#but she doesn't want to hurt minkowski's feelings because she is getting SO into them. entirely sincere about it.

[commsroom]

Your Minkowski Hallmark Christmas movies post made me consider: we know Eiffel hates Christmas, and Minkowski loves it - what is Hera's stance? My guess would be slightly bemused by it, probably disliking some elements while enjoying others, but I'm curious as to your take

that's pretty much what i think! there's a part in one of the AMAs where they're talking about the characters' ideal valentine's days, and gabriel says that hera cared more about it being eiffel's birthday than it being christmas, and that's kind of my. general philosophy about hera and holidays. she has no personal or cultural connection, so i think... if she cares about any holiday, it's going to be because the people in her life care about it and invite her to share it with them.

i think she might find it interesting for just how pervasive it is in american culture, especially the position it holds as like... a clearly religious holiday that insists it's not. i think she could probably appreciate the decorations, exchanging of gifts, etc. to some degree, but would find the media too saccharine in the wrong ways.

(@collectoroflovelythings said exposing hera to hallmark movies would give her some mixed messages about the "meaning of christmas", like, it was a religious holiday and now it's just about businesswomen learning to love...? and i thought that was funny.)

but also, the other angle of 'hera cares more about eiffel's birthday than about christmas' + 'hera would care about holidays because the people in her life care about them' is that i think she'd be willing to play into eiffel's hatred of christmas, even if she has no particularly strong feelings of her own, just because it makes him feel better to have someone on his side.

[clonerightsagenda]

Pick a favorite character for the ask thing

(Ask meme here)

Did you know in my years of doing this ask meme, no one has asked about my beloved Hera? Possibly bc I talk about her so much already. Jokes on everyone, we are doing it again

First impression

I have told this story many times, but I was white knuckling it through the whole podcast terrified that she would get her memories deleted. To be entirely fair that was a rejected season 3 concept.

Impression now

I love her! Favorite AI character of all time. Chronic pain solidarity.

Favorite moment

I have many favorite moments, but what's coming to mind now based on some of my other responses to this prompt is that Hera delivers the only "I love you" aimed at people who are physically present. Minkowski says it in a message to her husband, Eiffel says it in a recording to his daughter, but iirc Hera is the only one to say it live, and it's platonic and to the group, which I Just Think Is Neat. (Iconically aro podcast w359 strikes again.) Also the whole quote is "I love you guys, but you need to get it through your heads that what goes for you doesn't go for me" which really gets back to one of the show's points that love isn't enough. You can genuinely care for someone and want the best for them and still fuck up, still hurt them, still not fully understand what they're going through. But you still have to communicate and you still have to try.

Idea for a story

Currently working on a PGW fic where the crew swings by the Hermes on their way back to Earth to rescue that station's AI and Hera has to work through her feelings about facing someone who was in the same situation as she was but did not come out on top. Rn she is being unfair about it.

Hera’s equally on edge. “The collar program is still running, she might not have that much processing power. But be ready in case she tries something. She’d better not try anything.” “It’s not her fault, is it?” he asks, surprised by the viciousness in her tone. “I beat a collar program.” “Didn’t Dr. Maxwell help you a lot, though?” Hera doesn’t like talking about Dr. Maxwell. “I don’t care,” she says instead. “She shouldn’t have let Dr. Pryce make her hurt them. Just because she couldn’t stop Dr. Pryce from taking her crew away from her doesn’t mean she gets to take mine away from me.”

Unpopular opinion

You mean besides my post that got me vagueblogged about? Here's another one: I don't think Hera would want or enjoy a human/humanoid body. The one time she's limited to a single source of visual input, her response is "it's weird; I don't like it". She's proud of being able to see colors our skull-gelatin can't comprehend, even if she's sorry she can't share them with anyone. She enjoys being a AI mother program when she's on a functioning system like the Sol. Yes she envisions herself as present with the crew in parts of Memoria, and there's an implication she's given herself a humansona, but my interpretation of that was that she wants to be treated as one of them, and unfortunately most of the crew's approach to treating her as a person is trying to treat her like a human. She's not wrong to think they'd relate to her better if she looked like them. (Is that not the same principle the Listeners used?) Maxwell was able to meet with her on her level, but as much as the other crewmembers care about her, they don't understand Hera in the same way. Downloading her into an android body feels like an accommodation for their benefit rather than trying to find a way for her to thrive on her own terms. Smarthouse Hera forever.

(For the record when her VA was asked if Hera would like being human her response was 'she'd try it for a day to see what it's like but she wouldn't want to stay that way'. Seems reasonable to me.)

Favorite relationship

As most followers know I am very fond of her (non-romantic!!) friendship with Eiffel. They've got a lot in common! They fuck up with each other but then do better! They were both sent up there knowing they were disposable and then decide to care about each other on purpose. However most followers also know that in my last few relistens I've been thinking a lot about her overlaps with Lovelace - how they are both surveillance tools that entities use to try to hurt other people, and they both overcome that. Hera is extending non-human solidarity but she wants to be recognized as a non-human person and Lovelace would really prefer to be viewed as human, thanks. There's tension there.

Favorite headcanon

I've posted before that I think she retains some of Pryce and Eiffel's memories which has funny, sad, and interesting implications. Among these I think she kept override codes Pryce can use on AIs so she can fight that kind of thing off in the future, and something that will come up in that Hermes fic is her deciding whether she's willing to use those on someone else. Stay tuned.

[crossguild]

honestly if we take the fact that kepler's the employer out of the equation, between kepler and jacobi as a duo, jacobi is objectively the worse partner, especially in a hypothetical romantic scenario, so it's REALLY funny that the fanon portrayal is usually the other way around

kepler did an asshole thing (presumably showing the entire office a video of jacobi freaking out about ducks) and after realizing how much jacobi didn't like that, apologizes and promises not to do it again

jacobi spends the whoooole stakeout in no complaints being passive-aggressive and moody when he could've just outright said that he wanted to celebrate the workiversary instead of forcing everyone to endure that ten-hour clown show

jacobi feels guilty about playing a part in maxwell's death, so rather than acknowledging it and dealing with it like a healthy adult, he decides to swerve from accountability and try to blame it all on kepler instead. by making minkowski kill him. like, jesus.

kepler never tries to deflect from the fact that he is at least partially responsible for the events leading up to minkowski shooting maxwell in the head, but he also doesn't blame jacobi, whose decision more directly led to the outcome!!

jacobi also blames hera for being unable to save maxwell, when hera was trying the whole time to convince the heph crew to spare her and it was minkowski's decision to execute her. she had done literally all she could. jacobi also blames kepler for not defecting sooner, at a point when openly defecting would've quite literally gotten ALL OF THEM KILLED. jacobi blames people for not doing things they objectively couldn't or shouldn't do, just because HE feels hurt by it

jacobi blames kepler for not helping him more after the thing with clonecobi, but jacobi himself points out way later that he didn't even realize he was scared! he didn't even REALIZE that he needed more support and he definitely didn't ask for it-- so why would kepler know to step in?? every issue that other characters bring up with kepler is USUALLY addressed in some way or another, like when lovelace went to him about the alien clone thing and kepler was like, alright, you can have the documentation!

jacobi was pretty much okay with having information withheld from him when things were all going their way, meaning the issue he has with kepler is that. kepler can't literally see the future???

jacobi is volatile and passive-aggressive, he expects other characters to read his mind and fulfill his needs without him ever asking anyone for help, he rejects all attempts at reconciliation until it's too late and then he's mad at kepler for not defecting at the last possible moment when kepler had made multiple attempts to talk to him before then. when he realizes that kepler is a person and not this all-seeing figure that he's built up in his head, he gets mad at kepler about it instead of being like, oh right, kepler's human too, and sometimes shit happens! any emotionally healthy adult with a modicum of interpersonal boundaries would say that the toxic one in this equation is jacobi

he's a fun character exactly because he's a bundle of hypocrisy and emotions that he has no idea how to process, and he makes that everyone else's problem