I kinda like the idea of jax becoming a cautionary tale of what happens when you let dysphoria and self hatred eat you alive. I've met so many of him IRL in my own circles. I think people need to hear it. I need more characters who eat themselves alive and actually have to suffer the consequences of not choosing to be better. It's pretty refreshing to see a different and nuanced take on dysphoria and how it doesn't always manifest the way you would expect.
read books that you don't understand. read books where you have to pay attention. read books that make you reread a page eight times to figure it out. read books that you need to take notes on. read books with words you have to google. read books that don't make sense without research on the setting. read books that make you feel stupid because otherwise you'll just be stupid.
"when i showed weakness i was less of a man than him" and "i said something deep and personal that i thought would get her off my back" and ribbit putting their bow on jax and then saying "your secret is safe with me" while jax is happy and blushy looking at the bow and the montage of jax scenes with isn't she lovely playing in the background WE WONNNNNNN WE SO FUCKING WON
"if Jax is a trans woman she's still an abuser so she's bad representation so the show is transphobic" you're an idiot. you want your blorbos to be perfect ideal angels, I want my blorbos to be realistic, nuanced, flawed human beings, we are not the same. I LIKE that she's messy and fucked up and problematic, I think it's a realistic depiction of how a lot of repressed and traumatized trans women are. I think the show goes to great lengths to explore how and why she is the way she is, and to evoke sympathy for this kind of person. it doesn't excuse her actions but it does make them understandable. and I think the fact women like that deserve sympathy is an idea worth stating and worth shouting. yes she's a bully and she hurt everyone around her and that may never change. she still deserves sympathy.
Regardless if you liked or disliked the movie (I personally loved it, honestly a solid 8.5/10), we can ALL agree the anti spoiler message at the beginning was PEAK
That's not what Eva would call it if asked. She is not good at jokes which is apparent by the way this one falls flat. If Eva had to call it anything, she'd call it a ruse. A clever diversion. Of course the second coffee is for Dr. Grace but she knows better than to give a man who just vomited twice and whose throat is probably scraped raw a hot, caffeinated liquid. She didn't expect him to react this intensely to the experience but she really should have. He's a civilian, not military. She needs to remember that going forward.
So she pulls the cups to her chest and says “I need both” expecting him to look at her weird. But he's not missing a beat, just smiles crookedly and waves it off and Eva thinks once again: ‘I'm not good at jokes.’
☕☕☕☕☕☕
“Here you go.”
Eva looks up and there are two coffees sitting on her desk. Dr. Grace sits down next to her, sipping at his own cup, already distracted by papers he was handed for review.
Two coffees. Black.
She opens her mouth to tell him she doesn't need both but snaps it shut when he glances over at her and grins. She lifts one to take a sip and pulls the other one closer to herself.
It can't hurt.
☕☕☕☕
It keeps happening.
Two coffees. On her desk, waiting in her office, shoved into her hands on the way to another mind numbing meeting.
It doesn't happen all the time. Only on especially stressful days or when she is barely able to keep her eyes open. She's unsure if Dr. Grace knows it's just a bit that doesn't need to be indulged all the time or if he is genuinely concerned about her caffeine intake.
He doesn't tell her. She doesn't ask.
☕☕☕☕☕☕
He doesn't bring her two coffees when he meets with her to tell her that he can't do it, that he doesn't have it in him.
She's glad. She doesn't deserve it.
If he had, he might have taken one of them and thrown it in her face.
(he wouldn't)
She would deserve it.
☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
She orders the technicians to reprogram the food distribution part of Mary and assign Dr. Grace Ilyukhina’s coffee ration. The Russian woman rarely drinks coffee anyway. She will just have to deal. Eva feels guilty for all of a second before she soothes her own conscience with the fact that Grace will definitely share his ration with the woman anyway if she really craves some caffeine.
He's good like that.
☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
The launch goes off without a hitch. The atmosphere is somber and quiet. There is no loud countdown, no champagne for everyone. Just whispers and a table with some snacks and coffee.
Eva pours herself two cups, just out of habit. Puts cream and sugar in one of them.
Habit, everything.
She stares, unmoving, at the two cups sitting on the table for so long a hand reaches past her to take one of them, probably thinking they are up for grabs for everyone. It's the cream and sugar one, the one she won't drink anyway. She could let them take it but instead she grabs both cups before the other hand can.
“I need both,” she says.
The person next to her makes a face. Like she is being weird.
Eva stares at her two cups of coffee and thinks: ‘I'm not good at jokes.’
We NEED to talk about this scene because it shape-shifts when you watch the movie a second time???
On your first viewing, when Grace leaves the party to join Stratt on the deck, you’ve been following Grace's POV for the whole movie. You can feel how he's trying to break the ice and connect with Stratt via humor: "Permission to come aboard, captain?🫡"
And Stratt being Stratt kills the joke immediately: "You’re already aboard." And by killing that joke she also kills his attempt at connecting with her. That's her thing. You feel it in the knock-knock scene and you feel it here because Grace is feeling it. He stammers and he's nervous ("Talk too much, that's my problem, like right now"). His attempt at human connection is painfully unrequited (again).
When you finish the movie, you learn, however, that that is not true at all. You hear Stratt's voice crack when she has to do what she has to do, and you realize how her carefully constructed armor fractures because of him. He is not nothing to her.
And when you (inevitably) watch the movie again, and your POV is not limited to Grace's anymore but you can shift your view to Stratt ever so slightly, then suddenly the whole connecting-via-jokes business drops away to make room for the metaphorical meaning of "coming aboard".
"It is okay to be in your space? Am I allowed to be closer to you?"
And her answer?
He is already in her space, behind her defenses, and he doesn't even realize it (blissfully unaware about SO many things in fact). He is asking to be allowed inside the house while standing in the damn living room.
Of course watching a movie a second time will always deepen your understanding of the characters, but it's remarkable that Stratt's answer does not just gain a more differentiated level of meaning. Instead, it is transformed into it's opposite, from a very clear "I am not letting you in" to an equally clear "You've come in uninvited a long time ago", and both can be true at the same time!
AINT NO WAY Y'ALL BITCHED SO MUCH THAT THE CEO OF GLITCH HAD TO RESPOND. HOLY SHIT Y'ALL
There is legitimately something so insane about the fact that he had to come out and state the obvious in order to shut up complainers.
The TLDR:
This is a huge risk for Glitch, but they're doing it in order to change how the industry views Indie animation. [And also not stated but they also probably want to make money off of this. Which is fair bc they are a COMPANY that needs money to RUN]
The two-week gap was originally a one-month gap. Glitch had to fight to get it down to two weeks, and originally wanted just one. This was "unheard of" for the theater chains. Because, you know, usually theaters release things way before they become free. Obviously!!
If you're upset it's not near you, reach out to your theatre and ask! Glitch wants to get this out to as many places as possible, and fan correspondence is a way to show that there is an audience for this.
THE FACT THE CEO HAD TO COME OUT AND ADDRESS THIS IS INSANE. The fact some of you guys are so within your own little entitled hellholes and couldn't understand that "avoiding spoilers for a month" was an inconvenience in comparison to a YouTube Indie Show getting a CINEMATIC RELEASE! AT A WORLDWIDE SCALE!!! is fucking ridiculous. Sorry if I sound mad, it's 4am and I just woke up from a nightmare, but honestly you can't convince me that it's not insane to literally ignore how historic and impactful this could potentially be just because YOU personally don't like the decision.
Anyway, you can see what theaters are showing the finale here and here. Godspeed.
As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...
I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!
But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...
That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and friendly, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.
So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.
He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.
This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.
And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.
Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.
They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
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