#kier posts

He was put under, into this dangerous coma (that seems to have killed his 2 crewmates), and his body was violated by more than just injection of sedatives and coma-inducing drugs. He's got all this medical equipment on him and inside him: electrodes, an IV, NG tube, catheter, and what Grace calls a "butt tube".

In the movie he's dressed in a (white, I think) flightsuit as he's rolled towards the rocket. Since the Hail Mary was assembled in orbit, I'm not sure what the timeline would've been for when he was changed out of it and into the coma suit with the zipper hood (zipper over his face like a body bag...). But given the time between his initial drugging after he ran and the launch, I imagine that there already would have been some of this medical equipment in play, forced onto him by medical professionals who may or may not have known how willing he was. The robot arms handled everything once he was on the Hail Mary, but I still wonder about Yao and Ilyukhina, how much of a role they played in transferring Grace's unconscious body onto the Hail Mary... It's upsetting, the idea of other, unknowing people on the mission being made complicit in what book Grace directly calls his "murder".

In the book he wakes up naked and exposed, just absolutely covered in tubes and wires, which is. Rough. And obviously terrifyingly vulnerable. Movie Grace has the luxury of briefs underneath a translucent coma suit, but that presents a different terrifying thing when he eventually changes out of it and takes notice of all of the things attached to and inside of his body (honestly maybe that's why he just put the stripe hoodie on and didn't change into different bottoms 😬).

For book Grace (and if you notice the "Always muscles?" note on movie Grace's Who Am I? whiteboard), he's shocked at his musculature and focuses on it in a way that makes it feel like his body wasn't particularly toned beforehand, and these muscles feel Off.

His body's functions were quite literally arrested away from him. Even his muscles themselves, that give your average able person the power to move and control themselves and where they are in space. Control of his muscles is taken by the electrodes that buzz and puppet them to keep his body toned and functional. His whole body is carefully maintained to be functional for the mission. All against his will. And his body might just look/feel unrecognizable to him because of it.

In the book the robot arm shaves his face, which oddly feels worse to ne. When he's in his coma, he doesn't even get autonomy over basic optional grooming of himself, of his own appearance. Movie Grace's hair growing out is a different horror, that he has no control over his own grooming and appearance because he's, again, put in a coma and kept alive for the express purpose of the mission, becoming unrecognizable to himself in another way. There's a reason he cuts his hair short again as he gets his shit together, it's him claiming who is and the responsibility he has to Yao and Ilyukhina and the world now that he's on this mission. He wears his own flightsuit, yellow and embroidered with his name, unaware that he never chose this.

Parker is first on screen hanging upside down and then shouting with unfettered glee as she launches herself off a building (ahead of the count). Let alone the little flashback of her as a child blowing up her childhood home and running off with her thieved Bunny.

The way the Ocean is used in the PHM movie fascinates me so so so much.

Ocean exploration is the closest in spirit to space travel that we can have here on Earth. Air to breath and inhospitable pressure are issues for both, that we have to build air-tight vessels and suits for us to survive being there. Before the "Moment" scene, we're literally shown a shot of a deep sea diver in a fish tank at the bar before it cuts to Grace in his EVA suit outside the Mary in Adrien's orbit.

And of course, there's that deep, seemingly endless unknown darkness with the ocean. Cosmic horror tends to use elements of aquatic creatures for a reason, you know? It's terrifying and uncaring that it isn't hospitable to humans. Project Hail Mary looks at the fear over aliens that you get in sci-fi and cosmic horror and says that hey, life is weird, and maybe the life out there is more familiar to us than we think?

Of course, alien life can still be scary. But life we know about here on Earth is scary too. But a lot of the time, that scariness comes from it being unknown and unfamiliar to what we're used to. With the panspermia explanation of the similarities between Astrophage and Tau Ceti/Adrien's life, and Rocky and life on Erid too, PHM looks at life in our corner of the universe and says that it isn't that alien after all. It's from a different environment, but the ocean life on Earth is too.

Which brings me to Grace. It's clear that Grace finds some peace in sitting at the shoreline, it's a calming place for him, to watch the ebb and flow, maybe let the waves hit his feet. San Francisco, his home, is on the coast of course, he chooses a coastline to sit down at in the screen room of the Hail Mary, and his biodome places his house on the shore. The shore is a liminal space of sorts, between ocean and land. It's safe and comfortable, and he can look at it and think of it and wonder about the unknown beyond what he can see. Stargazing is much the same (looking at you, Neil Diamond's "Stargazer" playing when he wakes on Erid). Sitting on the crust of the Earth, looking into the sky and beyond into space. And he'd watch the ebb and flow of the universe and *wonder* about the life that could be out there. He specialized in speculative xenobiology from the comfort of keeping his feet on the ground here on Earth.

Grace likes the fog. He likes to wonder about the unknown. In fog, you see what's closest to you clearest. In the thickest of fog, it's perfectly safe if you're slow, careful, and keep your wits about you. You can enjoy the wonder of light scattering and refracting off the water droplets, obscuring the familiar world around you into an more unknowable sea. Fog is scarier when you don't know the place you're in, when you don't know the path you're on further than what your limited perception can see. Fog is more dangerous when there's a moving vehicle, whether you're in it or not, moving too fast to see through it clearly.

And that's where Grace falters. Hurtling beyond the liminal space where he's safe on the edge, where he can observe from afar and wonder. He's so deeply curious, he wants to know and share his knowledge, share what he learns, but he's terrified to risk going beyond the bounds of safety.

The uniting building block of life between the life he's discovering and the life he knows on Earth, is water. His speculation on life that isn't water-based is what lead him to die on the hill he did in academia, setting him on a totally different course in life to become a teacher and later be recruited by Stratt as the first person to study astrophage. Rejecting the limitations of life as water-based is what lead him to be the one to discover three planets worth of (water-based) life. So when he looks at the ocean, it's cycles of waves and tides, he's symbolically looking at life itself. Quite literally he's looking at its source. A common thread between his own life and life on Earth, Adrien, and Erid. And it's beautiful and it's massive and it's peaceful and it's so much bigger than he could ever be as one person. But it isn't.

The fact that in Nate's story he spins, Eliot, Hardison, and Parker die holding each other's hands, Eliot not left out of it, that really hits for me (even if that isn't how it played out, that the three of them were never in that van together like that, let alone dying together).

I really enjoy myself an aro Eliot headcanon and I love the idea of a queerplatonic thing going on with the Leverage OT3. So much in The Long Goodbye Job proves that regardless of Hardison and Parker being romantically together, Eliot means just as much to them as they do to each other, and Nate and Sophie both see that.

Nate's telling of the Heist Gone Wrong sees and recognizes how much of a Unit the three of them are, that just bc Parker and Hardison are together romantically, doesn't mean that Eliot doesn't get to hold both their hands at the end too. Sterling has the line of "Does Parker even know that you got Hardison killed?" bc he doesn't recognize that Eliot is just as vital a part of their dynamic. Whereas Nate does. In Nate's telling of their "deaths", Hardison while dying asks if Eliot got out okay, and they take each other's hands. Parker takes Eliot's hand. She dies holding Eliot's hand, not Hardison's, you know? Eliot dies holding both their hands. Nate's story sees them as the unit they are, that Eliot is an intrinsic piece of their relationship to each other. Eliot is the bridge between them as they die in Nate's story, while Sterling only acknowledges Parker's relationship to Hardison in his antagonizing.

At the end of the ep, Sophie says "Promise me, you'll keep them safe" to which Eliot says "Til my dying day." She says it bc she Knows he will. Sophie sees it too, like Nate, just how much of a Unit they are together.

And Nate to Eliot, "You know, Eliot, I'd say call if you need anything. But you never, never need anything." And Eliot's "Yeah, I did. And thanks to you, I don't have to search anymore." Because he knows it too, he needed this work and he needed these people.

Like I'm willing to bet initially Rocky just thought Grace couldn't hear well through the xenonite or through his EVA suit, or maybe Grace could be more limited in its echolocation since this alien is only making one note at a time when it makes noise. But when it finally clicks that Grace can't easily perceive things in physical space with his hearing, does not have echolocation, and his light-sensory organs have a limited visual field to what is in front of him, oh my god Rocky has so many notes. "human sensory organ bad design. why not have eyes on back of head too, question?"

and Grace gets to be like "wellllllll we have a phrase for "having eyes in the back of our head" actually! sometimes we instinctually sense things we can't see or hear! the hair on the back of our necks stands up and we can feel when we're being watched sometimes."

and Rocky's like "how, question?" and Grace just shrugs. which only bothers Rocky more lol.

Grace explains that "it's a survival instinct that most people aren't very good at or able to control, but it's good to have when you can only see what's in front of you."

It's called CONNECTION y'all. because that's the moment!!! That's the moment of trust. Of vulnerability. That sets the entire tone for their relationship, partnership, and friendship. They can't communicate well yet and Grace still risks it all, after initially turning away and trying to be better safe than sorry.

It was pressurized when he entered the tunnel and the readings were weird. Like the signs are there that it's safe. But for a man ruled by his fear, deciding to overcome it in that moment?