🎶amaze amaze amaze🎶

mik here! late 20s. she/they. bi. i write things. multifandom mess. | tracking: #rebelsmik

[bikananjarrus]

star wars rebels au where everything is the same except kanan has one (1) cunty little bisexual earring

[jellyfishforest135]

He's too powerful

[gecko-with-a-greatsword]

*guy who doesn't know anything about sports and has never cared about sports in his life* hey did you know womens professional baseball is returning after 70 years and the games are going to be streamed for free on youtube and the season starts august 1st

[gecko-with-a-greatsword]

youtube link

Women's Pro Baseball League

Our time is now. The inaugural season of the WPBL begins August 1st, 2026.

website

[butch-ragh-barkrock]

I think this is so cool and it's awesome they're streaming games for free! I also think it's incredible that this picture is the one they used to advertise the opening day. It's like those videos where someone threatens the camera while their partner shows off their collection of rocks they found.

[annotated-dc]

SDCC '26: DC unveils first-ever VIXEN ongoing & STATIC return DC Announces Vixen's First-Ever Ongoing Series and Static's Return at SDCC 202

DC announced Vixen's first-ever ongoing series and Static's return at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, marking a major moment for Black superheroes

[wintersvldierr]

We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope!

[huariqueje]

Hatch - Mia Bergeron , 2026.

American, b. 1979   -    

Acrylic on flat panel , 6 x 6 in.

[mayahart]

—Octavio Paz, Motion MERLIN ▸ The Sword in the Stone

[starvariety]

olesya ilyukhina, the sky was waiting for you

[wolfythewitch]

First | Prev | Part 10

Reminder: brackets [ ] mean internal monologue/thoughts

[bulkhummus]

Project Hail Mary is in part about cowardice and inexorability and the philosophical quandary of whether or not the ends justify the means. In order to understand this, we have to understand both the character Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace, as well as their relationship. In embarking on this question, we must also account for the perspective in which the book is written. 

The book is written from Ryland's perspective, and that shapes the narrative by disregarding fundamental truths that lie outside of Ryland's opinion and personal reality. By his account, Ryland is a normal middle school science teacher, albeit with a doctorate in molecular biology he rarely uses. 

While this is true, Ryland is also set up to be an extraordinary individual. He is a leading expert in his field. He becomes the lead researcher on humanity's most important project after making the ultimate discovery. He becomes so woven into the very fiber of the project that he can no longer be removed. 

When the story arrives at the big, sacrificial ask, which is typically the point in most stories where the unwitting hero would accept his fate for the good of the people, Ryland says no. What normal, sane person would want to strap themselves to a rocket and be shot into space, with little to no training, and a conclusion of death by their hand or some other tragedy? We empathize. We understand. And yet. 

Ryland was never normal. By his own standards, sure, but not to anyone else in the book, least of all Stratt. 

Let’s look at his counterpart. Eva Stratt is a ruthless, effective leader with a morally dubious code only defined by preventing humankind from extinction. She was placed in this position by the powers that be, due to her ability to get results. She is, by all definitions, not a coward. She does not fear the choices she knows she has to make and does not avert her gaze. She goes to court. She paves the Sahara. She watches as a nuclear bomb blows up the arctic shelf. The debate of whether or not these choices were 'correct' aside, they were choices she made because no one else would. No one wanted to shoulder the responsibility or the blame. 

This is a story told through Ryland's perspective. It is all the more satisfying when who Ryland believes himself to be is at odds with who everyone else believes him to be. Ryland is scared. His trust is betrayed. He has been put in an impossible situation and everyone is confused and disappointed that he is not willing to rise to the occasion. Ryland has told the audience, with unwavering certainty, throughout every flashback that he is replaceable and worthless only to be utterly confused by why people don't agree with him. 

Ryland relies on the safe guard, the guise, of being a regular, normal man only when it suits him. He leans into normalcy to protect himself. He downplays his own importance throughout the entirety of the book in the hopes that it will be enough to save him from amounting to anything great that could be knocked down in the future by failure. When Eva Stratt lays bare all his truths as she has come to know them, it is cruel but true. Eva never flinches and she never lies. 

The story is asking us to consider the cowardly person a hero and the person who does not flinch in the face of difficult, horrific choices as a villain. Typically the reverse is true. To what extent is inexorability favorable? To what extent is cowardice necessary? Cowardice is an integral part to the story and ensures that the emotional beats of it work. Without Ryland's tendency to flinch and flee, we would not feel the impact of Eva's choices. He is quick to pass judgement on her character, often describing it in ways that alienate her own humanity, as are we, because the book is his inner monologue. 

When she sends Ryland to his cell where he is to remain until the ship's launch, she avoids him for four days. She looks away. That is not a person unaffected by their choices. Ryland even comments on that being the longest time they've been apart since the start of the project. She was hoping he'd rise to the occasion so he would not have to be at the receiving end of a choice she did not want to have to make, but he does not. To her, she sees a man who is fundamentally good and capable of the job. A man that she hoped would help her shoulder the enormity of her responsibility after standing by her side for years. Being forced to go on this mission against his will was horrific, and there is no excuse for doing that to another human being. We empathize. We understand. 

And yet. 

Eva saw who he was before he did. What defined him as a person? Who was he willing to die for? To fight for? Even as the external audience, it seemed he did not know the answer to those questions even before his memory and life were taken from him. Eva made that choice for him. In fact, it was made by the person that made the same kinds of choices in some form or another over and over throughout the entirety of the book. The logical choice, the choice supported by all evidence presented to her, was that Ryland was the best candidate for the job. The difference is that this choice is up close and personal. It is because of our empathy we do not want Ryland to be sent to his death, but Eva Stratt cannot afford to act on empathy. 

Without cowardice haunting his own thoughts, we as the audience would not feel the impact of his own choices further down the line. Ryland's heroic moments stagger throughout the present day story, but are cemented by the end of the book. Ryland's 'hero moment', the moment, comes when he chooses to save Rocky. It is more impactful than the prior, similar choice, because we have seen this relationship develop in a meaningful way, and we have seen who Ryland is and the choices he makes when he is unburdened by past failures of who he once was. 

A good man, as Eva Stratt knowingly said. She was never a liar. 

Liking a character and empathizing with their situation does not suddenly absolve them of all the ways other characters in the book, including Ryland himself, view him. Nor does it disregard the context provided in the book that outlines how fear and low expectations have guided his choices throughout his life. He was a coward. Anyone in his situation would be a coward. The beauty of the story is that the importance of the life Ryland builds after he is disgraced from the academic community (the life he refuses to return to) is the life that ends up saving him.

To deny Ryland cowardice and to ignore Eva's burden is to flatten both of their characters, allowing no room for complex exploration of what it means to be a human struggling to do what is necessary in the face of right and wrong. To explore identity when juxtaposed by navigating a nonconsensual situation. 

The story ignores the idea that bravery is the only foil to cowardice. It ignores the idea that bravery is fundamentally good and right, and cowardice is weak and wrong. Ryland Grace being a coward allows the narrative to extend grace toward him. He is rewarded for his meaningful and well built bravery with a long life, and a relationship that defines his very existence. Eva Stratt saves the world, despite the irreparable damage she does to it, and all the judgment the world passes on to her in the process. These characters only work because they operate in contrast to one another, and draw attention to the way cowardice and bravery bleed into one another throughout the entirety of the story.

[djpachipikachu]

rocks. is making me emotional. brief period of time after landing on erid. rocky has never been so FUCKING busy. pondered scenarios with my beloved ponderer (@milolunde btw) couple of rocks btw

[thereigning-lorelai]

Am I expendable? Is that why you want me? That’s not the only reason.

Project Hail Mary (2026) dir. Phil Lord, Chris Miller

[harvocel]

take care

[discopines]

comedy genuinely peaked here. sorry to every other actor ever, you will never reach THIS height

[sayatsugu]

When You Look at Dr. Grace

part 1/2 (part 2)

[jheselbraum]

Like this point is driven home in the book especially, which if you know my thoughts on the book you know that's saying something, mercy is continually presented as not just the thing both Erid and Earth need to save themselves, but as what sets Eridians and Humans apart from, say, astrophage and taumoeba. Astrophage is devouring the sun, so to speak, but it's not out of cruelty and it's never presented this way in the book. It's a microbe doing what microbes do. Taumoeba eats astrophage, but there's no mercy to that, and in fact they nearly doom two worlds multiple times over because they're just microbes doing what microbes do.

There's not even an evolutionary reason for it overtly stated in the book, unlike bravery and self sacrifice. While both the intelligent species in PHM have the capacity for mercy, it's framed less as an overt survival instinct and more of a privilege.

Mercy comes very easily to the Eridians, and it's not because they're intrinsically better, morally, than humans. It's because they have the luxury of mercy. They can afford to take their time, to select the best and the bravest and the smartest people who want to go, of doing everything they can to give them a way to come home. They have almost a century from when the book takes place (well over that, from when they first launched the Blip-A) before things get bad. Even when the mission goes horribly wrong, Rocky doesn't stay in Tau Ceti just out of despair, he stays because he can afford to take his time and try everything he possibly can. The Eridians don't just build Grace a biodome because he saved their planet and he's scientifically interesting, they build him a biodome because they're physically capable of doing it.

Earth does not have that luxury, they have to destroy ecosystems just to buy a few more months for the hail mary to work. They cannot perfect the coma bot, they can't add more food or make a bigger ship, frankly the only reason there's entertainment is because it was faster to pirate the entire internet than it was to select what they thought might be useful. It doesn't matter if Earth would or would not choose to build a biodome for Rocky if the roles were reversed, we physically cannot create a biodome of our own damn atmosphere, let alone Rocky's. The best we could possibly do is a shipping container sized space for Rocky somewhere where if it fails it won't kill everyone in a mile radius of it and then also Rocky. Earth does not have the luxury of extending that kind of mercy.

But even outside that context, both Grace and Rocky's various acts of mercy are the thing that save their planets. It's not their bravery or lack thereof. And none of this is presented as a moral failing or a moral success, or a result of something intrinsic to how either of them evolved beyond just being something the intelligent species of the book shares. I feel like part of the reason Andy spends so much time in interviews and such emphasizing that the Eridians are obligate carnivores and apex predators filling the came ecological niche as polar bears, that as far as I can tell do not have domesticated livestock and hunt for their food, is because the book spends a lot of time decoupling (white, western, sorry Andy your book's political) expectations of societal formation and survival from morality and intelligence. And Grace's last act of mercy, turning back for Rocky, serves as the book's way to decouple mercy from luxury.

As much as I like that the movie lets the scene where Rocky offers to refuel the Hail Mary breathe, emotionally, I can appreciate just how quickly Rocky made that offer in the book. In the book Rocky's barely invented the spaceball, he hasn't even made the xenonite tunnels yet. He's not saving the life of a close friend, he's saving the life of an acquaintance at best, someone he barely knows in comparison to where Rocky and Grace are at in the movie. And we all know how that act of mercy chain reacts into saving two worlds: Grace is alive long enough to spot the taumoeba outbreak and he has the fuel to turn back for Rocky (in the book version the beetle tanks are steel but in the movie they're xenonite so Earth is saved by this act of mercy, too) but that isn't the source of the mercy in the act of turning back. Like sunlight in photosynthesis, it's the catalyst.

And where that leaves Grace is: he's just been on the receiving end of humanity at its worst. He bore witness to and was the target of the blunt weapon humanity became when it was backed against the wall, with nothing else but survival to aim for. And he could've very easily come out of remembering that wanting revenge, in fact he did want to give Stratt a piece of his mind after he remembered. He could've come out of it thinking "humanity sucks, Erid was kind to me, they're the ones who deserve to be saved." But Ryland Grace, who's the farthest from humanity anyone's ever been, says "no, I'm human, too" and "no, humanity isn't only who they were in their worst moment."

Because the whole time, humanity didn't need someone who was brave. Humanity didn't need a hero, heroism isn't real. Sacrificing yourself, your well being, to help another is noble, but bravery and heroism has a way of overshadowing the chain of events that put you in that position (as apolitical as Andy likes to claim his books are, I don't think it's a coincidence that he wrote phm in 2020, whether he was conscious of and deliberate with adding all these theses about heroism or not). Humanity is maybe not morally okay to sacrifice Grace to save themselves, but at the very least they'll survive to atone for the sin later (by having Stratt bear them. Scapegoat). But it's specifically because Grace didn't sacrifice himself, that he wasn't brave, that he wasn't a hero, that we're able to see that raw deal for what it is. And it's because Grace is merciful that Earth and Erid both live. And Grace is merciful not because he's Grace, not because he wants to survive or because he will survive without what he's giving up (book Grace made it abundantly clear that he turned back to Erid fully expecting to die), but because he's a person.

And that's why at the end of the book, when Grace tells us he thinks humanity worked together and helped each other, he's not doing that out of blind optimism and naivete. He's seen the worst of what humanity (and yes, Eva Stratt is a standin for all of humanity) has to offer, but he's also seen humanity at its best and, despite everything, Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace both represent all of humanity, in all aspects both evolutionary and psychological. And they both work together and help each other, they work with people they by all rights shouldn't be able to work with (Stratt and Reddell, Grace and Lokken). At no point does the base need to survive override the ability to work together, and at no point do the actions taken by those who just need to survive override the ability to work together, either.

And that's why when Grace turns back for Rocky, that specific act of mercy is the only one in the book that is ultimately not born out of luxury.

Rocky refuels the Hail Mary and rebuilds its lost fuel tanks because the Eridians have the luxury of a biosphere capable of breeding a nigh unlimited amount of astrophage and a lithosphere capable of producing the miracle material of xenonite: it didn't matter how big the ship was or how much fuel they needed, that wasn't a limitation for them. Therefore, Rocky can be merciful with his fuel and materials, giving some to Grace won't hurt his planet.

Rocky saves Grace over Adrian (planet) because Eridians can survive, very briefly and it hurts like hell and causes a shit ton of damage but they can do it, outside of their environment at a fraction of the pressure they evolved to, while on fire.

Grace saves Rocky over Adrian (planet) because Humans can survive, very briefly and it hurts like hell and causes a shit ton of damage but we can do it, massive chemical burns and immense strain to our muscles as we lift well over what our bodies are usually capable of.

Rocky saves Grace with the taumoeba because he has millions of kilograms of it, literal tons of calories, and Erid saves Grace with the biodome because again, they are physically capable of making it.

But ultimately, what lets Grace turn back for Rocky without killing billions, what gives him that capacity for mercy, what saves two worlds is the beetles. Four unmanned spacecraft born not out of circumstantial luxury but out of the necessity of survival.

And that's why we can believe Grace when he says he thinks humanity worked together. Not because he's naive, not because he's cynical, but because he's proof that you do not need the luxury of abundance to be merciful.

[kyoukorpse]

movie rocky studies i did this week to see if i could get used to his shapes and i did and i have and im gonna draw him like this more for sure yay.

ID in ALT text !

[depsidase]