cybercarmen

[vstormcloud]

What if the taumoeba wasn't enough to keep Grace alive during the trip back to Erid?

[ladywarlock03]

Karaoke night gone wrong? (Part 2 here)

First time chucking a brick, kinda nervous haha.

The idea I had in mind was more complex but this is the best I can give y'all right now

[idkwhattodowassuuuup]

I like to think about that the bike Grace had, where (in the movie, I don't remember about the book), it never made it back to his home. Sitting there for days. Weeks. How long was it there before it was moved? How long did the students watch it as they passed, knowing their favourite teacher, their backup, maybe even their safe space, wasn't coming back. I like to think they left things there. An homage to him. First one student stuck a flower in the rusting metal spokes of the front wheel. Then another. Then one day Eva Stratt sees an old, weathered bike with flowers and gifts and cards and drawings made only by the hands of rushed teenagers. And that is the first time Eva Stratt truly breaks down.

Because he gave them their future. And she took away his.

[its-timego]

Imagine the surreal insanity of being Irina Petrova and just hanging out having a hobby that you're very intense about and then you notice something weird and then all at once your name is one of the most uttered in history, by total accident. In the movie universe they describe her as a "radio telescope enthusiast" she does not even do this professionally. And suddenly everything is Petrova line, Petrova frequency, Petrova wavelength, Petrovascope, Petrova Task Force, Petrova problem. And you're like man. I have a day job.

[jellyfishforest135]

Activated them like sleeper agents

[adventures-in-instant-ramen]

[cooking-with-hailstones]

"The last time any human touched Ryland Grace was an act of horrific violence"

Well... Yes and no.

The last time Ryland Grace was CONSCIOUS of any human touch was when he was knocked out. Absolutely true.

But the last human contact he would have had was Yao and Ilyukhina. Who were told that he was scared about panicking during launch and asked to be sedated. Who did all the pre flight checks before the Hail Mary launched. Who would have carefully, gently carried Grace to his bed in the dormitory, made sure he was secure, and initiated his coma procedure.

There would have been love there. Remember Ilyukhina throwing her hands high and saying "welcome to crew!" Remember Yao saying how he hoped Grace would say yes. Remember how much the crew trusted Grace, Stratt's First Officer, the guy who helped them so much, and was so kind to them, and was the one who they entrusted their preferred methods of suicide to. Who thought they were wonderful and brave.

They would have tucked him in. Maybe brushed his hair out of his face. Maybe said something kind to him before initiating their own coma procedures.

Ryland Grace doesn't remember, of course he wouldn't. But the last human touch he ever had was full of love.

[semtruc]

Rocky, but in hells kitchen

[staryty]

something about eva's dehumanization of herself. the scapegoat who bores all of the blame. named after the woman who took a bite of the forbidden fruit. the eye of the storm. the dictator. a means to an end. prison awaiting her once the project is completed because she's no longer useful.

and something something about ryland, who's the closest to her, also falling into the notion that she's untouchable. he fails to see her as a person. whenever eva accepts yet another burden, he thinks of it as her strength, never as her guilt. he washed his hands off it despite being her second in command.

quite tragic, isn't it? ryland who hates having his value reduced based on his usefulness, doesn't realize that eva is trapped on that same logic.

[annabelle--cane]

[orangemummyghostcat]

Project Hail Mary if Yao and Olesya had survived the trip and found Rocky along with Grace

[all-and-sundries]

Okay but the linguistic shenanigans that must inevitably have ensued on board the Hail Mary if Yáo and Ilyukhina had survived as well.

They keep English as their lingua franca since they all speak it and are used to it at this point, but that doesn’t stop parts of other languages from getting mixed in. Rocky borrows bits and pieces of everybody’s grammar. He asks for a word for something and no one can come up with an equivalent until Yáo offers up a Mandarin word and they just all roll with it. Rocky notices Yáo and Grace aren’t prone to cursing so he gets Ilyukhina to teach him some handy phrases and the two of them swear loudly in Russian whenever something goes wrong.

They focus their vocab-sharing sessions on English for practical reasons but in their spare time Yáo and Ilyukhina teach Rocky bits of their own languages and use them to jokingly gossip in front of Grace, who can pick out his name but not much else (and who starts trying to teach himself and Rocky to speak Klingon using the pirated files on the laptop just to get back at them).

They adopt each other’s vocabulary. They argue over translations. They create so many weird pidgins. They talk and they laugh and they share and even out here in the depths of space they keep pieces of their home cultures alive in their mingled voices.

[callalillee]

[kaomojiloser]

with the abundance of digital material they have on the hail mary, i am 101% sure ryland got a hold of crappy jokes and started reciting them to rocky. rocky now thinks that human humour is full of dad jokes.

[lizluvscupcakes]

[in the voice of someone who hasn’t even seen the movie] imagine if Grace came back. Imagine if through some loophole in science, Eridians and humans were able to make contact and regularly interact with each other.

Imagine Eva seeing Grace again.

Oh no no no don’t look at me like that. He’s not mad at her. He understands that she did her best in a horrible situation with no good answer. So no he’s not mad at her.

It’s so, so much worse than that.

Eva didn’t even realize the difference between Grace’s friendly and Grace’s politely cordial until suddenly she had experienced ‘friendly’ and sent him away, okay with never experiencing it again.

But then he comes back. And he IS friendly, downright loving towards the rock people following him around. But he’s politely cordial to Eva. He answers her questions when she asks them but doesn’t ask any of his own. He turns to the big brown rock when it chimes and tells it in that tone of affectionate disbelief, “Rocky, you can’t say that to her!” But then only tells Eva when she asks, “you don’t need to worry about what he said; he didn’t mean it, he’s just mad.”

Imagine Eva attempting to go for a hug when she first sees him again, and he either just tolerates it, or even worse, he politely tells her “not yet,” “not now,” or even just “no.”

It was easy to pull the lever when you thought you’d hear the trolley roll over one person you loved, and they’d scream and train wheels would roar and with a splat, that would be it. But no; the one life she threw under the trolley, even though it was someone close to her, closer than she ever let anyone else, did not die. He managed to escape and survive the trolley and even managed to make the universe a bigger, better place.

But now he’ll never forget the look on her face when she pulled the lever. And things will never, ever be how they were because even though it was justified and he understands and doesn’t blame her, it hurt, even though the trolley never touched him.

It was better when she thought she was killing her friend, because she wouldn’t experience his friendship again, and neither would anyone else.

Now, everyone gets to experience his friendship.

Except for her.

[ellebumblebee]

Headcannon that the newspapers and media had a hard time of finding photos and info about Grace to put in their columns.

They search high and low for a sign of the mysterious man who was at Stratt's side for so long. They didn't focus on him back then, the paparazzi somehow failed to capture him properly whenever they got close enough to badger Stratt. Just another lackey, they all assumed.

He was never one for photos, he'd bat away Ilyukhina when she called him for a group shot. He'd make some joke about how he always looked awful in them, that his smile wasn't quite right, and she eventually gave up trying to convince him. Only a few shots remain, ones she snagged when he wasn't looking. Sleeping at his desk with a stack of coffee cups piled beside him, eating a packet of sour skittles with a look of pure bliss, working on a report with his tongue stuck out and a pen behind his ear, hair rumpled. Half forgotten memories.

The media is tearing itself apart looking for a sign. They find his disproved scientific paper, but after that he seems to drop off the map. No family, no known friends. Who was this man?

Then people come forward, finally. Not scientists, not relations, but parents. People who sat across the table from him at parents evenings, people who trusted him with their children, perhaps the highest form of trust. They have photos from sports days and school plays and barbecues, and more importantly, they have stories. He was an amazing teacher, a good colleague, a kind man. He was patient and clever and inquisitive.

The world knows Ryland Grace as a saviour first, but a teacher second.

[sjoongki]

STUDIO GHIBLI + FLOWERS

[andchaos]

Book Grace: This is all so cool! I am the first person to make contact with an alien. And then kill said alien. And then breed said alien. And then make contact with another intelligent alien species. And we can communicate. And we are working together! And I know its the end of the world and this probably isn't the time to be nerding out but, dang it! This is cool!! I just really love science!!!

Movie Grace: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! EVERYTHING IS TRYING TO KILL ME! I'M GOING TO DIE! Okay never mind. This alien guy is chill. Also I just really love science!!!