#Of course Minkowski's love for Eiffel looks different to Hera's love for Eiffel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vonkarma2 · 2 years

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character ask game do minkowski w359 and rocio if you want

These got so long omg

Minkowski:

Sexuality Headcanon: lesbian <3 She has a husband allegedly but I’m a minkowski was lying about being married truther. like why would she call his work phone if they were married??? It all adds up

Gender Headcanon: personally I think of her as cis although I strongly respect transfem headcanons as well. transmasc is definitely fair it’s just not what I think of with her character. The only wolf 359 characters I personally think of as trans are Maxwell, Hera (<sort of canon in a sense), and maybe Jacobi. 50/50 on Jacobi. Who’s to say.

A ship I have with said character: do I even have to say it. Minlace canon and real they are meant to be. There is barely any self deception involved in my perception of their relationship those women are GAY. It’s in the podcast like not intentionally but they will say incredibly gay things. From time to time. Well anyway I like how their personalities are in some ways different (ie how Lovelace is in many ways paralleled with Eiffel (although obviously they have a lot of differences as well such as Lovelace being incredibly mean)) but they get along very well and work well as a team. I like them both a lot individually as characters as well. They’re both really funny

A BROTP I have with said character: Im willfully ignoring the potentially cringe language used in this post Im just going to think of it as platonic relationship. It probably means friendship specifically idk if that’s how I would describe her and Eiffel though. I know they care abt each other a lot and ok they probably are friends but idk. Comrades maybe. Whatever the point is I really like their relationship especially in the finale, I like how she really wants to keep him safe and her entire crew as well, and how the two of them have been through so much together and they’re really close even though they hated each other initially. It’s nice to see it change so much over time + they have a lot of moments together I really like. Like when he came back from being stuck in a freezer for however long that was Im actually not sure it was a while though

A NOTP I have with said character: Her and Eiffel is unhinged I don’t think anyone actually thinks this probably. Her x Dominic Koudelka if you respect this woman’s marriage then get out ‼️

A random headcanon: I think she has a buzzcut because since this is an audio medium characters can look like whatever I want. I think she would be a cat person. For some reason I think of her as having lived in California like San Francisco specifically. That might be canon and I just forgot when I heard it but she is from Cali to me. I mean after she was from Poland

General Opinion over said character: I love her so much I’ve said this so many times I’m getting tired of saying that I’ve said this before but unironically she’s like the exact opposite of what I complain abt with women in mainstream sci fi action comedy. She’s a heavily flawed character but also has a lot of strengths as well, like she’s a good leader. Has a lot of development over the course of the series. I like her development and she’s very multifacteted as well. #1 minkowski stan whatever whatever. She is definitely my favorite character in wolf 359 which is saying a lot w/how much I love Eiffel and the overall cast as well

Rocio:

Sexuality canon: lesbian also not much else to say not much to elaborate on. Well I guess it is kind of funny she’s like I will transcend humanity…. To the next level of existence…. wait omg a cute girl 😖😖😖🥰🥰🥰. Not in those words. But that’s the idea

Gender canon: Largely indifferent to the concept, hasn’t really actively thought abt it but if she did she’d be like wow I literally don’t care at all like the concept has no influence on reality to her. Doesn’t dislike being seen as a woman in particular she’d be fine with that or genderless. The problem is being perceived at all lol.

A ship I have with said character: I’ve been thinking about her and Gloria recently I mean ofc I was going to say that because that is the relationship I put them in. And it is the only one that remotely makes any sense out of the OCs in this story. But yeah let’s talk abt some of the details with them

being around gloria makes rocio feel way more down to earth because 1) gloria herself is usually focused on the present moment 2) she is genuinely just annoying, she actively gets on rocios nerves enough that they’ll be distracted from being existentially depressed long enough to argue with her. But Rocio actually loves arguing + Gloria likes attention from anyone (it being slightly negative helps because she doesn’t have to worry abt letting anyone down) so they actually have fun together

One thing I like about Rocio is that for all their grandiose ideas and also incredible power they get embarrassed/flustered very easily which Gloria thinks is really funny and kind of cute

they each respect each other’s ability to do whatever they want and not care about the consequences or what other people think (even though this is a bad thing for both of them lol). However Rocio respects Gloria increasingly as she starts to doubt herself whereas Gloria loses a lot of respect for Rocio when she sees how she sometimes treats others + also how she’s not being cool and mysterious she’s also pathetic and annoying at times. It doesn’t make her hate them though it makes her pity them

I think they actually could work even though they don’t have that much in common it’s abt their personalities and the understanding they have of each other from pretty early on. They both get that the other needs to have space yk + especially after they become a bit more emotionally mature. They should talk to a couples therapist that would actually help a lot. Not marriage material probably (

A BROTP I have with said character: Due to the nature of their personality they have somewhat limited options…. I mean I would probably say Cirillo lol but Im going to talk abt Angel as well

During the story her friendship with Cirillo is solid but there are some flaws to it. They both depend on each other a lot because he doesn’t have a place to live without them and they need him to help with basic tasks (mostly communication based, like he’ll talk on the phone for her or order for her at stores sometimes). But this also creates a lot of tension because he’s really really nice to her and she really isn’t in return both bc she doesn’t want to (she used to just not really like/be comfortable talking face to face but now the problem is the act of communicating at all. It’s not THAT extreme most days but 1) sometimes it is 2) she wants to avoid it overall. Also bc she is afraid of interpersonal relationships, justifying it as not having time for them or them getting on the way of her goals, but really she’s just afraid of someone being close to her.) and because she can’t. But she feels pretty guilty about this no matter how much she wishes she didn’t. Cirillo usually wants to be understanding of this, he honestly doesn’t care that they don’t talk much because he can get that from other sources, he’s mostly just concerned. To be clear this isn’t me trying to talk about him as a perfect saint because 1) he neglects his own needs way too much and lets people treat him however they want out of guilt and a misplaced sense of respecting everyone even if they’re not a good person at all or treat him or others badly 2) he takes personal responsibility for Rocio’s mental and physical health which is already highly stupid because he is literally incapable of fixing the problem, but he’s also too nice to her to actually confront her about unhealthy things she’s doing in the slightest so the problem just gets worse and they both feel terrible. Jesus Christ did I spend this long explaining just the bad parts of their relationship there are good parts too omg. Rocio really appreciates how he’s willing to be accommodating and understanding when other people aren’t. She tries to help him where she can like looking for jobs for him or something. They can communicate very easily and do know each other pretty well since they actually talked via letters for like 3 years prior to the start of the story. On the very rare occasions where Rocio does feel like spending time with someone they both do enjoy it, like they’d go to the sea and watch the boats or some old man shit like that. But when they can handle it they like listening to him talk (+he likes spending time with literally anyone in any setting, they both appreciate peaceful settings a lot) and they absolutely appreciate all the things he’s done for her in the past, like theyre absolutely aware of how helpful he’s been and they probably would have been screwed in a lot of situations (there’s a lot of bureaucracy wizards have to go through for example lots of talking to people at colleges and government offices and things) without him since they don’t really know anyone else they can go to for help.

Ángel honestly never really knew her that well even though he wanted to, and she used him for personal gain and left him to die ( < there is slight nuance to this part in that at this point rocio really actually did need to make it to the tower in order to prevent a shit ton of people from dying and they might not have if they were still protecting Angel, as well as the fact that he wouldn’t have been the primary target of the demons anyway since they had already used his blood to open the portal so he wasn’t really an important factor anymore.) I’m not sure whether this would ruin their relationship permanently though because I think Rocios actions should have lasting consequences and this would be a really good opportunity to demonstrate that and contrast it with Cirillo forgiving her. But on the other hand I genuinely think it’s more in character for Angel to forgive her, he really wants to understand others in part out of curiosity but also because of loneliness. Tiago’s death was really really hard on him (yes they knew each other for literally a day but Angel had literally never had a friend before in his life) so he does really want companionship wherever he can get it. And he was willing to forgive Victor (even though what he did was probably not as bad even though it was more directly harmful it was WAY less risky and he probably had a better justification) I definitely don’t think he’d be totally fine with Rocio at all. But he would want to understand them better and why they did what they did, and he’d definitely be open to knowing them in the future. He’d like ask them why and what was going on and he’d want to hear everything they were thinking during the time they knew each other. And then after that I think he would forgive her ( < they would definitely cry like 5x during the explanation, they as in both of them), not to say he’s obligated to at all (I actually think it would be better for him not to have contact with her ever again lmao) but that’s what i think he’d do based on his priorities and the kind of person he is. I don’t think they’d actively spend time together usually but they have a lot of mutual friends so they’d be cool whenever they saw each other. Rocio will never stop feeling bad about it as long as they live. But they’re also pretty grateful to him as well.

A NOTP I have with said character: Setting aside the her being a lesbian thing she and Cirillo would not work I bring this up bc one time I saw writing something for them like a year ago and it accidentally sounded very romantic and it’s haunted me ever since. They would be miserable. It would be like all the problems with their friendship but exaggerated times 1000. They have no interests in common he’s a #extrovert she’s a #introvert he would try really hard to solve all her problems and it would make them both very sad when he’d inevitably fail. Just awful. But anyway in terms of people she could actually be with theoretically:

Laura: To be clear he’s 20 even though I’ve said she’s 18 before I changed my mind she is 20 so there’s not really an age gap. This is kind of out of left field I’d have to think abt this. Yeah it would not work

Lucia: She doesn’t like them lol but even if she did/got to know them better I don’t think it would really work she’s too down to earth and really opposes a lot of what Rocio believes in philosophically, not to mention their personalities would not work together at all theyre both very reserved and need someone who would actively make them feel comfortable (Lucia by being nice to her and listening to what she has to say, Rocio by being willing to argue with them + straight up by annoying them sometimes. And for both of them being willing to carry the conversation) which they could not do for each other AT ALL

So in the story I think literally anything besides her and Gloria would be out of character 😔 but honestly I wouldn’t be that strongly against these either like in the context of fans doing them the first one makes zero sense but whatever but the second I could see working if you slightly reinterpreted the characters or something it could be ok and it would also be really funny. If you changed Joanna or Salem to not be straight that would also be hilarious so I wouldn’t care about that either. I guess I would say her and Cirillo or her and Ángel I would be the most strongly against bc even though that couldn’t happen in universe I can see someone doing it anyway and I would not care for it.

A random canon: The first spell she learned how to do was to create fire. This was her final project at her college and doing this was what got her entered as a candidate to become a wizard like fully. At first she could only create a candle sized flame but she’s practiced it a lot and now can create like a bonfire relatively easily. They will die at around 200 years old outliving all of their friends also. (<wizards live for longer and age more slowly automatically) Kind of sad but it does mean they’ll live to see the 1990s which is funny. I mean they would have with a normal lifespan very likely as well they’d only be 70 or so. Whatever

General Opinion over said character: they’re just okay. No idk I really like how their design looks personally, it’s not very elaborate but I’m happy with it. I’ve had them for so long (<2.5 years not actually that long) and thought abt them so much so I like seeing how much they’ve developed over time. I’m really happy with them :) at least conceptually I think they’re interesting I like the different aspects of their character and relationship with others and I think some aspects of their development are heartwarming to me or whatever. I mean bc I created them. But yeah really love this character a lot. They’re fun and pretty easy to draw too <3

#thanks for asking!!#I always forget how long these take lol but this was really fun #I really need to come up with the full list of magic Rocio can do #there’d probably be abt 4-5 things #but you have to think what’s in character for their priorities yk #my ocs #rocio satapathy

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dragonfly756 · 4 years

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Once again thinking about the parallels/foils of Lovelace and Lambert and Minkowski and Eiffel. First of all, the obvious, like, the communications officer and the mission commander, and their contrasting demeanors about their mission and in general. Classic serious guy/fun guy dynamics here, nice that they’re reversed for each set, but not anything Revolutionary.......Right?

But, if we want to get deeper into it, contrasting Lovelace and Minkowski first, they’re both going through almost the opposite emotional journey for the same reasons. If we take a look at where they are in the beginning, Lovelace is the fun commander, she gets her job done, OBVIOUSLY, both Lovelace and Minkowski are ruthlessly competent, but where Minkowski initially insists on rules and order, Lovelace is willing to be more....Chill. She jokes around with her crew mates, she goes on space walks to relax, she may have a lot to deal with, but she deals with it with charm and pop culture references. (Sound like anyone else we know?) and when we first meet Minkowski, she’s.....Not doing that, not willingly, anyway. She is all business, her ship, her crew, this is a capital S-Serious Situation and she is not here to play around. Far from making joke logs about getting attacked by green aliens, she hides basically everything she genuinely cares about (The lady who totally doesn’t like musicals, no not even a little bit, no wait Doug don’t go in there you can’t see her pirates of penzance shrine-) behind this wall of military regulations and her no-nonsense attitude.

And then Selburg happens, or Hilbert happens.

....And Lovelace shuts down everything. The warmth, the jokes. She doesn’t do it to be cruel, but because her entire crew, the people who grew to be her friends, all died at the hands of someone she thought she could trust. And then she comes back from the dead, to a crew almost exactly like hers, and she doesn’t want to be friends, because it hurts too much to imagine what happened last time. Welcome to her cold war, kids, because Isobel Lovelace desperately doesn’t want to care about anyone, she wants her revenge, and she wants to get home. Despite everything, she ends up caring anyway.

...And Minkowski doesn’t fall apart, but she reveals a level of emotional vulnerability previously unthought of for her, she is angry, and paranoid, she wants to chase a plant monster through the vents for days to regain some sense of control that she feels slipping away. She seeks reassurance from Doug Eiffel, a man she’s previously (For the most part) written off. She makes an effort to be nicer to Hera, SHE TELLS THEM ABOUT HER HUSBAND. WHO HERA (ALL-SEEING SUPERCOMPUTER HERA) PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT WAS “A TYPO IN HER FILE” AND NOT A REAL PERSON BECAUSE MINKOWSKI NEVER TALKS ABOUT HIM. And despite her mistrust of Lovelace when she first arrives. Despite the fact that she wants to think of her crew simply as coworkers, she ends up caring anyway.

Both of them get hurt so much, but in different ways. And in the end, they stand together for their crew, and for each other. Both stand, thinking they’re going to die, but they are stubborn, and brave, and despite everything they care about each other, and so they live.

Now to contrast Lambert and Eiffel. This one is a bit more tricky, considering how little we see Lambert in canon, but we know a couple things. He’s stubborn, he likes rules, and presumably has a poker face that would make lady gaga jealous. Barring just, y’know, his entire personality, he and Eiffel actually are really similar. Both are considered to be generally annoying. (Lambert for his rulebook quoting and stickler attitude, and Eiffel for his seeming lack of work ethic and general flippancy.) Both are communications officers that are ironically pretty bad at communicating effectively with other people. Both are surprisingly competent at their jobs when they apply themselves, And both (Kind of?) die in ways that are uniquely horrible to both of them. (I would also argue, though I have very little evidence, that they’re kind of the heart of their respective crews. Eiffel, because, well, he’s Eiffel. He’s this laid back sarcastic guy who doesn’t want his friends to get hurt, he’s a dork and a pacifist and at the same time so incredibly loyal to those he loves that he’ll play Marie Kondo with a supervillain in his own brain to keep them out of danger. And Lambert because I highly doubt anyone who cares about rules and safety that much is not going to apply that same passion and energy to being fiercely loyal and caring (In their own way) once you win them around.)

But remember how I said that the way they die is uniquely horrible for both of them? Yeah, let’s dive into that.

So Lambert dies of Decima, an illness created by someone everyone trusted, (Maybe even his friend.) A disease that makes you cough up blood, die slowly and painfully. Which, A: For someone who wants so much all the time to be in control and proper and right, the thought of dying from something that attacks your body and makes it so you can’t even move or breath properly without bleeding profusely must be terrifying, to gradually succumb to the grip of something that strips you of your dignity and mind is bad enough, but B: this is something he could never have avoided by going ‘by-the-book’ because the people in charge of his mission, the authority he looks to? They’re the ones who selected him for testing in the first place. The authority he follows is the literal reason why he dies.

And Eiffel ‘Dies’ because he loses the very memories of who he is. Doug Eiffel is many things over the course of the series, but above all, he tries to recover from his addictions while in space with a bunch of people he initially hates so he can be a better dad when he gets home, and when he realizes he causes harm to his crewmates, he tries to be a better friend to them too, eventually succeeding in being the heart of the team, as discussed earlier. The greatest tragedy for him, then, is not dying from the Decima that he’s also injected with, but from losing all his progress, from losing his friends, from losing the person he’s worked so hard to be. Naturally, this is exactly what happens. He saves Hera from having her brain wiped by having his be wiped instead, and in doing so loses all memory of Hera, Lovelace, and Minkowski, (Arguably his best friends.) and then, presumably, his daughter as well.

For both Lambert and Eiffel, these are not just bad deaths, they’re deaths of the self, and every step of the way, their identities and personhood are stripped away from them, and so they die.

#thank you for coming to my TED talk #it's very late and I can't sleep so you all get an essay about a podcast that ended two(?) years ago #Wolf 359 #wolf 359 spoilers #Doug Eiffel #renee minkowski #isabel lovelace #sam lambert

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gemsofthegalaxy · 4 years

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♡: Accidentally falling asleep together w/ minffel 🥺🥺🥺 be it early s2 or whenever you want, ill still die djfjd

Okay this is like Really short (like 500 words) but I lowkey love it ngl. thank you for the prompt!!

The beeping was incessant. Commander Minkowski didn’t even know what was going wrong anymore. For all she cared at the moment, they could be falling directly into the star they were orbiting.

Well. That wasn’t quite true. She cared. Of course she cared. It was specifically her job to care.

She reminded herself that she cared, and that she had to remember what why the alarm was going off. Then, she shut her eyes again.

Seconds later, she felt the back of her head bump into something as it tilted back. Then, she became aware of the incessant beeping again.

“H-whuh,” she lifted her head again and glanced behind her. Eiffel was staring at her with similarly bleary eyes. “Hera,” she said, “status report.”

Hera ran her report and ended with some sort of quip about how it looked like their real status was that she and Eiffel were taking a leisurely nap.

Minkowski barely registered the words, her head lulling forward this time.

“Commander,” Eiffel said, though he sounded far away. She felt her back bump into something and opened her eyes once more.

“Wha..t?” she muttered, and she noticed that, now, her face was incredibly close to Eiffel’s. Evidently, he had turned around, and her back had bumped into his chest

“I said we need to sleep, Minkowski.” She gave a weak glare when he mispronounced her name.

“No, no,” she said, “I’m fine.” She shook her head and almost hit him in the face, then reached to grab a hold and pull away from his body.

“Okay,” Doug muttered, glancing away from her again. Minkowski drew herself closer to the screens they were working on.

“Hera,” Minkowski stated, voice just a bit more confident than earlier. “Status report,” she commanded.

Hera sighed with irritation, “I just told you…” but she recounted details of the current meltdown once more. Renee nodded along, her eyes dropping just a bit as she listened.

“Got it,” Minkowski muttered. “Eiffel. Bring me that… that doo-hickey,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder and Eiffel grabbed some little tool, holding it up. She nodded. “Yeah, the thing,” she said, then she sniffed.

Eiffel grabbed the hold and pulled himself closer to her again, and she instructed him to open a panel on the wall next to them. He did, and she turned to press over his shoulder and fiddle with some stuff in the panel.

“Is this.. is this doing anything?” Eiffel asked a few moments later, after Renee dropped what she was doing, her arm floating in front of her. Then, he heard her snore from her spot on his shoulder. Eiffel sighed, and shut his eyes again, leaning into her body.

A moment after that, the beeping stopped, for about ten minutes. Hera said something that neither of them heard.

When beeping started again (to be fair it may have been an entirely different beeping, neither of them knew) they both slowly opened their eyes and blinked at each other. Minkowski was still pressed up to Eiffel’s back, her chin on his shoulder, their faces barely an inch from each other.

Renee was too tired to even blush. She dropped her face entirely on Eiffel’s shoulder and made a pathetic little noise. Eiffel just pressed his cheek to her hair and let out a long, exhausted whine in the back of this throat that broke off into a fake sobbing noise.

About three minutes later, Commander Minkowski lifted her head and said,

“Hera. Status report.”

#minffel #wolf 359 #renee minkowski #doug eiffel #my fic #w359 #my writing #ty!!#answered #taniushka12

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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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Succulent Rat-Killing Tar Re-listen

Hey! So, I’m new here, but I’ve recently been re-listening to the podcast Wolf 359, and I'm obsessed again, so I kinda wanted, in true Self-Indulgent fashion, to record my thoughts about it, see what stands out now I know how the series plays out. I don’t know if anyone will actually want to read this, but I enjoyed writing it, at least!

If any of you don’t know Wolf 359, but are still, for whatever reason, reading this, a) you should go listen! It’s a sci-fi podcast with some awesome characters, and a really great balance of creepiness, wackiness and actual plot. But also, b) I will be posting spoilers here, sorry. It’s been a while, so I think they’re pretty much fair game now? But just so you’re not caught out: here be spoilers.

With that cleared up, then:

Succulent Rat-Killing Tar

In which we meet the disaster that is Douglas Eiffel, Hilbert blows things up, and the Hephaestus receive a strange transmission from deep space.

In some ways, re-listening to this episode was an odd experience, because the characters don’t quite feel solid yet. It’s the same in a few early episodes - tonally, they’re just really different to a lot of what comes later - and I don't think that’s bad, per se, especially since there are things, on a re-listen, that connect this to later episodes. But this episode is particularly weird, I think, even for the early episodes.

Gabriel Urbina actually talked about this in the writing notes he posted to his Tumblr, how he conceived of Wolf 359 as a one-man show, and what we get here is basically the Doug Eiffel! Show, with what are essentially cameo appearances from the others. As a consequence of this, Minkowski, Hera and Hilbert don’t get much characterisation, and even things like their voices seem ... odd? Hera, especially, feels more like Space Siri than the snarky AI we know and love, while Minkowski... eh, I don’t know why I don't like her here, but I remember not liking her when I first listened to it either. I think she sounds kind of flat, like she's not quite a real person?

It’s probably good, then, that Eiffel comes onto the scene fully formed and really freakin' funny. Zach Valenti is a funny man, and he kills it here, from the very first lines. I particularly love how much information he gets into his opening monologue. He takes what looks, superficially, like a lazily-written infodump - because seriously, who would start their log like that on day 448? Does Eiffel open every single log like this?! - and just runs with it. It's such a ludicrous thing to do, and the whole reason I buy that yes, Eiffel totally does just sit there every single night talking to himself, is Zach Valenti’s performance. It's so good, guys, seriously!

On a side-note, I am also endlessly amused at the way in which Eiffel’s utterly bonkers decision to narrate his boring chores like an exposition-heavy radio show gives the Dear Listeners ammo later on. Like, if Eiffel were not such a fundamentally ridiculous character, they would not have his voice to contact the crew. So much of the plot just hinges on Eiffel being a dumbass, and I can respect that.

Besides the fact that he’s this weird, lovable dumbass, we do also get some nice character moments for Eiffel. For one, it’s buried under a lot of funny stuff, but we get our first hints at him having an addictive personality - his love of cigarettes certainly hits differently when you know about his past with alcohol.

There are also, sticking to things I picked up the first time round, hints that Eiffel is perhaps more competent than he lets on? Certainly, he kicks into a different gear when the transmissions come through - the goofing around stops straight away, and he genuinely seems keen to make contact. I like that, I think.

That said, he blows his moment of competence by ignoring the signal and getting coffee. For such a pop culture-savvy guy, he sure falls hard into the "I’m sure it was nothing" trap here. Ugh, Eiffel. Come on. You’re better than this.

I’m not complaining, though, because it does give us time to listen to Alan Rodi's beautiful music. Words cannot convey how much I love it. I don’t know if it's just nostalgia from last time I listened to Wolf 359, but hearing the music again here nearly made me cry, genuinely. I especially love the acoustic piano. I think it'd be easy to go with a technological, electronic sound for a podcast set in space, so the choice to use a more traditional, old-fashioned instrument like a piano is a pleasant surprise, grounding the show in something older and more Earth-bound, and providing the same kind of connection to Earth history and culture that the old music does at the end. You've got electronic bleeping going on, sure, which adds a layer of space-y weirdness to it all. But it's still, underneath the noises, something lovely and comforting and nice. So congrats, Alan Rodi. You made a 30 second coffee break into something really beautiful.

Then we're back and Minkowski has Eiffel reading Pryce and Carter - another mainstay of the show being introduced right there - and then Hilbert's lab is on fire. This whole section is solidly funny, and I especially love the tone of the Pryce and Carter entries. From the muzak in the background, to the disturbing, sort-of-aphoristic style of the entries, which kind of feel like something from Welcome to Night Vale, to the fact that this book seems to have no structure and is just one giant, non-user-friendly list, everything about this is hilarious to me. I also noticed the reference to the idea that somebody might be in space for disciplinary reasons. Which totally won’t be relevant later. Nope. Definitely not.

Hilbert, although his voice is much less growly than I’m used to, feels closer to his later self, character-wise, than the others. He’s maybe a bit too dotty, but then again, literally everything he does during this season is a front anyway, so I'm willing to give that one a pass. Stuff blowing up is always fun, either way, and it also introduces another idea that will stick around: the idea that everything on the Hephaestus is either broken or is about to break. Mentions of a power outage last week, in particular, suggest that this ship is already... less than shipshape.

And the we get the episode's climax, the arrival of the alien message which turns out to be... an old transmission of The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin?

And look, I think this was what sold me on Wolf 359. Sure, it took a while to find it's feet. But this moment was what convinced me that hey, I'll hang around a bit longer. Because it’s such a smart choice.

Already, by having an audio drama series whose main character is a communications officer, and whose plot centres round him using radios and making audio logs, you have the ingredients for an intensely self-reflective, metatextually interesting show. It makes us think about radio and broadcasting and how sounds are transmitted through space.

But by using a real recording of The Entertainer, something from the very earliest age of radio, with its gramophone-y crackle, you’re widening the scope, linking us all the way back to the birth of recorded sound. And Eiffel's joy at it all, his glee at finding a connection back to Earth, is a reminder of the power recorded sound can have. Eiffel, listening to Scott Joplin, is transported somewhere new and intriguing. Meanwhile we, listening to some podcast about stars and toothpaste and spacefaring dumbasses, are also transported away from our lives and our world. It’s a lovely idea.

Of course, I could be reading too much into this. It could just be that the piece is out of copyright, and hits the right balance of strange vs. familiar.

Either way, it makes for an ending that’s beautiful, wholesome and surprisingly sweet. I’m charmed, particularly, by how earnest Eiffel seems when he’s talking about how the music makes him feel. After spending a whole episode goofing around, it’s a refreshing change of pace, and it made me smile the first time I listened to it. This time round, it feels a bit more bittersweet, I think. We know that Eiffel won't be going home for a good, long time, after all.

In any case, it's a solid end to an episode that, while it has its issues, still mostly holds up. A surprising amount of plot-relevant stuff is established. Eiffel, at least, is properly introduced. And I get weirdly emotional about radio shows. Nice job, Wolf 359.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Eiffel not understanding Hilbert when Zach Valenti voices them both is peak comedy and you can fight me on this

Eiffel joking about everyone on the ship have “series trust issues”. You ain’t seen nothing yet, hun.

The noises they made for Eiffel slurping coffee are so gross and childish I love them

Ooh, when he’s mocking Minkowski, Eiffel pronounces her name right!

Eiffel calling Hera “sweetheart” ^-^

Hilbert passing the explosion off as a hairdryer omg

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #succulent rat killing tar #nellied reviews #aka nellied rambles extensively about radio #because damnit i have feelings about this show

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everwizard · 4 years

Text

Back to the Present

Summary: After arriving back on Earth, Hera and Minkowski try to return Eiffel's memories through movie nights. Tonight's movie is Back to the Future.

Words: 1,374

Warnings: Spoilers for Back to the Future

AO3 Link

Eiffel sits down on the sofa. He looks at the blank screen in front of him. He doesn’t know what he will be watching today. It’s a surprise. It’s always a surprise.

They had gotten off of the Urania seven months ago and ever since, Hera and Minkowski, or Renée, or whatever he was supposed to call her, had been trying to return his memories to him. He started with the tapes but finished them quickly. He couldn’t understand half of what the previous Eiffel was talking about at the time and so his friends decided to bring him up to speed on over thirty years of pop culture.

Movie nights like this were frequent. Sometimes Lovelace and Jacobi would join if they were interested in the film and/or in the area but tonight it was just the three of them.

“I’ve got popcorn!” Minkowski announces as she moves into the room. She sits down next to Eiffel, handing him a bucket of the salty snack. “Hera, will you turn on the TV, please?”

“Of course, lieutenant,” the sentient AI replies. The television flickers to life, displaying the brand logo before switching to a DVD menu screen.

Eiffel reads the title. “Back to the Future, huh? Some sort of time travel movie?”

“Yes!” Hera proclaims. “I chose this one this time.”

The group had long since finished Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, and several other action-filled franchises of various genres. Today they were starting the 1980’s time-travel trilogy that, as always, Eiffel knew nothing about.

Minkowski presses play on the menu and the movie begins.

The movie opens with the ticking of dozens of clocks and Eiffel settles into the sofa with his popcorn.

The characters seemed interesting enough to Eiffel. Marty, the teenager with a knack for music, was the run of the mill high schooler. Eiffel wondered what high school was like. Where was he on the social ladder at that age? And Doc Brown, the eccentric scientist of unknown origins whose mind was on a totally different level than his peers. Was that what this Hilbert guy was like? Probably not. The Doc never killed anyone. Probably.

Eiffel watched with attention as, through a series of mishaps, Marty ends up in 1955 with no way back.

The mentions of aliens brought Eiffel's thoughts to Lovelace.

"'It's mutated into human form', huh? Remind you of anyone?" he says.

"Eiffel, do you have to make a Lovelace joke every time we watch a sci-fi movie?" Minkowski asks, pausing the movie.

"What? Come on, they're funny!" Eiffel exclames.

“No they’re not, Eiffel,” Hera chimes in. “Now shut up, I’m trying to watch.”

Eiffel scoffs, “Can’t you know this whole movie instantly?”

“Well yeah, but that goes against the whole point of movie night,” Hera sighs. “So I set my television processing power down to your human brain levels.”

“Alright, fine. Let’s keep watching then.”

Minkowski rolls her eyes and resumes the movie.

The trio sit in comfortable silence as the film continues. Well, Eiffel and Minkowski sit. Hera exists as a large house.

As the movie progresses, George gets beaten by Biff, George gets beaten by Biff again, and, you guessed it, George gets beaten by Biff a third time. Eiffel dedicates his full attention to the movie, determined to learn the secrets of his past.

His attention returns to the world around him when he hears Minkowski snicker to his left. He glances over. “What’s so funny?”

Minkowski hides her face. “What? Nothing.”

“Hang on, wait. You’re actually enjoying this?”

“Of course not. I would never enjoy something as cheesy as this.” Minkowski scoffs.

“Come on,” Eiffel prods, “what was it? The Darth Vader reference?”

“What? No.”

“The Vulcan reference then.”

“Absolutely not.”

“She’s lying,” Hera chimes in. “It's definitely the Vulcan joke. Her Command Authentication Code was literally Vulcan.”

Minkowski flushes. “Hera! Who’s side are you on?”

Hera laughs. “I’m on my own side.”

Minkowski sighs. “Fine, it was the Vulcan joke.”

“Wait a minute,” Eiffel starts. “Is this why we watched Star Trek first? Are you that big of a Spock fan?”

“No…”

“Lieutenant,” Hera warns.

“Fine!” Minkowski bursts. “Fine! I'm a Spock fan. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Minkowski! That’s so cool! Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Eiffel,” Minkowski sighs, “the last time I brought up one of my interests, you laughed at me.”

Eiffel’s face falls. “Oh,” was all that he could say. Did he really laugh at her? At his friend? What had she confided in him that he just blew off like that? Mocked her for? His past self must have been a real asshole.

Minkowski notices Eiffel’s change in demeanor. “Eiffel…” she starts. “Doug. You were a different person back then. You’ve more than made up for it by now. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even be here right now. On Earth. You made the biggest sacrifice of us all and I’m…” she hesitates, “I’m sorry for hiding this from you.”

“No Renée, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did to you. Back then. I was a real dick, wasn’t I?”

“Doug, you don't have to apologize. You were a different person. You don’t have to apologize for things you don’t even remember.”

“But that doesn’t excuse what I did. I was—”

“But you’re not anymore. You are a new person now. You’re my friend and nothing is going to change that.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Minkowski smiles. “Are you ready to keep watching?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

The movie resumes and everyone continues watching in silence.

Everytime Doc brings up not wanting to know his future, Eiffel cannot help but to think of his past. Who was he, really? The tapes only covered the last three or so years. He was never going to be able to get the rest back. All he knew from before the Hephaestus was what he said in the tapes. Besides his daughter, there wasn't much else there. He didn't even know how he ended up on a space station to begin with. He somehow got out of his prison sentence and that was all he knew.

His train of thought is interrupted when Lorraine begins trying to make out with Marty. “Woah, woah, woah! That's his mom. Is this guy really kissing his mom?”

“Technically, his mom is kissing him,” Hera answers. “But it doesn’t really make it that much better.”

“It really doesn’t,” Minkowski agrees.

Eiffel nods. “This is weird, even for me.”

Hera laughs in agreement. It was indeed weird, even by Eiffel’s standards.

“Hey, you picked it,” Eiffel points out.

“I’ve never seen it before!” Hera argues.

“Well that's fair, I guess,” he says, returning his attention to the screen.

Marty was fading from existence. His actions were causing him to be erased from history. Eiffel begins to think how that is going to affect Marty going forward. To almost die. To almost lose yourself forever.

Well, for Eiffel, it wasn’t an almost. The old Eiffel did die. The new Eiffel did lose himself forever. There was nothing left for him to remember, no matter how badly he wanted to.

Eiffel returned his attention to the movie once again. If he missed parts then he’d have to watch it again, which would slow the whole process down. So he paid attention again.

Marty safely arrived back to the future. He and all his friends were alright. The Doc survived. His family was happy. His girlfriend loved him.

Eiffel had arrived back on Earth in much the same fashion. His crew was alright. Almost everyone had survived. His friends were happy. And he had people who loved him. Everything was going to be alright.

He would never get all his memories back and that’s okay. He had his friends and they were going to help him. They would do what they could but ultimately there were always going to be blanks.

This was his chance to start over. To be better. For Hera. For Minkowski. For himself. For Anne.

He would fix his past for a better future. Just like Marty McFly.

The credits began to roll and Eiffel sighs, "So when are we gonna watch the next one?"

#wolf 359 #douglas eiffel #doug eiffel #renee minkowski #hera wolf 359 #fanfiction

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geejaysmith · 5 years

Photo

Kat and I have amazing conversations sometimes and I felt they had to be shared. Also, alienfuckers, dad jokes, Maxwell’s alternative lifestyle and other headcanons, and Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition. Full transcript under the cut.

Gill [Yesterday at 6:05 PM]: On an Unrelated topic: after the finale the crew remembers "OH YEAH, EIFFEL ACTUALLY HAD A FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATION WITH ALIENS" and now in addition to all the other reasons to want him to Remember they're really freakin' curious to know how that went

Kat [Yesterday at 6:11 PM]: Minkowski: so what did they look like Eiffel: me (They do seem to like his body, they had a few models to choose from when talking to Cutter.)

Gill [Yesterday at 6:13 PM]: Eiffel, probably: at least the aliens think I'm cool I know what was meant by that but your phrasing made me think "In a shocking turn of events, it is the aliens who are attracted to the human." The aliens... are alienfuckers

Kat [Yesterday at 6:17 PM]: I don't think that's their jam but that WOULD be just his luck

Gill [Yesterday at 6:18 PM]: It is unlikely, but also: it would be hilarious

Kat [Yesterday at 6:21 PM]: the aliens keep sending me mental sexts and i crave death

Gill [Yesterday at 6:22 PM]: And lo another shitpost transforms into a fanfic concept, like a humble irradiated lizard becoming Godzilla: "would you fuck your clone?"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: leave him alone has the man not suffered enough

Gill [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: No

Kat [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: sigh

Gill [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: Dance for my amusement, Douglas And also because I earnestly suspect that in the case of Eiffel and an interested alien-consciousness-in-the-form-of-a-Xerox-copy-of-him the answer would end up being "yes"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:34 PM]: idk i feel like it'd be more like "Oh what you spend two fucking years trying to drag us into the star because you can't be assed to make an appearance but you'll teleport across the galaxy for a booty call? Fuck you and I mean that figuratively" later sluts

Gill [Yesterday at 6:36 PM]: Bob is a bad datemate Is this entire train of thought brought on by the fact I still think of the person who expressed they shipped Bob/Eiffel in the tags of the "Take your double to Disneyland" post? Perhaps

Kat [Yesterday at 6:39 PM]: i don't know that you can have this at the same time as 'what if the aliens' bodies are still the people suppressed' without it getting Fucked Up but that's your perogative I guess as long as I don't have to hear about it family can't walk w me tonight so i need to hit the treadmill for a bit. ttyl

Gill [Yesterday at 6:41 PM]: See u in a bit! But ah yes, I hadn't thought of that til you brought it up Points at one explanation of Dear Listener manifestations for some ideas, points at a different explanation for ideas that would become unintentionally Pretty Fucked Up under the first explanation Although there is comedy potential to be found in Eiffel and Eiffel-2 having the "are we down with this" conversation In the /Justin McElroy voice, "someone just discovered they have ~the world's worst fetish~" sense

Kat [Yesterday at 7:33 PM]: a different terrible concept: eiffel with his pop culture references restored will likely be called upon to testify at the united nations

Gill [Yesterday at 7:37 PM]: O h g o d Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition

Kat [Yesterday at 7:46 PM]: i mean they're gonna have to tell the world SOMEHOW and i'd think the international court would want to know and he's the one with the subconscious recall implanted sidenote if the DL can do that mental transfer could they have just... asked them to reupload whatever their most recent scan of eiffel was there are so many ways around this that's why it failed to get much of an emotional rxn from me

Gill [Yesterday at 7:47 PM]: Minkowski and Lovelace trying to get him to practice his testimony bc if they hit enough subconscious recall triggers they can at LEAST get thru an explanation of the aliens without Eiffel going off into a tangent Once they're off the Dear Listeners' script though all bets are off

Kat [Yesterday at 7:48 PM]: here's a list of preplanned questions your honor we're not responsible if you ask anything else

Gill [Yesterday at 7:51 PM]: Eiffel, maybe: now Goddard didn't send up us there to bring home any xenomorphs but let me tell you, with the Decima project? They might as WELL have let a facehugger get up close and personal with me The translators rapidly swapping notes on late 70's sci-of cinema because a handful of them actually know what he's talking about

Kat [Yesterday at 7:54 PM]: Minkowski headdesking behind him Eiffel English isn't most of these people's first languages

Gill [Yesterday at 7:57 PM]: The news cameras are all dead-focused on Eiffel. He's hit his stride and is picking up steam. "And it was right around the time I was coughing up my liquefied respiratory system that I thought to myself, gee, I'd MUCH rather get a face of alien wing-wong than deal with this!" Minkowski is off to the side. She is visibly restraining herself. No poker face in the world can hide how hard she is longing for death. Whether it is hers or Eiffel's is a subject of contentious debate.

Kat [Yesterday at 7:58 PM]: someone at an elementary school: hey Garcia, is that your dad

Gill [Yesterday at 8:01 PM]: Anne, who was four the last time she saw her father in person, gets one look at the man weaving an intricate Star Wars metaphor out of crimes against humanity and recognizes him instantly, but signs back "I have never seen this guy before in my life."

Kat [Yesterday at 8:04 PM]: good call kiddo

============

Gill [Yesterday at 8:10 PM]: Honestly I love the concept that no matter how much Eiffel may drive them up the wall sometimes the rest of the crew would meet Anne and immediately be ready to kill a man for her sake

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: as far as we know he's the only crewmember with kids women in the military... it wouldn't be easy even if you wanted one, which idk if any of them did

Gill [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: Wait wait, brainwave: it is actually AMAZING that Minkowski had no idea Eiffel had a child because... does he seem like the kind of guy. Who would ever resist a Dad Joke.

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: haha fair

Gill [Yesterday at 8:16 PM]: Eiffel: Actually, I have amazing self-restraint when I choose to exercise it. (Various noises of disbelief.) Eiffel: have you ever heard me tell a dad joke? No? I rest my case

Kat [Yesterday at 8:21 PM]: biggest plot hole of the series more like it was too painful a memory but still

Gill [Yesterday at 8:22 PM]: If he ever patches that connection it'll open the floodgates

Kat [Yesterday at 8:26 PM]: He'll become the Maes Hughes of the gang, except with fewer war crimes

Gill [Yesterday at 8:27 PM]: ...has anyone on this crew done war crimes? SI-5 excepted of course, they have obviously done war crimes

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: yeah SI5 is war crime central I'm not sure about some of the other stuff executing a prisoner? idk about Minkowski

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Also my thought

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: she wasn't a formal pow though it was an ongoing engagement I don't know the rules

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Minkowski Has Done One (1) War Crime (Goddard Futuristics attempts to bring that against her in the court case only for Maxwell to stroll in like lol what's up gang)

Kat [Yesterday at 8:37 PM]: does Goddard in its current incarnation last long enough to sue anyone i mean i think you could sue them for attempted genocide

Gill [Yesterday at 8:38 PM]: Look I have had one semester of business law You were the one who almost went to law school Also re: other characters being parents, the only one I could see going kiiiinda either way on the subject is Lovelace and it wouldn't have been terribly high on her priority list prior to the Hephaestus mission I can see characters having the opinion that they could see Minkowski as a mom but she and her husband both strike me as understanding themselves and one another as being more career-oriented

Kat [Yesterday at 8:44 PM]: yeah if she wanted to rise in the ranks of the military... that would probably be a strike against her

Gill [Yesterday at 8:44 PM] And the implication she's got a Complex about her parents having both left promising careers to raise her Also, Lovelace: Well I always said I could see myself settling down someday, maybe have a family if I met the right person, but when I took the job with Goddard it was legally dubious whether I could actually do that- Eiffel: Because you're an alien? Eiffel: Eiffel: ...wait a sec

Kat [Yesterday at 8:54 PM]: ha It's ok to be gay in space

Gill [Yesterday at 8:56 PM]: Alternatively it's Hera who said that bc didn't connect those dots right away, meanwhile Eiffel saw Lovelace in a flannel shirt once and Knew Immediately Eiffel may be dumb but somehow his Bi-Fi has yet to fail him

Kat [Yesterday at 8:59 PM]: Hera doesn't grasp human sexuality nuances

Gill [Yesterday at 9:01 PM]: Funny addition to above thought: Eiffel put together that Jacobi was gay after like three days on the Urania, was the only one on the Hephaestus crew to do so, and just never felt it was relevant to bring up Hera, my child... you have much to learn (Also, Hera, probably: I'm experimenting at the moment, I'm looking for a torrent so I can download lesbianism)

Kat [Yesterday at 9:04 PM]: I don't know which option is funnier, that Jacobi is just Really Fucking Obvious but Eiffel was the only one paying attention or that it was super subtle and everyone's like How Did You Do That lovelace's righteous fury overwhelmed her gaydar, she was too mad to go 'same hat'

Gill [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Eiffel: I have something to confess to all of you... Jacobi: Eiffel literally not a single person on this ship is straight Eiffel: Oh I was just going to recount a PG version of my wild younger days, let's just say I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Jacobi on Earth: Just matched with myself on Grinder a-fucking-GAIN

Gill [Yesterday at 9:10 PM]: Jacobi: Oh I definitely picked up on it but who wants to go playing into stereotypes by speculating on what may or may not be a promiscuous history? Eiffel: Promiscuous? Look I've got notches in my belt but mostly I just ended up laying in somebody's bathtub at a house party while just conscious enough to nod along to someone else's relationship drama. Eiffel: to several sororities, I was the Gay Bathtub Wizard.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:11 PM]: Maxwell on day one of orientation: So if SI5 is paramilitary what's their stance on alternative lifestyles? Jacobi: I was recruited in a gay bar.

Gill [Yesterday at 9:12 PM]: Her asking the question has my brain going in several different directions

Kat [Yesterday at 9:13 PM]: I think she was recruited right after dadt was repealed... if obama exists in this universe fantasy obama

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: One part of my brain: Maxwell is also gay Another part of my brain: Maxwell is exclusively attracted to nonhuman persons Yet another part of my brain, most adjacent to number #2: Maxwell voice, who in their right mind would build a robot that can't fuck? The 4th part of my brain: Maxwell wants to know how chill they'll be with her living exclusively off energy drinks and frozen yogurt for weeks at a time

Kat [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: honestly I figured whatever it was it was MUCH weirder than just being gay

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: Maxwell: I have plans to take over the world with my army of battle bots and rule as their robot queen.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Maxwell: wait if you were recruited in a gay bar does that mean our boss frequents those or did he just go there to get you Jacobi: Believe me the question haunts me also Jacobi: sounds great i'm in

Gill [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Or, Maxwell: I am not joking for an instant when I say that I for one welcome our alien overlords "When I was 13 I tried to get myself abducted by aliens" except it's not a joke it's an actual minor headcanon of mine Also I almost typed "adopted" rather than "abducted" which shows you why Alana would probably want to do that

Kat [Yesterday at 9:19 PM]: she did say she's on bad terms with her family

Gill [Yesterday at 9:20 PM]: She grew up a pastor's kid in a tiny rural town in Montana, hearing that they don't get along is the furthest thing from a surprise to me. The surprise is that Maxwell has a restraining order against them

Kat [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: tht implies the court found reasonable cause to issue one wack anyway i had a long day, i'm gonna call it a night

Gill [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: o/ But yeah that Maxwell empathizes with nonhumans, apparently more than with most regular humans, that makes perfect sense to me I can see her frustration with the AI Ethics board in her last job Expressing Their Concerns and her suppressing flashbacks to many a Creationist rant, and trying to keep her eye from twitching visibly, and no I am not projecting I am just coloring in blank spaces in the narrative with my relevant life experience

#wolf 359 #conversations with kat #deliverusfromsburb

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whumpitywhumpwhump · 5 years

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Ummmmm hi just wanna pop in and show some love for the only other person who’s HERE FOR whump in the w359 fandom

UMMMMM YESSS I am extremely here for it! I don't think there's a way to listen to that whole podcast and not be itching to whump each and every one of those precious beans!

Minkowski? Yes, of course! You gotta whump the team leader, especially when she's such a hardass but loves her team so much and honestly whumping her is just supreme

Eiffel? Sarcastic boy extraordinaire? Literally whumping him is great because I am 100% convinced that he's the type to whine for years about a papercut but keep an actually serious wound on the DL-- also he seems like the type to try to play off how serious it is--so good--i love my boi on literally every level

Hera? Get you some of that sweet sweet AI whump! Definitely a different task because of her lack of human body, but really, that just opens up the potential-- she's running through an entire ship! Crash it into stuff! Let Hilbert or Maxwell do their nefarious work! Exploit what Pryce did to her!

Hilbert? Silent, stoic, he's not exactly a friend, but if he were to get hurt... well let's just say there are limited options for people to turn to in outer space

Lovelace? I LITERALLY cannot stress enough how perfect I find Isabelle Lovelace. She's a badass, she's funny, she's the woman who looks death in the face and dares it to flinch first! What with her whole 'Dear Listeners' existence, you also have a ton of potential for what she can go through and live (just make sure to properly toggle the power switch on your psy wave regulator!!!)! I actively would die for her, she's amazing and I love her so much

Maxwell? Well-meaning but too confident in her own abilities, too driven to the goal? Perfect target for emotional whump, especially along the lines of 'how far will you go to follow orders/complete the mission?' and 'what exactly are you willing to do to your friends/where do you draw the line?'

Jacobi? Ahhhh this bitch! He is cynical and so so very sarcastic in his own way and I adore hearing him gripe about literally anything. You've got plenty of room for physical whump for a guy whose job is blowing things up carefully, but also tons of emotional whump with Maxwell and with Keppler and honestly? In the podcast Jacobi whump is the gift that keeps on giving

and potential whumpers in the show are so great

I mean you start with the good Doctor Hilbert (med!whump, anyone?)

Then you get Keppler (b i t c h). You know he'd hurt just about anyone without flinching-- it's a little wild how unflappable he is! And you can have side!whumpers in Maxwell and Jacobi which is so good because you whump them and have them whump at the SAME. DAMN. TIME.

And then. AND THEN. Cutter and Pryce are the ultimate pair-- they are so evil but especially Cutter comes off so pleasant but you know he'd end you as soon as you're inconvenient. And Pryce will disdain you the entire time you're in contact and she will end you just cause tbh

And I mean the setting? Space? Literally outer space? There are explosions and air locks and guns and a literal harpoon? There's just,,,, sooooo much

There's so much potential whump and genuinely? They deliver on nearly every point

Literally Wolf359 is the whumpy treasure we deserve

(and also this podcast is legit the love of my life)

#whump #wolf 359 #podcast #whumpers and whumpees #minkowski #eiffel #hera #lovelace #hilbert #maxwell #jacobi #keppler #cutter #pryce #dear listeners #seriously i am not at all kidding with how much i love wolf359 #not even slightly joking #its the absolute best

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palukoo · 5 years

Text

so a couple months ago i relistened to w359 and made a 18000 word document while doing so containing iconic quotes, my reactions, feelings, et cetera. heres some highlights with varying amounts of context. (theres lowkey spoilers for the whole series btw)

""""i empathize too much""""

crazy how i still vividly remember walking outside [my old job] and to starbucks while listening to the spider ep... trauma

i mean i dont love it but it makes me feel things

GABRIEL THATS TOO ON THE NOSE

"let me have my badass space chick victory cocktail"

god like i AM team what wrong with handcuffs but I WOULD NOT HESITATE to kill hilbert for hera

the girlssss are fightinggg

THE SAD W359 MUSIC IS KILLING ME

like memoria who maxwell who jk jk

i love you renee minkowski marry me

local idiot's heart is in the right place

HARPOOOOOOONSSSS

lovelace lovelace lovelace loveLACE LOVELACE

"maybe she's some kind of clone thing" EIFFEL... this is day 1!!!

i hate these self sacrificial idiots

no no no not this music again ill cry

yall are so emotionally stunted it fucking hurts but damn if you dont care

literally how are they still alive

i want to hug her so much omg

alan rody shut the FUCK up im crying

rip zach valenti's throat

face the death reality via math

jacobi being a piece of shit

maxwell said lets kill hilbert rights

this is a kepler hate blog

minkowski thinking her emotions dont matter to the mission oh ho ho

"youre gonna straighten up" cutter they cant theyre not straight

maxwell and jacobi show up and blow up lads

"and you should really be more careful with your queen" KEPLER WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

wolf 359 stop making me stan these literally terrible people

FUNZO FUNZO FUNZO

i am caring about men tonight lads

theyre both awful sure go ahead have history

hilbert you interrupted their emotional moment they wouldve had a MOMENT

hera said im gay

ohhhh nooo interpersonal conflict makes me sad

hug minkowski rn

FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC jacobi and maxwell are iconic

minkowski how did you not kill him

how much do yall use the words "good enough" and "cant"

"are you an alien" GOD the Hints

"one of our... sexier jobs" vs "this is gonna said less sexy after that"

eiffel stop cockblocking them

y'all's choice of pronouns IS illuminating

PROTECT HERA AT ALL COSTS

aw eiffel... minkowski... communication is KEY

oh yeah THATS what the psi wave regulator is for.... SURE

hilbert read the room

JACOBI you can't just describe minkowski like that without giving me a heart attack

how many times have all these bitches almost died

SORRY ANYTHING THEY SAY I LOSE IT

oh minkowski finally flipped (VALID)

oh wait that fact isnt fun at all and im literally crying

LIKE sometimes you save someone's life at great personal risk only to kill her a little while later

minkowski cries to “back to before” from ragtime

i feel to many things about the gals here idk what to tell you i love them thats the problem

its gay and it hurts!

lovelace laughing at people who can and will kill her... hot

OH WERE STARTING LOVELACES SELF SACRIFICE ALREADY

they let lovelace say FUCK

OH WAIT NO I FORGOT ITS WORSE

THANKS FOR MURDERING ME WITH YOUR TEARY ANGRY VOICE

ouchie anyways gay or no but also gay

hilarious and sad at the same time?

MAXWELL dont be a bitch... i expect this from jacobi and honestly i actually expect this from maxwell too but i dont like it

NO NOT THIS MUSIC

BROTP BROTP BROTP

i cant say anything else im too busy crying

UGH I COULD WRITE ESSAYS ON MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS THE MESSAGE THE TAKEAWAY BROADLY THE PERSONAL EMOTIONAL ANGUISH THE DESIRE TO HUG HERA ITS

im mad but thank you... all of you... explain...

stop stop stop im literally so tense gone straight from sobbing to freeze instinct

GOD I HATE ALL THESE SURVIVALS GUILT IDIOTS

OH theyre all about uncertainty... the what ifs... okay... ouch ouch ouch

give everyone awards for bolero

eris are you gay

she said gay rights and AI rights

like i know i know we been knew but goddard really is so awful

Hera stop narrating Lovelace’s ongoing existential crisis

HOW IS THIS NOT GAY (I know how it’s not gay but. Let me have this)

KEPLER stop giving Lovelace insecurities and existential crises

Team back off lovelace for the win

like not to be dramatic but her arc is beautiful

oh boy thats my girlsssss

THATS FLIRTING MINKOWSKI

god i love that concern for your gf keep it up minkowski

COMMUNICATION? WITH THIS CREW? BOLD

GOD angrey hera is great

you know hera is having the time of her life witnessing it

eiffel you just ruined their romantic moment

minkowski is gonna kill them

a much better gayer more altruistic light

WE’RE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT COMMUNICATION

WAIT I WAS BEING CANON DAMN I THOUGHT I WAS BEING CREATIVE AND PERHAPS OOC BUT IM IN THE CLEAR I GUESS

god hera has needed to snap at eiffel for so long

i can already feel myself about to get hit with the tears... the emotions

that shit hits different renee

The implications that Goddard like destroyed global warming omfg

it’s the moral grayness babeyyy

when it hits you with minkowski's shaky sigh first thing you know its gonna hit different

MINKOWSKI i need you to. love yourself as much as i love you

GOD the mutual concern they always have for each other is touching whether or not you think its gay. i think its gay

HERA WOULD YOU ASK A COW TO NOT BE A COW

oh of COURSE they cut coms first

lovelace is man, butterfly is quote, it says "is this flirting"

jacobi i need you to chill

but jacobiiiii thats lovelaces schtick

oh eiffel... you fucking idiot who gets really lucky sometimes

this game of chicken where theyre both chickens and kepler doesnt know any of that and each of them only know half

minkowski said im an ethics teacher now

who taught minkowski empathy in high stress situations?

yeah so i stay hitting the nail on the head

“kepler SHUT UP” is what brings everyone together

this is, como se dice.... kinda gay

this statement does not bode well for that

“Maybe less talking to yourself” he says to himself

ugh, to be Pop Culture Man™️

RACHEL i love you even tho I also hate you

Rachel if you make one more hand joke I’ll lose my mind

HER NAME!!!! IS HERA!!!! And I love her!!

i have a vivid mental image of post-series eiffel doing stand up like chris fleming style

"my crew has made it very clear through a series of looks and gestures that one more slip up and i am out, thats it, so im taking this job very seriously"

"minkowski is very overprotective in a weird, erratic way, like when your seat belt randomly locks and its like i appreciate what youre trying to do but im going 4mph in a drive way."

"so when something like this happens you have to at least consider going away for a long time and living on a cursed space station"

"you know how when maxwell and hera are talking ive never felt less needed, you know, like ‘cause you guys would be totally happy alone on a rock in the middle of a lake"

"this is the kind of body you look at and go he'd probably be ok in space without a space suit"

the whole "theater kids" video is actually him going off about minkowski

minkowski is too swole for her own good

jacobi im gonna need you to take the redemption arc more seriously

i love my crazy crazy bitches

this FUCKING music

GOD HOW DOES PRYCE JUST ALWAYS GET WORSE

she just like mutilated that man he is doa absolutely destroyed one hit ko

can you tone down the gay, sweetie

you did it you broke rachel and Goddard down to their bare essentials

GOSH shes so AWKWARD

so damn jacobi was just IMMEDIATELY ride or die for maxwell

this is too much for my poor baby heart

pryce & carter literally are just like lets do eugenics, lets do genocide

when hera says ill pull a yall and sacrifice myself for minkowski and lovelace

god like cant believe KEPLER got a redemption arc (well not arc but you know)

ah yes the most tragic scenes all take place at once :)

I HAD TO STOP LISTENING TO BRAVE NEW WORLD CAUSE IT MADE ME TOO CRAZYYYY

THE SCRIPT SAID IT NOT ME

i love space moms!

this fucking music ALAN RODY IM SUING FOR DAMAGES

like the document also does have a lot of like deep thoughts and meta and parallels and discussion of motivations but this is just fun random things i said

#wolf 359 #w359 #i think im funny #im not gonna do character tags lol #my post #gotta love my trend of telling the music to fuck off

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redwineandroses-13 · 7 years

Text

If We Were Back on Earth

Fanfic written for @wolf359bigbang2017 Corresponding artwork Artist: @defenestratin Characters: Doug Eiffel/Isabel Lovelace/Renée Minkowski, Hera Rating: Mature Summary: In the crushing loneliness of space, this fragile thing that’s developed between the three of them has become a source of desperately-needed comfort—but also of anxiety, particularly for Doug. What happens to their loving little trio if they do make it back to Earth? When Doug stops being one of the only warm bodies available to these gorgeous, badass women he’s fallen more than a little in love with and all of a sudden they have options (and in one case, a husband) again? Lovelace and Minkowski, meanwhile, are more than a little afraid that they might not make it back to Earth at all. Hera hears their concerns, and she consoles them in the best way she knows how: by telling them a story.

The happy ending I like to imagine they’ll get. :)

It started with an innocuous comment— actually, a rather sexy comment. A comment Eiffel very much enjoyed hearing in the moment. Which makes the whole thing worse, really.

It happened during one of their talks, the ones they have so casually now, over mugs of nighttime tea or bowls of morning cereal. Conversations about this insanely glorious, mind-boggling, if-only-teenage-Doug-could-see-him-now kinky three-way relationship they’ve had going for a few months now, ever since Minkowski and Lovelace caught him jerking off at his station and punished him for it—only to find that they enjoyed punishing Eiffel just as much as he enjoyed being punished.

They’re talking through the logistics of a scene when it happens.

“Now, if we were back on Earth, Eiffel, I’d buy a nice dildo just for you and peg you with it,” Lovelace says, as cool and casual as anything, which is how she delivers a lot of her sexier propositions. It drives Eiffel crazy. “But I don’t know that there’s anything up here that would be good for that.”

“I don’t know,” Minkowski says. “There are some truly bizarre things on this ship.“

But Doug doesn’t hear much of the ensuing conversation (which centers mainly on whether or not anything onboard could be safely used for anal penetration) because he’s hung up on the one unsexy part of what Lovelace said.

“If we were back on Earth.”

That’s the phrase that gets stuck in Eiffel’s craw, that keeps coming back to him in quiet, vulnerable moments, like when he’s alone in the shower or halfway between sleep and consciousness. If we were back on Earth.

Because here’s the thing. No matter how Doug figures it—and he figures it a lot of ways, like solving a math problem by hand, in Excel, and on two different calculators, trying to get a different answer to a problem that only has one—this thing they’re doing? This threesome, triad, polyamorous arrangement, whatever they wanted to call it? It would never work back on Earth. Could never work back on Earth. He tries to imagine himself out on a date with Lovelace, her gorgeous and confident, him lanky and awkward and overcompensating with corny jokes. The stares they would get. The laughter, stifled under hands to be polite, but audible nevertheless. He doesn’t belong with her , these strangers would think. She can do so much better .

And Minkowski—Doug’s breath catches in his throat when he thinks about Minkowski and Earth. She has a husband. And while Doug doesn’t know much about their relationship—after Lovelace first defused the other woman’s protest that she was married with a sultry married ain’t dead, is it?, none of them had mentioned him again—there’s nothing to suggest that Minkowski wouldn’t go back to him when she returned to Earth. That she wouldn’t want to return to her healthy, monogamous marriage, leaving Lovelace and Eiffel—where?

Lovelace could find someone else, of course, easily. Someone as beautiful and badass as she was, her fitting counterpart, someone who in conjunction with her would evoke the phrase “power couple.”

And Doug would be all alone, with nothing but the memory of a few months on a spaceship when the two smartest, most fantastic women he’d ever met had been desperate and lonely enough to take him to bed. He could just picture himself, alone in a cramped and cluttered apartment somewhere, jerking off to the memories for the thousandth time. Miserable. Lonely. Untouched. And most of all, unloved.

It’s enough to make Eiffel collapse inside.

One night he’s in the middle of just such a collapse: he’s in the comms room, ostensibly on rotation, actually staring blankly at the controls, soul-crushing visions of if we were back on Earth dancing in his head like the world’s most vicious sugarplums and rocketing his mood into a downward spiral.

The thing about an all-seeing AI, though, is the all-seeing part.

“Officer Eiffel? Are you okay?”

Doug blinks a few times, rapidly, then rubs his eyes with the insides of his wrists.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine, Hera.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“It’s nothing. Really.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve seemed a little…off lately.”

Doug sits up, shakes the hair out of his eyes, and tries to feign alertness. “Off? I’m not off. I’m just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. Might as well call me Alvin or Rocky or something.”

“Eiffel.”

“Okay, okay, I will admit that I’ve been going through some stuff lately. Promise you’ll keep it a secret?”

“If I had hands, I’d pinky swear.”

“Okay, so…”

And he tells her the whole thing from start to finish. Lovelace’s offhand comment. How he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. The ways it had manifested itself, over and over again, in the darkest parts of his imagination.

Hera’s an excellent listener, and by the time Doug’s finished, he’s on the edge of tears, the beginnings of a good old-fashioned cry forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Have you told Lovelace or Minkowski any of this?” Hera asks when he finishes.

Doug snorts. “Yeah, right. I’m just going to draw attention to the fact that I don’t deserve them and remind them exactly how out of my league they both are. That definitely won’t backfire or make them reconsider this entire situation or anything.”

“I don’t think it will,” Hera says. “Eiffel, I think…I think I have an idea. Something that might help. But it’ll be better if Lovelace and Minkowski are both here.”

“What kind of idea?”

“Just…trust me on this one, okay? I’ll ask them to come up here, and you can tell them how you’re feeling, and I’ll take it from there.”

Doug considers it. He’d rather swallow shards of glass than admit to either woman how insecure he’s feeling about their relationship. Just thinking about it feels like swallowing glass: a sharp pain stabs at the back of his throat, and the tears in the corners of his eyes threaten to spill over.

Still, he trusts Hera. Trusts her more than anyone besides maybe Lovelace and Minkowski. And this thing, this fear that’s built up inside him and keeps getting bigger, feels like it’s eating him alive.

“Okay,” he says finally, the word half-stuck in his throat. He swallows, breathes, and tries again.

“Okay.”

Minutes later, Lovelace and Minkowski enter the comms room, the former looking confused and the latter concerned. All Hera had told them was that it wasn’t an emergency, but that Eiffel needed them.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Lovelace says, and Eiffel breaks. The dam of stubbornness and willpower that’s been holding back his tears bursts and suddenly he’s sobbing into Lovelace’s arms, Minkowski’s hand running comfortingly up and down his back.

“Shhhhh,” he hears the commander say. “It’s all right, Doug. It’s all right.”

When he’s recovered well enough to speak—Minkowski insists on getting him tissues, and Lovelace ties his hair back for him so he doesn’t have to keep brushing it out of his face—he tries to explain as best he can.

“I’m sorry, I know you both have work to do—”

“Never mind about that,” Minkowski says. “We want to know what’s happening with you, Doug.”

“Well, um. Shit.” He looks down at his feet. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You and I were talking,” Hera says, prompting him.

“Right. We were talking, and I was telling her…that I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Minkowski asks.

“Afraid of an if ? Which is completely stupid, especially when I say it out loud, it’s just…” Doug takes a deep breath. “A couple weeks ago Lovelace said if we were back on Earth. ”

“Then I’d be fucking you senseless with a strap-on,” Lovelace says. “I remember.”

Doug can’t suppress the hint of a shiver that runs down his spine when she says this. “Right. But I just got to thinking…if we really were back on Earth…we wouldn’t have this at all.”

“What do you mean?” Minkowski says.

“It’s just…I mean, the two of you are only with me because you don’t have any other options. Besides each other, of course, and honestly sometimes I’m not sure why you don’t just stick with that and leave me out of it—but my point is, we’re only doing this…thing we’re doing because we’re trapped in space together. If we were back on Earth? Neither of you would choose me.” Doug breathes deeply, trying to keep tears from welling up again.

“Oh, Eiffel,” Minkowski says, and she wraps him in what might be the tightest hug he’s ever experienced. “That’s not true. Of course it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Minkowski,” Lovelace says slowly, her expression uneasy. “I know I’d choose Eiffel on Earth in a heartbeat, but…you have a husband. The three of us would never have happened if he were in the equation.”

Minkowski tenses but doesn’t let go of Doug.

“I mean, that’s true, isn’t it?” Lovelace says. “You’ll go back to your husband. When we get back. If we get back.”

Minkowski shifts so that she’s still got her arms around Eiffel, but only loosely so. “I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t really thought about it. I’ve just been so worried that we’ll never get back at all…I’m not even sure he’d want me.” Her voice goes thin on the last sentence, threatening to crack. “He still thinks I’m dead. I don't…I don’t know what he’d do if I turned up suddenly.”

As far as Eiffel can tell, all this conversation has done is make everyone in the room feel worse. So he reaches for his lifeline.

“Hera? You said you had an idea to make this all better?”

“Yes,” Hera says, sounding less sure of herself now than she had in her initial conversation with Doug. “I thought I could…tell you a story. Of life back on Earth.”

“A story?” Doug says. That was her brilliant plan? Admittedly, Hera’s a hell of a storyteller when she wants to be—many nights spent masturbating to her cleverly improvised erotica could testify to that—but Doug isn’t sure a good wank is going alleviate any of the woe from the can of worms they’ve just opened.

“Yes, Officer Eiffel. A story. Everyone sit down, if you please.”

“What is this, kindergarten?” Lovelace grumbles, but she sits cross-legged on the floor nevertheless. Doug and Minkowski join her, and soon both women have Doug cuddled up between them, his head on Lovelace’s shoulder, her arm around his waist, one of Minkowski’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and her other hand resting on his knee. He feels warm, and safe, and cared for, and the sharpness in the back of his throat begins to dull.

“If you were back on Earth,” Hera begins. “Lovelace would buy that dildo.”

“Hell yeah I would,” Lovelace says.

“Hey, no interrupting.”

“Sorry. Just excited.”

“Lovelace would buy that dildo,” Hera continues, “and she’d keep it in a locked chest in the back of her closet, along with all the rest of her toys. Vibrators, and handcuffs, and ropes and paddles and whips and chains. Costumes, too—a catsuit, a headmistress’ uniform, corsets and thigh-highs and heels. Everything Lovelace had in her dominatrix days, and everything she dreamed of having but couldn’t afford or didn’t have the space for. But now, now she’s working with three incomes plus the payout from a successful class-action lawsuit against Goddard Futuristics. She can afford a few indulgences.

"A lot of indulgences, actually. See, since Lovelace and her crewmates got back to Earth, they’d kept fighting, had organized Goddard employees past and present, gathered evidence, shared their testimony. And when it was all over, they had an eight-figure number to their name, but more importantly, they had the knowledge that the people who’d hurt them and their crewmates would never hurt anyone else ever again.”

Doug isn’t sure what he’d expected this story to be, but this is definitely not it. Still, he feels his muscles start to relax, his shoulders dropping down and the tension in his face, which he hadn’t even noticed until it was gone, releasing.

“And with that money, Lovelace decided to treat herself. Lord knows she deserved it after everything she’d gone through. But more importantly, she decided to treat her partners. Because after everything they’d been through, she couldn’t imagine a happy ending that didn’t involve the three of them together. And neither could they.”

Doug feels Lovelace sigh against him.

“And so they bought a house together in Southern California. A place where the weather was beautiful and they never had to worry about being cold. A place where they could make trips to the beach whenever they liked, but where they weren’t permanently tracking sand into the house, much to Minkowski’s relief. A place where they could hear the sound of traffic, never so loudly that it interrupted their sleep, but just enough to remind them that there were other people nearby, would always be other people nearby.

"And it’s a smart house, too, very environmentally friendly. But more importantly, equipped to accommodate a state-of-the-art AI program, originally designed for a deep-space mission, but more than up to the task of managing a single-family home.”

Doug smiles. “I think I know just the right girl for the job.”

“They fill the house with things they want but don’t need. Really nice china plates for Minkowski, which sit untouched in their custom-made cabinet, but which make her smile whenever she looks at them, and a vintage record player and stacks of Broadway soundtracks on vinyl. For Lovelace, a home gym full of shiny, fancy equipment, and a motorcycle, and of course, her trunk full of toys. And for Eiffel, a home theatre, with Blu-Rays of every movie he’s ever loved, and an arcade-style Pac-Man machine.”

“Awesome!” Doug interrupts, and Minkowski shushes him.

“They drink coffee together, real coffee from Colombia that Minkowski grinds herself every morning. Some nights they stay in, order pizza and catch up on all the Netflix they’ve missed, with queues carefully curated by Eiffel. Other nights they dress up, go out to dinner at fancy restaurants where Eiffel comically mispronounces the names of dishes to cover up the fact that he legitimately doesn’t know how to say them, and they order the most expensive items on the menu just because they can, and they play footsie under the table and don’t care who sees.

"One night they go dancing. There’s a swing dancing club nearby, and Minkowski insists on taking them, even though Lovelace has never done swing dancing in her life and Doug has and knows exactly how much of a disaster he’ll be on the dance floor. Minkowski doesn’t care, though, and the two of them want to make her happy, so they let her teach them each in turn, clumsy steps slowly turning into graceful ones, even for Eiffel, until they give up on partnering off and begin twirling and swaying in a messy, giggly threesome, making up the steps as they go along, stealing kisses until, by the time they make it back to the house, they’re ready for something much more satisfying than kissing.”

“Mm, can I get some more details on that?” Lovelace says.

“The bed in the house is massive, a California king that’s almost the size of the entire bedroom in Eiffel’s first apartment. It’s only because of how spacious the master is that the room isn’t swallowed by it. It’s a little extravagant, maybe, but it’s got enough room for three people to sleep comfortably—and have sex comfortably. A lot of times, for scenes, they’ll use other rooms of the house—the basement, over time, becomes more dungeon than anything else, and the kitchen surfaces have all seen their fair share of… unconventional use.

"But on nights like the night they go dancing, they take going to bed together literally and tumble onto the mattress, a sweaty mess of limbs and passion, mouths finding necks, hands dipping below waistbands. Yes, they have every sex toy any of them’s ever imagined having, but for all the hours of fun they have testing them out, nothing can turn them on like each other, like the feeling of skin on skin and the simple truth of the three of them together, present, safe, with all the time in the world to dedicate to drawing out moans and gasps and orgasms.

"There are no disasters to manage, now. No mind games to play, no ominous mysteries to uncover. There’s just a house, and three people, and one AI. So even when the nightmares come—and they come—and even when they must navigate difficult reunions with people on Earth—and they must—and even when it all seems like too much—and it does—there is always a safe haven to come back to, a place where there is love and support and understanding. Where there is always at least one someone to wipe away tears, to rub tired shoulders, to hold onto silently until the hurt goes away or to listen patiently until every frustrated word has been spoken.

"There is no such thing as a world without hurt. There is no such thing as paradise. But in a house by the beach, where they can always hear the sound of traffic, three imperfect people with imperfect pasts and imperfect futures do their best to build something like it. And at times, like when they sit out in the yard together, watching the sun set in brilliant pinks and purples over the horizon, each one holding the other two’s hands, they come so close to paradise that they may as well have reached it.”

Hera finishes her story, and there is silence for a long moment, the four of them letting the final words of her tale linger in the air for as long as they’ll last. Then, finally, Lovelace speaks.

“Hera, I think that’s the best story you’ve ever told me.”

“Me too,” Minkowski agrees.

“Me three,” says Doug.

“Thank you,” says Hera. “I do my best.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but…I’d like for that to happen. Just like Hera said,” says Minkowski. “The house, the dancing…all of it.”

“I make no promises about the dancing,” Doug says. “Hera wasn’t kidding, we did swing dancing in seventh grade and my partner and I both ended up on the floor. Twice. No joke. But the rest of it…yeah. That sounds pretty perfect.”

“What do you say we get a head start on that whole ‘lots of really excellent sex’ part?” Lovelace says, her mouth twisted into half a smirk.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Doug replies, and he scrambles to his feet to race eagerly toward their quarters. The pain in his throat has completely vanished.

#w359bb17 #w359 #wolf 359 #doug eiffel #hera

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hephaestuscrew · 1 year

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I want to talk about this moment between Lovelace and Minkowski immediately after Cutter dies:

Lovelace GASPS in relief. Both women COLLAPSE, wounded, at the end of their ropes. LOVELACE Nice... shot. MINKOWSKI Couldn't... have done it... without you, Captain. You all right? LOVELACE No. You? MINKOWSKI No, I... I... yeah... LOVELACE Stay with me, Minkowski. MINKOWSKI Yeah... We're almost through this. We just... need to... get Eiffel... And off of their attempts to hold onto consciousness, we -

Firstly, the acting of this scene is incredible. (The timestamp is 1:42:26 if you want to listen back.) I'm in awe of the way Emma Sherr-Ziarko and Ceilia Lynn-Jacobs convey the sense of pain and exhaustion and relief and trying to hold onto consciousness. The kind of damage they've undergone has been very different - Minkowski bleeding out from her gunshot wound, Lovelace recovering from the external control that caused her to inflict that gunshot wound. But the way these experiences manifest in their breathless pained voices is pretty similar. There's almost a kind of unity in that.

I love that the first thing Minkowski and Lovelace do after Cutter dies, even as they are struggling to speak, is to acknowledge each other's contribution to this moment.

"Nice shot" feels like a comment more suited to congratulating someone on doing well at a shooting range than as a response to a friend successfully harpooning their evil boss. There's a casualness to it as a phrase that feels almost humourous in this context, but it also reflects the fact that there isn't really an established thing to say in a situation like this. (More below the cut)

Minkowski could have just taken full credit here - after all she's the one who fired the killing shot - but she doesn't. It reflects the ethos of this show that neither Cutter nor Pryce, the major antagonists, is defeated by a single protagonist alone, and that the protagonists themselves are aware of that.

This scene is an example of a kind of exchange we get a few times throughout the show, where a character asks another character if they are okay and the answer is a clear no. There's an conversation like this between Eiffel and Minkowski in Ep12 (EIFFEL: You okay, Commander? / MINKOWSKI : No, Eiffel. My second in command just betrayed me and tried really, really hard to murder both us. I’m pretty damn far from “okay.”), and between Hera and Minkowski in Ep29 (HERA: Commander? Are you okay? / MINKOWSKI: No. You? / HERA: No. But I will be.), and between Eiffel and Hera in Ep41 (EIFFEL: Are you okay now? / HERA: No, Officer Eiffel. I'm not. But... I'm going to be.) I think I've said this before in tags on a post, but there's something about that type of exchange that fits the tone of this show so well to me. Of course none of these characters are all right, not with what they've been through. But the asking is still important, because of the care these characters have for each other. And the honest answer is still important, because this is a show partly about communication and because sometimes the awful things need to be acknowledged.

I should probably also say that there are also plenty of instances in Wolf 359 where people falsely claim to be fine in response to questions like this. There's an awful lot of emotional repression and compartmentalising on that space station. Which makes it more significant when characters are honest about not being okay.

In this scene, Minkowski and Lovelace don't need to waste words on saying why they aren't all right. I picture them both looking down at Minkowski's wound as she speaks here. And they laugh, or as well as they can do in their current condition, at how absurdly obvious it is that they aren't okay. Maybe that attempt at laughter is a way to keep going. And they are both so determined to keep going.

Lovelace tells Minkowski "stay with me", even though Lovelace is struggling to remain conscious herself. There's something so tender about that to me, and it's particularly heart-wrenching given that Lovelace was forced against her will to fire the bullet that wounded Minkowski.

When Minkowski says "We're almost through this", it feels like a call back to her conversation with Eiffel earlier in this episode, when he said "We're almost through. Just one more day, and then we're done." The "this" in "almost through this" somehow holds everything that they've been through on the Hephaestus. The repeated sense that this is the last confrontation that they will face on that station is perfect for a finale. But there's also something very emotionally heavy about that finality, especially when spoken by a woman who is bleeding out from a gunshot wound. And yet through her exhaustion and her pain, Minkowski expresses hope that they will get "through this", that they are "almost" on the other side of the whole nightmare.

Neither Minkowski nor Lovelace even consider the option of not going to look for Eiffel (and Hera). It would have been perfectly reasonable for them to have gone back to the Urania to try to patch Minkowski up and to wait to see if Eiffel and Hera were able to join them. But these characters would never do that.

They go to look for Eiffel even though Minkowski has been shot and Lovelace has been subject to horrific external control. They go to look for Eiffel even though both of them are "at the end of their ropes" and struggling to hold onto consciousness. They go to look for Eiffel even though waiting on the Urania was the plan they'd agreed upon with Hera. They go to look for Eiffel even though, for all they know, Eiffel and Hera might have the situation completely handled, or might even already be safely on the Urania. They go to look for Eiffel (and Hera) because only once they are all together can they consider themselves "through this".

#It's surprising that I've barely talked about this scene #given that it is definitely one of the finale scenes that lives in my head rent free #I put Hera in brackets in that last point because they don't explicitly mention her #and the location aspect of 'looking for Hera' isn't quite the same #but I know that they wouldn't have left without her either #Also characters telling an injured/sick loved one 'Stay with me' is one of those tropes that really gets me #It's a way of saying 'don't die' without saying it (cos they don't want to say it)#It's a way of saying 'don't die' that disguises itself as says just 'stay conscious'#It's a way of saying 'don't die' that also says 'don't leave me. I need you here with me'#wolf 359 #w359 #wolf 359 spoilers #w359 spoilers #the empty man posteth #renee minkowski #renée minkowski #isabel lovelace

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theradioghost · 7 years

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Audio Drama Podcast Recs

EDIT: well jesus this thing is getting old! If you’re looking for podcast recommendations I would recommend checking some of the newer posts I’ve made. I’ve expanded my subscription list from about 30 to over 150 in the years since I posted this, & at at this point it’s a pretty inadequate rec list.

Because I’ve gotten a few questions over time about podcast recs, both from people who are curious about audio drama, and fellow denizens of Podcast Hell™ who need something new, I wanted to put together this list so I could go a bit more into detail about why I love and recommend each of these amazing audio dramas.

Rather than trying to rank them, I tried to organize this list roughly based on popularity, at least based on my dash! More well-known shows are listed first, and then my faves that I don’t see getting nearly the love that they deserve. Especially with the volume of new innovative audio drama being created, there’s some really good stuff out there not getting nearly enough attention. Which is not to say that, if you’re a new podcast fan, you have to start with the most popular – but those shows are more likely to have an active fandom. (Of course, there are a ton of great podcasts out there, and plenty (both popular and obscure) that I don’t listen to yet.)

I also have a podcast rec tag and a very long list of audio dramas, if you want to go hunting for something beyond these recommendations here. Additionally, if you want more details or content warnings about any of these shows, feel free to message me on or off anon and I’ll do my best to answer! This post really focuses on the positives of each show and who I think might enjoy them.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE – Community radio from a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, the dog park is forbidden, the mayoral candidates aren’t human, the weather is a mystery, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

If you know anything about audio drama podcasts, there’s like a 99.99% chance you know about Night Vale already. If not, just go listen. It’s weird and amazing and beautiful and helped to make a lot of this possible. Or if 100+ episodes plus live shows is overwhelming, don’t (but come back to it someday. It is magical).

For people who like: surrealism, humor, ‘radio show’ format, somewhat less emphasis on plot, diversity, indie music, experimental storytelling, a large back catalog of episodes, a fandom considered large by regular standards and not just podcast standards.

ALICE ISN’T DEAD – As she travels across America, a trucker tells the story of her search for the missing wife she had presumed dead, of the mysterious danger stalking her down freeways and backroads, and of the much bigger – and more terrifying – mystery she is uncovering.

The first and most popular of Night Vale Presents’ other podcasts. Gothic Americana soft horror lesbians! The writing, atmosphere, and orchestration are all superb, as is Jasika Nicole’s monologue performance. I personally recommend car/transit listening. (Also, you can get the whole soundtrack for free, and you should definitely do that.)

For people who like: surrealism, horror, Americana, female leads, lesbians, atmosphere, introspection, mystery, great music, something to drive to.

WOLF 359 – Doug Eiffel doesn’t want to do his job, Hera is a friendly but faulty AI, Dr. Hilbert is probably a mad scientist, Commander Minkowski wishes she wasn’t in charge of these idiots, and together, the four of them make up the entire crew of the USS Hephaestus space station. It’s not a picnic at the best of times: they’re isolated in a constantly malfunctioning tin can, orbiting a red dwarf star eight light years from Earth, and working for a shady corporation with coworkers they can’t stand. Then Eiffel starts to receive inexplicable transmissions from deep space – and everything gets so, so much worse.

It’s a hilarious office sitcom! It’s a character-driven deep-space sci-fi thriller! It’s a tragic, thematically powerful story about personhood, communication, and isolation! It’s all of those things, often within three lines of one another and frequently all at once! Wolf 359 is probably a masterpiece and now, heading into its fourth and final season, it continues to surprise and impress me every single time. Alan Rodi’s music is evocative and superb and the cast and writing are top-notch. One of the best. Listen to it.

For people who like: excellent character-driven writing, great music, well-written women, a gender-balanced ensemble cast, intimate sci-fi, hilarious and often referential humor, scary corporate overlords, cerebus syndrome.

THE PENUMBRA PODCAST – In Hyperion City, metropolis of a far-future Mars, a private eye named Juno Steel is pulled into life-threatening criminal conspiracies, and tangles with an even more dangerous, nameless thief – who could be his worst enemy or the love of his life. Within the Second Citadel, human civilization is protected by knights who venture out into the jungles to fight the monsters that threaten them – but some knights are discovering monsters who seem just a bit different. On the Painted Plains, a train-robbing bandit steals away a schoolteacher – and her heart. All of these and more are stories waiting to be heard behind the doors of the Penumbra, the grandest hotel this side of Nowhere. And absolutely none of them are straight.

Fabulously written genre-bending “queer AF” anthology show. The best is the Juno Steel series, about a bisexual, nonbinary sci-fi PI, which remains eminently and hilariously quotable even as it wrenches your heart out with genre-deconstructive depictions of mental illness and one of the most believable and emotional romances I’ve seen in ages . The Second Citadel fantasy series is also starting to come into its own in the second season and the standalone stories from the first season are a pretty damn good listen (LISTEN TO THE GAY WESTERN. DO IT.) I love this show, I love everyone from this show, I love everyone associated with this show, and I love Mick Mercury.

For people who like: playing with genre tropes, OTR, noir fiction, diversity, romantic chemistry, a variety of stories, suspense, heartache.

THE BRIGHT SESSIONS – Dr. Joan Bright isn’t an ordinary therapist, but her patients aren’t ordinary patients. Sam’s panic attacks bring on bouts of involuntary time travel; Caleb has it hard enough negotiating teenage emotions without also experiencing the feelings of everyone around him; Chloe can’t escape hearing other people’s thoughts; and the less said about Damien, the better. But Dr. Bright, too, is more than she first appears.

It’s a hard-hitting and poignant show about mental illness and people recovering from deep traumas, and also it is about superpowers. As the concept implies, the show is highly character-driven, and it develops an ensemble cast incredibly well. These guys are friends with the Wolf 359 crew and apparently have taken lessons from one another in how to ramp up a plot from “fun” to “oh god why,” but let’s be honest: that’s what we’re here for. Also, unjustifiably sweet gay teen romance, really cute friendships between ladies, at least one cat.

For people who like: highly character-focused narrative, superpowers, moral questions, ensemble casts, cool female leads, shady government activities, great acting.

ARS PARADOXICA – One minute, Dr. Sally Grissom is conducting cutting-edge physics research in her lab in early-21st-century Texas. A single mistake later, she’s on the deck of the U.S.S. Eldridge, in Philadelphia, 1943, smack dab in the middle of a classified WWII weapons experiment. She’s accidentally put time travel into the hands of the US government just as the nuclear era kicks off. And she can’t ever go back.

I assume everyone has heard of ars P because I assume that everyone knows Mischa Stanton. (They work on what must be like 50% of all podcasts that exist at this point, including The Bright Sessions.) Everything they do is pretty much a must-listen, but especially ars p, the “sad time show” to Wolf 359’s “sad space show.” The writing sticks out to me for its sense of consequence; it’s a major theme of the show that everything that happens will have serious and cumulative effects. Deservedly award-winning sound design. As a bonus, it crossed over with The Bright Sessions; if you like one, you might like the other.

For people who like: sci-fi, period settings, cold war thrillers, cool female leads, time travel with rules, complex and grey moralities, science lesbians, diverse ensemble casts.

EOS 10 – Dr. Ryan Dalias has enough to deal with just as the new head surgeon on a massive space station (alien aphrodisiacs, space anti-vaxxers, mind-controlling plants…) But as if that weren’t enough, his boss is an alcoholic misanthrope who has received an unwelcome ultimatum about his drinking; the nurse may or may not be inclined to bite people; there’s a deposed alien prince in the examination room who won’t put his pants back on; and an intergalactic terrorist who wants his name cleared is hiding in the cargo bay. And those are the people on his side.

I have my issues with EOS 10, not least of which is that it is still mired in a two-year hiatus (though Season Three is finally going into production soon? FINGERS CROSSED). I usually forget those issues when I listen because it’s still a frankly hilarious space comedy and the entire main plot is kicked off because of a potentially deadly boner. Think of it as the strange offspring of DS9 and Scrubs. Come for wild space shenanigans, stay for surprisingly heartfelt storylines about addiction (and even wilder space shenanigans). If W359 sounds cool but maybe a little heavy for you (or if the first season was your favorite), EOS 10 might be more up your alley.

For people who like: Star Trek, comedy, space scifi adventures, alien characters, gay space pirate cowboys, waiting.

THE THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR – “America’s favorite new time podcast in the style of old time radio.”

An anthology show like The Penumbra which takes a comedic approach to its old time radio inspiration instead (and it is very OTR inspired – not just playing with the same genres). Has a lot of segments, not all of which are created equal; two are standouts. Sparks Nevada: Marshall on Mars (which has a continuous plot) follows a deadpan robot-fighting lawman, the Martian tracker who provides him with somewhat vitriolic companionship, and their various allies across the sci-fi-comedy-western landscape of Space Future Mars. Beyond Belief (which is episodic) stars alcoholic socialites Frank and Sadie Doyle, who may be world-renowned paranormal experts, but who mostly just combat supernatural evils so they can get back to their two greatest loves: booze and one another. It was recorded live, often featuring celebrity guest stars (most notably and frequently Nathan Fillion), and recently ended its many-year run.

For people who like: OTR, forties/fifties culture, really REALLY cute couple chemistry (Beyond Belief), humor, much more lighthearted content, a large back catalog, great music, corpsing.

GREATER BOSTON – Leon Stamatis’s perfectly organized life abruptly ends one day at the top of the first hill of a roller coaster – and that’s where the real story begins. His death will start a domino effect of change rippling through a Boston where activists agitate for subway lines to form their own city, shadowy executives watch over offices where magazine editors predict the future, and Google Calendars are updated from beyond the grave.

Guys, I am never gonna shut up about this show. At this point it’s probably my favorite podcast. Experimental fiction, a sort of regional-gothic-slice-of-life, with a plot that builds into the story of an interconnecting community of people, all of them growing and learning and changing and interacting, even the dead ones. And it plays more brilliantly and hilariously and beautifully and poignantly with format and writing and character than you’d think possible. I sometimes see it compared to WTNV (the “weird town” angle), but I think it’s likely to appeal to fans of The Bright Sessions: its characters may be dealing with incredibly strange situations, but the focus (and the appeal) is the development of those characters and their relationships with one another. Alternately, just literally everyone should listen. It’s that good.

For people who like: ensemble casts, experimental fiction, awesome women, strong character development, lesbians, playing with format, characters named Extinction Event, political intrigue, great music, Boston.

WOODEN OVERCOATS – Siblings Rudyard and Antigone Funn, along with their assistant Georgie, run a funeral home on the tiny Channel island of Piffling. It’s the only one, which is how they remain in business even though Rudyard is a punctuality-obsessed misanthrope and Antigone hasn’t left the morgue in daylight for 17 years. Then the world’s most perfect man, Eric Chapman, opens another funeral parlor directly across the street.

A British sitcom about rival funeral directors in a small town, with all of the dry, witty black humor that implies. "British” does always feel like the best adjective to convey the distinct sense of humor here. Also, it has amazingly high production values. Like, it just sounds really, really good. Also, it’s narrated by a talking mouse. The third season was just announced, so now is a really great time to catch up.

For people who like: black comedy, British comedies, rivalries of both business and sibling kinds, mysterious backstories, just a whole lot of dead people jokes, a more episodic structure.

THE BRIDGE – Once, you could drive all the way across the Atlantic in luxury and style, using the Transcontinental Bridge. Now, the Bridge is virtually abandoned. The employees of its Watchtowers are the only people left to tell its stories: stories about ghosts, about curses and illusions, about vanished and abandoned people and places, about the monsters whose places these were before the Bridge, and the strange and dangerous people who came there to find them.

IMHO, possibly the highlight of the writng for The Bridge is that they can create atmosphere like nobody’s business, and the show has a gorgeous soundtrack to boot. The characters are charming, the plot is intriguing, and the world they are building is like absolutely nothing else. Like Archive 81 below, it might appeal to those who’d enjoy Lovecraft if he didn’t suck so much in every possible way, although it’s much softer on the scary factor.

For people who like: atmosphere, storytelling, great character dynamics, sea monsters, spookiness, really fun ladies, ghost stories, mysteries, the bottomless depths and siren’s call of the ocean.

THE STRANGE CASE OF STARSHIP IRIS and UNDER PRESSURE – Starship Iris is the story of Violet Liu, a biologist forced by circumstance to join up with a ragtag crew of spacefarers to determine whether the explosion which killed every other person onboard her spaceship was really an accident. Under Pressure presents the notes of Jamie McMillan-Barrie, a researcher whose literary background did not prepare her to negotiate the kind of office drama that takes place on a research station at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Both of these are part of Procyon Podcasting Network, which also has more upcoming shows which I am beyond thrilled about; both are also incredibly diverse, both in-universe and behind the scenes. Both are charming and very, very gay as well as racially diverse; I’m particularly fond of Starship Iris, but everything that comes out of Procyon is more than worth a listen. They’ve started pretty recently and have only a few episodes each.

For people who like: space scifi, found family tropes, workplace drama, human/genderless alien romance, space lesbians, diversity, cool female leads.

THE ORBITING HUMAN CIRCUS (OF THE AIR) – The dreamy, accident-prone janitor of the Eiffel Tower does his best to get himself a place in the fantastical, impossible radio variety show being broadcast from the tower every night. Will he ever be successful? Will the show survive his attempts? And just where do the mysterious and magical acts come from?

Considering it’s a Night Vale Presents podcast and stars an A-list of my favorite underappreciated creatives I was kind of shocked at how little discussion I see. OHC is so charming and dreamlike and heartwarming; it’s like recapturing the feeling of a particularly magical bedtime story. It features Mandy Patinkin singing Cheap Trick and you need that in your life. Also, it has a platypus in it.

For people who like: OTR, John Cameron Mitchell/The Music Tapes/Neutral Milk Hotel, a gentler weirdness than other NVP podcasts, Paris, charm, experimental storytelling.

WITHIN THE WIRES – You are a patient at the Institute. You have been instructed to listen to this series of relaxation tapes to aid in your treatment. You must trust my voice. You must trust only my voice.

NVP’s other highly underappreciated show. WTW manages to tell a narrative in a format (self-help relaxation tapes) I would have never thought possible, and though it’s difficult to say much about what makes it so good without spoiling the effect of that excellence, it’s a great choice if you’re weird-fiction-inclined. Like Alice Isn’t Dead, it also features lesbians. (It may not be good for anyone who has trouble with unreality, disturbing second-person commands, or depictions of institutionalization.)

For people who like: experimental storytelling, WLW love stories, surrealism, dystopic fiction, suspense.

INKWYRM – Mella Sonder was hired to work with a recalcitrant AI, not to be personal assistant to Annie Inkwyrm, head of outer space’s premiere fashion magazine – and the two of them will probably be fighting about that, along with all of the other disasters they get tangled up in, until the star they’re orbiting explodes. Or until they fall in love.

My money’s on the latter (fingers crossed please make it happen), but this show just finished a really fun first season and I absolutely cannot wait for more of it. I’m a sucker for dysfunctional coworker comedy, and an even bigger sucker for girls falling in love; this offers both and is excellent, and is just incredibly done for an amateur podcast. The peeps making it are inspiring and badass and really, really talented.

For people who like: The Devil Wears Prada, scifi, diversity, vitriolic romantic tension, cool female leads, alien characters, wlw romance, incompetently homicidal AIs.

THE BEEF AND DAIRY NETWORK – The number one podcast for those involved – or just interested! – in the production of beef animals and dairy herds.

Honestly almost impossible to describe. What really gets me is the hilarity of how it somehow perfectly imitates the public radio/industry podcast style, delivering you important updates from the world of cattle products, except not from a world anything like ours. Endless beefy fun times with the occasional sharp right turn into body horror and potent unreality played for comedy. This and Alice Isn’t Dead are my dad’s favorite podcasts, which probably says something about him.

For people who like: Wooden Overcoats (it’s by the same folks!), weirdness, humor, much less of a focus on narrative, ‘radio show’ format, satire, rich beef sausages.

ARCHIVE 81 – Dan Powell is missing. He was hired, so he thought, for a simple job cataloguing an archive of tapes for the New York state government: a series of interviews that a woman named Melody Pendras conducted with the tenants of an odd apartment building. Then the story on the tapes becomes impossibly strange and terrifying, and so does Dan’s life.

Another one where I’m not sure whether everyone knows about it and just isn’t talking, but they should be. It’s probably a sign of how fantastic A81 is that it’s one of my favorites even though I ordinarily can’t stand horror. This post really extolls its virtues in a better way than I can. This show has some of the most incredible sound design I’ve heard yet, so if visceral body horror conveyed solely through the audio medium isn’t for you, then neither is Archive 81. On the other hand, if you like extradimensional lesbian apotheosis and the nickname “Boombox Fuckboy,” listen to this. On top of that, the acting is superb. (The creators, Dead Signals, also did an apocalyptic scifi survival-horror miniseries thing called The Deep Vault, which is similarly beyond well-made.)

For people who like: horror, weirdness, found footage format, great music, absolutely stellar atmospheric and action sound design, excellent and realistic acting, The King in Yellow, a ‘Lovecraftian’ feel not based on hatred of anyone who isn’t straight/white.

JIM ROBBIE AND THE WANDERERS – Three trouble-seeking wandering musicians (one brash and upbeat, one an argumentative engineer, and one a grumpy robot brought to life from a radio and assorted cutlery) wander a post-apocalyptic America populated by strange towns and fantasy beings, some friendly, others dangerous.

This is another show that really charmed me right out of the box. Not to mention that it’s a take on “post-apocalyptic” that I’d never seen before – why have grim ruins or cannibalistic societies when you can have giant friendly genderless bees, an NYC inhabited by partying undead, towns full of squid-people, and desert-dwelling leprechauns? It’s much more of a fantasy take on the genre and the characters are incredibly sweet. I was also really impressed by the quality bump it’s undergone over its run so far.

For people who like: fantasy, more lighthearted narratives, fun and creative concepts, a villain called “The Fig-Wasp King,” great music, friendship, cool female leads, diversity.

THE HIDDEN ALMANAC – A thrice-weekly, four-minute show hosted by the plague doctor Reverend Mord, offering historical anecdotes from another world, the feast days of unlikely saints, and useful gardening advice.

Tired of that one analogy from every news article of the 2013 Night Vale boom (“like Stephen King/H.P. Lovecraft wrote A Prairie Home Companion”), writer/artist Ursula Vernon decided to take a crack at recreating Garrison Keillor’s other show, The Writer’s Almanac, in a similar fashion. Compared to WTNV, it comes off as less ‘weird’ and more fantastical, and is on the light side continuity-wise, though both the historical events and the frame show have arcs. In the past couple of years there have been a lot more story arcs, many lasting months, and a lot more appearances from guest character Pastor Drom and other characters. I find it incredibly charming and relaxing.

For people who like: fantasy weirdness, the actual Writer’s Almanac, WTNV, gardening, vitriolic friendships, worldbuilding, short runtimes, less of a focus on plot, large back catalogs, worldbuilding, crows.

#my posts #podcast recs #podcast recommendations #hey! here's that thing ive been doing #also before u ask about taz: im only to pttm and will probably add it once ive caught up #bobbie recommends things

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hephaestuscrew · 3 years

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Here’s another Minkowski & Eiffel ficlet, set at the end of Need to Know. You can read it on AO3 here if you’d prefer.

By now, it's a habit so ingrained that Minkowski does it without thinking. In moments of crisis, or when she faces a difficult decision, the relevant DSSPPM tips rise to the front of her mind without conscious effort. Often, she doesn't register that she's panicking until her brain offers up extracts from the manual as a response. She knows Eiffel would mock her for this coping mechanism if he knew about it. She can easily picture the affectionate smirk that would play across his face as he'd tease her.

After she reads that Eiffel was convicted of kidnapping and child endangerment, she thinks: 874. Ignorance is bliss. Bliss is to be avoided at all times during active rotation. She wouldn't characterise her time on the Hephaestus as anything akin to bliss, but her previous ignorance of this particular information certainly felt a hell of a lot better than the knowledge of it. If she were a good Commander, she'd want to know the truth no matter how unpleasant, but right now she just wishes desperately that she could successfully obey Tip 391. Forget what you’ve been told. Preferably after you’ve done whatever we told you to do.

She hasn't been told to do anything, which means she's got to figure out the next step on her own. There are only really two choices: talk to him about it or don't. She tells herself she's going to do the former, to confront things head on. But then he apologises to her, for something so entirely trivial compared to the crime he apparently committed. And she doesn't know how to reconcile these two versions of him.

There's Eiffel, the man she's known for over two years, who just said sorry for not keeping her in the loop about developments on the station, who hates spiders and loves pizza, who talks in pop culture references and stupid jokes, who tries so hard to make her crack a smile in the midst of this nightmare, who tells her to look after herself, who always argues against hurting anyone (even those who might deserve it), who has saved her life more than once, who she knows would do whatever he could if she was in danger again. And then there's the person in that leaked file, a person who is guilty of kidnapping and child endangerment, a person she doesn't know at all.

She thinks of all the times she's thought she might lose him; that possibility felt like a gun to her own head. This is a different way of losing him, one she hadn't even known to fear. The version of him she's had in her head is being ripped away from her, not by a virus or a bomb or the dangers of space, but by the truth about his own past.

340. Protect yourself from dramatic and/or ironic twists. If something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. This revelation is the dramatic twist to punish her for failing to follow that tip. Eiffel has never been a perfect crewmate, but she supposes it was still too good to be true, that she would have anyone on this hellscape of a station whom she could trust completely.

She trusts Hera and Lovelace, of course she does, but she has seen both of them nearly kill a man (not that she really blames them, given that it was Hilbert both times). And if Eiffel - often the sole proponent of Team What's Wrong With Handcuffs - is a kidnapper… Then perhaps there's no one within 8 lightyears whom she can totally depend upon to do the right thing.

622. Keep no secrets. You may be told lies. That one isn't completely relevant. He never actually lied to her about this. She would have known if he had; he's the worst liar she's ever met. The truth is she never asked him about his life before the mission, the same way he never asked whether she was married. Perhaps she never asked because she understood he didn't want to talk about it. Or perhaps, deep down, some part of her knew that there was something awful in his past, something she'd rather not know. But she never would have guessed this kind of awfulness. If she'd thought about it, she would have expected it was something awful that had happened to him, not something awful that he'd done. Those aren't mutually exclusive, she reminds herself.

Maybe it's a trick, or a mistake. Maybe he was wrongly convicted. She wants to hope it isn't true, but a memory that she's spent months repressing resurfaces: Hilbert asking Eiffel if he was afraid that she'd find out how he ended up on the Hephaestus. There was true fear in Eiffel's voice when he cut Hilbert off, and true shame on his face when he told Minkowski to drop it. It wasn't the response of an innocent man.

"What about you, Lieutenant? Are you going to care?" Jacobi asks. Nothing in the DSSPPM, nothing in her training, nothing she's ever experienced, can tell her how to answer that question. It’s all down to her, and a man she'd thought she knew, and a truth she wishes she didn't.

537. Trust your fellow crew members with your life.

538. But no further.

Yet another tip she didn't follow. She's trusted Eiffel not only with her life, but also with a piece of herself, of how she understands the world, of how she gets through life on the Hephaestus without falling apart. And if that piece is crumbling away, how can she not care?

#Yes its 'being emotional about Minkowski & Eiffel' hours yet again #All day every day I'm emotional about them #I think a lot about her reaction to finding out about Eiffel's jail sentence #It hits her really hard #because he matters to her so much and so she can't deal with the idea that he might not be the person she thought he was #which is why she can't bring herself to talk to him about it #Renee Minkowski #Renée Minkowski #doug eiffel #w359 #Wolf 359 #w359 spoilers #wolf 359 spoilers #w359 fic #the empty man posteth #Eiffel & Minkowski

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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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The Sound and the Fury Re-listen

Well, I've reached episode 7 in my Wolf 359 re-listen, which means it's time for:

The Sound and the Fury

In which Hera and Minkowski are fighting, Eiffel gets caught in the middle, and Hilbert just wants them all to submit to the biologically superior will of the Blessed Eternal.

Straight up, I should probably admit that I forgot about this episode, or rather I didn't link the episode title to the episode's events until I was listening to it. And then I was like "oh, yeah, this is that episode" all the way through. For whatever reason, I thought, in particular, that the plant monster didn't come back until Season 2, with The Paranoia Game. That said, I love the plant monster to a possibly unreasonable degree, so its return here was more than welcome, and the rest of the episode was also fun!

We open in the middle of an argument - and for once, it's not Eiffel's fault. In fact, Eiffel isn't even involved, except insofar as he's trapped in the middle between Hera and Minkowski, and is forced to be the voice of reason as the two of them have it out.

And look, that is always going to be a funny set-up. Hera and Minkowski are both incredibly stubborn personalities, and not at all shy about asserting their opinions, so there's definitely potential for a comically drawn-out, petty argument there. And casting Eiffel as the reasonable, level-headed peacekeeper, in contrast to the two of them, is perfect. It's in character - Eiffel always has been the most pacifist crew member - but it's also a role he's just totally unsuited to, because faced with the combined stubbornness of Hera and Minkowski, he's outmatched, and he knows it.

In an effort not to get involved, then, Eiffel briefly runs through the week's schedule, in a section that isn't really linked to the rest of the episode, but is full of little oddities that remind us just how weird the Hephaestus is. They have a compulsory chess tournament that Hilbert always wins. They have movie night, but only a VHS of Home Alone 2. "On Friday we'll have mustard." It's so weird, and I love it.

We're interrupted, at this point, by Hilbert, who sounds very strange, even for him. And naturally, Eiffel ignores it completely at first, focussed as he is on the unfolding Hera-Minkowski conflict. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, for such a pop culture-savvy guy, Eiffel falls into literally every horror movie cliché. He's so oblivious!

For the rest of us, it's obvious that something's wrong, and our suspicions are confirmed when we learn over the course of his conversation with Eiffel that Hilbert went looking for the plant monster, which now seems to be mind-controlling him, to the point where he's convinced that it's "the most evolutionarily competitive lifeform on this station, the most deserving of life."

And okay, I love the plant monster, but that's very alarming, and is made even more so by the fact that it's something that Hilbert might conceivably have said anyway? I mean, it's cold and Darwinistic and smacks of eugenics, yes, but it also has a callous ruthlessness to it that's totally Hilbert's style, as well as that trademark lack of concern for human life. It's like the plant monster just exaggerated what was already there, turned the mad scientist dial up to eleven. In other words, it made Hilbert even more Hilbert-y.

Luckily, Eiffel realises soon enough that something's wrong, and goes to warn Minkowski. Minkowski, being a mature, rational individual, immediately drops her argument with Hera and goes to - oh, wait, no, she does basically the opposite of that, ignoring Eiffel in favour of continuing her argument with Hera. Great. Good job, Commander.

It's at this point, of course, that we finally learn exactly what Minkowski and Hera are arguing about. And is it petty. Turns out, Minkowski wants Hera to submit reports on the various systems she runs around the station in case there's an emergency, but also just because Minkowski wants to know what's going on behind the scenes. We don't get to hear Hera's side of things just yet, but already, we can see the irony in Minkowski's arguments. Sure, she wants to be better appraised of everything going on onboard the Hephaestus in case of an emergency - but her stubbornness here means she's missing the emergency that's unfolding right under her nose!

Eiffel's attempts to make her see sense don't really help either, at this juncture. Instead, they just get him dragged into Minkowski and Hera's argument. Which I'm sure is that last thing he wants, because those two play dirty. First Minkowski pressures him into saying, to Hera's face, that he doesn't think AIs should be trusted. And then Hera, angry, plays Eiffel's words from earlier back to Minkowski, twisting what he said around so that both parties are angry at him. As a result, Eiffel ends up walking an impossibly thin line, trying to appease both of his friends, while keeping himself out of their argument as best he can and while getting increasingly frustrated with the both of them. It's a painfully awkward situation, and I genuinely feel sorry for him.

That said, the argument that then plays out is fascinating to me, because I think it shines a really interesting light on the power dynamics onboard the Hephaestus, putting the focus on Hera and Minkowski's relationship in a way that we haven't really seen before. Up until now, after all, they seem to have worked in tandem pretty well, with Minkowski giving orders and Hera carrying them out. Here, for the first time, we see a tension between them, stemming from the fact that Minkowski, as the commanding officer, nominally has the most power onboard the Hephaestus, while Hera, as the ship's AI, probably actually has the most power, between her vast sensory array, her huge databanks, and her literally running the entire Hephaestus. Yes, Minkowski is technically in charge, purely by virtue of her being a human. But Hera, on a day-to-day basis, is actually more crucial to their ongoing mission - even though, as an AI, she doesn't get to hold an official ranking position.

That's possibly why Hera takes Eiffel's well-meaning dismissal ("It's just her programming") so personally. It's a reminder of her different, subordinate status, and it reeks of a double standard - she's right that nobody would think to blame a human's erratic behaviours on their biology. That would be patronising, right? As much as Eiffel means well, writing Hera's reactions off as mere programming strips her of her agency - something that comes up again and again in her character arc. How much is Hera responsible for her actions, if she can also be programmed to act a certain way? In what ways has she been "made" a certain way, against her will? And how can she best deal with that while still retaining a sense of agency and control over her life and identity? They're big, complicated questions, and we're only really scratching the surface here, but I do think it's a solid foundation for later developments. At the very least, we get the impression that Hera doesn't like to be reduced to her programming - and rightly so, I suspect. To some extent, at least, she is more than just the code that she is made of, just like humans are more than the sum of their biology. And that's a good thing to be establishing now, buried in the middle of a relatively low-stakes argument, before the more plotty stuff kicks off later on in the show.

And of course, it also bleeds into Hera and Minkowski's argument, which really picks up steam at this point, after an impassioned but ultimately futile speech from Eiffel about how it's a stupid fight to begin with and how making him pick sides is dumb and unfair. Hera, ignoring this, accuses Minkowski of feeling threatened by the big, powerful AI. That, for Hera, is why Minkowski is micromanaging her. It's because she's a typical human, insecure about an AI having more power than her.

Hera's point is almost immediately complicated by Minkowski, who rightly points out that the issue, for her, isn't that Hera's an AI. It's that Hera' unreliable. She keeps breaking down and glitching, and so the crew keep experiencing emergencies that could maybe be avoided if Hera would just give Minkowski the reports she wants. We've seen Hera break down as recently as last episode, and so this does kind of ring true, even if the way that Minkowski brings up Hera' vocal glitching feels like a bit of a low blow.

Both of them, then, have a point, and I think it's also worth noting that it's also, as Minkowski points out to Eiffel, a question of protocol. Whether Hera likes it or not, Minkowski is, technically, her commanding officer, and should be able to just give her commands and demand reports from her. Refusing to do so undermines Minkowski's authority. That said, Hera didn't exactly have a choice when it came to joining whatever weird sort-of military thing Goddard has going on. She never signed up for the whole "commanding officer" thing, so why should she obey Minkowski? Because she's programmed to?

It's messy, grey situation, with no clear answers, and it's worth noting that the argument doesn't really get resolved. Neither Minkowski nor Hera back down at any point. Instead, a combination of Eiffel calling them out for being childish and Hilbert attempting a coup snaps them out of it, reminding them that they have bigger problems right now. There is a time and a place for the discussion they were having. But that time is not now, and so they decide, without really discussing it, to set aside their grievances. It's not that their respective opinions aren't valid. But keeping each other (and the rest of the crew) safe comes first, and so they bond over being annoyed at Eiffel, and they set off to save Hilbert. It's sweet, in a way, and I like how quickly they both just get on with it. And Eiffel's dejected resignation at the end is the cherry on top. Bless him.

And so we get to the end of an episode that, while it's reliably funny, also gives us an outline of the main points in an argument that we probably should have seen coming. It's yet another example of how stress and tension can easily build up in the contained, isolated atmosphere of the Hephaestus - only this time, we don't get Eiffel cracking and hoarding toothpaste, we get Hera and Minkowski cracking and unleashing the titular sound and fury. The points raised get us thinking, in particular, about Hera's status, as an AI, but also just as a member of the Hephaestus' crew. Eiffel, meanwhile, is forced into a responsible, mediating role that he is neither comfortable in nor particularly good at. And at the end of the day, we're reassured that Minkowski and Hera do, at least, have their priorities straight. Arguing over reports is fine and dandy, but it's not worth getting killed over.

And of course, perhaps most excitingly, the plant monster returns. Surrender your flesh, and feed your new master :)

Miscellaneous thoughts:

It doesn't escape my attention that this is the second title that's a Shakespeare reference. Keeping it classy there, Doug

"Umm... that's all it says for Friday."

The schedule bit is basically the Night Vale Community Calendar segment, but in space

Hilbert's voice in this is sooo weird and dull and creepy ugh

I know the science of it isn't really the focus here, and I'm 100% down with that, but also how does a plant mind control people?!? I want to know!

"Our operating system is a tin-headed, insubordinate, feckless fool!"

"Sit your Swiss ass down, and take a side, Doug."

Aww, Eiffel just sounds so confused and stressed-out by the whole situation :(

And finally we get the obvious Little Shop of Horrors plant monster joke :)

I didn't go into much detail about Eiffel in this, but his speech where he finally gets them to shut up and work together again is also great and I love it jsyk

"Shut up, Plant-Hilbert." Bwahahahaha.

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #the sound and the fury #nellied reviews #time to overanalyse Minkowski and Hera's argument #also #plant monster!#my not-so-small herbaceous child is back #gotta love it

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nellied-reviews · 4 years

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Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities Re-listen

Hello! I hope you're safe and well, wherever you are right now, and looking after yourself as best you can. It's a weird time to be alive, certainly. Fortunately, there is in this life one thing we can rely on: Douglas Eiffel will forever be a dumbass. I've hit episode 3 in my Wolf 359 re-listen, and boy, did this one cheer me up. So, without further ado:

Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities

In which Hilbert and Hera make a great but also terrifying team, Eiffel will do anything to avoid his physical exam, and Mink-oH MY GOD YOU WERE BEING SERIOUS?!

I feel, off the bat, like this episode is different to the previous two in a really good, productive way. It's a subtle thing, but it's something I definitely noticed this time round; Discomforts, Pains and Irregularities just works differently to the first two episodes. Where they were a sort of slice-of-life affair and a then a straight-up sitcom, this episode is more of a comedy horror movie; where the conflict in the first two episodes was between Eiffel and the rest of the crew, here we get our first external threat; where the plot, in the first two episodes, revolved around mundane, small things like radio broadcasts and toothpaste, the plot here's about a mutant space plant monster. It's a neat way of setting certain genre expectations and helping us triangulate, roughly, what we can and can't expect from the show, establishing a couple of constants (we're probably not going to get an episode, for example, with absolutely no comedy), but also a range of different tones the show can play with (sitcom, B-movie horror, weird sci-fi)

That said, it's not obvious from the beginning of the episode that we've stumbled into a horror movie. At first, when Eiffel starts his log sounding so very defeated, it seems like we're being set up for an episode about Eiffel trying to dodge a physical exam. Which you could get a whole, pretty decent episode out of it, for sure - it would probably end up following a very similar template to Little Revolución. Step 1: have Eiffel do something ridiculous. Step 2: escalate things. Step 3: Eiffel is defeated. Solid, right? So when Hera announced that physicals are coming up, it feels like there's a predictable way that this going to play out. Not bad, per se. But we can see where it might be going.

We do get the fun twist of Hera cooperating with Hilbert, and sounding surprisingly chipper about the whole affair. And I guess that makes sense? She doesn't have physical body in the same way as Eiffel and Minkowski do, after all, so she's not getting a physical, and I can totally see her making the most of it to troll Eiffel, or indulge in some Schadenfreude. Or perhaps she's just helping Hilbert because it’s her job. Who knows? Either way, it's nice, if a little bittersweet, to see Hera and Hilbert working as a team again and trusting each other; after season 1, we don't see so much of that, for obvious, murder-y reasons.

I also have to wonder, at this point, why Hilbert is running these physicals? He says it's to stop disease spreading, but surely the Hephaestus, a closed system with three actual people living there, has got to be disease-free, right? The only thing I can think is that this is actually part of his work on Eiffel, a convenient excuse to take samples and see how the Decima is doing. Which makes an already terrifying prospect even more frightening. I guess he also has to collect samples for Minkowski, to maintain his cover? Or - a more alarming thought that I kind of wish I hadn't had - he might also be taking measurements and samples in preparation for giving her Decima, should Eiffel go the way of Lambert and the last crew. Cheery stuff, you know?

That’s just me overthinking things, though. What we actually get, as the episode gets going, is a panicky, nervous Eiffel desperately bullshitting Hilbert to get the good doctor off his tail. Which is so very relatable. I feel you, Eiffel.

It didn't escape my attention, here, that Eiffel mentions a recent power outage. It's another sign that things were going wrong in the Hephaestus from the very beginning - something we won't get confirmed until Pan-Pan, I think?

It also didn't escape my attention, on a more immediate note, that Hilbert used up all of the water doing radiation experiments in the greenhouse. Which I bet is totally fine and totally didn't create the plant monster in the first place. Nope. Nuh-uh. No foreshadowing here.

In any case, Eiffel's ruse works, and then we get Eiffel and Hera just bantering for a bit, which is always a delight. Hera gets all sniffy (pun unintentional) about Eiffel's personal hygiene, Eiffel lobs a "you don't even have a nose anyway" back at her, she leans hard into her "well you're a feeble, puny human" shtick. It's fun, and I can totally buy that this might be a conversation they have had many times before. I don't know, I just really love their friendship, okay?

What I also love, when Minkowski calls to ask for help with the plant monster, is that Eiffel just straight-up assumes that she's also trying to get out of her physical. Like... has he met Minkowkski?! And yes, okay, technically she was in the greenhouses trying to avoid Hilbert. But the fact that now, when she is quite obviously not kidding, Eiffel decides to shrug it off? Genius. I love it. So very dumb.

Then, of course, we meet the plant monster, which is honestly one of my favourite things about this podcast. It's just so out-there! After two more slice-of-life episodes, it's delightfully weird, but also puts us firmly in the realm of soft science fiction. Like, there's no pretending, with a mutant plant monster, that this is going to be gritty, realistic, hard science fiction, and I kind of love that? Certainly, setting aside question like "is this scientifically plausible?" lets the show do all sorts of wacky, fun things that just make for a more engaging story. Mutant plant monsters are in the same cheesy B-movie vein as the Dear Listeners, super-soldier-creating viruses and mind control machines, and Wolf 359 is 100% better off for it.

Minkowski doesn't share my enthusiasm for the plant monster, sadly. She goes straight in with a flamethrower. Ah, Commander. Never change.

Eiffel still doesn't believe that it's real, even as he goes down to check on Minkowski, which is kind of hilarious, especially because it's such a tropey horror movie set-up. For such a pop-culture-savvy dude, he really dropped the ball on this one. But it's nice to see him and Minkowski bonding over being mutually freaked out by the thing. After two episodes of Minkowski being mad at Eiffel for various offences, it's cool that they're working together here, even if it takes the joint threat of Hilbert's physicals and a plant monster to get them there.

It's also here that the podcast format works so well, because without a visual on the monster, it's so much more frightening. Seriously, I bet all of our mental images of this thing are way more frightening than anything a TV show could give us, based just on Eiffel and Minkowski screaming.

Either way, we cut away pretty quickly after that, and the episode ends with Eiffel informing us smugly that the plant monster is still out there, but that, as a consequence of the ongoing monster situation, they have at least postponed physicals. It's a fun way to end the episode, anticlimactic in the funniest possible way, focusing on the dumb, mundane stuff and just dropping the plant mutant... for now. It leaves room for future stories featuring our resident not-so-horrifying monster (hello, Minkowski Commanding!). But honestly, it'd still be funny if the plant monster was never brought up again, and just hung round like the proverbial, vine-strewn elephant in the room. Which it kind of does, for a while, at least until Season 2.

It also works, I think, because this episode isn't really about how the crew would defeat a plant monster. Instead, the question the episode asks is just "How do the crew react when something really weird happens?" And the answer we get is something we'll see again and again: Minkowski goes on the warpath and tries to kill it with fire, while Eiffel is a bit more chill about things, possibly unwisely so. It feels like the blueprint for a whole lot of future disagreements where Minkowski generally leans towards more violent solutions, while Eiffel is a little more pacifistic, repping Team What's-Wrong-With-Handcuffs etc.

So yup. At the end of the day, like most of the early episodes, this one’s pretty heavy on the comedy. But it also establishes a bunch of new things that the show can do, and puts our protagonists into a totally new, strange situation, just to see how they react, paving the way for all sorts of future weirdness. Not bad, right?

Also, because it bears repeating, mutant space plant monster.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Hera getting snarky about Eiffel's body odour bwahahahahahahaha

That noise is terrifying and will haunt my nightmares

Also, why did Eiffel record his physical six months ago? What could he possibly have been planning on doing with that recording??

"Tell him to go... ffffrequencies!"

Ewwwww spinal fluid samples

"Let's get this - oH MY GOD YOU WERE BEING SERIOUS"

"For God's sake, help me kill this thing!" "With what? Harsh language?" "With napalm, you moron!"

#wolf 359 #wolf359 #w359 #wolf 359 relisten #discomforts pains and irregularities #nellied reviews #introducing the plant monster #aka my not-so-small herbaceous child #I just really like the plant monster okay

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