startingatmidnight

hey, are we maybe chewing gum at the never seeing your friend again party.

I'm back doing what I love, which is making fanfic covers. All Project Hail Mary this time!

Credits under the cut!

Project Hail Mary // Incorrect quotes 3/?

Bonus:

Ryland Grace has made it all the way to his bike with Eva Stratt at his heels, so her trusted security team has correctly assessed it's time to move in the cars, and Carl is approaching off-screen.

Grace comes out of the little "I don't know why that makes me such a nut!" rant, and there Carl is, stepping up into frame exactly next to Stratt. Tall, broad, unimpressed, unmistakably a force to be reckoned with, unmistakably a trusted professional.

But also a nameless goon at this point. An extension of the threat Stratt seems to represent to Grace. A depersonalized tool.

Grace clocks the cars, his presence, the unfolding situation, instantly and incredulously. And he does something clever, something he always does, which is to call attention to the absurdity of the unspoken threat by trying to force the situation into a normal mold.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

Turning Eva's nameless goon into a person with agency. Trying to force a relationship that hinders coercion.

Ideally, this would force them all to acknowledge how abnormal they are acting and retreat a little to keep up the appearance of normality. Or admit to what they are doing by refusing. Either way, the ball shifts out of Ryland's court into theirs.

Neither happens, though.

Carl sees exactly what he's trying to do with that and interrupts him mid-question. "Carl." And then keeps staring at him the same way as before. One word, and we already know so much about him.

He is not a nameless goon. He is an individual named Carl.

And he fully supports what is happening there. Because nothing is normal and it's stupid to pretend that what is happening isn't happening.

So yes, while he bonds with Grace over silliness and is the astrophage-coparent and instigator of Carl's Hypothesis... he is also entirely introduced to us as the man who will wish Grace the best of success on the mission while he's being sedated on the ground. Because Carl has a personal opinion about what is at stake.

"Sun's really dying, isn't it?"

hey, are we maybe chewing gum at the never seeing your friend again party.

look at this, holy shit.

it's important to mention some cool stuff going on in these spreads (tho they can correct me if it's since been changed): they had to manually recreate all the unicode symbols i saw fit in my infinite wisdom to throw into the chapters using adobe illustrator. a great example of how sometimes the creative choices you make idly in a collaborative project can become a bottleneck down the line for someone else.