Avatar

hole in the ground

@fivetrench

🌾 clay or trench | it/he | 19 | i like to draw 🌾
(tme/white/usamerican)

All the trolley problem stuff PHM fans keep posting about always forgets the crucial detail that Stratt is also tied to the tracks. She became public enemy number one to the entire planet after the Hail Mary launched. She got sentenced to life in prison and had to break out in order to keep working on the project. She might have not literally died, but she certainly lost her life.

When it’s announced that a Bay Area middle school teacher is one of three heroes sent to save the world, San Francisco clamors to rename things to “Ryland Grace.” Grover Cleveland Middle is quick to the draw, becoming Ryland Grace Middle the very next school year. Grace also gets a street, of course, a science wing at Stanford, a state park along the coast — by the time the Beetles return, you could probably throw a rock in San Francisco and hit a Ryland Grace reference.

Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.

And yet, light-years away, there is a beloved body of water, its surface dancing with artificial waves, that Ryland Grace wistfully refers to as The Sea of Stratt.

i do think the one thing the project hail mary novel has over the film adaptation is that when rocky boils himself alive in grace's atmosphere to save his life rather than be left alone again book grace is like "man what the hell was that for" and goes and boils himself right back for the exact same reasons. i just think it would settle a lot of discussions about their codependency and whether or not they're each other's equals to be reminded that they would literally light themselves on fire before being prepared to lose each other.

"what do you think happened during those four years on the way to erid" i think they engaged armando's suicide watch protocol in the first month. the one that wasn't even supposed to be necessary. for the suicide mission.

he's an engineer. he's an apex predator. he is two apples tall. he's a sentient spider-shaped beehive made of rock. he watched his friends die. he can't take a compliment. he piloted a 23-crewed spaceship to a star 10ly away completely on his own and knowing nothing of relativistic physics. he talks in whale song. he was stranded in space for 46 years. he got distracted during first contact cause he was fucking with a tape measure. he's older than the united states of america. he loafs like a kittycat :]]]] it should've been him. it should've been him. it should've b

Thinking of Grace and Rocky getting so bored on the way to Erid and also them just being so sad they they can’t speak each others language, no matter how much they understand it’s just not physically possible. But maybe just maybe there’s some word in their respective languages that they can sort of say (not very well) but enough that someone would understand it. And they spend days going through everything thats sort of similar to the vocal range of the other.

POV Adrian when they finally get Erid. Your mate is back with this freaky alien that speaks in such a condensed range of tones and you understand nothing it says but it seems happy to be here and happy to meet you. And then in the middle of a ramble of incompressible sounds it says, in the strangest accent, “thermometer” and then goes back to utter nonsense.