There is such a direct line between Grace's self-perception of "I'm not Stratt's second in command" and his failure to notice multiple people hitting on him and his inability to take a compliment and his inability to believe he is capable of saving the world. I feel like cowardice is the completely wrong word for it, even though that's the word the novel uses.
I’m not sure what the right word is. He does have confidence in his skills, the moment he gets into the zone with his work of any kind (teaching, sciencing), once he gets out of his own way he has no hesitation. But away from that, he does seem to think very little of himself, or rather, doesn’t see that he could have genuine worth to others. He is out of sync with humanity in general, even though he does have the tools to connect with people fairly easily, mostly with humor/teaching. When they tell him he’s the new science officer for the Hail Mary, he calls himself a failure, simply the type of person who is unable to succeed despite his obvious and huge achievements.
I don’t think he’s a coward at all. I think he feels alone and afraid most of the time, for whatever reasons (the book/movie do not tell us — past tragedy? Traumatic experiences? Autism? Simply his temperament? His career flameout is most likely a symptom of this, not the cause) and he is constantly doing it afraid, constantly having to be brave every single day. He has his comfort zones (teaching, sciencing) and his coping mechanisms (humor, burying himself in work) but he’s always afraid. That’s why when he fails (career flameout, astrophage are made of water, etc) he breaks and lashes out in frustration, releasing all that tension in a rush. He pushes himself so hard and he fails anyway and he crashes out/melts down.
And when he has amnesia, he’s still afraid. He isn’t suddenly a fearless person without his memories. He’s terrified, waking up in space alone. But he is also the kind of person who refuses to just give up, especially with something so important, because he cares so much. It’s love of science and people that drives him for everything, even when he feels certain he doesn’t belong with either. It’s love that drives him to save Rocky.
And I think Rocky sees that Grace is brave from the start. Even though Rocky teases Grace a lot (returning his humor), he never considers Grace to be a coward. I think ultimately Rocky is able to get past all of Grace’s walls, all his carefully maintained boundaries. He rolls right in and makes himself at home, and all Grace can do is accept it. I think it’s Rocky’s love that gives Grace the boost he needs to make such a calm decision to sacrifice his life for Rocky and Erid. The fear doesn’t go away, it never really can. But love lifts him up over his fear.
At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields
technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.
Free Harvard courses.
Free Courses from Stanford.
Free Courses from MIT.
Free courses from Yale.
Free courses from Princeton.
Free courses on Coursera.
Free Courses on EDx
Free Courses on Alison
For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.
When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses."
Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.
Hi can you explain to me how people who have trauma regarding a certain thing cope by reading the same exact thing happen to someone else, and also if they write about the thing that happened to them happening to someone else, I'd understand if they made the victim get revenge, but most of the time it's the victim getting raped/Sa'd/ harassed whatv, and then just ending it there or with the victim falling in love with their abuser. How in the world does that help anybody cope, I'm so curious about this
the “someone else” is a fictional character in a fictional story. they are not real people
one of the reasons why creative writing, including dark fics, can help people heal is because they are taking back control. it’s a safe and controlled environment whey victims and survivors have full control of what happens and how it happens
there’s no wrong way to explore creative writing. there’s no rule that says “you must write it this way” or “you must write it that way”. so if they want to write a story where the victim and the predator fall in love, or if they write it as a kink, then that is no one’s business but their own’s. if it helps them heal then it helps them heal. they don’t owe us any explanation, they don’t owe us anything. because when I say they have full control of what happens in the fictional stories that they write, I mean they have full control of the fictional stories that they write. no one has the right to tell and control them what they can and can’t write.
coping and healing through dark fiction doesn’t work for everyone, each survivor heals differently in their own way. but the most important part is that they heal and they don’t owe anybody anything.
There's, like, a Bluey episode that explains this....
Where Bluey has to learn about death after finding an injured bird that doesn't survive. She replays the scenario with Bingo while playing pretend, and this helps her process the outcome and her emotions surrounding it.
But in fanfic, we aren't playing pretend with our siblings. We are putting our blorbos in these situations and using them to safely examine and process a specific situation or emotion.
As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...
I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!
But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...
That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and friendly, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.
So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.
He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.
This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.
And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.
Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.
They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
