romantic). The fact that Project Hail Mary was about two people who love each other beyond any sort of rhyme or reason, who are so completely different yet fundamentally the same, who are willing to put their lives down for each other despite knowing what responsibilities they have to billions of people otherwise, because, genuinely, fuck the world(s) if the other person's not in them. Grace and Rocky are best friends, and they're weird about each other, and they'd kill for each other, and they'll ream each other out properly, and they observe each other like animals, and they feel like everything that has ever happened in their lives (in the history of their species) has led to them meeting, and all of this is something that they feel for a friend. And you're allowed to, too. Just so you know.
