The Nice Mercenary

WEBSITE: eriennemccray.com | TWITTER: @def467 | ART BLOG: Def Draws Hi, I'm Dedicatedfollower467, also known as Def or Erienne thirties | queer af | he/ne/they If you came here expecting just one fandom, boy did you come to the wrong blog, buster.

[aroace-ryland-grace]

eva stratt you are the most interesting character in all of fiction ever eva stratt they could never make me hate you

[aroace-ryland-grace]

I'm really really normal about eva stratt. if you couldn't tell

[luckykittycolor]

[dedicatedfollower467]

saw a post discussing what a "Tumblr sexyman" is and suggested it was specifically the tendency for Tumblr fandom to obsess over the skinny white male character over anyone else in the story, to the point of inventing ridiculous AUs for that white man to interact with himself or some other skinny white man from a completely different franchise expressly for the purposes of shipping, instead of, y'know. Engaging with the story in a meaningful way or shipping him with the nonwhite and/or nonmale and/or nonskinny character who's right fucking there.

by that definition, Dr. Ryland Grace is ABSOLUTELY a Tumblr sexyman and I will happily concede the point.

However. I do, imo, have a slight counterpoint. In my opinion, the quintessential Tumblr sexyman is not the Onceler, but, in fact, Sans Undertale.

And my definition of a Tumblr sexyman is someone that Tumblr obsesses over, to the point of inventing AUs to ship him with himself, who despite this popularity and memetic sexyness, is absolutely not conventionally attractive in their canon appearance at all.

Sans is a short fat skeleton. The Onceler is an animated beanpole with a weird nose. Cecil Palmer has no canonical appearance other than some descriptions of his clothing which include furry leggings. Jon Archivist also has no canonical appearance other than some gnarly scars. Bill Cypher is a fucking triangle. Stanford Pines is an elderly dude with a gigantic clown nose.

So therefore. As much as I love Senshi......

"Ant" Tenna Deltarune is absolutely more qualified by that definition.

[yexerrr]

*taps mic* Rocky should've been on the tumblr sexyman poll instead of Grace. *leaves*

[fascinationstreetmp3]

You are very brave. You are bravest human I have ever met. Is joke! I only meet one human, and is you!

ROCKY Project Hail Mary (2026) dir. Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

[dedicatedfollower467]

Instant hard back button in PHM fics:

Anything that implies that Eridians don't have the concept of war or are naturally more peaceful than humans. Erid is a full and lively planet with multiple cultures and languages created by a highly social apex predator species. You CANNOT convince me they've never ever in the history of their species had wars. Bullshit.

[annabelle--cane]

yknow I'm feeling a bit brave so I will venture to say what this blighted essay's pitch actually is: reading project hail mary (novel and film) as a ravishment fantasy. in both main threads of the narrative grace is brought wildly out of his element and pulled into the orbit of a mysterious foreign stranger who is significantly stronger / richer / more powerful than him, forced to accept unsolicited lavish gifts and personal praise despite protests and discomfort, and made to live in isolated locations in extremely close proximity to these people with no say in the matter, all of which are common motifs in ravishment fantasies. on her own, stratt also brings in other common motifs of restraints, drugging, being above the law, multiple kidnappings (I'm doing crazy things with the classical definition of "rape" as in "abduction" and its shared etymology with "rapture" as in "being taken to the heavens"), and the very specific yet still common motif of "otherwise trustworthy partner goes too far and doesn't take 'no' for an answer." rocky on his own brings in the overprotective flavor common to a lot of dark romance novel heroes, i.e. "I make sure you sleep and I like to watch you while you do it, I make sure you eat enough even if you've got baggage about it, I make inhuman displays of strength when you're injured, and as long as I'm around I'll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you ever again."

the issue I was running into with researching this a few weeks ago is that almost all of the scholarly writing on the content of people's forced-sex fantasies focuses solely on women's fantasies and starts with the research question of "why would women enjoy imagining such a horrible misogynistic thing?" despite surveys often showing that men have force-fantasies (where they are the one being forced) at very comparable rates to women. my hypothesis for a bit was "either men's fantasies are exactly the same as women's or they're completely different in [x] way," which was disproven interestingly when I did finally find something about men's force-fantasies: in content they are almost exactly the same as women's fantasies but the emotional motivations are often different in [y] way, which I hadn't expected. and [y] also super applies to my buddy ryland, perhaps even more than my original [x] hypothesis.

my hopes for writing this are twofold: a) to address the question I sometimes see phm audience members come away with of "if grace likes his life by the end and doesn't seem that mad about all of that, is the message supposed to be 'violation of bodily autonomy is good, actually?'", and b) to lightly resist one of the prevailing notions in the study of forced-sex fantasies, that ravishment fantasies are solely abstracted and fantastical and pleasurable and are completely 100% separate from fearful paranoid imaginings of / flashbacks to realistic sexual violence.

[annabelle--cane]

oh also: the most common interpretation of why people have ravishment fantasies is that it allows the fantasist to disavow a desire they feel ashamed of because, in the fiction of the forcing, they don't *want* it at all, they're being made to do whatever it is and can't be considered at fault. as I allude to in my final paragraph of the original post, I think it's a tad more nuanced, but there's definitely a lot of truth to that. grace can tell stratt that he's not smart or important or capable or brave or selfless enough to do what she wants, but she'll ignore it, make him do it anyway, and kit him out with skilled staff members and expensive lab equipment and coffee just the way he likes it. it's a fantasy of being respected and heroic and good whether he likes it or not.

with rocky, the fantasy is of being forced to be loved and protected. rocky decides to initiate contact, he decides that he's moving into the hail mary, he decides that he's always going to watch grace sleep even if grace says he doesn't need it, he decides to gift grace the fuel to get home even when grace pretends he doesn't want it, and he decides he's not going to let grace die to save him even when grace says he's made his choice. the two scenarios allow grace to experience the rewards of being selfless without needing to be so gauche as to ever say he thinks he's that good of a person AND to experience the rewards of being selfish without saying he thinks he deserves to be cared for.

[hartrathaway]

according to all known laws of batman, a robin should not fight crime. batman hates child endangerment. the robin, of course, fights crime anyways, because robin doesn't care what batman thinks.

[nonetoon]

Everyone meet just a normal goose :)

[nonetoon]

Glad you guys like this totally normal goose!

[nonetoon]

I am making everyone remember normal goose

[nonetoon]

Well, I can not find the original separate post of this so I’m just going to tack these on here

[dedicatedfollower467]

I've seen biologist Adrian and artist Adrian and fellow engineer Adrian

But consider: anthropologist/sociologist Adrian

[dedicatedfollower467]

Because I just played deltarune chapter 5 but I'm still hail mary-pilled:

grace has a copy of undertale on the hail mary because of stratt. imagine introducing rocky to undertale.

[samsincerely]

EVERYONE get in the tags rn and tell me your favorite cheese

[dedicatedfollower467]

I need more outsider POV fics about Grace and Rocky being fucked up and codependent, anybody have suggestions for me?

[dedicatedfollower467]

for the record: no, i will not be updating my personal designs/headcanons for the fallen humans from undertale. as much as i love Deltarune's Green and Aqua, i am far, FAR too attached to my own personal Kindness and Patience to ever give them up.

EDIT: okay further clarification - seth already looks a LOT like my Perseverance design, i did not have particularly strong thoughts regarding my Courage or Integrity designs, and Yellow is so perfect that I'm perfectly happy to adapt them into my current Justice design

but my Kindness and Patience kind of directly contradict Green and Aqua and i'm still not going to change them

[lypsys]

"Write character relationships that are normal" WRONG ☝ CODEPENDENCY BEAM 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

[dedicatedfollower467]

in chapter one sans asks kris to hang out with his bro, but never actually says his bro's name in either chapter. what if deltarune!sans' brother is not papyrus. wouldn't that be a horrible/great fake out to pull on us.

[dedicatedfollower467]

also hi, on the subject of toby "radiation" fox smashing me with hammers in every single new deltarune chapter:

sans has still never said his brother's name in deltarune. we still don't know for sure that deltarune!sans' brother who we have not yet gotten to hang out with is papyrus.