Rant about Grace/Rocky and shipping discourse in general.
I’m all for good platonic relationships in media. I love seeing complicated relationships get represented, I wish we had more of it even. I also don’t agree with the idea that romantic relationships are the most important relationships a person can have in their life. I think the depth of platonic feelings can be equivalent or even supersede romance.
But….
I will argue that Grace/Rocky are not even sub-textually romantically-coded. It’s just straight up textual, and I’m kind of tired of people saying the fact that some of us read their relationship as romantic, which I will soon argue is literally in the text, cheapens their relationship. This kind of thing happens with shipping in every fandom. I’ve been around, it happens with gay ships, it happens with f/f, f/m. Especially for anything that is not confirmed canon, people will always argue that “x pairing is better as friends” and a phrase I hear over and over again is always: “why can’t two people just be friends”. Which is ironic when they are just friends in canon lol.
But I’m writing this specifically about gracerocky because the coding and tropism is more overtly romantic than any recent platonic relationship I’ve encountered. Most fans already pick up and discuss these tropes, but I want to reiterate them for the purpose of highlighting their cultural romantic significance. I will be drawing from both the movie and the book.
Here are all the motifs that can be read with romantic coding (and probably would be if they were humanoid heterosexuals) imo:
The petrova line literally being the red string of fate, representing the tie between two soulmates. In the novel, when Grace and Rocky are discussing why their species evolution and technological advancement was so similar, Rocky says “it had to be, or you and I would not meet.” You can read this as a literal answer to Grace’s question, but I would argue the word choice there is very deliberately chosen to invoke a sense of fateism: the course of our species history was written and had to work out exactly in this way for us to be in the same place at the same time. Not to mention the timing of the astrophage crisis on both of their stars, each of their species responses to it, and Rocky getting stranded for 46 years before Grace gets there because Eridians don’t know about radiation. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a pretty tight window. Their meeting is pretty obviously written to be fated, and I doubt the red line imagery was coincidental.
Red string theory LITERALLY has romantic origins. It common in East Asian cultures, and supposedly comes from Chinese folklore, Taoism specifically, where the ancient deity, Yuè Lǎo, in charge of marriages and assigns the red thread. So while we can think of soulmatism nowadays as being either platonic or romantic, it undoubtedly comes from a romantic framework and is most often used/viewed in that context especially in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese culture.
Their names are also coded with their respective relationships to one another: Grace is Rocky’s (and Erid’s/Earth’s but we view it directly through Rocky) saving Grace and Rocky is Grace’s rock.
Speaking of saving each other, these two do it over and over again. In the case of Grace: with disregard to himself, and in Rocky’s: with disregard to both himself and the fate of his entire species. Heroic sacrifice is a trope used both in and out of romance. However, I think Grace and Rocky both try to sacrifice themselves in ways that are more for the sake of each other than nobility. In Rocky’s case of deciding to save Grace during the fishing incident, that was a decision made purely out of love rather than logic. Rocky is a practical being, so for him to cast himself and potentially the fate of his entire species aside out of love for Grace says a lot. Grace even asks why he would make such a stupid decision. Maybe Rocky did truly believe Grace would figure out how to save both planets, since we see Grace using that same line of thinking in the aftermath “he should have let me die, he could’ve whipped up a contraption to regain control of the ship”. Even still that’s a lot of trust to put in someone. But I tend to read it as a heat of the moment decision, instinctual, he couldn’t stand the idea of losing Grace and would rather it be himself. Idk man the concept of risking your entire species to save your alien bestie, sue me if that isn’t a trope reserved for close family, insanely deep friendships, and romance. In the case of Grace deciding to sacrifice himself by going back to save Rocky, we all understand he knows he is going to die at the time of the decision is made and is more than happy to do so. And while saving Erid is a nice bonus, it’s clear that the decision was made for Rocky’s sake. But what kills me is that even non-shippers have been drawing parallels to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (a romantic love story btw). Up is down, left is right, xenon’s a solid and Orpheus turning around saves Eurydice. I don’t think people read it that way for no reason.
Again, the line between romantic and platonic is often just a confession. Until that moment It’s blurry, and you can make platonic arguments for literally any pairing. Love exists in many a form, but for me it’s the compounding variables man. We have two explicit romantic parallels to historical myths and one trope that is more implicit. These and the smaller bits of romance tropiness like forced proximity in isolation, arguably stupid levels of trust, watching each other sleep, and having skills that complement and complete each other, are all hard for me to overlook. They are two souls destined to combine in order to save two worlds your honor!
How could something with such explicit romantic coding be cheapened by interpreting it that way? Why are we so afraid of well-written and intricate love stories? I mean so much (heterosexual) romance in media relies on guy+girl=together with little to nothing else, I’m a sucker for any deeper textual/coded romances.
So ship, don’t ship. Noodles! I don’t care if you like the canon interpretation better. I’m a fan of aroace Grace myself, I’m also fond of strattland and astrofathers (Carlgrace). I can’t bring myself to enjoy bloodymary (I have seen and enjoyed iron lung) but I’m not gonna hate on how others like to play with their dolls. I’m not trying to convert people to the ship, I’m just here to defend the grace/rocky interpretation. Because like, really you can’t be too upset at people for *checks notes* reading what’s written.
