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just imagine ryan gosling say this😭 and god he's the perfect casting

Ryland being like “I have to do this for my (school) kids! Well they’re not my kids, but yeah. They’re my kids,” is SUCH a mood.

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hey your tags abt project hail mary on that one post were fascinating can you pleeaseeee elaborate :3. the white saviorism & consent ones…. that book took my brain over for a month and im still in its clutches every now and then

HI HELLO YES OF COURSE

(disclaimer: i just love sci fi and literature and took a sociology module this year i am Not a media scholar this is just my personal analysis of this book)

Project Hail Mary was a really intriguing read for me because I went into it somewhat cynically, you know? I really like Andy Weir's writing, but from the moment it became apparent that this is another book in first person about a guy stuck alone in space I was fully expecting for the style and tone to match the Martian. After finishing it, I think he clearly managed to separate Mark Watney from Ryland Grace, mostly by their general attitudes but also with the situations they are getting put in. Watney is an astronaut, he knows what he is doing, and he has (sort of) been trained for the crisis he is in. Grace has no idea who is or why he is in the Tau Ceti system and this memory loss trope is exploited audience for loop after loop.

Spoilers under the readmore because honestly going in blindly is the best way to read Project Hail Mary in my opinion GO READ IT GO NOW

So. We figure out who Grace is, why he is 12 light years away from Earth, what he has to do: he has to save Earth from a major extinction event by sacrificing his own life. The rest of his crew died while they were in comas for the voyage, so the entire fate of humanity is resting exclusively on his shoulders. This is where I kind of heaved a sigh. At least it's not a twelve year old saving the world, but it is a white American man. This plays into the white saviour trope stemming from colonialism in the 15th-16th century, wherein concepts such as humanity and civilisation are values inherently tied to whiteness, exclusively possessed by white societies and must be spread to "uncivilised" areas through colonialism. Overall its an ethno- and eurocentric way of thinking that views the image of the white man as cleaner, better, more educated, et ceatera. This bias remains present in Western society and therefore in our media as well, in the form of the aforementioned white saviour trope, which I had expected Project Hail Mary to unintentionally cater to.

In the case of Project Hail Mary, Grace must be the saviour of humanity by journeying through space. The book makes references to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you can see the general similarity in the premise of both stories: men are sent on a voyage further into space than ever before with varying certainties of return. While the men abroad the USSC Discovery know they will be placed into cyro-freeze and retrieved by another mission in the vague future, the crew of the Hail Mary have no such hopes. They are sent out into space at nearly light-speed with no fuel for a return trip. Hail Mary plays with the trope of the traveler changed by his journey by making return both figuratively and physically impossible for Grace. As readers, we assume he was aware of this when setting out.

The audience also assumes that Grace is on the Hail Mary mission because he volunteered. He is set up as feeling great responsibility for his students and the children of the world, so although we are not shown for a long time why he decided to volunteer for the Hail Mary, we assume that at some point he must have, since we are tied to his first person perspective and he assumes the same. We keep on waiting for some sort of eureka moment in his flashbacks when he realises what he must do and with newfound conviction pledges his life to save humanity. We find out that he was not the first choice for the mission's science specialist; he wasn't even the second. The book introduces Shapiro and Du Bois, and as the audience we know that they will either die before the launch or be incapacitated in such a way that Grace is forced to step up. Again, I was rolling my eyes here. Somehow, Grace had to be switched into Du Bois's place, changing the intended protagonist from a black man to a white one, and I thought somewhat begrudgingly that if the author acknowledges that it could have been Du Bois who saves Earth, then why not just write it as so? After all, all the accidents and consequences through the story are conscious choices by the author. Why does it need to be the white man who bravely steps up and declares that he will sacrifice his life? I felt that there were biases in the writing and in the choice to portray the white man as the brave, lonely hero who will die for the greater good in the far depths of space, alone, afraid, and without complaint.

The actual reveal of the circumstances that landed Grace on the Hail Mary is expertly teased and foreshadowed. We see from the start that Ryland Grace isn't a particularly courageous man. He leaves his academic field after his paper is badly received, he surrounds himself with students who are easy to impress and who idolise him, he doesn't seek out relationships or even friendships because he fears rejection. He throws up in zero g, is not used to space travel, he's queasy around the idea of self administered death and generally lacks the brave enthusiasm and commitment that other astronauts in his flashbacks are shown to have.

So when we find out that Grace is actually a sort of coward, it all falls into place. Stratt gives him the option of joining the Hail Mary mission after Shapiro and Du Bois die, and Grace presents an obviously weak excuse and it's painful to read because the eureka moment we were waiting for never comes. I was personally thinking "wait a second, this isn't how it's supposed to go". But it also makes sense, after all, Stratt is asking him to go die in space and he's a high school teacher.

Stratt is also set up as someone who always gets what she wants. She is legally exempt from any consequences; she could kill a man and she would be pardoned since pulling together the project that will save Earth is her responsibility. She is ruthless, but as a readers we think that Grace is safe from her decree; he's her right hand, and furthermore Captain Yao is adamant that no one be forced to join the mission. If Grace decides to go, it must be on his own. Up until the last moment, we expect Grace to experience sudden onset character growth, to stop when he reaches for the door-handle and to overcome his cowardice and to say "yes, I will go, I will die for Earth".

And it doesn't happen. At this point I was texting all my friends "i am gouing to throw up". It is revealed that Grace was only given the illusion of a choice. In hindsight, it makes sense; he was given no choice about joining the project to begin with or at any step in the process. Stratt was hoping that he would choose to join, but when he refuses it the carpet is immediately pulled from under his feet and it becomes apparent that he has had no agency at all since meeting her. He has been set up and manipulated to be the second backup for the role of the science specialist on board of the Hail Mary by being placed with Shapiro and Du Bois and learning to use space equipment under the guise of testing it. He was kept close to Stratt, so he would always be at hand. Even more terrifying, Stratt has a way to work around Yao's demands. She has Grace drugged so he forgets that he is on board involuntarily and he is heavily sedated until launch.

This is what I meant by saying that Grace's autonomy is entirely taken away. Thorough the entire book, he is dragged and ordered around by Stratt's men, and now he is drugged and forced into a coma. His violation goes to the extreme; not only is he not allowed to say no, he is also not allowed to Remember wanting to say no.

Overall, Grace is a really interesting character to me. He is faced with a situation where only he can do what must be done and instead of rising up to the challenge he pleads and begs for someone else to be chosen. The book completely and satisfyingly flips the white saviour trope on its head. The protagonist is so against the idea of self-sacrifice that he threatens to doom Earth by self-sabotage if he is sent into space. Grace is not a bad person, but he has accepted that other people will take care of the crisis, that other people must die and that is the way things must be. It reminds me of Omelas; it is impossible to walk away, so how do we each accept the world that we live in? Grace accepts that three people must be sent to die in space in order for the rest of the Earth to have a chance of survival, but he thinks of that sacrifice as something that unquestionably happens to others. This echoes the contemporary state of affairs more closely; Western society is upkept by Eastern and Southern labour. We are aware of this, but still benefit from it.

Ultimately, Grace rises to his task and manages to save humanity. He could even return to Earth, but he doesn't. That's the part I think about the most. The journey changes and improves Grace, to the point where he does choose to sacrifice himself in order to save Rocky and Erid. We can ask what happened to make him more willing to save an alien world than he was to save his own. He does have a real choice, he could return to Earth and experience no consequences for leaving Rocky behind. I think the reason is that Grace has changed, yes, but Earth has changes as well in his eyes. Earth violated him, and in way exiled him, ruling through the figure of Stratt that his life was expendable.

First I thought the ending was cheap, but I've been thinking about it for days and I am coming around. It's just!!! I haven't formed concrete thoughts about it but God. God Fuck UGH. It's been 26 years on Earth. His students are grown and up his knowledge is probably archaic by now. His use for humanity has been expended. I am in pain. Would you crawl back home if the value of your life had been dismissed. Would Odysseus go home if he knew no one was waiting for him. I'm going to be sick.

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canon rocky was just whacking grace left and right for A. being a lazy ass and B. not being a lazy ass and getting some sleep.

fanon rocky: haha xD grace humans is stupid. Im just a little innocent alien rawr amaze amaze

Canon rocky: grace. The war.

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most people say they wouldn't care because eridians live like 700 years or something but no matter how long your life is, time is still valuable. even in another lifetime, on another planet, for a different species— time is still valuable. so this somehow feels so important and significant all things considered.

my favourite underrated piece of project hail mary lore is how at the beginning rocky says that adrian had probably found another mate because he'd been away from erid for so long, but then at the end rocky says that he has to go off to see adrian, implying that adrian waited for him the entire 50 years that he was away

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i really would love if rocky sings in the movie because in the book after the initial part i kind of forgot that he was still singing you know. then i would remind myself that 'oh he's actually singing' and it would blow my mind all over again that their language is basically music and i'd go down the rabbit hole of thinking about it.

what i *want* to happen in the movie: rocky sings and his dialogue is all subtitled

what i think will actually happen: the adaptation will have grace make a program on one of the laptops that translates rockys speech and speaks it aloud in english with a computer voice, or another mechanisn in which we hear rocky speaking english in some way

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it makes me so sad like weird and twisted as it may be i understand stratt's character to an extent but the fact that he was given no choice, drugged and sent on a suicide mission sickens me.

Ryland was tasked with asking everyone set for the Hail Mary mission how they wanted to die and he was never given the courtesy of being given a choice.

I AM GOING TO BE SICK!!!

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my question is (also i forgot a bit so i could be wrong) but aren't eridians not mostly made of water? like doesn't that make ryland's theory true or did i miss something?

"All right! Here we go! Time to find out what chemicals are in a life-form that doesn't use water!" I read the LCD screen. It showed all the peaks and the elements they represented. I stared at the screen silently.

"Well?" Stratt said. "Well?!"

"Um. There's carbon and nitrogen...but the vast majority of the sample is hydrogen and oxygen." I sighed and plopped down in the chair next to the machine. "The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen is two to one."

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's water. Astrophage is mostly water."

— Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

you can really read the disappointment in Ryland's voice at this turn of events.

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the hail mary thing i'm thinking about rn is how i, too, would find it both helpful and infuriating having a huge rock guy around going "how long since last sleep question" whenever I started to fuck things up. Yeah, Rocky, it has been a while since last sleep. Also fuck you. Thanks.

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can't explain it but mark is just so genz meanwhile grace is millenial coded

I’ve seen some more idiotic readers go “Mark and Grace are just the same people.”

if they’re the same people, explain this:

Mark Watney: *at any minor inconvenience * FUCKING FU— Ryland Grace: *world-ending, life-threatening news* holy moly

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#whoremembers

"When i saw Max was playing the long game, that helped me" his smileee

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shadow and bone, you are dearly missed

what the fuck is even the point of watching tv shows anymore at this point. if it's not already finished you might as well just assume it'll never be finished.

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rewatched most of arrival and now that I know the twist and looking back at amy adams’ character resolving to live her life even as she knows it will include such awful tragedy is mirrored by the heptapods visiting earth knowing that costello would die building this alliance

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“Love isn't something we invented. It's observable, powerful. It transcends time and space.” —Interstellar.

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mark watney at some point while listening to lewis' disco music

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*emerges from the other room covered in blood* you should see the word document

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James didn't mature for Lily It's too overused and melodramatic the way everyone says he grew up for her. War was raging outside of Hogwarts by the time he was at least 14-15 and became more prominent when he was 16-17. His parents dying was when he was around 17-18-19, and they might've gotten drastically sick and admitted to St. Mungos when James was still in Hogwarts. There was also a war going on, traitors and death eaters everywhere, along with choosing to support Remus financially and Sirius running away. I hate when people go 'he-matured-for-a-girl-who-barley-tolerated-him'. I also hate when people, anyone, says James constantly harassed her, stalked her and asked her out. That. Is. Not. Canon. Dating Lily probably wasn't even one of James' thoughts, so there's no way he would change most of his public personality just for her.

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james and lily my beloved. james and lily are the standard. the greatest love story. THEY LITERALLY HAVE A PROPHECY. the universe doesn’t exist without them. they did not die in the hands of the equivalent of nazis for yall to ship them with said psychos and/or break them up. it says a lot that you need to change the entire character in order to make some strange ship work.

james and lily would hate some of you they would clock yall so fast

jily will live