found family brainrot

"What if Stratt didn't force Grace to go?" Then the Earth dies.

"What if Yao and Ilyukhina had survived?" Then they all would have died in space, not enough food to get to Earth or Erid

If the Taomoeba hadn't escaped then Grace would have never seen his best friend again. Returning to a world he loves but no longer recognizes.

If the stars weren't dying then Grace never would have met his best friend at all. Living content but alone.

Project Hail Mary is a hopeful story. It is a story of friendship and what it means to be brave. It's a story about saving the world.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

Short

Thief

No parents

Not like the others (wants to stay at home)

Meets a guy he doesn't like to start, but they get very close by the end (boyfriends trust)

Sassy + witty

The Chosen One

Had no prior training, but is suddenly really good at combat (spiders in Mirkwood???)

Also really clumsy but again, is perfect in combat somehow

"No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe the woman who had to pee in a public park that only had pay toilets, so she tried to hide behind the bushes but got caught? Public urination is a sex crime.

"What? No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe you mean the homeless guy who had to strip down to get his clothes in the laundromat to clean them for the first time in weeks? He tried being subtle, but someone called the cops on him, and now he's on the sex offender registry for public nudity.

"Rapists and pedophiles! Kill rapists and pedophiles!"

Oh, like the trans woman who got called a pedophile groomer for helping a trans kid escape her abusive parents?

Or maybe the black man who got labeled a rapist because he came on to another man's wife, and he decided to get back at him by charging him with rape?

How about the 17 year olds who were fooling around, fully consensually, in one of their bedrooms? That's still technically underage sex and thus rape of a minor.

Oh, or maybe you're talking about the doctor who performed genital reconstructive surgery in a state that just voted to get that classified as rape?

People will do everything they can to get you convinced rape and pedophilia are the worst crimes possible, then accuse whoever they like the least of being either a rapist, a pedophile, or both, counting on you turning on them just for being accused of the crime.

"Oh, so you're saying you don't want to kill a serial rapist?"

That's exactly what I'm goddamn saying.

Once we decide a group is okay to kill, the government will do everything they can to convince you that their political enemies are either part of that group, or just as bad as that group, to get you to kill their enemies for them.

The solution isn't equating minorities to sex offenders so that no one gets killed, it's making it so that it will one day be impossible to make that assumption without a hell of a lot of hard evidence.

The solution isn't equating homelessness or public urination to rape the way the law does, it's updating the law so these categories are separate and nuance within the law can be had.

The solution isn't just going along with this out of fear of a wrongful conviction it's making it so that wrongful convictions, especially when it comes to minorities, aren't able to be made.

Of course that's unlikely to happen anytime soon so I understand why you're saying what you're saying. But I will never believe that those who rape or lay hands on children deserve to live in a prison paid for by our taxes. Prison is for rehabilitation and people like that cannot be rehabilitated.

Any other crime can have a defence from stealing when you're desperate, to drug dealing as many herbs less harmful than alcohol are classified as drugs, to murder in self defense, but rape and pedophilia? There is no justification. None. Not one thing. And the victims of those people will have those scars forever.

No one, *ever*, tried to persuade me to transition.