a blog of shity posts

Your partner since you were young goes on a mission to save your dying planet and doesn’t return as expected. He is assumed lost in space, and everyday things get more dire on the surface. You miss him terribly. And then one day, an ALIEN SPACECRAFT shows up with not only the solution to your dying planet but also your partner.

And you’re probably thrilled but also thrown for a loop because what do you mean 1. Aliens are real 2. They breathe highly flammable gas and 3. Your partner made friends with it. And said alien looks like nothing you’ve ever heard, and has a sense you don’t have at all and is also apparently dying of nutritional loss? And your partner is like codependent as hell with it, and suddenly your entire life changes overnight. Also your partner is himself but also completely different in ways you don’t understand, in ways that are sometimes scary because all that time in space changes a person.

I don’t know how anyone would react to that, cus damn that’s overwhelming, but I think that’s an interesting dynamic to have with an alien. Your partner’s closet companion besides you is an alien. It feels like the alien knows your partner better than you do some days. The alien also helped save your entire planet.

It’s an alien spaceship. Aliens came to save your species. And inside you find your long lost engineer and he explains that this alien that he met by chance has not only found the solution to the extinction level threat your species is facing, but that alien gave up on going back to his own home in order to save your species.

Because the alien is his friend.

ah yes. my personal favourite moment from the book: the first time Rocky realises Grace is the most intelligent idiot he’s ever met

When I said it was birdseed she just went “oh- can they actually eat that? Is that safe?”

I didnt know how to respond like, at all, so I just pointed at the duck and said “bird”

In contrast, Eridians had to discover fire in a lab since their atmosphere doesnt have O2 like ours. So they dont have, like, an entire culture normalizing fire.

> Be me. Rocky the Eridian cosmonaut

> Tell Grace about Eridian space elevator design made out of Xenonite. Grace very impressed, says humans only dream about making space elevator.

> Odd? Ask Human friend Grace how humans got into space. Expecting some high tech solution since science humans clearly know more physics.

Something jumped out at me tonight while I was driving home and listening to the Project Hail Mary soundtrack after rewatching the movie. And it was the song that plays while Grace is preparing Yao Li-Jie’s and Olesya Ilyukhina’s bodies for their final words and send off into space.

The song is called “You Were Loved (Burial)”

And I can’t stop thinking about it because it’s not “You were heroic” or “you were brave”. It was “you were loved.”

Grace sees bravery as something you’re born with. He says it to Yao, that he doesn’t have the ‘bravery’ gene that they have, and Yao corrects him in that moment and states it’s a matter of finding someone to be brave for.

And listen I know others have talked about how Grace learns to be brave because of Rocky. And, yes, it’s true. But I don’t think thats the complete message the were wanting us to take away from this movie.

See, the difference between “You were brave” and “You were loved” is the difference between “I” and “We”. Yao and Ilyukhina weren’t just brave. The song emphasizes that it’s not the bravery that mattered, but the fact that others loved them. We see it in their photos. Surrounded by children, loved ones, family, friends-

And then there’s Grace, in his one photo.

Standing by himself.

Alone.

But Grace loved his kids, you’d say. And yes, the children are so so important to him. But while they love him as a teacher, Mr. Grace, they don’t love him as the whole. They don’t know Ryland. They don’t know Dr. Grace. And Grace has no partner, no immediate family… he is liked. And that’s where it ends.

When he meets Rocky though? It changes. Slowly, yes, but surely. This little alien that knows him as someone clever, and smart, and clumsy, and bad at math. Grace is not just “the science human”. Grace is his friend. An equally valid form of love- platonic.

And what happens, when Grace for once gets the same love he gets? He does EVA’s on a ship experiencing active gravity, he leaps off to grab the predator collector even at the risk of dying, he nearly kills himself with chemical burns (in the book) carrying Rocky to get him back in his closure, he gives up his chance of going home, KNOWING he will die shortly after dropping off Rocky at Erid, if he even manages to find Rocky.

And we can say that it’s growth of Grace, learning to be brave and not a coward for the sake of his friend. But that’s once again focusing on the one person. The ‘I’.

You. Were. Loved.

This movie at its core is about how humanity is to love and be loved.

Grace didn’t suddenly develop a bravery gene. He was given what he so desperately needed- love. And it was only because he received it that he could make the choices he did.

He didn’t leap for the predator catcher because of bravery. He leapt because he was loved.

Rocky didn’t break through to Grace’s side because he was brave. He forced himself to go into Grace’s atmosphere because he was loved.

Grace didn’t pull the emergency air lock lever for Rocky because he was brave. He let himself be injured because he was loved.

And most importantly- Grace didn’t choose certain death to rescue Rocky because he was brave. It was not an act of bravery.

It was an act of love.

And that love could only exist because, for the first time, someone loved him.

did you make a promise, eva?

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Stratt who has been standing on the edge of the biggest glass cliff ever for the last 5ish years: I am going to be the scapegoat and I will probably never know peace again. It's fine. I deserve it.

The title Project Hail Mary and the choice to name the protagonist Grace immediately invites a reading through a Christian thematic lens. Sorry Andy "my works aren't political" Weir you were the one who decided to do that. And in Christian* symbolism, the rainbow has a specific meaning: it represents God's promise to Noah after the flood that He would never again send catastrophic weather conditions to wipe out all life on Earth.

Seeing as PHM is about catastrophic weather conditions threatening to wipe out all life on Earth, that's interesting.

So constantly framing Grace in rainbows evokes to me a visual signifier that this is the guy who is a representation of, or agent of, a future that makes good on that promise. Ryland Grace framed in a halo of rainbows is the one who's going to make sure life on Earth continues. It's a visual symbol of hope, life, and the promise that humanity and every species on Earth will live, and by tying it to Grace, symbolically reinforces that he's the one who will make that happen.