Imagine Grace defined his name as the elegance definition of grace and Rocky spends years thinking how fucking ironic this clumsy leaky space blobs name is.
Until Grace slips out a sentence along the lines of "could you give me a little grace here" and Rocky immediately points out he used a word wrong so Grace has to explain that yeah, grace means elegance but it can also mean mercy sometimes too.
And Rocky has to suddenly reconcile that the clumsy leaky blob that saved his life twice, that almost certainly doomed himself to come back for him, name is Mercy.
some actually fleshed out red string PHM au comics! (ft. qpr grocky)
happy pride month 🙂↕️ some doodled comics are below, plus a (warning: long) detailing of this au because i'm crazy!!!🧡
i have more doodles where that came from! but it makes more sense to post related ones together... so, to be continued. (i don't really do long projects [i get stressed], so it will likely be some non-linear storytelling throughout doodles.)
i am excited to post the next batch though, so have this (out of context) panel for now 😭
oh red string au, I love you so 😩 details are below. and I ramble. this has made this post very long. apology apology
there are multiple versions of a red string au but this is mine (so we are on the same page here):
people are born without strings, and get theirs when they are in proximity to their soulmate AND cross paths. think like bumping into each other on the street, sitting next to them at a concert, your waiter at a restaurant, new coworker, etc.
some people don't have a soulmate 🤷 it's rare, but not that rare that people believe it never happens. it's socially acceptable to believe that, if you reach a certain age, you may just not have one. but people find their soulmate at any age. it's just one of those things where the belief depends on the person.
people can also be tied to multiple individuals. #yeah
soulmate doesn't necessarily mean sexual or even romantic attraction. tis but a soul tie. two souls who were meant to be together. don't think ab it too hard. red string au storylines are super cute and I love them, but sometimes don't have a lot of complexity or nuance. just because two people "get tied" doesn't mean they're like, going to get married or something. what happens between two people after they get tied solely depends on those two people. it really varies. red string of fate au in 2026 means it's gonna be woke. happy pride month✋️
ALL THAT BEING SAID; we get into the plot of this being a PHM au...
grace not being tied, never getting tied. being surrounded by many people in the professional world who are all tied. always experiencing a slight othering because of it. nothing explicit, but just enough to be there. "making peace" with it, choosing to believe that maybe he's just one of those people that doesn't have one🙁 and that's fine! he knows that if he actually is, then it's perfectly normal. but he tries not to think about. ever. jokes that he is, instead, "tied to his work"
ironically, his fate WAS tied to his work though. this is where petrova line = red string of fate comes into play. Dr. "I'm soul-tied to my work" grace, pointing at the astrophage in a petri dish, then staring down into a dark xenonite tunnel protruding from the ship blocking the petrova line. screaming in shock as his red string appears, tying him to someone at the other end. (guess who!)
stratt's actions become more cruel, essentially dooming him (from the eyes of everyone on earth) to a life of never finding a potential soulmate. (though grace chose to believe that he might just be a person without one, there was always a chance he just hadn't found them yet. stratt took away his choice to do so.)
so. eridians can't see color. and because the string isn't a physical object with any mass or weight, it's just a force. i'd like to think this au is kind of just our society but everyone has a sixth sense to see the string of fate; like eridians discovering humans can see light. just another extra sense. ANYWAY, rocky can't see the string! he doesn't see that him and grace or tied, or have any idea about this aspect of human culture (or any, for that matter).
what's interesting though is that the red string also occurs for eridians, they just can't "see" it! i'd like to think that once grace is settled and situated on erid, he gets bombarded with questions and requests from eridians to tell them if they are tied with a "soulmate" according to human culture.
if you saw the other post, you may be thinking, "but bay you said grockdrian!" and you would be right. adrian is not pictured in this one (because this is the beginning) but they will be! qpr grockdrian domestic life on erid is a whole other thing. it's happening though. i said so.
bonus if you got through all of that:
NO IDEA why i'm locked in so hard. please actually ask me questions if you have any though. lowk i #needthat. honestly this post is so long... maybe i need to go outside actually holy shit 😭
me: [writing something] shoot... what's this woman's pronouns?
stenographer: well her bio says she/her...
me: better play it safe anyway [writes "it"]
the ghost of marie curie: [appears out of thin air] ivy... you're the first person to ever correctly gender me in a hundred and eighty-two years. from the bottom of my cold dead heart, thank you.
Okay but imagine being the team of Eridian scientists tasked with keeping Erid's Only Human alive for as long as possible while the whole planet's environment is literally trying to kill him. And then Rocky shows up and is like:
“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”
“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”
Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”
“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”
“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”
To celebrate Erid getting their sun back on track, Grace asks for some alcohol. There's a small amount left from the Hail Mary and Rocky offers to take it to the science Eridians to see if they can synthesise more.
“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”
“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”
“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”
Shane and Harris went to the same school and Harris saw this kid sitting alone during lunch and decided that is now my friend
Ofc they keep in contact over the years and Harris is the first Shane comes out too (after rose) and Harris is like “babes I thought we knew this”
Shane just stares at him for a while before replying “you couldn’t have let me know as well?” Then they laugh.
Harris freaks the fuck out when he hears Ilya is moving to Ottawa and Shane has to pretend that he has no fucking clue why Ilya is moving.
One day Harris invites Shane to one of the barbecues and he just says he’s bringing his old school friend named Shane. No one expects Shane fucking Hollander to show up. Not even Ilya.
Later that night Ilya is like “why didn’t you tell meeee???” Shane just turns to him with the most deadpanned expression and says “I did I talk about him regularly” and then falls asleep.
Ilya lays there staring at the ceiling for a while before he’s hit with several memories all at once the most prominent being the one where Shane tells him over the phone that one of his friends from school had pretty much gotten his dream job as media person with the centaurs. The other memories being little mentions of Harris here and there but all of them vague enough that he didn’t realize it was the same Harris
