I was gonna say 'like WW2' but then rapidly remembered that neither of the existing world wars involved like. much of any direct damage to civilian populations either because America's eternal wars haven't touched its own soil since like the 1860s. except for Pearl Harbour, which was literally One Attack in the whole of WW2 (and which was also primarily targeting a military base. and was in a colonized nation far from the mainland USA). I am not kidding if you look up 'attacks on American soil' every single thing since 1900 except individual attacks (Pearl Harbour and 9/11, basically plus a couple of border skirmishes with Mexico) is like 'America was attacked In The Gulf States' or 'America was attacked In Asia'. like mate where is the US? you can't count attacks on military bases as 'attacks on US soil' unless you need to bulk out the list which. look at the history.

Like imo one of the reasons the US is so comfortable being leisurely belligerent against Literally Any Country In The World is that it's been literally well over a century since the fight actually came to them. why WOULD the US government stop being blindly aggressive when the only costs are financial?

and instead of being primarily concerned about like. the actual thousands of people who are actually gonna die in these strikes. every time the US's unprovoked aggression hits a nuclear state of a state with a measure of international heft, the loudest concern from Americans is OH NO WHAT IF THIS ONE'S WW3

because. war is so abstract and foreign. because it's spent 150 years constantly happening Over There and only involving Americans who are in the military. foreign wars don't register as a threat because they're NOT a threat to Americans (the only Real People) and the way in which they're frightening is the abstract possibility that the other party might at some point bring America actually into the war. which has basically never happened so it's this vast unknown threat.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

'good luck' on a sticky note on ryland's coma suit

the use of the videolog as a way to convey the inner monologue to the screen

grace rocky save stars

the scene where they activate the IR view when ryland is doing the petrova line EVA collection at tau ceti and he's amongst the astrophage. god

just the entire execution of rocky and eridian language. PERFECT. that last scene where ryland doesn't need the translator? god

eva stratt double parked coffee

BLIP-A DESIGN. XENONITE DESIGN. ERIDIAN DESIGN. all impeccable.

'time to go fishing, question?'

the mental health screen room and rocky getting to experience bits of earth via it

the music while the hail mary and the blip a start spinning in sync. actually, just all of the music

ryland grace earth hackey sack packed on the hail mary, presumably on stratt's orders + ryland grace nerdy as fuck graphic tshirts packed on the hail mary, presumably on stratt's orders

implication that PHM sent a military jet to grover cleveland middle school to draw those 'save the world' pictures within 3 days so that they could send them with ryland on the hail mary. GOD.

nannybot -> armando. also ryland calling the ship 'mary'

not strictly within the movie but the tagline 'believe in the hail mary'. yeah.

yao and ilyukhina's collections of photographs and the way ryland cries over them when he does the space burial. they were his friends. he can't remember.

the scene where he's walking through the dark tunnel in the orange eva suit and it's like the inverse of the iconic 2001 space odyssey shot

he bikes to work and it's not for exercise

he vomits into a traffic cone after the supersonic jet ride

he runs from the baikonur facility and claws at the earth under his nails before getting sedated. one last look at the sky.

"WHOOMP THERE IT IS"

ryland grace in his classroom looking at the taped-up line running from venus to the sun that he's made to try to explain to his students what no one understands

ryan gosling's delivery of I showed you a clock and now youre showing me a clock <- THATS A NERD! THATS MY RYLAND GRACE!

"of course i'll watch you sleep, buddy. you gotta promise me you'll wake up though" just kill me now

grace getting to see the the blip-a! also, grace only remembering he didn't volunteer when he sees the light refracting off the blip-a.

rocky make door you close door

AND MOST OF ALL. they. made rockys handprint a scar on grace's arm. forever.

things I missed most from the book that weren't included in the movie

"I don't know if you can hear me. but i'm here, buddy, I'm on your hull!!" movie scene was good but grace clinging onto the blip-a thwacking a wrench into the hull in desperation while space is cold and grey and unrelenting in its darkness and silence around him and he doesnt know if rocky is dead. grace, question? you are here, question?

coma resistance gene plotline. this is FOUNDATIONAL for my understanding of stratt to sending ryland. if she could she would have gone herself. any of the PHM biology techs could have feasibly gone in the movie-verse. but they can't. it's one in 7000 and their next option is a distillery worker from paraguay. ryland grace, microbiologist sentenced to marytrdom by his own genes.... its delicious

doomed climatologist of all time, francois leclerc. he runs the numbers and knows we have nineteen years. he snaps and tells stratt 'this isn’t some optional outcome.' he nukes antarctica and cries. he has no choice

the fact that in the book grace is forced to work on analysing the probe samples and getting roped into PHM. in the movie he says 'I want to help earth if I can!' in that scene w the earth beanbag... its imperative to me that he literally never asked to do any of this at all

"how have you been lately" "dr shapiro and I have begun a sexual relationship"

steve, creator of the beetles

"do not fuck up my house, roscosmos bastards" ilyukhina line you are sorely missed

dmitri and grace bonding over puns and spin drives

'you are a fundamentally good man, dr grace.' 'you're murdering me.'

"why did the kiwi government think you were embezzling millions of dollars" "probably because I was embezzling millions of dollars"

dr lokken and dr grace's panspermia feud

the emotional whiplash of "Sorry, Rocky" after grace realises he can only go back to the blip-a OR earth to “I know you’d love a beetle to take apart, but I couldn’t spare one.”

the desperation of circling the petrovascope to locate the blip-a in increasing 5* slants not knowing if he's going to find anything.

As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...

I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!

But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...

That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and kind, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.

So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.