I'm sorry, but I think that familial attachment is the shallowest connection there is. People "love" you just for having their genes. Oftentimes it doesn't matter who you are, they only care about your blood. Oftentimes you as a person is seen as an obstacle! They love that you're their offspring, but they hate that this spot is occupied by someone who they don't like as a person. They ask you to change like it's a simple kind thing that you're being stubborn about, and not them asking you to not be you. Familial love is just an instrument to manipulate you. "Oh you can't go no contact with us! Think about your poor grandma, she loves you so much, she's going to have heart attack!". Excuse me, I thought this nazi savage wanted people like me dead?? Is she this sad that she won't witness my death or something?
when the Project Hail Mary movie has Grace having the emotional crashout of the century passed out on the floor with a vodka IV when he realizes he’s completely alone in space and when it has Grace proudly announce that he and Carl are fathers when they figure out how the astrophage reproduce and when it has no greenscreens and real actual sets and an animation-augmented puppet rather than CGI and when it has an absolutely heart wrenching and touching funeral scene for Yao and Ilyukhina with greatly expanded eulogies and when it has Eva sing karaoke and when it shows how physically demanding the forces both inside and outside the ship are on the human body in space and when it has the touchdown pass of the galaxy and when it truly conveys the absolute fear and stress of making first contact particularly when you are just one human stranded so far from home and when it has Grace be able to really show Rocky what Earth is like inside the little environmental simulation orb room and when when it has multiple Rocky POV scenes so the audience can see how Eridians “see” with sound and when it has a gorgeous choral soundtrack and when it has Rocky wear BOTH outfits from the book and when it showed the absolute desperation and despair in Grace’s voice when he tries to run at the end and then gets sedated and put on the Hail Mary against his will and when it has Grace helping Rocky to heal after Rocky gets burned by the oxygenated atmosphere by building him a little heat lamp and when it has Eva see Rocky on the video they sent back to Earth on the beetles and she got Rocky’s little xenonite human sculpture gift and when it has Grace affectionately call the ship “Mary” and the nannybot “Armando” and when it has Grace get to actually visit Rocky’s ship by wearing a xenonite EVA suit and when it has not one but TWO hugs between Grace and Rocky and when it has Eridian voices singing in the outro/credits song and when it has all the emotional range of the book by being so funny and devastating and thrilling and hopeful
Imagine that Eridians grow with age, so when Rocky first left Erid, Adrian was around the same size as them, but now coming back all these years later Rocky reunites with Adrian and they're now like three times the size of Rocky. (the wonders of time dilation)
Rock doing the equivalent of blushing furiously and swooning like "omg... my mate is so so so beautiful."
Also imagine that they never stop growing until death, so maybe by the time they reach 600-and-something and die of old age, they're MASSIVE.
So an old Eridian will just lumber off a ways, sit down, and pass on. and boom. they're a mountain now. That's a mountain.
Rocky leads Grace to two towering mountains and points up at them like "look look look! These were Rocky's parents!"
(yes, I was thinking about lobsters when I wrote this)
Tags courtesy of @robertseanleonardthinker on my last phm transcribed annotations post
So I shall elaborate. Mind you, I am just transcribing my sticky notes verbatim. Just because word counts and such interest me all of my in-post additions will be in a fun color.
@colortheparacosmist tagging you too since you also requested these
Okay I actually have a lot of thoughts abt his name (I can never be normal abt names again after reading the Silm, sue me). So:
Grace introduces himself to Rocky as Grace.
His kids call him Mr. Grace.
He asks others, friends, to call him Ryland, but they don’t (DuBois).
We don’t ever see Marissa call him by any name. Let’s go over these things.
Grace refers to himself once internally as Ryland. Once. Internally. (Correction as I am editing: I think it’s twice. But the other time, if I’m remembering correctly, is similarly “shut the fuck up Ryland” vibes). Perhaps he doesn’t have that strong of a connection to this name/doesn’t care about it. Until he’s got to be verbally mean to himself. This is just how he thinks of himself internally which is. Telling, given what life events it seems connected to and how casualness correlates to devaluation to him. Perhaps he doesn’t care about this name very much because it’s been out of use for a long time (thanks, academia). Perhaps it being out of use has something to do with his self-perception, as in he rarely ever thinks of himself as Ryland anymore. Cool. Cool. He’s normal and definitely hasn’t tied his sense of self so deeply to his academic career that it’s going to destroy him. Okay. It could also just be a meta decision from Weir for this moment, where Grace is beginning (albeit unknowingly) to farm Astrophage. “Ryland” = rye land, aka farmland/farmer. Very subtle. More generally, growing/maintaining life connects to his saving Earth & Erid.
By the time Grace meets Rocky, his most important name to him is not Ryland. He introduces himself as Grace. Probably some of this is because of the pride he allows himself to have in his PhD. After all, he does get smug about the Dr. title after remembering his name. But. I think it’s worth remembering “Grace” is a thematically chosen name. Grace’s primary character traits are mercy and patience, even for those he doesn’t know well. So, yeah, maybe he’s trying to establish some distance/respect between himself & Rocky, BUT he intros himself as “Grace,” not Dr. Grace. He’s half-in, half-out of who was in higher education/academia. He’s likely been called Dr. Grace for years by peers & colleagues & poured years (most of, PhD programs are long & require a lot of lead-up work) of his life into being in academia. It’s one of the most core parts of his identity yet was ripped out from under him after the Paper™. He’s still attached to it, clearly, but also recognizes he’s not quite who he was, & that there’s been an irrevocable shift in his life. And that shift was probably painful & traumatic, but he can’t fully accept it or figure out a clear way to move forward. Yeah, maybe the kids don’t call him Dr. because it’s a middle school—but I had high school teachers who went by Dr. Not that weird. Maybe he’s just the cool teacher, but then I think he’d go by Mr. Ryland. I think Mr. Grace is a signifier of liminality and Grace’s inability to accept he can shape a life & identity that is new. That he can change. I think maybe he just identifies more w/the name Grace. Fun for many reasons but to address 2:
Gender fuckery (“Grace” typically feminine)
Self-esteem fuckery & once again acknowledging, though only subconsciously, his best qualities. That he is kind, patient, & merciful, even with strangers. And that he can be loved.
Others still see Grace as Dr. Grace, as an academic leading the field of xenobiology, thought Grace seems to not want them to. Perhaps he’s really internalized that Paper’s fallout. Which is interesting, because you don’t pull crazy theories in academia (or theories @ all), without being willing to stick to your guns (i.e. be a bit of a bitch about your beliefs). It’s interesting how much that fall from Grace(* we’ll get to that pun too) affected him & again how he seems incapable of moving forward & processing that 2 identities can be true at the same time. Yeah, maybe he’s just trying to be friendly with colleagues (and maybe he’s being oblivious about how much they revere him & that he’s Stratt’s SIC), but…I think his sense of discomfort around others not using his first name is interesting. It betrays his self-impressions.
Marissa doesn’t call him by any name. Why? (Probably just a quirk of the writing, but indulge me) Is it because Grace is too uncomfortable acknowledging others’ perceptions of him to bring it up in the memory? Because what if how others see him is different from how he sees himself, and it forces him to confront his pain?
This is one of the earliest memories he recovers, so by the time he’s readily remembering more of how others refer to and perceive him later on, he’s had more time to work through/settle with that. As opposed to a freshly reborn gut instinct not to fucking look at what others think of him. Okayyy.
A final thought: he calls himself Ryland in a moment where he’s pissed @ himself & believes he’s acting stupidly. And the way he does it sounds an awful lot like he’s parroting how others have spoken to him before. God. He’s really uncomfortable with taking pride in himself, yet contradictorily acknowledges he is Grace, mercy, teacher, friend to aliens, lover of Earth and humanity, and worthy of life and wellness.
*A note on the phrase “fall from Grace:”
Grace goes back to (or tries to, with his peers) using Ryland, or at least leaving off his Dr. title. He is literally stripping himself of the name Grace after an academic fall from grace, in an attempt to strip himself of externally recognizable worth and value. Possibly (probably) because he does not believe he is valuable. He has really internalized the Paper fallout and takes until being forced back into a higher position to accept others’ recognition of such. Also, he is really attached to his academic identity and totally unmoored without it.
Highlights from the Project Hail Mary director's commentary:
*SPOILERS!!!*
Grace waking up from the coma was the first shot they filmed for the movie! They wanted Ryan to feel eased into the character, and what better way to do that than have him play a character who can't remember who he is?
The little "GOOD LUCK!" note in sharpie that's written on Grace's sleeping bag was canonically written by the other astronauts on the I.S.S. before the Hail Mary crew got put into the ship. In real life, Phil and Chris wrote one word each. They said it was like "a blessing on the movie."
Ryan's most nerve-wracking day on set was when he had to shoot with the classroom full of children. Most of the kids were made up of the children of the film's crew members.
The scene where Grace looks through Yao and Ilukhina's photos is footage of him looking at and reacting to actual pictures of the actors with their loved ones.
When Grace calls Stratt to tell her that he and Carl figured out how to breed astrophage, Ryan is genuinely calling Sandra on her day off set, and her audio is her genuine reaction to the unexpected line: "Carl and I made a baby!"
"We like showcasing Ryland Grace's social anxiety while having a lot of people staring at him. LOL!"
Their intention for the space funeral scene was to have Grace convey that he was trying to ease his own sadness by making the dead people with him feel better about being dead :(
The markings on Rocky's body convey his mission patch, his rank in the crew, his wedding band, and his family crest.
Grace and Stratt's conversation on the boat is Grace asking her if they're allowed to be close friends, and the response from Stratt is no, they can't. This gets driven home in the karaoke scene. She understands the value of connection, a part of her wants it, but "Her love for people has to be suspended for her to do her job."
Rocky has different forward-facing faces for different thought processes! They named his "satellite dish" face, his "scrunched up thinking face", and his "monobrow face".
Direct quote: "I love how on the spectrum Rocky is." ROCKY AUTISTIC CODED CONFIRMED!
After Rocky recovers from his injuries: "As Rocky returns to the movie, the lights turn on. The warmth returns. It's like the day breaking."
Confirmed that when Grace and Rocky reunite, Rocky says to Grace, "You came back for me, question?"
They throw this out there for two seconds and do NOT expand on it, but according to Andy Weir, Stratt is imprisoned for life but somehow ESCAPES???
The Eridians built Grace an artificial tree in his enclosure because Rocky knew he liked trees
There's so much more they shared about film processes and the people who were behind making certain effects possible. I highly recommend checking out the commentary if you're able!
Aplatonic-spec, afamilial-spec, aQueerplatonic-spec, aAesthetic-spec, and everyone else on the A-spectrum who isn't as talked about as asexual or aromantic Are completely valid, real, and deserve to be represented in pride month!
I posted a simplified version of this in a tiktok comment section earlier, but honestly it deserves a longer post because honestly Rocky and Grace are both shockingly young to be on death missions.
Rocky says that he is 291 years old. He also says that the average Eridian lifespan is 689. He's roughly 42.24% through his life. If we say that this is equal to the average human lifespan (I'm saying 80y bc I'm lazy) and that he's 42.24% of the way through 80 years; Rocky developmentally is basically some 33 year old who has just spent about 6.97% (5.5 human years) of his life alone in space.
Meanwhile, Grace is somewhere in his early 40's when he wakes and meets Rocky. Assuming he's like 42, that's 6.1%ish of the Eridian lifespan making him appear in Rocky's eyes as some 5 year old that just pulled up driving his own spaceship.
This is an insane comparison but I cannot stress enough that Rocky is a 33 year old highly trained astronaut tasked with teaming up with some hyper intelligent alien that's only been alive for 5 years because the alien's kind decided to throw that 5 year old on a one way space trip just to see what happens.
Obviously this is a gross simplification of their ages and how aging works for Eridians, for all we know Eridian maturity can happen at a rate similar to cats, where there's a rapid maturation with a certain period of time rather than a consistent maturation over a lifetime.
But even with that in mind, Rocky and Grace both seem to be at a similar level of maturity where they're old enough to understand the seriousness of their situation, but young enough to still show the side of themselves that's naturally inclined to be some goofy nerd that's just overly excited to discover (friendly and intelligent) alien life.
That being said, though, if anyone’s curious about Adrian, using this kind of math to see how long Rocky's been with his mate we get 27% of his life or 21 years which would mean if they were human that they would have met when they were 12 (Even if we say humans live an average lifespan of 100 and compare that number to 689, that would still make Rocky only 15 when he meets his mate—they're childhood sweethearts!!!)
imagine you're a child, you learn your queer and your parents are extremely bigoted. you have some friends on Roblox who are very kind, they're in their early 20s and they sympathize as they went through the same things as a kid. they offer to use your correct name and pronouns, maybe some even offer to buy you a binder or help you find hrt or support groups local to you
roblox rolls out their age group system, and you can no longer talk to any adults on the platform. you can only talk to people in person, i.e. your parents, who are horrid. now you're back at square one, being helplessly abused. to make it worse, you're homeschooled, as I was. you can't reach out to anyone at school for support either.
or maybe you're not homeschooled, and you ask your pronouns to be used at school. it goes well for a while, and you feel some relief.
then your state passes a bill that requires forced outing. your teachers report to your parents that you've been trying out a different name and pronouns.
they pull you from school, send you to boarding school or conversion therapy, and force you to attend private schools in the future that match their values.
you are entirely under their control. you could've made connections with other adults, ones willing to help you out. to treat you like a human, give you access to life saving care. and it's stripped away, you're alone, and everything feels hopeless.
this is the reality for many children. this is almost exactly what I went through as a child. it is not a mere hypothetical, it happens regularly. please stop falling for this moral grandstanding, it's about control- it's always been about control.
