#is rare

[seducingavampire]

ryland grace is almost unshippable to me.

almost in part because, well, it's kind of fundamental to his character that he was literally shipped into space. like he is very much shippable. stratt saw to that.

but also because done right, i am absolutely in favour of shipping him with rocky. and adrian. but that is IT. i do not fuck with shipping him with any human, from his canon or not. and emphasis on done right. (this feels like a good point to say: this is not me trying to assert that my takes are canon, or that anyone else's takes are wrong or bad. everything i say is about how/if it resonates with me)

(cut bc i have been frustrated by enough long posts lately to want to be considerate about it)

i'm still working on synthesising my thoughts into coherency, but i think it comes down to fundamentally what i find compelling about project hail mary (and to be clear there is a lot i love about project hail mary that isn't explicitly to do with the relationship grace and rocky develop, but that's not what this post is about) and how various takes work with or against the cultural romantic norms i'm used to seeing, and how all of that ties into my own messy aroace-spectrums-adjacent identity.

some things i believe in my heart to be true:

romance is a culturally constructed category, with no clear or consistent parameters (even between human cultures) (even between humans within the same cultures!)

sexuality is (to varying degrees, depending on the person) fluid and biological and contextual and malleable

applying rigid definitions or predetermined parameters of either of these is often faulty and inconsistent, even in human-human allo-allo relationships. every relationship is its own unique thing. how it gets described can vary wildly depending on the people inside of it, and the biases and experiences of whoever is describing it

ryland grace is aroace to me. which functionally means, he does not have a "normal" relationship to attraction or relationships. he has at least one ex (so do i), but he never seems bothered by his lack of a partner. he loves his life. he is loved. he is never the one to assert that his lack of a partner makes him more disposable.

the version of grace/rocky i find compelling, is the one where their relationship is explicitly both a departure from and a merging of human and eridian relationship structures. i don't picture grace ever going "finally, i have found romance, turns out im not aromantic my type is just aliens". what i find compelling is that without the barriers of human cultural expectations (or at least the ones grace and i have been subjected to), he is finally able to access a level of intimacy and closeness that has always been locked behind the wall of allonormativity. their relationship can't be built on cultural assumptions; their cultures are literally alien to each other. they don't have to be anything other than what they are; they meet each other where they are at. they use the scaffolding of their cultures to help describe what their relationship already is. also my headcanon is that rocky (and eridians in general) would be utterly perplexed by the human habit of deprioritising friendships to hold the monogamous nuclear family above all else.

idk if i'm really hitting the points i want to here. tldr grace and rocky are everything to me and i love them despite the ache in my chest that maybe the love and devotion i crave is locked behind being shot to space against my will, which will never happen because i would want to go and they would not let me on account of i am a fragile fool without the necessary skills <3

[mystical-mysteries]

When you ship rare pairs:

[pointless-letters]

‪Okay fair play, this one did make me laugh, if only because it reminded me of my favourite Scottish accent joke:‬

‪“Is that a doughnut or a meringue?”‬

‪“No, you’re right, it’s a doughnut.” ‬

[crayonurchin]

I am going to be happy that I’m the first commenter on a Markiplier video and no one is going to stop me

[ellieonomy]

so many drafts i wanna post but they will stay there forever bc no one will reblog them when i do!

[ilkkawhat]

“How the hell would I know? Never even talked to the real you! And I’m not sure I even wanna.” Um, ouch? 💔Is it weird I can see him saying this on the show and walking away big mad?

not weird at all! in fact i'm glad lol, any time anybody tells me they can like, see/hear the characters doing the things I write, makes me feel at least a little less insecure

[icecreamkink]

theres a weird type of peace in watching a match where you dont rly care for either team