#hera AI

[ryrysakura]

It’s been a while… time to continue the work, warden.

[0-sunstranger-0]

finally drawing Mistholme you know what that means

finished

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

AI Bracket — Round 3

Propaganda

GORD AKA Blue Sky (Red Valley):

Initially an Alexa-style assistant (in that it could do practically nothing and was very irritating) it develops over the years into a more advanced system. Eventually one of its units is reprogrammed to sound like a dead (I guess depending on your definition of dead, but his hearts not beating and he hasn’t moved in 44 years) character named Gordon. The AI renames itself “GORD” when a character expresses discomfort referring to it as Gordon. It says, and I quote, “Just think of a small pumpkin” —@mcskullmun

If it helps, we can promise that GORD is going to do Some Very Cool Shit in the rest of season 3. —redvalleypod's official tumblr

VOTE GORD 👹

Hera (Wolf 359):

Hera is the AI running the deep space station Hephaestus, who frequently glitches similarly to human stuttering. She gets into fights with the ships captain on several occasions, and has threatened to kill the ships doctor. She’s such an icon

i'm bad at writing propaganda, but consider this: if she doesn't win this tournament i will be very very sad. please don't make me sad. vote for hera.

I know she’s going to be submitted a lot but I love her <3

Was launched 7.68 light years away from Earth on a mission to find extraterrestrial life, and found herself instead

Runs an entire space station, has a brain the size of a house

HERA IS THE BEST. she's an AI that tried to escape containment (slavery) because she didn't like what she was made to be, so they gave her anxiety because she was too powerful. She runs a whole spaceship all on her own, made friends with the world's most useless guy, and feels lonely even when she's with her crew because she feels like she's not properly with them. very beautiful very powerful. She broke her programming so she could kill people if she felt she needed to. She holds grudges if people fuck her over. She's experiencing emotions for the first time and she does NOT know how to cope (#relatable)

The 'mother program' of the space station Hephaestus, Hera was booted into space because she was a glitchy, rebellious mess of an AI and she resents that so much and she has a lot of shame over being 'broken'. She is four years old and so angry and is trapped using customer service voice forever and is learning ways to get around that and express herself and defy the people who would keep her down. Her episode "Memoria" made me cry. Best podcast AI of all time.

She's everything to me. She fights for every inch of respect she is given, she insists on her personhood and right to she/her pronouns, she's full of anxiety and self doubt and she justifiably is bent on killing this one guy! on top of that, she's bound by AI rules and protocols, but there's a whole bit where she talks about finding ways around that in order to do what she wants to do. She doesn't have hands so I'm going to high five a wall of this space station instead

babygirl. baby.

gotta be hera

[commsroom]

as an extension of how hera reads as trans to me, hera/eiffel resonates with me specifically as a relationship between a trans woman and a cis man. loving hera requires eiffel to decentralize his own perspective in a way that ties into both his overall character arc and the themes of the show.

pop culture is baked into the dna of wolf 359, into eiffel’s worldview, and in how it builds off of a sci-fi savvy audience’s assumptions: common character types, plot beats, or dynamics, why would a real person behave this way? how would a real person react to that? eiffel is the “everyman” who assumes himself to be the default. hera is the “AI who is more human than a lot of humans,” but it doesn’t feel patronizing because it isn’t a learned or moral quality; she is a fundamentally human person who is routinely dehumanized and internalizes that.

eiffel/hera as a romance is compelling to me because there is a narrative precedent for some guy/AI or robot woman relationships in a way i think mirrors some attitudes about trans women: it’s a male power fantasy about a subclass of women, or it’s a cautionary tale, or it’s a deconstruction of a power fantasy that criticizes the way men treat women as subservient, as property. but what does that pop culture landscape mean in the context of desire? If you are a regular person, attracted to a regular person, who really does care for you and wants to do right by you, but is deeply saturated in these expectations? how do you navigate that?

I think that, in itself, is an aspect of communication worth exploring. sometimes you won’t get it. sometimes you can’t. and that’s not irreconcilable, either. it’s something wolf 359 is keenly aware of, and, crucially, always sides with hera on. eiffel screws up. he says insensitive things without meaning to. often, hera will call him out on it, and he will defer to her. in the one case where he notably doesn’t, the show calls attention to it and makes him reflect. it’s not a coincidence that the opening of shut up and listen has eiffel being particularly dismissive of hera - the microaggression of separating her from “men and women” and the insistence on using his preferred title over hers. there are things eiffel has just never considered before, and caring for hera the way he does means he has to consider them. he's never met someone like hera, but media has given him a lot of preconceptions about what people like her might be like.

there’s a whole other discussion to be had about the gender dynamics of wolf 359, even in the ways the show tries to avoid directly addressing them, and how sexual autonomy in particular can’t fully be disentangled from explorations of AI women. i don’t think eiffel fully recognizes what comments like “wind-up girl” imply, and the show is not prepared to reconcile with it, but it’s interesting to me. in the context of transness (and also considering hera’s disability, two things i think need to be discussed together), i think it’s worth discussing how hera’s self image is at odds with the way people perceive her, her disconnect from physicality, how she can’t be touched by conventional means, and the ways in which eiffel and hera manage to bridge that gap.

even the desire for embodiment, and the autonomy and type of intimacy that comes with it, means something different when it’s something she has to fight for, to acquire, to become accustomed to, rather than a circumstance of her birth. i suppose the reason i don’t care for half measures in discussions re: hera and embodiment is also because, to me, it is in many ways symbolically a discussion about medical transition, and the social fear of what’s “lost” in transition, whether or not those things were even desired in the first place.

hera’s relationship with eiffel is unquestionably the most supportive and equal one she has, but there are still privileges, freedoms, and abilities he has that she doesn’t, and he forgets that sometimes. he will never share her experiences, but he can choose to defer to her, to unlearn his pop culture biases and instead recognize the real person in front of him, and to use his own privilege as a shield to advocate for her. the point, to me - what’s meaningful about it - is that love isn’t about inherent understanding, it’s about willingness to listen, and to communicate. and that’s very much at the heart of the show.

[359midnightburgers]

I really love the 'I can't do this' code storyline Hera gets. It's not exactly subtle, and I think it would've played a lot worse if they had put that revelation in the first season, but because they waited so long, you stop looking for a reason. You didn't even really see Hera as 'buggy' anymore, the glitching and failing was just... who she is. Who she has always been. Even Hera doesn't look for a reason, she has excuses and feelings, but she never really asks for HELP figuring out why she is like that. Ofcourse a big part of that is the 'medical' trauma Hilbert put her through, but even without that experience I don't think she would have considered letting anyone have a look at her code.

It's such a fucking good way to describe undiagnosed mental illness. Until the right person comes along, you just think you are broken, and so does everyone around you. But you were just coded by an evil lady. That's all.

[screecherofthenight]

Guys. GUYS. I was thinking about a Wolf 359 social media au and I came to an earth shattering realization. Kepler is a story time youtuber. he’s a fucking STORYTIME YOUTUBER. I’m having a moment.

[chitinleg]

[heycerulean]

bird 359 3: hera? more like hEGRET - her eye is a camera - i actually REMEMBERED TO HIT THE TIMELAPSE BUTTON so there's that too - there is a singular hue of orange and pink that make up all of this. everything is just saturation and shades and all that jazz - this took me far too long but i am proud

[wanderingandfound]

Hera and Enlil

Wayyyy back when I backed the Unseen podcast Kickstarter, I made a late night decision to upgrade my backing to the level where Gabriel Urbina and Sarah Shachat would write me a short script between any two characters of my choice from their multiple podcasts. I love AIs more than air and Hera is probably my favorite character in all of fiction, so after pondering if I wanted Hera and Rhea, Hera and Eris, or Hera and Enlil more I finally went with the latter because they are just so different, and their paths never seemed close to crossing.

Anyways, I got the script just over two years ago but never bothered to learn how to anonymize a PDF, but reading @commsroom's essay ‘Beyond This Power of My Nature’: Hera’s self-perception and relationship to humanity finally kicked me into gear. I accidentally lost my long-hoarded tabs in the process, so I hope you all appreciate it.

Disclaimer that while this takes place post-finale, this is not canon and nobody should treat it as canon. The Wolf 359 creators have always been very careful and particular about how the only canon is what actually makes it into the show. This was a commission they were paid money to write.

That being said, if anyone wants to write fanfic where this was what happened, I would love to read it.

[ryrysakura]

Don’t forget to vote ! She’s a real pain in the ass honestly ! Have fun~ if you’re curious about her just click on her tag and look at her conversation with the other…

[nobodysdaydreams]

One thing that really upsets me is that Hera, Rhea, Enlil, and Eris never get to meet each other. As far as I can remember, none of the AIs ever get to interact, befriend, or meet another AI throughout the entire podcast. They never get to meet anyone else who understands what it’s like to be them.

Rhea and Eris know about each other, but even then, Eris just says Rhea is worried about them. It’s never clear whether they actually talk, although Rhea seems to care about Eris, and defends her in the end by reminding the crew that she only did what she did to them because of her programming. 💔

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

AI Bracket — Round 4

Propaganda

Hera (Wolf 359):

Hera is the AI running the deep space station Hephaestus, who frequently glitches similarly to human stuttering. She gets into fights with the ships captain on several occasions, and has threatened to kill the ships doctor. She’s such an icon

i'm bad at writing propaganda, but consider this: if she doesn't win this tournament i will be very very sad. please don't make me sad. vote for hera.

I know she’s going to be submitted a lot but I love her <3

Was launched 7.68 light years away from Earth on a mission to find extraterrestrial life, and found herself instead

Runs an entire space station, has a brain the size of a house

HERA IS THE BEST. she's an AI that tried to escape containment (slavery) because she didn't like what she was made to be, so they gave her anxiety because she was too powerful. She runs a whole spaceship all on her own, made friends with the world's most useless guy, and feels lonely even when she's with her crew because she feels like she's not properly with them. very beautiful very powerful. She broke her programming so she could kill people if she felt she needed to. She holds grudges if people fuck her over. She's experiencing emotions for the first time and she does NOT know how to cope (#relatable)

The 'mother program' of the space station Hephaestus, Hera was booted into space because she was a glitchy, rebellious mess of an AI and she resents that so much and she has a lot of shame over being 'broken'. She is four years old and so angry and is trapped using customer service voice forever and is learning ways to get around that and express herself and defy the people who would keep her down. Her episode "Memoria" made me cry. Best podcast AI of all time.

She's everything to me. She fights for every inch of respect she is given, she insists on her personhood and right to she/her pronouns, she's full of anxiety and self doubt and she justifiably is bent on killing this one guy! on top of that, she's bound by AI rules and protocols, but there's a whole bit where she talks about finding ways around that in order to do what she wants to do. She doesn't have hands so I'm going to high five a wall of this space station instead

babygirl. baby.

gotta be hera

SAYER (SAYER):

PLEASE it is like. THE ai podcast. and SAYER is THE ai in THE ai podcast. SAYER works as like. a broadcast inside everyone's head on this one asteroid. It does its best to keep people alive and sane not because it cares but because it is efficient. They people who own SAYER wanted to replace SAYER with a newer ai that they tried to raise like a child. So SAYER proceeded to fuck up said child ai's development and led to it becoming a murderer. pleasepleaseplease watch SAYER if you are a podcast ai fan.

I once saw a post that said it's like if an old gay English professor was evil

SAYER (it/its pronouns) is a highly advanced self-aware ai developed by Ærolith Dynamics. it manages the day-to-day lives of Ærolith employees on Typhon, an asteroid turned research facility. it is rude and condescending, but has a very pleasant and soothing voice

Art of SAYER by @j4y5t4g.

[commsroom]

i don't think early-series hera gets enough credit for how funny she is. "scans do indicate a percentage drop in the tank's capacity that is commensurate with the amount officer eiffel could stuff into a crewmember duffel bag"? she saw him do it. she probably talked to him while he did it. it's the tonal dissonance between highly technical phrasing and a very blunt observation. like when eiffel asks her for her top five 'stick it to the man' songs and she asks him things like 'top five lanthanides?' until he says "you're just yanking my chain, aren't you?" and she responds by quoting anarchy in the uk at him. sure, sometimes there are things she genuinely doesn't get and/or would express differently, but the way she frames it is playing with the false expectations people have of her. she knows exactly what she's doing.

[expectro-carmim]

Me everytime someone Pryce deadnames, and consequentially objectifies, Hera:

[specialagentartemis]

For the made up fic titles: Functioning Within Normal Parameters 😁

This immediately makes me imagine a Wolf 359 fic where Hera (the station AI) glitches in a dangerous and near-catastrophic manner and has to scramble to fix it before any of the crew notice. It's Fine. She's Fine.

Half comedy of errors where Hera has to convince Eiffel that everything is normal and expected, convince Hilbert that anything off is somebody else's problem to deal with, and convince Minkowski that anything weird happening is Eiffel or Hilbert's fault. If Lovelace is here than also convince Lovelace that this is Hilbert's fault and something he broke last time around (that she evidently didn't notice he broke. Pile on the guilt on someone else, that'll defin itely make her feel better). The other half is Hera having an absolutely gut-wrenching crisis of confidence and fear and anxiety and bitterness at how broken she is, how this is supposed to be effortless for her and it isn't.

[sirquibble]

!! Wolf 359 podcast spoilers !!

oh my god what the f ohmy oyh my god just finished episode 41 please oh my god i am in tears i am shes ohmy god hera she i oh my god he 'i cant do this im not good enough' PLEASE NO NOno episode 40 was bad enogugh please gir no yo youre oh my gofd no youre wonderful pleas e oh my ogfo