something that i DO find fascinating abt both phm and interpretations of it is when folks say things along the lines of “the point of grace’s lack of attachments isn’t that he’s aroace, the point of grace’s lack of attachments is that he’s refused to open himself up enough to form ANY close bonds because he’s a coward” because like. not only is it very possible for both to be true, i think that reading both as being the case continues to enhance the story AND speaks a very honest truth about how being aroace might have affected his life?
like. imagine you are grace. you have a life you enjoy where you get to teach kids you’re fond of about a subject you love. you’ve been hanging out with your friend marissa weekly for years (!) and you have a lot of peers on project hail mary who you respect and even have fun with. but! you’re also like 40, and you know how the world works - at the end of the day, at the end of the project, all of those people will go back to their parents and families and partners. the people whose names are on their emergency contact forms and birth certificates and marriage licenses and apartment leases. no matter how much you care about them, and no matter how much they care about you, there is always someone else in their life who is Above you, and Before you, because That’s How The World Works.
so like… yeah. lmao. aroace grace not opening himself up all the way because he anticipates pain and wants to avoid that is a kind of protective hedging that i find very likely for him to engage in? even if he opens himself up to the people around him, the fact is that most of those people will only reciprocate to whatever degree they/society deem acceptable for friendship, even if they like him a lot.
which is why, imo, the very careful portrayal of grace and rocky’s friendship in the phm film reads as extremely aroace-coded. because it’s not “rocky specifically is Special and Likable in a way which fixes all of grace’s hangups and allows him to open up” - it’s “rocky has a partner to go home to, but on multiple occasions, puts grace Above and Before that in a way which grace is unused to, because grace comes from a society which culturally and legally devalues the types of relationships he wants and holds most dear.” and once rocky shows that he is willing to reciprocate friendship and care to a degree grace could never expect from anyone on earth, grace no longer needs to maintain the kind of emotional defenses he always has. grace likes rocky and wants to be friends from the moment they meet, of course, but only lets himself form SUCH a close bond after rocky demonstrates that he, too, does not place an earth-society-style limit on the strength of their friendship. and they’re both better off for it!
