Think or Perish

Eva's POV

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

sources: l.e.s. by donald glover // this year by the mountain goats // maya hornbacher, madness // watchisjawdrop on tumblr // wuntrum on tumblr // kim kardashian // unknown // godblessryankent on tiktok // nayyirah waheed // unknown // lev st. valentine

'Mid conversation I ran out of people energy, and I won’t be able to keep speaking constructively. I need to leave now or I will explode' script: “Hey, I’m sorry, but it’s getting late, and I should really be going. It’s been really lovely speaking to you; we have to get together again sometime soon. But I really need to head out. I’ll talk to you later?”

‘Your opinions are bad and you should feel bad about them, but I have some reason to not tell you that. instead i want out as fast as possible from this conversation and/or to reroute it IMMEDIATELY’: “I can see why you’d think that, yeah. I get what you’re saying, but, you know, I don’t really know this topic well enough to talk about it, you know? What about [tangential, barely related thing that is safe to talk about that they also care about]?” Wait a few minutes, nod and mmhmm at some stuff, and then check your phone and go “Oh, no, it’s getting pretty late. I have to run, but I’ll talk to you later, alright?” (This one is very useful when your unfortunately unavoidable but incredibly prejudiced grandparents come around and your parents will be mad if you start screaming arguments with them over the Thanksgiving table, especially if you can reroute them into a topic of conversation that other people care about rather than running away wholesale.)

‘you are so fucking annoying. never speak to me again’ or other variants of ‘fuck off’ that you dont want to just say that way to someone you know because that is fucking mean. basically a friendship breakup script: “Listen, I think you’re a great person, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way because it’s really not personal, but I think you and I are very different people, with very different interests.  That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t think that you would enjoy spending much time with me, and vice versa. I wish you the best, but I’d rather we just stay acquaintances, alright?” (Don’t do this unless you absolutely mean it, but it’s good to know what to say when you mean it.)

like. imagine you are grace. you have a life you enjoy where you get to teach kids you’re fond of about a subject you love. you’ve been hanging out with your friend marissa weekly for years (!) and you have a lot of peers on project hail mary who you respect and even have fun with. but! you’re also like 40, and you know how the world works - at the end of the day, at the end of the project, all of those people will go back to their parents and families and partners. the people whose names are on their emergency contact forms and birth certificates and marriage licenses and apartment leases. no matter how much you care about them, and no matter how much they care about you, there is always someone else in their life who is Above you, and Before you, because That’s How The World Works.

so like… yeah. lmao. aroace grace not opening himself up all the way because he anticipates pain and wants to avoid that is a kind of protective hedging that i find very likely for him to engage in? even if he opens himself up to the people around him, the fact is that most of those people will only reciprocate to whatever degree they/society deem acceptable for friendship, even if they like him a lot.

the concept of star-eating microbes causing a crisis and the solution being the introduction of space wolves to space yellowstone to control the space elk population. i love a good trophic cascade

dr ryland grace immediately pitching "turn the spaceship into a giant centrifuge to generate gravity" and then not balancing his actual centrifuge later on

the entire "life is reason" scene really

grace forgetting to open the mystery alien container in a fume hood AND immediately sticking his nose in it. if we did this in chemistry lab we were executed on the spot

academia drama being one of the cornerstones of grace's character

grace switching through every spectrum setting on the microscope to try to see into the astrophages and not being able to (relatable)

also: the astrophage dying and grace going "ohhh it died..." (very relatable)

grace having his not-scientist buddy Carl to give him frank solutions when he's overthinking. yes, often the solution is just to put the box in another box

copious duct tape usage

just sticking a filter into the path of the petrova line to collect astrophage goop

eva going "so it's alive" when grace tells them the astrophage are moving, and him being like "WELL ok that could be for a lot of reasons" in the tone of someone who doesn't even know where to start explaining why that's a hasty assumption

grace referring to the first new astrophage as his and carl's baby multiple times (HIGHLY relatable)

who benefits from you believing that people like that exist, and in such quantities that theres no choice but to lock them away?