Eva and Grace’s dynamic is so important to me. They’re in love platonically. Like, that’s not a common dynamic. She put the way he likes his coffee into the ship’s computer. He follows her around like a puppy. In the book, she cracks jokes with him and him only. She cares about his opinion. He was the only one she asked about the coma gene, wondering if it was worth it.
He’s her best friend, and she doesn’t even know it. They’re so close, that in the book, people think they’re sleeping together, and poor Grace is so confused because he thought that was his platonic work wife, wdym people think we’re sleeping together, that’s my person that I crack jokes with and then she glares at me because they’re not funny.
She’s softer with him than anybody else and is only ever vulnerable around him. We see in the movie, he’s the only one who ever gets her to smile, and sometimes even laugh, and then she serenades all of them, but mainly him, and he stares at her with those big, shiny eyes so lovingly, and she points at him when she sings, “everything’s gonna be alright”, and then she gives him those eyes, so loving.
And then she’s trying to stop herself from crying when she’s sending him away because, against her will, he’s become her person, and somewhere along the way, she’s become his, and they will have forever ended this relationship on bad terms, and nothing can fix that.
It’s a platonic tragedy. It’s a platonic love story. This is something we don’t get often, or, like, ever, and it’s deep and it’s tragic and it’s sad.
But even after, Eva’s still taking care of him. Packing clothes she knew would bring him comfort. Programming the ship to know how he likes his coffee. And Grace is still watching out for her, speaking to her directly in his video logs, with that same lopsided smile he used to throw her way.
He uses Rocky’s sign for goodbye, and she uses it back, and how did this book and movie give us such a deep platonic friendship because, guys, this NEVER HAPPENS.
Eva and Grace, the platonic male/female friendship of all time.
americans are sooo desensitized to guns and sometimes it manifests in ways that affect your media literacy. like remember in the first episode of sherlock when john watson opens up his drawer and you see a gun in there and youre supposed to understand that this is narratively significant and conveys his suicidality as well as his willingness to skirt rules and laws but the first time i watched it i was like oh well theres his desk gun. lots of people have those
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
I've seen a couple posts around about doing 'humans are space orcs' stuff with PHM, and i realized eridians have the upper hand on humans on quite a few things. climbing prowess, raw strength, sturdiness, thinking power and speed, sleep schedules. we're kind of stacked against the odds here.
so here's a few things humans are particularly good at for all your 'being human is pretty cool actually' needs!
1. swinging on your arms
humans can climb pretty okay, but eridians have more limbs than us and their muscles are steam-powered! they can hold on for longer, and they can do so more easily with more points of contact. what they DON'T have are clavicles and rotation support on their shoulders or lower limbs. see, primates are capable of swinging under the branch, called brachiation, and it's a pretty unique locomotion style!
so imagine them being on centrifuge but the settings are off so things are all kind of upside down. Rocky watches Grace monkey bar over to the right controls and fix it, and is kind of baffled he did that at all. or just Grace somehow turning on a hanging bar, that's pretty impressive!
2. throwing things
so we know apes and specifically hominids have some really specialized hands for fine motor control. but did you know humans have a special adaptation on the wrist just for throwing things like a spear? other apes can only throw things by big arches of the whole arm, they can't direct throws or make them go as far as a human can. we are superbly good at throwing!
now when it comes to eridians, they have a lot of raw strength on their limbs. again, steam-powered muscles. but how can they aim throws when they can't even rotate their forearms, much less have wrists at all?
I can just imagine Rocky's surprise at Grace somehow aiming a paper ball throw from across the lab, why bother yknow? but then the thing sails and just barely misses?? how?!?!
3. mimicking
sure, humans aren't lyre birds, but our ability to produce and mimic sounds is pretty damn impressive. we can not only mimic each other, but we can also figure out ways to mimic animals and even inorganic noises. Eridians are described in the book as using a similar system as whales, pulling air back and forth through their vocal chords instead of just one way. them not having lips and - i assume - a tongue would also limit them quite a bit.
not saying that Grace will be a very good mimic, it's a skill to be trained like any other after all, but I think Rocky will be pretty amused at whistling, and then beatboxing and imitation competitions.
4. teeth! chewing!
as i mentioned above, eridians don't have teeth! they manually tear up their food as much as they can and pop those suckers in right away. if you wanna stretch the whole 'exotic eating habits bit', you can have Rocky be very put out by the concept of a mouth with weird boney protusions.
not only that, but the oral fixation humans have must be rather absurd. what do you mean they just, stick random shit on their mouth and chew on it just because?? no Grace put the pen down stop slobbering on it, it's been all over! and what do you mean human mouths are full of harmful bacteria if they bite each other and break skin??
that's freaky stop that!!
5. horrifying immune system
we know Erid has single-cell life, and it's not a stretch to think there are illness inducing bacteria out there. jury's still out if they have stuff like viruses but whatever. Eridians use their hot system as a way to sterilize their own food when they eat, so i imagine their immune systems are a little handicapped when it comes to biological attacks.
meanwhile humans are leaky space blobs that easily coexist in symbiosis with unrelated bacteria for stuff like digestion, and you could say humanity has domesticated bacteria responsible for fermentation. we eat rotting stuff all the damn time! bread, pickles, aged meats, kimchi, beer, we can't get enough of it. no wonder Rocky thinks humans eating is gross!
also um, don't tell him about autoimmune diseases where our own immune system freaks out and attacks our own very healthy tissues, and we just. Live With That.
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