Gender am I right

A compliment every now and then wouldn't kill ya

I know Mark goes out of his way to ENSURE the others don't feel guilty about his "death" (this kind soul omg)

But I also really like the way, posing for his first photo, he makes sure it's something that can't be (or is hard to be) spun into a negative light. Like yeah he knows PR is going to try to kill NASA for such a stupid mistake, and that picture is going to be in every news story, negative or positive. And he can't control that. But this is something he can control.

How much harder is it to slander a space company when the first picture you get of the abandoned astronaut is him giving you a double thumbs up emoji, him going 👍"ayyyyy!" 👍 I mean.

and like yeah theres a LOT of youtubers and documentaries and he’ll even movies about it, but that takes TIME! so for a while your average guy doesn’t really know what mark was doing on mars apart from what NASA was saying for i’m imagining a lot of interviews going like this:

Mark: I mean i made 600L of water so that was one thing i didn’t have to worry about too badly

Interviewer: wow that’s incredible- what do you mean by “make water”? how did you do that?

Mark: oh NASA hated this one: i burned hydrazine in the Hab and mixed it with oxygen!

Interviewer: … i’m sorry? How did you not blow yourself up??

the martian is the story of one man stranded on mars with barely enough food and supplies to last him a calendar month, let alone the 14 that it inevitably takes to bring him home.

mark watney's rescue means millions of dollars in unplanned expenditures, cooperation between multiple nations that frankly have no stake in the life of one american astronaut, and risking the lives of 5 of his crew members. it is a story that makes you tackle the fundamental question of: "how much is one human life worth?"

the answer, the book (and its equally well-executed movie adaptation) offers, is everything.

they could have simply called it a day and told him that it was untenable, that they cannot possibly be asked to risk the lives of the rest of the ares iii crew. but they did not. they did not, because they deemed that no cost was too high if it meant that there was even a snowball's chance in hell that they could bring that one man home.

project hail mary, on the other hand, is a complete 180.

here, the fate of an entire planet's survival rests upon the shoulders of one rather unremarkable man. ryland grace is a middle school science teacher, whose only claim to fame is a controversial research paper. it is a story that forces you to confront the question: "how much do you personally owe humanity when its fate hangs in the balance?"

once again, the answer is everything.

ryland is not the brightest person on the planet, nor is he the bravest. he doesn't choose to be involved in saving earth, and he certainly doesn't choose to be sent on a suicide mission away from it. in project hail mary, one man has no choice but to shoulder this burden for the sake of humanity. and, it turns out, he's not the only one carrying this responsibility.

somehow, both books provide the same answer and message, only in somewhat different ways. they both serve to convey that life, no matter the scale, is worth preserving.

that when it comes to one man stranded 140 million miles away, no cost is too high, no risk too big, because his life matters. he matters. and he matters not just because he volunteered to go up there, or because it wasn't his fault, or because they know he's out there. he matters because he exists, and that is more than enough to do everything possible to bring him back.

or that no personal cost is too high to pay if you are the one person that can actually save humanity. the people may be faceless, nameless crowds to you, but their lives are worth saving simply because they exist. they exist, and that is plenty reason to doom yourself to certain death if it means that there is even a single chance in hell that you will save them. you don't have to be talented, or remarkable, or necessary to matter.

Steve’s identity revolves entirely around fighting. Fighting for the oppressed, fighting against oppressors, fighting just because. He actively wants to die fighting, that’s why he does what he does. He’s polite, sure, but never confuse that for being nice or civil. There’s a big difference. Steve was probably applying for the draft BEFORE Pearl Harbor, he’s very politically engaged, even before he became Captain America. He might wear old clothes, but rest assured he would be an actual punk if he was born today.

The Dark Worlds represent everything the Lightners keep buried away in the backs of their minds. They're the places where characters go, end up confronting the things that haunt them, and moving forward and growing from it.

'Closing all the fountains' is not the Maturity Button. It is not a metaphor for growing up. It is the repress everything and become exactly like your parents who don't know how to deal with the fact that they're divorced / their daughter is gone / their son probably doesn't want to come back from college / their wife is genuinely kinda horrible toward their daughter button.