u/Either-Special2552

byler is literally my favourite ship of all time, but i honestly find it surprisingly rare that i really fall in love with a fic in this fandom

usually it’s because the characterisation feels a little off, or, if i’m being completely honest, a lot of fics lately read as ai-generated or ai-assisted in a way i don’t really encounter in my other fandoms to the same extent (even though, yes, it’s gotten worse everywhere). sometimes the writing also feels a bit juvenile, which is absolutely not a criticism of the authors themselves. everyone starts somewhere, and i genuinely respect anyone who’s creating and sharing work for free. the demographic in this ship is also younger so that makes sense. it just means a lot of the bigger, widely loved fics don’t quite work for me. there are definitely exceptions that i ADORE, but there are also plenty where i just don’t understand the hype

what i love most is when a fic really understands the heart of mike and will’s friendship. i don’t mean it has to be soft or fluff-heavy at all. i actually love angst, even devastating angst, if it grows naturally from who they are. i don’t need them to have an easy journey; i just need it to feel like their journey. i think a lot of stories capture the circumstances around them, but not always the core of who mike and will actually are

my only, ONLY absolute dealbreaker is mike being involved with another guy. a passing crush, even a kiss, a boyfriend, or a previous relationship is a hell no. none of it works for me personally. it’s just fundamentally not how i interpret his character or his arc. i genuinely feel that, had it not been for will, mike would never have understood his sexuality at all. i think will is the catalyst. because of the environment mike grew up in, his repression, and the way i read his internal world, i don’t think he ever gets there without will specifically. it’s just not in his pathology. that’s the one thing that makes me immediately click out of a fic

i’m much more flexible with will. i don’t mind if he has another relationship at some point, or at least i tolerate it even if i don’t prefer it (of course i prefer that he isn’t but honestly if the fic is good, it’s good) as long as it’s always clear that mike is the person he truly wants, and that his feelings for mike remain in a completely different category from anyone else
i also love pre-season 5 fics, although i enjoy post-season 5 as well, so please don’t hesitate to recommend older works. one of my favourites is a body in motion by astrobi. it just feels incredibly true to both of them

i’m happy with anything: one-shots, longfics, canon-divergence, them as little kids, season 4, post-canon, whatever. the more they feel like soulmates, the better. i do prefer non wips

as a point of reference, i know a lot of people loved super soaker before everything came out about it, but those kinds of stories just aren’t really what i’m looking for. there are other popular fics that also didn’t work for me, but i don’t think it’s good fandom etiquette to publicly single out stories people poured genuine effort into. the only reason i’m mentioning super soaker at all is because i don’t feel inclined to extend that same courtesy to someone who was undermining the creativity and community that ao3 was built on with ai assisted trash

and please don’t recommend the absolute classics like you keep my heart sleeping. i love it, and it feels wonderfully in character, but i’ve already read it more times than i can count

please, please, please send me your favourites

apart el (that’s okay bc it’s canon and whatnot) but any fics where mike and will are only ever with each other? can miwi, college byler, anything. small or short but please complete fics only! and any rating, i don’t care!

your favs please

i watched the movie first, which i genuinely never, ever do, AND I KNOW IS A SIN… i’ve always believed books should come first because they’re almost always richer, more nuanced, and give you the full emotional and psychological picture that a two hour film simply could never, ever do. and if i do happen to watch a movie before reading the book, it’s actually incredibly rare that i’ll ever pick up the novel afterwards. the only exception is if the movie completely captivates me and i love the story so much that i desperately want more of it. AND WELL THIS WAS THAT

i absolutely adored the movie. it was genuinely one of my favourite films of the year so far, if not my favourite. i fell completely in love with ryland as a character, i loved rocky, i loved their relationship, and i desperately wanted to spend more time with them. so i picked up the book expecting to love it even more

INSTEAD, i found myself loving completely different parts of it

the biggest surprise, and honestly the biggest disappointment, was grace and rocky’s relationship..

i fucking hate to admit that, but i don’t think their friendship is bad in the novel. not even remotely. they obviously grow to care about one another, and by the end of the story there is absolutely so much love between them. but i never felt that their relationship transcended their circumstance in the same way it did in the movie

in both versions, they’re inevitably going to become close. they’re alone. grace wakes up to find both of his crewmates dead. rocky has been isolated for decades. they’re the only two intelligent beings they can talk to, so of course they’re going to rely on each other

but dependence/trauma-bonding and chemistry aren’t the same thing

the movie convinced me that even though their friendship began because of circumstance, it eventually became something much, MUCH greater than that. it felt like they genuinely loved and laughed and bantered with each other. their banter felt effortless, their teasing felt natural, and there were moments where you completely forgot that they were only talking because they had nobody else. they simply enjoyed each other’s company

i never quite felt that to the same extent in the book…

their relationship always felt one step more practical. i believed their dependence on one another. i believed that they loved each other. i just didn’t always believe that they had that unique chemistry that made their relationship feel singular the way it did in the movie

the best example of this is rocky giving grace the astrophage to return home

in the movie, this absolutely destroyed me

rocky isn’t simply helping grace. he’s sacrificing something tangible. he knows that giving grace enough astrophage means he’ll return to erid years later than he otherwise would have. he accepts that cost without hesitation because, in his own words, he couldn’t save his own crew, but he can save grace. it’s an extraordinary act of devotion

in the book, the exact same plot point exists, but it comes so much earlier in their friendship that it never really landed for me emotionally. they simply hadn’t built enough of a relationship yet for it to feel like the enormous sacrifice it should have been. on top of that, it’s heavily implied that rocky has more than enough astrophage anyway, so it doesn’t even feel like he’s giving anything up

it’s still kind and generous, but it isn’t HEARTBREAKING

the movie understood that sacrifice only becomes emotionally powerful when the relationship has had time to grow.. and it just even stylistically didn’t feel like the right time as a writer to have that scene so early

there were so many moments where i kept waiting for just one more line, one more scene, one more conversation that would show just HOW much they meant to one another

i especially felt this near the ending. i actually preferred that grace feels older in the novel after living on erid for so long. i liked that detail. but i found myself wishing there was more emphasis on just how impossible it had become for either of them to imagine life without the other

that their friendship had become one of the defining relationships of both of their lives

i also thought grace himself was a little less lovable in the novel

he’s still compassionate and cares deeply, but movie grace is pathetic in the most endearing, human way possible. he’s awkward, anxious, self-deprecating, incredibly soft, and wears his heart on his sleeve. you constantly want to protect him. I LITERALLY HAD THIS URGE TO NURTURE THE FUCK OUT OF HIM

book grace is more emotionally reserved. his cowardice is still there, but somehow it doesn’t make him quite as vulnerable. i found myself caring about him because i already loved him from the movie more than because the novel itself made me fall in love with him. i mean it did but far less

the prose also.. i honestly didn’t think andy weir’s writing was particularly remarkable on a sentence-by-sentence level. that’s perfectly okay because he’s an incredible storyteller, but i sometimes found the actual prose a little juvenile. occasionally it even felt a little silly. white older man humour. i don’t think beautiful prose is necessary for this kind of novel, but i did expect something a little stronger

having said all of that… the flashbacks were absolutely PHENOMENAL. genuinely phenomenal. every single time the story returned to earth, i couldn’t put the book down. learning how astrophage was discovered. watching grace slowly understand what it was. seeing the scientific process unfold. watching the world’s governments scramble together. seeing humanity cooperate in the face of extinction. learning about the antarctica project and deliberately increasing greenhouse gases to slow earth’s freezing. all of it was endlessly fascinating

i actually think those sections were perfect

i also loved getting to know grace’s crewmates (and the ones that died in the lab explosion) before they died

that was one of the greatest strengths of the novel, because we spend time with them before the mission, their deaths become devastating in retrospect. they stop being names attached to bodies and become real people with personalities, hopes, fears, and friendships/romances even (no matter how cringe)

their deaths actually hurt because we’d been allowed to know them first

that emotional groundwork was something the movie simply didn’t have time to include, and i thought it elevated the story enormously

and STRATT.

UNPOPULAR OPINION, but i actually think i preferred book stratt

movie stratt is softened considerably. she’s more openly emotional and we see her humanity much more

book stratt is terrifying. she treats the end of the world almost like a mathematical equation. if we want humanity to survive, then this decision is necessary. therefore she’ll make it

she bulldozes governments

she ignores politics

she pushes through bureaucracy without hesitation

she’ll stop at absolutely nothing, and we see that in the movie but HERE oh my god, it’s almost sociopathic. it’s not, but it’s arithmetic

and yet there’s a sentence or two that we see a crack but barley and it’s just perfect. a brief glimpse that reminds you there is still a person underneath this impossibly pragmatic exterior

i think had she been that way in the movie people would’ve HATED her but wow

the political side of project hail mary was also so much more interesting in the book. seeing how governments interacted. watching international cooperation unfold. seeing all of the logistics behind a project this enormous. or just stratt’s fucking dominion haha

those sections alone were almost five stars for me

which is what makes my feelings about the rocky and grace relationship so bittersweet because had they been as good, it would’ve been 5 stars for sure

because i already loved them from the movie, i still loved spending time with them, but i honestly don’t know if i would’ve cared quite as much had i read the novel first

i think i brought a lot of my love for these characters into the novel instead of the novel creating it for me. the movie had already made me fall completely in love with grace and rocky

the book simply gave me more time with characters i already adored

so idk

honestly i still can’t get over this little 3k one shot.. it changed me fundamentally. so not something i thought i’d enjoy… and just wow… i don’t even have language. don’t overthink it and just go into it blind, please trust me

my best friend bought it for herself and she died three months ago… the idea of not being able to get my hands on it actually makes me feel physically ill. she wore it religiously. i can’t bear the idea of it never coming back and never being able to buy it for myself to keep her with me. it was a temporary colourway i think.. this might sound stupid but i’m going to cry if it doesn’t