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YOU ARE THE REASON
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@dearthshine
my knight you have to live you have to get up you have to put your hand over your wound and hold it there. you have to keep walking and walking and walking because you cannot lay down yet, it’s not time. wipe the blood off your breastplate and look up into the sun. lean on your sword if you need to. lift one foot after another. get up. get up. this would be a pitiful grave.
phm is decently popular in japan and i mostly see this when i check twitter and see accounts posting pictures of handmade rocky plushies that are so fucking round looking it brings a tear to my eye
he keeps me sane
what do you mean hes fictional. i need him
watching a video on brewing Mesopotamian beer and look at this orange man (his ass cannot guard the barley)
"you don't" "yeah, i do" naim isn't even aware of just how much ryan likes him
Felt like drawing a short and cute PHM comic thing
I have 100,000 followers on here (i know; tumblr power user jmg) and i think it gives me, like, zero social capital? Which I think might be why it's still good.
Like, when my agents are pitching me for something, they'll be like, "Look at his facebook! Look at his tiktok!" They're never gonna say, "100,000 people follow him on tumblr. Remember tumblr?"
But the thing is, I don't actually use facebook or tiktok (except for promo). This is the only place I use, the only place where I'm interested in the community and shared creation and all that shit.
So long live tumblr. Nobody who's gonna hire me to do anything has ever heard of it. It makes for a terrible space to promote your forthcoming book tour. And that's literally why it doesn't suck.
Isolation In Project Hail Mary - Score Analysis
I've been getting into the aspects of storytelling I discovered within the OST for Project Hail Mary by Daniel Pemberton. I wanted to share some of my discoveries with all of you! I was really hoping someone with a lot more musical knowledge than myself would break this down in a video essay but it hasn’t happened yet. So here we go! We’ll start with a theme I decided to call “Isolation” that comes up at several points of the score. I attached a sample of it as an audio file which you can listen to so you can recognize it in the score later. I've also included timestamps before many of the tracks (which I then link to the Youtube upload of that track) so you can follow along if you want to.
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The theme of Isolation is one of the first musical themes we hear in the movie (but not the first! More on that in a future post)
:015 - Last Man on Ship
This is the track where we first hear the theme. The audience finds out Grace is alone. We don’t know why yet or how, but we can see he himself also has no idea and the music enhances the feeling of loneliness and bewilderment.
1:45 - Invalid Operation
This one’s a sucker punch. During a high-rhythm musical montage Grace problem-solves his situation - first discovering he is not in his own solar system, then realizing how far he is, and finally realizing that it would take him over a century to return to Earth. Which is of course, to say….he cannot return before he dies. Now he truly knows he is alone on this ship and out of reach of humanity. This second hit of the musical theme brings us back to the idea of being alone while hitting us with this even deeper isolation. Just devastating.
0:32 - Top Secret Clearance
This is a interesting one and I could be wrong: but this theme at the start kind of sounds similar to the Isolation theme. The note intervals are just SLIGHTLY different than before and down an octave, but it feels too close to me to be a coincidence. Would love to hear from more musical folks on this tho! If I’m right, it’s interesting that this plays during this scene in the story because this is where Grace is learning about Project Hail Mary for the first time. We hear the theme play specifically at the part where Stratt talks about building a ship to send to Tau Ceti, over 11 light years away. Grace pushes back on the feasibility of this and they discuss his findings on astrophage and how he can now help fuel the ship. Interesting that Grace, who ends up alone in space to solve the problem is here, talking about himself and his role. Just neat!
0:55 - Here the theme definitely kicks in, you can hear the strings take up the theme, under the choral voices. In the movie, it’s the mic drop after Ryland realizes the mission’s name - Hail Mary - and its implications.
0:41 - You Were Loved
Another subtle one, but at the beginning of this track Grace is burying his deceased shipmates, as he struggles with both the weight of their immense sacrifice and his own feelings of overwhelming loneliness. We hear another theme predominantly throughout, but right at the time mark I’ve indicated you hear a soft, rhythmic version of the isolation theme. On top of the obvious story beat here of Grace being alone, we also hear him speak of Yao and Ilyukhina’s family, friends, and previous lives. In contrast, Grace hasn’t shown any evidence of a life back on earth -further isolating him from humanity and driving home the musical theme even more.
Barrier Language - throughout
This one is so interesting! I actually didn’t catch it til I started working on this writeup. Here the theme appears right when Grace leans in to the Xenonite barrier, looks through, and see’s Rocky’s hand for the first time, knocking. There is first contact and a connection here - but Grace is inside his EVA suit and they are further separated by the barrier. On top of this, the very first message Rocky sends is to tell Grace to go get back in his ship! Poor Grace - he finally found a friend and he immediately has to leave. The visuals here are so beautiful and heartbreaking - Grace moving through the darkness, alone and isolated, entering his ship and shutting the hatch again - peeking through a tiny porthole window, eager to connect again.
3:14 - Learning to Communicate
We hear the isolation theme when Rocky tells Grace that his shipmates died, leaving him alone. And of course, Grace also tells his own story of isolation. The theme ends on a moment of tension by the end of the track as Grace and Rocky realize they no longer have to do this alone - before breaking beautifully into a separate theme (which I will definitely be getting into in another post!)
1:55 - Finding Rocky Voice
We hit this theme as Grace leave Rocky to sleep (or tries, to lol) We just heard Grace avoid answering the “you’re going home!” implication Rocky made then he starts to leave and this theme starts breaking in all over the place while the audience absorbs Grace’s dilemma but also begins to learn about Rocky’s trauma around sleep. Just when Rocky reveals the sad story about watching his crew sleep - and them never waking up - the theme breaks in with a new sweetness and sadness.
God Willing - throughout
The theme breaks in as Grace asks Stratt if it’s hard to ask people to die for the project. The theme here again is a base under another theme of Sacrifice. Grace is surrounded by people giving their all for the mission, several even willing to die, the ultimate sacrifice - as they all sing and socialize he sits alone, longing for connection but also seemingly terrified of it, keeping up a wall, keeping his distance by sitting alone, by not participating.His isolation is contrasted in the music with the Sacrifice theme beautifully.
Three Days - the whole dang thing
A short track during the moment in the story when the astrophage explosion kills the mission crew scientists. This one could mean a lot of different things - it’s the moment Grace’s fate is sealed. He’s going to end up alone in space. The idea of isolation can also be linked to death (we are a social species) in this moment - Earth fate is now in the balance in a new way. Would love to hear some thoughts on this from anyone out there, too!
Rocky Sacrifice - at the beginning
The theme opens the moment Grace begins reaching for the final switch and passes out. Alone, he can do nothing. He is isolated even with his friend there, because he is pinned by the chair - and Rocky is behind xenonite and cannot reach him. The “whiff of death” is here too as Rocky breaks through the barrier and enters Grace’s atmosphere, severely harming himself. We then transition into the sacrifice theme….a post for another time!
Gravitational Aftermath
This actually doesn’t play during this track, but just before it in the movie. Grace has three hours to decide whether to join the mission. His internal isolation is strong here. He’s not like the brave heroes he is surrounded by. He is alone inside and he will soon be alone in space too. The sequence with Stratt’s ultimatum transitions into Gravitational Aftermath - which is when Grace sees the sacrifice Rocky made to save him. He is now alone again, unsure if his friend will wake.
0:20 - Goodbye My Friend
Grace now knows the whole truth about the mission - that he was a coward, that he was betrayed and forced into his isolation. His internal isolation is also intense - he alone among the crew had to be forced to go - he stands apart from the true heroes. He is returning to a planet he saved…with the knowledge that he didn’t want to.
Grace and Rocky are also now saying their final goodbye. Due to the interstellar distances and Grace’s lifespan, they cannot meet again. Grace is ultimately also isolated from his friend in a deeper way. Rocky didn’t have to be forced to save his people. Grace’s awkwardness during this moment is so palpable and you can hear the music speaking his inner turmoil. “No one to watch you sleep” Rocky comments, adding to the feelings of isolation.
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That's it for now! I hope you enjoyed nerding out with me on this. Please comment on anything you're thinking! I'd love to have more discussions of the themes. And if there are any ACTUAL musicians out there, I'd love to hear if there's more to gnaw on with like....chords and the use of certain note intervals and stuff like that. I'll try to make more of these in the future as I have time (and if there seems to be interest!)
Since I found that music analysis video, maybe it's time to blow the dust off this writeup I made.
This is the same theme the video essay calls the "Oh Shucks" theme and I actually prefer her take on it in the video!
But I had fun writing this and feel there were some good points here too, so if you're geeking out about the music as much as i am, have a read!
Maybe I'll do more if there is enough interest.
This is an incredible analysis! I have been waiting for someone to do this since the movie came out.
Even if you're not a music person, I feel a fan of the movie would enjoy this, so check it out fandom!
Something I don’t think I’ll ever be over, is how Yao and Ilyukhina died for nothing, and yet at the same time, *didn’t.*
Because they both volunteered to board the Project Hail Mary to search for a solution to astrophage, they were both willing to die in order to give the rest of humanity a fighting chance of making it.
And they both died before ever even seeing Tau Ceti.
And it feels so unfair, because they went all that way for nothing, they died without even getting to try and save the people they were going for.
So they died for nothing.
Except they DIDN’T.
Because their deaths saved Grace, and in turn, saved Rocky and Erid. Without the surplus coma slurry, Grace wouldn’t have been able to go back and take Rocky home, and Erid would have had a much harder time with astrophage.
This isn’t particularly coherent, but I can’t stop thinking about these two people who were willing to die for their world, died before getting the chance to fight for their species survival, and yet their deaths meant the sole survivor of their crew could save both their home, and another.
There’s just something so devastating about that to me.
i think grace teaching on erid was rocky babytrapping him. i think at one point grace was like the only thing i miss about earth is teaching my kids and rocky was like hmm...rocky make some calls.
actually this is ryanaim after leaving town
i keep thinking about that moment in grace’s very last video message when he says “at least i never have to hear you say i told you so. even though you were right.”
grace introduces those videos to rocky as messages for earth. all of the jokes and discoveries and personal moments he films throughout the movie are framed as a record for earth. but then you get to that moment, and you realize, oh, fuck, we read it wrong. he was never really talking to earth. he was talking to eva.
tags are so real bro. I don't want to be contacted for 3-4 business days
augh i literally sent 5 messages out for phm rbb and got shadowbanned and meanwhile the support page is like "um so we don't shadowban :)" babes. yes you do. if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a shadowban
a leap of faith !
