project hail mary is insane bc the first half is like oh my god the world is dying and there's alien bacteria eating the sun and there's some guy alone on a ship and he's having a breakdown and the flashbacks are getting darker and this is a tragedy the likes of which i have never seen. then BAM andy weir says fuck you actually. here's this pokemon guy he's here to save the day with the power of friendship. and it's the best thing you've ever seen in your life

grace was just another choice she had to make. it wasnt difficult for all the reasons that it was. i think a large part of her character that the movie forgot (aside from her ruthlessness). was the aspect of no time for diplomacy. she was placed in charge because of her ability to get things done. everything is a chain reaction. the human race did not have time to deliberate. the book made a point of mentioning to time to peer review any reasearch being done and people just enmass publishing their findings. the explosion of the center due to the astrophage felt particuarly poignant to me. because it really soldified the mass human panic of operating without any safety channels. there is a reason we delibrate and we ponder and argue and have precautions in place. and to me it just really signals this sense of urgency that there is no time for caution in the mad scramble to save humanity. she paved the desert and blew up the artic shelf without knowing if it was going to work it was all predicated on theory. so when a choice comes along that really is a no brainer. eva is going to take it. and it just so happened that that choice was sending grace. it was the cleanest and clearest decision she had to make throughout the whole project really. she knew he was too stubborn to stay down - too smart to not be a part of this - that he was a good man. (which is not the same as saying as what shes doing isnt unforgivable or horrible). she knows shes ‘going to hell that hell is coming to us’ and those are really the same thing in a way. so it was a really easy simple choice to her. none of it is ever done maliciously. she did horrible horrible things but she knows. she KNOWS she is doing horrible things. but the motivator for it is that if somebody doesnt. push them along them life as they know it will cease to exist. she has no time for guilt or pity or upset. no time for deliberation. stop your crying its a sign of the times (via @bulkhummus)

i MUST finish The Martian today so i can move on to the 2 books my friend is lending me and if i don’t everyone has to bully me

locked tf in and finished 🎉 let me start off by saying i did like the book…but i think was really dragged this book down for me is the prose of the log entries. because they’re retrospective entries, it’s all “I did x in order to y and then z happened.” it’s so formulaic and a lot of “tell don’t show.” which does make sense! i understand why it’s written that way—the whole in-world purpose is for Mark is to document what he did—but it’s not a great reading experience. i liked the breaks when we shift over to the Earth pov because the writing becomes enjoyable to read. i’m the last person to complain about science writing because i enjoy scientific research papers, but there was just a lot about the scientific explanations in the book that felt like too much. that was a lot of negative things but i did still like the book’s premise! the ending also picked up in pacing, so i was really into the last quarter. i’m glad i read it, but parts of the style limited my experience as a reader.