Bonus speedrun bug for your enjoyment! (Mostly because my flatmate threw a blank sketchbook page at me and ran away. Which I took to mean he wanted a drawing.)
The real magic of game dev is the jeans we wore along the way.
I saw someone post a stock image of people in suits that were meant to represent my team at work... My live reaction was to just look down at my current form.
You know, in a way, Stratt wasn't just Earth's scapegoat... she was also Grace's.
She knew he would rise to the occasion because he'd done it before. He had to be coerced into working with her in the first place, but he bravely chose to come back after being told he could leave after being a whole ass bitch about being wrong and having a fairly valid crash out. It was, at the end of the day, his insistence that he continue and to be given a few dots. But in doing so, in coming back, in staying to see it through, no matter what happened he had made his bargain with fate.
There's a high chance that Grace would have faced prison the same as Stratt. He might have been the leading scientist on astrophage, but he was also, by all accounts but his own, her right hand man.
In the tragedy of both of their stories she sacrificed him. There's no denying that. But in doing so she spared him a life she must have known was coming after the dust settled.
This anxious, apparently socially oblivious genius dumbass guy that everyone likes, had to be elevated after he made a discovery too big to ignore, on his insistence to be given a chance to do so.
Was it selfish of her to share the weight of the world? To bring him everywhere, to have him tested for the coma gene same as herself? Maybe. But she was doing some serious emotional labor for the entire world.
So... He was already doomed. He was his own separate trolley problem that she took on the emotional labor to solve.
So, I've reread Project Hail Mary a few times. I've gone through it with the fine tooth comb of "Grace is an unreliable narrator" (because he is! Because it's from his perspective. He has to be because he's deeply, unmistakably human.)
But I finally watched the movie. At first I was disappointed. They didn't let him feel smart. They opened it with him being scared, and goofy, and lost, but never allowing him the space to show the viewer that he's SMART, damnit!
But there was a moment in the movie that made me realize that I was being a dumbass. Despite the outside view, the movie is from his perspective too. Of course it is. (Spoilers and personal health experience below that tie into this)
For context. I'm photosensitive. My body has decided that the best way to handle flashing lights and strobes is to try to force close vital applications my brain needs to, I dunno, function. So I can't watch movies without a buddy to tag me out when strobes start and to tag me in when they end. I go dark.
In most movies there's enough audio to keep me focused, to know what's happening from moment to moment.
But Project Hail Mary handled this differently... When the ship lost control due to what I imagine was the ruptured tank from the book, when Grace began to (presumably) lose consciousness. There was silence. Deafening, terrifying silence.
I, like Grace in that moment, had so little context. 'What was happening? Where am I now? Oh God, is the ship righting itself? Where is Rocky?? I can hear him. I can barely hear him. He sounds distressed.'
And the scene changes. A memory, far far away. I don't need someone to tap me in. Human voices remind me that I'm somewhere else. They tell me that I can come back to the scene, even though I'm scared it'll start again.
Reframing my viewing of the movie from Grace's perspective I see a lot more. I feel his awkward discomfort for social situations, His feelings of inadequacies among his peers, His desire to share his work with others. I feel the discomfort of his masks that he presented the world, that goofy gooberness that annoyed me because I knew he could be more.
All of that to say, I love me an unreliable narrator. This is the first first-person perspective media that I've enjoyed in a long time. Not because he was a hero (I love that too), but because he was flawed, raw, and he was self absorbed not in ego but in anxiety.
Ditto’s transformations are a little messy, but that doesn’t stop us from loving them - so why should it stop you from embracing your own imperfections? 😌
You can tell a lot about someone's mental health by how long they need to ruminate in their vehicle or on their front steps before going in the house...
Due to my weird childhood and my weird brain, I have this very unhelpful compulsion to conceal Everything I do from Everyone. I Cannot be observed performing any action, no matter how mundane. My nervous system is convinced I'm gonna, like, Get In Trouble for eating food at dinnertime or sleeping in my bed at bedtime.
I've taken to asking myself, "Okay does this task actually require subterfuge or am I stealing a balloon on Free Balloon Day"
Somewhere in the middle is the epiphany that happens when you're nowhere near technology. The heavens part and the gods bestow the most perfect line/scene ever imagined. You need to repeat that line to yourself over and over and over like a madman as you dash to the nearest writing implements, hoping you don't lose the inspiration.
And then you promptly forget it the minute you cross a threshold.
I posted my ditto and now my family has requested dittos. (Ft fixed proportions cause I was going from memory and my personal ditto was too dang leggy).
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