Hiya! I’m Marina, I’m from the Netherlands and this is my PHM sideblog! 💫✨ Here be Project Hail Mary posts, and only that (with some personal, yet related posts sprinkled in occasionally)!
As is unfortunately the case with sideblogs, I won’t be able to like posts or follow back from this account — instead that will happen from my main, @marinaqua! I can, however, still DM from this account 🙂↕️
I’m always happy to make new friends in this fandom, please give me a little shout in the replies or my askbox! Just to be safe though — because I don’t know how many minors are active on this platform these days — I am in my thirties, so please don’t offer if you’re below the age of 18!
#project hail mari is my personal posts tag!
^ das me!
(Also, this username may or may not be a little wink to The Alan Parsons Project 🙏)
✨ About This Blog ✨
I am a Big multishipper, GraceRocky and Strattland being my main ones (but I tag every ship, so if there’s anything you’re not comfy with you have the chance to mute those tags 🙏) I also think aroace Ryland Grace is amaze, but I personally project my own demisexuality onto him 👎
That said, you won’t find any Bloody Mary content here, sorry if that’s what you’re looking for! It’s the one ship I can’t get into 😅
I also don’t tag individual characters, unfortunately (the exception being rocktiz)! Didn’t think of doing so when first starting this blog and now we’re in far too deep to fix that. But as I said earlier, I do tag ships! Duos/trios will often be tagged under their ship tags here, too.
I’ve seen PHM 8 times in theaters 🙈… No, I do not have a theater subscription. How did I do it? With Ryan Gosling money, of course.
I use she/they pronouns and I am a demi-aroace lesbian!
I’m a singer, voice actor, digital artist, and a writer! Expect some original homages to this awesome movie here, too ✨ I also have an ACGGoods store where you can find PHM trinkets (I will keep adding more over time)!
I have an absolute soft spot for Rocktiz, the propaganda got me 😩😩 A lot of the GraceRocky content I like will feature him, I think it’s a lovely way of honoring James’ talent and recognizing him as Rocky 🫶
I adore Stratt. She did the best she could with impossible odds to face and choices to make. I certainly don’t envy her for what she had to do 😭
… If I think of anything else I’ll add it here, lol.
What?! TWO new shop additions in the same week?! I can hardly believe it myself, but it's true! Eva Stratt is now available in my ACGGoods store as a keychain and sticker, both with some awesome special effects!!
Silly parts of a Grockadrian comic below the cut! ⚠️implied nsfw⚠️
Gonna be so fr I’m likely not gonna finish coloring this comic anytime soon bc I’m moving and about to get a second job on top of my full time job so 🥲 take this
Yeah I also want to add I thought this was hilarious til I read the book and realized eating wasn’t taboo in the way I thought the fandom meant but the inks were already done so suck it
"I want to enjoy you, Doctor Grace" [...] I'm going to finish my drink, and you're going to let me finger you while I do."
"jammers minde" by @bonvivant-divisionbell or, in other words, the day Grace called a colleague "a staggering waste of fucking carbon" and met Dr. Ricardo Ortiz at the bar in the aftermath of that
It is absolutely insane how much time I spent on this but I Had to devote myself to every single scorching hot detail in that fic scene 🫠
with the Rocktiz design done, I'm moving on to the next character I had in mind... my wife Eva Stratt <3 have a little preview of her! since Grace and Rocky got depicted with their respective spaceships, it only made sense that Eva should be drawn with hers... 🌍
update:
will likely finish her up tomorrow! then she's gonna be yeeted into the shop~
At last, he is here!! Rocktiz hot foil sticker + glitter epoxy keychain are now live in my ACGGoods Store! 🪐💫 (Together with some funky fresh GraceRocky bundles too, ooooooo.)
I've recently written a PHM fic, I'd wave my hand, reveal the stars, and decided to pick a bunch of movie titles for the chapters. This post is my little behind-the-scenes look for why I chose those movies specifically, so there'll be a lot of rambling under the cut!
(Includes spoilers for the whole fic, of course.)
Ch. 1 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
The real OG readers know that I didn't start with the movie gimmick right upon posting, so there was a time, before the second chapter got posted, when this chapter was called just "First Contact". So obviously, when that changed, I wanted an alien first contact movie for the title of this chapter in which Grace and Rocky make first(...ish...) contact. I considered Arrival (2016), in part because of there being timetravel elements involved in the plot of that movie (hehe), but in the end I decided that you can't go wrong with the classics!
Ch. 2 - Casablanca (1942)
This one was just for the famous line at the end, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" since, well, it is! This is where Grace decides he and Rocky have become friends! And maybe the movie has Themes about old love and new love, and making sure someone is happy even if it's not with you, which are relevant to the fic as a whole.
Ch. 3 - Rocky Balboa (2006)
This was obviously chosen because of Adrian's name being a deliberate Rocky movie reference, and this chapter is very centred on the matter of Adrian. But! I specifically chose *this* entry in the franchise rather than the first Rocky movie, because in this one he's a widower - his wife Adrian has died. And obviously PHM!Adrian is fine and alive in my fic! But PHM!Rocky is still a widower here, not that Grace or the readers know it at this point...
Ch. 4 - Inception (2010)
Listen, I just like this movie, and this chapter is a lot about sleeping, alone or supervised/together, so... yeah. And there's also a hint of Grace realising something about the handprint tattoo, something that could make him 'wake up' from this beautiful dream of having A Special Person in Rocky, if he just were to acknowledge and question all these weird things he notices... but he chooses to stay asleep. So there's a bit of a connection to Inception's central themes there, too.
Ch. 5 - Pacific Rim (2013)
"We're cancelling the apocalypse!"
Ch. 6 - E.T. (1982)
Classic alien movie, I knew I'd have to use the title somewhere - and, well, in the latter half of this chapter, Grace works very hard to enable an alien to call home...
Ch. 7 - Matilda (1996)
This chapter had a lot of content about Grace's role as a teacher and his connection to his kids, how deeply he cares for them and wants to provide them with a future and answers - so I wanted a movie with a central positive teacher figure, and felt that my backup pick, Dead Poets Society (1989), would carry far too bittersweet implications. Instead, Grace gets to be Miss Honey (and if you ask Rocky, Stratt is the Trunchbull of this story).
Ch. 8 - The Prince of Egypt (1998)
"When You Believe", the karaoke song I have Stratt singing at the end (instead of Sign of the Times), is from The Prince of Egypt! There's also a lot of symbolism hovering in the background about Moses figures and miracles/divine signs, but that literal connection was what led me to pick this as the chapter title.
Ch. 9 - The Hangover (2009)
Grace gets a massive hangover in this one, simple as that.
Ch. 10 - October Sky (1999)
This one's a semi-autobiographical movie about kids trying to build rockets (the original title of the book it's based on was "Rocket Boys"), and it I figured it would be a nice fit for the chapter built around the rocket launch. My backup here was Apollo 13 (1995), but much like Dead Poet Society for ch.8 that would've carried way more serious implications...
Ch. 11 - Alien vs. Predator (2004)
I felt very funny for this one. In this chapter, Grace is discovering a natural predator of the star-eating alien lifeform that has been plaguing them, so... it just felt obvious. And also carries some darker implications than this relatively hopeful chapter seems to warrant, but as we all know this was very much the calm before the storm!
Ch. 12 - It Came From Outer Space (1953)
This is a classic alien scifi horror movie, which is both Grace's AND Adrian's experience during this chapter... but, crucially, the body-snatching aliens in this movie are not hostile, they're only trying to repair their ship and leave again, but the local humans panic and form a mob intending to kill them. And of course, the Eridians are equally benign, even if Grace, much like the humans in the movie, nearly gets violent in his paranoid fear. (Also, originally 11 and 12 were going to be one chapter, but I was very pleased to split it, because both of these titles were fitting for one half of the chapter and I just couldn't decide!)
Ch. 13 - Back to the Future (1985)
Official time travel reveal! I always planned to title the reveal after this one. Technically I could've picked the third movie in the franchise, whose central emotional plot involves saving someone who should've died in the past, which is of course pretty close to what Rocky is doing - but I felt it would be best to keep it simple.
Ch. 14 - Der Himmel über Berlin (1987)
You may know this movie better by its English title, Wings of Desire. It's a classic German arthouse film about guardian angels watching over humanity, listening to their thoughts, seeing the world only in black and white and forever observing the joys and tragedies of human life - though some of these angels yearn to be human, to love, to see the world in colour. It's a very thoughtful and beautiful movie, and I thought it would fit the way Rocky imagines his role in Grace's life... and I picked the German title, which translates to "The Sky/Heaven Above Berlin" because I like it better, and also because of the final paragraph of the chapter where I have Grace note the overcast sky.
Ch. 15 - Blue Valentine (2010)
I was searching for break-up-centric movies, this one came up, and then I had to laugh when I realised who was playing the lead. And the bitterness of a collapsing marriage probably is close to what Grace is feeling in this one, so it won out over other break-up movies I considered.
Ch. 16 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
We're continuing the theme of movies about break-ups! Though here I especially wanted Eternal Sunshine's specific theme of forgetting/choosing to forget/the complications of memory, as well as people feeling a connection even if they don't have the memories to back that up. Even aside from the final paragraph, Grace repeatedly thinks about forgetting in this chapter...
(My backup movie title for this one would've been The Notebook (2004), which has more involuntary forgetting, but also would've been another film starring Ryan Gosling. Alas, it just didn't fit as well as Eternal Sunshine!)
Ch. 17 - You Only Live Twice (1967)
This one was a last-minute pick, because 17 and 18 were initially going to be one chapter, and the title I had prepared would definitely have to be slapped on 18. The bit about Eridians being good spies at the end of the chapter made me want to pick a spy movie, in particular a Bond movie, and in the end I narrowed the options down to this one and Quantum of Solace (2008). I liked QoS for the poetic sound of its title, for the fact that Grace does find a bit of solace in this chapter, and also because this is one of the movies that don't have any Q (or any other quartermaster figure) in them, so there's a bit of irony in the passage where Grace recalls that Rocky thinks Bond movies are lame except for the bits that have Q and his gadgets. But in the end, You Only Live Twice won out, for being a Bond movie about rockets and space - and, well. Because Grace does very much Live Twice in this fic's timeline...
Ch. 18 - It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
A classic movie about becoming aware of the impact you have/had in the lives of others, by seeing a glimpse of a reality in which things happened differently... perfect for Grace at long last recognising himself in the Eridian photo. (Does this make Adrian the equivalent of Clarence? Maybe so!)
Ch. 19 - Starman (1984)
I really wanted to use this movie as a chapter title at some point, because of the themes of a human and an alien growing to love each other and trying to help each other - and, fitting with this chapter, in the end they are forced to say goodbye forever. But also, there's the important vision of Star-saviour Grace in this chapter, a man amongst the stars, so it felt double appropriate here!
Ch. 20 - Love Actually (2003)
Oh, this chapter title has been in place since I was halfway through the fic! There's a lovely romcom running-to-the-airport-gate scene in it, AND the movie ends with multiple scenes of people reuniting at an airport, showing all kinds of love to each other. It was perfect for this chapter. It's always about love, in the end.
Ch. 21 - Project Hail Mary (2026)
This one has also been in place for a long time. In the end, it all comes full circle, and this fic's Grace is on his way towards the same happy ending as the Grace in PHM canon. There's nothing else I could've chosen, really.
Bonus:
The fic's overall title is part of the lyrics of the song "There Will Be Sun" from the musical version of Groundhog Day!
Normally, I mention where my fic titles are from and why I chose them on the first chapter, but in this case that would've semi-spoiled A) the time shenanigans and Rocky's usage of foreknowledge (because Groundhog Day) and B) the whole sun-getting-saved-early arc (because the song is all about the end of winter and the return of the sun), so I kept it quiet!
Here's some lyric segments that are particularly telling in regards to what Rocky's initial goal is...
Oh, if I could, I'd will these clouds away, my love
I'd wave my hand, reveal the stars
Oh, if I could, I'd hold the tide at bay, my love
But clouds will come and tides will turn
And all I have to offer is
Tomorrow spring will come and then
There will be blue skies, my friend
Bright eyes and laughter
Tomorrow there will be sun
