I love Project Hail Mary so allow me to be critical of it for one second. The sociopolitics of that universe would be so rich if Andy Weir weren't self-proclaimed apolitical (basically high modernist) and actually explored them. He dodges any complex relationships, politics, and consequences in his work and it can be very frustrating if you're into sci-fi as an overall genre. Sci-fi that tries to be apolitical is the bane of my existence.
This is gonna be a hot take but somehow the movie made it worse by deliberately cutting out the most controversial and political events in the story: nuking antarctica, paving the sahara, stratt's misogyny and militant dictatorship, acknowledgement of the pending lawsuits. That stuff is complicated and hard to stomach, but that's what sci-fi is all about.
I still love the film and the book for what they're trying to be, but man does it sting whenever sci-fi gets stripped of any hard-hitting introspection and politics. That's where the genre truly shines
It also harms his alien worldbuilding a decent amount because of it.
The Eridians, in canon, somehow together build an ENTIRE FUCKING SPACE ELEVATOR, shoved tons of astrophage in their oceans in a way that killed most their marine echosystem (aka high level of coordinazation requiring a LOT of work) and also had a lot of ??? volunteer scientists. These must be equally controversial decisions as the Hail Mary, right? I mean it's impossible all agreed on killing all their marine echosystem, especially sinceh the sun cooling was like a 70/80 years away issue, aka like human climate change level issue. Ok so they must have some sort of goverment and or organization that did it, right? Someone who made the decisions and chose who would go, right? It'd be interesting to learn and parallel it with Grace's own experience with the taskforce. No you don't get to learn any of it.
Then, in the epilogue, they somehow spend A FUCKTON of their depleated post crisis resources creating a bespoke echosystem with food, water, ect that is kept significantly cool compared to eridian room temperature and clone skin specifically to keep him alive. For an alien that lives the equivalent of like, a dog's life to us. How did they decide this? There really should be opposition to something like this, even if the alien saved the planet, right? So who signed off on this? No no they don't have goverments society or a protest movement or something I guess?
In fact, you barely get any sociological aspect to Eridian culture that isn't strictly based on biology, the thing he's actually interested in eridians exploring. How does their society look like? How large are family groups? They have mates so probably they stay in some sort of family system, right? No don't worry about it no one cares.
Note how he talks about the culture aspects vs the biology aspects. The "Basic culture" section is basically just another biology section roughly mascarading as "culture". He can tell you at exactly which temperature they die and how many calories they eat but can't tell you anything about their culture past "they're a social species who watch each other sleep and use a 6 based math system and really like some kinds of science."
There is PRECIOUS PRECIOUS little about them and their society.
And like if it's not a controversial thing to keep Grace alive for like, a measily to eridians 50 years while cooling his ecosystem to like, what would be liquid nitrogen level temperatures compared to our ecosystem, why not? Do they have some sort of greek style hospitality law that says you have to keep, feed and watch each guest sleep? Like it would make sense I guess but still why am I having to infer such basic and important cultural aspects?
He writes human politics because it'd be extremely jarring to have blowing up Antartica be something no one suffers cosequences for but because he's a self identified apolitical guy with Eridians he completely avoids it. Think of it from a human prospective. Think of the politics that would be required to decide to keep some weird ass alien alive in their little cute bespoke liquid hydrogen tank with for like 5 years of life, even if he helped save the whole planet. Really let it sink into you. We joke about Rocky keeping the taumoeba hostage so Erid will keep Grace alive but that is like, a thing that is likely to be necessary.
theres an assumption that if an alien has an alien gender system they wouldnt understand homophobia but maybe they just have their own more complex version of homophobia. alien society with eight genders and a horribly complex web of what is considered socially acceptable that makes the gender binary look like easy mode. i'm inventing homophobia 2 and it's terrible.
Imagine a species where sex is divided by two sets of (mostly) binary characteristics. So most of the species has either primary genitals A or B, and most of the species also has secondary genitals a or b - but they can have them in any combination. So most of the species will be Aa, Ab, Ba, or Bb - with a small percentage of interesex people because biology is never straight-forward.
And the "normal" relationship that's accepted is to mate across both of these characteristics. So someone who is Aa will pair up with Bb, and someone who's Ab will generally go for Ba, etc.
It sometimes happens that someone will pair up with the same secondary characteristic. So an Aa might pair up with a Ba and it's a bit odd, but the world's full of all sorts and it's generally harmless if they want to do that sort of thing in private, but you wish they wouldn't flaunt it, and you understand why some people might not want their cubs around those people. It's okay if they're in a triad relationship with an Ab or a Bb because that makes more sense, but otherwise, how does a relationship work without someone being the b? All roles ought to be represented in a relationship, otherwise it's just not healthy and they definitely shouldn't be allowed to start a nest and raise cubs because they'll never be able to show a healthy family dynamic.
And then you get the absolute freaks who pair up Aa to Aa or Bb to Bb and that's just gross. They should be locked up.
I know a lot of people like to read/write stories where things are better because they want to escape the suckiness of the real world, but, sci-fi stories have a lot of potential for fucked-up homophobia 2 type scenarios.
This idea might need to sit in my head for a while to see if it starts to grow a plot.
theres an assumption that if an alien has an alien gender system they wouldnt understand homophobia but maybe they just have their own more complex version of homophobia. alien society with eight genders and a horribly complex web of what is considered socially acceptable that makes the gender binary look like easy mode. i'm inventing homophobia 2 and it's terrible.
Same with species that have 2 indipendent intelligen species, or even moreso, species with much smaller changes (think homo sapiens vs neanderthal) on the same planet. People assume they'd have like, just racism among the "races" and not the kind of racism we have now, that's mostly based on minor phenotypical traits. No they'd have both. They likely wouldn't differentiatate the "races" from the minor differences between within their own species until they discover like, evolution and dna which is pretty advanced. They may even be more racist to someone from their same species that has different phenotipes than an entirely different species that looks almost the same for a long time. They'd probably develop entirely new kinds of racism the more science they learn about how their species evolved.
theres an assumption that if an alien has an alien gender system they wouldnt understand homophobia but maybe they just have their own more complex version of homophobia. alien society with eight genders and a horribly complex web of what is considered socially acceptable that makes the gender binary look like easy mode. i'm inventing homophobia 2 and it's terrible.
"Earth would try to dissect Rocky" counterpoint: Earth is not like, encountering Rocky in person for the first time with zero context, Earth is seeing Rocky in the video logs first in any scenario in which the beetles get launched since they accelerate faster than the Hail Mary, and in scenarios where they're not launched then Earth is seeing the video logs shortly after the Hail Mary arrives. Meaning Earth, in universe, has most of if not all the same information we have about Rocky out in the meat world. And just as a reminder, Rocky the Eridian is an instant classic of a character who is so universally beloved he was referenced in a critical space mission with the whole world watching. Earth would fucking love that little guy.
They would, also, on an individual level, be really paranoid that no one else loves Rocky as much as they do, and there would be a lot of arguing about who is capable of giving Rocky the best quality of life
The concept of 2 entire planets surviving because some engineer rock was antisocial and stayed in the lab all day, possibly even slept in there. It amuses me. #stayinsidekids #donottouchgrass
"oh rocky is being a little shit in the sleepover scene" personally i think rocky is hella anxious abt grace not waking up. hes counting how long grace sleeps for. he keeps trying to get closer to grace even when told to back off. he isnt trying to mess with grace, hes trying to make sure grace wont die in his sleep
The PTSD Rocky must have over the all crew died + 46 years alone in spance situation... Years and years alone without someone to watch him sleep in the most unsafe environment an Eridian has EVER been in. Years of feeling guilty.
I feel like we forget Rocky VOLUNTEERED for the suicide mission despite having a mate and a fullfiling life on Erid and because of that is even more of an Outlier of Eridians than Grace is of humans. We're judging Eridians based on their equivalent of Olesya "I want to do a lethal injection with a little bit of heroin" Ilyukhina.
The humans? Definetely not. They'd been obsesrving space a while and knew it was a long shot. Did not even slightly consider it.
The eridians? Eh we can't judge that they may have had people who were better. They couldn't know their only survivor would be antisocial weirdo engineer that stays in his lab all day.
My headcanon is Adrian's whole family kinda sucks, there's a readmore because this post got too long
Eridians don't have cities the way we think of them so they probably don't have countries the way we think of them either, but I think like. After graduating from eridian engineering school, Rocky came to live with his cousins and ommers (gender neutral term for your parent's siblings) and they happen to be from the same culture as adrian so when rocky's ommers are like "hey if you're going to live here long term you should let us arrange a mate for you" because their culture does that (historically, the first mate you take is the arranged one, and then you can take additional mates if for whatever reason that relationship isn't as fulfilling as you'd like, but you can also arrange multiple mates) and rocky's like "ok sure" thinking nothing is going to come of it
Enter the elders in the community who are like "hey so we see the weirdest member of your family wants to arrange a marriage, what if we matched them with this other person, they're the weirdest member of their family and we think it'd be a good match"
So they're introduced and Rocky is like "well ok I think Adrian might be nice but something about this whole situation is weird" and his family is like "Yeah so we're not completely sure what's going on, Adrian seems very nice, but their family is absolutely dog-piling on them every chance they get but they're doing it subtly and hoping that because you're not from here you're not picking up on it"
And basically Adrian is like. Like they've tried finding a mate before and it hasn't worked out so their family is like "Okay cool this is basically your last chance or you'll be living with us forever" and their parents specifically are like. Like Rocky's an engineer and so are several members of his family so they're like, a tad higher up the social ladder than Adrian's family, so Adrian's parents consider it to be like, a huge honor for their hatchlings to even be considered for such a union. Except they're like "Okay but why did they pick Adrian they're gonna fuck it up" like they think it's an insult to Rocky that out of all their kids the elders matched him with Adrian. One of their parents literally says to their face "six kids and the elders pick the worst one" so they're putting a lot of pressure on Adrian to act normal, which means like. Like "try not to draw too much attention to how large you are" and "don't talk about biological studies in polite company" and "do make an effort to actually harmonize with them" and "don't be so intimidating" and "don't be clumsy" and and and
So all this means Rocky doesn't get to know what Adrian's really like until like multiple Eridian years in, and his family is surprised he stuck around that long because like "Adrian's nice, but they might never open up, you know that right?" but Rocky is nothing if not persistent and logical: he wants to know who he's rejecting if it comes to that, even if that means barging into their life and refusing to leave until he has the answer (the standard engagement/courtship/whatever you wanna call it period is also like, really long, like on-par-with-the-amount-of-time-Rocky-was-in-space long so he's not like, stringing Adrian along or anything)
Anyways one day Rocky manages to convince Adrian to let him tag along to their lab and he manages to get them talking about biology and what she's working on and her actual likes and interests and that's when Rocky's like "Yeah okay this can work"
So they get married and the whole time Adrian's family is like "you're sure? you want to marry Adrian? the weird one?" and Rocky's like "yes obviously I want to marry Adrian, that's why I'm marrying Adrian." and everything seems to settle down once Rocky and Adrian are actually a done deal.
Then 40 Eridani a starts dimming.
And Adrian designs the life support system for the Blip-A and applies to be selected to go into space with Rocky, but it's decided that their specialty in high altitude biomes is better put to use at home since that's the part of the ecosystem that will start seeing the effects of the dimming star first. So Rocky leaves, and Adrian stays behind.
And so. much. time. passes.
And while a lot of the crew's family members hold out hope, for the general public it's just sort of quietly accepted that the astronauts aren't coming back, that whatever's out there killed them and they'll have to find a way to kill the astrophage from home.
Enter Adrian's family, now pressuring them to take a new mate and to work extra hard not to kill this one, because let's be honest the crew probably would've survived whatever's out there if the life support system had been built by someone who knew what they were doing.
And Adrian of course refuses, they've been with Rocky for so long and they have a good support system outside of their family that they no longer feel that pathological need to listen to them and change for them, but then when Rocky finally returns it's just him, and everyone else in the crew is dead. The people Adrian knew and worked with and in some cases trained are dead, only Rocky survived.
And one of the first things Rocky says, before he's even gotten to Erid, while he's still just communicating via radio, is that what happened to the crew had nothing to do with Adrian's life support system.
Also aliens are real and there's one here and it's super dying.
So everyone scrambles to do everything they can to save the alien, including Adrian, who's honestly just thankful something out there saved Rocky. The catch, though, is that Adrian thinks Grace will be going home soon. Like, very soon. It's only after Rocky and Grace actually arrive on Erid that Rocky is able to clarify that first Grace has to survive the trip home, which means he'll need food, and his ship will need major repairs, which will take time, and they'll need to breed two million kilograms of astrophage to refuel because his was a suicide mission, and even then, they don't actually know if Earth is okay. They're obviously going to give Grace the option but it's possible going back to Earth would mean he just starves to death when he gets there because he could very well be the last human, if not the last Earthling organism that lives outside hydrothermal vents period. So like Grace is probably staying for a while.
And like I don't think Adrian's family are the ones that put the idea in their head that Rocky is leaving them for Grace but they really don't help and they're definitely the loudest voices on that particular topic, though most everyone else in their life is less "well obviously rocky is leaving you even though our species mates for life, you almost killed him" and more "oh my god stop whining rocky isn't leaving you go be with your mate and stop being ungrateful."
Both Grace and Rocky do confirm with Adrian that her life support system design, which (and again this is my headcanon) had battery backups and a hand crank generator and therefore did not require astrophage to power it is the only reason Rocky survived for six weeks in a ship with no fuel (it's sheer luck he was able to avoid a lethal dose of radiation but an alternate power source for the life support is the only way I can see that not failing). And once Rocky's gotten over his fear of somehow giving Adrian acute radiation syndrome (I mean, mercury breaks down when exposed to radiation and becomes radioactive itself, I'm so certain that during the initial trip before Rocky or the crew knew what was going on they assumed it was a regular pathogen and that Rocky was a carrier for whatever it was, he's definitely terrified of sleeping near other Eridians and potentially killing them, and I don't think he realizes this until that first night back with Adrian and he just can't watch them sleep properly he has to do it from another room, just like how they made him do it on the Blip A) and Grace starts working through his willingness to say or do whatever Rocky and Adrian ask of him because if he doesn't then they might strap him into the Hail Mary and send him off into space to die, they all talk about their relationships and clear the air between them.
And Rocky starts working his way up to watching Adrian sleep, and eventually opens up about what happened on the Blip-A and the guilt he feels because he couldn't fix it, and he's furious that anyone let alone Adrian's own family has been trying to make them feel that guilt
Adrian starts opening up to Grace because it's hard to let the jealously get to you when the guy you're jealous of thinks you should feel whatever type of way you feel about this whole situation and also keeps insisting that your mate loves you to the stars and back
It's still several Eridian years before Adrian entertains even the thought of letting their family meet Grace. Rocky insists it's gotta be after he's recovered from the scurvy because if he grinds his teeth too much they might fall out and he doesn't need to lose any more. Grace is oblivious and is just "I'm ready to meet your family whenever :)"
Yeah maybe like three notes out of any of Adrian's family members has Ryland "if I had a nickel for every time I wanted to smack a kid's parents, I'd have enough nickels to put in a sock and smack them with that instead" Grace barely able to restrain himself but also refusing to give them any leeway on insulting Adrian and pushing back at every opportunity, which is honestly a reaction Adrian was not expecting, because usually people either tacitly agree with their family or even if they don't they're subtle about it in public so it often goes over their heads (like with Rocky). Meanwhile Grace is like "Adrian's family is insulting our field of study what the hell?! none of these people get paulie privileges" and eventually Adrian's family goes too far and they manage to get an actual uncensored swear out of Grace.
And I think that's the moment Adrian really starts letting Grace in, because up until that point Adrian has both witnessed and been on the receiving end of Grace's people-pleasing survival tactic. Up until that point he's been nothing but polite and cordial and maybe even afraid of accidentally offending someone, to the point where Adrian and Rocky had a hard time convincing the biodome team that an above ground building with windows and everything would be more psychologically beneficial than an underground Eridian style home because every time they asked for his input Grace would just go "whatever's easiest for you, honestly I'm fine staying in the Mary, you don't need to waste all that material on me."
Like Adrian knows that wasn't just UNESCO Grace coming out, that was Grace deliberately pressing the big red UNESCO button, believing on some level that at the very least, some of his basic needs would not be met as a result of him doing that.
I think Adrian ends up finding a lot of common ground with Grace, and it's honestly kind of nice to have someone that was the focal point of so many of their insecurities coming to them to ask questions about Eridian biology and Adrian's specific research endeavors, and it's rare that Adrian is valued like that. Less rare now that Rocky's back, but they do have Grace in their corner and that goes farther than either of them think it does.
I think Adrian has spent so much of their life making themselves small, putting their needs on hold, and being made to feel lonely in a species where they're never alone, that it's no surprise to them that they end up relating to a literal alien. The one person on the planet who's objectively weirder than she is. And Rocky loves them, Rocky loves them so much, and they could never do anything to change that, but Adrian has spent decades afraid that they finally messed up so badly the one person in the world who could put up with them died. And when you've spent the past 46-49 years thinking that, there's something freeing about finding someone you'd have to actively work at to drive away.
Wdym there's a Sherlock Holmes short story where he has to catch a kkk murder and it's ass??? Girl (author from the 19th century) how do you fuck that up???
arranged marriage adrian and rocky have been on my mind for days. i wonder if arranged marriages on erid are a result of trying to optimise the health of future children (i am not saying this is a good thing but it would be interesting if they had a vulcanish lowkey eugenicist thing happening)? and, at the same time, create or strengthen alliances and family ties, like on earth.
if arranged marriages aren't expected to result in romance (since ortiz said that he was picturing adrian and rocky's relationship turning out better than either of them expected), it may be that "mate" is a word used to refer to the arranged secondary parent of one's children rather than one's romantic partner. in fact, romances between mates may even be frowned upon since romances can end messily, and it's better to have a clear and platonic partnership with the secondary parent of your children.
it could be that romantic partnerships are expected to form outside of mate relationships. which makes it very interesting if you interpret grace and rocky's relationship as romantic. because that WOULD be fine on its own, except rocky already has a romantic relationship with adrian. i am not a cheating enjoyer myself, but the narrative tension of rocky being expected to Not have a romance with adrian, deciding to anyway, then meeting another potential romantic partner who society would approve of more (he's an alien but he's the saviour of the planet and NOT rocky's mate!) is. oh it's tasty.
My headcanon is Adrian's whole family kinda sucks, there's a readmore because this post got too long
Eridians don't have cities the way we think of them so they probably don't have countries the way we think of them either, but I think like. After graduating from eridian engineering school, Rocky came to live with his cousins and ommers (gender neutral term for your parent's siblings) and they happen to be from the same culture as adrian so when rocky's ommers are like "hey if you're going to live here long term you should let us arrange a mate for you" because their culture does that (historically, the first mate you take is the arranged one, and then you can take additional mates if for whatever reason that relationship isn't as fulfilling as you'd like, but you can also arrange multiple mates) and rocky's like "ok sure" thinking nothing is going to come of it
Enter the elders in the community who are like "hey so we see the weirdest member of your family wants to arrange a marriage, what if we matched them with this other person, they're the weirdest member of their family and we think it'd be a good match"
So they're introduced and Rocky is like "well ok I think Adrian might be nice but something about this whole situation is weird" and his family is like "Yeah so we're not completely sure what's going on, Adrian seems very nice, but their family is absolutely dog-piling on them every chance they get but they're doing it subtly and hoping that because you're not from here you're not picking up on it"
And basically Adrian is like. Like they've tried finding a mate before and it hasn't worked out so their family is like "Okay cool this is basically your last chance or you'll be living with us forever" and their parents specifically are like. Like Rocky's an engineer and so are several members of his family so they're like, a tad higher up the social ladder than Adrian's family, so Adrian's parents consider it to be like, a huge honor for their hatchlings to even be considered for such a union. Except they're like "Okay but why did they pick Adrian they're gonna fuck it up" like they think it's an insult to Rocky that out of all their kids the elders matched him with Adrian. One of their parents literally says to their face "six kids and the elders pick the worst one" so they're putting a lot of pressure on Adrian to act normal, which means like. Like "try not to draw too much attention to how large you are" and "don't talk about biological studies in polite company" and "do make an effort to actually harmonize with them" and "don't be so intimidating" and "don't be clumsy" and and and
So all this means Rocky doesn't get to know what Adrian's really like until like multiple Eridian years in, and his family is surprised he stuck around that long because like "Adrian's nice, but they might never open up, you know that right?" but Rocky is nothing if not persistent and logical: he wants to know who he's rejecting if it comes to that, even if that means barging into their life and refusing to leave until he has the answer (the standard engagement/courtship/whatever you wanna call it period is also like, really long, like on-par-with-the-amount-of-time-Rocky-was-in-space long so he's not like, stringing Adrian along or anything)
Anyways one day Rocky manages to convince Adrian to let him tag along to their lab and he manages to get them talking about biology and what she's working on and her actual likes and interests and that's when Rocky's like "Yeah okay this can work"
So they get married and the whole time Adrian's family is like "you're sure? you want to marry Adrian? the weird one?" and Rocky's like "yes obviously I want to marry Adrian, that's why I'm marrying Adrian." and everything seems to settle down once Rocky and Adrian are actually a done deal.
Then 40 Eridani a starts dimming.
And Adrian designs the life support system for the Blip-A and applies to be selected to go into space with Rocky, but it's decided that their specialty in high altitude biomes is better put to use at home since that's the part of the ecosystem that will start seeing the effects of the dimming star first. So Rocky leaves, and Adrian stays behind.
And so. much. time. passes.
And while a lot of the crew's family members hold out hope, for the general public it's just sort of quietly accepted that the astronauts aren't coming back, that whatever's out there killed them and they'll have to find a way to kill the astrophage from home.
Enter Adrian's family, now pressuring them to take a new mate and to work extra hard not to kill this one, because let's be honest the crew probably would've survived whatever's out there if the life support system had been built by someone who knew what they were doing.
And Adrian of course refuses, they've been with Rocky for so long and they have a good support system outside of their family that they no longer feel that pathological need to listen to them and change for them, but then when Rocky finally returns it's just him, and everyone else in the crew is dead. The people Adrian knew and worked with and in some cases trained are dead, only Rocky survived.
And one of the first things Rocky says, before he's even gotten to Erid, while he's still just communicating via radio, is that what happened to the crew had nothing to do with Adrian's life support system.
Also aliens are real and there's one here and it's super dying.
So everyone scrambles to do everything they can to save the alien, including Adrian, who's honestly just thankful something out there saved Rocky. The catch, though, is that Adrian thinks Grace will be going home soon. Like, very soon. It's only after Rocky and Grace actually arrive on Erid that Rocky is able to clarify that first Grace has to survive the trip home, which means he'll need food, and his ship will need major repairs, which will take time, and they'll need to breed two million kilograms of astrophage to refuel because his was a suicide mission, and even then, they don't actually know if Earth is okay. They're obviously going to give Grace the option but it's possible going back to Earth would mean he just starves to death when he gets there because he could very well be the last human, if not the last Earthling organism that lives outside hydrothermal vents period. So like Grace is probably staying for a while.
And like I don't think Adrian's family are the ones that put the idea in their head that Rocky is leaving them for Grace but they really don't help and they're definitely the loudest voices on that particular topic, though most everyone else in their life is less "well obviously rocky is leaving you even though our species mates for life, you almost killed him" and more "oh my god stop whining rocky isn't leaving you go be with your mate and stop being ungrateful."
Both Grace and Rocky do confirm with Adrian that her life support system design, which (and again this is my headcanon) had battery backups and a hand crank generator and therefore did not require astrophage to power it is the only reason Rocky survived for six weeks in a ship with no fuel (it's sheer luck he was able to avoid a lethal dose of radiation but an alternate power source for the life support is the only way I can see that not failing). And once Rocky's gotten over his fear of somehow giving Adrian acute radiation syndrome (I mean, mercury breaks down when exposed to radiation and becomes radioactive itself, I'm so certain that during the initial trip before Rocky or the crew knew what was going on they assumed it was a regular pathogen and that Rocky was a carrier for whatever it was, he's definitely terrified of sleeping near other Eridians and potentially killing them, and I don't think he realizes this until that first night back with Adrian and he just can't watch them sleep properly he has to do it from another room, just like how they made him do it on the Blip A) and Grace starts working through his willingness to say or do whatever Rocky and Adrian ask of him because if he doesn't then they might strap him into the Hail Mary and send him off into space to die, they all talk about their relationships and clear the air between them.
And Rocky starts working his way up to watching Adrian sleep, and eventually opens up about what happened on the Blip-A and the guilt he feels because he couldn't fix it, and he's furious that anyone let alone Adrian's own family has been trying to make them feel that guilt
Adrian starts opening up to Grace because it's hard to let the jealously get to you when the guy you're jealous of thinks you should feel whatever type of way you feel about this whole situation and also keeps insisting that your mate loves you to the stars and back
It's still several Eridian years before Adrian entertains even the thought of letting their family meet Grace. Rocky insists it's gotta be after he's recovered from the scurvy because if he grinds his teeth too much they might fall out and he doesn't need to lose any more. Grace is oblivious and is just "I'm ready to meet your family whenever :)"
Yeah maybe like three notes out of any of Adrian's family members has Ryland "if I had a nickel for every time I wanted to smack a kid's parents, I'd have enough nickels to put in a sock and smack them with that instead" Grace barely able to restrain himself but also refusing to give them any leeway on insulting Adrian and pushing back at every opportunity, which is honestly a reaction Adrian was not expecting, because usually people either tacitly agree with their family or even if they don't they're subtle about it in public so it often goes over their heads (like with Rocky). Meanwhile Grace is like "Adrian's family is insulting our field of study what the hell?! none of these people get paulie privileges" and eventually Adrian's family goes too far and they manage to get an actual uncensored swear out of Grace.
And I think that's the moment Adrian really starts letting Grace in, because up until that point Adrian has both witnessed and been on the receiving end of Grace's people-pleasing survival tactic. Up until that point he's been nothing but polite and cordial and maybe even afraid of accidentally offending someone, to the point where Adrian and Rocky had a hard time convincing the biodome team that an above ground building with windows and everything would be more psychologically beneficial than an underground Eridian style home because every time they asked for his input Grace would just go "whatever's easiest for you, honestly I'm fine staying in the Mary, you don't need to waste all that material on me."
Like Adrian knows that wasn't just UNESCO Grace coming out, that was Grace deliberately pressing the big red UNESCO button, believing on some level that at the very least, some of his basic needs would not be met as a result of him doing that.
I think Adrian ends up finding a lot of common ground with Grace, and it's honestly kind of nice to have someone that was the focal point of so many of their insecurities coming to them to ask questions about Eridian biology and Adrian's specific research endeavors, and it's rare that Adrian is valued like that. Less rare now that Rocky's back, but they do have Grace in their corner and that goes farther than either of them think it does.
I think Adrian has spent so much of their life making themselves small, putting their needs on hold, and being made to feel lonely in a species where they're never alone, that it's no surprise to them that they end up relating to a literal alien. The one person on the planet who's objectively weirder than she is. And Rocky loves them, Rocky loves them so much, and they could never do anything to change that, but Adrian has spent decades afraid that they finally messed up so badly the one person in the world who could put up with them died. And when you've spent the past 46-49 years thinking that, there's something freeing about finding someone you'd have to actively work at to drive away.
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