my digital scrapbook

at this point I think a nastyyyyyy gay situationship is the only thing that could fix me.

if i was a soccer player i'd simply kick that ball in the goal instead of wasting everyone's time

Making Eva Stratt East German in the film is really really meaningful. She grew up (in the 1980s I assume?) behind the Berlin Wall. She came of age in a world defined by scarcity, secrecy, checkpoints, state control. She knew, viscerally knew, from her own life experience, what the whole entire world was going to devolve into when things started getting bad. It wasn't just some abstract academic idea to her (though, as a historian, she also intellectually knew from countless examples of eras of conflict across history). But this she knew in her bones, and she knew that she would have to do whatever it took to prevent it. To prevent, as much as she could, others (the children) from having to go through what she (as a child) went through. Having that personal history tacitly be part of her character's motivation is so, so good. (Also, this makes "It's so insulting" make way more sense, given what she's lived, and how her childhood was different from his.)

i really like eva stratt. weemp weemp

Wait can you make the ashes get blown away by the wind?

if i was a soccer player i'd simply kick that ball in the goal instead of wasting everyone's time

trying to write book grace, and the way I'm approaching him is that he's capable of feeling extremely sympathetic towards stratt on the rare occasion where she drops her professional façade and shows vulnerability around him (which seems to be more often than anyone else on the project, if we take the coma gene decision as an example). he's a fundamentally good guy at heart and he wants to help. the problem is that socio-academic death can do a number on a guy's ego, so he is mentally and emotionally hardwired towards self-preservation and building up elaborate narratives to protect himself. man loves his narratives #hisnarratives. and unfortunately the one he built for stratt cannot include weakness or remorse or her needing to rely on him in any way. which can make him flip flop between how he treats her very fast because seeing her in pain makes him instinctively go both "here, how can i help" and "huh. that's not right. What's wrong with you" at the same time. infuriating dynamic to be on the other end of, alas.