Semi-Imaginary Place

Colorism in china has existed long before white people started bathing more than once a month. It's just a very different paradigm.

Skin color in chinese/han culture and east asia in general is about class not race. Being the largest ethnic group in the world (lit like 1/7 of the world population), there is some diversity in han skin color from light to medium light to medium. And there is a slight difference corresponding to latitude (southern han are a little darker than northern han even accounting for environment/lifestyle). But most of that color difference is environment and lifestyle aka we tan easily. So the farmer or laborer out in the sun all day isn't genetically different from the noble inside or under a shaded canopy all day but the court people have a lighter skin color. So lighter skin color becomes a prestige symbol same as other status signifiers like long nails, elaborate clothes, being carried everywhere, that one period where bound feet were popular, etc. These are all social signals that you are so rich you can have seevants do everything for you and you never have to go outside or evern walk for yourself.

So thus light skin color gets associated with all sorts of noble bullshit like being more cultured and noble and beautiful. And it becomes a beauty standard that spreads with han influence across east and se asia (se asia has other factors). Of course every country is multiethnic, main land china, taiwan, hong kong, singapore etc. are all multiethnic so you get intraethnic and interethnic diversity in skin color

Then someone said "it's always light skin good dark skin bad" which is such a narrow minded tiktok brained incorrect statement i dont even know where to begin.

South asia again operates on a different paradigm. Specifically the migration and invasion by the aryan ethnic group starting at the himalayan foothills and extending south like 2000 years ago. This contributed to the caste system and guess who put themselves at the top yeah the indoaryans started the brahmin caste and the invaded dravidians got stuck at the bottom. This was 2000+ years ago so the caste system has since moved on from race and skin color but it did set the beauty standard for south asia that continues on to this day. Part of the invasions included revising the existing local mythology including this one folk hero whose name I have forgotten. His skin color was originally described as so dark it was blue (dark as a raincloud) (because very dark skin does reflect blue light) and while his story was adopted his iconography was changed so that his skin color was actually blue.

So south east asia got a bit of both. But in modern times you can see the chinese influence more (movies, tv, ads, etc.)

Oh and for honkai star rail xianzhou specifically they're all on spaceships so while more color variation would be nice, sun? what sun. All of xianzhou to begin with is a genre subversion of han mythology and the celestial court

A more interesting conversion is about how the boisin are mongol coded and also like really negatively portrayed in star rail. Which makes sense because xianzhou is drawing on a lot of chinese literature where mongols/central asians/barbarians from the north/west are a frequent looming threat. Like this is a literary factional archetype that star rail is drawing from. But also yikes it really is all the negative stereotypes. Maybe it'd be better if boisin were based on multiple cultures or portrayed less negatively but then we wouldn't have the folktale and literary references.

Now the one downside is having something that can be grabbed in combat which is true of any hair longer than 1 in which is all I see drawn anyways (like you lot really think mb would risk hair longer than 2 in?). But all these hairstyles can minimize grabbing by tying and oiling the hair. Most chonmage are oiled anyways which would make them difficult to grab. A braid can easily be coiled flat to the head. And both those would then be harder to grab than 2 in modern hair.

New venture on the 8th dawn: oh there's more why did the last main quest talk like that was the end. Several weeks later. Weren't stops suppose to be 7 days and here himeko is talking about taking a few weeks off to revisit places which is what caused the fuel crisis to begin with. Sunday wants to be punished and is punishing himself by not contcting robin. Tell you damn sister you are alive. I'm more confused about the timeline than ever. Sunday and woneeek talk about how this is sunday coming back to penacony so how much later is this??

Gopher gave like a 10 year old control of reality for the day and now kid sunday's ridiculous rules are back. Sunday's really interesting he's driven by a need to improve things. The ivy league student if i were just in charge I'd fix everything, and if i want something done right i have to do it myself mentalities. Control freak workaholic indeed. I just rewatched kh3d so it's on my mind, sunday is very hard on himself and yeah the whole trap everyone in the universe in his dream was yikes, but sunday seems to have always had the mentality that failure makes him lesser. Also interesting that he frames what happened in terms of failure instead of like anything else ex:harm.

I mostly just ignored it at the time because the entire loufu main story was one of the worst written things I've experienced in a while. So phytallia or whatever her name is possesed tingyun because she's a heliobus and when we defeat her tingyun's form also dissappears this contridicts how heliobus possession works. We meet tons of possesed people and get possesed ourselves and every time the heliobus leaves the original person/body gets left behind. So what the hell happened with tingyun? I mostly just passed it off as a writing error, that the heliobus lore was later corrected or the 2 writers just fidn't communicate which us common in live/continuous development games. So tingyun did get destroyed by posession and ruan mei managed to recreate her? Sure it's all space magic to me anyways.

That didn't explain how she disappeared on the loufu. Ok so the modification to account for permanent destruction contamination turned her tail pink and I'm guessing loucha was the one who got her out of there. Which leaves more questions i thought cianzhou was imprisoning loucha I guess he got out. I assume tingyun was in the coffin and was the delivery he was talking about (horrible pacing of this information btw). Which raises the next question of how long has tingyun's body been in the coffin? Like if the tingyun that disappeared was a heliobus projection then loucha double reverse kidnapped her from phyglia (whatev) then was he carrying her around the entire loufu story? But then why sneak her in... No she had to have been on the loufu but then who prediction she'd get kidnapped and experimented on and needed rescue. Im confused.

This is like the 3rd time sunday has underestimated robin smh. After that teasing about mr workeeek and the best alias sunday can come up with is wonweek. Yup robin clocks him in 2 sentences and then begins running circles around sunday in the conversation. Now that i think about it both siblings crossdress for their disguises. I hadn't applied the broken bird metaphor to sunday before but it is in line to what robin said about how sunday tends to overthink and get stuck on his failures. Just like how he was unwilling to let the healed bird out of the cage. But robin is encouraging him to fly. She also even knew he was coming and prepared a puzzel for him. Wonweek being sunday's resonance creation i did not guess.

Sunday took off the halo to feel pain nd remind himself of his failures. But also as a reset point to enter the dream neutral of order and harmony. Sunday learned of the stellaron when he became head of the oak family. Why was he so suprised about that revelation in dreamreef? And yes this storyline takes place after sunday left and returned. Where was he? Or am i doing these out of order? Aw he hates himself. He's stuck in a cage of his own making

I really have to say sunday's first outfit is vastly superior to his new/playable out fit. The second outfit is a mess visually it's 2 coats glued together with tassels and a scark and eibbons glued on, hiw does it even work?? I'd excuse the logistics because dream if it wasn't so ugly. the white suit on the other hand has distinct shapes and lines. It's good use of positive and negative space. It's 3000% better as a deaign. Yeah yeah character development but you didn't have yo put him in that atrocity. Also the funny lore implication for the sacredos armor is that sunday just stripped on the spot and gave the astral express the clothes off his back. Trailblazer brongs up a good point despite his whole arc having religious imagery and being about religion and literally quoting christian sermon, sunday has very little faith in humnity but also in general that's why he feels he has to do so much on his own.

Memories are the prelude to dreams because I'm STILL in penacony. Wait this is post amphoreous why was this unlocked ages ago in main quest. Ah whatever. So now i don't trust any of constance/dahlia's identities. Is she actually a memokeeper or part of the duke inferno family? All i know is that she has memory mind powers. So when firefly and silverwolf broke into the dreamscape firefly walked through a vision of the real hotel and acheron. Hasn't it been like 15 patches. And only now is the story addressing how it was revealed that all of what players experienced were the modified memories (that black swan recorded?). We never did see the truth of events. But also i can't tell if what dahlia showing us actually happened or not. Or more specifically how much of it is true. Her intro frames her as someone duplicitous, she introduces herself as a nameless then as blackswan but also you aren't on the train at all. So we are poised to not trust her when dahlia says she was there the whole time in penacony. The dahlia makes 3 important memokesps mucking around penacony. Sparkle claims robin is aligned with order not harmony before "killing" her, i wonder what is up with that

Yeah yeah glamoth was using the power of propogation to make their own queen and hive. What I'm confused about is the timeline. Penacony's swam disaster happened pretty soon after the rebellion so like at least 1000 years ago if not 2. If ar214 was present for that then her and firefly meeting was earlier and when they last met was before the fall of the glamoth empire. If so then firefly is like 2000 years old which is weird because her whole character concept is how she'll die young from magic cancer (clever integrating the swam dying battle mechanic into the entropy syndrome). "When (Trailblazer) and Kafka found me, I had just finished my duties as a Glamoth Knight..." I'm missing something.

So dahlia is always messing with others' perceptions of her and black swan thinks she's a cremator. The presentation of these plot points is really weird. There was the first penacony story which was loads better than loufu but still a bit messy but then they put story points in monkey ninjas, fate crossover, and dahlia memories stories so all the plot pieces are scattered everywhere. It's not very cohesive. I like a puzzle so I'm doing ok but this presentation and progression/pacing is not well thought out.

Robin and sunday are each other's doves. Sunday wants to shelter robin and keep her uninvolved while he does everything. Robin wants to set him free. I'm still confused sparkle put her mask on robin and that removed the one she previously had on?? Uuuuuuu. Robin can harmonize with harmony in dreamreef but not in the sweet dream which has been filled with order. Robin previously vould because gopher was specifically harmonizing with her. Ok that makes sense robin herself believes in harmony. But then there's the part about how gopher gave her a "divine law" (order) when she left penacony. But she's not order aligned since she wasn't harmonizing with order in the 12 hours. So ??? What's that about? manchurian agent/disease vector for order??

Sunday tried to atticwife the universe. Huh.

Yeah tiernan fought the swam disaster which ar-214 caused which was after parting from firefly. What is the timeline??? The glamoth knights were spreading the swam as they were also powered by propogation. That's a good one. Oh gopher you never villian monologue, that just leaves evidence. In the clockie movie the primordial dreamscape was compared to a dessert that gopher build a lush garden in but until now we didn't know how. By paths I would have guessed abundance but propogation works too. Wait why isn't the swarm following firefly around? Dahlia allied with the dreammaster who gave her "divine law" (order power??) and that boosted her memoria power. She set a remote detonator on robin's memories that would wipe out what she learned to reset her back to order. I was wondering about that since robin personally seems to believe and align with harmony what gopher's plans for her were since he totally had plans and wanted her to be chordmaster.

Between her and the dahlia acting like exes and acheron's trailer I think black swan has a type. Worm eaten wood. Gopher wood merged himself with the dreamscape. If propogation is infecting the dreams I wonder if this is the containment zone. He's losing control of propogation and that's why he's stepped back from his duties claiming illness. I've been wondering for months (patch time might have been a year) why aventurine wasn't in dreamreef! So razalina also merged her life with the memory zone to stabilize the dream and let people lost in the chaotic memoria have their desires guide them back to somewhere more stable. Hmm dahlia is talking like wood's plan to capture propogation hasn't happened yet and firefly is his lucky break. But what about ar-214? Was her corpse an illusion he got dahlia to show firefly? It's sounding that way. Nd why is dahlia showing trailblazer all this? Gopher IS the four divine laws. One is with robin, one with the dahlia to leash her, I suspect one on sunday and the last is the one managing the dreamscape. Oh there's words i need to look this up. 1. path gift. Dont rely on the divine gifts we have been given. Robin. 2. oppression restriction. Be humble, restrained, grounded. Binding dahlia 3. obliteration paradise. Paradise is fleeting. Gives attack. 4. No one knows or at least dahlia doesn't. Dahlia days that the 4th law erased his plan's only weakness and gopher wood is dead but right before the charmony festival we see him talking to sunday with the raven and also see him talking through a pepishi and the harmony hive mind. Or is this scene with dahlia, blackswan, and aventurine happening while sunday is turning into the aeon of domination. And why does gopher wood want a swarm disaster right at the end here.

I've been getting those txt msgs from from sunday and he's so incredibly earnest. He's always trying his best. He wants to help. He's like some sort of shepard dog that just painfully wants to help.

I can't believe the devs removed argenti's intro to the story. He just randomly crashes into the express and through sheer riz ipc lacky has a quasi religious experience and totally changes his own life plans. Then hi bye he jumps out to fight a bug. That's perfect foreshadowing to him just showing up with 0 explanation to wood's special swarm incubation dream.

How did firefly know where oak dream/manor was and how to get to it? Did sparkle give her instructions off screen? I really should read crime nd punishment. The revolt in penacony killed gopher's physical body and then choice he made then in immortalized in oak manor force or deceit. So punish the revolters or sweep it under the rug? Man i really need to read crime and punishment. Ok they lost me i dont get the family envoy section. So wood was to be punished for not stopping the revolt which is seen as a failure to the family and to atone he needs to take on another "crime" which is the stellaron that harmony created. Are all the stellarons created by harmony?? If so why is it considered a crime. And in taking the stellaron wood is also betraying harmony??? Im so confused. Also, the timeline!! The clockie movie implied that wood used the stellaron to build the sweet dream to begin with but this revolt sounds like it's past the founding. Maybe i need to review it. Order was strongest during the swarm disaster because everyone was afraid and desperate for a scrap of stability. Wood seeks to recreate that and scare people into praying for order. Which is exactly what ena did not want. THEY chose to fall rather than people pray to THEM because they were scared. Also confirmation that order is one of harmony's faces and propogation isnt. I don't get why releasing the swarm and revealing harmony's lies are mutually exclusive i dont understand what lies he's talking about either. Alive in body dead in spirit is what the family envoy condemed wood to. Divine law iii clarifies it means to give up on your desires and give up the ability to choose. "If i have to suffer this everyone will". Which makes me more confused. Wood didn't want to revive order but was ordered to by the family??

and translation note nü shì and xîao jîe are both translated as miss but the former is more respected like madam or like female master and the later is informal like what you'd call woman you don't know of the street or more csually like missy.

Still confused firefly thinks wood/iii has surrendered to destiny but she thinks even if the end is eternined you can still choose the path. Will this be her second dearh? Also yeah harmony is responsible for all the stellarons. Are the writers being deliverately confusing? Ok yup that's why wood needed firefly. And here I was gearing up for a fight. He's inciting her wish to live (through illusions) onto the stellaron to use her to propogate the swarm disaster. So is that the same stellaron from the theater or are there 2 stellarons in penacony? The raven following sunday is divine law 4 midnight and that's where i lost the plot. Uuuug my brain. What strike would shatter the stellaron even if firefly never showed up. What does this mean?? "The dreamers will learn that the power to destroy their own lives comes from the Harmony, but that it is ultimately the worst option." I just flat out do not understand this line. Edit i think i get it he's saying that he's making a wakeup call to everyone that the harmony sucks and relying on the stellaron is a bad idea.

And then the next part of the conversation is using this star metaphor I barely comprehend. We already know the result, the embryo of philosophy. Sunday does not revive order but creates a new path of dominion/domination. Divine law 4 detach oneself from personal attatchmnet. reminds me of hanekawa from bakemonogatari if you love everything you don't have preferences. Sunday rejects the divine laws. wood is asserting that the stars are cruel and sunday is refuting him by saying he'll become the only star in the sky and won't be cruel. Are the stars metaphors for aeons? Sunday says the stars are cruel because they are only thinking of themselves and have never shared "heat" (power? Blessings?) with the masses, so exactly because they are detatched from worshipers. Sundays says he's going to be the brightest and only star, drowning out the night stars with the noon day sun and taking down any other suns (ena?). Sunday's only divine law: submit and be blessed or die. Ok this has taken like half an hour.

So as planned firefly's wish revived the swarm including her old friend. Wood's 2 step plan. Recreate the swarm disaster in the dream, make ena's dream cover the universe thus making it the only reality with an endless propogation to fuel endless prayers. Wood though that because the past is set vhoices will always be the same this the future is deterministic. Dahlia spells out the main theme embrace the past to find the strength to wake up and face the future. And as firefly said earlier the end is already known but here in some good story gameplay integration we get to choose how we get there (i hope).

I wonder when the writers decided stellarons were made by/from harmony. In the concept drafts befor launch? 2 weeks before this patch came out? I'm betting it was more of rhe later. And when little miss/mister stellaron was inteoduced the writers had no idea what a stellaron was besides magic uranium. Like i havent seen any fragmentum on penacony.

Black swan explains that sunday was merging reality and dreams with asdana's memoria leaking out which caused the "flaw". So misha showing up wasn't reteoactive insertion into our memory. He was there because the memoria was bleeding over to reality. On one hand the penacony story did feel incomplete with some holes towards the end. But on the other hand this has to be the worst example of achronistic storytelling I've ever seen. The out of order scenes do nothing but make the story harder to follow. It's bad guys it's bad writing. We just keep jumping back and forth for no reason. A lot of these scenes would have done better inserted earlier in the chain (like 10 patches ago).

Anyways aventurine doesn't sleep well and his eyes have the same color rings as ena's. Sunday aeon is held together barely with duct tape and a prayer. 10,000 oak members + swarm fear vs. ipc preservation ship supression. Sunday's paradise was build on top of the family's 12 hours (+primordial dreamscape). So now we need to break through 3 layers of dreams. Interestingly they are straight up calling sunday ena now. Here we go again. Why does firefly fall into ena's dream when she breaks through into the 12 hours layer? Uuug dreams merging with reality will make any death real. If firefly's script says she'll die 3 times doesn't that mean elio doesn't see a future where sunday suceeds? Since sunday has to fail for firefly to live and have a 3rd death. Jade's cornerstone can read wishes or something and it's now in the dreamscape. When people fear the swarm they'll pray to preservation instead of order. Topaz was stuck at the border since it was found in the gem bag? It's been too long I don't remember. So that'll take down ena. Hmm oh i connected 2 dots. Domination was plan B. Sunday tried to resurrect Order and we stopped him so he tried to raise an entirely new aeon. Here I though embro of philosophy was the original plan. I'd wonder where argenti is but he's always just come and gone, like a cat, so this is on brand.

Ah. Finally. Sparkle loaded bombs all over the place as the original countermeasure to break the 12 hours layer. But why would this kill the dreamers for sure. Is this not like firefly where their deaths would only stick if ena's dream pervailed. What makes this different? Also wonder why sparkle is helping i cant remember. Also translation note, sparkle calls the bombs fireworks, her name in Chinese is "firework", literally fire flower for both which is why sparkle has a flower motif (and a bomb motif). Birds fly because they are birds they don't need a reason people slumber because they are people here we go again. I know the writers want this to be really profound but this is very im 14 and this is deep level cool words strung together to sound cool intead of actually having meaning. The irony that a stellaron destroyed their homeworld but sunday is basing ena's dream on the power of a stellaron. Robin sings for sunday because she thought it would comfort him. Both siblings struggle with wanting to be a force in the universe and enact change but the difficulty or futikity in doing so. More than "proof" "reassurance" seems like a better word. Don't fear failing because there is still hope afterwards (you could have just said this instead of the metaphors). Sunday really is a little birdie robin is looking afterwards. Uug metaphors, because sunday can't stop people from dreaming/hoping, they will inevitably wake up because people don't need a reason. Even if robin fails you can't stop people from flying/hoping/waking.

So firefly absorbed the swarm corrupted sam and that burned her to death? Is that the 2nd death? Wait no. Still not sure why she falls into ena's dream. Wow the devs are getting a lot of mileage out of the sunday fight. That's 4 times now. (Understandable, very cool fight). I get that the devs wanted back to back fights but the firefly -ar214 should have been earlier. The tension was building up earlier and a fight would have been perfect instead we get a scene transition without catharsis and the pace hits a wall.

I'm too tired to figure out what is going on. This may be elio's script but i'ce also seen the credits like 3 times so idk which is rhe script. And then daglia says the true ending was toosad to so you saw something else and im so done. We saw firefly on the yatch but the dahlia is saying she met no one between shnday fight and leaving. The finality part actually amkes sense with all that talk about how the future is decided already because the past is the past so all that would lead to a person'a decisions have already happened. And here we have finality cat who can be convinced to change the past and thus our future.

So it was the stellaron hunters that asked the dahlia to erase trailbazer's memories to avoid drawing destruction's attention on amphoreus. But i haven't gone to amphoreus yet so yeehaw destruction here we come. Oh and vonstance cound be ome the lord ravager ephemera and detroy remembrance. Uug wow firefly really is the writer's favorite. I'm so confused. Here my interpretation. So firefly's 3 "true" deaths are her dreamself since she won't dream again (why can't she sneak into penavony again or is this a destiny thing), she DID die from propogation, and the propogation accelerated entropy loss syndrome. Her intention was to die alone (and stalk us). But we either find her or like retroactively imagine/dream of finding her? (I'm confused) anyways and stay with her until she dies. Then i get confused because the galaxy rangers areiving has fireworks then there's the upcoming ship fireworks, then there's the fireworks from the yatch episode, and now firefly and trailblazer are imagining fireworks together. Firefly goes blind before the fireworks start and trailblazer is determined to convince finality to change the past which is how we get the yatch episode.

I think I finally understand what aventurine was up to. 1 smuggle the jade cornerstone in so it can be used to info gather and as a focus/relay for preservation power/influence. 2 get himself killed/missing so the ipc can say penacony can't manage itself. 3 get into the restricted areas to dig up dirt like the swarm incubation and order.

Martha Wells short stories from Muderbot ("Rapport" etc.) but also "Obsolescence" which I like better. Martha Wells in general

Heart of the Comet for deregulated capitalist hell (Reagan era), similar mystery setup but in the old 20th century style of a much slower pace. transhumanist discussions.

Dust by Elizabeth Bear for something similarly fresh and innovative and also the genderqueer space future. Similar thriller pacing. However Dust itself is the puzzle and the fun part is figuring out what is going on compared to tmbd which is very easy low effort reading to get a surface level understanding of what is going on. Very exotic and confusing. "Scifi told in the style on fantasy".

Theodore Sturgeon short stories for some more historical scifi. (The guy responsible for Star Trek's famous "Amok Time"). In particular the historical milestone "A World Well Lost".

Guy(n) who doesn't want to be there dragged on adventures and has to save the group honestly describes The Hobbit.

Overall most similar jrpg to the tolkien legendarium is probably like Elden Ring. Sense of melancholy lost glory. Travel and explore and adventure. Magic as a state of being and fantastical and slightly eldritch elements. Despite everything there is still beauty in the world, Arda Marred etc. Everything about Elden Ring really. Corruption. Lost kings and queens. Secrets to the world both wonderous and terrible. Fulfilling destiny and quests.

Ah finally my area of expertise: the overlap of tolkien and jrpgs. I have some experience in Tolkien scholarship and my personal taste is in The Silmarillion (both in lore and the irl published book) so here's series that remind me of it. And I connect thematic similarities more than surface details.

Final Fantasy IX. Adventure. Melancholy. Existential/discussions of fate (or "doom" in the text). hidden elf kingdom kinda. passes the vibe check for similarity. There's also war and invasion adding pressure/dread to both. sense of a living breathing world.

Final Fantasy XII Adventure to the background of messy politics (im a feanorian enthusiast can you tell?). Discussion on war and power and morality. Hidden elf kingdom. Even more of a living breathing world

Nier Replicant. Also melancholy and existential but more cynical than tolkien's works are but it fits the atmosphere of silm. Quest narrative like lotr (actually a distant descendant. Tolkien to sword and sorcery to dnd to dragon quest to jrpgs to nier). Like very existential, similarly to silm discussions of fate and free will and doom, oaths and the extremes people will go if they have a justification. Exploring and critiquing violence

I heard dqxi is similar but i haven't played it.

Octopath traveler 2. Explore a beautiful but dangerous world being overtaken by evil/darkness.

Other fromsoft games like demonsouls, dark souls 1-3. Fallen kingdoms and general sense of decline from a mystical past to a mundane future, exploration. More body horror than tolkien but within acceptable range.

Not an rpg but loz Twilight Princess which nier was inspired by. Twilight are major motifs for both. Quest narrative across a failing world. Also melancholy. 

Not japanese but dragon age. Origins is better written but has an obsession with lust demons and shock value gross out content. Inquisition has worse writing but closer atmosphere

There are also official tolkien verse games but I feel each of them misses the mark. They are closer to peter jackson's lord of the rings and rather distant from silm. So like glorification of war and violence where tolkien was a critique of that very concept present in germanic epics (beowulf) and was extremely anti-war having fought in ww1 and lived through ww2.

Xenoblade Chronicles 1. I was hesitant to add this because it's very scifi but it at it's core it's about a band of adventurers on a quest to save their world journeying across different environments and metter different cultures. Both have christian discussions of the relationship between creator, sub creator and creation. Tolkien being devote catholic and deep in the theological pits. Xbc1 by being gnosticism inspired.

I was thinking about ffx because both have quests to save the world through fantastical lands and people. They're both heavily about death and grief. But they are thematically opposite (foils maybe). Ffx is about thinking about faith and the institutions of faith critically and evaluating how they affect society. The legandarium is about keeping faith and using it as a moral compass. I suppose both discuss religion, ffx directly, tolkien because he's so catholic is bleeds into everything.

"To Interstellar. While both stories involve desperate missions to save humanity from extinction, Project Hail Mary acts as a Spiritual Antithesis to Interstellar by swapping cosmic dread and the "transcendental power of love" for scientific optimism and interstellar friendship. While Interstellar is a heavy, sweeping drama focused on the bittersweet sacrifice of family and the isolation of the soul, Project Hail Mary is a witty, Competence Porn narrative that suggests the scientific method and cross-species collaboration are the ultimate tools for survival. Essentially, where Interstellar looks inward at human emotion as a physical force, Project Hail Mary looks outward, finding hope in logic, humor, and the simple bond between two unlikely companions." (Some guy on tvtropes)

Intersteller also ends up being really condescending towards biology while project hail mary celebrates biology. Interstellar is callous and blatant about exploiting earth until everything useful to humanity is sucked up and then discarding the planet while glorifying the delusions of grandeur necesary for this mentality. Project hail mary is about compassion for the planet, for other planets, and for Others. Intersteller is a colonizer wet dream (what are you an israeli settler in west bank??). Project hail mary is about how the invasive species is just doing what bacteria do in favorable conditions with no natural controls and how to rebalance things.

Have i mentioned i find interstellar morally repulsive. Excellent well made movie. I hate it. Love project hail mary i need to watch it again when im not delirious from sleep dysfunction.

Edit: "While most scifi reaches for the metaphysical or the spiritual to bridge the gap between worlds, Project Hail Mary takes a much more grounded approach. It differentiates itself by suggesting that the universe isn't connected by mystical bonds but by objective facts. As opposed to a film like Interstellar, where we are told that love is the one thing that transcends time and space. And it's a beautiful sentiment but it's a total fantasy. There isn't really any science behind that [none in fact]. In this story the relationship between Grace and Rocky is the heart of the film, but that heart is built on a foundation if physics. They don't become friends because they are destined to meet ... proving that the most profound connection isn't magic it's mutual understanding ... It's suggests that our greatest chance for survival isn't tied to fate or destiny, it's in our own ability to observe, think, and innovate. " (Hyperversemedia).

To be more specific Grace and Rocky's relationship is so meaningful exactly because they aren't magically destined but because we see them build communication and a friendship/comraderie brick by brick (and even more so in the book). There is no molecule of love in the universe we must forge it ourselves.