#And its interesting that Lovelace and Minkowski effectively do the same thing for Eiffel in Constructive Criticism

[hephaestuscrew]

Thinking about what it means to be part of a crew in Wolf 359... 

Ep15 What’s Up Doc?

Ep18 Let’s Kill Hilbert

Ep25 Lame-o Superhero Origin Story

Ep31 Sécurité

Ep36 Fire and Brimstone

Ep52 Constructive Criticism

[nellied-reviews]

Super Energy Saver Mode Re-listen

Hellooooo! My Wolf 359 re-listen has hit episode 6, and guess what that means? Yup, you got it!

Super Energy Saver Mode

In which Eiffel struggles to name his top five lanthanides, Hilbert blows things up again, and the Hephaestus might be haunted?!

I'll confess, going into this episode I could not remember very much about it. The title felt familiar, I vaguely remembered that it was one of the episodes where something on the Hephaestus stops working, but other than that? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. So that was exciting.

And you know what? I can kind of see why I didn't retain much from this episode! Plot-wise Super Energy Saver Mode just doesn't do very much. There's not a complex solve or fix for the issues that come up, or a clever work-around. Instead, Minkowski and Eiffel just... figure everything out and fix it competently?

In retrospect, there is, of course, one big, plot-relevant, spoilery thing that happens. But even that is basically left unresolved by the episode’s ending, which aims to create a creepy atmosphere than anything else.

Because that is what this episode does well. Without the additional job of being plotty, Super Energy Saver Mode can just concentrate on being atmospheric. Coming into it pretty much blind, in particular, meant that I appreciated the tension baked into the episode - even once I remembered what was going on, I really enjoyed how spooky this episode felt.

As per usual, though, we don't start with the creepiness. Instead, we start with Eiffel chatting about something mundane - namely, the fact that it's the crew's 500th day in space!

It's something that I think, on any other show, wouldn't actually be all that mundane. There are a whole bunch of spacey series where I could imagine a pretty decent episode being built around the crew trying to host some sort of anniversary celebration. But here, 500 days isn't something to be celebrated. It's not a bad thing, per se. But it's not a good thing. It's just a thing, a reminder of how worn down the crew are at this point, and how many days they have left on the clock. We get the impression that this mission is more of a long, hard slog than anything else - and thus we're reminded again of how little Goddard cares about its employees' wellbeing and morale.

Eiffel and Hera are having an unofficial party, though, with just the two of them, which is sweet. In practice, of course, this just means that they're spending time chatting while Eiffel avoids work. But it's really cute, and I find the banter about top five lists and the various criteria that Hera uses to come up with them soooooo funny. I mean, Hera judges "Stick It to the Man" songs by active political regimes at the time of composition, and complexity of choral progression, which I love for reasons I can't quite pinpoint?

The sequence also shows how differently Hera and Eiffel think. Eiffel very immediately and intuitively forms an emotional connection to things like music, but can't even fathom how Hera just knows things like the 900th digit of pi, or all of the lanthanides. Hera, meanwhile, has so much more information and raw data at her metaphorical fingertips than Eiffel, but doesn't quite connect to it in the same way, and doesn’t entirely get how Eiffel does. It's not (like with the Dear Listeners) that she can't connect to music, or fundamentally doesn't get it. But she's working on a different scale, judging by different standards. And she's not embarrassed to mess with Eiffel because of it, or to talk about it with him. Really, it's a textbook example of how to hang out and be friends with somebody while still thinking and relating to the world differently - which I think is a large part of what I like about Eiffel and Hera's friendship.

Their fun little interaction gets interrupted, sadly, by Hilbert requesting extra power for his lab, which we can already tell will end badly, because come on, it's Hilbert. But what is interesting is how irritated Hera seems afterwards. I mean, she does the whole "I am not programmed to get upset" spiel, but nobody's buying it, and when she confesses that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone, there's definitely a lot of annoyance there. It reminds us, after seeing Hera's machine side, that she's still a person and still has emotions - a balance that Wolf 359 is generally pretty good at. Hera's allowed to be an AI, with the non-human worldview that that entails. But at the end of the day, she's still a character with emotional depth and nuance.

With that in mind, then, Hera admits that she doesn't like Hilbert's tone - which is totally understandable - but also that she's mostly worried that somebody's going to get hurt as a consequence of Hilbert's recklessness - which seems to be validated when the station's power cuts out and Hera goes offline mid-sentence.

Eiffel, given the circumstances, remains remarkably calm, but this does mark the point where the episode shifts genre to become what is, in effect, a haunted house story. It's set on a space ship, sure, but all of the beats from this point onwards are pretty much the beats you might expect if Eiffel were, say, spending the night alone in his late grandfather's crumbling old mansion, long rumoured to be cursed. It's paranormal horror at its finest, complete with weird voices and jump scares and a bunch of "it's probably nothing" moments.

I noticed, as well, that there was barely any music from this point onwards. There is some (shout out to the creepy little theme with the ghost-like, theremin-sounding wail and the soft bass guitar!) but it's subtle, and very much secondary to the sound effects, which suddenly get very loud. For as long as the power is off, we get all sorts of creaking, groaning and echoing - and with it a sense of just how big and empty the Hephaestus really is. Hera's constant presence and the electronic noises around the place do a lot to mask that, normally. But now we're hearing the silence, and it is eerie.

Adorably, Eiffel's first instinct is to ask himself, "What would Commander Minkowski say if she were here right now?" This leads into a huge and surprisingly detailed fake argument, of course, which is hilarious in and of itself, but there's also just something kinda sweet about how immediately Eiffel assumes that Minkowski would have a handle on things. Eiffel still complains about her a lot, at this point in the series, so the respect that this little moment betrays feels fresh and sort of unexpected.

Eiffel's not wrong to trust Minkowski, either. Once she shows up, the episode's main problem - Hera being offline - gets solved quickly and remarkably efficiently, with Eiffel doing the legwork and Minkowski giving instructions, and honestly, it's in moments like this that I remember how technically competent Minkowski is. I think I tend to remember the more military, combative bits best, with her stalking round harpoon in hand or shooting folks, so it's nice to be reminded that the Commander can also handle things like repairs just fine.

Of course, that  means that the episode's main tension is never actually about the power outage. The sudden silence and the threat of life support running out add to the episode's general atmosphere, sure. But the thing we are most anxious about, as the episode plays out, isn't the ship's newly-accessed Super Energy Saver Mode. No, instead of that, we're given a new mystery, and it's a doozy: what's up with that voice Eiffel keeps hearing?

It starts almost inaudible, but in the end Eiffel hears the words loud, clear and terrifying: "You're not the first." Which, like, terrifying much? It's vague and ominous and very chilling, especially with all the distortion that's going on.

In retrospect, of course, we know that this is our first encounter with Captain Isabelle Lovelace - indeed, it's one of the very few encounters that we have with the real, non-alien-duplicate Isabelle Lovelace, for whatever that's worth. We also know that she doesn't mean any harm - she's trying to warn the crew, in fact.

Strangely, though, knowing that doesn't actually this any less effective as a ghost story. After all, what are we hearing, but the voice of a dead woman, warning the crew about an even worse monster lurking in their midst? The Hephaestus, Lovelace's recording reminds us, is indeed haunted, if not literally then at least metaphorically, by the ghosts of its former crew and the traces that they have managed to leave behind.

With or without hindsight, then, the episode is creepy, hinging ultimately on the idea that there might be something not quite airtight in Hera's programming, that there could be something hiding - or deliberately hidden - just underneath her code. In making that the focus of the story, the episode opens up the tantalising possibility that something might fundamentally be wrong with the Hephaestus and its systems. The show's very setting is destabilised and made frightening - and that's a genie that you can't just put back in the bottle once you decide that you're done telling ghost stories. Instead, the feeling that something is not quite right persists even after Hera comes back online, and still haunts the episode as it draws to a close, since we don't actually get an explanation of who Lovelace is. Instead, it remains a mystery. A spooky, weird, always-in-the-back-of-your-mind mystery.

It's a bold move, and it feels a lot like what happened with the plant monster, which is also at large at this point. I'm beginning to suspect that this is a thing we're going to see more of, too - big, obvious plot threads that are ostentatiously waved in front of us, then dropped, apparently without comment. 

It's something I think these early episodes could do more easily, since the expectation that loose ends would be followed up on wasn't quite established yet. Later on in the series, everything gets more serialized, so if something like, say, an alien duplicate of Jacobi turns up and is left dangling, we can reasonably expect that it'll get addressed at a point. Earlier on? We've not got those expectations. This might just be the sort of show where weird, scary voices are brought up and then never mentioned again. It might be the sort of show that lets a plant monster loose and forgets about it for the rest of the series. 

When it turns out, then, that that isn't the case, even in these early, apparently inconsequential episodes, it feels like a bonus, and we get, in hindsight, a little thrill of recognition, as we realise that no, there was a plot there the whole time. It's a satisfying feeling, at least for me, and it's 100% what's fuelling this re-listen.

So yup. Super Energy Saver Mode. An exercise in atmospheric spookiness, an enjoyable haunted house story and just generally a pleasant surprise. Solid work, really.

  Miscellaneous thoughts

Eiffel is talking about an 830 day mission, if I've done my maths right - with the possibility of Command extending it! That is one long-ass time to spend in space with three other people!

I want to know Eiffel's top five Stick It to the Man songs so badly 

"Ooookay. Maybe this isn't one of those wait and see things. Maybe it's one of those... imminent death things."

Wait Hilbert had to amputate multiple of Minkowski's toes???

Bless her, Hera sounds drunk when she's coming back online ^-^

[caladblog]

this whole life’s a hallucination

Captain Isabel Lovelace has a chat with the dead, shortly after she's left that land for the third time.

Plus, Aperture Futuristics, everyone murdering everyone else, magical girl transformation sequences on LSD, communal blood, and the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom.

[Big-ass spoilers for basically everything through Episode 46: Boléro. I fudged the end of the episode a little because you're not my real dad.

This fic is brought to you by Variations on a Theme, my personal philosophy on identity/reality, and me being super gay. Please consider supporting these sponsors on Patreon

Only two months til it gets jossed! *pops champagne*]

The thing in the body bag writhes.

No.

Lovelace, in the body bag, writhes.

This is the tableau for a solid thirty seconds, set in the U.S.S. Hephaestus's picturesque cargo bay: A captain who was shot in the head roughly ten hours ago seizes and coughs, wrestling motion and consciousness from the early stages of rigor mortis. Nearest to her, drifting closer, a communications officer stares blankly. Opposite side, drifting further away, a man who makes things that break other things also stares blankly. Perpendicular to them and several feet away, a recently-usurped colonel presents his handcuffed wrists with a pleasant smile that never reaches his eyes, watching, sharklike, the final person present in this scene. Nearest to the door, a sometimes-lieutenant sometimes-commander looks back at him, clutching her handgun like it's the only thing in the universe that still makes sense (which it very well could be).

Compulsory musical accompaniment: Boléro weaving in and out with static as an autopilot/mother program struggles for control of the station. This might be easier if she knew the specifics of what she was struggling against, but, then again, maybe not.

In media res. Diabolus ex machina. Ready to begin?

(Your answer to that question is irrelevant.)

Hera silences the overture with a synthetic gasp and several things snap at once.

Jacobi scrambles backward as effectively as he can with his hands and feet chained together, mumbling a crescendo of "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck Colonel what the fuck--"

Kepler ignores him in favor of jangling the handcuffs and saying sweetly, "Limited time offer, Commander. It's in everyone's best interests if you take it. Just think: all the answers you've wanted, all the answers you've killed for--"

Minkowski clicks the safety off and takes aim at his center mass, nerves drawn taut as a bowstring, shouting, "For once in your miserable life, shut your god damned mouth--"

All of this leaves Eiffel the only one left watching the-- Lovelace. Her movements are less epileptic now, more... deliberate, waves of tension rolling down her body as muscles contract and relax in rhythm. Her breathing is still too deep, too harsh, but even that's starting to smooth out. He's close enough to see her pulse through the thin skin of her throat, rapid but steady, and as everyone else yells in the background she begins to settle. Not limp, but at ease. Not dead, but unconscious. And then her head turns a little and she frowns and mutters something inaudible, incoherent, almost like she's... having a bad dream.

"I think she's waking up," he says haltingly, freezing Jacobi and Minkowski in place.

"It, Officer Eiffel," Kepler corrects without looking, calm as ever.

Minkowski lunges forward and jams her gun against his mouth and snarls, "I told you to shut up. Do it before I make you."

Kepler holds up his hands in surrender. "But of course, sir. Working with zero information is a... unique command choice, but if sir has made a decision, I can but follow sir's wisdom."

She swallows and her gun falters for a moment, but her eyes never leave Kepler's face. "Eiffel, what's-- what's going on?"

"How in the three hundred and fifty-nine circles of hell am I supposed to know?!" he all but shrieks.

"You're not-- You don't--" Hera says, barely intelligible through the glitches and echoes. "You don't come back! You don't do that! You don't--"

"Hera!" Minkowski snaps. "Focus on keeping us in orbit. We'll-- We'll figure this out and keep you updated. Eiffel!" He startles and glances up at her, sees the way she's desperately trying to hold herself together. Her voice sinks into familiar biting sarcasm. "You could start by observing and then communicating your observations, unless it's too much to ask for you to carry out your basic job description--"

"She's--" He has to clear his throat. God, his hands are shaking so bad. "Like she's asleep, but... restless? Moving around a bit. Breathing normally. I think she--" and then his voice cuts off in a yelp as Lovelace's eyes fly open and she jerks upright, struggling out of the body bag.

Utter silence. She swivels around, taking in the cargo bay, glazing right over their faces without actually seeing a single one, and the brief flashes of her expression are just-- confused, pained, frantic, afraid, and all Eiffel can think of is the way she looked at him, chained in the armory of the Urania at his side with Kepler's gun pressed to her forehead. Wide eyes, but calm. Settled. The look of someone who's finally stopped running. She never got her revenge but she got her peace and now she doesn't even have that.

"Captain Lovelace...?" he whispers.

She jolts, meets his gaze for the briefest second, then turns away from him sharply and zeroes in on the gun in Minkowski's hands. "What in the..." Her voice is shaky, rough, but distinctly hers. "Fourier, what are you-- Why aren't you working on the-- Where is the-- Where am I? What just..."

"Lovelace!" Minkowski barks, clearly terrified, falling back on protocol as she always does when she doesn't know what else to do. "Get your head together!"

"Oh, now that's just insensitive," Kepler murmurs, and Minkowski actually pistol-whips him, the sharp crack of metal against jawbone doing nothing to fracture his obnoxiously congenial attitude.

"We need your help, Lovelace, wake up, we need you with us--"

"Where else am I going to be? Don't you take that tone with me, Fourier, I am still your commanding officer despite--" Lovelace cuts herself off, scanning the room rapidly once more, and the naked fear in her eyes tells Eiffel that she isn't... she isn't entirely here. "The hostages. Who...? Why are you, but I'm not-- I'll be right back."

And with that she's through the hatch, off like a shot. Minkowski jerks her head in the same direction. "Go after her! I've got these two."

He nods once and shoves himself through the hatch and calls, "Captain! Captain, wait!"

She doesn't, but the words freeze her for a split second, and that's all he needs to nearly catch up.

"You're not Sam," Lovelace says under her breath, brusque, tense, moving at a rapid clip down the hallway to the armory. "I don't have time for you. Fourier and Selberg are working triple overtime to finish the shuttle and you're not going to make me curl up in my bunk and cry like a little girl. If you were really Sam you wouldn't be trying this, you wouldn't be trying to weaken me like this. There's shit to get done, Sam. You can haunt me when we're all back on Earth so until then you stay out of my way and you stay out of my head." Her voice cracks under the strain. "If you were really Sam you'd be proud of the way I'm handling this. Staying focused, staying in control. Not checking out like I did when Fisher..."

A deep, ragged breath instead of an end to the sentence. The armory's hatch doesn't budge under her hands and she frowns at it. "Rhea, what kind of game are you playing? Open the door."

"I can't let you do that, Dave," he says, and it's really, really not funny. "Hera, lock down the armory. As securely as possible."

"Already done, Officer Eiffel." Subdued. Businesslike. She's... well, processing, for lack of a less punny word. No fight-or-flight to drown out her ability to productively think about what the hell just happened, no adrenaline making things messy. Eiffel can taste it, coppery on his tongue, his heart trying to pound its way out of his ribcage.

"Rhea, what is this? Rhea!" Lovelace hauls back and punches the armory as hard as possible, a deep, resounding clang that makes him jump, and then once more with a faint sickening crunch underneath, and there's blood on her knuckles, and she turns around and leans against the door with her eyes closed and an almost beatific look on her face.

"Oh. That's right," she says serenely. "Command took you too. Not in cruelty, not in wrath/The Reaper came that day. You liked Longfellow. I just liked Portal. Remember when I called you a companion cube and then the hot water just coincidentally crapped out every time I tried to shower for a week? I meant it as a compliment, Rhea! Mostly. A devil visited this gray path/And took the cube away and they took everyone else too and now I can't even get a door to work."

Eiffel moves close, afraid to actually touch her and take her by surprise. Unarmed, injured, recently dead, and he still has no doubts about who would come out on top in a fight. This... this weirdly candid way she's speaking, this otherworldly calm, though, is scarier than anything she's ever done. "Captain Lovelace...?"

"You're not Sam," Lovelace laughs, almost a sob. "Sam died too quickly to leave a trace. It came on in the middle of the night, and by the time Rhea got us awake you were twitching in a pool of your own--" She sobs, almost a choke. "Selberg tried his best, but when you've lost that much blood there's no bouncing back. All he could do in the end was try to make you comfortable." She chokes, almost a laugh. "Isn't that what we always tell people? We made him comfortable. It was quick. There was no pain, no fear. But I know that no matter what, there is always time for pain and fear. You know that too, now, don't you? I swore to myself after Fisher died that none of you would ever know that, and now all of you do."

Eiffel leans against the opposite wall and says, very quietly, "That's a promise that nobody can keep, Captain."

"You're not Sam," Lovelace whispers, eyes still shut, "but it's good to see you anyway, Sam. Can I talk to you for just a minute, Sam? I know you're not here, I know you'd disapprove if you were, but I promise I'll go back to my post in a minute, I will, Sam, I'm just so tired." She huffs out a weak attempt at a laugh. "Do you remember that one time Fisher and Fourier and I actually managed to con you into playing strip poker with us? See, most guys I would accuse of losing on purpose, but I think you are actually just that bad at cards. Two rounds, was it? three? before your scrawny ass was chewing us all out about codes of conduct this and dangerously unprofessional attitudes that and not an approved team-building exercise whatever, in nothing but regulation underwear and a single sock. I'll never forget the color you turned when I laid down my hand and told you to finish the job. You ran away, Sam, probably the first time in your life you'd ever defied a direct order. It was fucking hilarious. Didn't even take your clothes, just left them in the cargo bay. I don't think I've laughed that hard since."

They breathe in silence for a very long moment.

Lovelace opens her eyes, slowly, like it takes every ounce of energy she possesses, and she focuses on his face. Actually seeing him, not just looking through him. "Officer Eiffel," she says, calm and formal and resigned. "So you've come to haunt me, too? I'm afraid you'll have to get in line."

"I'm not--" He frowns. "Captain, I'm here."

"The shuttle exploded, Eiffel. Even if Minkowski and Hera weren't lying about radio contact with you after the bomb went off, it still pushed you out into deep space." Another weak laugh. "I pushed you out into deep space. It's been... months? A year? If I didn't kill you, I let you die, and that's even worse."

"You didn't, though. I survived the explosion. I survived what came after it, too." Her expression crumples, and Eiffel continues quickly, "I mean, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I christened it the good ship Horrible Unending Nightmare for a reason, and like... the nightmares haven't ended but the Nightmare did, y'know? It's over. A tiny speck of radioactive space junk, floating in the void. I have fingernails again, and my hair grew back, and sometimes I can wake up in the morning without tasting cryo in the back of my throat! And all of that's because I'm alive." He takes a deep breath. "And I'm alive, in part, because of you."

"What?" So small and strangled it's barely a word.

"Jesus, Captain, what do you think kept me going all those whatever-hundred days?" A bit of a humorless laugh. "Something goes horribly wrong and it's Minkowski reciting Pryce & goddamn Carter in my head. I'm staring down the barrel of one hundred days of food and six thousand years of distance and you're there telling me to quit whining and survive already. Every time I wanted to give up, and it was, it was, it was a lot of times, I'd think of you and Minkowski and Hera holding things together with sheer stubbornness, and I'd think of the person you guys deserve to have out here with you, and I'd try to get within a light year of being that person. And it worked. I'm not dead."

He stretches a hand across the corridor, and she stares at it for a long second, and she reaches out cautious and trembling, and she gives a tiny sob and seizes it tight when their skin makes contact.

"You're not dead," Lovelace chokes out, gripping his hand even tighter, and wow okay semi-heroic speeches aside he hasn't magically stopped being a wimp and this is really starting to hurt. "Oh, God, that's right, you're not dead. We thought you were for months and there was no contact from Command and then you stepped out of the Douchebag Express looking like a fucking skeleton but you weren't and there's-- there's SI-5 and secrecy again and paranoia again and planning again and something went wrong, it went really wrong, Kepler was going to shoot you, Kepler-- he-- I--"

"I would love to fill you in on the details, Captain," Eiffel says with only the slightest manliest hint of strain, "the very second you stop grinding my bones to make your bread."

She laughs at that, nearly manic, and lets go of him to fold her arms over her chest. He rubs his palms together, casually stretching the one she crushed.

"Okay. Um. I'm not really sure how to say this, so, kind of stalling to be honest. Hera, can we get a quick status update?"

"Turbulence appears to have settled down for now," she says, sounding a bit more like herself. "Nothing else is really... happening? Commander Minkowski's still got a gun on Kepler and Kepler's still got his stupid smile and Jacobi kind of... looks like he's about to throw up, maybe. I'm pretty sure that's the face he's making? He's really hard to read."

Lovelace's expression snaps into focus. "Wait, where's Maxwell? She's the most dangerous--"

"Yyyeah." Eiffel hunches his shoulders. "Not... not anymore."

"Oh." She closes her eyes briefly. "I know you didn't want anyone to die, but--"

"It's--" a heavy swallow-- "fine, Captain."

She gives him a look, but lets the subject drop. "Anyone else?"

"Hilbert."

Lovelace blinks. "That man's a cockroach. Are you sure he's dead?"

"Well, Jacobi got to him with explosives and kept the comms open, so, yeah, we're pretty goddamn sure."

"God." She scrubs at the back of her neck. "This is... Please don't take this the wrong way, or tell anyone else, but I sort of... lose time, every now and then? But this is a lot of time. It's never been more than an hour before, I don't think, but now-- The last thing I remember is being chained up in the Urania's armory, and then I think I was in the Hephaestus cargo bay but everything's so hazy until a couple minutes ago when you were talking about the shuttle. What, um, what happened?"

Eiffel clears his throat and looks down at the floor. "Okay. Previously on the Mutiny Fuckup Power Hour: We get taken hostage by Jacobi and brought to Kepler in the Urania's armory. Maxwell messes with Hera and forces her to tell them Minkowski and Hilbert's position, but Hera manages to warn them and they get away from Jacobi into the air vents. Guess all that plant monster hunting was good for something, eh? They split up--Minkowski goes after Maxwell in the bridge, Hilbert goes after the napalm. Minkowski takes Maxwell hostage. Hilbert is... not so successful. They... they had the room bugged, and they knew about everything, and Jacobi packed the floor full of C-4 with a remote detonator. He wants Maxwell's release in exchange for Hilbert's life. Minkowski doesn't budge. Jacobi blows up Hilbert. Minkowski shoots Maxwell. Kepler demands her surrender. Minkowski and Hera put the ship in a decaying orbit. Kepler gives up because, crazy as he is, I guess he's not suicidal. So, uh, there we are. Bad guys handcuffed in the cargo bay. Good guys won. Yippee."

"Hm." She stares off into space for a short while, then looks back at him with a small frown. "You're leaving something out. Where was I during all this? Still with you and Kepler in the Urania's armory?"

"...Yeeeeees? Yes. That is where you were."

Lovelace narrows her eyes. "Officer Eiffel you are the worst liar I have ever met and I worked with Lambert for chrissakes. Tell me the truth."

"I did!" He hunches his shoulders even further.

"Eiffel..." she says warningly. When he doesn't respond, she cocks her head to the side. "Okay, then. What was I doing? What was I saying?"

"Um, a lot of really cool and badass stuff that made Kepler cry?"

"Eiffel I swear to God I will get a real answer if I have to rip it out of you with my bare hands--"

"Nothing, okay? You were doing nothing." He buries his face in his hands. "You were doing nothing because you got shot. That's why Minkowski took the napalm route. Kepler shot you and gave her an ultimatum."

"Wait, what?" Lovelace looks down at herself. "Where? I feel fine."

"Okay, I'm gonna need you to be really calm, and openminded, because I am absolutely telling the truth this time even though it sounds completely crazy--"

"Eiffel!"

"In the head. Point blank. I was right there." He screws his eyes shut. When nothing happens, he cracks them back open to see Lovelace staring at him flatly.

"That's not possible."

"Yeah, well, you know what else isn't possible?" he says with a bitter laugh. "Sentient plants forming their own religion. A red dwarf up and turning blue. Friggin' aliens beaming out classical music whenever they're not busy copying people's voices and memories. This star does nothing but redefine 'possible'."

"No, no, you must've... seen something different. There's no way I could--" Her voice cuts off abruptly, and he has to watch the horrified realization settle over her face.

"Yep." Eiffel tips his head back against the wall. "You were dead, Captain Lovelace, for hours. I got a... body bag out of the lab, put you in it myself. That's why we were all in the cargo bay. For your funeral. And then, ten minutes ago, you started gasping for breath. Kepler knows all about it, apparently, because of course he does."

There's a hand clamped over her mouth, and she's shaking her head slowly, and her eyes are wide and terrified. "No. You're wrong. I'm-- I'm normal. I feel normal. I've been back on the Hephaestus for two years, there's no way I could be--"

He shrugs and looks away. "The Jacobi outside the craft that one time sure sounded like he felt normal."

A sharp intake of breath. "Oh, God, you're right. You're being honest, God, I'm not even real--"

"No! No, stop that, that's not the point." Eiffel's eyes flick back to her, and he almost looks angry. "We already just lost you, we're not going to lose you again."

"If what you're saying is true, you never had me in the first place!" A little hysterical laugh bubbles up. "I-- Lovelace probably did die in the star, and then the--God, this is ridiculous--the aliens spat me back out for whatever goddamn reason. You've never even met Lovelace."

"I've met you." The tension makes him jittery. Every word has the potential to blow up in his face and he's never been good at this. "No matter what the hell Kepler says, you're-- I've been thinking, well, I am thinking right now because this is all happening really fast and it's just that-- You. The person three feet away from me. I met you when you stepped off your terrible duct-tape shuttle already planning eight steps ahead of the rest of us. When you were putting a ship made of cannibalized space station and righteous fury back together and making it work. When you were telling horrible jokes, and saving my life, and saving Minkowski's life. Beating Kepler at his own game. Keeping calm through every stupid crisis that pops up on this useless tin can. Whether you were born on Earth or space-Xeroxed two years ago doesn't matter. I know you."

"Nice speech and all, but you can't just--" Lovelace makes a frustrated abortive gesture before falling back, all her fear suddenly drained into exhaustion. "You have to be wondering why I'm here. Why they'd go through all the trouble of putting me together, putting my shuttle together, pushing me back to the Hephaestus. Sticking me in your midst while they've got this, this contact event thing planned. I doubt I'm meant to be a peace offering."

"Yeah, okay, it's suspicious." He fists his hands in his hair. "Maybe you're some... alien sleeper agent, and when the contact event happens you'll go full Winter Soldier on our asses. But you know what else? Maybe Kepler and Jacobi will get free somehow, shoot us all, and book it out of here on the Urania's secret luxury escape pod. Or maybe Minkowski will finally snap and Here's Johnny her way around the station til she accidentally chops through the hull. Or maybe Maxwell left some virus buried in Hera's code that'll turn her into GLaDOS and I know there's no friggin' cake on board so don't even try that."

"We do what we must because we can," Hera chirps on cue.

It earns a shadow of a smile from Lovelace. "I've always wondered about that. Isn't GLaDOS, like," she waves a hand, "offensive to the AI community? Misrepresentation or something. All of them, SHODAN and HAL-9000 and that guy from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream?"

"Actually," Hera says, almost prim, "I always found GLaDOS somewhat inspiring."

"That's..." Eiffel tips his head back and stares upward. "Hera, you make our oxygen. Please don't say things like that."

The shadow stretches into a tired grin. "Did you have a point to your little spiel about how everyone could murder everyone else, or are you up the stream-of-consciousness without a paddle as usual?"

He jabs a finger at her. "Excuse me, Captain, but there is always a point to my communications. Almost like I'm an officer of them, or something. Actually, I have three points. Number one: there are bigger problems right now, and we never know what's going on, and we're always flying blind, and that hasn't--" He stops abruptly and frowns. "...Well, I was about to say 'that hasn't killed us yet,' but all three of us currently present have been dead before, so, uh."

"Flawless delivery, Officer," Lovelace says dryly. "I see now why you're the communications expert for this mission. What a stellar job you're doing! I hate myself for that pun."

"No, no, hold on, I can salvage this. We're here, aren't we? More or less intact. Despite all kinds of fingers in our brains," he points at the ceiling, "and friggin' drowning in outer space, and bloodthirsty mutant viruses, and being stranded on a nonfunctional craft for a period of time that my sanity has deleted out of self-preservation," he flattens his hand on his chest, and then sweeps it toward her, "and you! I've known you for two years and I was gone for like half that time and I've still witnessed you shrug off a mountain of shrapnel to the guts and a gunshot to the face! Captain Lovelace I have personally heard your heart stop twice and it's still beating. The universe has thrown every stupid death it can cook up at us and we. are. here. So what if you're... whatever you are. The situation hasn't changed. We still have to figure out what to do about the contact event and how to get back to Earth, first of all."

She squeezes her eyes shut. "Eiffel--"

"Still got two points to get through, please save all questions for the end of the presentation. Number two: you still eat and drink and sleep and feel things like you did before you popped out of a star in a magical girl transformation sequence on LSD or whatever the hell actually happened. And Hilbert operated on you pretty extensively due to the aforementioned shrapnel-in-guts incident. Wouldn't he have noticed if you were significantly different from a human being?"

"Counterpoint: I am significantly different from a human being in that you just watched me come back from the dead."

"Counter-counterpoint! That time when you dumped like twelve gallons of your own personal blood into my veins--"

"As opposed to what, my communal blood?"

"--and yet here I float, no telepathy or lasers shooting from my eyes or anything. Which, non-sarcastically, thanks, but also, sarcastically, thanks, because despite all the horrible Decima crap I am still thirteen years old and kind of want to be an X-Man. Blood transfusion by a secret alien is a much better superhero origin story than non-consensual medical experiments."

Lovelace buries her face in her hands, inhales, holds to a count of four, exhales. "Are you done?"

"Point number three!" Eiffel says loudly. "If there is anybody on this station who does not get to be the grand arbiter of the difference between a person and a thing, it's Colonel Goddamn Kepler. You think like Captain Lovelace. You act like Captain Lovelace. You remember being Captain Lovelace down to every tiny detail of, I don't know, the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom or whatever. Congratulations, you get to be Captain Lovelace now. Hera would've printed out your certificate but she's kind of busy keeping us from dying all the time. If your thoughts, your actions, your memories... If that's not what makes you you, what does?"

She's quiet for a minute. "I'm not gonna lie, being Captain Lovelace kind of sucks. Can I roll a different character?"

"Yeah, the backstory's a hell of a thing. On the plus side you've got the best stats by a mile and that was before your level-up bonus was revealed."

Lovelace snorts. "God, you're an idiot. How are you... How can you possibly be this chill about everything?"

"Oh, no no no no no, I'm not at all. I'm just so freaked out that it's looped back around to composure. You can fully expect a nervous breakdown in the next two to four business days."

"Well, at least we have that to look forward to." She drops the sarcasm and just looks at him, a little lost, a little vulnerable. "I'm. You can't ignore the fact that I'm not human."

"Okay, well," he rubs at the headache behind his eyes, "maybe that's true. But, like... the only thing that's gonna change is I'm more likely to hide behind you at sudden scary noises now."

"Eiffel, for God's sake, take this seriously," she snaps. "I could kill you."

"To be fair, Original Recipe Lovelace could probably have killed me too. I'm kind of the scrawny tech loser to the badass space commando thing you have going on."

"Eiffel--"

"I mean," Hera interrupts, slow and hesitant, "I'm not a human either, but I'm still... y'know, a person. An individual. A part of the crew. I think that's what he's trying to say? Maybe one day you'll kill us all but I've almost killed you all, like, a dozen times! Not to mention the fact that you've already tried to kill us all before. We got through that. We'll get through this."

Lovelace swallows and her hand goes to the spot on her arm where the dead-man's switch used to rest, an unconscious habit she seems to have picked up while Eiffel was off gallivanting through deep space. "I... okay," she says, taking a steadying breath. "Okay," she repeats, squaring her shoulders, gathering the pieces of her psyche and slotting them back into place til she's the same unstoppable force of nature that has held her position on this station for years despite every possible kind of turbulence. "Okay. If I walk back in there with a gun, Minkowski's gotta be jumpy enough to shoot on sight, and I'd rather not... test the limits of this regeneration-whatever more than I have to, yeah? So. Game plan?"

"Um." Eiffel ticks off on his fingers. "Give you a proper burial at sea, which has been taken off the docket for obvious reasons. Extract information from Kepler, filter out the bullshit which makes up at least 75% of what he's saying at any given moment so that should take way too long. Survive the contact event, which kind of sounds like it's about to start any second now. MacGyver the Urania back into flying shape. Get back to Earth. Kick Goddard Futuristics' ass--this'll be the climax of the third act, I'm thinking lots of cutting-edge laser guns and brutal hand-to-hand combat and Hera's got a super dramatic scene where she hacker-fights the evil AI at the center of the compound, it eats up most of our CGI budget but it's so worth it--and then we all walk away in slow motion as the building explodes and some really badass music plays. Then pizza? Definitely pizza at some point."

Lovelace gives him a look. "You're literally a child." He shrugs. "New game plan: don't die. It's a classic for a reason. Sound good, Hera?"

"I don't know, Captain, Eiffel's had me compiling a list of potential end credits songs for quite a while and I think I've got a pretty good set going..."

"Thank God someone's looking out for what's important," she says dryly, then heaves herself back towards the cargo bay. "Alright, kids, let's go. Time for me to meet my maker."

[greyelven]

Fandom 5k Letter

Dear Writer,

To begin with, thank you for writing for me! I really appreciate the time and effort, especially for this exchange, and I want to emphasise that I’m going to love whatever you come up with, so write what you want to write and don’t stress about it. All I ever really want from exchanges is more fic about my favourite characters so I’m very easy to please. The genre tags I’ve picked are probably bordering on the excessive but that’s just me liking a lot of different things. As always, prompts are just there if you need a little inspiration, if you already have your own idea then go for it. My previous letters can be found here; I’ve recycled a lot of old prompts in this letter but you’re welcome to draw on any I haven’t as well.

Likes – AU settings (modern, steampunk, sci-fi etc, go wild!), canon divergence AUs, grey morality, gothic vibes, fantasy elements (creepy fairies, enchantments etc), character studies, backstory, banter, road trips, found family, femslash, ladies working together, ladies kicking ass (literally or figuratively)

Dislikes – torture, depictions of rape/dubcon/sexual assault (implied/discussed is fine), pregnancy, homophobia

Ghostbusters

Erin/Holtzmann, Abby & Erin & Holtzmann & Patty

This movie was such an unexpected delight and I just want more of these ladies, kicking spectral ass and being friends and not giving a damn about what anyone else thinks of them. I loved the light tone of the movie but I also love creepy ghost stories so feel free to take these prompts in any direction.

-what’s one of their most memorable busts? Are there any particularly scary or irritating ghosts? Do they ever go beyond New York? Perhaps to investigate a ghost town, or abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere…

-how does their ghost research progress after the events of the movie? Any big scientific breakthroughs? Do they find out more about the world through the portal? Any big mishaps that lead to more ghosts rather than less? I wouldn’t be surprised if Holtz’s unstable equipment malfunctioned somehow

-the team hanging out in their downtime (movie nights, celebrating each other’s birthdays, Patty taking them to interesting historical sites around the city…)

-there are a lot of genre AUs I’d love to see for this fandom but the first ones that spring to mind are Victorian gothic (ghost hunting would fit so perfectly) and cosmic horror (what creatures live on the other side of the portal?)

All of those could have an Erin/Holtz bent but for some more specifically shippy prompts:

-everyday moments between the two of them, slowly getting closer the longer they work together - cleaning off slime after a tough bust, late nights at the lab, long uneventful stakeouts of ghosts that may or may not be there

-established relationship moments - lazy mornings, date nights (bound to be some odd ones with Holtzmann around), culinary adventures, trips away together

-I’m dying for a San Junipero au of these two, if you’ve seen it (if you haven’t, it’s a standalone piece and a really lovely story - Black Mirror season 3, episode 4)

HTGAWM

Annalise/Bonnie

I’m not caught up on the second half of season 3 but I will be soon, though tbh I’m here for character dynamics - there are so many freaking plot twists I’ve forgotten much of what happened earlier in the show anyway. What I love about this pairing is how complicated and co-dependent it is; their personal relationship and working relationship bleed into one another, it’s messy as hell and it’s never not going to be like that.

In the meantime, shameless copying and pasting of prompts from the last exchange I did, with a few new ideas:

- they finally kissed and then the freaking house burned down, so maybe a quiet moment between those things happening when Annalise is wide awake and sober (seriously that whole situation was so ficcy, with Bonnie taking care of her – might as well mine it to its full potential)

- I like how effective a team they are as lawyers and the contrast with their complex messy personal relationship, so like, maybe casefic with a side of dysfunction

- backstory! all the backstory! good moments, bad moments, just anything exploring how their relationship came to be as it is

-assuming Bonnie gets Annalise out of jail, how does their relationship change going forward?

-in terms of genre shift, I would love a political au - Annalise runs for office, or maybe she’s a career politician, with Bonnie as her right-hand woman (of course), and they take a similar approach as they do to law - occasional good intentions, regularly dirty methods, a string of bodies in their wake

Rogue One

Jyn/Leia, Jyn & Leia

All I want from Star Wars is a proper relationship between two women and it has yet to materialise. So give me Jyn and Leia as friends, girlfriends, reluctant allies, whatever, as long as they’re interacting. They’re from very different backgrounds - polished princess and petty criminal - but they’ve both been trained for rebellion from a young age, and if they met around the time of A New Hope, they’d both be grappling with loss; there’s a lot of potential to mine.

-they’re sent on a mission together at some point during the war - how well do they function as a team? Who’s in charge? How does the other deal with that?

-Jyn surviving Scarif and standing beside Leia when the Death Star gets destroyed - what does it mean for each of them? What would Jyn’s involvement in the rebellion be like going forward?

-building on that, what would Jyn do if she were still alive during the Force Awakens? Would Leia turn to an old friend/old flame for support after losing Han?

-college au, where they’re both involved in student activism but have very different methods of getting shit done (Leia working from within the institution, getting elected to various student offices and delivering impassioned speeches at committee meetings, while Jyn goes for more subversive tactics)

Wolf 359

Lovelace, Minkowski, Lovelace/Minkowski, Eiffel & Minkowski

My new favourite thing! I started listening about a month ago and was immediately hooked. I love the show’s effortless switching between humour and much darker material, the insular character dynamics set against the big empty galaxy, and the bleak underlying scenario of being stuck on a spaceship that’s falling apart while nobody on Earth really seems to care.

I requested my favourite characters and combinations of characters but I like Hera and Hilbert too and most of the prompts could apply to the Hephaestus crew as a whole, so if you want to take more of a group approach that’s totally cool. What I’m really interested in is how the characters function and develop meaningful relationships under the circumstances.

(I’m less a fan of the SI-5 team; the angle I’m interested in there is the disruption they present for the original crew , so if you want to include them in that capacity, go ahead. Also, feel free to ignore the whole Lovelace = alien thing cos that’s mostly what I’ve been doing.)

Prompts!

-if the crew do make it back to Earth, what then? Do they stay in touch or drift apart? Is it difficult to re-adjust to ‘normal’ life? Or for a lighter approach, the crew indulging in all the things they’ve missed most about Earth

-wacky space shenanigans! The first time Minkowski brought out the jetpack and Eiffel got excited, an experiment of Hilbert’s going wrong and everyone helping with damage control, ways Eiffel has attempted to alleviate his boredom...

-exploring pre-canon - the characters’ first weeks of life in space and how it was the same/different from what they thought it would be, moments where characters realised their first impressions of each other weren’t quite accurate, etc

The X-Files

-what I’m really after here is casefic, weird happenings with a side of Mulder & Scully banter. One of my favourite things about the show is how many genres it managed to incorporate so effortlessly, sci-fi/horror/thriller etc, and I love the monster of the week episodes that their own distinctive feel - the claustrophobia of Ice or the melancholy of the Field Where I Died. Some of my favourite X-Files tropes are small creepy towns, isolated mountain forests and strange lights in the sky, if that helps :)

-I’m not a huge fan of the revival - I think it was a missed opportunity, because it was a) a mess and b) didn’t really use aspects of the 2010s that make the show still relevant today - government spying, distrust of authority, etc. So a modern au done right would be really nice.

-the show’s pretty noir-ish already but I would love a full-blown noir au, Scully as the straight-laced detective who gets reluctantly entangled in her partner’s wild goose chase

-or complete opposite direction, take out the aliens and have Mulder & Scully as office co-workers