Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
almost home
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Show & Tell
#extradirty
Sade Olutola
occasionally subtle
todays bird
Janaina Medeiros
@theartofmadeline
dirt enthusiast
Stranger Things
Three Goblin Art
Claire Keane
Not today Justin
RMH
hello vonnie
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
titsay
Mike Driver
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from T1
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Spain
seen from Spain
seen from United States
@autistatic
Eva Stratt carrying around Grace like a stuffed animal.
"Look what I found in the dumpster. He figured out how to breed astrophage so I can fuel my Hail Mary. This makes him the most valid person in the world and I have the power to decide that. Isn't he the bestest and most specialest and wonderfullest little scientist around? He talks like that because he's a teacher. You will get used to it. Or else. He is doing so well. Look at him. Clap for him. I said clap for him."
Imagine the Eridians set up some kind of far space satellite relay system so they can actually communicate with Earth at a reasonable rate (like hours/minutes instead of months/years).
And they get Grace to send his first message to Earth in years.
And a female voice comes back saying "It's good to hear from you, Doctor Grace."
"...Eva Stratt?!"
*Person who sent Grace into space, question?*
"Yes Rocky but..."
*BAD HUMAN! BAD BAD HUMAN! SENT GRACE TO DIE ROCKY NO LIKE BAD BAD BAD %@#$#*
Cue Grace trying to wrestle the speaker away from Rocky while apologizing profusely
And then the next transmission that comes in is Eva Stratt laughing her ass off as she's getting cussed out by an alien in the most chaotic first contact scenario ever.
Bonus Bloodymary: Grace awkwardly trying to explain "uh yeah we also found another human in a wormhole in a weird bloody submarine"
And then Eva "...would that possibly be connected to the space stations full of very confused tramatized humans that showed up here a few years ago? they said the black box from the blood ocean led them out?"
(screw it let Simon save his remnants of humanity as well he deserves a win)
Stratt: This is Dr Grace, he’s… not my assistant, some other word.
Grace: I’m her carer.
Stratt: Yeah, my carer. He cares so I don’t have to.
another phm book thing it would've been so funny to see in the film is stratt trying to brute-force her way into a new zealand max-security prison and getting pissed that she has to have a pat-down first bc that's slowing down her world-saving mission, making grace have a very teachery moment of "uh uh! you can't always use 'i'm saving the world' as an excuse to be a jerk!" to which functional world dictator stratt actually admits "yeah ok you might have a point" (and then recruits an embezzler convicted of manslaughter to pave the sahara desert into an astrophage breeder farm bc this book is fucking wild) i can't stress enough that NOBODY is doing it like these two. dynamic of all time
just like. "not good at jokes" "sit down" "stand up". she's just so. direct. she never sugar coats it or tiptoes around anything. this is how it is and this is how it will be. get on board or fuck off.
watched PHM in cinema i thought i was gonna puke during the adrian section.
[mild phm book spoilers]
"they didn't nuke Antarctica" this "they didn't pave over the Sahara" that. guys, I feel like we greatly glossed over the fact that there is a huge supply of heroin aboard The Hail Mary... Like it's just there somewhere. Because Ilyukhina asked for it. And Stratt was like sure??
When he found out about what happened to Grace, Rocky was reasonably horrified and livid. On their way to Erid, Grace hears the most beautiful tune he cannot seem to understand. It doesn’t sound Eridian, it just sounds like regular music. He sees Rocky on his laptop messing with Garage Band. Grace asks what’s up, very amused. Rocky tells him,
Rocky made Stratt diss track.
so the project hail mary ground team probably had communication with the ship for a little bit before it traveled out of range, right?
i’m talking video feed, microphone, and remote access to the care robot.
stratt watched the ISS crew assist yao and ilyukhina and a sedated grace prepare for their induced coma. she heard ilyukhina make a joke about waking up the most well rested she’s ever been in her life. she watched yao shake hands with the crew captain and thank them for their help. she watched the fate of humanity drift off to sleep, watched as the ISS crew wrote “good luck!” on the sleep pods, watched the hail mary detach from the ISS.
stratt checked the feeds almost obsessively. she would pull up the cameras and tap into the microphone, even though she saw no movement and heard no sound. she scrolled through health reports that she couldn’t understand. it became part of her routine. despite all her bravado, all her efforts to remain distant and detached, these people had become her friends.
and she had betrayed them all, in some way. grace most of all, yes, she had forced him on a mission he didn’t want to go on, had signed his life away to the stars for the sake of a dying star and a suffering planet, but she had also betrayed yao and ilyukhina, sending them on a mission without knowing that grace had said no. a lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless.
once the ship had cleared the requisite distance from the ISS and any satellites, the astrophage engines kicked on. the speed increased and with it the distance, which eventually led to delays in communication with the ship. the reports began to slow, delayed by a few hours, then days, then weeks. the video feed became glitchy before going dark. the mic feedback was nothing but static.
the hail mary became a ghost — something that was there but could not be seen or reached.
but perhaps most haunting of all was the last report ground control was able to receive:
STATUS
YAO - DECEASED
ILYUKHINA - DECEASED
GRACE - ALIVE; Vitals: WNL
You can totally tell how proud Eva is of her little Hail Mary presentation. Fun visuals, succinct, and to the point.
She has explained it 500 times in front of every world leader.
"Wheemp wheemp!"
Her science guys have seen it 300 times.
"Why? Tell him!" -> "We! Don't! Know!"
This show has been on tour for a good while but she still gets really into it.
This is her baby.
had a realisation the other day
except Stratt didn't need to do any of that, did she? she knew exactly who would be the replacement science specialist, grace having the coma resistance gene was a statistical miracle already and anyone else they would find would be unqualified and under prepared.
she's panicking. revisiting the list is a waste of time: she makes a panicked last ditch attempt to spare Grace's life and he calls her heartless for it
eva stratt the character you are. yes, the way she took away grace's autonomy made me sick to my stomach, but holy fuck is she so well written. they put a woman who cared in front of the trolley lever while her friend was tied to the tracks, and she looked him dead in the eyes and made the choice that would ultimately save humanity.
Things I noticed from re-watching PHM an hour ago:
Stratt prompts a room to clap for Grace at least two separate times
After the lab explosion, Stratt is up and running almost immediately, way before anyone else
As Carl and Grace are building the box for the astrophage, the bodyguards in the back are each eating a packet of skittles
Rocky’s puppeteer is on the news at the very beginning of the movie
Yao’s body is much more decomposed than Ilyukhina’s — possibly because he’s older, but I’m betting he died earlier in the journey than she did
Grace starts doing math almost immediately after getting out of his coma which is hilarious
So much fox stuff is in Grace’s belongings, which begs the question: does he like foxes THAT much, or did someone in charge of packing for him see his fox sweater and go “yeah okay, give him a shit ton of that”?
During the betrayal scene, both Grace and Stratt have visibly trembling lips
Do you think that, if the ship wasn't always recording at all times, when Stratt got those videos twenty years later, it slowly dawned on her that it was only Grace in recordings?
Do you think she felt a pitching, gut-wrenching horror when she realized that he was alone?
Do you think she thought back to that day that she forced him to go, soothing herself with the reminder that he at least wouldn't be alone, and realized that, no, she not only sent him to his death but she sent him utterly alone with two corpses?
Do you think that she remembered the fact that Grace had always been forcibly alone: ostracized from his communities, humiliated into silence, and realized she was only compounding on that?
Do you think that, upon hearing about Rocky for the first time, she felt a wash of relief rather than wonder or awe or surprise?
Do you think that, upon seeing Rocky in the ship for the first time, she felt pure joy not at the fact that she was looking at an alien but knowing that Grace wasn't alone anymore?
Project Hail Mary X Transformers
My friends dub the au, TransMary
I just want a fic where everyone is all ‘why is Dr Grace so grumpy today? He’s normally so sweet’ and Stratt goes to inspect him for like 5 minutes before grabbing scissors, snipping the tag out of the back of his shirt carefully enough not to leave one of those itchy lines behind, and then he’s a freaking sweetheart again for the rest of the day. Like the princess and the pea. And for some reason only her people watching abilities could figure out why.
Carl probably could have figured it out too, but he can’t be glued to Grace’s side 100% of the time lol.
I love Carl's introduction. It's such a great establishing moment.
Ryland Grace has made it all the way to his bike with Eva Stratt at his heels, so her trusted security team has correctly assessed it's time to move in the cars, and Carl is approaching off-screen.
Grace comes out of the little "I don't know why that makes me such a nut!" rant, and there Carl is, stepping up into frame exactly next to Stratt. Tall, broad, unimpressed, unmistakably a force to be reckoned with, unmistakably a trusted professional.
But also a nameless goon at this point. An extension of the threat Stratt seems to represent to Grace. A depersonalized tool.
Grace clocks the cars, his presence, the unfolding situation, instantly and incredulously. And he does something clever, something he always does, which is to call attention to the absurdity of the unspoken threat by trying to force the situation into a normal mold.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
Turning Eva's nameless goon into a person with agency. Trying to force a relationship that hinders coercion.
Ideally, this would force them all to acknowledge how abnormal they are acting and retreat a little to keep up the appearance of normality. Or admit to what they are doing by refusing. Either way, the ball shifts out of Ryland's court into theirs.
Neither happens, though.
Carl sees exactly what he's trying to do with that and interrupts him mid-question. "Carl." And then keeps staring at him the same way as before. One word, and we already know so much about him.
He is not a nameless goon. He is an individual named Carl.
And he fully supports what is happening there. Because nothing is normal and it's stupid to pretend that what is happening isn't happening.
So yes, while he bonds with Grace over silliness and is the astrophage-coparent and instigator of Carl's Hypothesis... he is also entirely introduced to us as the man who will wish Grace the best of success on the mission while he's being sedated on the ground. Because Carl has a personal opinion about what is at stake.
"Sun's really dying, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
