Agent Rouka's Blog

Evening Dances - Oleg Riabchuk , 2026.

Lithuanian , b. 1965 -

phm AU where everything is the same EXCEPT:

Summer Day

- Was eventually trialed by governments of the world as a scapegoat and sent to prison

- She somehow BROKE out of said prison and currently commandeers a rogue paramilitary faction of Project Hail Mary loyalists who believe in her over world governments, who presumably are still hunting her down

- She currently is on the run and staying mobile on an ice breaker ship like some kind of james bond villain base (but you know, good) while STILL working on project hail mary the whole time

- Her rogue loyalist faction controlled enough resources they could go to space and collect the beetles Grace had sent. Alternatively, it was the world government that collected the beetles, and Stratt had a whole ass heist movie to steal them, which is why she had the little xenonite figure at the end of the movie. Either ways she was running circles around them.

“Just Stop Your Crying” / “It’s the Sign of the Times”

just the ol' nine-to-five

touch starvation crisis solved

it surprised me, because when I watched the movie, I was just like, damn he was a coward at first, I didn't expect that. I also didn't even gove thought to if Stratt was evil or not because to me it seemed like a clear cut "she doesn't want to do this but it's the only way to have a real chance of saving Earth" thing.

I expected Rylands cowardice to come up again in the movie, like as guilt or a still existing problem to overcome, but it didn't.

The weird thing to me is that my instinctual reaction was to cringe at Grace's cowardice, but it seems the more common reaction is purely to feel bad for him and think it's acceptable to say no.

It'd make more sense to me ro see Grace in a nuanced way, where he is both a victim in this situation and a coward for refusing to do the earth saving mission. And witg Eva, she decided to take away Grace's freedom/choice about the mission and that's a horrible outcome, but it simultaneously was absolutely the best thing to do, if saving Earth is the ultimate priority.

In that instance, Eva made the autonomy-violating but Earth-saving choice, and Ryland made the Earth-dooming but self-preserving choice.