Stellar Punctuation

- The villains call themselves the Space Pirates. Not just any space pirates. THE Space Pirates

- It’s established that destroying planets is the easiest and best way to deal with your problems

- Pinball

- The soundtrack is “the most beautiful, haunting melody you’ll ever hear” and “beep boop”, with no in between

- The most deadly, virulent parasite in the universe looks like fruit gummy

- Official comics repeated show that Samus is addicted to circles

- Samus’ pet raccoons are apparently highly skilled star pilots

- The Japanese tagline for the series is “Metroid Fun-roid”

- The series’ most iconic villain has never been the main villain of any single game. He’s also a Pokemon

- The fourth game has not one but two bosses capable of blowing out the Gameboy Advance’s speaker system

- Magic exists. No one uses it, no one acknowledges it, but it’s there and it’s central to everything anyone does

- The series once took an eight-year hiatus because a game was too good

- The first and last games take place anywhere between two and twenty years apart depending on your sources

- No fewer than five men have taken the role of being Samus’s dad, a job which has a 100% fatality rate

- Every possible interpretation of the phrase “The main character of Metroid is Metroid” is an entirely accurate representation of the series

they're literally so… like, the way their relationship has evolved just in the past couple weeks for tarvek. the last time they got into a physical fight with an audience, it was gil slamming tarvek into a wall and tarvek nearly getting shot for punching gil for accusing him of planning to spark-wasp agatha. now they can't spend five minutes having a normal conversation in front of another country's representative without deliberately getting into a play-fight just… to give themselves something to do with their hands while they talk?? to have an excuse to stay in maximum physical contact until the last possible second because they're going to have to be in separate rooms for a few minutes?? like literally why are they doing this. what is wrong with them. also the way the play-fight ends the instant tarvek actually does have to go, and tarvek checks that gil is going to be okay because tarvek is the one who's just been kidnapped at least twice, trapped in a stasis field, and nearly-fatally stabbed-and-poisoned, but gil is the one who needs to be worried about here because tarvek has already figured out which one of them is the cheetah and which one is the emotional support dog in this relationship

Klaus is running for their lives with the total supplies of one (1) sword and one (1) baby.

If we're feeling generous, they also have one (1) baby blanket. But only one. (Skifander may be warm, but caves - sorry, Jules Verne - are not.) He doesn't have anything to carry baby Gil in (or put baby Gil on) if he needs two hands for something. If he wants to take that torch with him, he's going to have to put the sword away. He doesn't have so much as a water bottle, much less a baby bottle. No supplies, no backup, no plan, no nothing. This man looks like he's lucky he's got shoes on.

That doesn't sound like the Klaus we know now.

And that tells me that whatever happened in Skifander, there was no warning. None. Zero. Not even a rumor. Klaus didn't have time to think about this. He didn't see it coming. He didn't have time to plan for it. He didn't have time to consider other options. He didn't even have ten seconds to throw baby stuff into a bag.

He just grabbed baby Gil - maybe the only baby in reach - and he ran.

I'm convinced he didn't mean to leave Skifander. I'm coming around to the idea that he might not have left baby Zeetha behind on purpose - he just didn't have a baby sling to hand.

No wonder this man is such an absolute control maniac. Emperor of Europa in all but name, and all because back in Skifander, he got blindsided by something he wasn't prepared for.

I imagine that this is the thing driving Klaus. This fear. This moment he had nothing, and he was the only thing keeping his son alive.

If that IS Doctor Vapnoople, his statement implies that he has been working on and sending out the Time Dragon backwards through time somehow - since it started appearing before he ever got his spark back, or ended up on the other side of the portal.

Fair enough! That place certainly exiats outside the normal flow of time.

But that means, doesn't it. That means the Dreen very much did NOT just want the very big gun from Klaus.

They needed him to do experiments on sparks over almost two decades, capture ans operate on Dimitri Vapnoople, making sure he is locked away in his own head for years, fueling his desperation and dedication, so he makes Krosp to lead his bears,

All so Krosp could take the bears from Marcellus, lead a raid on Castle Wulfenbach, liberating Dr. Dim, and taking him to England for sanctuary,

So he'd end up where the Cultists called their Vozzler, so Kjarl could fix Vapnoople's brain,

So he could end up on the other side of the portal, the most angry he's ever been,

So he could build the dragon,

So they'd have something to fight.

The ENTIRE POINT of Grace’s arc is that he is a Coward, with a capital C. He is a coward not only in his refusal of the Hail Mary mission, but in the way he lives his life before the Petrova Line was ever discovered. Grace has no close friends or coworkers, no pets or hobbies, no partners (short or long term), no family that we know of. His two main drives in life are (1) being a Cool Teacher to his students, and (2) nursing a grudge over getting kicked out of academia for proposing wild theories about life forms not based on water. As Stratt ACCURATELY points out, both of these things have large self-serving components. Grace genuinely loves his students and is good at teaching, but it’s at least partially because his classroom allows him to demand respect and attention without returning emotional vulnerability in the same way a peer relationship would. His academic theories were also largely motivated by a desire to be The Specialest Boy - and while Grace DOES prove himself very smart and capable, his pet theory wasn’t supported by his work with astrophage. Grace doesn’t jump at the chance to work with Stratt when she first approaches him, and he isn’t out there Living LIfe to the Fullest every day. He ADMITS to himself and to Stratt that he IS a coward, both for the way he’s lived up to PHM and for refusing to go on the mission when the timeline made it clear that there wasn’t enough time to bring another candidate up to speed and have the same odds of success. He straight up tells Stratt that he’ll sabotage Project Hail Mary if she tries to force him, DESPITE HIM KNOWING that Earth is headed for a literal apocalyptic Ice Age, and that everyone on the planet - including his beloved students!- has a pretty good chance of DYING if the mission doesn’t succeed! Stratt has to give him a coma cocktail that induces mild amnesia, and bet on him being at least good Enough (TM) not to kill the whole planet because he hated her for doing this to him.

(Also no hate for Eva Stratt, I love her and I will SUPPORT THIS WOMAN’S WRONGS until my dying day, she committed so many crimes and I cheered the whole way)

Despite Ryan Gosling’s very pretty Sad Boi eyes and sweaters, Ryland Grace is NOT a manic pixie dream scientist in love with Earth and its life and cultures. He just ISN’T. And if he WERE, then. Well. He certainly didn’t love Earth enough to fully embrace it while he was here, OR to volunteer to save it when he had the chance. This IS one of those situations where the distinction between “I love life” and “I don’t want to die” is a meaningful one. Does this make Grace a Cancelled Villain of All Time? No - it makes him a coward, but that doesn’t mean he inherently deserved to die. Does it ethically or morally justify forcing him onto a suicide mission while he fought and pleaded not to go? No! It makes Grace ORDINARY. Just some average fucking guy, not evil but not valiant, either. It’s like trying to claim Laika was the top search and rescue dog in the city when she got put into the pod. You don’t NEED to give Ryland Grace all these Tender Tragic Qualities of “loving Earth/Life” to have empathy for this poor dude who got launched into space.

In fact, Grace’s arc DEPENDS on him STARTING from that place of “I don’t really have a reason to be here” to “I have EVERY reason to turn my back on survival and do this act!” Grace wakes up on the Hail Mary, and has no context for why he’s on the ship but assumes that he was a Heroic Volunteer, like Yao and Ilyukhina. He sees their personal effects and Reasons Why They Volunteered, and keeps searching for his own Reason Why until he remembers that he didn’t HAVE a “reason why.” He was never a heroic volunteer. He comes to terms with the fact that he’s going to die, and IS. IN FACT. AS STRATT PREDICTED. A GOOD ENOUGH man to want to save the earth anyway rather than die alone without even trying to figure out the Petrova Problem out of spite. And he can do some pretty neat science along the way, which has always been one of his life motivations! At least he can do that before he dies, in the absence of anything else!

But the thing that Grace ACTUALLY loves enough to die for is ROCKY. The one in a million friend! Who saved his life and opened up his entire view of the universe! Grace’s core trait was NEVER “loving the Earth,” or “loving life.” The WHOLE FUCKING EARTH wasn’t enough to get Grace willingly onboard the Hail Mary! What made him turn the ship around was his GOTDAM SINGING ROCK FRIEND. The whole point is the change! Humanity’s capacity for massive apathetic cowardice and also astonishing bravery and hopefulness in connection. Andy Weir has his head in his ass about politics in his work, but you see?!?! You see, right!?!?!?!