in all seriousness, if someone atticwives ryland grace, the power dynamic on display (as buck has already mentioned) is kind of horrendous, but it already exists in the text. i gestured at it in caulk worm fic and subverted it primarily because it didn't match the tone, but there's so much going on...
grace is fundamentally at the behest of paternalistic benefactors who consider his existence kind of cute and interesting. this is a very scary position to be in: if, say, funding ran out for his biome, what would he do? i know weir (and, by proxy, the film) glosses over this by making eridians a sort of utopia, but andy weir also doesn't give a single shit about things like "linguistics" or "culture" so i dont trust that guy
he is already atticwifed because presumably there is lots of stuff going on outside on erid and he's unable to participate in it. for example, we know on earth grace lacks friends; does he have friends outside of rocky on erid? can you be friends with a team of zookeepers hired solely to keep you alive? can you, as a human, be good friends with your primary care doctor? and even if you can---can you trust your doctor to be honest with you both as your doctor and your friend?
beyond that, what is grace's status? is he a citizen? do they even want him there? surely there is opposition to his existence. if erid is neoliberal democratic, is he given a right to vote? if they're anarcho-syndicalists (my preferred choice, for what is a thrum if not a union) is he a member of a union to be able to bargain for his rights? is he able to join a union without the ability to thrum? does he even have any notion of the political situation? or is that something he's happily oblivious to in order to keep him safe?
he is fundamentally at rocky's mercy for all of the above. as he seems to have no access to the outside world bar what rocky filters through for him, rocky can tell him something and he has absolutely no way to go check for himself. if rocky were to say, lie to him for grace's own good, that could spiral very very fast indeed. i know, again, the film glosses over this, but that puts grace in a very tenuous position. why not set the attic alight to be able to truly see for the first time the goings on of the house below?
