Title Pending…

[cloudabserk]

the book scene where dubois and shapiro tell grace they’re having sex is really interesting. it’s not just that’s he’s uncomfortable talking about sex (although he very much is) it’s that he doesn’t understand why they would have sex if one of them is guaranteed to die in space soon. they kind of included this in the movie (when he asks stratt why everybody is partying and hooking up if they’re all gonna die)

there’s another line that stood out to me in the book, where amnesiac grace initially finds his dead crewmates, and he goes “i hope they weren’t friends of mine!” which imo is a crazy thing to say upon finding two corpses

it’s not just that grace avoids forming close relationships, it’s that he avoids it (in part) in order to avoid experiencing loss. really interesting character trait especially knowing he has no immediate family (did they die? is that why he’s like this?) not even a pet (is he scared the pet will die?)

[foxglovedforest]

[islamprotestan-blog]

only 5 seconds

[zanyflowerpizzatrash]

i wasn't ready for that..lol

[suffer-no-humiliation]

Immediately recognized that look

[clowndraws]

yknow when you wake up in the middle of the night & anxiously check on the person next to you to make sure they didn't randomly die in their sleep

okay now crank that up to 1000

[clowndraws]

@cntrlaltdelete-what your tags are also making me unwell... their red string of faith bullshit keeps me up at night

[almondcroissantsandink]

Ryland Grace, seconds before losing consciousness: did--did you just reference Parks and Rec

[morningsaidthemoon]

Tag! You're It! - My 2nd year film :D

[pengosolvent]

[galacticsabc]

You put Grace in unserious shirts may I suggest one of my own?

He would wear this

[hailed-marys]

The thing that really gets me about grace. And something that I also see misinterpreted a lot. Is that he’s not humble. He’s not modest. He doesn’t act the way he does out of humility or not wanting the spotlight. Ostensibly he is a drama queen and wants to be seen and he wants attention. Why do you think he called a man a staggering waste of carbon. Why do you think he’s Like That as a teacher. Why do you think he jumps at the chance to Be Right. He’s not humble he just deep down actually doesn’t believe he’s special. But he also knows that he has deeply specialized knowledge. He just has enough self hatred to genuinely believe that someone else could do what he’s doing without issue. Even though they couldn’t. He knows that in some corner of his brain but he ignores it because when you set your standards low you’re never disappointed if people dont actually like you

[hailed-marys]

i do have to reiterate that this character trait is deeply unpleasant. its awesome how fucking awful this facet of his personality is. if he was just this and had none of the empathy that came with teaching children and being genuinely curious he would be impossible to tolerate. but he is all of that. hes fascinating. i need to study him like a bug

[gobelindoll]

im rereading project hail mary already dont judge

[fictionadventurer]

Anakin Skywalker fought a Sith Lord on a great big spaceship, stood holding a lightsaber over his disarmed (literally had his hands chopped off) opponent while Palpatine told him to kill him, and he obeyed, which started his fall to the Dark Side.

Twenty-three years later, his own son fights him on a great big spaceship, cuts off his hand, and stands over him holding a lightsaber while Palapatine tells him to deliver the killing blow. Vader is now where Count Dooku was, sitting helpless while he waits for a Jedi to kill him at the word of a Sith. To Vader, it had to seem almost like justice. This is how the story goes--Sidious takes an apprentice, then orders a Jedi to kill them, and the Jedi becomes the new Sith apprentice. Sidious will win, because Sidious always wins, and the cycle will go on, because darkness always creates new darkness to destroy it. Luke will make the killing blow, because Vader's given him good reason to, and then Luke will become enslaved to Sidious and the dark, until the day he is inevitably betrayed and killed himself...

But then Luke tosses aside the lightsaber.

It must have been like light breaking through the darkness, to receive mercy in the situation where you yourself had no mercy. To see your son be stronger than you were, because back then you had not known that it was strength to refuse to use power. This boy who's so much like you found a way to break the cycle and refuse the chains that waited for him. The story doesn't have to end the way it always does. He found a way to defeat the darkness by refusing to give the darkness what it wants...

Anyway, it's such a perfect parallel.

[raphalorem]

giving simon wormhole-opening powers so grace can send an instant probe once they're on erid and inflict more psychic damage on the og petrova task force

[animentality]

[opossum-mypossum]

[teaboot]

I was too busy laughing to take a picture but my son answered the door last night ready for an adventure 😭😭😭

[teaboot]

IT HAPPENED AGAINNN

[beardedmrbean]

[keepcatholic]

According to my government shutdown poll, tumblr agreed that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was the one federal law they were most likely to continue to respect while the federal government was on indefinite hiatus:

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[zz9pzza]

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

[runawaymarbles]

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

[kyraneko]

This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.

[jeffsatyr]

(ID in alt)

[dramatic-dolphin]

a while ago I read this sci-fi short story from the 50s where a guy is kidnapped and interrogated by aliens using a very sophisticated lie detector, but he realizes that the lie detector works off technical truth, and with some careful phrasing and misdirection, he manages to make them believe that humans are a race of immortal, overpowered, omniscient telepathic beings. and it works.

my favorite part is when he tells them that humans are "capable of transportation without the aid of spaceships or any vehicles, just by using mental power to control physical matter". it's true, we can. it's called walking.

[dramatic-dolphin]

okay I found it, it's The Best Policy by Randall Garrett

and it has other gems such as "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what every member of my race thinks of you" (they don't know you exist) and "every human knows exactly as much about the location of your home planet as I do" (nothing)