elvella's trash bin

SHEILA ATIM as Akasha

"Come to me."

Grace is single = weir is disillusioned with dating

Stratt betrays Grace = women are not good enough for weir and have dissapointed him and he doesn't trust them

Grace meets an alien in space who understands him in a way no-one else ever has, and who has an instinctive imperative to watch over him while he sleeps, and who has a massive amount of obligation to protect and care for Grace due to their situation = weir longs for platonic physical affection and closeness, and to be understood and loved for who he is. but he can see no way in which this is possible to achieve on earth with human beings, because, as previously mentioned, all women betray him, and men aren't allowed to cuddle or be close to each other. rocky is safe for his author insert to get deeply platonically close to because he isn't a woman or a man, and sex is completely off the table. also, people never seem to particularly like him, so he longs for a crisis situation in which they are forced to be in his proximity long enough to see what a nice guy he really is

Grace has to change his mind about returning to earth, and although grace isn't portrayed as happy about this, the text itself portrays this as an unambiguously good thing, where Grace goes on to live a life in a new place where he is fully apprieciated = weir doesnt feel like he fits in with humanity, is largely pessimistic about humankind as a whole, and wants to be free of them because they dont treat him as special in the way he thinks he deserves

But building on this, the two directors of the PHM movie saw this read, prioritised it over Weir's intended read as both more accurate and more compelling, and built the movie around that read as a basis. Particularly striking to me is a moment from an interveiw about the movie's score. One of the directors says that, intially, they tried ominous and scary music to accompany Grace waking up on the ship, but it didn't feel right. So they instead alighted on a piece of music that said, in the director's words: "Poor thing. He's going to be alright. He just doesn't know it yet."

This quote is hugely important to me, because it underpins the dialogue between the book and the movie, and can almost be interpreted as a direct dialogue between Weir and the directors. Weir writes a book that says: here is the world. It rejects me, and I don't feel valued. I deserve better than this, and instead of examining why, I choose to externalise the blame. And the director, another man, but one with a more healthy mindset, looks at this worldveiw that Weir has presented to him and says "poor thing. you're going to be alright."

Film Grace’s characterization is (among other things) fearful and avoidant. His first impulse when faced with any unfamiliar or threatening scenario is try to run away. Tried initially to run from Stratt (and dithered when he finally did ask to join the science mission), tried to run from the room of Important People, tried to run from Rocky’s spaceship, obviously tried to run from the mission — anything that man could run from, he tried to run from. Now when he couldn’t run he absolutely did rise to the challenge with extraordinary courage and capability, but the characterization of “first impulse = flight” is pretty consistent.

Canon Grace is a different ball of wax. He’s the one constantly mouthing off to Stratt, the one who demanded to be let onto the science mission when she was going to take him off it, the one who so far as I can see feels no qualms about rubbing shoulders with all these foreign dignitaries, the one who had no reservations about meeting an alien. All of which could coalesce into an equally well-rounded and compelling character if Weird Andy had even slightly more deft a hand at characterization!

But any which way — when Canon Stratt calls Canon Grace a coward, when he calls himself a coward, I think the narrative as presented to us by Andy Weir wants us to see that as untrue and unjust. All the things Canon Stratt names in evidence of Canon Grace’s supposed cowardice — leaving the prestige of academia and becoming a school teacher, not having a het relationship — can easily be read as failing to perform a certain kind of masculinity. Aside from that, all that Canon Grace has been in this novel is a Confident Masculine Self Assured Badass who Don’t Bow Down To No Woman (even if she is his actual boss) and is Wholly Vindicated By The Narrative.

book!Grace is, essentially, punished for not "serving women". He doesn't perform well in heterosexual relationships, and doesn't kowtow to Stratt (or show her much respect at all), and he doesn't have a prestigeous career. He is failing at what the patriarchy tells men they have to do in order to perform their gender successfully, ie providing wealth, prestige and sex to women, while also coddling them and attending to their every need, and so he is punished and launched into space by a woman, the ultimate metaphor for rejection from society.

It's an incredibly fascinating bit of insight into how men who get sucked into the manosphere veiw the world. Weir and men like him think that if they fail in these ways, they will get punished and penalised and rejected, and it's just - not true! The only people who punish men for not performing the "alpha male provider" role correctly are other men who have also fallen for this brainwashing, plus a few women who never unlearnt the patriarchal values they were raised into.