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hey for any sixteen year olds out there: it gets better

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I always liked this exchange

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the other day I remembered the 2003's movie Calendar Girls which somehow ended up in this dialogue,,,

anyway, set in early s2, of course

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The thing about Kepler's final good act is that like, he could have chosen to do that at any point prior to that in the finale. Namely, he could have killed Rachel before they brought Eiffel to Cutter, thereby saving Eiffel's memories and precluding any possibility of Cutter getting the information he wanted. Why didn't he? Well, doylist explanation is obviously that the big climatic showdowns between Hera, Pryce, and Eiffel and between Lovelace, Minkowski, and Cutter needed to happen for the story to resolve in a satisfying way. But in character? Kepler's hedging his bets. He's willing to do just enough to make sure the whole of humanity doesn't die painfully, but that's literally it. He's trying to keep himself alive above all else. He doesn't want to fully commit to team Minkowski because he thinks they might lose, and then Cutter would kill him. However, if team Minkowski wins, he can appeal to their well-established mercy and claim he was really on their side all along. He only kills Rachel because she found him out, therefore he could no longer hide in his safe position as Cutter's lackey. His final act is not one of bravery, it's one of cowardice

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When you think about it Kepler really died because he couldn't resist one last smug self-righteous little speech. If he'd shut up and shot Rachel again or even just moved away from the airlock he'd have survived. But that's an impossibility for Colonel "thinks he's the smartest in the room and is addicted to the sound of his own voice" Kepler. Poetic justice <3

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Minkowski vs. Kepler: Middle Management Foils

I wasn't about to let Podcast Girls Week pass me by without Minkowskiposting, so here I am (wanted to do the Minkowski immigration post tonight because that one's more fully about Her, but that one's going to require more effort and might be closer to a full-out essay, so it'll have to wait) (make no mistake, though, this is a Minkowski post in spirit, I do not care about Warren Kepler outside of his connections to her)

So, Minkowski and Kepler are pretty obvious narrative foils. For starters, Gabriel Urbina has pointed out in AMAs that the SI5 are meant to be an "evil" parallel to the early-season Hephaestus crew, with Maxwell as the Hilbert parallel, Jacobi as the Eiffel parallel, and Kepler as the Minkowski parallel. Their speech patterns are also really similar in a way that I'm pretty sure was intentional: for example, they both use the phrase "Right the hell now!" quite a bit. There's some deeper similarities, too, which say interesting things about both of their characters, including:

Their positions. As Hilbert points out to Minkowski in episode 15, she's middle management and always has been: she loves being a leader, but is ultimately doomed by her insecurity and inability to function without her own rules and orders, so she's stuck basically shuttling orders constantly from point A to point B with very little will of her own. Cutter pretty clearly takes advantage of this tendency in her, exploiting her desire to lead (which is, in turn, a surface-level manifestation of her desire to matter and to have agency over her life) to get her onto the Hephaestus. Kepler seems to have more power than she does at first: when we meet him in season 3, he answers to no one, orders Maxwell and Jacobi around, and effortlessly subjugates the Hephaestus crew, Minkowski especially. His asserting his power over her is part of what makes her desperate to act out and prove her agency and power in season 3: he denies her access to the weather reports, doesn't consult her on any decisions, throws her in the brig, and incessantly refers to her as "Lieutenant" rather than "Commander". Then season 4 rolls around, and suddenly we see that Kepler is middle management too: he's powerless against Cutter and the aliens, both of which delight in denying him the little power they allowed him just as Kepler did to Minkowski: the aliens remove his hand and belittle him as a "violent troll", while Cutter denigrates his leadership and gives him orders constantly. The pig joke Kepler tells in episode 34 always sticks out to me, because it clearly applies to the Hephaestus crew, but Minkowski especially: Goddard took advantage of her skills and let her believe she was in charge, but they never intended to let her keep that power (or even her life: Hilbert's original order was to kill her!) Then we get to season 4, and we see that above all, the person it applies to is Kepler himself: whether he likes it or not, he's in the same boat as Minkowski, because under capitalism there's a whole lot of people who think they have power and very few who actually do.

Their identity struggles. Kepler's are most obvious: in episode 34, he calls himself "the artist formerly known as Warren Kepler" and asserts that whatever he was before is gone, replaced by his job. But the parallels between Minkowski and Kepler lead us to wonder... could the same apply to her? Since she was a child, she's been forced to deny parts of her identity in order to "make it" and prove herself": she speaks English perfectly despite it being her third language, and worked so hard to get rid of her Polish accent that we only ever hear it once. And the emphasis on titles in Wolf 359 shows exactly how much of her identity she gave up to become "Commander Minkowski": the only times we hear anyone call her by her first name, other than Cutter, are in season 4. We also see her attempt to hide aspects of her identity that don't fit with the "commander" persona. Until the later seasons, she only expresses her love for musicals in a context she sees as safe, i.e, the talent show, which she can get away with expressing herself at because she can pass it off as "building crew morale". She actively tries to hide the existence of her husband from Eiffel, only admitting it hesitantly in episode 17. And when she's feeling the very non-commander-like emotions of fear and guilt in episode 53, she doesn't confide in Eiffel or Lovelace: only in the construct of Hilbert she made up in her head (which I talked about more in this post). While Kepler has been the leader of the SI5 so long he's successfully repressed all aspects of his identity, Minkowski's is still very much there, despite her attempts at erasing it to better fit the commander persona she desperately clings to. I almost wonder if in some ways, Minkowski wishes she were Kepler: she wants to be the consummate commander in control of her crew, and I wonder if she looks at him, having given up his identity fully for that kind of control, and feels envious. At any rate, in season 4, both of them are in a nebulous space regarding their identities and personas: Kepler is losing his confidence in his mission and has already lost his place as prime authority on the Hephaestus, and is starting to feel a sense of morality that he thought he'd lost, and Minkowski knows she isn't Commander Minkowski anymore and maybe never was, but she doesn't know what that makes her now. Which brings me to:

Their endings. Both Kepler and Minkowski's endings involve reassertion of their identities outside of any roles given to them by Goddard, but that ends very differently for each of them. Kepler sacrifices himself to help the Hephaestus crew on the grounds that "he's still human", which I think of in the sense of "human vs. emotionless capitalist automaton following orders": despite his best attempts at stamping out his identity, he's still a full and complete person beneath all of it. It's also really interesting that he says he's betraying Rachel because he's "on Minkowski and Jacobi's side": while you could argue that he names them specifically because he doesn't see Lovelace and Hera as human, that still doesn't explain Eiffel. I think he mentions Jacobi because Jacobi is the one who triggered him to think about his morality more, and he mentions Minkowski because she represents what he's turning towards: a reassertion of full, complete identity over capitalistic roles. Because in the very same episode, Minkowski's arc resolves when she asserts her identity: the infamous "I am Renee Minkowski, and that is more than enough to kick your ass" comes to mind. She doesn't call herself Commander, because she's more than that. She can't beat Goddard with its own tools and she never will, but she can beat them with her own strength and power: she just has to stop relying on an externally-assigned role to get it. And in the end, Minkowski lives because she was able to fully reassert that identity, while Kepler dies because he can't: he wants to turn away from his capitalism-assigned role, but he's defined himself fully around it, so once he takes that away, there's nothing left of him. (I have mixed feelings about the death itself, because I think it would have been really powerful to see him build himself back up from the ground and reclaim who he is, but I understand what Urbina and Shachat were going for.)

So, there we have it - there's probably even deeper I could go into this, but that's all for now. Maybe if I have time I'll do a deep dive into all their interactions in the show, but that's the basics. Peace and love on planet Minkowski, and war and hate on planet Kepler. Len out.

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Podcast Girls Week Day 4

I wonder SO much about Eris from Wolf 359. She was an AI who had no stable crew. Hera was the "mother program" that took care of the station and the crew inside it, and Rhea was the same way; both developed real fondness, friendship, and solidarity with their humans over time. Enlil we see less of but he seems to like his job flying a jet, and have positive interactions with his passengers.

But Eris was designed to be antagonistic. that's her job. she meets a crew once, puts them through a VR dream nightmare, and teaches them to appreciate each other more when she's not there harassing them.

WHAT was her socialization like? Does she ever get any stability? She gets fractured into iterations and placed in boxes on stations, with the data beamed back to Earth. does she have memories of all these selves, all these human crews she met once just to torment... she seems almost wistful when she meets Lovelace. Does she like her life? Does she like her job? Does she have other AI friends??? Eris deserves a life post-Goddard. Set her free to be an internet troll, she'd get to carry out her function while also meeting all sorts of people.

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@rosenkranz-isnt-dead convinced me to post all of the wolf 359 art I did over the years, so here go a very long post

Designs keep changing as I listen to it

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I’ll finish Wolf 359 either today or tomorrow, here are my predictions:

Doug will make it back to earth. Bonus points if he has the plan that will get them back and it’s pushed aside because it’s Doug. I need a reunion with his daughter like I need air in my lungs.

Lovelace will also make it back. She will compartmentalize the alien/immortal/Ship of Theseus and just be able to relax for the first time in years. I’m thinking a cabin in the woods AFTER three solid minutes of her beating the shit out of Cutter.

Minkowski will also make it. I’m thinking she will be the one to make the plan happen but also predict what will go wrong and fix it. Bonus points for the plant monster heist coming up again. She deserves to have a tearful reunion with her husband and settle down.

Hera. I’m not really sure if she can get a happy ending. Even if she makes it back to earth, it’s too small for her. Her brain is literally the size of a house. There’s no room for her to be able to be Hera. But she will make it back and I hope they will work something out with her

Rachel will come around to the good side… is what I was thinking before listening to Volte Face. But I still think she is the most human of the remaining bad guys. She’ll help people escape.

Jacobi. He has to live. He has lost his friends family and crew. Sure he’s kind of awful but him building a bomb and Lovelace detonating it on the Hephaestus is the best ending for them. I think he will truly let go of Kepler being a friend. Especially after the failed mutiny and Maxwell.

Kepler. Dies. He’s such a reprehensible person and I think he will go as soon as Cutter realizes how useless he is. Bonus points for a kind of gory end!

Riemann. Imma be honest he’s fodder and I don’t know anything about him so don’t really care.

Price and Cutter have a falling out. She gets disabled in some way but I don’t think she goes until he does. He is willing to do a lot to keep her alive and I think she has depths I haven’t seen or noticed yet.

Cutter (I’m hoping. Praying even) gets what he deserves. Falling into the star. He and Pryce have actually made me stop and think how two people can be so evil. I think the original Hephaestus crew will ensure he gets justice.

End of the world? I have no clue! But this is my character predictions that I’m pretty sure I will be deeply regretting how wrong I was in about two days!

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Had the inspiration to try something different so. Throwing Jacobi at the new thing

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IF ANYONE HAS ADVICE ON HOW TO MAKE A PHYSICAL COPY OF THE DSSPPM PLEASE TELL ME IT HAS RECENTLY BECOME MY LIFE'S MISSION TO HAVE ONE

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for AUgust, i put Jacoffel under medival and my perfect answer to that is:

messenger pigeon handler doug and guard of the castle daniel.

i'm a genius

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not nearly enough i’ll tell you that

how much overlap is there between the dim20 crowd and W359 crowd?? as someone who sits in the center of that venn diagram I keep seeing posts about maxwell on my dash where halfway through reading I'm like, huh, not the pronoun I expected there but cool.

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“i asked chat gpt” “i asked grok” yeah well i asked the dear listeners and they told me i must cowabunga, dude. and soon

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Submitted by angelic-petty

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Jettison my favorite characters into deep space why don’t you

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Dood