my personal favorite "ryland grace is so infatuated with this fucking rock that it's actively breaking his brain" moment, from chapter twenty-nine:
So that’s what I’m left with. Option 1: Go home a hero and save all of humanity. Option 2: Go to Erid, save an alien species, and starve to death shortly after.
I pull on my hair.
I sob into my hands. It’s cathartic and exhausting.
All I see when I close my eyes is Rocky’s dumb carapace and his little arms always fidgeting with something.
There'll be a moment when you realise you're 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn't be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters. The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don't talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom's burnt pie will become the best food you ever had. And I know on some days you won't be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37.
Queerplatonic grockdrian is making me feel things.
Grace never having understood why he's never really "fit in" with everyone else. Him never having understood anything about romance or sex and feeling out of place all his life, and other people noticing too! What Stratt said, he has no one (at least not in the eyes of an amato- and heteronormative society) so he's worth less to them. (this isn't a great example, since Stratt would've said anything to convince him to go, she just said whatever seemed the most convincing, but you get the point.)
And then there's Rocky, who doesn't even have all the cultural context to know why Grace is acting strange when he mentions his own mate. But even then, Rocky was always there for him despite that, Rocky doesn't care whether or not Grace has a mate, he just wants Grace to be happy.
And then Grace on Erid meeting Adrian and loving them and being loved back by them just as much as Rocky does. And being loved and wanted by both of them and it doesn't matter in what way they all love each other, only that they do.
There are no expectation for anything. No expectations of sex or kids or anything of the like, just being able to choose what he wants instead of being pressured into something by all of society.
Grace finally feeling accepted, loved, and wanted all unconditionally and being leaky (of course) over finally feeling like he belongs.
it's funny how ppl are so mad that Ryland Grace is in the finals for the Tumblr sexy man poll because he's played by a conventionally attractive actor which I agree with but it just goes to show you that Grace will always find himself in a Situation, placed there by other people
