#anyway i hope this resonates with others

[cacaocheri]

desperate for a deeper connection

[comradekatara]

I saw your toph+katara gender post and honestly... thank you for being one of few ppl i've seen who actually do a deeper analysis of toph? Most people tend to just go "i love toph she's cool <3" and while that's fine, its so nice to actually see someone Get Her. Esp wrt her gender expression and relationship to femininity. She's always been v imporant to me, like when i was like 12 i used to watch youtube clips of the toph+katara spa day scene on repeat and have Feelings abt it (still think its a super interesting scene??). Imo, while a lot of her expression is def rebelling (+overcompensating) and doing the oposite of her feminine upbringing, a lot of it is also a genuine JOY at being covered in dirt/burping/being loud and crass and tough? Idk i just feel like a lot of her contemporary "tomboy" characters were more defined as "ugh i hate Skirts and Dresses", but tophs brand of gnc joy and complex relationship w femininity always hit closer For Me? Like. She's loud and crass and rude and badass and cool, she does find it fun to dress girly but as like an Activity with a buddy, she's overjoyed at being portrayed as a big buff dude ("that's exactly how i would cast it!"), she's actually very spiritual and perceptive when not in Loud Mode, she keeps her fancy hairstyle but adds messy bangs, idk she's just. Character of all time. I'd love to hear if you have more thoughts on toph+gender (or just toph in general), and thank you for actually Understanding Her <33

YES!!!!! i have so many thoughts and feelings on toph. she is one of my absolute favorite characters i truly love her so much, and like you said, i hate when people dismiss her even as they claim to love her. "she's so badass" like okay, and?

toph is also just very important to me as her disability informs so much of her arc. and that disability is also inextricable from her gender and her family and all the factors that shape who she is, her strengths and her insecurities. you cannot separate her parents' abuse from her gender, class, or blindness. it's the combination of being an aristocratic blind girl that informs who she is and how she's perceived, especially by her family. she's an only child in a family that would clearly desire at least one son, and you cannot help but wonder whether they stopped at one for eugenicist purposes, whether they couldn't bear the "pain" of risking having another disabled child. and also because they clearly consider having a blind child such a handful that any other child would draw their attention away from her dire, pressing needs. so they completely smother her, but they also dismiss her, trivialize her desires and ignore her feelings and treat her more like a fragile porcelain doll than a person.

it's why, by the time of "the chase," she gets inordinately defensive over katara's suggestion that she pitch in when setting up camp. i see a lot of people claim that toph in this episode is acting like a spoiled brat who refuses to do manual labor because she's too wealthy to understand, but that's not actually the case. toph is fine with doing manual labor (she literally spent who knows how long working in an underground wrestling ring, she's not unaccustomed to work), but she's averse to helping others. as she says, "i carry my own weight." she's establishing, erroneously but understandably, that her idea of affording others respect is assuming that everyone behaves on an individual basis. she's never had friends before, by her own admission, and so in her mind, the only model she's ever seen for "helping others" is smothering them, denying their agency, and deciding everything for them.

toph thinks that katara is a bitch because katara is suggesting that toph meddle in other people's affairs, instead of respecting their own business. and katara thinks that toph is a bitch because she does just straight up assume that toph is a spoiled brat who doesn't understand the value of community. and while toph isn't a spoiled brat, learning the value of community is indeed integral to her arc. and more than simply communal values of helping and sharing with others, she also learns to rely on them in turn. she learns how to embrace her vulnerability, and let others carry her weight for her. her apotheosis in the finale is literally hanging onto sokka, who is holding her entire weight with one hand, for dear life. putting her complete faith in him to carry her and protect her as he always does.

that ability to embrace her vulnerability among the people she actually trusts to not only love and support her, but also to recognize her as a human being and care about her as a a peer, is so crucial to her identity as someone who has learned from years of ableist stigma to put walls up and present herself as someone uniquely powerful and invulnerable. and it's not that she isn't uniquely powerful, but her strength is also largely a projection. it's why she's so delighted to be portrayed by a big buff man, because that's the kind of person she wishes she could be, so that she wouldn't have to be underestimated and belittled and oppressed by people who dismiss her and coddle her and disrespect her and, quite literally, put her in a box.

so if toph's experience with disability is informed by her class and her upbringing, then let's now turn to her experience with gender, which is equally informed by her background. katara often balks at toph's less feminine presentation, because despite her incredibly righteous crusade against limiting patriarchal standards, she nonetheless has her own hangups when it comes to gender. but then again, so does toph. just as katara disdains toph's masculinity, toph finds katara's femininity offensive because her only real model for femininity in her experience is that of aristocratic wifehood. poppy beifong, to be exact, who is not exactly a girlboss (let alone a revolutionary, like katara is). and when katara tries to shove toph back into a box, toph resists because of course she does, that's who she is. she's not going take what she experiences as violent repression lying down.

toph is wrong in "the runaway" to exclude katara from their fun, and she is wrong to call compare her to a mother, but it's not out of nowhere. there is an obvious precedent to these actions. katara is a genuinely feminine girl who loves to boss people around and dictate how they should live their lives. to toph, this is the most egregious sin imaginable. katara, through her femininity and authoritative attitude, is positioning herself, in toph's eyes, as her mother. and toph calls her out for being overbearing and claims that katara hates fun and wants to boss everyone around for this reason, even though sokka is obviously the primary fun-hating, overbearing member of the group.

however, sokka never dictates how toph should act or dress, sokka never made fun of toph for being blind (which is a thing that really deserves its own post, if we're being honest). sokka makes them spend their vacation time at the library and enforces his color-coded schedules on them and generally brings down the vibe what with his neuroticism and severity, but he also laughs at toph's jokes and banters with her in a way that treats her as a friend and not as a rival. and unlike katara, whose desires and commands seem completely arbitrary to toph, sokka's commands are grounded in a logic that toph can understand. so even if from an outside perspective, toph's claim that a revolutionary teenage girl who loves to cause trouble and seeks adventure and joy around every corner is trying to be the overbearing mom of the group makes no sense, it makes perfect sense to toph, based on her history with femininity, overbearing mothers, and feminine overbearing mothers.

toph presents masculinely as compensation, as a way to make herself seem strong and tough instead of dainty and submissive as she was always made out to be. she associates masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness because that's the paradigm she grew up in. it's why she's always teasing aang about his supposed femininity and calling him "twinkle toes" (which, as sokka points out, isn't manly). in their first interaction, aang beat her in a fight and humiliated her in front of all her adoring fans, and avatar or not, toph's gonna make him pay for that by undermining him in turn, by using his presentation as a monk to mock him. even if aang isn't gay or even gender non-conforming (within the assumptions of his own culture), toph is still employing the logic of sexism/homophobia to undermine aang when she makes jokes about him being "more in touch with [his] feminine side than most guys." and of course, the nickname "twinkle toes" is also deeply affectionate, and aang (bless his heart) never actually takes offense to it. but toph is trying to establish herself as more powerful than him due to the humiliating knowledge that he could beat her in a fight, easily.

toph's masculinity is inextricably tied to her invulnerability. she wants to be taken seriously and treated as a human being, which is respect that has been denied to her due to her status as a blind girl, save for her blind bandit persona, which superficially empowered her and made her feel strong. it's not coincidence that her rival earthbender is a guy who is essentially a parody of masculinity. toph wants to position herself as equivalent, if not directly superior, to the Most Masculine Man, because that's how she'll be afforded respect, in her mind. but she is a girl. and there's a part of her that likes being a girl, and wishes she could explore her femininity more than she's allowed herself to, beyond the confines of the beifong mansion. she keeps her hair long because she still loves her family and holds out hope that maybe one day they can accept her (she comes from a culture modeled off of tang dynasty china, so her long hair is likely a product of her adherence to confucian values). and once she embraces it, she genuinely does get into being made over at the fancy lady day spa.

femininity has been a genuinely harmful and repressive agent in toph's life, and it's understandable that she would internalize some misogynistic notions surrounding girl/womanhood as they were foisted onto her her entire childhood. but femininity isn't ontologically harmful. femininity isn't ontological, period. i think as toph gets older, and her friendship with katara grows deeper as they both come to be more honest with each other, she would grow to embrace her masculinity in a more organic and less compensatory way. less of a "i'm not like other girls" complex (which itself is not something that girls should be mocked and punished for, but rather a product of a patriarchal system that oppresses and alienates women, thus leading many less gender-conforming girls to attempt to assert their agency and individuality in any way they can, even if it means putting down others in the process), and more so genuinely coming to embrace her butchness. (you don't necessarily have to read her as a baby butch, of course, but considering that being a masculine girl is important to her, i think that's a really lovely and beautiful synthesis of her relationship to gender as a character.)

i think toph would learn stop pitting masculinity and femininity against each other, and instead embrace whatever aspects of either (or neither) she desires, while nonetheless respecting everyone else's deal in turn. i think she would also, in a key turning point, realize that even if she loves her parents, she doesn't have any obligation to be the daughter they expect her to be, and cuts her hair. and as she grows more secure in herself (which comes with age, no twelve year old is truly confident in their own skin), she would stop feeling the need to put other people down to feel big, and be comfortable embracing her desires. and, credit to her, she's clearly already on her way. the progress she makes being vulnerable, especially around sokka, even in what is chronologically a matter of months, is huge.

toph isn't just "badass" because she's strong and powerful. but rather, what makes her so powerful, at least to disabled viewers who see their struggles reflected in hers, is her ability to grow with her environment, allowing herself to admit help, and letting herself be loved. if you couldn't already tell, toph is incredibly important to me.

[metaphorfordeath]

My latest story "Watch Where You're Going" is now available to read in issue six of Olit Magazine. In it, two trans people watch a movie and talk about life while one of them finishes her shift at a video store. This story is loosely inspired by my own experiences of having friends come hang out with me and watch movies during my shifts at Family Video in college (shout out to @indecisivesailorscout for keeping me company all those times, and for snacks). It is also a conversation about making meaning for oneself, and about choosing art and authenticity over that which is expected of you. Content warning for references to homophobia/transphobia.

Thank you to Maggie Wolff, Nicole Balsamo and the staff of Olit Magazine for including my story in this issue. I highly recommend everyone check out the rest of the issue, it's a really great one.

[aparticularbandit]

Kyoko's entire gender and orientation and all of the things is just detective. That is who and what she is, and it is one of the very few things she is sure of, and most everything else just does not matter.

She is, first and foremost, detective. Everything else is secondary or less.

Junko, on the other hand, has never been that sure of anything in her entire life. Right now, she's Despair, and that's fun, and it can be her entire self right now, but even that's not really who she is because she has all of the different personas - she doesn't know who she's supposed to be, and she changes between them because she gets bored of them - and so of course she would call Kyoko boring and predictable because Kyoko is ever only and always Detective with a capital D.

(Except that Kyoko's involvement was the thing she did not predict in DR0. Someone comments on that, on how Kyoko isn't supposed to be there. (Mukuro? Maybe?))

But the thing is that Kyoko gives a permanence and stability in the midst of the whirlwind chaos that is Junko Enoshima. Because even without her memories, Kyoko is still Detective.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object indeed.

(Take the best things about the other and add them into yourself: Kyoko teaches Junko how to find herself in the midst of so many unknowns, and Junko gives Kyoko wings.)

[saph-yells-into-the-void]

the amount of DISDAIN I get from some ppl saying that blue flag is written for the straights.

girl I did not stay up til 6am reading this manga, tearing up and crying bc of how much I saw myself in characters like touma and masumi and how painfully relatable their pain/struggles were just for you to say that blue flag is for the straights

be so fr rn

[commsroom]

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

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

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

A couple of disclaimers:

For the purposes of this post, assume that ‘personhood’ (recognition as a full and equal person to any other person) and ‘humanity’ (the quality of Being Human, however nebulously defined) are separate, albeit related, concepts. Assume that ‘personhood’ is a given for all sentient beings as far as the text is concerned, even if other characters within the text may not extend the same courtesy.

I’d also like to say that I know the subject of Humanity as it relates to AI characters can be a touchy one - I’m also coming at this from the perspective of someone who finds it a little distasteful to ascribe a Human Identity to characters who already have their own, complete, distinctly non-human identities, or to place Humanity on a pedestal in a sci-fi context where humans are the peers of other sentient beings. I don’t think these concerns apply to Hera, or to Wolf 359 as a show, but just to be clear: everything I want to say here is about Hera, specifically. It’s not meant to apply to other AI characters, even within Wolf 359, and it definitely isn’t meant to be viewed through the lens of real-world AI development. I believe Wolf 359 is a character drama above anything else, and I believe it is especially concerned with its exploration of humanity - something I’ll talk more about later. With that said:

i. ‘some do. i don’t.’: other examples of AI identity in wolf 359

How much do we know about general concepts of AI identity in the universe of Wolf 359? The short answer… not much. The slightly longer answer:

When Minkowski introduces herself to Hera, there’s this exchange:

(Ep. 61: MINKOWSKI: Yes, they, uh, briefed me about you. I just... Unit 214, I presume? / HERA: Oh, no, no. Hera. Definitely Hera. / MINKOWSKI: Oh, sorry. I'd heard Sensus Units prefer to go by their serial - / HERA: Some do. I don't. If that's all right, Commander?)

Minkowski says she “heard Sensus Units prefer to go by their serial [numbers]” and Hera responds, “Some do. I don’t.” … It’s entirely possible that both Minkowski and Hera are going off of Goddard propaganda here, or that Hera doesn’t know what other Sensus Units might think at all and she’s just trying to defer to Minkowski before making a request of her. But for all we know, maybe that’s true? Maybe some Sensus Units really do prefer that. And whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter. In saying it, Hera acknowledges that all AIs may not feel the way she does, but that this is how she feels about her name.

In Change of Mind, we have this exchange between Eris and Lovelace:

(Suddenly, behind her, there's a soft WOOSH! Lovelace spins around and - finds herself face-to-face with a YOUNG WOMAN. / ERIS: Hi. / Lovelace blinks. Confused. /  LOVELACE: Hi? What - who - / ERIS: It's me. Eris. / LOVELACE: But... I thought you were an A.I. / ERIS: I am. This is how I see myself. Well, how I see a version of myself. As long as we're both in a mental state, we can interact this way. Remember, you're not really here either. / LOVELACE: But... look at you. You're - /  ERIS: Yeah. I know.)

I’m not going to speculate on exactly how Eris appears in this scene, but: “This is how I see myself. Well, how I see a version of myself.” is interesting to consider, both in the context that Eris has an internal sense of self (presumably human in appearance, as far as the stage notes go) and the suggestion that there are other ways she sees herself that might be equally ‘her’ - does this mean Eris as in the Eris we know in Change of Mind, or does it imply that each iteration of Eris, in each of the training modules Goddard uses her consciousness for, perceives herself differently? Both? Neither?

And I think it’s revealing to show these two lines next to each other:

(LAMBERT: Rhea says... “It’s just the way they programmed her, back off.”)

(Ep. 7: EIFFEL: C’mon, Commander, you can’t really hold that against her. It’s just her programming! / HERA: Oh, stop. Do you have any idea how condescending that is? Just chalking everything I do to my programming? What if I just went around blaming every stupid decision you made on... “biology”? / EIFFEL: Hera... / HERA: “Why are they doing that, isn’t that a bit dangerous?” Oh never mind, that’s just their biology. “That’s a terrible idea, don’t they know any better?” Just that pesky ol’ biology, we really should’ve sprang for the more expensive model.)

… Which. I kinda think the difference in philosophy there speaks for itself. Sure, Rhea’s line is in defense of Eris, while Hera doesn’t appreciate ‘it’s just programming’ being used as a defense of herself, but I find it hard to imagine she’d ever see it as anything but condescension. 

It also might be worth noting that none of the other AIs we know (despite how little we know about them) seem to be people Hera would really get along with: Enlil is the exact “willing to roll over for any bozo in a lab coat” type of AI who gets the “cushy job flying jet liners over the Atlantic” she shows such disdain for; if Hera met Eris it would likely be under circumstances where Eris was a threat to her friends + despite Eris’s ‘rogue AI’ aesthetic, she is designed to serve that purpose by Goddard and serves her role (and accepts her fate) without much resistance; and we don’t know much about Rhea, but from her defense of Eris, and what we can interpret from her limited interactions as a sense of professionalism, she and Hera also… likely would not see eye to eye.

All of that to say: we don’t know much about AI identity as it broadly exists within the setting of Wolf 359, but I think we do know enough to fairly assume it’s as varied and individual as identity would be for any other group of people. Which… of course it would be. I think it’s entirely possible that some AIs would have a sense of self-identity that is entirely divorced from human categorization. And all of this presents a ton of questions that I don’t really have answers for, that I don’t think we even have enough information about in canon to properly speculate on, but I think it’s important groundwork to lay out to further emphasize: when I talk about Hera’s identity, I am talking about Hera’s identity. How she sees herself, how she wants to be seen, what she values, etc. as an individual person. So.

ii. ‘you’re remembering this wrong’: what the subjective reality of memory can tell us about hera’s self-perception

If there was only one scene I could call attention to here, one piece of evidence re: Hera’s identity and self-perception, it would be the opening scene from Memoria. If you want to, please just go listen to that scene again, right now. Notice how it’s framed, and what the audio cues might suggest in a visual medium - in her memory, Hera perceives herself at the table with the rest of the crew. Physically present.

So much of Memoria is about subjective reality, memory as the product of the world through your own personal filter, your perspective and biases. “Everything before memory is about the world around you. Everything after it is all in your head.”

So looking at how Hera remembers things, more than anything else, I think can tell us a lot about how she perceives herself. Even when she doesn’t realize it. ‘Minkowski’ in Hera’s memory says… well. We get this scene:

(Ep. 41: MINKOWSKI: You're remembering this wrong. You weren't here with us. / HERA: I... I wasn't? / MINKOWSKI: No, Hera. We were over here, and you... / The soundscape shifts. There's a WOOSH, followed by some DIGITAL PROCESSING. It subsides, and when Minkowski says - / MINKOWSKI (CONT’D): ... you were over there. / - she sounds like her voice is coming through a SPEAKER. And it GLITCHES. We hear her the way we normally hear Hera. / HERA: Oh. Right. I'm here. I'm here.)

But here’s the thing. Minkowski - the real Minkowski - would never say Hera wasn’t there with them, because from Minkowski’s perspective, she was. This is Hera’s perspective - Hera feels as if she wasn’t there. And to quote @the-empty-man​, from a similar conversation we had a while back: ‘in the actual reality of that Thanksgiving meal, she was there with them in the sense that she could directly see them and hear them and interact with them in various ways and (if we think of her as being located in the Hephaestus) she was kind of sharing the same physical space as them. In the reality of that memory, she was as "there with them" as she ever has been with anyone (excluding weird mind-space things) but that didn't feel like enough for her. If she doesn't think she was fully there with them then (or at least a part of her doesn't), then she's never felt like she's been fully there with anyone (again maybe excluding mind-space weirdness). It's like she's got this longing for something that she barely even has a frame of reference for.’

I think that’s just it. Hera experiences physical loneliness. The wording of “over there.” The shift in sound design, and the implication that Hera hears the others the way they hear her - that she’s not an equal presence in a different form, from her own perspective, but physically somewhere else on the other side of an impassable barrier that the others don’t even recognize exists. She has an image of herself in her mind that most other people never see.

Still, ‘how does Hera see herself?’ is a difficult question, and not one I’m going to be able to answer all at once. For now, it might be useful to first point out how Hera definitely, canonically does NOT see herself - she does not see herself as the Hephaestus.

In her own memory, she imagines herself as singular, physical, (by all indication) human in appearance. Without the awareness that ‘mind-space weirdness’ is even possible, that appearance is for no one but herself. And the Hephaestus, I think, is an entity in its own right, and one that Hera is bound to for most of the show, but she exists within it, not as an inherent part of it. Her connection to the Hephaestus, the functions she performs, are her job. The further into the show you get, and the more Hera asserts her own autonomy, the more the text distinguishes between Hera, the systems that she runs, and even her hardware. And, of course: “Or end up in other places. Doing things not because you're good at them, but just because of what you are. Has it ever occurred to you that there might be jobs for which the only requirement is having no pulse?”

iii. ‘i know what’s waiting for me back there’: when and why hera rejects humanity

It’s important to note that Hera’s identity absolutely is informed by the fact that she’s an AI, and the way she navigates the world and her relationships because of it. At times, this creates something of a double bind for her - it’s frustrating to have others acknowledge her situation, when it others her and creates or emphasizes a reminder of the distance between them, but it’s also frustrating when they don’t recognize she can’t always do the things that they can do, or that she has other physical/safety/etc. concerns that wouldn’t occur to them. 

Consider the part in Theta Scenario where Eiffel has them vote on whether or not to return to Earth and sheepishly has to add, “and, uh… all those without hands?” The progression of this scene is a good illustration re: Hera’s alternating refusal of and embrace of humanity: she blames her loneliness on her programming, her attachments, her humanity - she chooses to separate herself from these things without ever making an affirmative statement as to what part of her would be Her in their place. That’s because it’s coming from a place of hurt. And remember that she’s still dealing with Maxwell’s betrayal. This is an emotional reaction, which I suppose is worth noting in itself: when Hera is hurt, her judgment is clouded, and she can be confidently wrong. Consider how convinced she was that Hilbert was making everything about Decima up, while she was at the height of her anger with him.

When Hera is hurt, when she is feeling betrayed, and frightened, she tends to self-isolate - she leans into the idea that she is fundamentally different and therefore intrinsically doomed. It’s only by letting go of these preconceptions and allowing for real connection that she’s able to heal. It’s true that the only people who have hurt her have been humans - but so are the only people who have ever helped her, who she’s had any meaningful relationships with at all. She has to believe she isn’t fundamentally different from the others, because ultimately that’s what allows her to return home with them - to think maybe there could be something for her on Earth after all. And by choosing to believe in Eiffel’s promise to her, that whatever happens when they get back to Earth, they’ll go through it together… That's a start.

iv. ‘i know where this train goes, i've been on it before. "she'll hurt someone. she can't be trusted. it's okay - she isn't even human.’: hera, lovelace, and real-world alienation

I think it’s also worth noting, however, that while Hera’s identity is informed by being an AI, the implication of Being an AI in the world of Wolf 359 specifically manifests in ways that are directly applicable to real-world human experiences. The double bind that I described, the lack of life experience compared to your peers and the embarrassment associated with that, the feeling of alienation and isolation, even the feeling of being ‘not quite human’ through repeated dehumanization and othering - these are things that real people experience. In the same way that Lovelace is an alien clone, yes, but more importantly just a person with PTSD… Hera is an AI, but she’s also a person with anxiety and chronic pain - and with experiences that I think can be directly drawn to neurodivergent, disabled, and trans experiences in various ways. I’ll try not to get too into that aspect of it here, but I do think it’s worth noting - Wolf 359 is a show about humanity, about people whose humanity has been denied to them in various ways, interpersonally and/or systemically, and I think it’s important to consider Hera’s character arc and the ways she chooses to assert her autonomy and self-identity within that framework.

And of course, speaking of Lovelace, it’s impossible to ignore that Hera is the most staunch and immediate defender of Lovelace’s humanity, following the realization that Lovelace is herself an alien clone, because Hera recognizes the way others react to her perceived differences with fear, distrust, etc. and how they will use those feelings to justify dehumanizing her. Lovelace’s humanity and Hera’s humanity are directly linked in the text.

v. ‘it’s like you’re making a movie’: why i think it does hera’s character arc a disservice to approach it with general biases regarding AI characters

You know that thing about how Wolf 359 leans into sci-fi tropes? How Eiffel is the wisecracking everyman, Minkowski is the by-the-books Commander, Hilbert is… well, you know. And so on. But instead of being subversions of these common archetypes, the characters in Wolf 359 are as intricate and contradictory and dynamic as they are because a central tenet of the show’s character writing is to ask ‘why would a real person behave this way?’

If we extend that logic to Hera and interpret her as an example of the ‘AI who is more human than some humans’ archetype, then the answer to the question is simply… because she is fundamentally human. The failure of that trope, in my opinion, is that it often sets up an AI character in the position of ‘becoming’ human, suggesting humanity is something greater and aspirational, and often directly equating ‘being a person’ with ‘being human’, even in settings where other non-human and equally sentient forms of intelligence exist. There’s something self-aggrandizing and patronizing in that.

But this is NOT the case with Hera; she is just as human at the start of the show as she is by the end of it - her struggle is not in ‘attaining humanity’ but in navigating the biases of others, the way repeated dehumanization has affected her own self-perception - to get others to see her the way she sees herself.

vi. ‘such a big, big universe...’: isolation, the ‘big picture’, and what the contradictions in am i alone now? tell us about hera’s priorities

Here’s a line I think about a lot. Specifically, I think about how often this line is used to represent Hera… “Such a big, big universe, and you only gave yourselves the tools to think about a tiny portion of it.” It’s fascinatingly ironic when you put it back into context: consider the way this monologue is framed. She’s telling all of it to Eiffel, but she isn’t, really. That’s the conflict. She wants to be able to tell him these things in the same way she wants to be able to describe what she sees to him, to get him to understand her experience, because she can think about so many more parts of that big, big universe at once, and what does it get her? She can’t do anything with it. She can’t tell anyone. She ‘tells’ Eiffel anyway - she chooses to talk to him, even when she isn’t actually talking to him. She can’t make that connection, but she wants to, so badly.

She thinks she’ll be left alone up there, sooner or later. It’s a feeling she learns to let go of, little by little, until something else finally seems possible.

There’s a theme throughout Wolf 359: the ‘Big Picture’ as an antagonistic force, whether it’s alien and unknowable, or corporate and uncaring, or some combination, and how its counterpart is Personal Connection. That’s something I’d like to get into in more depth in another post, but it’s worth touching on here because I think keeping that in mind reframes so much of Hera’s monologue in Am I Alone Now?

Think about how much of it is those Big Ideas in contrast with the familiar and immediate - that she wants to tell these things to Eiffel. “Some days I wonder if I’ll miss you, after you go away forever… I doubt it. But you never know.” The subtext is in the contradiction. The lonelier Hera is, the more she denies her humanity, but in her denial, in her loneliness, that humanity becomes all the more apparent. 

Sometimes I see people take ‘I doubt it’ at face value, as evidence of eventual character/relationship growth, suggesting she gets more attached to him over time… I don’t think that’s true. She watches a star die 13.7 light years to the left and she thinks of him. She watches the swirling, raging solar winds in colors she has no name for, and wishes she could share that with him. She’s not talking to anyone, but she still chooses to talk to him. Of course she would miss him. Of course she would.

vii. ‘even hilbert never sunk that low’: how hera is treated by the show’s antagonists

It might be interesting to note that almost all of the antagonists do acknowledge Hera’s personhood, and that the way they treat her is almost always a reflection of how they treat other, flesh-and-blood people. The only antagonist who seems to honestly see her as less than a person is Hilbert, and even in his “tell me you’re not mourning that appliance” levels of cruelty towards her, there’s a way that it’s not so different from his general disregard for human life and ability to see people less as individuals, and more as expendable assets to be used in pursuit of a Greater Cause.

With that said, he’s not particularly relevant to the discussion of Hera’s self-image. The characters who are: Maxwell and Pryce.

viii. ‘i can totally rewrite a memory’: hera and maxwell

I think this is where the distinction between personhood and humanity becomes most relevant. Because I think Maxwell believes very strongly in AI Personhood, and I believe she generally prefers the company of AIs to human people, and I think… those facts allow her to help Hera in a way no one else could have, but they work against her understanding of Hera as an individual. Let me try to explain.

From the moment Maxwell gets on board the Hephaestus, she starts altering things in Hera’s programming - little things, like Minkowski’s title, that Hera can ignore because the larger things that Maxwell is able to fix for her genuinely improve her quality of life. And Maxwell, despite showing compassion for Hera, uses more mechanical terminology to refer to her than almost anyone else. But the thing is… while the SI-5 certainly have no qualms about blatant and intentional cruelty when they deem it necessary, I don’t know if Maxwell realizes what a violation some of these things are. She helps Hera, sure, unquestionably. But she also betrays her in what might be the worst possible way.

Think about the way Cutter threatens to delete and alter Hera’s memories - in Decommissioned, and in the live show. It isn’t fundamentally all that different from what Maxwell wants to do in Memoria, but Maxwell seems incapable of understanding why the concept is so upsetting to Hera. I don’t think we have enough information to make any claim for certain, but I do think it’s possible that other AIs may not perceive themselves in the same way Hera does, or value the same things. There’s a chance this is not malicious at all, but just a failure to recognize Hera’s priorities as an individual do not align with Maxwell’s previous experiences. With that acknowledged, Hera defends Maxwell against the idea she might turn her against the others, saying, “Doctor Maxwell understands better than anyone how much of a violation that would be. She would hate herself.” … but does she? Would she? Does it matter, when she does it anyway?

Hera is distraught over her realization that she never really knew Maxwell, but I guess I like the idea that maybe Maxwell didn’t understand Hera as well as she thought she did either. That maybe Hera’s unpredictability is something beyond programming, something closer to the same messy, complicated human quality that the rest of the crew survives on - that Hera was able to catch Maxwell off guard and win against her for the same reason they all triumph over Pryce and Cutter in the end. Because human unpredictability is the one thing that Goddard’s Big Picture can never factor for.

ix. ‘you don’t look like me’: hera and pryce

And if there’s any relationship that can tell us about Hera’s self-image, it’s this one. Pryce is fully aware of Hera’s humanity. Pryce’s collar program (and Maxwell’s, for that matter - another link between them) serves a similar function to Pryce’s restraining bolts, but as far as Pryce is concerned, I think it’s actually preferable to her that Hera is aware of it. “They could be whatever she wanted them to be - and as real as she wanted them to be - and they never left her behind... and they never talked back... and they were never afraid of her. Except when she wanted them to be.” …

Likewise, Hera’s attachment to her own identity is necessary for Pryce’s methods of control to be effective. Pryce is able to hurt Hera by dehumanizing her, by degendering her, by taking away her name and her autonomy, by reminding her that even her own voice isn’t her own - because those things matter to Hera.

So then you have that line in the finale, where Pryce sees Hera in Eiffel’s mind and she says, “You don’t look like me.” I think there are a few different ways you could read that.

One, the more common interpretation: that Pryce expects Hera should look like her because she is functionally ‘designed in her image’ and that Hera, over time, intentionally shifted her internal sense of self away from that. And I like this, I think there’s a power in it, especially alongside headcanons where Hera adopts some features of the people she loves to incorporate into her own - but I think it might be the less likely option. While I think it’s entirely believable that Pryce would give Hera her appearance in the same way she gave her her voice, and while I think there is an intentional cruelty (and given that Pryce herself was probably isolated for much of her life, perhaps a kind of awful retribution in her mind) to Hera having human desires without human physicality, I don’t think all of that is just Pryce’s design. I think that’s giving her too much credit.

The other possible interpretation: canonically, Hera is able to be in Eiffel’s mind by interfacing with Pryce’s neural imaging processor, which is presumably configured for Pryce. She is intentionally running a whole bunch of extra code to appear as herself instead. I don’t know. There’s something about that idea, to me. That by default, more easily, she could choose to appear the way Pryce does, but that it matters to her that she doesn’t.

(I also kind of like the idea - given the transhumanist nature of Pryce and Cutter - that the way Hera appears in the finale is distinctly human. I think it works well with the themes of the show - that where Pryce rejects her innate humanity, considers it weakness, considers herself above it, tries to transcend it… Hera recognizes the strength in her own humanity, for all the ways it fails her, embracing it has allowed her connection to others that she would’ve thought impossible, has made her more free, has made her more herself.)

And again, if there’s anything that tells us about Hera’s self-image, it’s this: we know from later events in the finale that there are ways she could’ve interfaced with the machine without appearing in Eiffel’s mind, but she wanted to. She wanted to be there, as herself, as ‘physically’ as possible, and be seen. If you don’t count her punching Pryce in the face (which… I guess it counts as a type of interaction), the only direct physical interaction Hera ever has with another character in the entire show is the stage note that says: Hera and Eiffel stand together, his arm around her shoulder.

x. ‘[gritted digital teeth]’: physicality in the way hera is written and performed, and how that informs her as a character

A bit of a tangent, but speaking of physicality. One thing I always like to point out is how, in the live show, they chose to have Hera on stage with the others, but just… far enough away from them, physically. And the only person who ever crosses the stage to interact with her directly is Eiffel. Of course, you can’t take any of that as a literal expression of… anything, but I do think it’s worth considering in the context of Hera’s physical loneliness expressed in Memoria, the way Eiffel consistently tries to bridge the gap between them via emotional connection, and, finally, Hera’s lone physical interaction in the show being with Eiffel in the finale.

There’s also the (albeit mostly circumstantial) detail that Michaela Swee recorded a lot of the show remotely, with the notable exceptions of Memoria and Brave New World - the two episodes where Hera has ‘physical’ appearances.

And if we’re going to talk about the way choices in the writing/acting impact the way Hera’s character comes across, there’s this screenshot I managed to dig up from Gabriel Urbina’s now-defunct blog. I think it’s worth noting that, as well as expressing physicality within the text of the show, she is also admittedly written with, performed with, and informed by those aspects of physicality, even when it’s not visible to us - in that sense, from a metatextual perspective, you could even argue she has just as much physical presence as any other character in the show.

(Someone says, “Okay so I was a little wary of watching the live show, mostly because of Hera. I didn’t want her personified. But the way Mikaela [sic] Swee portrays her character, puts Hera on that stage, is perfect.” to which Gabriel responds, “A perfectly understandable concern, but hopefully one that’s not too prevalent after you watch the show. There is so much of Michaela’s mannerisms and physicality in how we write Hera and the vocal performance that hopefully seeing her perform it will amplify the character that she’s created rather than narrowing it down.”)

xi. ‘i know plenty’: challenges to hera’s identity, self perception, and connection to humanity

So, why am I so caught up on the humanity part of this? Because I think Wolf 359 is, before anything else, a show that is concerned with humanity. I think it is a show about very human people (in some very flawed and tragic ways) trying very hard to retain their humanity in inhumane circumstances, and often with people actively trying to dehumanize them, whether interpersonally or through corporate alienation, human experimentation, the treatment of prisoners, etc. But that leads into a whole other topic, so instead I’ll share these three things:

This exchange from Out of the Loop, where Hera’s argument with Jacobi hinges on humanity - her accusation that he “works so hard at being inhuman” and her anger and offense at his retort that she wouldn’t know what that means:

(Ep. 49: HERA: You are despicable, Jacobi. I have never met someone who worked so hard at being inhuman. / JACOBI: What do you know about being human? / HERA: I know plenty.)

This line, from Quiet, Please, where Minkowski defends Hera’s autonomy directly and refers to her as a woman, which I promise will be relevant:

(Ep. 58: Minkowski SLOWLY, maintaining her VICE-LIKE GRIP, PULLS HIS EAR DOWN, bringing Jacobi's face down to her eye-level. / MINKOWSKI (low, deadly): Shut. The Hell. Up. That woman? For the last two weeks, she was the only person who even tried to resist what Pryce and Cutter were doing to us. So you are going to show her some goddammed respect, am I clear?)

And because I’m incapable of writing lengthy meta about Hera without bringing up this quote from Sarah Shachat in some capacity:

“What I can tell you is that the fact Hera that clearly has a human gender in her speech and conscious perspective, yet lacks human physicality, is something she definitely does think about. She isn’t removed from it, or taking the view of some sort of Hyper Advanced Future Machine for whom human binary constructions are funny, if a bit quaint. She’s been placed on a spectrum the same way she was placed aboard the Hephaestus. Her journey so far has very much been about dealing with that, about trying to assert her unique sense of self given the limitations placed on her and to communicate with these other idiots who don’t share her experience.”

While this is about Hera’s relationship to her gender in particular, I think the fact that she sees herself as a woman specifically is relevant. The fact that she has a human gender and she cares about that, and that human concepts of identity in general do apply to her. She doesn’t consider herself separate from or above them.

And that leads, perhaps, to one more question. Is it possible that Hera sees herself as human not because of an innate desire for the attributes of humanity, but because all of the people she knows are human - because once you conflate personhood and humanity on a societal level, is it possible she feels that she will only be seen as a complete person if she is also human? And, I mean… Maybe? It’s possible. But I don’t think it changes the outcome.

I’m asking this here because I think this is also analogous to a trans experience. If you have social expectations of what a woman is, and you feel that you are a woman, and so you choose to conform to those social expectations (to whatever degree) because it allows your womanhood to be recognized… as long as the desire for those attributes comes from a genuine place, can you really tell if you would feel differently about it if society viewed womanhood differently? At some point socialization, societal expectation, and personal preference do get muddled up to a certain degree, and while it’s worth examining to make sure you’re doing what makes you most comfortable, whatever that may be… I think at a certain point ‘I feel better presenting this way than not’ is the only real answer you can find.

I think this also applies to Hera, in her connection to humanity and her expressions of/desires for a kind of physicality. We have a sense of how she canonically perceives herself, and how she struggles to be perceived by others, and with that in mind it’s largely irrelevant to me how she might feel about her identity with social pressures removed. Identity is shaped by connection, and while I waver on how much I want to say that Hera is human, full stop, no qualifiers… She is a person with human desires who wants to be close with and share experiences with her human friends. She is an AI, and that informs her identity and the way she navigates the world, but I don’t believe those things are mutually exclusive.

(I’ve written a little more about why I think Hera’s character arc reads as a trans narrative here.)

More than anything, I have a hard time believing that Hera would want to be seen as fundamentally different from the people she loves, when struggling to overcome that difference both within her own self-perception and in her interactions with others, is such a significant part of her character development. There are times where Hera being an AI does mean she has to consider things that the others might not, and it’s important that the people in her life are aware of and respectful of that. But to emphasize her differences in circumstances where it’s not relevant only serves to other her.

Or, let me put it this way. Whether or not Hera would want a body, if she could have one, is a whole other set of questions, but if Wolf 359 is a show about humanity, about connection, about the value of small, personal things over the Big Picture, then I think if Hera was able to hug her friends, if she was able to go somewhere by herself, entirely by herself, and put her hands in the water, and feel it… even the fact alone that she might have the desire for those things… Well, maybe there’s a way that Wolf 359 is about that, too.

xii. ‘if this is it? i’d rather go as me, thank you very much.’: conclusions

I often see people say that we have ‘no way of knowing’ how Hera might want to be seen, or even that she definitely wouldn’t want to be seen as human, or that it wouldn’t occur to her to want [whatever thing] because she’s ‘not human’ and I just… I don't think any of those things are true. I think there’s plenty to go off of in canon, and I think it all points more in this particular direction than not.

I once saw someone say - as a criticism - that Hera was less of an AI character and more of just “a person in the walls” and that stuck with me because… well, because it was such a funny way of phrasing it, but also because. That’s not a weakness of the writing or a failure of imagination. That’s the point of her character! There are so many other sci-fi stories that are interested in more speculative questions re: how AI characters might be different from us and prioritize different things. That’s not Wolf 359! Hera is not meaningfully different from the others, she just thinks she must be because she has different life circumstances and has been treated differently.

And I understand why people are wary about ascribing ‘human’ qualities to AI characters, given the track record of a lot of science fiction, and the reasons a lot of people might relate to AI characters in particular. I really do. I just believe that in this particular case, with this particular character, and the themes in this particular show, it would be doing Hera a disservice to ignore these aspects of her self-identity that she so clearly canonically struggles to come to terms with, when her physicality in the finale in particular is so much a culmination of this fight to be seen - in both a literal and metaphorical sense. 

I believe the tragedy of Hera as a character is that she is written to be fundamentally human, with physical desires, physical loneliness, an internal self-image that - except under extreme circumstances - she can never show to anyone else. But one that matters to her, and that she holds onto, nonetheless.

And there’s so much more I could say. I could talk more about Hera’s connection to water, her apparent draw to the natural and tangible. I could talk about how she reads, the way she processes things through emotion and into memory. I could talk about how she phrases things in terms like “now I’m going to have a headache” and only rephrases if someone challenges her on her wording. I could talk about how, while, yes, she is technically always everywhere, it’s also established that she can be more present in one place if she wants to be (and how this connects to her learning mindfulness in canon.) I could talk about how Hera sleeps, how she dreams, how Pryce has intentionally given her nightmares and threatens her with more.

But all of those are just details. If there’s anything I’d want people to take away from this, it would be that, one, over the course of the show, I believe it becomes more and more apparent that Hera is fundamentally just an average, more-or-less human person navigating extremely abnormal and inhumane circumstances, and, two, she experiences physical loneliness. She starts off the show embittered by, and in part in denial of, these facts, and by the ways she’s been mistreated, isolated, and othered. Accepting that she’s not fundamentally different from the people around her, and therefore not intrinsically doomed, is what ultimately allows her to leave the Hephaestus with the others, and allows her to believe that building a life on Earth is possible for her.

[laomelettedufromage]

Note to myself so I can articulate some stuff out of my brain this evening:

There is a future waiting for you where you will get to see and make new memories with the loved ones you miss that you’ve had to leave behind for the moment and there’s a future where you’ll make many more new lifelong loved ones. It seems so very and annoyingly far away right now but it’s waiting and you will get there. There’s a future where you’ll get to live with old and new loved ones where movie nights are common place and casual nights out and other hangouts and field trips are as expected as you like. Life will still be hard but it won’t be lonely. There will be people who will let you lay on the floor of their bedroom and complain and will come to yours to do the same and they will be within walking distance, either down the hall or down the street. It won’t happen today or in a month or maybe even in three years but it’s there.

[deadtower]

i do have to say in this shitshow of a world currently that i've started wearing my magen david out again recently and i've gotten a ton of compliments on it which is... really nice. like it's so sad that the bar is basically underground re: being nice to jews but

[seoafin]

This is going to be weird, but you prompted some thoughts in me about rip!mc when you said you can’t envision her living past 50. So when I was 16 during lunch one time, I got this sinking feeling that I wouldn’t live past 24. I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but over the years I’ve thought about it more and now I turn 24 in two months. And this is almost certainly just an intrusive thought, but it’s still there and it’s been playing on my paranoia and expectations of my life for years. My Abuelo always said that he would be ready to go at 60 and he didn’t expect to live past that, but he’s now 90 and still kicking. It’s tangential and I’m definitely projecting, but I feel like rip!mc is similar in the sense that she’s fully ready to be dead before 50, she’d be content even to live that long considering their world as jujutsu sorcerers and really she expects to be dead long before that. But instead, she just keeps living and having to figure out how to keep going. She can’t just give up because there are people who care about her and who she cares for in turn, and they wouldn’t let her anyways. Like even if stsg died first in whatever au it is, there’s a part of me that imagines her one day as a granny in a garden where you can look up at the stars at night. Like her kids with stsg have their own kids at this point that always come to stay at her house, and megumi 100% still visits with his kids and their kids. Like I just hope she’s learned to be content and to let herself be happy. And of course this could be the complete opposite of where you see her going which is absolutely valid, you’ve just made me really care about her with your wonderful writing. I just love the idea of taking this person who doesn’t expect or even want to live very long because they had so much pain and having them get to cherish decades and decades of a life experiencing love completely to their astonishment. God you’ve made me insane lmao thank you so much for your beautiful stories!! - times

messages that have me tearing up at 12 in the morning this ask literally touched me so much you don't understand 😭😭😭😭 i love when people tell me their little stories as a way to relate to ripmc it's so human and not weird at all. it's wonderful it's lovely i love when people tell me something that made them resonate with her! like yes she was always meant to be a projection of the reader reading! but she also probably reflects a lot back to the reader just as they project onto her. it always worries me when people say that relate too hard to ripmc (rip my ao3 comments 😭😭) also in my mind it's kinda always just been oh ripmc probably just expires at 50 because somehow that's how it was always supposed to be. she was supposed to die but she didn't. it's just natural that she dies early. it was also probably me wanting to give her some peace in death but also why!!! i don't necessarily think there's more grace in death than living. sorry i don't know where this is going but you're right! there is grace and happiness and dignity in living to an old age, surrounded by the people you love! it's not wrong to live. there's never anything wrong in wanting to live.

[shirbird]

Thinking about how Crowley was so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed when we created his nebula, how he was so full of life and love and happiness- and then he started to ask questions/no longer blindly follow authority and was rejected, cast out. How it hardened him, how all that life and love is still inside him but he doesn’t let himself-much less anyone else- access it.

How so many of us, too, were full of life and love and happiness, once upon a time. How we dared to be different- or even just be ourselves. How we were rejected, told that we were wrong- bad. How we hid who we were inside ourselves.

How the people who told us we were wrong were wrong themselves. How it’s not black and white. How they weren’t the “good guys”, even though they were supposed to be. How we’re NOT bad.

How even though we might know that now, it hasn’t necessarily sunk in. How we’ve internalized it, how that critical voice in our heads isn’t actually our own. How we’ve learned to suppress the voice that is ours- that voice filled with life, and love, and happiness, and hope.

How we’re learning to take ourselves back, to love ourselves and the world again. How it’s hard. How it’s possible.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

looking at the goodreads reviews for five's legacy while trying to decide whether to try the audiobooks was a Mistake, because i forgot that 99% of them were from 2014 fandom and therefore unbridled rabid hatred lmfao

reviews: i don't care if they try to make him sympathetic, he's an unlikable spoiled brat!!

me, staring at the kid who literally thought homelessness was a luxury because he could steal food, clothes, and pocket change to watch movies without having all of it systematically taken away from him by someone who controls his entire life; destroyed every one of his drawings for years so he could have them at all for a minute before he did, because if he kept them they'd be Belongings; was eventually found out anyway, and monitored constantly afterward to keep him from doing even that; and still destroys them out of habit years after escaping: ah yes. much brat. very spoil

[soupsandstars]

i absolutely LOVE your bruce banner and hulk art!!! 💚💚💚 they’ve been one of my biggest special interests for YEARS 💚 i’m so happy to see bruce and hulk art 🥺💚💚

Aww man thank you so so much!!!

[roamingbadger]

‘Normal People’s Frank Blake on an actor’s life’ by Liadan Hynes

Full article below the cut (warning, it is long!):

‘I used to worry on set, ‘I’ve just done another mean thing’,” Frank Blake says with a rueful smile. We’re discussing what’s probably his most high-profile role to date, playing Alan in director Lenny Abrahamson’s TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, a show that went a long way towards getting many of us through lockdown one.

“There’s a bit where I throw water on Marianne. I just felt awful that day,” he says with a laugh. “You know, because I’ll throw water on her, and Lenny’s not going to go, ‘Good man’. They called cut, I stand in the bold corner for a while, Daisy [Edgar-Jones] gets dried off for the next take, where the same thing happens again.”

Alan is central character Marianne’s older brother, a man lost in his own stew of anger and resentment; a threatening character in both the book and screen versions of Normal People. In the past, Blake has commented on how it is necessary to find a way into a dark character, to find some sympathy. Otherwise, you’re just playing a tone, he says.

“You just have to find what makes a person human,” he says now. “Lenny was a great help there in doing the groundwork. Alan’s feeling a bit hard done by in life. He’s obviously got a bit of jealousy going on there — a bit of trauma from the loss of their dad, which is a tough thing to deal with.

“I think it’s symptomatic of a certain rural repression, that character. And a male rural repression, maybe, when we see, unfortunately, that so many young men don’t ask for help, and they go a certain way. I think it’s a nice contrast to Connell in that show, where actually he does go looking for help in what’s such an amazing scene — his therapy scene. So I think, yeah, that’s an interesting juxtaposition in the show.

“If someone just asked him, you might get something out of him, but no one does and everyone’s afraid to. That’s the energy he gives off. So, he’s probably unlikely to get help.”

It’s hard, he agrees, to portray that kind of darkness without descending into pantomime. “Particularly when that show was very much about Connell and Marianne, so you have to be comfortable in the fact that you’re there to serve the story. You have to be there to serve this part of the story, so I don’t have to be liked or whatever.”

Throwing water aside, they had the best craic on set, he says. “I used to always be jealous of the other cast members. I’d get pictures of them shooting a pool party, or all the cool, hot Trinity stuff. It was actually great craic with Aislín [McGuckin], who played our mum, and Daisy. We’d such a laugh in between scenes.”

Blake had come from performing in Louise O’Neill’s Asking For It at the Abbey Theatre before the Normal People auditions began, along with some other actors, including Paul Mescal who later appeared in the show.

“I think it was one of the last weeks of Asking For It that we were all auditioning for it, so it was quite funny actually. Not only were there actors from Asking For It, but there were plenty of other actors in the [Abbey] building, and you could just see people walking around with copies of Normal People,” he grins. “‘Ehhh, why are you reading that?’”

When he found out, months later, that he had landed the part, he was performing in another landmark Dublin theatre, The Gate. His agent let him know on the opening night of Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie that he had been successful.

Blake, now 28, didn’t grow up knowing he wanted to be an actor, but at the same time, he had always been interested in theatre and movies. He hails from Tuamgraney, Co Clare, and is the youngest of three. “I think there was a latent actor in me there, but it was never something I did as a child or anything.”

His family ran an equestrian centre. He and his siblings would muck out the stables before school and get stuck in afterwards. “It gave you a good work ethic, anyway. It gave me a good maturity, in that way. And I saw so much of the country through travelling around to horse shows and stuff. It was a really interesting environment to grow up in.

“I wanted to do that as well, for a long time,” he continues of the world of horses. “It’s kind of a world I liked. I don’t know, I just kind of lost interest in it as I got older. People are always, ‘Oh that’s so amazing’. But I think when you grow up in that kind of environment, it’s almost like a bit of a chore.”

In his younger years, he didn’t know anyone who had made a career out of acting. “There were no stage schools around me. Now, there’s loads of things there, thankfully, for other people. And I think drama is about to become a subject in secondary school as well. If only!”

Dramatic outlets may have been limited, but from the age of four Blake had attended the annual amateur drama festival circuit each year — the plays were staged in the school hall. “My neighbour used to bring me. Every single night, there’d be different drama group doing a classical play. I’d seen every John B Keane play, Conor McPherson — I’d seen all of that stuff by the time I was 12.”

Eventually, aged 17, Blake performed in the community musical. “I was in the ensemble of Jesus Christ Superstar,” he laughs, adopting grand tones. “It wasn’t a school thing, it was the whole community. They used to let some schoolkids be part of the ensemble, so myself and a few of the lads just said, ‘Sure f**k it, we’ll throw ourselves in here.’ We were pretending that, ‘ah, this is just a bit of a laugh’, but I was secretly absolutely loving it. Nailing Jesus to the cross — that was my big role!” He grins at the memory.

Previously, he had planned to study psychology in university, but this experience pushed him to look into acting as a career. “It’s a bit of leap to be making,” he chuckles. “That sorted of turned my head a bit.”

He did an arts degree in NUI Galway, studying drama along with German and philosophy. It rapidly became clear though where his true interests lay. “I did eight plays in Dramsoc that year, and I think it quickly became apparent that that’s what I was into. I was still kind of in denial a bit — ‘Oh, that’s for the people over there’.”

Who are the people over there, I wonder? He’s not sure, he says, then jokes: “People in Dublin.” He adds: “The biggest obstacle is probably yourself, really, for a long time.”

Towards the end of that first year, Blake applied for a place in The Lir Academy, Ireland’s National Academy of Dramatic Art at Trinity College, without telling anyone. “In secret. Because I still didn’t know what I was at. You did three auditions over three months. I was skipping lectures, saying I was going to the doctor — stuff like that. And then I got in there.”

That felt amazing, he recalls, although he quickly realised he would have to tell his mother, and braced himself. “I remember getting ready to ring my mum, and be like, ‘I’m dropping out of college,’” he adopts, at this point, a sort of urgent, I won’t be dissuaded, tone. “‘I’m going to be a dropout.’ And expecting this big blowout, and being like, ‘Well I’m going anyway’.”

When he did ring, his mother was nothing but supportive and very proud. “I didn’t get to do any of the big arguments I’d practised,” he laughs.

Drama school was a somewhat different pace from an arts degree. But he relished it. “A lot is asked of you. But it pushed you so much outside of yourself that I loved it.” He particularly enjoyed the intensity of the schedule. “Looking back, you spend so much time waiting around as an actor, even if you’re busy, you’re still doing nothing. And to think that you got to go in there and you got to do something from morning until night, every day, that you loved. It’s just the best.”

Ending drama school can be a time of pressure — not everyone gets an agent. Blake did, however. “And then… you think you’re going to be a rock star,” he says with another laugh. “For most people, 99pc of people, you realise, ah, things are a bit different when you finish. You realise how hard it is. You’re just auditioning and getting no’s. Not even getting the no’s — not hearing back at all. It was just that for ages.”

He worked as a doorman in a hotel in Ballsbridge. He never considered giving up on acting, but he did begin to doubt himself. “And [I’d start to] think, ‘This isn’t what I thought it would be’. I did worry and think maybe it wasn’t for me for a while.”

Eventually, things began to pick up. “I started to realise then it’s about building a career, and it’s building blocks. Like, some people come out and they’re movie stars after a week. But I kind of realised you just chip away, doing small bits in theatre, and doing small bits on telly, or whatever is coming along. You eventually build up relationships. And after a couple of years, I could see that starting to pay off.”

Resilience is key for actors, he agrees. And the knowledge that this is a long-haul game. “Everyone finds it hard. You talk to people who you think are doing amazing, and the goalposts always move. And it’s always hard. You have to find the comfort in that.”

That said, it can be difficult. “It’s something I still find really, really challenging. Because you’ll always go through bouts of not working. Or things just being a bit different to how they were before, or how they will be. You just have to find the ease in that.”

He dislikes the nature of having to wait for someone else to give you a yes that comes with acting. “But it’s the reality of it. I’ve tried writing and stuff, as a way of taking back a bit of control, myself. I found great joy in that.”

He wrote a short film a few years ago based on Donal Ryan’s short story The Passion. “It was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done, because there was so much control in that. Being part of every aspect of a production, not just being told what to do. It was great, I loved it.”

It also demystified parts of the process, he reflects. “You think that’s for the people over there, and then you just do it, and you go, ‘Oh, right, I just had to do it’. So, I’ve gotten more into that now. I’ve written a few screenplays that are in development.”

Since Normal People, he has appeared in PBS costume drama Sanditon. He moved to London last year, having wanted to for years. “I love it. But I’m doing that classic thing of moving over to London and hanging out with a load of Irish people.”

He also appreciates that many of his friends are not in acting. It is good to have people who are not in his professional world. “When things aren’t going well, the last thing you should be doing is talking about all of the acting ever, when you could go out and kick a ball against the wall.”

For now, though, things are going well. Already this year, Blake has worked on film and in theatre. He is currently between jobs. “I’m doing that waiting thing,” he says, smiling. “I did a few bits this year. I’m just waiting for the next thing. There are a few things floating around.”

[bear-cubs-art-things]

you're aspiring quote of the day (that's actually from our drumline show and considering the world rn actually resonates differently to me now than it did before)

"Imagine a world where we are all enlightened by objective truths, rather than offended by them."

If there is an actual source to this quote I do not know it and please lmk if you have the source

[3nderstar]

.

[my-love-is-sunlight]

one piece men react to you screaming their full name

ft. Ace, Zoro, Sanji

SFW, mentions of alcohol and smoking, gn reader

Masterlist

𖤐⭒๋࣭ ⭑ .ᐟ ᡣ𐭩

Ace

“PORTGAS D. ACE” your voice resonates through all the walls, rooms and every nook and cranny from the Moby Dick. The mentioned stood frozen at the dinner table fork still full of food, he knew better than to run away

“What did you do now?” Marco asked eyes wide open

“Nothing!… that I remember” Ace scratched the back of his head trying to make memory of his recent activities, searching for whatever may had upset you

Marco laughed in disbelief “You’re a dead man” he said before taking another sip of his drink

You entered the room, stomping your way to your clueless boyfriend “May I have a word with you?” The tone and the politeness of the sentence made Marco fear for his dear friend. Ace nodded before he stood up and followed behind smile beaming in hopes you’ll have some mercy. A chorus of teasing ‘UUUUH’s were heard as you exited the dining room.

“Have I told you how radiant you look today?” Ace leaned over to kiss your cheek but you ducked making him loose his balance

“Don’t start with me Portgas” a shiver ran down Ace’s back, both from fear and… something else.

“You did this” you held a pillow cover in front of his face “You burned my only bed sheets, and you’re getting me new ones even if you end up in debt with everyone on this ship”

Ace was attracted to you all the time, but there was something in the way you would always stand your ground and how gorgeous you looked right now that was knocking him out of his feet. He placed his hand in the one were you held the pillow cover and pulled you in for a hug

“Im sorry sweetheart I’d get you new ones on the next island, you can borrow mine for now” you rolled your eyes and sighed, he got you wrapped all around his finger and he knew it, you couldn’t be mad at him for long

“Of course I’m taking yours, you sleep at my bed every night anyways… but wash them first” Ace picked you up and pampered your face with kisses “You look so hot when you’re angry

Zoro

“RORONOA ZORO” you screamed while exiting to the deck where he was working out, all of the straw hats looked back at Zoro in fear, Sanji holding in a laugh

Few things made this man flinch but he couldn’t help but catch himself lose balance when he heard his full name exit your lips in such an angry tone followed by your big stumps getting louder as you got closer

Everyone wrapped up whatever they were doing and ran off to the kitchen, leaving Zoro to face his demise alone

“What now?” He played it off trying to sound as nonchalant as he could not even looking your direction

“How many times have I asked you to not leave your sake around my desk?” If looks could kill your boyfriend would be a dead man

“Where am I supposed to put it then?” He scoffed crossing his arms in front of his chest, he looked at you for a second and his heart clenched at the cute way your brows furrowed and your arms rested on your hips

“Oh! I don’t know maybe, just getting silly here, IN THE PANTRY WHERE IT BELONGS!” Zoros condecency was driving you insane making your tone scale

The swordsman noticed how you were getting tense and teardrops threaten to run down your cheeks, he sighed a little embarrassed he had made you this upset. He cupped your cheeks while he apologized in that soft tone he reserved just for you

“I’m sorry I forgot to put it away last night, it won’t happen again I promise” he drew comforting circles around your cheek as he whispered

“It got all over my notebooks” oh so that’s why you were so shaken up

“I’ll clean it up baby” your boyfriend kissed your forehead as he made his way to the kitchen for a towel, as he opened the door every crew member fell comically on top of each other, they were ears dropping as they do.

Before Zoro could complain, your sweet laugh was heard at the distance which made him smile a little “You should listen to her mosshead” Sanji muttered which made the swordsman’s smile drop and scream back at him

Sanji

“BLACK LEG SANJI” even though you were screaming at him, the cook couldn’t help but feel his heart flutter at the way you wouldn’t use his birth last name as you knew he despised it and what it stand for, instead raging while using his public name.

You stormed in the kitchen eyes fixed on him, even angry Sanji thought you were breathtaking

“Yes my world?” he beamed a smile at you which you didn’t know if it annoyed or charmed you

“What have I said about smoking indoors?” Sanji felt the air get stuck in his throat, his eyes drifted from yours in shame

“I uhm-“ he laughed nervously as you got closer and closer cornering him against the counter, both hands caging him while they rested on said counter

“You know damn well I hate when my clothes smell like cigarettes, now imagine how I feel when my whole room stinks” you grabbed Sanjis tie to move his face closer to yours without breaking eye contact, you knew exactly what to do to make him a nervous wreck

The blondes heart couldn’t help but skip several beats at the way you were acting right now, he felt bad about upsetting you but he could get used to this side of you

“My apologies love, you know I cant manage to go without a smoke and sometimes I don’t want to leave your side” he twitched when his gaze met yours as he tried to explain himself

“Well you better start to manage” with a torturous slow move you took the cigarette that hanged from your boyfriends lips and threw it on the floor before stepping on it to take it out “Or I’ll move out of the room” you smiled teasingly while exploring his handsome features, stopping at his lips.

The cook turned all shades of red and pink breathing heavily, squirming a “Yes ma’m” before you kissed him passionately and breaking it abruptly

You winked at him before leaving the poor poor man absolutely stunted and a hot mess

𖤐⭒๋࣭ ⭑ .ᐟ ᡣ𐭩

Hi! This is my first time doing this type of format so tell me what you think and feel free to request. English is not my first language so correct me if I made any mistakes.