Looks like someone's a lil bit lost

idk who you are n you dk who i am

[peppapigvevo]

happy pride month LGBT+ community! (Legendary creatures, Ghouls, Blood, Terrors +)

[lizluvscupcakes]

[in the voice of someone who hasn’t even seen the movie] imagine if Grace came back. Imagine if through some loophole in science, Eridians and humans were able to make contact and regularly interact with each other.

Imagine Eva seeing Grace again.

Oh no no no don’t look at me like that. He’s not mad at her. He understands that she did her best in a horrible situation with no good answer. So no he’s not mad at her.

It’s so, so much worse than that.

Eva didn’t even realize the difference between Grace’s friendly and Grace’s politely cordial until suddenly she had experienced ‘friendly’ and sent him away, okay with never experiencing it again.

But then he comes back. And he IS friendly, downright loving towards the rock people following him around. But he’s politely cordial to Eva. He answers her questions when she asks them but doesn’t ask any of his own. He turns to the big brown rock when it chimes and tells it in that tone of affectionate disbelief, “Rocky, you can’t say that to her!” But then only tells Eva when she asks, “you don’t need to worry about what he said; he didn’t mean it, he’s just mad.”

Imagine Eva attempting to go for a hug when she first sees him again, and he either just tolerates it, or even worse, he politely tells her “not yet,” “not now,” or even just “no.”

It was easy to pull the lever when you thought you’d hear the trolley roll over one person you loved, and they’d scream and train wheels would roar and with a splat, that would be it. But no; the one life she threw under the trolley, even though it was someone close to her, closer than she ever let anyone else, did not die. He managed to escape and survive the trolley and even managed to make the universe a bigger, better place.

But now he’ll never forget the look on her face when she pulled the lever. And things will never, ever be how they were because even though it was justified and he understands and doesn’t blame her, it hurt, even though the trolley never touched him.

It was better when she thought she was killing her friend, because she wouldn’t experience his friendship again, and neither would anyone else.

Now, everyone gets to experience his friendship.

Except for her.

[everyfandompossible]

If Stratt and Grace ever got to meet again, or at least speak again

Grace would say “I understand”

Not “I forgive you”

Because he doesn’t

And Stratt would say “I miss you”

Not “I’m sorry”

Because she isn’t

[kaomojiloser]

grace after every time eva asks him to do something:

[likelightinglass]

"History student falls in love with the astrophysics student" by Keaton St. James

[actual-changeling]

positioning grace as some sort of "victim" of eva stratt is so weird to me. they're freak4freak, they were unhealthily co-dependent on each other and had an insane dynamic going on that works for them and should never be applied to anyone else.

the fact that grace fails to consciously acknowledge basic facts about his life and social status is not her fault and not her responsibility either. that's a grown ass man, a scientist, a teacher. he can be aware if he wants to be, but it's uncomfortable and he avoids discomfort like hell. he runs from confrontation, he runs from challenges, especially emotional ones. that's a defining characteristic of him.

she didn't turn him into anything, he willingly went along with all of it and if he had wanted to see it, he would have known that he was always on the damn list of candidates/science officers.

you do not follow eva "i don't care about who wants to go, i care who's most capable" stratt around for FOUR YEARS and not think "oh maybe me, the leading researcher in astrophage, is on her list of people to be shot into space to save humanity".

he knew. she knew. everyone knew.

not a single person on the planet was surprised when he was the third choice, everyone probably went "oh yeah he's the most logical choice, of course he's going". because he IS the most logical choice and always has been.

the fact that stratt had two other people in front of him — literally the perfect candidate — shows how much she cared and understood that he didn't want to go.

she wanted to keep him on earth, god, she really wanted to keep him. but she could not choose him over the world, no matter how badly she wanted to say fuck it and send someone else.

[actual-changeling]

after she gets grace onto the project, she has a nightmare about shapiro and debois both getting blown up so she's going to have to send grace against his will.

she wakes up, tries to shake it off and splashes some water in her face, but when she looks in the mirror there he is.

silently staring at her over her shoulder in a uniform that has yet to be created. she doesn't know why or how, none of it makes sense, and he doesn't say a word. somehow she knows, though, she knows her dream wasn't just a dream, and that the ghost is a prophecy, a warning.

so she tries to keep everyone safe, tries to make sure that they will all live, that grace will watch the launch by her side, that she gets to keep him on earth and alive.

the ghost doesn't budge. it follows her, and she sees it in light beams and mirrors, in the back of a crowd, in empty rooms. first, she tries to ignore it. then, she attempts to bargain with it, but not a word comes from his lips.

the more time passes, the more desperate she gets, losing control in rooms that aren't really empty, looking at herself in the mirror but into eyes that aren't hers. throwing a glass at him and it flies right through him before shattering against the wall.

"tell me! tell me how to keep him from turning into you."

"are you going to stay, at least? when he's gone?" quieter, defeated, at the end of long days, and the ghost just tilts his head.

everything goes to shit, people die, and she runs towards the explosion thinking this is how i kill him.

the night before she tells him he is going to die, that he is the only solution she has, she talks to it again. she was made to carry the world and yet failed to change the fate of the one person that she has come to care for the most.

"does it matter? that i tried? that i did everything i could to keep him?"

the ghost, of course, does not answer, making her question if she ever tried at all or just told herself lie after lie to still lie awake at night, wondering.

the love was there, but did it matter? did it change anything? was there a point to it if it will always play out as a tragedy? was it really a warning or simply punishment for choices she had yet to make?

fate spins along anyway. his fate was spinning and stretching until she was handed a pair of scissors and told at any cost.

eva cuts the thread, she was always going to cut the thread, and the next time she looks in the mirror, there's only the lingering grief of what could have never been, and grace is gone.

[xxcringeizdead666xx]

You ever ship something… in theory??

Like you see it, you see how one could come to that conclusion. You might even humour it an engage with the ship. But you just don’t believe that this could happen in canon. Like those are a separate version of the characters, specifically made to fall in love with one another.

[actual-changeling]

when she showed up at the school, he was already her solution. she'd talked to everyone in his specific field, and they all told her if he hadn't crashed his career, he would have been leading it by now.

he's the best and she needs the best.

i think she considered putting him as the first choice for science officer, but after being around him for even just a few hours, she realized that nope, oh no, definitely not. he is not an astronaut, he'd never go willingly.

so she found dubois and shapiro, two more of the best of the best, thinking it's enough. grace is her third choice because she went soft on him the moment she met him. logically, it should have been him. he is the leading scientist on astrophage research.

he attended every important meeting, followed her around the world, and his pure talent and skill is not something that could ever be taught.

grace was her solution — but she did not want him to be. so he wasn't.

(he was hers and she was his, and she has to justify her choices to no one except herself.)

stratt tried everything and anything to keep him off that list, and maybe she should have felt guilty for treating him differently, for putting him on a pedestal with a sign that says 'do not touch', but she didn't.

selfishly stupid, she thought she could get away with it and cling to the one thing that makes her human.

"i don't care who wants to go. i care who's most qualified."

but that isn't quite true, is it?

because he was always the most qualified, the best of herself, the best of humanity, the best chance. yet she took him off the list entirely until fate forced her to confront what she had been avoiding all this time: there is nothing sacred left for her.

the one thing that corrupted her (that made her smile and laugh, that made her soft and strong and someone, a real person) was going to break apart in her hands.

did she wonder if she could have prepared him better? if he would have gone willingly had she not hidden him away? if she had been less selfish, less fascinated, less enamoured by him and just put him first on the damn list?

you are my solution.

(i'm sorry i never told you, i should have.

i hope you hate me even half as much as i hate myself.

i hope you forget about me, i hope you never remember me.

i hope you breathe without guilt and die without shame, and i hope it's all mine to carry.)

maybe there's a sense to it all, in the end, or maybe they both lie awake at night thinking, what if i had been brave?

[giannathetopgunfanwrites]

sacrifice

The explosion at Baikonur happens 3 days before the launch of the Hail Mary. Grace is sacrificed for humanity/Earth 3 days early.

You know what else happened in 3 days? Jesus being sacrificed for humanity/Earth...

I've seen things about "For Eva Stratt so loved the world, she sacrificed her only friend" (or secret third thing, #ilovestrattland)

I would also like to make a connection with my statements above about the Blessed Virgin Mary having carried Jesus in her womb, and the Hail Mary is full of Grace in this story....

The religious undertones of this story are absolutely insane, I feel like Matpat, thank you Andy Weir. It's 1am and I just made this connection.

[intezaarlily]

grace and stratt; love as faith

[glowbeam]

"Hi. Uh, hey. So here's the thing. I understand why you did what you did. Why you had — thought you had to. The great big cosmic cost/benefit analysis, and all. And that's a terrible thing to have been put on your shoulders. Like pretty much the absolute maximum that could be asked of a person, barring — uhh, y'know. And I get that, right, like I do get it, like I might be the only other living person — well, human person — who understands the magnitude of everything you were going through to any degree at all. And because of that I really wish I could tell you that it's all, like. Cool. You know? Like whatever. And I know I should.

"But I can't. Hah. Just like last time, right? I can't do it. I can't just do the right thing.

"I wish you a good life. Happiness, peace, eight hours of sleep at night. And if the governments are watching this, if my vote counts at all, I don't think she should be punished. But I do want you to remember me.

"Not, like, in the cute way. I mean I want you to remember. Whenever you see an old man walking a dog, or a child holding hands with her mother, whenever you see the rays of the afternoon sun streaking through the clouds like the sky was the canvas of your God... I want you to hear me screaming. Whenever the thought that you did something to be proud of even approaches your heart, I want you to remember me telling you 'No,' in plain fucking English.

"I know that's, y'know, mean. But you killed me, so it's probably fair. And I know you'll do what I ask, because you are, fundamentally, a really good person, Eva Stratt."

— Dr. Captain Ryland Grace, "i_dont_forgive_you.mp4"

[state-of-being]

Stratt's first prison is the one she makes for herself. She put herself behind these bars not when she condemned Grace, and not even when he ran, but when she stood to watch.

[boldkatte]

[b--1ove]

K!ll your science lapdog

[datura-45]

When I’m a losing dog that my boss is betting on

[whiteflwrs]

can’t and won’t stop thinking about eva stratt and ryland grace as two sides of the same sacrificial coin: one who offered herself to the cause as the world’s scapegoat and celebrated by no one, and one who is made the lamb without his consent yet celebrated as the savior he never agreed to be.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

and it’s exactly in said coin’s nature — two sides always meant to be tied to another, and never meant to face each other again.