Raven on Ice

@Raven_on_Ice on AO3 | 26 y/o | She/her | I post random things about my fanfictions, Yuri on ice and figure skating and occasionally other latest obsessions

[ravenonice]

The absolute satisfaction German!Eva Stratt's inner child got when she was handed all those documents allowing her to basically do anything and everything after a childhood of growing up with parents saying "Na? Hast du nen Darf-Schein oder was???" (Rough translation: "well? Do you have a you-can-do-permit or what???") At any given opportunity

[ravenonice]

No. But. Pause. Imagine if Grace had never woken up either or at some point the mission had gone so sideways that he had died before being able to solve the astrophage problem or at least had been unable to send the beatles to earth...

The 26 year anniversary of the hail mary launch comes and passes. There is no sight of the beatles.

The earth and it's people are struggling but trying to be held together by this faint hope. Maybe it just took them longer to solve the issue? So they hold on just a little longer as the world around them turns colder in more than one way...

Eva Stratt eventually, after several additional years have passed, has to be dragged before the press and be forced to admit that the Hail Mary Mission has failed. Tears roll down her cheeks as the questions hail down on her, not because of overwhelm or because the reality of human extinction starts to fully settle in... but because all the pain of every sacrifice she had ever made in the name of saving earth starts to hit her at once...

Antarctica. The Sahara. Entire ecosystems eradicated too soon. Countless people robbed of their intellectual property. People ripped away from their lives and families to work on this project.

And not to forget...the People who had died for it. Martin DuBois. Annie Shapiro. Yáo Li-Jie. Olesya Ilyukhina. Ryland Grace.

For some reason the last one hits the hardest. He hadn't chosen this. He hadn't volunteered to try. Hell for all it's worth he could be the very reason nothing has come back! Maybe the amnesia drug hadn't worked...maybe he had refused to collaborate...No. He wouldn't have. Stratt shakes her head, lowering it allowing the tears to drop to the floor.

Dr. Ryland Grace had had even that: Grace. A fitting name for the man, really. And he hadn't wanted to die. He had wanted to stay behind and teach, or maybe study the astrophage further. Maybe keeping him here and safe maybe would've done more for humanity than forcing him on that ship kicking and screaming had done.... because it had done nothing but send him to die.

Stratt excuses herself with a shaky voice, pushing past the security men at the door, the reporters behind her screaming, demanding louder for the answers she won't give... because she doesn't have them.

She will never know what went wrong. She doesn't know what to do now. But what she knows is that people she sent out to safe the world, willingly or not, are dead. No matter what. Even if a Beatle shows up in several years when humanity has already been eradicated. It all ends the same way. Always was supposed to.

It was a hail mary. She had known from the beginning. She had just hoped it would work.

Making these decisions had been easy, or at least she had told herself so. It had been for the greater good of humanity but now that she couldn't justify it anymore and no matter how much she tells herself that they likely would've died anyway... they're just dead people.

And she had murdered Ryland Grace.

[ravenonice]

Quick sketch of rocky playing with the tape measure because it's one of my favourite scenes from the book 🥹✨

[ravenonice]

OH PLS DO!!! I'm not much of a tattoo person but if you'd actually want to get a tattoo based on this feel free to use the reference (to give to a much more talented artist lol) I would be honoured 😭

[penny-anna]

honestly funny to me that project hail mary stars Ryan Gosling bcos like imagine being an alien and the first human you meet is Ryan Gosling. im imagining Rocky trying to figure out how physical attractiveness works for humans (u know out of scientific curiosity) and while trying to get a fix on it being like 'Grace considered attractive??' and Grace is like nooo not really I'm pretty regular.

& then later in the event of making contact w other humans Rocky being like 'so that was a fucking lie'

[ravenonice]

With his new gadget and years of practice with Rocky, Grace is able to communicate with the eridians quite easily and fluently. So when he arrives on Erid, there is no need to give the other eridians "earth names".

Still, the eridians notice that in conversation with Rocky when he's speaking English, he's using his own combination of sounds for his name. They quickly catch on that just like they're using a different sound for Grace, he is for Rocky. But Rocky's name has no meaning in eridian?

When asked Grace explains that when he had no way to produce eridian, he had to use a substitute for Rocky's name and because there was no meaning he just...stuck with the first impression he got of him.

It quickly turns into, especially the pebbles, wanting to know their "earth names". Grace, overwhelmed with the pressure, says he'll need time to figure something out.

Grace would feel bad for just slapping random names on them without much thought. Though he has never been great at naming things (despite having to name so many...) he wants to make an effort to actually give fitting meaningful names, kind of as a token of respect for how much resources, time and care is being put into simply keeping him alive.

But every now and then, the perfect name strikes him like lightning and when told the eridians get super excited, some even trying to replicate the melody of the word. Grace always makes sure to give the translation or explanation. The eridians then go around telling everyone who'll listen that Grace gave them an earth name. To them it feels like an high honour.

At some point, Rocky gets jealous though.... because Grace didn't give his name this much thought. Rationally he knows that back then it was a simple necessity. But still. Rocky wants to know what Grace would name him now that he knows him.

Grace is a bit taken back by the unexpected question. He hadn't thought that what he was doing could possibly hurt Rocky in some way... but he also can't think of any other name he'd want to replace it with.

Rocky slumps in disappointment, ready to leave...but then Grace says: "Hey! Hold up! It's not that I can't think of anything to describe you with. There's probably a thousand names I could give you! But to me you are Rocky and will always be because that's simply the name I associate my best friend with and all the sacrifices you made for me. It's not just a random word for me anymore that kind of fit... it's been filled with meaning. And you mean everything to me. I couldn't replace it with anything because there is no word to describe it all."

And that's how Grace finds himself on the ground crushed by 180kg of rock <3

[ravenonice]

Quick sketch of rocky playing with the tape measure because it's one of my favourite scenes from the book 🥹✨

[ravenonice]

Had too mich time on my hands at my internship today soooo here have some more phm sketches 🙂‍↕️ Grace is looking rather youthful but oh well i just can't get his hair right 🥲

[ravenonice]

Quick sketch in celebration of me finishing the book today 🎉 Dutch Eva Stratt I love your problematic ass have some hagelslag 🙂‍↕️🫶🏻🇳🇱

[ravenonice]

Something about Eva Stratt being Dutch in the book is hilarious to me bc wdym that bitch (respectfully) was probably eating hagelslag while plotting to nuke Antarctica??????!!!!

[ravenonice]

Pitt finale got my brain buzzing with hucklerobby fic ideas oh no

[ravenonice]

Told my coworkers I'd spend the evening eating snacks and sobbing over the pitt finale and you BET that's exactly how my night is going!!!! Yei!!!!

[ravenonice]

Dana: hey Whitaker heard you'll have your own place for a bit. How about kinship fostering for baby jane doe?

Whitaker: oh I'm sorry no. I would but Robby specifically said no babies. Sorry.

Dana:... specifically???

[ravenonice]

Santos: *trying to be nonchalant* sooooooo what did Dr. Robby want

Whitaker: *like he's seen a ghost*... I'm house sitting for him

Santos: oh...okay...

Whitaker: I think he's suicidal...

Santos: Wha-

Whitaker: Also Abbot does naked Yoga

Santos: I think there's a clear answer to what should disturb me the most here but yet...

[ravenonice]

Robby: *examining Whitaker after he got in an accident* "Okay hot abdomen..."

Whitaker: *on morphine and giggling* "you think my abdomen's hot?"

[spoonerismetal]

you know yurio would attempt that backflip

[skate-the-onion]

Perhaps the world's most unintentionally funny stereoscopic replay

[teapotteringabout]

I know it's been a hot minute and it's not GA related, but dammit the figure skating has been on and I got nostalgic for Yuri on Ice.

For context: men's Olympic figure skating, the two Japanese skaters in the photo (Shun Sato, the crying lad, and Yuma Kagiyama, the smiling lad) won bronze and silver respectively. It was too good a photo to not adapt, though I like to think in the YOI-verse Yuri has won gold 😌😌