#but the way you draw lovelace and minkowski is SO much like how i see them too.

[nobodysdaydreams]

Doug and Hera need to have their own spin-off comedy space podcast/sudden therapy be a regular thing, because there's no other duo I'd rather see confront Cutter outside of his office documentary style with cameras and mics demanding an explanation for his many crimes🎙️

(Or my reaction to episodes 50-52 of Wolf359)

Welcome back dear readers! It's been a long day, and I know it's been a long time since I've reacted so I thought I'd sit down for a little Wolf359 this evening. Please enjoy!

Tagging the mutuals who got me invested in this, and if you want to be tagged or untagged from these posts, lmk, or you can follow my blog or simply follow the tag "#bods wolf359 reactions". Anyone who has followed me for a while knows my updates are inconsistent, so I apologize in advance for that and for any spelling/grammar mistakes in my posts.

@sophieswundergarten @oflightningandstars @acollectionofcuriousreblogs @herawell @commsroom

Episode 50: The Hiccups Method

I agree Minkowski. When will Kepler get it through his head?

👏 No. 👏 One. 👏 Cares. 👏 What. 👏 He. 👏 Thinks. 👏

With all of Jacobi's sarcasm, I think he and Doug would have been drinking buddies in another life where things were different.

Poor Lovelace. I can see why she doesn't want to take the risk. These aliens are interesting. They called out Kepler for his violence, but they themselves have been extremely violent and hostile. Do they genuinely not realize how fragile humans are? Do they think humans can regenerate like they can so they don't bother being careful? Are they just not used to being careful?

Oh right. Because Hera has been taken over before too. She knows what it's like.

Hera deserves her moment. I hope she gets it, whatever it looks like.

Maybe they could listen to the music. Maybe that will draw the aliens out. They did seem to enjoy the tunes. 🎶📻👽

I mean...the brain IS like a computer...but it's not exact. It's way more complicated. And a "part alien" brain? Let's see how this goes...

Ah the creepy background music. 🎶 That must mean it's working.

Eiffel! Oh dear. I guess Lovelace doesn't do well with creepy silence and breathing.

I know that sound. A treadmill. My old enemy. /j /treadmills are actually fine, it's the pacer that gets me.

Oh no this sounds terrible. I'd be out. Bods would not be a pretty sight. I'll spare you all the details.

Keep trying Eiffel, I believe in you!

And it's not your fault Lovelace. It's none of your faults.

Well except Kepler it is his fault for sure. And Jacobi.

Kepler's idea would probably involve chugging some whiskey.

Oh this is bad too. I should have figured. Kepler would have probably hoarded the whiskey for himself anyway. Not to drink, but just to enjoy the feel in his...well feet now I guess since he um...could use a hand right now.

The aliens did make Lovelace pretty indestructible... except for the one that killed itself that they heard about...oh maybe they can self-destruct.

As horrible as they were, it would be way more useful to have Maxwell or Hilbert around. I get why they had to die. If you have characters who can explain things, you lose the plot. But it would be strategic to trade Jacobi and Kepler for them.

Oh they don't sleep much? Interesting. What happens when she sleeps? Do they take the data from her brain?

Alien duplicates have a more complex brain stem? Interesting. A more complex life support and control system.

Norepinephrine. I struggled to pronounce it to Doug.

So that would mean she needs the opposite of alcohol.

DOUG WHAT IS THIS PLAN?

HERA CAN IMITATE THEIR VOICES? That's kind of cool. I hope she uses that later to trick Cutter and Pryce.

"Complete the process?"

Cliff notes? Key inside is outside? Enter in order to leave? Douglas must what?

Do they want them to fly into the star? Is that why they tried to drag them in before? Is that what the aliens mean by "Kalabunga"?

They know that doesn't work with humans right? They've seen human bodies, they know that can't work right? Are they trying to make more human clones? Why?

Good work, Doug. At least they know what the aliens want now. Sort of.

Episode 51: Shut Up and Listen

Sophie has really been hyping up this episode, so I'm excited to listen.

I love these intros. ✨Hera✨, Captain Isabelle Lovelace the Second, all the aliases for Hilbert 😂 "Boom-boom wow Jacobi" oh my gosh the Kepler one 😂

Professor D.F. Eiffel. What is his middle name? What is he a professor of?

The Hephaestus files! I love the intro theme. It's very drama. UF Overview is good too.

Again with the dramatic music. This is perfect. I love Doug and Hera together they're fantastic!

Please Minkowski being the mom. "You're not poisoning anyone on your radio show are you?"

Man, Doug is never living down this "you poisoned yourself" thing.

Oh right the radio signals. The ones that couldn't possibly from 8 years ago, because no radio station has ever played old music before. It’s not like we have whole stations dedicated to music from the 70’s and 80’s.

Why are we listening to Kepler's opinions on the aliens? They already made it clear they don't like violence. Kepler tried to get violent and they chopped his hands off and talked down to him. These aliens don't really even seem to talk normally. Do they even normally communicate with sound?

The lion speech actually makes sense. You don't know what "that's a nice scent there" means.

But Kepler. You are ASSUMING that you can't get where the dear listeners are technology wise without doing horrible things. And even if that is true, you are also assuming that's where you want to be. Why are these aliens taking such an interest in you? Maybe they're desperate. You literally just said you don’t know anything about how they work, and now you’re claiming to know everything. Whatever fits your worldview I guess.

"Finish the process quickly" sure sounds urgent to me.

As for Maxwell's language logs, maybe Hera can take a look.

I knew it! Hera can understand it.

Math is math. There we go! And binary gives you yes and no. Simple, but effective for answering questions.

I'm sorry Hera. I know Maxwell wasn't here for you, but she was there for a while. I'm sorry she didn't make a better choice. It’s sad to think that if they made better choices in another life, Maxwell and Jacobi might have actually been friends with these guys.

"How to listen. How much have we missed already?" That's a good metaphor for life too.

Not the Goddard Futuristics sponsorship 😂😂😂

"Do you want to do horrible things? Do you wish more of your time was taken up by conspiracy theories? Are you tired of just being evil on earth and want to be evil 🚀in space🛰️?" 😂😂😂

"Experiences no other human has ever gone through" right, but Lovelace is technically not totally human. (no offense. Biologically I mean).

"The Doug Eiffel charm" oh goodness

"What could possibly go wrong" DO NOT ASK THAT QUESTION DOUGLAS.

The wonderful record scratch and future Hera. 😂

"Fancy meeting you here...in the bridge...of a space station...the USS Hephaestus" I can just tell Doug ran a comb through his hair and threw on his best shirt for this. And that’s all you need. Max effort. Charm to 100% 😂

✨my casual stance😎✨

smooth Doug, very smooth

"I won't record you without your permission" 😂

I would not be surprised at all if Cutter and Pryce have listened to 100% of their journey. Microphones hidden everywhere.

"Don't pull others into your sinking boat" you're all in the same boat.

Wow. Lovelace is getting real here. "What would Isabelle Lovelace do?"

Lovelace you are YOU. ...Aw, she wants to feel like herself again. You can still be you Lovelace.

"That doesn't work. You know why?" oh because she's not her? Eiffel? Oh no.

Oh Hera. He was afraid of Hera? Windup girl? Hal9000 impressions? Doug, they weren't just jokes, and you know it. That's why you stopped.

"People are always going to be afraid of me, aren't they?"

Ouch.

And Doug did deserve that slap. It know jokes are how he copes, but poor Hera and Lovelace.

...yeah that DID happen. And I'd imagine Doug has been MIA. He's probably ashamed.

Doug, they know you're not a bad guy. We all make mistakes, but you need to apologize.

Doug is not the best listener or good at remembering or reading subtext. Me too buddy. It's okay. Dang they really called me out with this character and I don’t like this part. Can we go back to him being funny and a good friend and the only person brave enough to point out the obvious “killing people is wrong”?

Minkowski's speech about how hard it was to change her language and accent was a lot. I wonder what she thought about all those times Doug mocked Hilbert’s accent and Nationality? It also makes me wonder whether the aliens are doing the same with them. Not the mocking, but changing their speech. Are they just trying to communicate or do they want to create a certain impression?

But this is getting sad. Why does this feel like a forever goodbye? I don't like that. I don't like that at all.

"That's the thing about you Eiffel. You try. You really really try. And then you stop trying. Don't stop."

Let's see if he does.

I also love that Hera continued the podcast even though she got mad at Doug. She's so sweet. HAHA...The Hephaestus Files, nice. Hera deserves that.

I love the exit music 🎶🎶🎶

I feel like this episode might be a good metaphor for the aliens and communication. Doug didn't listen to what his coworkers were really saying. Maybe the aliens are the same way. Who knows.

Hm. I should go to bed now.

Eh...one more couldn't hurt.

Episode 52: Constructive Criticism

Oh Hera's trying to take care of him. It's okay Hera, he'll get over it, he just needs time.

Good thoughts Doug! You're listening! Why classical music? What's so special about that to them? Maybe they don't have a concept of sound or music! Maybe that's what they came for! You're doing it Doug! Good job!

The music is what they are sending. The point is why.

Be careful, Doug. She cares about you. Your friends care about you!

Oh Doug. RUN!

What would he do without Hera?

Did Lovelace gag him? Is this Kepler or Jacobi?

...why does Hilbert's lab have it's own pressure and air? To protect the experiments or give Hilbert a way out? Is there a way to detach the lab?

Also, it was only a matter of time. Cutter's errand boys kept chiming in when they weren't wanted. I'm surprised they weren't gagged sooner.

"The rules apply to Eiffel?" I suspect many rules were created specifically for or because of Eiffel.

A game? Not Funzo I hope.

Huh. Fortunately, Unfortunately sounds like a fun story telling game.

The story will tell you when to stop. Or you get bored. Or everyone dies.

Well not everyone I hope.

Oh Jacobi was that kid wasn’t he?

A WEEK? What happened to Doug? I knew he'd be upset after what happened, but yikes.

I knew it. The NPR special. Doug's punishing himself.

Looks like Kepler and Jacobi are getting on slightly better terms. Don't like that.

Hera. Hera no! HERA!

Oh right. She doesn't want to do a full reset of her personality. She doesn't want to delete herself even if she won't remember.

Don't ask Kepler for his games.

Oh now Jacobi is upset. I wonder what happened to him during the last round.

Wait, the you can only ask questions game! I love that game!

"Run away while you still can" no thanks Jacobi I'll play.

Kill him, Hera. Ask him about his Whiskey.

Now here's a good question. How did Jacobi end up here?

Oh right...Kepler's too proud to stop the game. This is perfect.

So Goddard did some good things. Wonderful. But you can't kill someone, show up in court, and cry "what about the millions I gave to the orphaned children?" YOU COULD HAVE STILL DONE THAT WITHOUT KILLING PEOPLE.

And good and bad DOES matter when you talk about progress, because it determines what you are progressing towards. FORWARD TOWARDS WHERE JACOBI? ASK YOURSELF WHY DOES THE WORLD WORK THAT WAY? DO YOU THINK THAT'S A GOOD THING? ASK DEEPER QUESTIONS YOU SIMPLETON!

"There aren't sides. There's people you do things to and people you do things for"

So Jacobi would kill them if given the opportunity. Tell me something I don't know. Pity he wasn't interested in the redemption arc. I was hoping somebody, ANYBODY would reach for it. The standard is low. The bar is on the floor.

Doug just wants to be helpful. Poor guy.

Yeah Doug, I know how this feels. It hurts. It's okay buddy. It's okay. They're still you're friends. You’re not worthless.

Oh his poor stomach.

And...Hera wins the game! Yay! 🥳

That's a lot of music. But again, why. Why do they need the music?

I'm beginning to like fortunately, unfortunately game. Let’s try it.

Fortunately, Jacobi had a come to Jesus moment and decided to stop blowing things up and stop threatening to kill people...oh dang it Jacobi!

Should have seen that coming.

[hephaestuscrew]

Every Time I Can Think of When Names/What People Are Called Is Significant in Wolf 359

Cutter using everyone's first names as part of his terrifying over-friendliness thing. It's also definitely a power move because the crew aren't permitted to call him by his first name. They have to address him as Mr Cutter.

Alexander Hilbert / Elias Selberg / Dmitri Volodin. Since Hilbert has been working for Goddard for a long time, we can assume that these aren't even the only names he's gone by. The repeated identity-switching illustrates how Hilbert doesn't really have a life outside Goddard.

When trying to find out about Hilbert's past in Ep25, Eiffel asks him for his real name, like he thinks this might tell him who Hilbert really is.

After learning Hilbert's original name, Eiffel agrees to the continuation of the Decima experiments, although he says "I still don't trust you, Dmitri Volodin." I think this is the only time we hear Hilbert being called by his original name on the Hephaestus. Even at the funeral, Eiffel calls him Alexander Hilbert. The name that sticks is just the one he happened to die whilst wearing.

Lovelace sometimes calls Hilbert Selberg (e.g. "I've seen Selberg's dark side")- this seems to indicate when she's feeling most mistrustful of him.

Although the aliases are a practical measure, they also create a degree of separation between Hilbert and his previous selves. I think the most notable example is when he yells "Selberg not here today" at Lovelace in Ep26. When Hilbert is trying to save Eiffel from dying of Decima, he does not want to be called by the name of a man who killed two people using that same virus.

Like Hilbert, Cutter has gone by many names (William Carter, Marcus Cutter etc). He sheds identities to suit his purposes.

Andrea Nash /Rachel Young also took on a new name when she joined Goddard.

In her logs from the first Hephaestus mission, Lovelace says about Lambert, "I wish you were here Sam, I wish you were here to ask me not to call you that"

In her first meeting with Hilbert, Lovelace insists on being called Isabel.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the only people who call Lovelace "Isabel" at any point are Cutter and Hilbert. Cutter calls her it because he does first names with everyone, but Hilbert asks "Isabel... are you listening to yourself?" in Ep38 after she's given an any-means-necessary revenge rant. And he calls her Isabel again in Ep44 when they are inspecting the mind-reading chair thing before the mutiny. In a twisted way, it's an acknowledgement of their shared history. Hilbert thinks he knows Lovelace better than the rest of the crew do, so he feels entitled to call her by her first name.

For Hera, her name (as opposed to her designation of Unit 214, which places her as just one among many, rather than an individual) is an assertion of personhood. Pryce insists on calling her Unit 214 and chides Cutter for calling AI by their names, because she doesn't see AIs as people.

The crew call Hera Unit 214 when they are being mind-controlled and Eiffel gives away his non-brainwashed state by automatically calling her Hera, indicating his inability to see her as a mere machine.

In Hera's first meeting with Minkowski, Minkowski initially calls her Unit 214 because she had heard that AIs prefer to go by their serial numbers (incidentally, the fact that Minkowski looked into this is wonderful. I wonder whether its true that most AI like to be called by their serial numbers or whether this information is put out by Pryce to deprive AIs of identity.) Hera responds "Oh, no, no. Hera. Definitely Hera."

In Hera's backstory ep, it is revealed that Goddard doesn't name their AIs until after they've been assigned to a posting. This really illustrates Goddard's attitude of "we won't consider treating you like a person unless you're useful to us".

Hera doesn't always have control over how she addresses the crew. She is forced to call Hilbert Commander during his Christmas mutiny. After Kepler's arrival, she starts calling Minkowski 'Lieutenant' rather than 'Commander' without even noticing. This is a symbol of her lack of autonomy over who to respect/ obey.

When Eiffel's freaked out about Lovelace being an alien, he keeps calling her "Cap" and she picks up on this as a sign of something being up.

Minkowski's surname and its correct pronunciation as a representation of her Polish heritage, which Eiffel disrespects by mispronouncing it. He says he initially tried to get it right, but stopped trying after they started fighting. After she tells him how much his mispronounciation bothers her in Ep51, we do hear him start to try to correct himself.

Eiffel insisting on calling Minkowski "Commander" even when she isn't officially the Commander - at times, it almost feels like a nickname or a term of affection. Even when she's voluntarily given up command to Lovelace, he still asks "Do I really have to call you Lieutenant?" It's an indication that, even though he doesn't always show it, he does see her as the one in charge.

I remember seeing a post which suggested that Eiffel calls Minkowski "Commander" when he is showing full respect for her and "Minkowski" (pronounced wrong) when he isn't, and I think there's definitely some truth to that.

He calls her Commander in his last words before being stranded in deep space (Ep28), before launching himself into the star (Ep52) and before the mind-wipe (Ep61).

I'm pretty sure that the first time Eiffel calls Minkowski 'Renée' is when he is begging her not to send him off back to Earth in the Sol. This is followed by Minkowski saying "Goodbye, Doug."

Minkowski does call Eiffel Doug several times in the early episodes but I think this is more because the writers hadn't fixed on the significance of names at this point. I think I remember seeing the writers saying that they wish they'd held back on her calling him Doug so that it would have more power later on.

During Eiffel & Minkowski's first meeting, she cuts herself off from asking him to call her Renée, and says Minkowski instead (perhaps because she's trying to be more formal/authoritative). After he butchers her surname a few times, she tells him to call her Commander.

Minkowski reintroducing herself to Eiffel after the mindwipe. Eiffel pronounces Minkowski's name correctly first time. This time she does ask him to "call me Renée".

This might be a stretch but arguably it's significant that she reintroduces herself with "my name is Renée Minkowski. I'm the Commander of this space station" rather than "I'm Commander Renée Minkowski"- she isn't defining herself by her military position.

The si-5 have a similar thing going on where they don't often call each other by their first names, so when they do, it gives those moments extra emotional significance.

Kepler calls Maxwell Alana in Ep39 when telling her not to get sentimental about Hera.

Maxwell first-names Jacobi twice in Ep42 (the Outside Jacobi Incident), once to tell him that if its a joke, it isn't funny and once to say a firm No to the idea of leaving Outside Jacobi to die.

When Maxwell is calling out for an answer from Outside Jacobi, our Jacobi says "Alana... I didn't go anywhere."

In Ep43, when Maxwell is about to lay into Jacobi for losing his cool over the Outside Jacobi Incident, she begins with "Daniel? Look at me." He eventually responds with "Alana, you're... You're absolutely right."

You could even argue that the classic introduction of 'This is the audio log of Communications Officer Doug Eiffel' draws attention to names as a key motif.

[gorseflowers]

Favorite Characters Tag Game

Rules: List your favorite character from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people.

Tagged by: @section-69 thank you for this chance to ramble

random order also ive just got done ranting with my flatmate abt prophecy narratives so this is gonna be intense im riled up

faith lehane from btvs, my bestest worstest woman forever and always, i absolutely could not fix her i love her so so much

worf from star trek. gonna see him again in picard s3 and my brain is On Fire about it. he’s been written so inconsistently to put it politely over the years if they fuck this up i will wreak violence, telling the 6′4 klingon warrior to get behind me babygirl i’ll defend your character from defamation

captain isabel lovelace from wolf 359. on all levels except physical i am wrapping her in my arms. i think about desperate measures and i go fucking insane. if you call her the “villain” of s2 you and i have a fucking problem. shoutout to hilbert minkowski and eiffel whom i am chewing the doorframe over also

abed nadir from community. choosing just one of the study group was a very gun to the head deal but i will tell you at length why abed is one of the best characters ever written for television so i feel like it has to be him. 

James Flint. very similar situation of how do i just choose one when half the characters of black sails live rent free in my heart and head but uhh yeah james flint realigned my worldview and my sense of self

nandor the relentless from what we do in the shadows. i am going to mug him i am going to steal his cloaks and i am going to wear them every day for the rest of my life. i love other things about him very deeply but its so important you know that every day im thinking about those cloaks.

geralt from the witcher. i feel like him and ciri were specifically tailored for me at this exact time of my life to wreck me in every way. he committed so hard to being a loving caring father for her nobody fucking look at me.

abigail kamara from rivers of london. i wrote a fucking character study thesis fic for her based off a bonus short story in the back end of lies sleeping and THEN ben aaronovitch came out with her whole novella and did i miss? did get a single character beat wrong when i extrapolated from next to nothing? no i did not. that was my magnum opus. 

thor from m*rv*l. i just think he’s neat

hellboy, although ive not read the comics i just watch the gdt films when i was younger and latched onto him which reminds me im always saying ill draw him and then i never draw him

Tagging: @flintcoded, @blacksailsgf, @runestele and anyone else who wants to do it!

[nellied-reviews]

Super Energy Saver Mode Re-listen

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

Super Energy Saver Mode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Miscellaneous thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

[hurlumerlu]

Reepicheep. And I want an answer for every single one. Also: Minkowski, Marian, and Nightwing

alslkgjfyhdtt you don’t pull your punches X)

Reepicheep :

Sexuality Headcanon : that mouse is gay and there’s nothing you can do about it. Gender Headcanon : I feel like he has a very simple and straightforward relationship with his gender, the only problem being that other people make assumptions. Luckily, duels exist. A ship I have with said character : Listen I wracked my brain ALL NIGHT and I got nothing. Him and Caspian is too lover/beloved for me, we see him interract with our heroes when they’re kids, his fellow mice are all clearly crushing hard but he doesn’t seem interested. I will ship him with any minotaur who comes his way, though. Just because I can. A BROTP I have with said character : Lucy. The strong must protect the sweet. A NOTP I have with said character : Aslan. Not that Reepicheep can’t fuck God if he wants to but Aslan doesn’t deserve him. A random headcanon : that mouse is trans and there’s nothing you can do about it. (also he’s an excellent dancer) General Opinion over said character : what can i say except that he’s the best thing C.S. Lewis ever wrote ?

Minkowski :

Sexuality Headcanon : bi. (though when we didn’t know her spouse’s gender I was headcanoning her as a lesbian) Gender Headcanon : she probably hates how so many people tend to see her as a woman first and anything else second, but she wouldn’t define herself as anything else than a woman. A ship I have with said character : Minkowski/Lovelace (of course). A BROTP I have with said character : Minkowski & Eiffel (of course bis). i also really love her relationship with Hera. A NOTP I have with said character : I don’t really have one. Minkowski/Kepler would feel like a big disturbance in the Force though. A random headcanon : she’s a pretty good writter, even though it’s not particularly her thing. General Opinion over said character : she was never really my fave, but that’s only because Wolf 359 is so full of excellent characters. her sense of responsability toward her crew and the struggles it brings her are amazing and an excellent red thread all throughout the show. i also love how single-minded and dumb she can get when stress and powerlessness get the better of her, but that even at her worst she’s incredibly compassionate. AND i love the harpoon (of course ter).

Marian :

Sexuality Headcanon : it pains me to say that but she’s probably straight ? Gender Headcanon : well being a woman in her world is obviously not easy, but she draws strength from it, because drawing strength from the unjust things you fight is a very Marian thing to do. A ship I have with said character : the love bewteen Marian and Robin has been part of the myth for so long that i pretty much always ship them, but the bbc version is my favourite version of the ship. there’s a lust for life between them that is just A+ A BROTP I have with said character : Marian & Allan ! they’re perfect. Also Marian & Jack, and Marian & the abbess in a vaguely shippy way (what ? i said probably straight) A NOTP I have with said character : NOTP is a strong term but Guy/Marian just doesn’t work for me. i just... as a romantic prospect he’s kinda boring ? and seems to care more about Robin that her ? and they have zero chemistry ? and by the time the writers realize they need to sell us on that love triangle it’s far too late ? I just don’t really get it. A random headcanon : she has a very nice, mezzo singing voice and she’s not dead just chillin’ General Opinion over said character : fierce baby angel who deserves the best and is not dead just chillin’ I liked in earlier episodes when she was much more calculating than she became after, but the character developpment makes sense so it really doesn’t bothers me.

Nightwing :

Sexuality Headcanon : he’s bi. Gender Headcanon : he’s the kind of dude who says “it takes a real man to love [inserts “feminine” thing here] without shame”. A ship I have with said character : i don’t have any big ship, but Nightwing/Batgirl (or Oracle) would be the main one. and Nightwing/Deathstroke can be fun. BROTP I have with said character : the whole Batfamily, of course. also Nightwing/Starfire with benefits (and his friendship with Midnighter was anecdotic but fun) A NOTP I have with said character : nah ? i just don’t feel very strongly about his romantic endeavours tbh. A random headcanon : he’s not a good cook, but he definitely has a “kiss the cook” apron General Opinion over said character : i am contractually obligated to stan all the Robins but Dick has always been my fave among them. I tend to prefer Nightwing’s friendly, heart of the team iterations to his cold, calculating, vengeful iterations but i’m painting in broad strokes here, it’s great when he can be a bit of both, and I’m always happy to see him and to watch him leave.

thanks :D

[benevolenterrancy]

Maybe Herawell?

I’ve never written Herawell... or Maxwell at all, so this was a fun challenge (and a good excuse to relisten to season three episodes)!  Definitely not a drabble but I had an idea and I wanted to roll with it.  I’ve also posted it up on my AO3.

By now, Maxwell knew the Hephaestus like an old friend.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that if she hadold friends, she would know them as well as the Hephaestus.

She sees the blueprints in her head, sees them shift andswim through their three dimensional mapping, the layers of crew pathways andservice corridors overlaid with technical graphs of wiring and pipes andcarefully labelled systems that blurred over top of each other until she, withbarely a thought, dissected them from one another and superimpose them over hersurroundings.  She was in engineering,but she wasn’t just inengineering.  To her right she passed acomms terminal, and snaking through that wall was a network that connected itto three other engineering terminals to create a subsystem, partitioned off themain systems for safety reasons. Immediately beneath her feet were three different branches of theHephaestus’ heating ducts, and below that was a primary power node.  Overhead, she knew there were four differentnetworks of wires, all carrying different information at impossible speeds allover the ship.  Interspersed through allof this was the grid of cameras and sensors and auditor inputs used by themother program to supervise the station and its inhabitants.  All of this hidden from sight buteffortlessly visible in her  mind’s eye.

With ease she moved  through the stuffy, complex maze ofengineering, not even looking up from the tablet in her hand and she pushed herway along.  She was trying to make senseof an error that had cropped up yesterday in the ventilation system.  It had been a strange, brief tick and shemight have overlooked it if it weren’t for the fact that it quite literally should not have happened.  As far as she could tell there was no triggerthat should have set it off, it was a completely inscrutable puzzle, and that annoyed Alana Maxwell.  So here she was, attempting to hunt it downto its root system.

She may have very well continued on her way, comfortable inthe busy silence of an unsolved dilemma (one that took her blissfully far awayfrom the unmitigated chaos of the rest of the ship since the colonel had betterthings to do than slum in engineering, Lovelace and Minkowski were bothdutifully busy with their own work, and Eiffel wasn’t likely to go somewherethat might require him needing to actually work.  Honestly Maxwell was grateful for thattoday.  Today wasn’t a day she felt muchlike being around other people.  Jacobiby now knew to leave well enough alone; he’d given her shoulder a brief pat inthe morning when they had passed in the kitchen and that had been the extent ofit.

So it was just her and the machines.  Really, if you thought about it, that wasn’tso much sad as much as it was… a tradition.

That might actually be more sad, if she let herself think aboutit too much.  Which she didn’t.  

This peace was broken though, when one of the machines spokeup.

“Doctor Maxwell, stop!”

Hera’s voice was so sudden and so filled with cracklingpanic that Maxwell didn’t even question it. That, and the sharp warning beeps that came half a second after told hervery  clearly that she needed to quitmoving now.  She scrambled to stop herself as quickly as shecould while gliding in zero-G.  Shedidn’t stop a moment too soon; immediately in front her face one of the pressurerelease values on engine systems gave an ear-piercing shriek as it released askin-burning cloud of built-up steam. Even from where she clung to the pipe that had slowed her down, Alanacould feel the sizzle of super-heated water vapour across her cheeks.

The steam died back down as quickly as it had come, leavingthe room silent besides for the plinkplink of cooling metal.  Maxwell tooka moment to compose herself and come to terms with her near death experiencebefore speaking.

“Maxwell?  Doctor Maxwell?  Are you okay? …Alana?”

Maxwell breathed carefully. The air felt all the colder passing into her lungs after that burst ofsteam.

“I am… okay, Hera. Barely, but okay.  At least Iwasn’t done up like steamed broccoli so it could have been worse.  Now, if you don’t mind me asking, what the hell was that.”

A semi-omniscient artificial intelligence that was fullyintegrated with a space stations couldn’t actually flinch, but Hera definitelytried.  

After the uncomfortable static died down, Maxwell asked, asgently as she could, “Hera are youfeeling okay?  That was a reallyunexpected pressure build up, and–”

“No no no, I’m fine! I’m fantastic!  I am – with allthe work you’ve already done for me, Doctor Maxwell, I’ve honestly never felt better. It was just…  I was doing a fewadjustments of our orbit and I guess it just put a bit more strain on theengines than I had calculated.  Sillymistake!  Must have, um, forgotten tocarry the one?”

Maxwell crossed her arms. She’d gone from being shocked and mildly concerned to down rightsuspicious.  “You’ve been spending toomuch time around Eiffel,” she said flatly.

Hera couldn’t really deny that.  She swore she used to be a better liar.

“Seriously, Hera, what’s wrong?  And can we not do the usual song and dancearound this.  Just… let me know whatneeds to be fixed, so I can fix it.  Letme help.”

“Nothing needs to be fixed – well, no, that cooling tank bythe starboard thruster is still running at a loss for some reason, and I’m notsure that reroute you patched in last week has fully settled – but what I meanto say is… this was just an accident. Honest.  And besides, youshouldn’t be overworking yourself today, right? Right!  Right, so let’s forget it.”

Maxwell squinted.

“What’s thatsupposed to mean?”

Hera seemed to realize she’d taken a misstep because shefumbled to self-correct.  “What?  Mean? Nothing!  Just… you’re a…hardworking individual and you shouldn’t work… too… hard.”

“Why is today so special?” she demanded, though she knewwhy.  “Look, whatever you think you knowabout me, Hera–”

“Look, I wasn’t snooping just to snoop!  Well, not much.  Maybe a little.  It happened while we were patching code fromthe Urania into my databanks.  It’s allbeing shoved into my head, it’s hard notto look and it was just a little date and it wasn’t exactly classified – much –anyway!  It’s not really a big deal,right?  Except… then you haven’t saidanything about it and no one else has said anything about it and now I’mthinking maybe it is a big deal and,yeah…” she trailed off.

Maxwell just sighed.

“Alright, let’s just… get this out in the open then.  Yes, it’s my birthday.  I suppose I shouldn’t have really expectedyou not to figure that out.”

“Happy birthday?” Hera offered tentatively.

“Not really,” said Maxwell pointedly.  “Look, you know and… honestly, I’msurprisingly okay with you knowing. Because it’s you.  But I don’twant to talk about it or acknowledge it or anything.  Get it? I don’t exactly have a lot of great memories about birthdays and honest,I’d rather just be busy.”

Math, numbers, machines, those had always been there, thosehad always been constant.  Growing up,nothing else really had been.  She lookedback on her time in public school mostly with resentment.  They hadn’t know what they had had.  They had left her alone and bored andstagnating.  They had left her with herfather and left her with her inscrutable classmates and left her inmotherfucking Montana.  But at the time, as a child, she had likedschool, as much as she’d liked most things. Oh, she had hated her classmates, and hated the lonely boredom of recessand lunch until she had learned to smile and charm and convince her peers totolerate her on a surface level.  She hadhated how boring the work had been and how stupid her classmates had seemed.  But school at least had been constant.  Every weekday, eight to two.  And once a year, like every other student intheir small elementary school, the principal would call her name over the morningannouncements to mention to a mostly uncaring student body that it was herbirthday and to invite her to get a birthday pencil from the office.  It had been predictable.  It had, when she was younger and more naïve,made her feel good.  Once a year, atleast one person would wish her a happy birthday.  She had heard plenty of stories about whatbirthdays were supposed to be like, heard peers talk, read it in books, seen iton TV.  Parents pampering you, presents,parties, praise.  Some years her fatherremember.  Some years she wished he didn’t.  Most it wasn’t an issue, but it wasn’tmentioned.

But she would spend the entire day on edge, wondering if,if, if, if he would remember, and if he did what would happen.  It had been an unpredictable, anxious sort ofday.  Most years she would drag herbiggest, and most interesting books into her room – whatever she’d been able tocheck out of the school’s little library or borrow from the classroom – andread.  She’d look at the grade six mathbook that was theoretically three years too advance for her and let the simpleequations solve themselves before her eyes, she’d read about space and scienceand exploration and imagine the hidden math there.  A rocket went up to space.  How? The book didn’t tell.  She wouldspend the evening on her stomach with paper and pencils in front of her as sheimagined how it worked, why it worked, if she could make it work.  The math was constant.  It kept her busy.  It was a good friend.

And yes, she realized that that sounded sad.  Childhood trauma and all that, the plight ofa child genius, everyone had heard the narrative before.  She shut it down and locked it up behindfirewalls and deleted the directories that lead back there.  It was unnecessary baggage, a glitch in herprograming, an obsolete file that slowed her down.  But command_code: “birthday” had a way ofdrawing those memories back up.  So shekept busy.

Maxwell spoke first, eager to change the subject.  “So how about we figure out what the heck hasbeen causing these weird alarms over the past few days.  At this point I’m thinking there might besomething wrong with the alarm trigger itself, with the audio, because–”

“I, uh… I know what’s wrong.”

“…Are you serious?  Sowhat, you’ve just been watching me scramble around trying to figure it out?  Hera, if this is a prank you have really been spending too much timearound Eiffel.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Hera…”

“I’m serious!  Well, Imean technically there were thingsthat were wrong for a very, very briefamount of time.  I was trying to surpriseyou and so I was… practicing.”

“By… breaking the ship? I mean, I would have beensurprised if we’d suddenly dropped into the star but I think everyone elsewould have been too.”

“Oh, so I need to keep you updated about every time I adjustany system, but you don’t even have to tell me that it’s your birthday!” snapped Hera, clearly riled.

“What does that have to do with anything?” demanded Maxwell,feeling just as frustrated.

“Because it’s your birthday!”

“So what?  Kepler’s isnext month, do you give a shit about that?”

“No!  Because that’s Kepler, and this is you. I care because it’s yourbirthday!  This is the day you started existing.  And I thought that we… I thought…”  The glitch was thick in her voice.  “I thought you would c-care if I knew.”

The action was immediately, without any sort of thought; Maxwellreached out and put a hand on the nearest pipe. It was an absolutely insane, nonsensical thing to do.  To say that Hera was the Hephaestus was agross over-simplification to begin with, but even if you did make that leap itwasn’t like there was any sensation for Hera to experience by Maxwell touchingsome arbitrary part of the station.  Shecouldn’t tell that Maxwell’s hand was soft. Apologetic.  Shocked and sincereand overwhelmed but not knowing how to feel any of that let alone voice it.

“I don’t really dobirthdays.  Not a lot of great memoriesfor me.”  Please understand.

“I get that, I just…” said Hera, with stops and starts.  “I’m sorry, I’m going to mess all this up.  I just, I wanted you to know that I’m g-gladyou exist.  And I get not liking whereyou c-came from, but I don’t care aboutthat.  Who cares if the person who madeyou was a b-bad person?  I’m glad youexist, like this, now.”

Maxwell could feel her hand tighten its grip on the pipe asher throat tightened around a lump of emotions rising up from her chest.  She didn’t know what to say, so she saidnothing.

For a moment it was silent, or as silent as engineering evergot.  Just the sound of a single humanand thousands of pounds of complex machinery co-existing.  And a single AI thinking carefully before shespoke.

Finally, Hera said, with great tentativeness, “Can I giveyou my gift now?  I… I was still working itout but I think it should be ready.”

That startled Maxwell. “Alright, Hera, you’re pretty amazing but – no, you are possibly the most amazing person I know – butthere are limits.  You don’t have hands, Hera.  We’re stuck in a tin can eight lightyearsaway from earth.”  Laughter was breakinginto her voice, a disbelieving, amazed, intrigued laughter.  She was curious.  Not just curious, but completelystumped.  You couldn’t just get someonesomething when you had next to no resources to begin with and were existing ina tiny bubble in the middle of space. And yet she was supposed to believe Hera had somehow managed it?  Just because it was Maxwell’s birthday?

Honestly, if anyone could manage it, she supposed the factthat Hera had surprised her the least. No matter what that little voice in her head might insist, Hera wascapable of so much.  Maxwell had builther life around artificial intelligence, and yet Hera was constantly,endlessly, relentlessly amazing her.  Notbecause she was a great AI, but because Hera was, unerringly, a greatperson.  A great, shocking, frustrating,wonderful person.

“I have my ways,” said Hera, with a smug pride in her voicethat was so far removed from the helplessness that she was still workingthrough that Maxwell couldn’t help but smile. ”So… do you want it?”

“Yes, I’m too curious now.”

“I know all your weaknesses,” teased Hera.  “You’re going to have to wait for just onesecond.  It’s a little tricky to getgoing.”

Maxwell floated in the middle of engineering, waiting.

Then a warning buzzer went off somewhere below her.   Maxwell was in the middle of doing afull-body twist – immediately looking for what was going wrong was such aningrained instinct at this point that she didn’t even think about it – when thebuzz cut off.  And then another alarmbeeped, its lights flashing.  Andbeeped.  Stopped.  A higher pinging, a warning bell, and soonMaxwell was listening to a choir of notification pings and alarm buzzes andalert beeps play out in what, she realized with delighted awe, was asurprisingly recognizable rendition of HappyBirthday.  And this wasn’t just Herapiping music or even noise through her speakers.  No, Maxwell realized as she floated amid a rainbowsky of flashing lights, somehow Hera was managing to choreograph an array ofsystem failures with the sole purpose of making the machines around them sing.

That should have been more terrifying than it was.  Mostly Maxwell just wanted to figure out away to hug an entire space station, because an entire space station beingsystematically broken and rebuilt in the span of microseconds that was possiblythe coolest gift she had ever been given.

When the last warning hum died down, and the bright lightswere flashing and twinkling like party poppers, Maxwell applauded.

“D-did you like it?”

“Hera, that was amazing.  How did you even manage that?”

Hera was flustered, delightfully so.  “Oh, you know.  Practice. Which, um, sorry about that.  Butit was really just like knocking over a line of dominoes.  …Dominoes that you also need to make sure youprogram to immediately rebuild themselves after they get knocked over soeveryone doesn’t die a horrible, painful death.”  Hera laughed uncertainly.  “But everything was fine, so – yay.”

Maxwell was turning on the spot, mentally trying tocalculate how many different systems had played into that, how that many couldeven be altered or tricked in such a way. “There must have been a hundred different failsafes to work around topull that off.”

“Oh, believe me, there are and none of them are happy withme right now.  But… I did it.  I really didn’t think I could but, well, thenI figured who says I can’t.  So I just,did.”

Maxwell had her face in her hands.

“Doctor Maxwell?”

Her shoulders shook.

“Alana?” called Hera, more alarmed.  “I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have doneanything; Eiffel doesn’t like his birthday either, but I’d thought–”

Finally, Maxwell laughed. Deep, gasping laughs that were almost tears, probably were tears, butwere  wrapped up enough in humour and joythat they could be safely ignored.

“I can’t believe you just completely kicked down everywarning sign built into your head that you could find.  You just… stomped right over every stopperGoddard made because you wanted to. Because you thought it would make me happy.  I can’t… I…”  Her breathing steadied alittle, and suddenly the weight of it, the weight of twenty seconds and a sillychildish song hit her fully.  “Thank you,Hera.”

“You’re welcome, Alana.” A beat, and then, as if thinking better of herself even as she said it,Hera said, “I understand why you wouldn’t like your birthday, and I definitelyget having memories you don’t want to think about, but someone really, reallywise told me that memories are what make us people.  So I was thinking, maybe, we could make somenew memories?  Together?”

Maxwell didn’t know what to say.  Her mind whizzed with every reason this was abad idea.  Birthday’s were inherentlyunreliable, so she filled them with reliability: numbers, math, work, a few ofthe constants in her life.  Thetemptation to stick with what she knew, to avoid the thoughts, to avoidconfrontation was great.  Sheoverthought, and she knew it.  So shestopped, and said the only thing that she could possibly say.

“I imagine everyone can keep us from dropping into the starwithout me there to hold their hands for a few hours, right?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hera, fondly.  “But I’d be willing to test that hypothesisout.”

“Sounds like a date.”

[redwineandroses-13]

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.

[greyelven]

Fandom 5k Letter

Dear Writer,

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

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

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

Ghostbusters

Erin/Holtzmann, Abby & Erin & Holtzmann & Patty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HTGAWM

Annalise/Bonnie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rogue One

Jyn/Leia, Jyn & Leia

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

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

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

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

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

Wolf 359

Lovelace, Minkowski, Lovelace/Minkowski, Eiffel & Minkowski

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

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

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

Prompts!

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

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

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

The X-Files

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

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

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

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