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Yes i am emotional about this why do you ask?

[halfpricefool]

Morality in Wolf 359

A month ago, I made this post about how Wolf 359 doesn’t have any good or bad characters, just people making choices. I also said I’d write a full-length essay about this topic. Well, here’s the essay! Be warned, it’s a hefty 2400 words, because I wanted to be thorough. If you don’t want to read all that, here’s a TL,DR.

People who were interested in reading this: @commsroom, @a-side-character, @firstofficerrose, @afrogsmoraldilemma

Now without further ado, the essay, below the read more.

Keep reading

[halfpricefool]

I do think the SI 5 genuinely cared about each other and all of them saw the group as family, just Kepler and Jacobi saw that in very different ways and so when Maxwell died it fell apart.

Kepler's loyalty is almost wholly to Goddard, specifically to this ideal of progress, of a bigger picture, that he has given everything for. He cares for Maxwell and Jacobi as an extension of that ideal first and foremost, and as the closest thing he has to family after that fact.

The company's interests come before theirs, just they so often align or at least coexist that it doesn't matter, there's no need to draw that distinction. Kepler has faith in Goddard and puts it before Jacobi and Maxwell, and expects them to do the same.

But Jacobi's loyalty is to the group, his family, and where to Kepler SI-5 is important by extension of Goddard's importance to him, Goddard and progress is important to Jacobi by merit of that being their group's goal. He is on the ground, fighting not for the idea of the flag he wears, but those soldiers beside him in the battle. If Kepler and Maxwell decided Goddard didn't matter one day, then it wouldn't matter to Jacobi anymore either. He cares about Goddard only because they care about Goddard, because he sees direct cause and effect of "people like him doing their jobs, so that people like Maxwell can do their jobs."

Kepler sees the big picture from above, and Jacobi is level with that image and sees only what's near him and the distant horizon. Jacobi understands on some level that him and Kepler never saw eye to eye on this, but never wanted to push and really see how Kepler thought of them. It was never a need to know for him, until Maxwell died and suddenly it was.

TLDR: Kepler cares about the SI-5 as an extension of Goddard's goals, and Jacobi cared about Goddard as an extension of the SI-5's goals. Maxwell's death was the first time that there was an important distinction between those two, and so Jacobi betrayed/abandoned Kepler.

[halfpricefool]

literally obsessed with hera from w359. she's an artificial intelligence who's expected to always be calm and logical and have everything under control but she's also just. so incredibly human. she's emotional, she's flawed, she's traumatized, she's afraid. she cracks under pressure, she gets angry and snaps at people, she likes music, she's sarcastic and passive aggressive, she remembers eiffel's birthday when nobody else does, she wants to murder someone, she is completely justified in wanting to murder that someone, she loves her crew, she hates her crew, she keeps everyone on the ship alive, she makes mistakes that nearly gets them all killed, she hates herself for not living up to everyone's expectations of her, she assures eiffel that he shouldn't care what people think of him, she takes on every responsibility she can't handle because she believes she's worthless if she can't do her job. and so on.

[halfpricefool]

'Beyond This Power of My Nature': Hera’s self-perception and relationship to humanity

Okay, this is something I’ve wanted to make a proper post about for a long time now: what evidence we have for how Hera sees herself in canon, why I think it’s important to acknowledge she is written with an element of physicality, and how I think, keeping the themes of Wolf 359 in mind, Hera as an AI Character comes across very differently from a lot of other AI Characters. The idea that she is fundamentally human has different implications in the context of a show that is so focused on humanity, and specifically on the way that its characters (at various points) navigate, reject, desperately try to hold onto, and are repeatedly denied recognition of their humanity. There’s so much more I could say on the topic, but. This post is already over six thousand words, so it will have to do.

tl;dr: Hera’s identity is not representative of AI Identity in any broader sense, even just within Wolf 359. Hera has a defined internal self image that is singular, and distinct from the Hephaestus or any systems she runs. There is an aspect of physicality to the way she is written, performed, and treated by the text, and she canonically experiences physical loneliness. Her feelings of isolation and the ways she is othered, even by herself at times, are reflective of very real human experiences - in particular, I have to touch on how I feel Hera can be read as a trans character. Hera struggles with the feeling that she is inherently different from everyone around her, and therefore intrinsically doomed, and it is only by letting go of those fatalistic notions, realizing she and her friends are more alike than different, that she can start to move forward and imagine a life for herself.

Keep reading

[halfpricefool]

the second(?) hephaestus mission was a joke. minkowski was never a leader, doug was never meant to make contact, decima was never going to succeed. they were getting rid of trash - namely, hilbert and hera. killing him would have been messy, killing her would have been wasteful. throw em up there on the off chance they do something entertaining, stack the crew to hate each other as much as possible for shits and giggles, wind em up and watch em go, maybe they do something useful but don't bet on it. i guarantee the mission was mainly to get rid of hilbert, who was a liability. otherwise, why announce that they died during launch? they clearly didn't do this for the previous mission, otherwise minkowski at least would have asked about it or mentioned it. she wouldn't have been so shocked. that's why the skeleton crew designed from scratch to be as dysfunctional as possible. when eiffel struck gold that's when the plan changed - and they weren't finalized until hilbert did the scan.

[halfpricefool]

hera spends an entire series pointing out that she fundamentally isn't human, has no desire to be one, her alienation stems from the people she loves being unable to relate to her on her level or prioritize & understand her needs the way they do other humans, and wanting to be seen and loved for who and what she is...

she had an instant rapport with maxwell, who saw her as an AI and not less than because of it. she felt connected to and seen by someone who didn't feel the need to understand her as a human but who sees and values her as a non-human person (compared to pryce, who does not treat her as a person though it's arguable that pryce doesn't treat anyone as deserving of personhood)... w359 emphasizes again and again that someone doesn't need to be human to be a person, and AI-ness has many parallels to different kinds of marginalization (explicitly mental illness and disability, but the race and trans allegories aren't out of place either) and from all of those perspectives, it's pretty messed up to say that someone who is marginalized must want to be accepted as the same by the people who other them

what hera wants isn't to be a human, which necessitates a biology that she explicitly finds kinda gross-- she wants to be seen and acknowledged as a whole person with unique needs and wants as an AI, without compromise, regardless of her physicality. she wants to use a hydraulic door as a play on breathing and have someone understand the station is her body as much as a hand is a part of theirs, even if she relates to it differently. throughout the series, the only people who could get on that level were maxwell and kepler, and the ultimate betrayal was in maxwell's duty as an si agent ranking higher than hera

having a humanoid form or projection is one of thousands of ways hera can exist, and one she relies on to relate to the humans who are her friends when she's in a shared space with them. but i like to imagine a world where she doesn't need to defend her personhood so fiercely, and could exist as many things in addition to or even instead of a human, and all of her is fully acknowledged as a sentient, feeling person

[halfpricefool]

I listened to Memoria this morning while getting ready for work which was a terrible decision cause it's difficult to put make up on while you're crying.

I just want to say the idea of Pryce inputting a core thought meant to tear Hera down, that runs every time she does anything, and the idea of "giving them my own voice" so the thought is indistinguishable from her own, really fuckin hits me in the mommy issues.

I think one of the coolest things they did with Hera as an A.I. was to create a computer metaphor for some aspects of human psychology; that a self-defeating thought is implanted in someone by another person that occurs at runtime every time.

That a small, single line of "code" recited subconsciously before every thing we do effects our whole systems.

That we need to know it's there to cope and work around it.

It's just very, very good. I like it a lot.

[halfpricefool]

I spent so much time on this so I hope you all like it! Prepare to have your heart ripped out of your chest. I really enjoy making these edits.

[halfpricefool]

today's playlist

[halfpricefool]

nvm i'm a wolf 359 blog now.

returning to tumblr two years later to become a taz ethersea blog.. (i love all the campaigns but ethersea is just hitting so hard and there isn't content out there that i need like there is for balance)

[halfpricefool]

they call me horse cause i am kicking and kicking and kicking you kicking you kick your bones apart and die forever

[halfpricefool]

returning to tumblr two years later to become a taz ethersea blog.. (i love all the campaigns but ethersea is just hitting so hard and there isn't content out there that i need like there is for balance)

[halfpricefool]

Today’s playlist:

[halfpricefool]

Hi Tumblr it’s been a while

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Earlier in the year, I stage managed a play: The Clean House, and lately I’ve been on the bashert thing where it’s like before the baby is born it has a soulmate picked out and that implies that soulmates would be born around the same time and it’s cute especially bc I know a lot of people who have either been best friends w or liked each other who’ve been born within a month of each other and I’m like :( soul mates and I just want that too

[halfpricefool]

Today’s playlist: