Whale Obsessed

science teacher besties!!

In the book, they drag him to a cushy prison cell and he still has a few days to process everything. It's one thing to think about the possibility of being shipped off on a suicide mission, but being told "these are your circumstances, wether you like it or not" is a whole different beast. He has time, however little, to grieve for the life on earth he's about to lose and the students who will miss him and the heartbreak of being berayed by your friends/coworkers of 4 years. Yeah, he tells Stratt he'll sabotage the mission, but they both know he doesn't mean it. He's angry, scared, sad, the whole range of emotions, but in the back of his mind he has enough time to acknowlege, rationally, that this is the only choice.

In the movie, he doesn't get that. His last moments are adrenaline and visceral terror and being tackled to the ground. It's all emotion running high and he has zero time to switch from the possibility of going on the mission to the reality of being launched into space millions and millions of miles away on a one way trip.

And then, you know, there's recency bias. The lasting echoes of his memory of earth will all be shrouded in anxiety and terror. Imagine years without soft grass and the scent of soil and every time you try and recall the sensation of petrichor and soft dirt or a picnic in the summer you have to stave off a panic attack. A lot of people have latched onto the last human touch he's had being rough and disorienting.

Hello tumblr. I’m reviving my old blog from the dead with some of my PHM fanarts.

it's really interesting looking back at both iterations of the story and how stratt and grace's rapport hinges on unrequitedness. there's obviously the karaoke scene in the movie acting as grace's bid for human connection vs stratt's necessary refusal in order to do her job. the book rarely if ever interrogates stratt's interpersonal relationships in the project and how her sense of duty and utilitarianism extends to them (well, aside from grace. more on that in a sec). She's a History major and an administrator and She Loves Humanity, but it's a characteristic that when analyzed deeper rings pretty hollow (possibly because the author thinks social analysis/critique in science fiction is stupid and thus doesn't exactly have much to say about People like someone in the humanities would. SAD!) so that's an addition to her character from the movie that i'm deeply pleased about. what i don't like as much is that the bid for connection starts from grace.

because book stratt and grace? the one sidedness of their rapport is the driving emotional conflict of the entire pre-launch plotline—and of grace's character development throughout the whole book.

like most scientists on the team, grace was brought onto the project by force, but he's the only one who fulfilled his purpose, was allowed to return to his own life, and then came back of his own volition, out of a sense of personal duty and responsibility. which is the reason stratt takes him back on! and why she begins to rely on him more and more, as an administrator, as a mediator, as a scientist, as an advisor. she has all the more reason to do that when she discovers he's coma resistant, but she was already doing all that baby!

grace spends the rest of their relationship half-assing that sense of responsibility. one thing i adore about book phm is how merciless it is with grace's "modesty" "insecurity" and "social anxiety". children are easy to dote on. they're not stupid, obviously, but on an interpersonal level they're not your equal, they have no way to actually demand accountability from you and call your ass out. he doesn't actually think he's a failure, he's not blind he should know damn well he's not like the other scientists. "science lapdog", "ooo i'm just a little guy cmonnnn i'm just a middle school teacher", he downplays his own importance because if he genuinely grappled with the level of responsibility she holds him to towards the people in the project he'd run like a fucking dog.