I’ve seen people do au’s of Bloody Mary where Grace’s twin brother is Colt Seavers from the fall guy which I honestly love but I haven’t seen anyone do what I consider to be the funniest option available which is make Ryland Grace an escaped Ken from Barbieland.
Think about it throughout PHM Ryland never talks about having a family he mentions having a girlfriend once in the book all we really know about her is that they moved in together briefly and that she had a lot of stuff.
Let’s say after Ken and Barbie break up. Ken decides to go out on his own and stumbles upon the real world. There he learns about science and becomes completely invested in that pathway. He either eventually figures out how to become a human or he stays a doll which could explain why he was the only one to survive his hyper sleep (and so he can live with rocky longer)
It could explain why he so heavily believes in non water based life so much because he WAS a non water based life form. Water doesn’t exist in Barbieland it’s all plastic.
Furthermore this could explain why he decided to become a teacher being a doll previously it’s only reasonable to assume he’d enjoy kid’s presence the same way Barbie does.
He also loves the beach and we all know that Ken’s previous job was beach
In the Barbie movie the CEO of Mattel states “we’re not worried about Ken…. Ever.” Meaning that it’s likely they wouldn’t care at all if a Ken left Barbieland and perused an education became a scientist and eventually a school teacher.
All this to say imagine Simon and Grace getting into some kind of fight where Simon is like
“You have no idea what it’s like to live your life forced to be a cog in the system. Knowing that what you want doesn’t matter, nobody caring about who you are not even your name matters”etc. etc.
and the entire time Grace is having PTSD flashbacks of this:
And then responds with:
“You wouldn’t last an hour in the place I grew up”
I wonder if Eridians ever domesticated their wildlife. Do Eridians even have endocrine systems like we do? Humans have a funky biological function of getting Good Chemicals when they come into contact with other animals, even if we prey on those animals, and we want to take them home and treat them like baby humans. For example, baby deer are fairly independent from their mothers because predators usually think mom=baby=easy lunch, but humans will see the baby deer and humanize it and think "Oh no! Abandoned baby deer! I must now take it with me." In evolution, this makes sense, because our babies come out half-baked and their brains are more vague connections of neurons than any hard-wiring.
So what would Eridians define as "cute"? Humans rely on vision (which is why our pupils dilate when they get Good Chemicals), so do they have cute noises? Cute vibrations? Would they be strong enough for them to pick up a wild animal and go "I'm raising you now" like how humans do to domesticate animals?
And I imagine that the Eridians would be totally confused with Grace's physical reactions to cute things like loafing or baby Eridians. He whole body and body language would, very audibly, shift towards the "cute" thing. It probably freaked them out a bit, since humans very noticeable shift their bodies to display attention. Grace just sees a baby Eridian for the first time and is fighting tears with how cute they are, and fighting a squeal, and the parents are like "This alien creature is looking at our baby, which is easy picking for a meal, with way too much intensity. Should we be worried?" Meanwhile Rocky is trying not to laugh his ass off as Grace tried (and fails) to fight off his brain chemistry going wild at a tiny pebble.
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".
This is how I think about the ending, about Dark. Based on my own theory.
When we died, we saw Celine and Damien. They asked us to take our body so we accepted. But it was not them, it was Dark.
They’re baits made out from Dark to trick us and take our body. They’re not an actual Celine and Damien. It’s fake.
Those two and Dark is not a same person.
rocky: if scared enough, all human plural can lift 3x current weight, question?? fight through dying pain, question??? fight large predators, QUESTION? BUT ONLY SOMETIMES, QUESTION??????QUESTION????????????
I was listening to City Of Stars on repeat and kept thinking about aroace grace. I love grace who is happy without a relationship, who doesn't need any romantic relationship to be fulfilled, but... I also keep thinking about Grace being a hopeless romantic. Grace who keeps hearing about love love love and nothing else, Grace who keeps waiting for that one true love, Grace who was more in love with the idea of romance than his actual girlfriend. Grace who just doesn't understand why it doesn't come naturally to him, why he can't seem to have what everyone else wants, what he keeps dreaming of. Maybe he thought Stratt may be the one for him. Maybe the idea of a big swooping romance with Stratt makes him want to claw his eyes out. Grace doesn't know what he wants.
He wanted to experience romance so bad, to understand what it was like to fall in love, what everyone keeps talking about... and now he never will.
Grace mourning his one true love back on Earth, someone who doesn't exist and never will. Grace mourning something that was never his in the first place.
While browsing through the jiuyuan tag on ao3 I came upon my lastest obsession that has me by the throat, i can even begin to explain it please PLEASE everyone go read Dance in the Dusk RIGHT NOW!!!!! I never knew i needed Wu Yanzi SY but i did. I needed it so bad. And you need it too!!! Go read (check the tags first doe)!!!!!!
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